Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [34]
Anger was like the ground hamburger of our existence. Its versatility was inspiring. There was Anger Turned Inward, Repressed Anger, Misguided Anger. There were Acts Made in Anger, Things Said in Anger and people who might very well die if they didn’t Face Their Anger.
So we screamed at each other constantly. It was like a competition and the prize was mental health. Every so often Finch would say, “Hope has been expressing a lot of healthy anger lately. I truly believe she’s moved up to the next level in the stages of her emotional development. She’s leaving the anal and moving into the phallic.” So then everybody hated Hope because she walked around being so smug and emotionally mature.
Although his peacockian displays of anger and his high decibel baritone voice prevented most people from directly confronting him, there were times when the doctor himself was the target of someone’s “healthy expression.” Usually Agnes’s.
The doctor and Agnes had been married for what seemed like hundreds of years. When she’d met him, he was a handsome, promising young medical student. She was an attractive and traditional Catholic girl. Surely, she could have had no idea what she was getting herself into.
She reminded me of a scatterbrained old Cadillac that had been driven into the ground but somehow kept on starting, without fuss. Normally, Agnes was just there in the background, wordlessly agreeing, endlessly sweeping, making herself invisible and generally staying on the sidelines.
So it was especially exciting when Agnes flew into a rage. And all her rages were directed at the doctor.
The problem was that the doctor had a mistress. Actually, he had three of them, and he called each his wife. He was fond of saying, “Agnes is only my wife in the legal sense. Emotionally and spiritually we are not married to each other.”
Agnes didn’t seem to mind this except when the doctor threw it in her face. And when he threw it in her face it was always with his favorite wife, Geraldine Payne.
Geraldine was the female equivalent of a diesel Mercedes sedan. She was, it seemed to me then, well over six feet tall. She was broad-shouldered and broad-faced. When she lumbered into the room, the word mistress did not come to mind.
Dr. Finch adored her. She’d been his muse for over a decade, traveling with him from motor-lodge to motor-lodge. Their love was no secret. Often we would joke, “Can you imagine her on top of him? She’d crush him.”
Geraldine seldom came over to 67 Perry Street, except under the protection of holidays and special occasions. Agnes would be chilly but polite, never forgetting that she was first and foremost a doctor’s wife.
And when Geraldine was gone, the screaming would begin.
“I don’t care,” she’d bellow from behind the closed bedroom door. Then something might crash against the wall. “I am your wife. You cannot do this to me.”
Finch would always laugh. He found her fury absolutely hysterical. His face would grow red and his eyes would tear and sometimes he’d call somebody into the room just to watch Agnes in the blind midst of her rage. “Hope!” he might bellow, “your mother is having a fit of hysteria. It’s spectacular!”
Agnes continued screaming regardless of who showed up at the door to watch. It was like she was in a scream-trance. And then, for some reason, she always ended up laughing, too. Somebody might point out how insane she looked, holding the nightstand above her head, and then she would catch herself and laugh.
It fascinated me how she tried to maintain her dignity as a Doctor’s Wife. She always spoke of him as “the doctor.” And she always wore lipstick, even if she was only cleaning turkey off the ceiling—something that needed to be done on a frequent basis.
When it was the doctor’s chance to be furious with Agnes, he could bellow and boom all he wanted but she