Dinner with Edgar

by Melanie Datz

Dr. Walker does the thing I hate most in the whole world: She stands in the door to my room and clicks the lights on, off, on, off. It's a painful way to wake up. I block the light with my left hand and say, "But it's spring break."

"I'm bringing someone to dinner, and there are a few things you need to know."

Her last dinner guest was a man who chewed with his mouth open, spraying bits of food across the table. Halfway through the meal, he leaned toward me, jabbed his fork at the potted palm, and said in a hoarse voice, "The man in the corner wants to kill me." I don't understand how anyone could mistake a palm tree for a person, or why my mother keeps bringing these people to dinner, but know it's just a matter of time until one lunges, knife and fork in hand, and carves into someone. I drop my hand. "Do I have to be here?"

"Don't whine." Dr. Walker drums her fingers against the door. "It's important; Edgar's going to be discharged. He needs to get used to stressful situations."

"Fine. Whatever." I toss my head and peer between strands of tangled brown hair.

"Edgar obsesses about whether women wear underwear, so wear some with visible lines. And he's aroused by toes—"

"That is so gross." I sit cross-legged and pull the comforter over my shoulders. Dr. Walker coughs. Thinking of my parents as Mr. and Dr. Walker makes them more like teachers, who can boss me around but have no emotional hold on me. I like them better as Dr. and Mr. Walker.

"So no flip-flops." She frowns. "And wear something plain."

I nod at her beige sweater and slacks. "Should I borrow one of your boring outfits?" Dr. Walker's hair is a short, blonde helmet. Looking at her frightens me: This can't be the life she planned. Surely when she was in high school, she didn't say, I want to work with crazy people, and live in a suburb, and be married to a boring guy.

Dr. Walker purses her lips and exhales. "When you work with schizophrenics you have to dress plainly."

"This is bogus." I slump against the headboard. "It's not fair."

"Schizophrenia isn't fair. Think about someone else for a change."

I yawn, let my mouth gape wide. She hates that.

"Young lady, one day you will thank me for this experience."

"I won't."

"Clean your room." Dr. Walker spins on low-heeled loafers and walks away. She leaves the light on.

Sometimes I wish Dr. Walker worked with retarded kids, and brought them home for dinner. My friend Becca's brother, Rudy, is chubby and clown-faced, a three-year-old in a twelve-year-old's body; he wants nothing more than constant hugs, games of Candyland, and Sesame Street on TV. Rudy I get, but lunatics are incomprehensible, and the way Dr. Walker talks, lunacy is random: Anyone could go crazy.

I pull the comforter over my head and snuggle into a ball. I count the days until I turn eighteen and can leave home—876—and think about Friday, when I made out with Tad Markham between Geometry and French II; and before I fall asleep, I think quadriplegics are better than retards, and if Dr. Walker brought some poor guy in a wheelchair home for dinner, I'd happily spoon-feed him, and wipe his face, and even empty his pee bottle.

***

Mr. and Dr. Walker's house is a split-level, on a street of split-levels, in a suburb of split levels. It's the world's most boring suburb, and all I want is to escape into a life out of Cosmo's perfumy pages: Hot guys, nice clothes, travel, fat paychecks. But no one explains how to get that life, and one bad decision could land me in a split-level house, with nowhere to go but the mall, for the rest of my life. And believe me: I am so over malls. But there's nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. Fifteen and a half sucks; I'm at the mercy of family, and friends, and laws that prevent me from driving, or working, or living on my own.

Alex is in the family room, slouched in a recliner, intent on a black and white samurai movie. I stand in the door and wait for him to notice. He doesn't. "Can you drive Becca and me to the mall?"

"No."

"Please?"

He turns the volume up. A samurai shouts in guttural staccatos and chops someone with his sword. Alex doesn't have the subtitles on.

"How can you watch that? You don't even know what they're saying." I sit on the sofa. It's beige, just like Dr. Walker's clothes, and the whole, stupid suburb.

"Art is universal, you cretin."

"When your arty movie is over, could you drive us?"

He hits pause; the samurai freezes, swords overhead. "Malls are bourgeois. They're temples to consumerism. Shopping is the lowest form of pleasure—"

I throw myself against the cushions and stamp my feet. "Why isn't anyone in this family normal?"

Mr. Walker calls, "Lynette, I'm working. No yelling."

Alex rolls his eyes. "Maybe we're normal and you're not."

Alex is definitely not normal. He wears only black jeans and black t-shirts, and plays chess and D&D. Cool kids quit band in eighth grade, but he hasn't, and I'm mortified when he passes me in the hall, black resin clarinet case in hand. I say, "I wish I had Becca's brother."

"So do I. He doesn't care about malls." Alex turns back to the samurai, who jerk into action.

