OPENING THE CAN OF WORMS (Chapter 6 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 6 

There came a heavy snow with a howling wind during my wakeful night.  Early the next morning I was exhausted, feeling like a dog left squished and bloodied to die by the side of the road, but while I was brushing snow off the windshield of my truck a swarm of gray birds suddenly rose in the air. All at once they changed direction, and in that split second the black of their bellies became a dark cluster in the sky over all the whiteness of snow below.  It seemed like a positive omen.  It seemed like looking God in the eye.

Oh, please, let it go well with Sally.

 I felt nervous, as usual when Sally and I were going to be together, since almost always we are on opposite sides of an argument.  We hadn't communicated in other than a trivial manner for years, though I've tried to breach the barriers and sometimes she has, too.  Many times we have renewed what can only be seen as a bad bargain.   It’s a problem between us that I must be at least partially responsible for—-even though the mote in my eye only allows me to see her very apparent faults and none of my own.  But no doubt about it, it takes two to tango.

Sally and two of her children lived in one spacious wing of an enormous antebellum house belonging to a wealthy old woman, Mrs. Lujan, who suffered with Parkinson's disease and was barely this side of comatose most of the time.  Sally was responsible for overseeing the woman’s care and managing her affairs, scheduling the many nurses and aides who were on round-the-clock duty.

Justin, Sally’s eight-year-old fatherless son that now was in deep doo-doo, lived there permanently with her, but his older brother, Brandon, stayed with his father, Val, on weekdays and was only with Sally and Justin after school on Fridays until school Monday mornings.  Her two older children, Jock and Katie, had lived for years with their father, Murry, in Pueblo, several hours away.  So you see there were three fathers, four children.

At Mrs. Lujan’s I parked among stiff icy weeds on the narrow roadside space in front of the elegant Victorian mansion.  I couldn’t chance driving up the snow-packed sloping driveway that right now could easily double as a toboggan run. Kicking a quantity of wet fluffy snow out of the way in order to open the icicle-laced wrought iron gate, I trudged around dead-on-the-vine lilac bushes to the back of the building through the patio.  I left a deep path in the fresh snow while sloshing my way to the sliding glass kitchen doors.

Where will this morning's conversation lead?

As she came to the door the sun shone fully on her face through the wall of glass, emphasizing her marvelous bone structure with a high wide forehead, prominent cheekbones, her chin nicely rounded.  She appeared pale and haggard, especially so because she was framed by a colorful riot of purple violets and pink azaleas growing inside where the sun penetrated through the glass doors.  All was intensely bright as the morning sun reflected off the fresh snow, dazzling as it bounced in all directions.

Under stress, as she obviously was, and totally devoid of make-up, still she was an elegant woman with whom I had donated DNA that gave her dark Irish features, but I have no idea where her deep dimples came from. She was stylishly thin, but not anorexic like when she was snorting all that cocaine.  Where the sun shown in through the glass doors it looked like diamonds were sparkling on her abundant curly black hair.  She wore it dramatically pulled to one side and fastened with a plain silver barrette; it fell in a graceful cascade over her shoulder.  Her eyes, though right then red and swollen from crying, are the color of those blue crayons that as a child I always used when coloring the sky.  Sometimes I’ve seen dragonflies that same shade of blue, also the blossoms of the Forget-me-nots I’d had in my garden the summer before.

We hugged each other briefly--more a formality, an old family ritual, than a warm embrace--then with shaking hands she poured us each a cup of coffee before she sat down opposite me at the Formica kitchen table. 

We were both very tense.  After only a minute I asked, "What's going on with Justin?  What’s been going on that you say I don't know?"

She lit a cigarette, then studied it for a few seconds before she took a big drag and exhaled a huge storm cloud.

"The problem isn't just that Justin was uncontrollable at school yesterday," she told me.  I was expecting her to begin an assemblage of evasions, but after another long pause she looked directly into my eyes and rapped off, sprinting toward the end of the sentence in a shrill voice: "Mama, recently I surprised Justin and Brandon engaging in sex together."

"What? Engaging? ‘Engaging’ in sex you say?’  That’s a funny way to put it. So? What kids haven't?"

I didn't feel surprised about any kind of the boys’ sexual shenanigans, however I was concerned that Sally was obviously so very distressed.  What I was apprehensive about was what was going to happen with Justin after the recent trouble at school.

