Phantom Strays Read online

As we approached the entrance of the Western Asthma Clinic and Old Folks Home one Saturday morning a year after the Beatles incident, I remember seeing ahead the green girth of a saguaro cactus rising from a triangle of gravel like the stretched pelt of a reptile or a green rocket. The cactus had been transplanted in the shadow of the long low building. Up and down the hide on the accordion pleats, the gray cactus needles caught the sun and resembled frayed seams poking out of a giant sewn toy. Its two mammoth arms joined the great central stalk with slight swellings that warped these needles in a fashion that pleased me. Above the stagey saguaro limbs, pink-tipped clouds liberally dolloped a turquoise sky. The clouds nearer the sun basked in golden rays cascading Ping-Pong fashion.

  A Gila woodpecker poked its head out of its nest in the saguaro, and in the morning light it spun its head around in comical wonder and crazy appraisal of the sky with its fat clouds and teased wispy edges and the cool wind rattling the tops of a nearby mesquite tree.

  “Madness, mad, mad,” it squawked.

  A bean from the mesquite fell languidly from a high branch to the elbow of a lower limb and clung there. “Well, so, so,” the bean lisped back.

  We walked past the saguaro and mother opened the wood and glass door that led into the clinic, releasing a somber blast of stale air into my face.

  “Goodness, they make these clinic doors heavy. Substantial, that’s the word. Get in there, you kids, and don’t you dare dilly dally.”

  “What an attractive lobby,” she gushed when we entered. She pushed her sunglasses onto her head. I cringed to think someone had heard her; she sometimes spoke too loudly. She let us pass in before her and spoke to us in the same bold voice that concealed her insecurity. “I believe this is one of the finest asthma clinics in the southwest. You and Jack are very lucky that they agreed to take us.”

  “And our money,” said Jack slyly. He wisecracked at Mother constantly.

  Twenty feet from the door, a shiny white phone on a reception desk rang quietly and while we listened to the insistent ring I saw us standing awkwardly in the reflected world of a large gilt-framed mirror. The receptionist kept a letter organizer in the form of a stretched-out dachshund with a spiraling brass wire as its body, a body that held the many letters the clinic received; each envelope had a long careful tear along its spine. Mother stood in front of the desk, waiting for someone to arrive. Eventually the phone stopped ringing and she interpreted that as a sign and led us, with a shrug, around the desk and across the thick carpet directly toward the hall that we had used the prior week.

  We approached an enormous oil painting in another gilded frame. It took up an entire wall and Mother paused in front of it. “Apollo and Dionysus,” Mother announced. “They are two Greek gods drinking wine together. Ordinarily I wouldn’t approve of drinking in daylight, however this is topnotch art. The drinking of the two gods is a symbol of two different forces in the arts: chaos and order. Here they are getting along well together. Thus the artist, whatever his name, teaches us that superior art uses chaos and order wisely. By cracky, this is certainly very high-class art. A fine example of classical oil painting of the higher sort, the higher class. Gee, I wish I’d studied more for that art history class I took my senior year in college. I’d give anything to be able to list artistic movements with the snap of a finger. Instead of meeting your father that night at the Rio Rico Bar, I should have studied. If I had, I could tell you all kinds of marvelous things about this painting. Art interpretation—that interested me. Let that be a lesson to you. Study harder than your mother did. Though I don’t approve of drinking, these gods are of a superior breeding. Of course, you would expect that given that the owner of this clinic is a very wealthy woman. She would pick classical art even if it does happen to be gods imbibing alcoholic beverages.”

  “Gods get away with a lot of junk,” said Jack snidely.

  Mother pulled her spine up. “Maybe what you need to do is wash your mouth out with a bar of soap,” Mother retorted. “Just keep acting up. See what it gets you.”

  I noticed my Indiana mother said “wash” as though it were written “worsh,” and that was another thing about her speech that often made me cringe.

  Now,” said Mother sharply, “be sure to follow all the directions from your teacher, you two.” We approached the door to the room where the class had been held the prior week. “This asthma class is important for you, Jack. We’ve got to pay attention to get the full effect in terms of a cure for you and to strengthen your lungs. You’ve got the weakest lungs, says Dr. Kimberling, which he has ever seen—they could hardly even be called lungs on a good day—and I don’t know what we can do besides this, so it has to work.”

