A Postcard from Standish Sanitarium

Be Glad You're Not Here...and Wishing I Wasn't.

From the backstage to the backseat; a hired-car ride in the rain. I turn my head and watch out the backglass as the train grows smaller, and darker, and all together disappears into the night, rain, black, and smoke.

Groucho lights his cigar, and the driver complains.

"Don't you know who he is?" I ask.

The driver ignores us, and Groucho laughs, telling me not to play the whole 'Don't you know who we are' bit with the locals; it isn't nice.

I didn't mean to be a snob, but the Marxes are pretty big names on the Vaudeville circuit, and if the man in the greasepaint mustache wants to smoke a cigar in the back of his own hired car, then tell me, why can't he?

Maybe the driver is allergic to smoke, I say to myself. And I wish the voice in my head would be quiet for one night. Quiet for one ride. I hardly ever get to sit this close to the Marxes when we ride the train from town-to-town, so now I finally have a chance to talk to them.

My other voice tells me the Marxes don't want to talk to me. I'm just a two-bit performance artist/actress/glorified sideshow freak in a red swimsuit and high-heels as I play the accordion with my teeth and thighs, climbing a ladder to a board twenty-feet high only to dive into water, all while still playing. Even when wet...

Never miss a beat.

I won't, I say to my voice.

We arrive to a daunting, three-story, nightmarish castle of a concrete building, and "No, I don't want to go to the Standish Sanitarium!!"

The boys wrestle me from the car...

My real voice shouts. My real voices cries. My other voice tells me to be strong, and brave, and surely sweet Harpo won't let 'em keep me here.

In the lobby, he looks at me, as if to say, "Well, maybe she isn't crazy...can't we keep her overnight?" An injured kitten -- maybe I could be mended! Maybe I just need a man who knows what he's doing; a man with a heart. But Harpo only sighs and walks away wordless.

Defeated.

Even the nice one's given up on you, my other voice says. And soon I'm lifted onto a white and metal gurney. Like freight, loaded onto a truck. I am nothing. I am not even human to these lab-coated men. To these two remaining brothers. Soon Chico slinks away; I hear him asking to use the telephone. Groucho is asking to see the doctor for permission to sign me in, and get the Hell out.

They roll me down a hallway. The gurney wobbly, squeaky. Wheels turning in my mind on stained white linoleum squares. Marked with treks of wet shoes. Squeaking. Wobbling hands go beneath me, struggling to lift me? I feel so heavy now. And these faces look constantly-aging. Beneath yellow lights on the ceiling...long yellow lights...I meet Dr. Hall. He talks to me through a mask; shakes Groucho's hand, and Groucho leaves.

Two of the ever-aging men take me into a white room. They strip me down, and wrap me in a cold wet sheet. Ice-water straight jacket! I don't bother to scream. They harness me to a bed.

Out for hours, or days...I awake to see Chico. He is standing over me. He puts a pillow behind my head, and offers to play the piano.

"There is no piano," I tell him.

So he pulls a chair over to my bedside, and plays me.

I like it when he hits the high notes...if only he'd shoot the keys on the low notes.

"I'm making you uncomfortable?" he asks.

"You're making me wish I wasn't wrapped in a cold wet sheet."

He tries to tear it with his teeth. As he leans further into me, his hair tickles my nose and smells of train smoke. I try hard not to sneeze...

For fear of waking up: assuming this is a dream. A good night in the theatre. The audience clapped for me, and I felt so alive again! Awake as an artist, and alive. And here, before I could even bow, before I could even enjoy it, the Brothers rushed me off stage, and out the back door. Madness overtakes me -- every thing's in circles! kidnapped -- and I doubt every word coming from my mouth, and from my head. Over and over again, I say aloud: "I don't want to talk about it."

I don't know what to believe.

Embarassed. One voice inside me says, "Write more...write all you want, until you're happy!" but the other voice says to be quiet, and go back to 'sleep'.
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