The Long Happy Life of Taffy Slummings, part 1

[Arroyos]

The Long Happy Life of Taffy Slummings, part one


The train ride wasn’t what he expected. Camarillo wasn’t what he expected. The state hospital sure as hell wasn’t what he expected, and the greeting from the hospital staff was … well, suffice to say, he wasn’t expecting it. The looney-tunes behavior inside the hospital, now that was what he expected.

While standing in the lobby, a nurse passed by pushing a wheel chair with a wizened old lady in it, chortling. Why she was chortling, he hadn’t a clue. But chortling she was, a sort of chanting and laughing sound that bubbled out of her lips while her head lolled about on the top of her neck as if she were trying to see everything at once. When she spotted him standing there, travel bag in hand, she pointed and chortled louder. The nurse just patted the old lady’s shoulder and sort of shrugged toward Slummings, as if to say, what can you do?

A moment later the receptionist, whom he’d informed he’d come to visit a patient, said, “Head Nurse Peters will be here in a moment. She’ll need to instruct you before we let you onto the ward.”

Before Slummings could ask which ward and where, a tall young man dressed in a female nurse’s uniform rushed up to him and started talking very fast, “And if it were done when it’s done then it better be done quickly for being is doing and that’s the end all of all endings today and tomorrow and the next day too ‘cuz this petty pace creeps in day to day to day to day and nighttime too until the quietus of the bare bodkin—” the young man paused only to catch his breath, then started speaking again, “brings us by a curious viscount of recirculation back to—”

He was interrupted by an orderly grabbing him by the arm and saying, “Shakey, I told you not to bother the guests.” The orderly turned to Slummings, “Sorry about that.” Slummings shrugged it off. “His meds haven’t kicked in,” the orderly added as he dragged the young man in the nurse’s uniform.

“I’m not Shakey! Not Shakey!” the young man protested.

“Okay, okay,” said the orderly in a calming voice. “Who are we today?”

“J … J … Joyce!” the young man said.

“Joyce?” the orderly asked. “As in … Joyce Carol Oates?”

“James, you driveling little moo cow you! Away alone at last along the!” he shouted out as the orderly gently tugged him out of the lobby and down a long hallway.

Slummings risked taking a few steps forward to be able to see down the hallway. The young man in the nurse’s uniform was still speaking, the orderly guiding him down the hall past several open doors. Out of the first came a bearded gentleman in a hospital gown. He was blowing on a wooden flute. He shuffled his slippers across the tiled floor until he stood just a few feet from Slummings. He played a few notes until Slummings noticed him, then said, “Do you like pizza?”

“Pizza?” Slummings responded automatically.

“A sort of pie made with cheese and tomato sauce and then you add—”

“Yes,” Slummings said interrupting. “I do like pizza. Why?”

“Because the Greek makes great pizza!” the elderly gentleman said. His white hair and white beard made him look a little like Saint Nick, except he was neither jolly nor did his belly shake like a bowl full of jelly. He was slender and slight. Maybe one of Santa’s elves, thought Slummings. Even elves age, don’t they? He was about to ask when the gentleman in the slippers said, “In town,” and taking Slummings’ arm one bearded gentleman (in slippers) led another bearded gentleman (carrying a travel bag) back to the entrance, where he pointed through the glass double doors and explained.

“No more institutional food, okay? Just take me over there,” pointing out the door with the flute, “to the Greeks, that’s where they have the pizza. Oh, such pizza as you’ve never tasted! It begins with the pie, hot triangles of pie so greasy they slip from your fingers if you aren’t careful, covered with cheese you can slurp out of your palm, and no matter how patient you are, no matter how hard you blow across it, no matter how long you wait before gobbling up that first bite, it always burns the roof of your mouth so bad that for days it hurts to touch your tongue up there.” The elvish old man turned to look at the owner of the Arroyos, “You’ve done that, right?” He pointed at Slummings’ mouth. “You’ve burned it, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes, occasionally I admit I—”

“Of course!” the slippered elf said, “everyone has. That’s how you know a good pizza.” He turned his face toward the glass and spoke softly, almost reverently.

