The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [93]
The water, the sky, the trees. Life. How nice not to be locked away from it.
We went into the marina for coffee. I was feeling great. Bea was there and said how much better I looked than when she had seen me only ten days ago. “Yes, yes, yes, Bea. It’s all on the up now. No more being sick for me. I’m going to get so strong and healthy it’ll make you sick.” Bea laughed and gave me some free pie. “You still could use a little more weight.” What a wonderful mother.
What a wonderful feeling. What a wonderful place to end my generational collage. Going crazy and getting well was just what I needed. I was missing something before. This was just the right twist. A real thing that happened that everyone could agree happened. All that other stuff, all the stuff before the farm and then the farm, was all much more elusive. Head changes and all. It could be argued whether or not they were really happening. But now a real nut house, got my ass shot full of real Thorazine and all that other stuff.
Before maybe I was exaggerating all the bad things, all the villains, all my trials and tribulations. People might not think it was really that bad. Maybe they wouldn’t have wanted out of Boston the way I wanted out of Boston. But they’d certainly have wanted out of the nut house the way I wanted out of the nut house.
3
ROUNDS TWO, THREE, AND GOING HOME
It’s got to be over before you can say, “That’s the best time I ever had.”
—S. Adams and H. Smith
TOWN AGAIN. “Did you come down for the fight?” One of Bea’s kids talking.
“The fight?”
“The heavyweight championship, Ali vs. Frazier.”
“No. I didn’t even know there was going to be one.” Well, one more thing along with the mill, automobiles, the war, that my craziness didn’t put a dent in. Haven’t people had enough of that shit? How can people get so excited about two men trying to kill each other in a ring?
On to the post office. And for transportation, what else but faithful Car Car, the old Volks that had no right to keep running, great friend of its keeper who had no right to be out of the nut house and so cheerful and spunky to boot. I was cheerful, Kathy was cheerful, Car Car was cheerful.
There were three important pieces of mail—a very nice get-well letter from Genie, one of the few people I had felt close to at Swarthmore, a poster from my father, and a letter from Vincent addressed to “Virginia and the Folks.”
The letter from Genie had been forwarded from the hospital. She was sorry I had gone nuts, wondered what it was like, hoped I’d be feeling better soon, plus a few paragraphs of chitchat about various friends. It wasn’t a heavy letter but it started me thinking about a heavy question. Why had I put so much distance between myself and the people, places, and things I really loved? How did I end up in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of Swarthmore people I had barely known at all? In a love relationship with so little warmth?
The poster from my father was a spaced-out, apocalyptic, mystic, back-to-the-earth quote. I don’t remember that much of it or who said it. “What we are doing is real… If we have to go to the headwaters of the Amazon to establish enclaves of civilization…return to Caesar’s grave… Not everyone should go…artisans…” How did Pa feel about that quote? How did he feel about the farm? How did he feel about my going nuts? But there was no enclosed letter or explanation of any sort, just the goddamned poster.
I hesitated a bit before opening the letter from Vincent, but he’d buggered around in my life enough. I was one of the “folks,” wasn’t I? Damn the torpedoes.
“Dear People.” My mind focused, picking out poor wording, punctuation mistakes, affectations, clumsy constructions. I just barely resisted the impulse to correct it with red pencil and send it back for rewriting.
“Kathy, read this and tell me if I’m out of line thinking it’s an unforgivably whiny maudlin pile of shit.