  Jack began heaving his chest and breathing raggedly for the dramatic effect.

  “I don’t want to see this asthma condition limiting your ability to do things in the future. Teddy Roosevelt, one of our presidents, and I happen to think one of the greatest of the whole kit and caboodle (but I can never remember what number president he occupied and I have been asked that many times when I worked in the library in Indiana) and he had the same condition and cured it with exercise and activity out here in the West at a ranch, oh, a fabulous place in Wyoming or some such state, so you may be able to also. But nothing will get cured if you don’t pay attention to the classes. Last time I caught you,” she pointed an index finger at me and shook it, “not listening and being silly, kid.”

  Mother opened the door of the hall where our lessons took place. The lights were off; only the morning sunlight reflected off the waxed parquet floor. We were the first people there, and Mother walked us across the barren room, down a line of empty tan metal folding chairs set out for the parents of the pupils. Each chair had a brown paper bag on it. Those were for a breathing exercise where we puffed the bag up to practice exhaling better. Mother picked a spot as far away from the door as possible in a corner of the room.

  “Nobody else is here. I think we’re way too early,” I said wisely. Within the last year since the Beatles fiasco, I knew definitely that I had lost the good opinion of Meredith. Though I’d fought valiantly to get back in her graces, through various ingratiating acts and self-deprecating comments such as “I’m a kook,” she found many errors in my nutty thinking and actions, and as a consequence rejected me more. This rejection had matured me and also given me courage, but only courage against Mother. Rather than correct Meredith I’d become good at noticing Mother’s mistakes and pointing them out if only briefly and always saying “we” as though all of us had jointly made whatever mistake I thought she’d made. Thus the comment that “we” were way too early.

  “Not at all,” Mother replied, “arriving early shows the clinic owners that we value their lessons. Also, the way I see it, arriving early shows we’re a special kind of person who takes care to arrive promptly and attends to their business in a professional manner. You would do well to remember this. Notice that we haven’t arrived with the mob of common people—such a humiliating experience. We don’t want to be mistaken for common people who can’t plan anything. They’ll be cramming in at the last minute, demonstrating their lack of dignity, and planning. Never cram into a place at the last minute. All in a rush. That puts you at a disadvantage and sets you off balance for the whole activity. You’ll want to start an activity in a dignified manner, showing your knowledge. People make snap judgments about others and you’ll want to be among the better class of people. Not the riff-raff. But today because we came early and sat quietly in dignity we show that we are a superior class of people.”

  “Or that we’re nuts,” said Jack, becoming quicker and wittier with his humorous asides, also directed at Mother’s supercilious nature. Most of her attempts to prove breeding went terribly wrong and served to humiliate her more; Jack saw through her pretend superiority to the ridiculousness of her prescriptions and warnings.

  This crack however brought a long, stony silence. Mother unclasp her purse, selected a handkerchief and blew her n
ose. Only after she had finished did she speak. “I don’t understand your thinking. I can’t always follow the remarks of smarty-pants little boys with asthma who think they’re being cute when they ridicule their mothers. And both of you put the bags down right now.”

  With this correction of us, Mother gathered her forces and redirected her criticism to my behavior at the prior week’s lesson. “And you, my fine lady, sitting there so prim and proper on your chair today were dancing and acting ridiculous during instruction last week and none of the other children did one ounce of that, no siree Bob. Not one of them, and I checked all around the room carefully to see if anyone else made a silly gazabo of themselves with their brown paper bag, and no one did! Now don’t get the idea that you can fool around like a gazabo again today or we might just be asked to leave the premises. I don’t want you to get the idea that these lessons are for you, either. No, my little lady, this is all for Jack and you are only coming along to keep him company.”

  I came to run across the room with the asthmatic kids.

