Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [20]
Did the Finches keep a wolf in the house?
It would make sense, I thought. They seemed to be sort of crazy. They were up at all hours of the night, they didn’t care if you used a coaster on the table under your glass. They didn’t even care if you used a glass.
The wolf moaned again, but this time it also called out a name. “Agnes.”
The sound was coming from the top of the stairs. But it was muffled, like it was behind a door.
“Agnes!” Now it sounded like an old lady. Frail, but insistent.
I was wondering if I should poke Agnes on the shoulder or maybe just slap the coffee table really hard to wake her up, but just then her eyes fluttered and she mumbled. Automatically she reached for her black vinyl purse, an air conditioner-sized accessory that was never more than a foot from her body.
“Agnes!” It was almost a howl. I could picture a ghoulish old lady, hands mangled by arthritis, crawling along the floor upstairs.
“Uh, oh. Okay, yes, okay, I’m coming,” Agnes muttered. Somehow she’d heard the old lady in her sleep and now she was standing up and heading for the stairs, as if programmed at birth to do so. “I’m on my way,” she called. Agnes looked weary and fatigued. Her body was like a bag of sand that she was forced to drag around.
“Where’d Agnes go?” Hope asked brightly when she walked back in the room. She was carrying a box of croutons and offered me one.
“Oh, no thanks.”
“You sure? They’re good when they get a little stale.” She shook the box.
“That’s okay, I’m not hungry.” The box looked old and worn, like it had been filled and refilled for many years.
She shrugged and sat on the sofa. “Okay.”
“Who is that lady?” I asked. “The one who was calling for Agnes?”
Hope smiled and then she chuckled, popping a crouton into her mouth. “Oh,” she said, rolling her eyes,“so you heard Joranne.”
“Who?”
“Joranne,” Hope said. “She’s one of Dad’s patients. She’s wonderful.”
I waited for more.
“Is that where Agnes went, upstairs?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, so okay. Joranne is really special. She’s one of Dad’s patients and she’s staying in the middle room upstairs.”
I would be living in the same house with a crazy woman? And then I realized I already was living in a house with a crazy woman—my mother.
“She’s a very sick lady,” Hope added, crunching a handful of croutons. Then,“Ouch,” and she spit one into her hand. She smiled up at me. “That one was a little too stale.” She brushed it onto the floor.
“What’s wrong with her?”
Hope sighed and set the box of croutons on the coffee table. “Joranne is a very brilliant lady. She’s incredibly wellread and very interesting. She loves Blake.”
“Who?”
“He was a painter,” Hope smiled at me. Her face said, Oh, I forgot you’re only twelve. You’re so mature for your age.
“Oh,” I said. I still didn’t get why she was here.
“She’s an obsessive compulsive neurotic,” Hope stated.
“A what?”
She turned sideways on the sofa to face me. “Obsessive compulsive neurotic. That’s the technical term for her condition.”
This sounded impossibly exotic and I immediately wished I was one too, whatever it was.
Hope then explained that this meant Joranne could not leave the room upstairs for any reason. In fact, she had not left the room once since she was brought to the house two years ago during a personal crisis in a nor’easter.
“She’s been here for two years?” All I could think was, wow.
“A little over, yeah.”
What kind of doctor lets a patient live in his house for two years? And did she really never come downstairs?
“She’s never been downstairs once. Agnes brings all her meals up to her. And everything has to be wrapped in aluminum foil. She’s afraid of dirt. So nobody can even step into her room. When Agnes brings her a food tray, she has to stand in the doorway. Nobody is ever allowed inside. Her room is really spotless by the way. Too bad the rest of the house doesn’t look like that,” Hope laughed.
If Joranne had never been downstairs,