I give him the narrow-eyed look of derision I've been practicing, but he just watches his stupid movie, and I wonder who's weirder, Alex or Dr. Walker's patients? I think Alex must be a ticking time-bomb of schizophrenia. Japanese movies, D&D, chess: Those have to be warning signs, unless normal people just wake up crazy one day. I think about schizophrenia's warning signs a lot, because Dr. Walker is vague about how and why people go nuts. I say, "You'll have someone to talk with tonight; she's bringing another nut job to dinner."

Alex shifts in his seat and taps the remote against his thigh. "I hope this one won't have a meltdown."

"I wish she worked with retarded people."

Alex half-turns toward me; his eyes are wide-set, and he looks like Mr. Walker. He talks like him, too, in a slow, bored voice. "You only say that because you think they're more socially acceptable, but when was the last time you saw a retarded adult?"

"There's the bagger at Jewel." I eye the gray shadow above his lip. "He has a greasy little mustache, too."

Alex wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "That's one. Where are the rest of them? They're like Mom's crazy people: Society hides them because they disturb us. If Mom brought retarded adults home, you wouldn't want to eat with them, either."

I stand. "Shows what you know. I'm going to become a special ed teacher." Then I realize, no, I'm not, because it sounds suburban, split-level, buying beige clothes at the mall on Saturdays.

Alex laughs. "Oh, please. You'll end up selling shoes. Go on, go shopping. It's all you're good at."

***

When I come home, Mr. Walker is at the kitchen counter, a long skewer in one hand. He shakes his head at my shopping bags. He runs a consulting company from the basement, and maybe he's ashamed, because all he says about it is, "Consultant covers a multitude of sins." Mr. Walker also says, "Lynette, you worry too much about what people think." But people who don't care what others think eat lunch alone. When I see Alex by himself at a table for twelve, book in one hand, sandwich in the other, I think, I'd rather die than be friendless in the cafeteria.

"Set the table. Please."

"Why can't Alex? I have to change into underwear with visible lines. Otherwise Edgar will obsess about me." Mr. Walker drops the skewer and whirls, a glob of raw chicken in his left hand. I pout. "That's what she told me."

"We'll discuss that later. Alex ran to the store for me. It's a finger-food meal, so just plates and napkins."

I take a stack of plates from the cabinet. "Why do we have to do this?"

"Quit whining and set the table." Mr. Walker turns back to the pile of raw chicken on the counter. He's short and swarthy, with dark hair going silver. I'm glad I don't look like him. I don't look like Dr. Walker, either. I hope that means I'm adopted.

"If I have kids, I'm not going to make them suffer through crazy people at meals. I'm not going to embarrass them by bringing work home. Or by working at home."

"Try supporting yourself before you make promises." Mr. Walker sighs and skewers a mushroom. "And you must like the money we earn. How much did you spend?"

"You are such a hypocrite. I used my babysitting money."

Mr. Walker says, "Teenagers. Jesus." I slam the door and set two plates on each long side of the table, and one far away at the foot. I fold napkins and set them to the left of each plate, then run upstairs with my new clothes.

I bought short-sleeved, summery shirts and a printed sundress. I want to wear the sundress, but a lunatic is coming for dinner. I study my reflection and wonder if I'm thin enough; I turn sideways, study my belly, and resolve to do sit-ups, every day. Every time I look in the mirror, I wish my braces were off, that I was blonder, that I looked like girls in magazines. It takes some rifling through my closet to find boring clothes, but they're necessary: The time before last Dr. Walker brought a slumpy woman to dinner for the second time. She said my flower-print shirt would attract bees and howled, "You have to take it off." When I didn't, she slapped at us and herself, then hurled a plate at the wall. We didn't even eat; Dr. Walker just escorted her back to the locked ward.

I settle on a hoodie and cargo pants, pull my hair into a tight ponytail, and wipe away my lipstick and eyeliner. Then I flop, belly down, on my bed and plan. After college, I'm going to live downtown, in a lakefront high rise; I'll go to clubs, and take taxis everywhere, because taxis are sexy and sophisticated. I'll have an exciting job, like—But that's where my plan always falls apart. It's easier to imagine myself in taxis and clubs than working. I'm not interesting enough to be a photographer, or a writer, or anything like that, and everything else sounds boring. I roll onto my back, trying to recover the image of stepping through glass doors held open by a uniformed doorman, but picture the hulking hospital complex where Dr. Walker's schizophrenics live behind barred windows. It's not far from the luxury towers on Michigan Avenue, and that seems wrong. I roll over and take the April quiz: Is He Your Soul Mate? I think about Tad Markham while I answer the questions.

