A THIRD OF YOUR LIFE

PEOPLE THROW THE WORD “CRAZY” AROUND A LOT—those kids are crazy! What are you, crazy? I’m going crazy—but I know what crazy really means because of this guy Eddie. He lives above the breakfast place where I work, and every day he comes downstairs to eat. He’s a big dude with a shaved head, moustache, and he only wears cut-off jean shorts and knee-high suede moccasins with fringe; that's all, so you can really see his whole nine yards: hairy back, flabby front. And he sweats a lot—appetizing? Not so much. My boss, Josh, gave him the whole no shoes no shirt no service song and dance, so Eddie went out and got a suede fringed vest that matched the moccasins. I figure he must freeze in the winter and now, one of those awful Chicago Julys, he’s got to be dying under all that animal skin. But it isn’t my place to ask. What I can ask is, "You want some coffee, Eddie?"

"Absolutely not," he always says. “I don't condone that sort of behavior." Then he goes on to explain what caffeine can do if you mix it with other chemicals—Lithium or Prozac or Wellbutrin or Lexapro or Celexa, 'cause those are the ones he’s on.

"Okay, then," I say, and get him juice instead, followed by a red pepper benedict, the Garden section of the Trib, and two crossword puzzles. After that he gets up, lays down a twenty, and goes to work at the Sealy Posturepedic warehouse, driving pillows around in a great big truck.

"How's your mattress, Megan?" he asks me, very seriously.

"It's fine," I say, 'cause what else do you say?

"Gotta be," he says. "You spend a third of your life on your mattress."

I don't know if he realizes that we’ve had this same conversation, right down to the sentence structure, for nearly a year; that because of him I can define such terms as Depressive Pseudodementia and Psychomotor Retardation with medical exactitude. It’s actually helpful, this front row seat to crazy, ‘cause lately I’ve been thinking I might be going crazy myself.

Every morning, I get to the restaurant at 6 a.m. I walk from table to table, putting napkins down at every right corner. Then I take the same walk, putting spoons on the right side of every napkin. Then, around again with knives, and then—then—the forks. Napkin, spoon, knife, fork; napkin, spoon, knife, fork; and I've been working here for, what, five years now? I never was very good at math, but that's a lot of forks, right? Right? So what would happen if I switched it up a bit? Maybe go napkin, fork, knife, spoon; or knife, then fork; or maybe really let loose and put the forks on the right side of the napkin. Would the world start spinning backwards? Would the glaciers melt, meteors crash, or humanity find some common ground?—who knows! Not me! So last week, on Monday, I put down all forks. No knives or spoons, just three forks on every napkin. Then, on Tuesday, I didn't put down any forks at all, just all knives and spoons; on Wednesday, no spoons. So, maybe you're thinking This isn't very interesting, Megan, I've got better things to think about than cutlery—and I get it, I do—but it's important that you stick with me here 'cause this is how I lost my mind. For real. Not Oh I'm going crazy, like we say eight hundred times a day, but serious. Certifiable.

"Uhm, Megan?" Molly asked after a few days of resetting the silverware I'd just set. She'd never dream of second-guessing me—she's only been working here a couple months, and I've been here five years; five years, waiting tables at the same exact place—five. "What are you doing?”

"I don't know, Molly," I said. I turned around and faced her, her curly hair and careful smile and fistfuls of forks. "Maybe I'm going crazy."

She laughed. "Totally," she said. "That happens to me all the time."

I pointed a fork at her and said, "I'm serious. I might be seriously crazy."

"You're seriously crazy," Andy said, when I suggested we go dancing. We'd just picked up some takeout from Penny's Noodles and were driving back to his place.

"Let's go!" I said again, having that fun little fantasy where you've got a rose between your teeth and your boyfriend's in tight black pants with a magical, wonderful ass, dipping you low and dragging you slowly up his torso. "I saw a sign back there, let's try it!"

He stopped at a red light and turned to face me. "I'm from Marquette Park," he said, as if the South Side was where this question would die. "Besides," he went on, "it's almost time for CSI."

This is what we do, me and Andy. We get take-out food and go home at the end of a long day, mine at the restaurant and his at the ad firm. We snuggle up on the couch and drink beers and relax. He'll have one arm around me, and sometimes we'll make out. And if that gets heavy, we'll go into the bedroom for sex, after which he falls asleep fast 'cause he works all these hours. And that's when I lay there, listening to him breathe. It's something between breathing and snoring, actually, with a little bit of spit rolling in the back of his throat. Sometimes he whistles through his nose. I listen to this every night.

Every night.

Every night.

Every night, and then the alarm goes off at five, and I'm at work by six, setting up the restaurant: napkin, spoon, knife, fork, creamers in the bowls. “What kind of toast would you like with that, sir?” In my hands are the coffee cups, and I imagine throwing them, or flinging plates like Frisbees; they’d smash against the wall right above the line of customers’ heads, and it would be so, so, so satisfying. But instead I say, “Would you like hash browns or side salad?” to the three-top at table seven and “Citrus vinaigrette or lemon tarragon?” to the lady on nineteen. And to Eddie, I say, "You want some coffee?"

"I don't condone such behavior," he says, and this is our routine—red pepper benedicts, crossword puzzles, a third of your life on a mattress. And on we go, every day, Monday through Friday. Eddie never comes in on the weekends. On the weekends, it’s not breakfast, but brunch. Brunch in Chicago is an almost religious experience. The restaurant is packed, people wait over an hour for a table—it’s way too much for Eddie to handle.

