What Love Was

There was a woman in the trailer park whose father had bought her trailer for her; though she had done nothing in her life to earn the requisite cash she'd have needed to at least put down on a trailer, she referred to it as "hers." She was house proud- she had a garden, her own larger-than-normal bit of land, owing to the trailer's position at the end of a row. She'd planted chrysanthemums and irises right next to each other and it looked weird. The plants were randomly assigned, so that when you were in her garden you had to walk around the flowers, which were frequently hidden in robust clumps of weeds. Her name was Chryssie.

There was another person in the trailer park- a young man. He was definitely a man, no  longer the age where other adults referred to him as a "young man" to his face but who still called him a kid when speaking to each other. His name was Wolfgang. He'd inherited it from an uncle who'd passed away years before, and Wolfgang remembered this uncle as being  the kind who'd come over three times a year and drink something he'd brought, usually something in a single bottle and fancy, comparatively speaking. He'd make jokes that were funny every other time. So the young man had no objection to being named Wolfgang.  He would walk around Standish Estates and look at his neighbor's units and their picnic tables and their foraged stones that they'd put in neat lines bordering the paths to their doors (it was a popular look.)  He would slow down at Chryssie's trailer to watch her.

She was almost always outside when he walked, and for a while he imagined that she was doing it deliberately because she had a secret crush on him. She certainly waved hard enough when he walked by, using both hands and arms with vigor, moving them across space almost presidentially; also she smiled. "Hi Wolfgang! Hi there, I see you! Hiya Wolfgang! You should say Hi back- look at me, I'm waving so hard you should say Hi back!" she'd say, but all he managed was a small smile. Ostensibly he did this so that he didn't encourage the presumed crush she had on him.

There came a day when she wasn't there, and then one immediately after. This turned into a week, maybe eight days, and Wolfgang thought while she was absent. He realized that, of the two of them, it was more likely that he had the crush- he didn't feel the way he supposed a crush was supposed to feel- there was nothing tingling on him, neither high nor low, and he didn't lose track of his intent to walk his usual Standish Estates perimeter. However- well, he kept looking for her, and that must have been what a crush was like. He decided he had the wrong idea of what a crush was in the first place. He walked and searched for her at her place and then around, generally.

On that eighth day, he decided to pace. He'd done his round, and he just could not let his unease settle into mild detachment, so he paced back and forth in front of her trailer. When he saw Virginia Cravach looking at him as intently from her next-door kitchen half-window, he moved into Chryssie's yard, which was fenced (a luxury) and gave him semi-privacy. He shook his fists at Virginia's kitchen because he knew there was greater privacy in the world outside the trailer park. During the gesturing, a car pulled up in front of Chryssie's trailer. Wolfgang jogged the twenty feet from the end of her yard to her front path, and she was being helped out of the sedan by a man older than her by a few decades, at least. Chryssie herself was quiet and kept looking at the man with a sour expression to make him leave.

"Oh great, you're here already. Linda must have called the service while I was at Shadytown-" said the older man. "Could you just grab her here- by the arm is good, she associates it with the center and it's soothing."

Chryssie looked at Wolfgang slyly, a look that he'd never seen on her face before, and that was including every time he'd seen her in the ten years he'd lived there. She then said "I associate it."

Wolfgang piped up. "I'm not from a service." He felt he should have said more, but didn't.

"Oh god, I'm sorry." Older man held out his hand. "I'm Desmond, Chryssie's father. thank you so much for being here- thank you so much. I need to go. I hate that I need to go, Chryssie. but I have other plans for us soon, and you know I'm good for it."

"Aahh- plans" she replied.

Desmond smiled, and Chryssie suddenly smiled back and the sour expression wasn't even a memory on her face.  :"Plans! Plans, Chryssie!" Then he made an awful villain face and rubbed his hands together, saying "Plans for you, my dear." Then he got in his car. "It was nice to meet you."

Chryssie, after an appropriate pause, looked at Wolfgang. "Could you take me by the arm anyway? I do actually find it soothing, but I hate to admit it in front of him." Wolfgang could think of no reason to hesitate. "Thank you. Also it's not because of the center. Who could be properly brought down in a place called Shadytown, anyway? What a name."

