The Good Neighbor (14 page)

“What was the name of your other pharmacy?” asked the man. She could see it in her mind, a small corner store on Seventh Avenue, made of red brick. The owner’s name was Bernie. He had a brother who’d retired to Orlando. The pharmacy was about a thousand years old, and it smelled horribly of some kind of ointment. Did it even have a name? If it did, she’d never

known it.

“I can’t remember,” said Francie. “I’m having a block.” She tried to laugh. “Don’t you just hate it when that happens? I’ve been there a million times and I never even thought to find out what it was called.”

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The man smiled understandingly and moved to his computer. “If you could just spell your last name for me,” he said, “I’ll see if you’re in our system.”

“H-A-R-T. Hart,” said Francie. “First name, Francine.”

She watched the pharmacist’s plump fingers as they dashed over the keyboard, and she wondered idly, as she was prone to do during in-between moments, what this man must think of his life. He probably got lots of people with things wrong with them coming to see him every day, she thought. Everything you could think of, from hemorrhoids to cancer. And there were probably plenty of people like her, too, the kind with problems you couldn’t see. Those would be the hardest to deal with, she decided. You could never tell with people like her when they were going to lose it. People who were crazy.

“I’m sorry,” said the pharmacist. “You’re not in our database.” “I see,” said Francie. She felt pain in her fingers. She looked

down to see that her knuckles were white around the handle of the shopping cart. “I see,” she said again, forcing herself to let go, gently. Her hands fell from the handle and hung at her sides, while a feeling she had not felt in many years, one she’d hoped never to feel again, began to peck at the underside of her lungs. It was like having a chicken trapped in her abdominal cavity, she thought. That was precisely how it felt when she became anxious. The pink pills were what fed the chicken. When it was sated, every thing was fine, and the chicken stayed quiet. But she had never failed to feed it before, not once in nine years, and she noted with alarm that the chicken was suddenly hungry. It hadn’t been fed in ages, and now it was thinking about making a break for it.

She said quickly, “Well, is there any way you can . . . look, I’m out, and... I haven’t ever run out of... I’ve been taking these for a long time, you know? I thought I might try going off them, but I can see now that was a mistake. So it’s like, something bad might happen if I stop taking them. I don’t even
know
what would happen.” She laughed here, trying to make it sound like a joke.

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The pharmacist smiled again, but not as broadly as before. He looked quickly at the telephone. Francie noticed this, and sud denly the chicken grew larger and more violent. She could actually feel its claws digging into her duodenum.

“I’m sorry, dear,” said the man.

Did men like him look at her and have grandfather fantasies? she wondered. Did they daydream about taking her shopping for granddaughter things and sending her checks at Christmas? Then she realized that that was an insane thought. Only a crazy person would think something like that. Grandfather fantasies, indeed.

“I’m sure you know I can’t do anything without a prescription.

What exactly is the name of the drug?” the man said.

“Benedor,” said Francie, wild hope surging in her. Maybe he had some he could slip her! In a paper bag, through the back door!

“Oh, no, definitely not with Benedor,” said the man. “That’s a psychoactive.”

Her heart fell. “I know,” said Francie. “It’s just that . . . we just moved here from the city. Today, in fact. And I forgot to get my prescription filled before we left. I’ve run out. And I lost it, any way. I have no idea where it is.” Her voice had begun to tremble, she realized. She was repeating herself. She was going to cry. Oh, shit.

“I’m really very sorry,” said the man. “I wish I could help. Can’t you just go see your doctor? Tomorrow, maybe?”

“Oh, my God,” said Francie. “Oh, my God!”

She said this because the chicken had just burst out of her, through her abdominal wall and out into the clean, white air of the supermarket. She was amazed the pharmacist couldn’t see it, or, if he could, why he didn’t say anything. It was covered in her blood and visceral matter, this chicken, and it strutted oddly along the tiles of the floor, its claws clacking wetly, tentative in the brave new world of reality. Francie put one hand on where she imagined the hole in herself to be and sank slowly to the floor. A poetess on the edge of the cliff. An actress, dying her best onstage

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death. But this was real, or seemed to be, and it was no fun at all. “Ma’am?” said the pharmacist, leaning over the counter to look

at her. “Are you all right?”

Francie sat down, her legs spread out in front of her like a child. She watched dully as the chicken turned left and wan dered out of sight down the detergents-and-soaps aisle. She be gan to cry.

“Ma’am?” The pharmacist had somehow appeared on the other side of the counter. Had he actually leapt over it? How heroic. A heroic Mennonite pharmacist. Francie felt his hands on her shoul ders, trying to comfort her. He was asking her grandfatherly ques tions. Are you sick? Do you need water? Do you need to lie down? She ignored him. The pain where the chicken had ex ploded out of her was unbearable. She couldn’t breathe.

“What’s your phone number?” the pharmacist was asking her. He was holding her hand. She saw him looking at her wedding ring. “I’ll call your husband.”

Francie sobbed. “I don’t know!” she said. “We don’t even have a phone!” She was going to have to live at the supermarket! She would never have the courage to leave it, not now. Not after the world had seen her weakness.

“Come in the back and lie down,” said the pharmacist. “We’ll get you taken care of, my dear. Don’t you worry about a thing. Nothing at all is wrong.”

“Yes, something is,” Francie said. She allowed herself to be helped to her feet and led by the hand, like a child, through the waist-high swinging doors of the pharmacy counter, into the em ployee break room. The pharmacist put her on the couch and took her shoes off. He brought her a glass of water.

“Here you go,” he said.

