Dialogue in Several Voices

You don't know everything.

Well, duh. Tell me something I don't know.


You don't know everything.

That's not news.

You think you do.

(Pause.) I've never said that.  I make mistakes.  I know that.  I do things I shouldn't do. I don't think I know everything.

You think you know how things should be.

How things should be?  In a way, doesn't everyone? Peace and love and everyone getting along and being with a person they love and doing jobs they want to do and food and health care, well, all of that, sound trite but aren't they really the answer? To how things should be?


You think you know how to get there. What will make people happy.  How to make people happy. 

Oh, come on.  I've always been very proud of my humility.

And you love to help.

What's wrong with that?  Isn't helping good?

On the off chance you know what you're doing?

I suppose, but....

Oh, humility.

I'll tell you a story.  Once upon a time, half a lifetime ago to a human, eons to a fruit fly, and nothing to a rock, there was a young girl. Teens her own age described her as *different* and a little weird. For an adult--which you  were supposed to be at the time--she seemed...disconnected.  As though we were alien life forms that she visited, finding us *different* and a little weird. She lived in a Star Trek world, scored by the Beatles, and embraced--one way or another--by Spock.

By the way and somewhat as an aside, speaking to "you" is tiring and a little confusing; remember this is a story and it's about you, but I am telling and it is also then about me. A first person P.O.V is easier. The pronouns become simpler.

Her younger sister was my oldest son's junior high girlfriend at the time.  She encouraged--almost begged me--to ask her sister to sit for my four kids. Which of course I did.

It was easy to bond over the Beatles and Star Trek.  And it became evident very quickly that she was a broken winged bird with a sad sad story.  The details are important, of course, for her life, but beside the point for the story.


I adopted her.  Oh, not legally and she still lived at home with the little sister, the dad, and the alcoholic mother--who happened to be another broken winged bird with a sad sad story. They fed her, clothed her, paid the bills, and took the brunt of her intense mood swings and terrible silences.

She was happy at our house.  Not effervescent happy, but ...happy.  In fact, she liked it so much that I just recently learned she told  her little sister to stay away:  "It's MY place now."

The church ladies (and, yes, I was one of them) took that sister under our wings.

Wait a minute--what was wrong with that?  If anyone needed  love and support, that poor child did.

No question, yep, she needed love and she needed support.  Couldn't get even a late night infomercial attorney to argue against that. .But--well--OK, define love. Start with that.

Caring for someone, delighting in them. Thinking of them before you think of yourself--you know, the whole love thy neighbor as thyself thing.  Caring. Trying to do right by them.  You know, love.

Warm feelings?  Needed?  Helping.

Yeah.  Warm feelings.  Caring.  Trying to help.  You know she didn't wear a bra because no one ever took her shopping for one.  

Poor baby.

Yeah, poor baby.  I know you're being sarcastic, but she was a poor baby, and a poor child, and lonely, broken, confused, angry.  She needed helping.

Did anything you did, collectively, individually, church ladies, you or me--did anything we ever did really help?

She got a bra.  

Now you're being sarcastic. Did she ever get what she needed?  Oh, and by-the-by and just wondering--who ever got the younger sister a bra? Back to the older sister, though.  Did she ever get what she needed? 

I don't know--no, probably not, no.  But we--I--tried . Really. Truly.

(Speaking in a gentler tone.)  I know.  You, they, I, we--all tried very very hard to help, to give her what she needed.  But--what did she need?

(Long silence.)  I...don't...know...I guess.  Love?  

How can you give someone what they need if you don't know what they need?  And, even  if you do know, how do you know you can provide it?  I mean I might know you need a heart transplant but that doesn't mean--

Finish the story.  I don't like the ending--never have--and I don't like the post script either, so you might as well get it over with.

OK, we'll skip all the middle part, the mother dies, the getting married, moving away--all of that.  Well and some pretty bizarre behavior.

Skip to the phone call.  I know that's where you're going, so just go.

The phone rings.  After years, that voice, her voice.  From the past, well, once the past, but now in thepresent, the right now.. 

I can hear it in her voice, something is terribly, terribly, horribly wrong.

And she called you.

I'm here.  At a hospital.  They think I'm crazy. My therapist, my husband (she called him by name but I won't).  They're trying to put me in the hospital.  They think I'm crazy.  Am I?  Do you think I'm crazy?  I'm not crazy am I?  Not enough to have to be locked up, am I?  Tell me what I should do, should I...?  I'm scared, but I don't think I'm crazy...?

She really didn't want to be crazy, did she?  And she called you.  When the chips were done and she needed someone--

Shut up.  I know what you're going to say.

Because you said it, which means that--

I said it.  You said it.  We said it.She didn't want to be crazy, which is, you know, a pejorative word for mentally ill   And she did not want to be that.  

So we told her--what? 

That she wasn't.  That of course she had issues and problems and needed help, but of course she wasn't crazy and didn't need to be locked up.

Which amazingly and exactly coincided with what she wanted to hear.  You don't need to be locked up--you don't need, oh, what's that word? Oh, yeah, right--treatment.  I think that's what they call it.

How do you know?  That's what my husband said.  How do you know what she needs? You're not there, you have no idea what's going on.  How can you say anything?  Not your business.

But I love her.  I love her and I, I want to help.

She didn't go in the hospital.

No.

No.  She didn't. At least not that night, not then.

Nice to be needed, isn't it?  And that used to be the end of the story didn't it?  Well, barring the subsequent phones calls of love, reconciliation, gratitude--oh, and the threats to bring a gun and shoot the entire family.

*****

  

  That used to be where the story ended.  Kind of sad, but hopeful too because she did have a therapist and she wasn't all that crazy and...well, you could always figure that maybe someday and somehow it got all better.

And the unicorns were dancing on the front lawn, sparkling in the silvery moonlight, gleaming in the sun. 

Hey. That's sarcasm.

Yeah?  We used to wonder, you and me, how it all turned out.   Turns out nobody really knows, not around here anyway.  All the letters come back to the family--

No one here and not at this address.