  “Don’t get the idea that you are the center of attention. No nonsense from you today, kid. Dancing around like a loon without a care in the world was not what I brought you here for. No squirming and picking at the bottom of your pants, either, like you’re doing right now. That’s not what I brought you here for. It certainly isn’t. And not what I paid good money for. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know; this is a privilege. Your father is risking his eyesight working as an engineer on plans night and day so that you can attend this asthma clinic and dance around like a loon. This is a special opportunity for both of you to have fun with the kids here. Um, I’m fairly certain there are superior families enrolled in the class with you, by the way. The children with the same asthma condition. The same that Jack has. Yes, I am remembering signs that several of these kids you played with last week were the children of topnotch families. By signs I mean the make of their dresses and the cut of certain jackets indicated hand-made clothing with delicate stitching which, yes, tells me something about the quality of the parents and these in your group are the children of prominent people, though I couldn’t quite catch the names and match them up to the faces of the various children, but I may be able to this week, with luck. I think a few of them are related to, oh, some of the better people of the state. This is quite an opportunity for you. As long as neither of you embarrass me. Last week was tremendous fun, wasn’t it? A bunch of good fun for both of you.”

  Neither Jack nor I responded. We hadn’t enjoyed the scene that prior Saturday of sickly asthmatic kids with dark-rimmed, deep set eyes and barking coughs and wheezes, most of them were real namby-pamby types who clung to their mothers and fathers or ran about huffing and puffing in agony. We would have preferred walking to our own park, where Jack ran about with a few wheezes, certainly, but no real collapse. We also hadn’t enjoyed the barking orders of the lady who ran the clinic and gave breathing instructions.

  Mother processed our sullen silence correctly, sensing that we had hated the first asthma class, despised the other sickly kids, detested our demanding teacher, resented the waste of our free time, and wished never to return again.

  “I want you to get it out of your head that the clinic last week wasn’t fun. You were both very morose after last week’s lesson, very disagreeable. By cracky, this is typical of both of you. I don’t think two more ungrateful children could be found by special order. When your mother goes out of her way to enroll you in a special course that might fix your problems, well, I don’t think it’s too much to ask you to act as though you like it. I suppose that’s just too great of a burden for the two of you. I guess my children are just too good for help. Goodness me. I’ll tell you I don’t like that kind of pouting when you’re being given a chance to improve yourself and mix with your betters. What wouldn’t I have given for the opportunities you’ve had? You two are spoiling your chances with people of higher positions. I’ve just about had it with your negative attitudes toward efforts to improve yourselves. I want both of you to get down off your high horses and rub elbows with the boys and girls who are trying to learn correct breathing techniques. I’m telling you this for your own good. It’s not like I need to make friends with people of better society. It’s not like I have asthma. Why, I passed every athletic test in the Women Marines and went on to college with awfully fine girls and heavens, you know, I discovered that many of them were the daughters of what you might call cowboy princes. I think I might have told you about the fabulous ranches out in the wilds of Arizona and how those wealthy families lived, those cowboy princes? Why those ranches were bigger than most counties on the East Coast. And golly—the cattle, um, that was something…and I can tell you the families spared no expense on the clothing…”

  “For the cattle?” said Jack with a smirk on his face. Our mother had a very unfortunate way of migrating too quickly from one topic to another. We would often see bewilderment on the faces of people that had to listen to her long narratives. They interrupted her frequently with cautious, clarifying questions.

  Mother, who had reached the kind of verbal groove she would often be in where nothing could stop her, ignored him and blustered right over his words. However she glanced away from his grinning face and I saw her eyes water. “Sending away to, oh, I suppose, Boston or Chicago, the better cities. Why, the fact is that I ranked as a pauper in comparison, not that I compared myself to them because I always had a feeling of my own superiority, or I should say, self-worth which came from childhood years of careful Bible studies and many young years spent living on a farm in Indiana. I had a strong sense of who I was and never had to compare myself with others. I mimicked a chick. They come out of their shell and run, run, run. Pretty quickly, anyways. A chick knows what its place in life is, by cracky. Anyways, I want you two doing exactly what your teacher says today.”

  A chick in its shell? A monster chick? That reminds me of something from my childhood. A stubborn imaginary companion of mine…

  We nodded sullenly in agreement with her orders. We knew better than to try to argue with her once her eyes had watered; she would usually lash out and take away TV or playing with friends if we continued making fun of her.

  At that moment a lady with a large gray bun like a bunny hugging the back of her head opened the door and squinted across the distance of the unlit hall at the three of us. She registered surprise. “What’re you doing in here?” she called.

  “Isn’t this the asthma clinic today?” Mother yelped back fearfully, clutching her purse to her chest.

  “Why yes, it is, I mean it will be later, but not,” she consulted her wristwatch, “for nearly an hour. This room really should be kept locked.” She had a pinched expression on her face when she peered at us. Clearly she thought the room should be locked so that nuts like us didn’t sit there for an hour.