I warily asked, "What were they doing?  How did you handle it?"

"They were on the bed together in their room.  I walked in unexpectedly and they both jumped up and tried to hide it, but I had seen."  

"Well, what did you see?"

"They were partly under the covers, but I saw that their pants were down and they had their mouths on each other.  They were engaging in sex!"

"Engaging, huh? You mean they were sucking each other’s cocks?”

“Yes.”

“Well!  It's not such a big deal, Honey. Don’t you know all kids screw around? I did and I’m sure you did, too.  What did you say to them?"

"I didn’t say anything.  I was shocked, of course, and they knew it."  Her lips were clasped in a straight line as she looked daggers of displeasure at my response.

 One dimple flashed as she blew on her coffee to cool it before she spoke again.  "I didn't know how to handle it.  They knew that I saw what they were doing and that I was upset, even though I didn’t say a word about it--not one word, Mama.  I was so stunned.  There wasn’t a peep out of them, either.  They immediately got dressed, grabbed their books and left lickety-split for school.  They left the house, without breakfast, without further ado, all of us avoiding eye contact.

“After they were gone skiddle-dee-dee and I had a chance to recover from the shock, I phoned for an appointment at the Rape Crisis Center, then made sure one of Mrs. Lujan's nurses would stay here at the house while I went to get advice."

"Advice?  Rape Crisis?  Why there?  What does rape have to do with it? Why did you call them?  What advice did they give you?"

Sally's brow furrowed in anguish as she answered.  "The psychologist said it was necessary to talk to the people at the State Child Abuse Division.  They said there was case history evidence that pedophiles begin this way, that the boys could grow up to be pedophiles, that they must immediately have the seriousness impressed upon them and get intensive therapy."

"Oh, come on, Sally, that’s crap."  I felt exasperated.  Again she had the bureaucrats involved.  The authorities, psychiatry, and the Catholic Church are her staples.  "Lots of children, if not all children, experiment with sex.  You shouldn't feel too concerned about the sexual acting out, though of course it should be curbed.  Tell the boys it’s okay to masturbate if they want, but alone, it must be a private thing.  Explain incest—that’s a giant taboo, though I doubt there's a man alive who didn't experiment with siblings and other kids when he was young.  Maybe no woman alive, either.

“I remember once when you and the little neighbor boy had the door locked to the bedroom and I suspicioned you were drawing on the walls with crayons or some such deviltry, but you opened the door and told me ‘It’s just a boy/girl thing,’ so I closed the door and left.  Remember?  So what if they find most pedophiles were farting around with sex as children?   Of course it’s in their case histories.  It’s in the case history of every human being on the planet who isn’t totally brain dead."

"The psychologists wouldn't agree with you."

"Look, Sugar. I don't give a tinker's dam if these educated imbeciles agree with what I think about sex or not.  When I was a little girl, all the neighborhood kids would get together and `show' themselves,” I confessed.  “Often we made fumbling attempts at missionary position intercourse, though I recall playing with some kids when we thought intercourse was standing back to back, pulling our buttocks apart and rubbing anuses."

"Maybe that's why you're so screwed up," she lashed out immediately, without even the time it would take to blink.

"Being screwed up seems to be a universal imperative," I lashed out right back, without delay, responding with the animosity that I usually managed to repress. 

We looked at one another for a drawn out moment of reciprocal surveillance.  After a few deep breaths I made an attempt to lighten things up a bit: “I wonder if being screwed up runs in our family, like hemophilia.”

She didn’t laugh at my little joke.  We sat quietly for a few more minutes like a mute pair of bookends. Sally had the stub of her thumbnail in her mouth, gnawing at it furiously. 

Finally she spoke in a low voice, her tone even, the cadence as if she were reciting a grocery list. "The therapist told me I should talk to Brandon's father right away, so I went over to his house.  Val wasn't too upset about it at the time.  He said about the same things you're telling me.  But he phoned me back late that night after he had talked to Brandon and his other kids.”

After taking a gulp of air, she sobbed: “He found out that not only Brandon, but Val's wife's son--Brandon's older step-brother--had been molesting their younger half-brother and sister."

Sally broke into tears.  Deep sobs shook her bent-over body. I went to where she was seated and put my arms around her, sharing her pain.  For a minute it was as if again she were still my darling little girl, bruised from a fall off of her tricycle.