***

The front door slams. Muted voices float up the stairs, and Dr. Walker calls, "Lynette, please come meet our guest." I drag my feet, and pause on the landing. Every dinner with a lunatic ends the same way, and after Dr. Walker returns the nutcase to the hospital, she only says, "I guess they're not ready to move on." I suspect we suffer through these dinners because Dr. Walker isn't any good at her job.

In the living room, Mr. Walker stands to one side, a fake grin stretching his mouth, while Alex, in all black, shakes hands with a gangly man whose hairline has retreated over the crown of his head. It must be awful to be bald, but still, it makes me laugh.

Dr. Walker beckons. "Edgar, this is my daughter."

Edgar jerks toward me. A black patch covers his left eye, and he looks lame, though on someone else it might be pirate hot. He says, "Aren't you pulchrilafictudinous?"

"What?" I drop his hand, which is clammy and hot.

"Too pretty to be true." His voice is a stiff monotone, which Dr. Walker says is a side-effect of his medication.

"Honey, Edgar is a wordsmith. He invents new words." Dr. Walker's smile is extra-wide, and makes her look loony, too.

I say, "Based on my vocabulary homework, there are too many words already."

"My longest word is thirty-seven syllables." Edgar offers me a dog-eared index card.

My stomach suddenly aches; I wish he was a retard, who could be treated like a child, or a cripple, just a normal person in a broken body. The index card has a string of typed letters, beginning —que and ending —qua. "What's it mean?"

Edgar considers his scuffed loafers. "I don't know that yet."

I hand the card back. "What happened to your eye?"

Dr. Walker takes his arm and says, voice steely, "An accident." Edgar shrugs.

***

There's a platter of whole artichokes and another of shish kabobs stripped from their skewers on the table. I shiver: A few years ago, Dr. Walker came home and said, "One of my patients tried to commit suicide. He stabbed himself in the eye with a fork." I peek at Edgar's eye patch and imagine a fork coming right at my pupil. While I picture this, Alex darts to the foot of the table. Dr. and Mr. Walker sit beside each other, leaving me the seat next to Edgar. I try not to gag at his sour, hot metal odor, another side effect.

Dr. Walker serves Edgar. He cocks his head and studies his plate. "Is that a closed heart?"

"An artichoke. You eat it like this." Dr. Walker plucks a leaf, dips it in melted butter, and scrapes its flesh with her small, even teeth.

Edgar has to turn to look at me. "I write palindromes and poetry. Do you like poetry?"

I scowl at my artichoke. "No."

Edgar glances at Dr. Walker. "I thought girls liked poetry."

"I prefer limericks. You know, 'There was an old man from Nantucket—'"

"That's enough." Dr. Walker's voice is sharp. "We have company."

I pop a mushroom in my mouth and glare at Dr. Walker. I wouldn't have told a really dirty one, though I'm never sure which of the hundreds of limericks I know will come out.

Edgar recites a string of syllables as meaningless as the guttural ones in Alex's samurai movie, and I realize crazy people should come with subtitles. He twists in his seat and stares at me with one pale-blue eye. "What do you think of that?"

I tear off an artichoke leaf. Dr. and Mr. Walker must know Edgar makes me nervous, but they act like this is an ordinary meal; at the foot of the table, Alex is in his own little world. I've been sacrificed in an experiment I don't understand. I say, "I don't get poetry." It makes me wonder if retards are like limericks and schizophrenics are like poems. It reminds me of the practice tests we take every Tuesday in English class, where everything is stated with authority.

Limerick : Retardation :: Poem : Schizophrenia

"That was a palindrome." Edgar holds his artichoke to his ear, like it's a shell and he can hear the sea.

I revise my analogy.

Limerick : Retard :: Palindrome : Nut Case

Alex says, "I read poetry. Tell me who you like."

Edgar nudges the artichoke into the exact center of his plate. "I don't read. If I read, book words get mixed with my words. Book words take over." His voice jerks higher.

"You should read Rimbaud; I bet you'd like him. I read all those French guys—" Alex is such a pathetic geek, with his French poetry and philosophers. I slouch and drift back to Tad Markham's kiss. He pushed me against my locker and said, "A little French kissing to loosen up your tongue." Ted's a wrestler, and I imagine him pinning me to the floor. My face goes hot, and my crotch goes damp. An artichoke leaf lands in my lap, and another hits my shoulder. The words "French existentialists" fade in the air. On my left, Edgar is shredding his artichoke with both hands. Leaves cascade to the floor. I scoot to my right.

"I don't like the French; they prevent people from inventing new words." Edgar's voice is no longer robotic. "They chop off peoples' heads."

"Not in a long time." Dr. Walker's voice is calm.

I glare across the table. "Why does this always happen?" But their reaction is typical: Dr. Walker shakes her head and watches Edgar, while Mr. Walker finishes his dinner.