"It's a ridiculous name. Why would they name a health center Shadytown?" He'd carefully left out the word "mental' before "health center". He hadn't been raised by wolves, after all.

"It's only called that because it has no shade. None. The Commons is just an overheated fish tank without water when it's sunny." She sighed. He was still holding her arm, and he gently put it down next to her side before he let it go. "Oh, that's all right" she whispered both tenderly and dispassionately. And that was it for Wolfgang: he fell, somehow- he fell for Chryssie, who was a bit older than him (he had no idea how much older) and just come back from a mental institution after being treated for nerves or depression or bipolarism. These were the mental illnesses he was familiar with, and he'd read about them in Time or whatever news magazine his other uncle subscribed to. (Wolfgang lived with his other uncle, who was named Sid after no one in particular. He'd lived with Sid since his mother died and left him the trailer- Sid had come with it, a permanent inhabitant with the only steady employment to speak of. It was a good arrangement, but a juiceless one: Sid preferred to watch the same stuff on television every night, and spent his weekends on the couch, watching more of the same stuff in marathon form. Occasionally Sid would go square dancing with his regular date, who seemed to be Sid's girlfriend except that she was never around and Sid never spoke about her. When she came over, and crammed her gigantic crinolines and cowgirl snap-down shirt into the trailer, taking up more than half the width of the living area, Sid seemed happy; still, no telling.)

So he fell, somehow. Again it didn't feel like falling or twinkling or giving his heart or anything else to her (he wondered how that expression came to be, since it was so bogus.) He did feel proprietary. He would be the arm-taker, now. He would be the one to soothe her and determine how she was soothed, and he would listen to her. He felt a strong need to listen to her and whatever she said, and to think about what she'd said. He supposed that he'd got it wrong about love all around, not just about what constituted a crush.

They were together for months, sailing along, together- visiting for days at a time, with no thought from either side of moving in. Chryssie was exuberant and weird and a good sport. Wolfgang was focused and smiling and kinder than he knew he could be, which he supposed was what love was (he was always adjusting his definition.) There were a few times when she herself grew quiet, and had a pained expression on her face, and drank. There was a lack of regular sleeping hours- she became narcoleptic and slumped into herself any time, doing anything. Wolfgang got out of bed and got dressed when she passed out like that during their "sexy times," as she put it (they had both been virgins when they decided to slip downward and consummate their unspoken love- they'd told each other the next morning when they woke up still on the floor, and they'd both found it hilarious.) But when she'd fallen asleep like that, he got up and got dressed and woke her half-way so that he could half-lift her into a cab.

He went to Shadytown with her in his arms. He wasn't alarmed. He'd read about this in Time or whatever, and he'd decided even then- even before they'd spoken- how he would act if and when the need arose. So he stayed calm, and he admitted her easily as the yet-more-calm lady who admitted Chryssie had her own pet name for his girlfriend. That was slightly unsettling, and he thought about being unsettled while he quietly waited for someone to come out and tell him what to do next. He sat in the separate waiting room and was gently shaken awake by someone in a lab coat sixteen hours later.

"You're Wolfgang" proclaimed Lab Coat. This person's demeanor was almost intimidatingly calm and definitely professional.

"Hey there" said Wolfgang. He felt very awake now.

"Thanks for bringing her in. It's the narcolepsy that's the surest sign of a peak coming, and I've never seen you for Chryssie before but you caught that right away."

Wolfgang blushed like a schoolchild. "It was pretty obvious."

"Good. So, anyway- she's here, she's in need of a stay for a few days. I think 'til Monday would help." Said Lab Coat. It was Wednesday. It seemed an inordinate amount of time to him, but he didn't say so- he just went home. Sid was there. He mentioned what had happened to Sid- in a glancing way, something about taking her to the doctor's and how he intended to shower and get a good night's sleep. Sid made soothing noises of his own. Wolfgang slept and paced, waiting until Monday. The morning came and he picked her up in another cab, which was paid for by a standing account of Chryssie's father's.

