Crazy Lady!

Stuart Miller

Growing out of a tangle of love and laughter and grief, this story transcends formula. Right up until the very last line, the drama is in the characters, their sadness and their surprise. The setting is grittily authentic: a poor city neighborhood of brick rowhouses on the edge of a slum. The story's told in the unaffected voice of Vernon Dibbs, a big, clunky kid who's failing seventh grade. He befriends Maxine Flooter--the neighborhood "crazy lady," who walks down the street when she's drunk, hollering and cursing--and he helps her care for her tall, skinny, severely disabled teenage son, Ronald. It's Maxine's love for her son that moves Vernon most, since he's grieving for his mother, who died three years earlier from a stroke at her factory sewing machine, the only person who had helped him believe he was special. His father tries, but he can barely manage to keep the home going for Vernon and his brothers and sisters. All the characters (except for an idealized, all-wise teacher) are drawn with compassionate realism and restraint; they are flawed and struggling, both comic and weary. There are heartbreaking scenes: when Vernon visits Maxine in jail; when drunk Maxine publicly humiliates Vernon, shouting out that he's dumb; when Vernon takes Ronald shopping for sneakers; when Ronald says his first word ever; when Vernon and his father finally share their grief. Vernon can't bear to see Maxine's failing struggle to keep a home together for Ronald. In the parting scene, when Vernon has to let Ronald go, the physical wrenching is a metaphor for all that's lost.