"They're threatened by new words; they've got a secret panel that prevents them." Edgar watches the kitchen door as if he suspects a Frenchman with a guillotine lurks behind it. "They'd chop off my head to keep me from inventing words."

Alex pauses, hands above his plate. He looks confused, then nods. "Oh, you mean the Academy. They only care about French—"

"How're the shish kabobs, Edgar?" Dr. Walker stands and props the kitchen door open. Edgar mutters a long word, full of harsh consonants. It begins —grak and ends —ank. Dr. Walker says, "That's not polite."

Edgar puts his hands over his ears and screams a word equally long, equally full of harsh consonants.

I look at Mr. Walker. "Do something!"

Mr. Walker covers his plate with his napkin. "I made lemon bars for dessert, but I assume Edgar won't have one?"

Dr. Walker motions to the door, and Edgar hurls his artichoke heart at Alex and says another garbled word. I run for the kitchen. Dr. Walker's voice is brisk and efficient. "I don't understand words you haven't taught me." The kitchen door swings closed.

***

My plate is still on the table, but Alex carries his into the kitchen. I wish I'd done that; you'd think I'd learn. He leans against the counter. "Was that my fault?"

"Of course not. Don't talk with food in your mouth." Mr. Walker cuts the lemon bars and holds one out to me on a spatula.

I open my palm, lick my index finger and set it against the powered sugar crust, then lick my finger again. "I guess Edgar won't be released."

"Discharged. No." He shakes his head.

"Her patients never get out. What's she doing wrong?"

"Nothing. Things aren't always what they seem, Lynette."

Dr. Walker sticks her head around the kitchen door and I turn my back. "I'm going to take Edgar back to the hospital. I'll be back soon." A few seconds later, the front door shuts.

I say, "Couldn't she just take them to McDonald's? Why should I have to witness—"

"You don't." His voice snaps, sharp and angry. He carries the broiler pan to the sink and turns on the faucet.

"Don't blame me; it's not my fault he went berserk."

"You're not the witness. I am. Haven't you two realized Mom does this so they won't be discharged? The state wants to save money; your mother is fighting to get people the care they need." He slams his hand on the counter. "If you weren't so selfish and unobservant, you might have figured it out."

My eyes sting and the kitchen goes blurry. "I always knew she cared more for her patients than for me."

Mr. Walker says, "Don't be stupid."

"Good for Mom." Alex fits half a lemon bar into his mouth.

"But it's wrong." I blink back tears.

"Oh, grow up." Even with a mouth full of lemon bar, he manages to sound scornful. "Can't you see Mom's a hero?"

"Both of you grow up," Mr. Walker says, shoulders rigid, hands in the sink. "Clear the table, and get that mess off the rug."

I flip Alex off and run upstairs. I don't cry, much; instead, I put on my new sundress, and shake out my ponytail. I want Tad Markham to see me in my dress, and push me down on my bed, but if I ever brought him home, the house would probably be full of crazy people, and what would he think? I put on my iPod, and sing along. I practice walking in heels. I want to be ready. 875, I think.

***

When Dr. Walker knocks on my door, I'm reading the April sex column. I flip the magazine shut.

"Lynette? Dad says you're upset. Can I come in?"

I pull one earbud out. "I don't care." I sit cross-legged and stare at the wall next to the door. Dr. Walker wears red sweatpants and an old t-shirt; she holds a wine glass in her right hand and rolls the stem between her thumb and index finger.

"I know these dinners can be unpleasant, but—"

I say, "I just want to be normal."

"Schizophrenia isn't catching, sweetie." She leans against the doorjamb and sips her wine. She pretends not to notice my dress, or the magazine. "You're fine."

She always misunderstands: I mean normal, a family without quirks. I want a brother who plays soccer, a mother who sells real estate part-time, and a father who takes the commuter train into the Loop every day. I want a family no one will laugh at or talk about. I want a family that fades into the background so I'm the interesting one. But if I try and explain, Dr. Walker will launch into a lecture about how I need to accept other people and be myself. I shrug and tune her out.

"Do you understand?"

"I guess."

Dr. Walker sips her wine. "I only do it as a last resort, and it's safe—I promise they aren't violent, or even aggressive. Just trust me, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll let you get back to your music, but maybe this weekend we can go downtown, just us girls. Would you like that? Lunch, and a show, and shopping?" I nod, though part of me wants to ignore the offer. "Okay, then. Good night."

"Good night, Mom." Her name slips out unexpectedly; it feels strange on my tongue. I correct myself silently: Good night, Dr. Walker. She smiles and walks away. I put my headphones back on and turn up the volume. I picture myself in a club, rolling a wine glass between my fingers, the way Dr. Walker does.

© 2011 Night Train and respective authors/email support AT nighttrainmagazine.com