She was quiet and contemplative on the ride home. When he asked her, as he'd been meaning to ask her, in his most exact, most diplomatic words, what was wrong with her, she turned to him and smiled. She looked at him for a few minutes that way, just sitting there, like she was stuck. Wolfgang sat with the most dignified cab-seat posture he had, and waited and looked back. He didn't break eye contact. Then she said "it's schizophrenia, if you must know." She then leaned over and kissed him, and he was relieved and kissed back, which turned into a full clutch in the back of the car with the cab driver looking in his rearview with a mildly disgusted expression for the rest of the ride.

When they got home, Wolfgang moved his few things into her trailer and notified Sid that that's where he could be found now. Nothing else would change- just that he'd be with Chryssie. "You're already over there all the time. Congrats" said Sid. So: there were times, and there was sleeping, and there was wine, which appeared all by itself while he was sleeping, and which Wolfgang got rid of almost as soon as he woke up. He took her to Shadytown when she needed it- they had many a running joke about the name by the time she really, really took ill.

He'd set the alarm early, so that he could check for wine or wine coolers hidden about. There had been a building, an erection of some kind of bubble around Chryssie that was palpable, and visible- there was a sort of shimmering when she'd talked her self hoarse and fell asleep on an armless chair so that she slid sideways and Wolfgang had to catch her and haul her back to sitting on her couch. He had noticed it, and had ignored it; he was proud of how well he could read her and understand her needs and triggers and ecstasies before she did. So:  ignore the shimmer, ignore the aura she had that she'd never had before. He'd just gotten her back from Shadytown and didn't want to give her back, he wanted her in her bed and possibly with some delivered Mexican (they both had the stomach of a walrus and could eat bones, if necessary. It didn't bother them, which was an achievement for Chryssie considering how much prescription medication she'd ingested in her life.) So: he woke up, and she had a knife.

"Chryssie, did you cut something?" Wolfgang said, past alert, before fear.

She was cutting long lines into the wall in some orderly fashion- it looked like she was rendering a spread sheet in the bedroom's fake wallpaper. "Honey, I wasn't. I'm trying to cut this, but it won't go very deep. I picked a dull knife in case my hand slips, so my hand  would be intact."  She pulled the knife up- it was the dullest one in the place and he absorbed that information.

"What's going on?" he asked. Futility, because he knew, but he couldn't stop himself from wanting an explanation.

"Wolfgang Wolf Wolfie. I love your name so much, it's a fantastic name for a boyfriend. I don't think I mentioned."  This statement warmed him, so he watched her knife the bedroom and just asked her questions. He expected something to sound like reason or just her usual form of charm, which included her wandering thoughts. But it was more of the knife-woman, his Chryssie encased in her pod or bubble that waved like heat on a horizon. She began attacking the floor, in long and thoughtful pulls, and the carpet was no match; she talked about her plan and its' dissemination via the carvings. Wolfgang finally got off the bed. He picked up his phone and dialed Desmond. Chryssie was making the gouges smaller, and she stood up to get another knife- "a paring knife for the fine work here. It needs a paring knife. Fine fine-" but Wolfgang blocked her, and when she protested he reached around her waist to trap her. He kissed every time she tried to break in, on her neck or her nose or her ear, and she learned it and started pushing her head toward his every time he bent near. She clocked him on the mouth. It bled a little, and discreetly on the inside.

"What did you do that for?" In the little crash of mouth and skull, he had forgotten she was sick. He had a flashing thought that she was just picking a fight.

Desmond slammed into the trailer- unwise, considering the situation. "Wolfgang, when did it start?" he asked, all automaton, looking at his watch.

Chryssie began to rock her shoulders in a real effort to get out of Wolfgang's circle. He got a look at her face, her beautiful face, for the first time since he'd held her back- and realized that this was what love was: his heart breaking in two parts that were themselves breaking. One half was flooded with a compassion that demanded he stay with her until her face relaxed, and she could look at him without that rictus of imprisoned hurt- he would die at her bedside if it meant she might become happy- and the other was bleeding out his own life.