BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Fifty

Dirt is destiny.

I didn't know exactly what that statement meant, but I liked it, so I wrote it down in the diary I was starting to keep. I thought about doing a blog, but that wasn't for me: too clinical, too technical, too cynical, too "n-ical." I was a Luddite and opted for scrapes of paper and any writing implement.

Maybe dirt is destiny is something like if you walk on the beach, you're going to get sand in your shoes. Or not.

I mention these non-sequiturs because, for the next two weeks, I slowly lost all concept of reality. Phyllis wisely stayed away from the house after I had been unkind to her. As usual, she had tried to be supportive of Mara and had dropped by unannounced, often to my disdain.

When she saw me lounging around the house in my underwear and Dodgers cap, I overheard her asking Mara, "Have you thought about having him committed?"

"He'll come out of this intact." Mara responded, hoping that Phyllis would look after me while she did some shopping. Her still-life paintings and occasional forays outside kept Mara sane. Which prompted Phyllis' next question to Mara, "But will you come out of this intact?"

As Mara moved toward the front door, Phyllis wondered if I got violent. I really didn't want to be left under Phyllis' care, however temporary or well-meaning. When Phyllis sat down on her favorite long-suffering stool, I asked her to settle down.

"The stool is uncomfortable for some reason."

"It's trying to tell you why."

"Adam," Mara implored, "please try to be nice. I won't be long."

"He'll try," I responded, purposely in the third person.

"I have to do some errands. Listen to Phyllis."

That wasn't going to happen. I suddenly let both sisters know of my displeasure at what they had arranged, "You want him to abdicate his life for yours?! He won't do that?!" I insisted.

When Mara tried to reassure me, Phyllis grabbed a shopping list from Mara and headed for the front door. "You stay here. I'll do the shopping and errands."

"Can anyone tell me who I am?" I shouted.

Phyllis got in the last and ultimate answer to that question, "Your shadow."

She closed the front door and fled to her Prius.

What Phyllis wouldn't know was that morning was a good one for us – even when Phyllis came back from running errands. Still in my underwear and Dodgers cap, I was eating a lunch of tabbouleh and sliced smoked turkey when Phyllis returned with two bags of groceries and Mara's dry cleaning.

Mara put away the groceries, giving Phyllis her supersized bag of blue tortilla chips which she had already opened in the car. Mara then remarked on an item she spied among the groceries.

"Where'd you go shopping?"

"Vicente Foods."

Mara showed Phyllis a box of 20 seven-gallon, six-micron high density clear plastic trash bags made by Galahad Products. With drawstrings.

"What's wrong? It was on the list."

"I didn't specify a brand. How did you know this was what we used?"

"A nice nurse suggested them. She said they use them at the hospital. She was helpful."

Phyllis crunched loudly on a blue tortilla chip. She offered me some chips to go with my lunch; however, I retreated to the chaise lounge on the patio so that I wouldn't have to watch Phyllis leaping for another tortilla chip, like a great white shark breaching in pursuit of its prey.

I didn't say anything this time. I walked out onto the patio while literally biting my tongue. My upper and lower premolar teeth gripped my lingual septum. I didn't want to alienate Mara.

And Mara didn't want to alienate Phyllis. Phyllis was helping Mara to deal with me – if it could be called help. She would talk with Phyllis almost every evening with an update since Phyllis had made herself available in case of a spiritual crisis, manic episode or panic attack – by either one of us.

I became erratically non compos mentis. I was temporarily not of sound mind, memory or understanding. Thoughts and recollections drifted in and out of my mind haphazardly. It was tough to decipher an order out of the chaos.

I tried to put together the pink shards of the shattered pig-nose mug, removing them from the hearth in the living room and placing them on the carpet. Mara watched begrudgingly and then came over to me, lightly touching my hand, causing me to flinch. "May I?" she asked.

I was compliant at this point. "He guesses he needs your help after all."

"It's nice to be needed, Adam."

She smiled at me as I let her collect all the pieces of the fragmented coffee mug. From out of the vast caverns of my cranium, I said to her, "He couldn't love his father."

"Who couldn't?"

"He couldn't."

She realized that I was talking about myself in the third person. She listened while holding the shards.

"His father was vengeful, stupid and dishonest. He couldn't love his mother because she refused to allow it. They drank themselves to death."

But Mara didn't know if I couldn't love my mother or if my father couldn't love his mother, his being me or my father. It was scattered, disjointed, unconnected, vast, empty.

How could I get thoughts from my mind into hers?

Kōan as a burgeoning quasar.

Mara didn't want to know whom I said had drunk themselves to death. She let me talk.

"Is he cruel like them?" I asked.

"No, you're not cruel, Adam."

"Of course not."

I stood up and declared to the world:

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE

I AM

THE ONE

WHO FEEDS

THE CAT!

I sat down and rubbed my fingers over the coffee stains in the oriental rug. Mara had fled to the kitchen during my dramatic declaration of feline benevolence. She threw away the shards of the pig-nose coffee cup from her father's TV show.

Bye, bye to that memory.

When Mara returned to the living room, I was fetal-ly falling asleep on the oriental. She placed over me a crocheted, pale ivory cashmere blanket she retrieved from the couch, as well as a red-and-black bargello needlepoint throw pillow on top of which she gently laid my head.

Ever so gently.

I stayed there through the night. I only woke up at one point to yell, "HE'S AFRAID OF HEIGHTS. CAN YOU CURE THAT?"

As I fell back to sleep, I saw Mara and Willie standing in the foyer staring at me on the living room floor. I hoped they didn't see that I had wet myself.