  “We’ll wait. It isn’t a problem for us.” Mother smiled a smile that she probably thought implied her superior breeding, but which actually came across as timid.

  “Don’t come this early again,” the lady warned. “We don’t want people sitting in here so early.”

  She spun around and the door closed. Mother took it all in, the harsh correction of her mistake. Jack and I resisted the temptation to mock her for the scolding she’d received. “My goodness, she snapped at us,” Mother said eventually, a little sadly. “Someday they will find that a sharp woman like her interacting with the public will reduce their business. I can see that she doesn’t understand that the owner wants to build the business up among people of character and money. The owners won’t be able to do that with this snappy lady speaking rudely to people who are only waiting in rooms. Quietly. After all, we didn’t pay good money to be spoken to in a rude manner. And I have already recommended this place to several other people with asthmatic children. But I’m a big person; I can see that the owners aren’t aware of her bad attitude. They are a higher class of people. I suppose they don’t realize that she is rubb
ing people the wrong way.”

  As we sat silently for a few more minutes she considered her opinion of the clinic itself. “Well, they have a very interesting theory of how to cure asthma, the people who run this clinic, and their theory, which is based on research on the part of the owners, but oh, I don’t know exactly what the research entails. I wonder if their research actually involved medical journals or experimental results. They don’t describe the source of their inspiration and I’ll have to think about it. Is it on the up and up? This wrapping of your chest and the cocktail mixer, well, you have to admit that’s a bit odd. I would have to call it peculiar. When I first learned about it, I was dubious. I don’t know that it will work, but it’s worth a try at this stage for your sake, Jack. Asthma is taking away your ability to function well on school days and you missed so darn many days of school. Your teacher is getting mad at me. And we might just get you somewhat better in the process. At least you are out with other children socializing and I believe a few of the families that were here were the better, high-class families. Asthma may run in the finer families. In that way we are a little close to them, the better families, these weaknesses of the families being something like…well, like the Russian royal line of Romanovs or whoever they were and their faulty blood, you know. Their blood not clotting. And about this clinic…well, I believe their theory of how to cure asthma has some interesting ideas in it and so I bought the rubber material to wrap Jack’s chest, dental dams, and the battery-powered cocktail mixer tickler. And you’ll do the tickling, kid. You could look at this another way and say that the whole thing is the work of a charlatan. Well, I will acknowledge that there is an element of wishful thinking in this and I don’t want to say it’s going to work. How would I know that? I just have reason to believe that the wrapping might actually cause his diaphragm muscles to strengthen rather quickly. I’m not sure about the cocktail mixer tickling theory. Goodness, that just might be a little bit too odd to work, or just odd enough to work. I can’t take many more days of writing notes about why Jack is missing school. We need him to get well enough to get to school more.”

  I suffered through an eternity listening to these remarks of Mother’s about the Russian blood not clotting and cocktail mixers before other children arrived that Saturday morning, but eventually the room filled with pale, sickly kids whose chests sunk, whose eyes were dark rimmed and tearful. All of them were sicker than Jack. They were children our age who we despised. Many of them clung to their mothers, crying and rubbing against their sides, clutching frantically to be held. Others just wept or stared morosely from their chair. And then the trainer arrived, in white pedal pushers and tennis shoes, and we remembered that we were not enamored of her either. Her hectoring style reminded us too much of our Woman Marine mother.

  The owner stepped in the door behind the trainer and lectured us briefly with the clinic’s ideas of how to cure asthma, which we had heard the week before. It involved a whole body approach of active participation in movement and various hot compresses, touch and breathing. “There is nothing better for the asthmatic child than a roomful of non-asthmatic children to run and play with. Yes, parents, asthma must not hold your children back from normal activities with other children. Do not dread occasions when your child can be dashing about. The lungs can be trained out of the asthma condition.” With this, she left us in the hands of the trainer.

  “I don’t want to run, mommy,” wailed a pale boy near us. “I don’t.”

  I tried to shoot a glance of hatred and disapproval at him. I sincerely hoped my tanned legs and arms were alarming him, making him worry that I might randomly decide to pummel him, something I wanted desperately to do. I wondered if he might be one of those despicable Easterners infecting Arizona.