“Pizza at the Greeks. Nothing better.” As if to punctuate the idea, he played a solemn tune on his wood flute.

Slummings felt it would be rude to interrupt, so he waited. After a moment, the man in the slippers took a deep breath and turned back to Slummings.

“Why the Greeks, you’re wondering. Because you can get a dinner salad that’s more than just lettuce and week-old tomatoes, you can order wine or beer with your pie, and the pie is hot, fresh out of the oven, made to order just the way you want it. With onions or mushrooms, pepperoni or pork, pineapple and ham, even artichoke hearts! Can you imagine? Artichoke hearts on a pizza!” The slippered man smacked his lips. “And the best thing? The very best thing of all about the Greek’s pizza? The grease is free.”

The slippered old man waited for the one with the bag to laugh, then roared a St. Nick-like laugh that filled the lobby. “Free grease! Get it?”

“Grease?” was all Slummings could manage to say.

“Delicious, succulent, fattening, filling, olive oil grease!” The elvish one played a lively tune. “You think they serve us grease here? You think they permit one iota of flavor to spill onto the excuse for food they serve us here? No! Against the rules. No grease, no fat, no flavor, no sweets—hell, we can’t even be trusted with a sugar jar! Just those little packets, you know, like in fast food places? And only two of those per meal. Damnation, we might o.d. on sugar!”

The patient blew a loud, discordant note on the flute, then looked at the guest and, for the first time, noticed the travel bag. He pointed at it. “Does that mean you’re moving in?”

Slummings looked down at the bag and shook his head. “Just visiting.”

“Happy days!” the elvish one said and played a jig which he shuffled to, more or less, in his slippers. He spotted a nurse crossing the lobby from one hallway to another and he shouted out to her, “He’s just visiting! Ain’t he lucky!” The nurse faked a smile and kept on walking.

“See?” the flute man said. “They don’t care about us. They have a job, they do it, but they don’t really care. Not enough to feed us real food. Not enough to give us a field trip to the Greeks for pizza—not even on holidays!”

“I’m sorry,” Slummings said because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Sorry?” the flutist said. “Sorry is no solution. Sorry doesn’t get me to the Greeks. What do you say to a rendezvous?”

“Rendezvous?” Slummings echoed.

“Yeah, when you leave. Say I meet you here, and you give me a lift to the Greeks, and we share a pie—best pie you’ve ever eaten, I guarantee it! Whadda you say?”

Slummings hesitated. The idea of sharing pizza with this … this … well, this very nice and very well spoken fruitcake who could, Slummings admitted, play a sweet tune on his wooden flute. Still, pizza sounded good and if it was as extraordinary as this man suggested, it might be worth it. Worth what? Slummings quizzed himself. Worth smuggling a patient out of a mental hospital? Could they put him in jail for that? I mean, was that even against the law? And what if he made sure the old boy got back, say if he paid his taxi fare back from the Greeks, would that be a crime too?

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

Slummings started to deny it, then shrugged. “Yeah, guess I am.”

“Don’t be a fool. Don’t do anything crazy. They’ll lock you up, right here, and throw away the key. Oh, they know how to throw keys away. Everyone here, every one of the patients that is, we all had keys once, keys to get out, keys to go home, keys to leading a normal life. They threw them all away.” He blew a rising note that sounded like a whistle fading in the distance. “That’s what they do. First thing. Take your clothes,” he tugged at his hospital gown, “put you in slippers so you can’t run, give you drugs so you don’t want to, and then—just in case—they lock you inside and throw away the keys.”

He played several notes that sounded to Slummings like birds in flight or trains in the distance. Something far away, something moving.

