Crazy in Chicago by Norah-Jean Perkin Page A

Voices, or maybe not voices. Feelings and impressions. I can’t believe it has anything to do with me.”
    â€œWhat does it matter if it’s weird or not? Not sleeping and feeling sick are weird, too. Besides, there’s nothing else to pursue.”
    Cody sipped his milk and tried to close his mind to her questions, the same questions that plagued him whether he liked it or not. He set down his mug. “I don’t like weird stuff,” he said finally. “I’m a reporter. I like facts and figures, things I can see and touch.”
    â€œBut it’s all you’ve got left.”
    He shrugged. “That may be right, but I don’t choose to pursue it. I’m not interested in tall tales and weird possibilities.”
    Roberta’s brow puckered. She looked at him as if he were a puzzle she had to figure out. Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious!”
    He shook his head, unwilling to discuss a subject that struck far too close to home. “I’ve just had more than my fair share of weird, that’s all.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    Cody didn’t want to explain. But as he looked at Roberta, her face a picture of tender concern, his resistance started to melt. She seemed to want to know, to care what he meant and why. Ever since he’d returned to work after his disappearance, apparently healthy and normal, no one had seemed to care about the demons that made him run. No one, at least, until Roberta. But was it an illusion?
    He wavered and then, won over by her sincerity, decided. “Okay,” he said. He took another sip of milk, then looked past her to the kitchen cupboards. “I’ll tell you. My father was a fairly normal father at first. But when I was around eight, he started to change. Little things at first. He bought crystals. He grew his hair and wore a pony tail, gave up his suits for jeans and sandals or flowing robes. He started meditating and cooking brown rice and tofu.”
    He paused, remembering what it had been like for him and his mother. As always, with the memories came the fierce pain of his first and sharpest disillusionment. He swallowed and plowed on.
    â€œIt was all right at first. Funny, even. My mother used to tease him about what the neighbors would think. But as he got deeper into mysticism, into unusual avenues of thought, everything started to change for the worse. He claimed he had visions. He stopped washing. He had a direct line to God, or should I say a whole army of gods that he personally named. He said he was in touch with other dimensions, other beings. Eventually they became more important to him than my mother and me. He didn’t come home at night. He quit his job. He and my mother had terrible fights. He refused to get help. Finally, one day, he just up and left.”
    Lost in memories, Cody stopped. Pangs of embarrassment and bewilderment assaulted him as he pictured, as clear as if it had happened yesterday, his father stopping to talk to him and his friends. Pre-adolescent boys, gawky and uncertain, they’d guffawed nervously and looked away while his father had waved his arms and launched into rambling monologues about the meaning of life and his astral travels. Cody remembered wishing a hole would open in the floor and swallow him. How he’d tried to distance himself from his father. And yet, his father’s eventual desertion had devastated him.
    â€œYour father. Where is he now?”
    Cody blinked. Roberta looked horrified, and indignant, like an avenging angel ready to seek out and throttle his father.
    Cody smiled faintly. Her passionate response was endearing, but unnecessary. He shook his head. “I don’t know. India, maybe. I think he’s a member of some new sect there. Don’t know. Don’t care.”
    He sipped his milk, then set it down on the counter again and looked at Roberta intently. “I decided when he left