Juliette Miranda

“I can find my recipe for chloroform, but I can’t find my recipe for bouillabaisse, damn it!”

My guy believes that I am the only woman in the entire world who has ever sputtered the words “chloroform” and “bouillabaisse” in the same sentence, but I’m not so sure. Martha Stewart appears to blink crazy every so often, and from what I’ve read in the tabloids could likely put the two words together to form a recipe well-suited for a cooking show from hell. Not that I haven’t mentally made the same combo, too, of course, but fortunately for my guy (and the general population), my crazy stays in check.

Most of the time.

Crazy runs in my family, I’m afraid. Mostly it’s been the Beautiful Mind kind of crazy – where genius comes with a side serving of compulsive ticks and maybe an apparition or two. We laugh about it more than anything else, and perhaps boast just the slightest bit as we regal each other and guests with stories that begin with phrases like, “Remember the chicken bones!”

They’d been heaped on a plate, a tangled mass of legs and wings awaiting transport to the trash compactor when my father got to them. His eyes circled the plate. Where I only saw the remains of a dead and cooked animal, he saw something more. And he stared at it for nearly an hour, unblinking and steady.

Even my mother wasn’t sure what to make of my dad’s catatonia. We cleared the dishes around him, held a mirror under his nose, and made nervous conversation until something snapped back in place and he returned to the land of the socially functional.

Two days later my father had the thesis for his doctoral dissertation.

I’d like to say that my own crazy has the same productive results. Unfortunately, I fear all it does is make my guy secretly program the local psych ward into speed dial.

I was half ready to make the call myself last weekend. Admittedly, I was edgy, having read far too many Martha Stewart Living magazines in preparation for a dinner with my guy’s family that night. I’d finally located my bouillabaisse recipe and was surveying the living room to ensure all was correct before I began cooking.

Rationally, I realize my home will never resemble Martha Stewart’s. I’d sooner jab myself in the ear with scissors than craft anything, and my idea of decorating involves displaying artbooks of industrial erotic surrealism on the coffee table and hanging a string of Indonesian Spirit Birds made out of multi-colored bandanas in the kitchen.

But I do take great pride in our bookshelves. I fell in love with them the second I saw them in the store – so much so that my guy had to prevent me from walking up and licking the shelves.

Since being delivered, I’ve lovingly filled them: first run hard covers, well worn paperbacks, framed photos and random things we’ve collected. My odd organization system likely makes my guy dizzy, and certainly wouldn’t win any nods from Ms. Stewart, but everything in those bookshelves has a specific order, and I can tell at a glance if something is out of place.

What my system doesn’t account for is the random misfirings of my brain when I am anxious or stressed. That particular day, as I planned a menu and hoped I could host my guy’s family with enough grace to cover my usual social bumblings, I lost something. My sense, my logic, whatever glue it is that holds my brain in place came undone, and as I stared at the bookshelf, I believed with every fiber of my being that a prized possession was missing.

A large amethyst that my father had given me when I was younger was supposed to be sitting on top of a stack of Charles Bukowski books. I KNEW this. I knew this because I loved that rock, treasured it and made a point to look at it and think about my dad every so often, conveniently forgetting to consider that he is slightly nuts.

I ran my hands over every single book on the shelves, hoping to somehow find the rock in a rearranged place. I began to panic as it became clearer that the rock was. not. there. Conspiracy theories raced through my brain. My guy had recently held a band rehearsal in the living room. Could the new guitarist also be a klepto? Could he have seen the amethyst, been entranced by its glimmer or thought it valuable and slipped it into his guitar case when no one was looking?

Or had my guy in a fit of playfulness snuck it off the shelves to test my neuroses? It was the more unlikely of the scenarios, yet it didn’t stop me from ambushing my guy the second he walked into the room.

“Where is my rock?” I asked, lips quivering and eyes rolling around their sockets. “You know the one – you made fun of it once and when I said it was from my father you stopped and it was on the bookshelf I know it was and now it isn’t and where is it!”

My guy looked at me the same way you look at a pet who has snatched something you need back: slightly amused, yet with trepidation. I’m sure he wanted to prevent me from gnawing off what was left of the sanity we both needed.

“Calm down,” he said. “Are you sure it isn’t in your closet?”

Of course I was sure. I had held it up and polished it and always kept it with my books.

“Are you sure you unpacked it when we moved in?”

Of course I was sure. I had packed it in the same box as the Living Dead Doll I wasn’t allowed to put on our bookshelves and the record album I meant to frame just as soon as I unpacked it. And with that, my eyes blurred, my brain slowed and it suddenly dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, I had never put the rock on the shelf at all.

My loving guy went to our garage as I sat with my head in my hands then, found the box I had not unpacked, unpacked my rock, and came back up to place it in my hands.

As I shook off my crazy and displayed my favorite rock where it belonged, I gave my guy an embarrassed smile, hoping he still found me cute enough to humor.

He gave my head a few soothing pats and told me it was all okay.

“I have my own weird issues,” he said. And to show me that I am not alone in my wackiness, took me to the garage and pointed to the license plate on my car.

“Look at the number 2,” he said. “It’s bigger than all the other numbers. I’ve stood here nearly every day staring and wondering why. It drives me insane.”

I looked. He was right; the two was bigger. I smiled with the realization that my guy is equally wacky, and he smiled back. Relief washed over me as he engulfed me in a hug, and I knew that we could both be freaks together happily. It was an unexpected, but welcome, ingredient to our relationship.

We walked back into the house, and as I turned to close the door behind us, I caught site of my license plate. What the hell is up with that two anyway? I made a mental note to investigate further. I’m sure my guy will understand.

1. Dil Says:
   March 24th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

   I say we celebrate our neuroses with a rag full of chloroform tonight.