Slummings started to speak but the man in the slippers held up a finger. “Don’t say a word. Don’t even think it. You’re the lucky one here. You can leave. Don’t blow that. Get out while you can. You can have a long, happy life out there, don’t trade it in for anything.”

He played a quiet, wind-like tune on the flute, then smiled at Slummings and said, “Time for my nap,” then shuffled out of the lobby. Slummings could hear him as he wandered down the hall, blowing the occasional note as if greeting friends in passing.

“Mr. Slummings?” A tall woman with curly red hair spilling over the white shoulders of her nurse’s uniform was standing in the hallway across from the one the flute player had disappeared down. She gestured for Slummings to follow her, then started down the hallway. Slummings hustled to catch up. At the first door she stopped and pointed inside. “You can leave your things here.”

Slummings handed his travel bag and jacket to the young man behind the counter, who snapped his picture with a camera mounted above the counter. Before Slummings could ask what the picture was for, the red headed nurse was leading him further down the hall, explaining as she went. “The photo goes in the security computer, to make sure you depart on time. Your possessions will be tagged to the photo, so only you can retrieve them.”

“Wow.”

“Wow indeed. We’re very proud of our security system. Well, at least the part that monitors visitors. Internal security we still struggle with.” The nurse stopped abruptly and turned to look at Slummings.

She looks a foot taller than me, Slummings thought.

“You’ve already experienced one of the minor lapses in internal security which continues to plague us,” she said.

“I have?”

“The flute player?” she gestured down the other hall. Slummings nodded. “Did he trouble you at all?”

“Oh no,” Slummings said. “He was very nice. Plays the flute well too.”

“He didn’t ask you to drive him downtown for pizza?”

“Well, yes,” Slummings said, amazed. “How did you know?” He looked up at the ceiling. “Do you have monitors and microphones everywhere?”

“No no,” said the tall nurse, chuckling, “nothing like that. It’s what he asks every visitor. We try to keep him out of the hallway, but he always manages to sneak out when he hears someone arrive.”

“Every visitor?” The nurse nodded, her red curls bouncing on her white shoulders. “Does anyone ever take him for pizza?”

She laughed aloud. Slummings was dazzled by her red curls as they bounced above him. When she finished laughing, she said, smiling, “There’s nowhere to take him.”

“But he said—”

“That the Greeks’ pizza place was in Camarillo, right?” Slummings nodded to confirm. “But there is no Greek restaurant in Camarillo. The Greeks—the pizza restaurant he’s referring to?—it’s in Rhode Island. Was in Rhode Island, years ago. He’s remembering something from his college days. He may have taught at a college in Rhode Island years ago, we haven’t been able to pin that down. But it’s a frequent fantasy of his, that he’s still there, and the Greek’s is just down the road.”

“Wow.”

“Indeed. So,” the red haired nurse said pointing to a computer screen installed in the hallway, “here is where you check in.”

Slummings leaned down to read the screen, then entered the information as requested: name, address, phone, the usual. The computer noted his time of entry.

When Slummings finished with the computer, he turned to find the nurse smiling and offering her hand. “Welcome, Mr. Slummings. I’m Head Nurse Peters and your friend, Mr. Mayberry, is waiting for you in the Visitors’ Room, which also serves as our general purpose room—television, games, dances, when we have them. You get the picture.”

“Yes, but …” Slummings couldn’t decide how best to explain.

“But?” Nurse Peters said.

“Well, Mayberry isn’t exactly a friend, more like a colleague.”

“Not a distinction we need to make. Any visitor from the outside is categorized as a friend. Why else would you visit someone here?”

“I’ve never actually met the man,” Slummings admitted.

“Really?” Nurse Peters smiled coyly. “So if I just left you in the Visitors’ Room, you wouldn’t know which of the patients to say hello to?”