I tried to comfort her.  "Oh, Honey, sex play is more contagious than Chicken Pox.  It's the measles of mankind.  It's good this has come out.  These kids need more wholesome activities, more attention, more supervision, some sanity in their lives.  It's good they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar—so to speak.  Now things can get better.  It's not the end of the world.  Be glad it's come out.  This should take care of the problem, now that you and Val know and can give the kids some interesting substitutes—-cut out the many hours they spend alone with each other without supervision.  And for Christ’s sake, stop those violent video games."

Though, I must admit-- I’ve never found any substitute as interesting as sex.

"You still don't understand," Sally looked up at me with her tearful blue eyes.  Sunlight sparkled rainbows on her thick wet eyelashes.  "Now both Brandon and Justin are on probation, so with Justin acting up at school it may be out of my hands what happens next with him.  I may have nothing to say about it."

"No! What!  Both? On probation!  What happened to put them on probation?"

"That was what happened after I talked to the psychologist at Rape Crisis Center," Sally said between racking sobs.  "I thought probation was a good idea when she recommended it.  There would be free therapy provided, as well as. . .”

“Hey, Sweetie.  Dog shit is free, too.”

 “. . . as well as giving me back-up support from a probation officer.  I felt the boys would have to behave me that way--it would give me more muscle, more clout, so to speak.  But now, by making trouble at school Justin has broken probation.  Now it's in the hands of the Children's Court."

                "Oh! No! NO!"  I collapsed back in my chair.  "He and Brandon screwing around has nothing at all to do with Justin's fits of anger.  It’s with you he’s angry.  Justin is expressing the fury he feels but always suppresses. This is just too stupid.  I can't believe it."

"Believe it," Sally said flatly, blowing her nose and dabbing at her eyes.

"So you're afraid there may be no choice other than Justin being kept again in Children's Hospital?  It isn't what you think is best?  What you think should happen?"

"I think it may be for the best.  These people are professionals.  They know what to do about cases like Justin."

"No, they don't, Sally."  I took her hand in mine and looked earnestly into her still-tearing eyes.  "They haven't known what to do, or Justin wouldn't be in a psychiatric hospital right now.  Don't accept everything these people tell you as if it were engraved in the UN Charter. 

"Did you know there are cultures where they masturbate infants to relieve colic?  Cultures where children are taught lovemaking by the elders of the tribe?  Margaret Mead said the Trobriand islanders were not monogamous like geese; there were no marriage ceremonies; they grew up open and free with sex.   Clitorectomies are still performed in the world today.  I knew an African artist it had been done to.  As horrible that seems to us, she seemed happy and was productive, a loving mother with two children.  She didn’t know what she's missing, of course; it's like a neutered dog is a happy pet.  There’s a whole gamut of sexual practices. 

“Honey, we certainly must honor our society's mores and taboos, but our sexual patterns aren't written by the finger of God. An act that brings admiration in one society will get you locked up in another.”

"That's not what the Church teaches," Sally said, shaking her curls vigorously.  "What you say happens with a bunch of heathens doesn't make it right."

“Great God, Sally.  Don’t you realize the Catholic Church itself is a hot bed of sexual perversion?  Especially man-boy.  Homosexuality is rampant there, too.” 

“You think homosexuality is okay, but you have a hard-on against the Catholic Church.”

"Well, that may be true, but clothes make the man, they say.  I think many of those priests are drag queens, prancing around with their velvet capes and fancy head dresses even as they condemn homosexuality. It’s a baby step from Boy Scout uniforms to those of the Green Berets--all those dudes that go in big for patriotism and medals. Those army blokes don’t prance around in velvet robes and jeweled crowns like the priests do in their performances of their liturgy, still the army has lots of their own rituals, like the medals they pass out, like the way they salute each other in the hierarchies they create: General, Colonel, Lieutenant, Sargent, down to the lowly Private First Class.  From the name to the thing itself is but a step.  It’s ludicrous how they line up all together in a row to march and shoot their guns.   Their group initiations, ceremonial induction, flags, oaths. . .”

What in the world am I talking about.

Take a breath. 

          “Let's drop this side issue,” I said in a calmer voice. “The point is Justin should live with Stacey, not be locked up in the hospital.  I know you truly love Justin and would miss him, still realize it’s like Einstein said, ‘You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.’  Cut the kid loose.  Unleash him from the wheels of your karma.  It's you he's so pissed about.  Surely if this time you would support his living with Stacey, the authorities can be convinced.  Brandon would do well there, too, if Val would ever agree."