  “Boys and Girls. Well, well. Isn’t this wonderful?” said our tormentor. “What a group we have here today. You folks, over near the windows, please join us. Will someone make sure he joins us? My goodness. Well. Let’s not have these tears. I can hear crying. Will a mother get him to stop? If possible. Goodness. Let’s come together now, shall we? Now gather around. That’s right. A good Saturday morning to one and all. Well, we have gathered together again to have fun together and learn about asthma and what we can do to BREATHE easier every day. Have you been doing your paper bag exercises since we met? You have? Well, excellent. On your seat you should have found a bag and I want us all to practice together. We’re going to blow as hard as we can into these paper bags and exhale all our spent air, pushing it out.” So we dutifully joined her and blew into the bag.

  Jack smiled impishly. He filled his paper bag at his mouth and then snuck it to his side. He brought his other hand over quickly.

  Bam! The sound of him popping his bag echoed tremendously in the hall.

  “What was that?” shouted our instructor. “Why, it must have been a car backfiring in the road.”

  Several mothers scurried over to gape out the window; Mother, I thought, glared in our direction.

  The instructor fretted for a moment and then retraced her thoughts. “These paper bag exercises will strengthen your diaphragm and do you remember how to find your third vertebra from the top and press it? Let’s all do that. That’s right. You must put your hand on your neck and wiggle it down slowly until you feel the portion, the part, which rises and falls when you touch and count three down of those bumps. Three, boys and girls. Now press that bump for me. Good job.”

  I rubbed my neck and wiggled my bottom stupidly.

  “Good job, boys and girls. At home are you using warm water compresses on your noses? You are? And wrapping your chest with rubber just the way you are told to on the sheet of instructions? Well, if you do, you will strengthen the diaphragm every day to get over your asthma and the exercises I gave you will help. Who got the dental dam material and wrapped yourself every day? Let’s raise our hands. Raise them high so I can see them. Very good. I see that a lot of you are doing your home exercises. This week I want you to continue that and be sure you are following the instructions on the sheet I gave you and I’m sure our mothers will help. The wrapping has to be tight, don’t forget. We’ll practice with the bags again later today. Let’s give them to our mothers. Now, come back, yes, as I’ve told you, you may be coping with asthma, but I believe exercise can still be a part of your life. The benefits of exercise even to the asthmatic are well known and I’m here to teach you to enjoy exercise and breathing. Let’s all line up against the windows on the far side of the room. Every last one of you. Come on now. We can all get up. That’s it. Leave our mothers. Everybody line up together. Now will you get ready? I see people getting ready. Very good. Can you get set? Do you have that? All right, there’s only one thing left. Let’s go!”

  In that past morning I must be running gloriously across the room, legs lifting, heart pumping, arms held close to my side and joy on my face when I realize that Jack and I are beating all the sick kids at running and when I fling myself against the wall, with the asthma suffering kids behind me, me running faster and better than all the asthmatic kids into the morning light across the parquet floor, sunlight streaming down at a shallow angle.

  “Now see all of you go!” shouted the asthma clinic lady. “It’s wonderful. Wonderful, children, keep going. That’s the way to do it.”

  Jack and I’d reached the other side of the room well before the other kids had. Usually I failed at running, so this thrilling development pleased me. I couldn’t help but celebrate the moment by dancing around, jumping and jiving in a ridiculous wiggle. I raised my arms above my head and clapped for myself. I smiled at these sickly kids coming toward me and I twisted my hips and flopped my legs around. Just when I was happiest, I saw Mother studying me in an unflattering fashion. She shook her head to make me aware of her disapproval of the celebrating I did. Her lips pursed tightly and she clutched her hands at the side of her skirt. I celebrated beating asthmatic kids of prominent families. This was one too many faux pas.

  I dropped
my hands to my side and the rest of the kids stumbled to the finish. Jack was rather angry with the others, whom he loathed. The teacher told us now how to control any asthma that struck. She had us testing ourselves for signs of asthma.

  I might have been there for an asthma clinic, I might have been there for no reason at all, but I might have to remember it. The writer might be wrapping her brother’s chest with stretchy gray rubber dental dam (about ten inches wide) and teasing his diaphragm with a camel hair brush mounted on a battery-powered cocktail mixer for several days running to cure his asthma. The writer might do this steadily with no result, except for the production of a useless memory.