“Well, I suppose I might guess. He’s an elderly man, I know that. Bald, according to the pictures of him in the Front Office. That’s the main office of the Yuma Arroyos, which is where—”

Nurse Peters was laughing again. “I apologize, Mr. Slummings, but if you walk into the Visitors’ Room looking for a bald old man, well, you should have plenty to choose from!”

“Oh,” Slummings said.

“Everyone in this building is old—we keep the younger patients in the south building—and most of the men here are bald or balding, so … you see.” Slummings nodded and smiled, embarrassed. “As for the Yuma Bulldozers,” Nurse Peters continued, “we know all about them. Mayberry talks endlessly about his Dozers, as he calls them.” She leaned down to speak confidentially to Slummings. “You’ll be amused to learn he imagines himself the manager of the baseball team!”

Slummings swallowed. “He is. General Manager. That’s why I’m here.”

The nurse shook her red curls. “Say what?”

“Technically, I mean legally, he is still the GM of the Bulldozers—only we aren’t Bulldozers anymore, we changed the team name to Arroyos.”

“Good, Bulldozers never seemed to fit a baseball team. But,” Nurse Peters paused to phrase her question, “do you mean to say that Mr. Mayberry—our patient Mayberry—is in fact what he has been saying he is? The manager of a baseball team?”

“Weird, huh?”

Nurse Peters suddenly looked troubled. “Weird doesn’t begin to describe it. Disturbing would be closer to the truth. Undermining more accurate yet. You see, Mr. Slummings, we have assumed, having no information to the contrary, that this baseball manager fantasy was just that, a fantasy. That’s been the central assumption of our work here—all the therapy and group sessions—that Mr. Mayberry was suffering from a delusion, a fantasy of sorts.”

“Oh,” Slummings said. He thought he should say more, but he had no idea what. He was relieved when Nurse Peters kept talking.

“Now you walk in here, out of the blue, and turn all our theories, all our assumptions, all our hard work topsy-turvy.”

Slummings suddenly felt ashamed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Excuse me,” Peters interrupted, “but I need to confer with the staff psychologist right away. Here’s the Visitors’ Room,” she said, pushing open double doors, “I’m sure if you just call out Bulldozers, you’ll find Mr. Mayberry without any help.”

With that she turned on her heels and marched double-time back down the hallway, the double doors swinging closed behind her.

Slummings didn’t know what to do. He stood and watched her disappear, then turned to survey the room. He didn’t notice the tv or table set up for card games, he hardly noticed the orderlies coming and going through doors on the other end of the room. But he did notice the patients.

Everyone had turned to look at Slummings, their faces filled with expectation. Several began to approach him. Slummings wanted to run, to hide, to disappear, but before he could move one very strong old woman grabbed his arm and tugged, hard. Slummings looked at her heavily lined face; it was filled by a hopeful smile.

“You’re here!” she said.

“Oh ah, yes yes,” Slummings stammered, “I guess I am, but—”

“He’s here!” the wizened old lady announced to the others with great joy in her voice. “Jesus is come at last!”

[Borealis]

Be careful, Taffy, you might find yourself stuck in the looney bin, too...

[Arroyos]

Be careful, Taffy, you might find yourself stuck in the looney bin, too...

That's outrageous ... no one would ever ... would they?

[Lions]

Mayberry's going back to Yuma and Taffy's staying... to be honest, it's been so long I don't remember how Mayberry ended up in there in the first place.

Nurse Peters seems kind of nice in this one... I always pictured her more like Nurse Ratched.

[Borealis]

Nurse Peters seems kind of nice in this one... I always pictured her more like Nurse Ratched.

I think she's playing Taffy - she'll stab him in the back when he's not looking...

[Arroyos]

Mayberry's going back to Yuma and Taffy's staying... to be honest, it's been so long I don't remember how Mayberry ended up in there in the first place.

Neither does Mayberry, but you can search back many years and rediscover when it happened, or ... you could just wait until I make up a new excuse for Mayberry being committed.