The day it happened was a Sunday, one of those awful 90 degree mornings where the humidity wraps over you like a blanket. All the customers waited inside for their tables, to be near the A/C, and me and Molly and the other girls could barely shove through the bodies. "Excuse me!" we said, carrying plates high over our heads. "Coming though! Look out, this stains!" I was behind the counter pouring mimosas when Eddie came in, all bare, hairy chest and dangly fringe. He looked shocked to see so many people here, in his place, interrupting his breakfast, his routine. I saw him talk to Josh by the front door. I couldn't hear them over all the people, but I figured Josh told him he'd have to wait.

That wouldn’t go over very well.

Eddie stood for a minute, oblivious to the stares he was getting 'cause of his clothes, then turned to the nearest customer—some dad with a comb-over and pleated pants. Don't, I thought, not knowing what he was doing but sure that he shouldn't as he grabbed the guy's arm and whispered something. The dad's eyes widened, and he backed up a couple steps into the lady behind him. A sort of domino-effect happened then—customers backing into busboys backing into waitresses, with Eddie moving forward through the mayhem, grabbing anyone who got in his way, whispering something to each of them. Eventually he made it to the counter—to me. His eyes were glazed, a thin layer of milk coating the iris, and I knew he wasn't seeing me as he wrapped one meaty fist around my elbow and tightened, his fingers pushing through my skin, hitting bone. And it hurt, it hurt, but I knew he wouldn't hear me if I said, "Let me go, Eddie," or "You want some coffee, Eddie?" or "Did you forget the Lexapro this morning, Eddie?" He wouldn't hear my words 'cause he didn't hear his own, like somebody else was speaking through his mouth as he whispered, "If you don't get out of here, I'll take you outside and smash your head on the sidewalk. I'll hold it between my palms and pound it into the concrete.”

When I think back on this, I don’t remember feeling scared. I remember feeling sad. He was so completely alone.

In the end, Josh called the cops and Eddie was 86’d—couldn't come into the restaurant without an automatic arrest. I'd see him sometimes, driving the big 'ol Sealy truck packed with pillows, and he'd always ask how my mattress was.

"Gotta be fine," he'd say. "You spend a third of your life on a mattress." I'd repeat those words at night—a third of your life, a third of your life—as I listened to Andy breathe the spit-sloggy in and outs, feeling my mattress below me, watching the ceiling above me, watching the clock: one o'clock, two o’clock, three. And by then, I was imagining all the things I could stick up Andy's nose: drinking straws, uncapped Sharpies, the corkscrew for wine.

And one night, a month or so after Eddie went crazy, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I opened the silverware drawer and took out the knives and forks and spoons, and then I opened the oven and stuck them all in. There was still a lot of space in there, so I got the dishes and put them in, too; and the pots and pans, and the blender, and the electric juicer; and everything on the spice rack. By then, there was too much stuff in the oven, so I took it all out and tried to put it back in a rational manner, like when you're packing for some big trip. You roll up the underwear and the socks and stuff them in your running shoes. You put the extra batteries in with your toiletries. You fold your flip flops into your sweaters—you make it fit. I would make it fit. Fit, goddammit! And suddenly, the overhead light came on, and there was Andy, standing over me.

I've since tried to imagine what he saw that night—the girl he thought he knew so well, squatting on the tiled kitchen floor with her blue nightgown hiked up around her thighs, surrounded by foodstuffs and spices and flatware and Tupperware. My eyes must have been glassy as I looked up at him, my hair wild.

He was very still as he sized me up. Then he asked, "What’s going on in here?" as though I might have a logical explanation.

"Your nose whistles," I said.

He just stood there, not making any sudden movements.

"Every night," I went on. "Every night it whistles, every night I listen, and I figured I should get up this time and do something different so that every night wouldn't be the same night as last night—"

That's when the alarm starts buzzing in our bedroom, and it's time to go to work. Napkin, spoon, fork, knife. Creamers in the bowls. Coffee decaf regular. And at nine-thirty, we open and the place fills up. It doesn't matter where my mind is—my body knows what to do. It's muscle memory that makes your latte, classical conditioning that reaches for the juice; like, how someone can ask What's up? and you say Fine, 'cause you assume they've said, How are you?

I know what to do and I do it—it's routine—except today is different. Today, Molly says, "Hey, look," and points out the front windows of the restaurant. It’s one of those warm, perfect Chicago September mornings. Every customer waiting for a table is standing around outside: moms and dads, girlfriends and boyfriends, tables of six or seven friends meeting for brunch, all of them on the sidewalk looking at the sky with their arms in the air and their hands held palms up to catch the snow. Snow—it's snowing, white fluffy flakes falling mid-September. But when I get closer to the windows and out the front door, I can see what it really is: feathers. Hundreds of feathers floating in the air, and I stand on the sidewalk and tilt my head back. There, leaning out his window above us with an army knife and a pillow, is Eddie in all his fringe. He splits the pillow open with the knife, holds two opposite corners, and shakes it 'til the feathers fly. Then he reaches behind him and grabs another pillow, pillow after pillow. "How's your mattress, Megan?" he yells down from the window, and I close my eyes and let the feathers brush my face.

It feels really wonderful.

Even if it is kind of crazy.