Moodswing - Testing badly

Bill and my sister Cheryl are down in Nicaragua yelling at each other right now, probably, which is why I’m not looking forward to going there. Cheryl moved there three years ago to help him with the small hotel he owned after he had a heart attack (if that’s what that was). It was a gesture for which, over time, I guess Bill didn’t show adequate appreciation, because as of now, my sister has moved down the street and opened her own business.

“Her crust is getting thicker and I cannot reach her,” Bill wrote. “Words fall on deaf ears. What fun we’re all having, functioning dysfunctionally.”

“Bill’s crazy,” my sister had written earlier. “He’ll order a hamburger in the restaurant and spit it out on the floor, in front of the customers.”

Now, I love old Bill, even though he is about as cuddly as a menstruating sea urchin, and I love my sister, even though to this day she will have me in a headlock when the whim hits her (and it hits her about twice daily), but both of them are now imploring me to come to Nicaragua, and I’m worried they want me to mediate or validate or something regarding this feud, and, Jesus God ... I really, really don’t wanna.

For one, of course Bill is crazy. My mother met him when he was living in his car and, showing a judgment of character her daughters would all inherit, she became his best friend. He has always smoked like a living chimney, but still his eyes are as big and blue and clear as if a preschooler painted them, I swear. But there’s good crazy and bad crazy, and Bill’s crazy borders on good most of the time. He survived being homeless and he survived his heart attack (if that’s what that was), and he will survive this feud with my sister. But some survivors are so used to climbing over obstacles that they don’t know how to function when their path clears up, so they simply create other obstacles.

And of course my sister’s crust is thick. Bill’s known her half her life, he helped talk her out of her last bad boyfriend, a bipolar-behaving strip-club manager who once imbedded all his kitchen knives into the ceiling of her bedroom. Still, it took her awhile to give up on that guy, because that girl does not give up on anything easily. Even her college education is testimony to that. She didn’t get her degree, mind you, seeing as how she tests badly, but she’s got five years of self-financed, full-time university studies in her brain, which is important.

Anyway, she could have carried Bill out of the jungle on her back if she had to, but Bill didn’t need her for that. He needed her to roll up her sleeves and take over, which she did. My sister jumped in with a big belly flop, splashing everyone around, and to her credit, some of these people seriously needed some splashing. For example, she saw no use in a kitchen employee who couldn’t work a can opener. So they yelled about that.

Also, Cheryl fired the person who functioned as the hotel manager, seeing as how he had a habit of stealing from them and seriously harassing the other employees. But evidently Bill didn’t consider these to be bad traits in an employee, so they yelled about that, too.

My only thought is that Cheryl had come there when Bill was sick and infirm with a purpose to clear a path for him as he recovered. And mind you, I don’t even know if Bill asked her to do it, but I suspect a clear path to Bill is like garlic to a vampire; if he can’t avoid it, he’ll destroy it. In this case, he did not have to look hard for obstacles, he simply made one of my sister.

The last time I saw Cheryl was nearly a year ago. It had been two years since she’d moved to Nicaragua, and she was visiting the States to attend our little sister’s graduation from law school. I think it’s always been a touchy subject for Cheryl, her absence of a college degree and all because she tests badly. After our mother died, she moved alone to Las Vegas, and I used to worry about her living there, working an unforgiving job as a cocktail waitress, calling me at 10 a.m. already drunk and bitter, panicking over an army of inner evils, phantom and otherwise.

And Christ, did I worry when she moved to Nicaragua. But when I saw her last May, her arms were toned and her skin was the color of caramel. She complained about Bill, and she smoked like a living chimney, but her eyes were big and clear and green. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life, Holly,” she laughed, and I thought about how good it was to see this girl again. I hadn’t seen this girl — I mean this one, with the easy laugh and the absence of panic — for more than a decade. Bill is testing her, yes, but he better watch out. This time she is not testing badly.

hollis.gillespie@creativeloafing.com


Hollis Gillespie will be the guest auctioneer at the Grant Park Cooperative Preschool fundraising auction May 1, 5-9 p.m. 1144 Avondale Ave., just off East Confederate Avenue in Ormewood Park. 404-521-0440. www.gpcp.org. She also will be reading and signing her book May 5, 7-9 p.m. at the viewing of Full Circle: Work by Daniel Troppy at Marcia Wood Gallery, 263 Walker St. 404-827-0030.