"No way," Sally said emphatically, jerking her hand from under mine.

I continued begging: "Justin is always so good with her.  It would be a fresh start for him living there where no one would know of all the trouble he's had.  He'd be in a new school, have new friends, a new beginning.  He’d have a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card."

"Mama, you've said this so many times.  You know," she said to me just as earnestly as I had spoken to her, "there's no way I would let him live with Stacey.  I've refused before and I refuse again--especially since she's moved to Florida."

"Well, then, how about his living with me?  I can stay in Boulder if it's necessary."

"We won't even discuss it.”

What can we discuss?

(Written by Louise Pickering Scott)

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A SLOUGH OF DESPAIR (Chapter 5 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 5

During the day I left messages on Sally's answering machine.  All that cold, gray day at Melanie’s house the phone remained silent.  The upstairs windows looked out on a garden dead from the winter. There wasn't any sense in more packing until I knew when, indeed if, I would be leaving.  Perhaps I would need to be packing to rent a place in town.  There was nothing to do all day but wring my fingers and count on my worry beads about what was happening with Justin and to wait for the phone to ring.

Waiting is. . .

Melanie had radically decorated the upstairs guestroom with walls painted shocking pink, using bright pumpkin orange as accent on the silk pillows and curtains.  The bedside lamps had purple pleated shades that matched the purple frames on several ultra-dimensional Escher prints; the prints made me think of a Mobius strip--only a person versed in the unified field theory could understand Escher’s art: people seeming to go from level to level never succeeding.  The room was eccentrically decorated, but it worked.  Sliding glass doors led to a south-facing balcony. The other walls had large windows that gave a splendid view of the hills beyond that were speckled with dark green pine over a leftover dusting of snow. The sky was a crystalline blue though there was another storm approaching.  It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

I spent the day lethargically lounging around Melanie's spacious upstairs guestroom.  Comfy and cozy, swaddled with a soft down comforter around my shoulders like I was in a cocoon.  On one shelf of the bookcase was a small framed photograph taken at a luncheon barbecue that Sally had given in her lovely garden one sunny afternoon years ago; way before all this current trouble with Justin, way before the Saudi Arabians destroyed the World Trade Center and gave George Bush and Cheney an excuse to invade Afghanistan.

Melanie, then late-forties, looked radiant with her shapely arms and ample bosom somewhat exposed.  The sunshine was bouncing off her glorious red hair.  She was cuddling Justin on her lap--at that time he was an angelic cherub of six months or so.  Preschooler Brandon, seen in profile in the background, was just stepping into one of those cheap round Doughboy wading pools that they sold at K-Mart. 

My three sumptuous daughters--Sally, Stacey and Marta--were standing behind my chair with their arms around one another. We were all smiling in the beauty of our youth—even I looked good.  I never have felt I was good-looking except when I see myself in a photo taken at some previous year. Then I was pretty--not beautiful--but I am glad I didn’t have to deal with buck teeth, cross eyes, a harelip, jug ears, or an oversized schnoz. 

Melanie is my long time best friend from forever and shares a lot of love with my family, especially fulfilling for her since she never had children of her own.  She has a genuine kindness that transcends the social distinctions of her Southern upper-class background; she’s a natural born democrat.

She was proud of her family, especially a great-grandfather who was said by some to have been a successful shipping entrepreneur and by others to have been a rapacious pirate or a slave trader.  She never knew which version was true, but money in her family had trickled down from him through the next generations, spendthrifts one and all, until now nothing was left in the coffers for Melanie.  She did all right for herself anyway, owning a trendy clothing store that catered to the stylistic consumerism of the designer-jeans crowd.  She had the Midas touch. Her opulent boutique, aptly named Daddy’s Money, mainly catered to trust-fund college students.  It had been Daddy’s money, her inheritance, that had set her up in the business and paid for her magnificent home.

 The day passed slowly.  I was feeling as out of synch as the Escher prints that showed dozens of  people going up and down lots of stairs to no avail.  Up stairs and down stairs, up and down, although there was no up or down to the various floors where the steps led.  I could identify with those people.  Like them, I was going nowhere, waiting for God knew what, with nothing to do that would matter.  Right then it seemed as if my life was on fast-forward and re-wind at the same time.

