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FRESH
YARN PRESENTS:
Scared
Medicine
By Maxine Lapiduss
PAGE
TWO
 So,
I'm still screaming inconsolably when Saul returns from the Beacon
Drug Store with a bottle of Phenobarbital and Es feeds me two teaspoons.
For the first time that day, I felt a calm wash over me. It was
like when my yellow blanket would emerge newly warm and fresh from
the dryer. The anxiety and doom simply vanished and I, completely
exhausted and serene, melted into my pillow. "Blob? What dat?
Who dat?"
By four the next morning, the drug had worn off and I bolted upright
in my bed, certain the Blob was slinking up our stairs and climbing
the laundry chute, sledding down the fireplace, surrounding our
house, ready to devour us all, and the histrionics began anew.
Out came the Phenobarb, which Es and Saul dubbed "Mackie's
Scared Medicine." But, I gotta tell ya, after a few days on
the stuff, I began to look forward to Club "Med." Two
spoonfuls each morning, two spoonfuls each night. It was the only
thing that brought relief. As the weeks passed, they tried to wean
me off but each time they did, I'd hallucinate, stay up all night
and scream in terror. So two spoons each morning, two spoons at
bedtime.
Every night my parents would take turns lying down with me. Es would
come in, give me my Scared Medicine, then hold me close. I could
feel her warmth, hear her heart beating, and I'd relax. After a
while, Saul would come in and spell her. He'd sit at the edge of
my bed and stroke my forehead. Off to sleep I'd drift, feeling safe
and secure knowing that my parents really did love me.
Months went by. I still saw the Blob around the house, but didn't
really care as much. I loved Scared Medicine time because it was
the only time my sister's eczema and sourball attitude wasn't sucking
up all my parents' attention. They weren't fighting. Or, if they
were, it was about me for once, and my mental health, instead of
Esther's compulsive shopping or how Saul should have been a more
successful travel agent so Es wouldn't have to work two jobs and
they could join the country club like Vi and Joe Sapperstein.
Apparently, after the third "do not refill" was exhausted,
Dick Tracy became concerned. Mackie was wacky on smackey. Schwartz
called a confab. They couldn't keep me on Phenobarb indefinitely,
so they started giving me sugar water in the Phenobarb bottle but
still called it my Scared Medicine. I'd take the placebo, two teaspoons
of peppermint sugar water, and not knowing the diff, drift off to
sleep listening to Esther's heartbeat or feeling my father stroke
my hair, and all was right with the world.
I knew
nothing of 12 Step programs then. Nothing of enabling or addictions;
nothing of unhappy marriages or jealously between siblings or resignation,
which makes people resentful and bitter; nothing of thwarted ambition
or destructive patterns. All I knew was that I was finally getting
my parents' attention on a regular basis, their physical closeness,
and felt them working together for my welfare and the good of the
family.
But that phase didn't last long. Don't get me wrong, my folks stayed
together for 55 years. They're still together. Torturing each other
daily. As best I can tell, they both felt trapped, felt they settled
for each other, and had my sister and me to rescue them from their
lives of quiet desperation. So I took on the role of savior. Tried
every way I knew, from age four on, to make them happy. Make them
proud of me with my great accomplishments: school work, talent shows
-- later bucking the odds and writing on successful sitcoms, making
big money and showering them with gifts, being a good citizen, buying
Es more blouses than she could ever wear, a car, building her a
house. But none of these things did the trick. Dissatisfaction flowed
through her veins more than red blood cells.
And so the more money I sent home, the more complaining I heard
and the more blouses were bought. Unopened boxes of expensive blouses
stacked up in her closets. The house began to resemble Filene's
Basement. I started to see that shopping was Esther's Scared Medicine.
And she wasn't about to give it up. Saul had his two-pack-a-day
habit and his Hershey bars.
Maybe it's a job that fortifies us, maybe a lover. Maybe it's the
real drugs we take to fill the cavern of fear in our hearts. But
wouldn't it be cool if there really was a Scared Medicine? A potion
to make us courageous and compassionate; able to look past our own
needs to those of our children, rather than sucking all their energy
into our own vortex of overwhelm and self-pity and self-loathing,
barely able to cope from one disaster to the next?
I love my parents. They were from fucked up homes of their own.
Their parents escaped The Bolsheviks and lived in ghettos and sold
apples in the Depression. So teaching their kids to be whole, healthy
people was not tops on their "to do" list. I get that.
That's why all these years I've refused to give up on them. I've
kept searching for the placebo; the magic pill that would soothe
their past, ease their aging process and make them understand that
deep down, it's okay. I know they're both just terrified like me.
Maybe I'm not really scared of being alone -- maybe I'm more petrified
of loving anyone as much as I love them, because parents devastate
you. They have heart attacks and weaknesses, and expectations, and
they embarrass and disappoint you again and again.
So you move away and put up walls and live your own life and screw
inappropriate people and turn queer, deny them grandchildren and
do the opposite of what they want you to do and FUCK THEM and HOW
DARE THEY and then you're so pissed off at them, that you're the
Blob, a big blob of anger and frustration and hurt and you don't
want them to hold you or be your Scared Medicine anymore because
you were just a kid back then, DON'T THEY KNOW THAT? But they're
the ones that acted CHILDISH and SELFISH and made YOU TAKE CARE
OF THEM your whole life and they should have known better but THEY
BLEW IT! Ah, who gives a shit, it doesn't matter anymore you're
43.
But the nagging truth is, it does matter, damn it. Because you can't
get on with it. You can't sleep alone. You do want your mother
to comfort you. You want her to hold you in her arms and lie in
the darkness, in the stillness. You want to just listen to her heartbeat
and drift off to sleep soundly and contentedly, without drugs, without
the walls, because she's 85 and it's time to forgive her while you
still have the chance.
Even through it means listening to her heartbeat through the two
hundred dollar blouse she just charged on your Amex.
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