“Something is terribly wrong,” Francie told him, taking the glass. “Something has
always
been wrong. I’ve just never been able to figure out what it is.” She sipped carefully at the water, hoping it wouldn’t leak out of the hole in her middle. It would surely

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cause a mess if it did. “That’s been the problem with me all along,” she told the pharmacist. “Only no one knows how to fix it.”

“Just relax,” said the pharmacist.

Francie let her head loll back slowly against the wall.

You stupid, stupid man, she thought. You don’t know what you’re messing with
.

10
‌

Drink This to Make It Better

M
ichael had retreated to a corner of the inner living room, separated by a wall from his marauding brother-in-law; and

there he sat in semidarkness, sulking, waiting for his sister to come home. Colt sponged up some drops of blood from the floor that he’d discovered only after walking through them, assuaging his mild revulsion with the hope that this act of penance would partly absolve him of his violent sin. Darkness had fallen, and Francie wasn’t home yet. Now Colt paced before the fire, worry ing that something might have happened to her, worrying about what would happen to
him
when she returned. She was, he knew, going to be angry. When the headlights of the Camaro fi nally illuminated the driveway, it was with mixed emotions of relief and apprehension that he came to the door. He watched her get out of the car and mount the porch steps, bearing bags of groceries. At least two inches of snow had accumulated in the driveway. More was falling, whipped into miniature tornadoes by the ever-increasing wind.

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“Jesus Christ,” Colt said, as she came into the foyer, “where have you been? I thought you were lost!”

Francie didn’t answer. She pushed past him silently, heading straight for the kitchen.

“What’s the matter? Is the car all right?” Colt asked, following her. “You didn’t have an accident, did you?”

“Go check it yourself, if you’re so concerned,” said Francie. She put the groceries on the counter. Colt tailed her closely, suspi cious.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Nothing happened.”

“No. Something happened. I can tell. You seem . . . funny.”

Francie was holding her coat tightly around her middle, as if to prevent her insides from leaking out. She was of two minds con cerning the hole through which the chicken had emerged: her ratio nal mind knew that it was a delusion, but her poet mind believed it was real, and at the moment the poet mind was winning the argu ment hands down.

“Funny how?” she asked. “Milton Berle funny or Hannibal Lecter funny?”

“I mean . . . weird.”

“I’m fine, Coltrane.” She waited for him to go away, but he stayed, hovering in her face like an insistent prosecutor.

“What do you have in your coat?” “Nothing.”

“Open it. Let me see.”

Abruptly she surrendered, as she always did, simply because it was the easiest way to be with him. Pushing her arms aside, he pulled her coat open and looked. She closed her eyes and waited.

Colt frowned. “Is something bothering you? Inside?” “No. I just . . .” So he didn’t see it. So it wasn’t real. “What?”

“I had a moment. That’s all.”

Colt frowned, let go of her coat. He went to the counter and

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began to unpack the groceries. Francie sagged against the counter, depleted.

“A moment? What kind of moment?” “It’s nothing, Coltrane.”

“Oh, I get it. Some kind of woman thing, is it?” he asked over his shoulder.

Francie rolled her eyes. “Yes, that’s it,” she said. “Some kind of woman thing. That’s all. Nothing to be taken seriously.”

“Well, in that case, why don’t you have a glass of wine?” he said. “I can make dinner.”

“A glass of wine,” she said. “What will that do?”

“What do you mean, what’ll it do? It’ll relax you. You could use it.” “I see,” said Francie. “Is that your assessment of what I need?” Colt gave her an odd look.

“You really are in a weird mood,” he said.

“How very perceptive of you, Coltrane,” Francie said. “That’s the most sensitive thing you’ve said all day.”

“Touchy, too. You know, in the old days, they used to make menstruating women leave the village and go into a hut. So they could leave everyone else in peace and quiet.” He grinned. “Maybe I oughta build you a hut of your own,” he said. “In the backyard. Now that we have a backyard.”

Francie bit her tongue then, because otherwise she was going to scream.

❚ ❚ ❚

A few moments later she carried two glasses of wine into the liv ing room, looking for Michael among the shadows. She squinted; he had melted away, he was nowhere to be found.

“Mikey? Where are you?”

“In here,” came the muffled reply, through the fireplace. Francie went around the wall, where she found her brother staring into the flames, hugging his knees.

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“Mikey? You want a drink?”

Michael looked up at her, pathetic. She recognized this expres sion. It was the same one he used to have after the neighborhood boys had been at him, painting him with mud, poking him with sticks.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

She sat down next to him, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Dried blood lingered on the wispy hairs of his mustache. Francie touched his face.

“What on earth happened to you?” she asked with concern. “I . . . I bumped my nose.”

“Aw, honey. I
thought
you must have done something to your self. Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts.”

Francie touched it, lightly. “Is it broken?”

Michael winced and pulled away. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe.”

“Poor little honey. Here, drink this to make it better.”

How many times had she said that very phrase to him? A hun dred, perhaps a thousand. As a girl, she was always making infu sions over an imaginary fire, brewing up innumerable potions in a cast-off aluminum pot to heal his plentiful ills. Grass and dande lions for hurt feelings, bark and roots for boredom, mud and rocks for anger and bad grades. They never worked, but she was still try ing. She handed him the wine now, cool in the glass. Michael drained half of it in one gulp as Francie sipped hers daintily. The pain in her middle had begun to fade. To her surprise, she found, suddenly, that she felt fine. It was as if she had expressed some thing poisonous, and now that it was out of her, she was cleaner, more natural. Maybe that chicken coming out was a
good
thing, she thought. Although it certainly hadn’t felt good at the time. Worst pain ever, in fact. Yet there was something purifying about it. She felt, quite literally, as if she’d been purged.