  By changing the present we couldn't bend the past, we couldn't change the history that had carried us inexorably to today with this plot unfolding in a way most definitely not to my liking.  Never mind how large a part of the mess I must have created-- undoubtedly so.  The past was the prologue.

 Where was Glenda the Good with her magic wand?  Where’s a Yellow Brick Road? I wished for a script change, one with a prancing white horse waiting for me to climb upon its back and charge against the evils occurring in the world—evils occurring right in my own back yard--actually in what would have been my back yard if I still had one. And actually, I would have preferred to have it be a tall handsome hero wearing a Stetson, like Vincente Fernandez, who could ride up on his stallion to sing me a song and save us all.

There have been so many problems with Sally during the years that I've learned to live in spite of the agony, immunized against the pain.  Sorrow no longer flowed; it was coagulated, but each time I thought of Justin--the poor little bugger, probably again locked up in that sterile hospital--my constraint would burst like a dam and flood me with tears.  Finally I had hiccups, the hiccups turned into deep breaths, and then I was only aware of a deathly vacancy as minutes ate into the day.

Not knowing how else to handle my anxiety, I did a dynamite job of cleaning Melanie's elegant house, moving and polishing heavy antique furniture and even cleaning behind the refrigerator.  Mercifully, the edge of my misery was rusted a little by the housework routine while I was listening to Melanie’s collection of Mozart. To stop the futile pondering I concocted an eggplant Parmesan using leftover spaghetti sauce.  No Parmesan cheese, so I substituted ricotta and a nub of dried up Swiss I found.  

***

I was sprawled on the white leather couch, keeping my feet well off of it, staring blankly out the window at the gathering of sullen black clouds beyond, watching the storm clouds’ indigo rim stretching out to suck down and swallow the red sun, when Melanie's Subaru roared its way up the drive. 

Her cheeks and snub nose were rosy from the cold, her flaming red hair was lightly sprinkled with snow as she came tromping in juggling loaded market bags and bundles. Melanie is small but dynamic; a Mighty Mouse, Brandon once said. 

"Great God, Polly,” she drawled as she entered. “I declare! You look a mess!  Your eyes are puffed out like a bullfrog's.  What's the matter, Girl?  Are you sick?"  Her voice was particularly Southern as it is when she feels any strong emotion or drinks too much booze.  She always says ‘aaahnt’ and ‘aaahfter’ like the good Southern Belle she was raised to be.  She has a slight lisp whereby she holds on to the constants and slides over the vowels.

 In one motion she dropped her purse and grocery bags on the floor as she tossed her fur-lined coat and bright yellow scarf on top of the big seaman’s chest.

“Big problem with my grandson,” I told her.

“A big problem?  It must be something with Justin.  It can’t be with Brandon.”

"No.  Never a problem with Brandon.  But there is a heavy-duty mess with Justin.   Sally says he threw a tantrum at school.  A regular conniption fit.  The cops came and handcuffed him and took him away.”

“What?  Police? Trouble at school?”

“That's all I know.  I'm waiting for Sally to call with more information about what occurred."

“What?  Goodness Gracious! Cops?  Handcuffs?

“Yes,” I said. “The police handcuffed him.”

“A little squirt like him?  Handcuffed? You gotta be kidding.  He's spunky okay, rambunctious for sure, but handcuffs!   That's unbelievable. That's dreadful, atrocious, too barbaric," Melanie declared, astonished.  “Cops, eh?  They took him?  Where did they take our boisterous little lad?  Handcuffed like a criminal, he was?  Gee Whilikers! They took him to the hoosegow, you say?”

“No, I don’t think they took him to jail, but I think he’s back to the Children’s Psychiatric Hospital in Denver.” 

"Eh?  To the Funny Farm?  Again?"

"Again.  Sally says there’s a lot going on that I don’t know about.  No surprise that."

She stood there quietly for a few minutes, and then gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze before she picked up the bags of groceries, went to the kitchen and returned with two strong gin and tonics.  Mine must have been at least a double.  She placed the glasses on the coffee table as I scrunched and pulled my knees up to make room for her at my side.  She collapsed like a deflated balloon, then kicked off her snow boots and sprawled arms akimbo with her legs splayed straight out.  Melanie seldom relaxes, but when she does, she goes all the way.  There are no holds barred with anything she does.

