Everyone Should Read Special Exits.

Special Exits opens with pages the color of red clay I have often seen lining the rural roads in southern California, outside LA. The cover is gray with black text, and a strip of green runs along the brownish-red spine. The images of the two elderly people on the cover coupled with this earthy color scheme referenced they way some believe our bodies get buried and become fertilizer for lush green growth.

I’m sure many of Farmer’s readers have grandparents, and have dealt with their shrinking bodies, waning appetites, and cluttered homes; however, this was not what was depicted on the first two pages. I was surprised to open to the first spread and see bulbous characters stuffed into claustrophobic frames they often overflowed out of (follow the cat’s tail that leeks into multiple frames on pages 2 & 3).

Mortality is mentioned immediately, first with Laura being attacked by the cat, and then on the last frame on page 2 where Lars pulls up his sleeve to reveal hatch-marks of cat scratches across his arm. Lars’s nonchalance about the cuts on his arm also references this indifference toward his health and his body we see throughout the text, ie. the shingles outbreak (25), ant poison (33), and his persistent resistance to see a doctor.

The time-tags in Chapter two begin to become less precise and adopt a slightly annoyed tone, for instance, “yet another week…and another…” (33), as opposed to “a week goes by…” in the previous chapter (25); the word “yet” implies that the narrator is beginning to realize this is the beginning of many weeks, even years, to come.

I think that Farmer cleverly communicates her opinion about medical personnel starting on page 134 where she depicts the receptionist at Memorial Hospital painting her nails while implying that Laura’s request is excessive by saying, “for a blister?” as if to say, “It’s just a blister and totally not a big deal.” Then the smiley secretary for the nursing home is doing a crossword puzzle while telling Laura that her mother fell and broke her hip, days ago (138). I found the frame depicting the doctor suggesting more tests be done on Lars while betting on horses was the most direct and clever jab at medical personnel (173). I say clever because all of these details are added by Farmer, in other words, there is no way she could have known what the doctor was reading on the other end of the line during that conversation.

The most haunting and explicit speculation Farmer makes throughout the novel is depicted on fifth and sixth frames after she and Lars meet with the nursing home lawyer: the lawyer is depicted on the phone saying, “home free, boss!” then he instructs the nurse to “put Mrs. Dover in this private room next to my office” (147). Since this is a memoir, all the author really knows is that she / Laura met with the lawyer and then a week later she finds Rachel in the private room next to the lawyer’s office (149). It is almost as if these speculative frames are indicative of a moment of insanity induced by anger. Farmer, or Laura, return to their senses on the bottom of 150 where Rachel is dead and the lawyer is depicted leaning over Rachel’s bed with a maniacal grin on his face. Here Laura stops speculating and attacks him by saying, “When she first fell and broke her hip, it would have been kinder if you had taken her out in the alley and SHOT HER!” (150). Here is where Laura’s anger boils over, no more speculation, no more guessing, Rachel is dead, and Laura tells everyone she blames the lawyer / nursing home.

The speculation in these frames of the disinterest in all the people outside of their family involved in Rachel’s care did not seem in-genuine or excessive. They are all reading a magazine or ignoring Rachel all the way to the end, ie. the woman at the funeral home is depicted reading “Art News” rather than letting Laura see Rachel’s body (151). I read these as moments of victory for Farmer and the reason she wrote this book in the first place.

My father has been in a nursing home before, after a nearly deadly motorcycle accident. He barely made it out of the coma he was in for a month, and when he did, we had to admit him to a nursing home. He couldn’t speak or move and spent most days lying on his back as his eyes rolled in his head. My sister had to drop out of school to move home and take care of him for months. I received constant reports of mistreatment from not bathing him, not changing his sheets, bedsores, and forgetting to feed him and administer his medication. Ultimately, my sister came to the nursing home daily and ended up bathing, feeding, and giving him his medication herself. Now with seven years of hindsight, I believe that my father would have died in that facility if it were not for her.

For personal reasons I not only trusted Farmer in these moments of speculation, but I had to refrain from jumping up from my couch and saying, “Yeah, fuck you!” to the lawyer right along with her. Special Exits is a profoundly important piece of literature and I wish it was not just required reading for our class, but also for anyone over the age of twenty-five. I realize now that the color scheme of the cover does not reference death and the way our bodies eventually make the plants grow…it is referencing they way we can learn from our mistakes and make better ones in the future…a color-scheme of self-forgiveness.

~Margaret Seelie~