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“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I am.”

“I don’t think you’re alright.”

It went on for twenty minutes. If she’d just asked once, it might have made me feel better, like she was still my mother and that she cared. But because she was like a broken record, because she couldn’t stop asking, it made me feel she was truly insane.

Finch said the reason my mother went psychotic was because she was in love with him and afraid to admit it. He said her repressed emotions for him made her sick.

“I need to talk to you,” Neil said.

I realized I was staring blindly at the floor and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

“I’m going through my own crisis here,” he said. “Over you.”

I didn’t want to hear anything he said. I wanted him to go away; to go back to Rhode Island and wait for me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that my feelings for you are so huge, I don’t think I can contain them. Sometimes I want to hold you so tight it scares me. Like I want to hold you until the life is gone, so you can’t ever vanish.”

This sounded alarmingly like something you’d hear on an episode of Charlie’s Angels; a final episode where the Angels are taken to a warehouse and doused with gasoline, firecrackers stuffed in their pockets. “You’re not going crazy too, are you?” I said. Was everybody going to go insane now? Was it contagious, like the flu?

“I may very well be going insane,” Bookman said. He was trembling. His lit cigarette making a zigzag of light in the darkened room.

“Can we talk about this later? I just can’t deal with anything else right now.”

“But I can’t deal with my emotions, with what you’ve done to me. You have a power over me.”

I hated it when he talked about the power I had over him. He was like one of those people who sit in the hallway and bang their head against the wall over and over. He just wouldn’t stop. “Later,” I snapped.

He reclined on the bed, staring straight ahead.

I’d pissed him off. I went over to him, put my arms around him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just feel like I’m gonna explode.”

“Don’t you see,” he said, “that’s exactly how I feel.”

For two days my mother was like a grizzly bear. In fact, she seemed to increase in mass and sprout fur. Her body gave off a repulsive odor that was both sweet and metallic. And no matter how much medication the doctor gave her, she didn’t seem to be getting any better. I began wishing she would throw herself out the window so that life could go back to normal. Nothing, it seemed, would fix her.

Until Winnie Pye came along.

Winnie was a sassy waitress at a coffee shop down the street. My mother had insisted that she wanted a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich and when the doctor said he’d send Hope or me off to get it, she screamed, “I will go and get my own goddamned sandwich.” Finch had told her she wasn’t well enough to be out in public. And she’d taken his Brill Cream and sprayed him in the face with it. “If I’m well enough to aim, I’m well enough to get my own damn sandwich.”

So Finch had gone with her to the little diner on the corner. Like a bodyguard, I followed, lagging slightly behind.

Winnie had been their waitress.

She had tall, teased blonde hair and tan, leathery skin with tiny wrinkles surrounding her mouth. Bright pink lipstick bled into the corners. Her eyelids were painted sky blue and she wore gold heart earrings that were the size of onion rings.

My mother loved her instantly.

“I’m being held hostage by this crazy man,” my wild-eyed mother said when they sat at the counter.

“Are you now, honey. You two lovebirds having a little fun with the baby powder?” she teased with a wink.

“You don’t understand.” My mother leaned in. “He’s the crazy one, not me.”

“Hey, sugar. I don’t make no judgments about no one. To each his own. Now, what can I getcha?” She licked the tip of her pencil and poised it over her order pad.

My mother ordered her sandwich, the doctor ordered a slice of Boston cream pie.

I sat at the far end of the counter and watched. When Winnie came to take my order she said, “What’s a little man like you sitting here all by your lonesome?