"Well I’ll be jiggered. I thought things were going well with Sally and the kids,” she said, “now that she’s no longer being a hot floozy exotic dancer; no longer Pussy Galore.  But I guess you don’t make over a life the way you sew on a loose button.”

"I also thought things were better until a month or so ago when I had the boys sleep over at my place.  She was supposed to pick them up early the next morning.  She didn't come for them as expected, nor did she answer the phone, so I was worried.  Late that afternoon when I took the boys home she was laying on the sofa in her bedroom, the room dark with the curtains drawn--most gloomy.  I could only rouse her enough that she looked at me with lackluster eyes and mumbled that she had a migraine.

“I don't know, Melanie.  At the time I accepted that it was a migraine and whatever she'd taken to knock herself out with was necessary for the pain, but I don't know.  Maybe it was a hangover or maybe she was on downers again.  Drugs.

“I didn't know what to do.  I don’t know what to do now. I never know what to do. The boys had headed straight to their room and were gleefully murdering each other by proxy on one of those violent video games. One of Mrs. Lujan’s nurses was there in the house, so I left."

Melanie’s brow was furrowed as she asked: "But except for that, you thought she was doing well?"

"Yes, I've thought things were much better, that she finally had both oars in the water. She said that on weekends she’s been taking the boys to a motel where there's a heated pool.  She said she and the kids swim, go to Mass, then to the movies before eating at McDonald's or having pizza.  It's a big improvement over keeping them quiet at Mrs. Lujan's."

"Golly! It must cost her a fortune to do that, eh?  Why doesn't she get a different job and rent her own place?”

"Of course,” I sniveled. “Obviously.  But it's her business, not mine.  I don’t deserve any gold star for motherhood; much of Sally’s problems can be laid right at my door.  Mea culpa.  Anyway--going away with the boys on weekends is a solution--of sorts.  Without paying any rent, she easily earns enough taking care of Mrs. Lujan’s affairs to pay for it since she's stopped spending money for booze and drugs."

"If she's stopped," Melanie said, unconvinced.

"I've believed so."

"Well, Girl, do you believe it now?”

“I don't know.   I just don't know."

There was nothing more to say.  We’ve been friends since Jesus wore diapers so we don’t need a lot of conversation.  During the Beatnik era we had cemented a friendship as we spent hours drinking coffee or wine while we discussed politics, styles, books by Sartre, Camus, the other existentialist writers.  We wore black turtleneck sweaters as we listened to Billie Holiday and Miles Davis, told our fortunes with Tarot cards and the I Ching.  One of the nicest parts about a good friend is that when you don't know what you're doing, there’s at least a chance someone else does.  It was cathartic to talk it over, but nothing was solved.

We sat in silence as the sun briefly flashed through a break between the approaching ominous low-lying heavy black snow clouds.  The very noise of our breathing seemed a violation of the silence.

***

  Melanie was peeling potatoes and I was chopping leeks when finally Sally phoned.

“Well, Mama, they took Justin to Children's Hospital in Denver again," she mumbled.  "I can't go to see him for a couple of days--hospital rules for new admittees.”

“Not even you, his mother?”

“Not even me.  But Mama, you and I need to talk.  You don't have any idea about how things are. No idea at all.  Would you come over for breakfast in the morning?  There's a lot I need to tell you.  There's a lot you need to know."

 "Of course.  I'll be there by eight with the whole day free and will help in any way I can.  Is there any chance you can get Justin released right away?"

My hopes were up, maybe there could be a rewind.  Maybe this time we could arrange for Justin to live with his Aunt Stacey. Maybe we could right away get the paperwork done for whatever releases the hospital might need, undo the inevitable red tape that’s always strangling everyone in corporate bureaucracy.

"We'll talk about that and a whole lot more in the morning, Mama.  There’s much you need to know, but right now I'm too tired and discouraged to go into it.  I’m collapsing with fatigue.”  Her voice sounded wasted—pooped--ready to drop.  She said she still had to pick up Mrs. Lujan's medications and do payroll for the nurses before she could go to bed.  “We'll talk tomorrow and I’ll explain it all,” she promised.  “You’ll understand then.  See you at eight.”

“Good night.  And Sally, you know things will get better.  All is not lost."

“Well, Mama, if all is not lost, I’d like to know where the hell is it.”

Written by Louise Pickering Scott

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