Breaking Out of Bedlam Paperback - 2011

Excerpt

THE BLANK BOOK

I got this book from my granddaughter Emma. The cover looks like a gunny sack. It has a dried purple flower on the front, and all the pages are blank. It’s supposed to be pretty. The purple pen that goes with it is squishy, like chewed-up gum. “So it doesn’t hurt your hand, Gamma,” Emma said. I laughed, thinking where my hand has been these eighty-two years, and what it’s done. I was polite, though, and asked her real nice what in the world I’m supposed to do with it. “It’s for your thoughts,” she said. “If you have any memories or reflections you want to write down. Or a poem, maybe, or a sentiment you think is meaningful.”

That girl has always worked my last nerve.

They all feel guilty for putting me here, so they’re trying to keep me from losing my mind. I also got a jigsaw puzzle (one of the biggest wastes of time I can think of) and an embroidery set (which I have always hated) for Christmas. My son Dean even gave me a paint-by-numbers kit with three kinds of dogs: a poodle, a collie, and a German shepherd. Do they think I am retarded? That I’ve gone back to my childhood?

They don’t know the first thing about me.

I put those other gifts down in the day room and they got snapped up like nobody’s business. I tucked this book in my top drawer thinking I could tear the pages out if I needed some blank paper. It’s thick as a damn Bible. I don’t know who in their right mind could ever fill it. Then this morning I got up early, when the light was just starting to come through the blinds. Usually my pills knock me out ‘til breakfast, when the walkers and wheelchairs make a slow-motion stampede for the dining room. But this morning was quiet. Nobody calling out from their bed, or knocking a mop around. The phones at the nurses’ station weren’t ringing yet, the gardeners weren’t running their leaf blowers, and the delivery trucks weren’t idling outside my window.

This morning I sat straight up in bed like somebody called my name. Lots of times I can’t get out of bed at all. I stay there all day, dozing and waking up, dozing and waking up. I might swallow a few more of my little darlings to settle my nerves. Sometimes whole chunks of the day disappear. Fine by me. But today I woke clear as a bell. I did my bathroom business, sat down here at my dressing table, and started to write.

I got a plan. I’m going to write down everything I ever wanted to say. I’m not holding nothing back and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks. Most people don’t tell the truth about their lives, including me. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I lied to keep myself alive because life is hard and there’s things you got to do. But now I got nothing to lose. I’m going to tell the truth, once and for all. I hope those that put me in this place read it when I’m dead—which I have a feeling won’t be long. Maybe then they’ll see.

The trucks are starting to idle outside new, spitting fumes right into my window. And the inmates are creeping down the hall, yelping like animals fighting to get to the watering hole. Damned if I’m not hungry myself. Those rubbery eggs don’t sound half bad.

I got another reason for keeping this book. It’s called leaving a paper trail. Something fishy’s going on in this place and I want a record in case anything happens to me. That’s right. There’s whispering, and shifty looks, and things gone missing.

It’s all going down here.

I’m using the purple pen.

I’ve always had the prettiest handwriting.


From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

“A kick….Reading [Cora’s]’journals,’ as she reawakens, finds a friend and a paramour, and plots her escape, is a hoot.”
—The New York Times

“Tough-edged Cora Sledge, 82, is a reluctant resident of The Palisades nursing home—a ‘prison [where] your only crime is you lived too long.’ Her tell-all journal, recounting dramas at the home (thefts, love affairs, rivalries) and a tragedy buried in her past, is profane, harrowing, comical—and Cora’s voice is spot-on.”
—AARP Magazine

“Breaking out of Bedlam is a fun—and inspiring—read, that proves you’re never too old to really start living.”
—Instinct magazine

“Larson has drawn a winning character in Cora . . . a Confederate Stone Angel, with our Hagar as template. Like Hagar, she is rude, crude, arrogant, and totally without apology—and readers should admire her for it.”
—The Hamilton Spectator (Canada)

“Delightful . . . Larson injects a jolt of liveliness into the bleak setting of an assisted living home, thanks to the obstinate and crass narrator, 82-year-old Cora Sledge. . . . Cora’s machinations—sometimes wily, sometimes curious, always funny—and her lovable crustiness give this plenty of heart and humor.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“Heartwarming and funny, with nary a slip into sentimentality.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Leslie Larson is a writer of tales that are hilarious and heartbreaking at once—no easy feat, but the mark of great storytelling. She writes with an intimate eye and heart about citizens so familiar to the American landscape, we don’t even see them.”
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

“Leslie Larson has created an original in Cora Sledge. Overweight with secrets, tough as she is ill, Cora is about to spill the beans on her ill-mannered, kidnapping children in a journal given to her by a grandchild. Instead, what she discovers in this moving and funny novel about assisted living is, to her astonishment, a primer on love.”
—Helena María Viramontes, author of Their Dogs Came with Them
 
“Is death a tragedy or a triumph? Is it a nightmare or a dark comedy? Do we put our accounts in order, or do we exact our revenge? Is there, even, a touch of grace? Somehow, Leslie Larson manages to explore all these possibilities in this powerful novel.”
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Into the Beautiful North
 
“In a voice brimming with wit, energy, and originality, and with a keen eye and a pitch-perfect ear for language, Leslie Larson delivers us a protagonist like no other. Through Cora Sledge’s unique perspective, we ache and laugh along with her until the very last page, and she reminds us that longing and acceptance are at the very core of the human condition no matter what our age or circumstance.”
—Alex Espinoza, author of Still Water Saints

"Few women have kept me as worried and curious and awake at night as Cora Sledge, the 'heroine' of Leslie Larson's great new novel. Her life is huge, and tragic, and comic, and stalwart, and her voice is astonishing. How does Larson know these things, especially the things we're all afraid of, that we'll end up helpless, powerless, loveless, after such lives we think we're living? Read this novel to see redemption."
—Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon and A Million Nightingales

“Meet pill-popping, slovenly, sharp-tongued Cora Sledge, all three-hundred pounds and eighty-two years of her. Be prepared for surprises at every turn, from the moment her children shove her out of her home and into Palisades, a cinder-block warehouse for the aged. There, love, skullduggery, and heartbreak await Cora and finally lead her to a well-lighted path. In BREAKING OUT OF BEDLAM, Leslie Larson gives us high hilarity and deep tenderness, allowing neither to rob the other. In Cora Sledge, she gives us a woman who is brave enough to look closely at the sum of all her years and to learn new love from old sorrows.”
—Kate Maloy, author of Every Last Cuckoo


From the Hardcover edition.