Sick & Tragic Bastard Son

by Rowan Massey

  The grass in front of Mom’s house was dead. Weeds grew where they pleased. I used to make a minimum effort to take care of the small lawn, just for the sake of not being embarrassed that I lived there. I was grateful those days were over for good.

  I slipped my key into the lock and had a moment of hesitation, as if I was about to walk into a stranger’s house. Ignoring the feeling, I stepped inside quickly and locked the door behind me. The smell would have usually been stale with a little smoke, a little burnt coffee, but something was truly rank in the air. I covered my nose and mouth, but I didn’t want to inhale at all because that would mean it still entered my body. My tumor wiggled in protest behind my eyes. The ceiling shifted slightly, ready to descend.

  “Mom!” I shouted through my fingers. “You home?”

  I walked around the little house trying to find clues. The kitchen was the first shock. We’d always been a mess, but now and then we’d tackle a small part of the chaos to keep it at bay. She hadn’t been keeping anything at bay. Dirty pots, pans, plates, utensils, and so on covered every surface in the cramped space. The sink was grimy, but empty. When I got close to it, the drain was clogged and smelled like hot garbage. There were several empty and full wine boxes stacked against the side of the fridge. She’d bought it in bulk.

  A scrap of paper was stuck onto the freezer door with a magnet. It said, “cruelty” in tiny block letters. Anyway, I thought that was what it said. It swam away too quickly for me to be sure. I stayed frozen there for a long moment, staring at it and trying to make sense of it. She was losing her mind.

  In the middle of the floor next to the table, she’d swept but left the pile of dirt and crumbs without picking it up. I stepped over to the sliding glass door and looked out. There was nothing out back except the old lawn furniture, an overflow of cigarette butts, and more overgrown grass.

  I headed down the hallway, already getting used to the smells, and took a step back when I saw that something had been smeared across the wallpaper all the way from Mom’s bedroom to my bathroom. I warily leaned forward to inspect it. It was yellowish, dried, crusty stuff.

  “Mom!”

  No response.

  My phone sounded three times in a row, so I went to the living room, away from the streak of god-knows-what, and checked my texts.

  Mom: Not feeling good.

  Mom: Stop yelling.

  Mom: What do you need?

  Zander: House looks like shit. What’s going on?

  Mom: Not feeling good.

  Zander: Ok. Do I have health insurance?

  I waited a few minutes for a text, pacing around the house, but didn’t get one.

  “Zander,” she called from down the hall, her voice exhausted and impatient, just like I remembered it. I hurried and met her at her door where she was holding an insurance card out to me, her face hidden in darkness. I took it. She was closing the door, but instinctively, I stopped it with one hand. I still hadn’t seen her face. There was an awkward moment when neither of us said anything.

  “Have you been going to work?” I asked.

  She was quiet and still, and then, “Mostly. Won’t get fired. Relax.”

  I nodded even though she wouldn’t look at me. Her frizzy hair covered half her face.

  “Where have you been?” she asked with a sigh.

  “My, uh…my boyfriend’s.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m taking a nap.”

  Again, she tried to shut the door, and again, I stopped it.

  “What about work?”

  “They changed my shift. I start at noon. Now go on.”

  I let go of the door, and it shut just as I saw the ceiling inside her room coming down fast. Anticipating the sound of it cracking against her head, I cringed, but nothing happened. I backed away and headed down the hall.

  I’d gotten what I’d come for, and she’d said she was still working, so I had to let go of the rest of it. There were much bigger problems to deal with in my own life.

  The door to my little room was closed, and I didn’t want to go in, but I did. The air was dead and cold. I poked around for anything I might want to take so I wouldn't have to come back for it, but there was nothing. Standing over the pitiful mattress, staring at the dirty walls, staying wary of the ceiling—which was lowering by centimeters, twitching downward when I wasn’t looking right at it—I closed my eyes and made an oath never to enter Mom’s house again, not even if things went south with Clay. I hadn’t been a whole person back then. I’d been a fragment. Going back to that would be like dying.

  Never again. I swore it over and over, eyes shut, fists tight at my sides, willing it with everything I had. Never again. Never again. Never again.

  An hour later, and I’d taken the momentum from the visit to Mom’s and gotten myself to a clinic. I’d figured out where to go ahead of time. It was a mental health clinic at the center of town for people with no money, located right next to the projects. A couple days back, I’d realized while Clay was reading to me that I was reading along with him. I’d hurried to the bathroom with my phone and started searching for “mental health near me”. I’d memorized what I’d found, which took a while, and Clay was too absorbed in the book in his hands to notice I’d been away a little longer than normal.

  The lady at the sign in desk told me that for a drop in visit I should have showed up at eight in the morning. She looked at me with zero emotion, like a manikin. She made sure I knew I might be waiting hours and still might not see a doctor, and that I might want to make an appointment instead, but it would be two months from now. I just kept nodding. When she gave me the forms, I went and sat down. It was only when I held the pen over the paper that I remembered I couldn’t fill them out. Feeling incredibly stupid and worthless, I took a good look around at the other patients in the room. I tried to tell myself they were just as fucked up as I was, but I couldn’t fool myself. They were obviously poor, but otherwise showed no signs of mental illness.

  The thing that kept distracting me was that the walls were freshly painted in a crazy shade of purple. I felt girlie for knowing, but I was pretty sure it was called periwinkle. Even the ceilings and furniture were periwinkle. The nurses’ uniforms and the pen in my hand—all periwinkle. It gave a cotton ball sleepiness to the whole place, more like a baby’s nursery than a doctor’s office.

  I didn’t know how long I’d sat there, distracted by the weirdness of it. My mind wandered. The place was hugging me with muffled noises.

  “You gonna stare at that all day or fill it out, buddy?”

  I looked left and right for the source of the friendly voice. It was the man two chairs away from me. The middle one was empty. He had messy hair and heavy jowls. I was glad Clay wasn’t old enough to have jowls yet.

  The forms in my hands were still swimmy. I sighed and let the clipboard rest against my knee.

  “I can’t read it,” I said.

  “What? You can’t read?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think…I’m gonna just go. I’m gonna go.” I got to my feet and went and set the clipboard on the counter in front of the desk lady. She was dealing with a printer at the back of the office.

  “Wait a minute now,” he said, waving his hands at me and standing with effort. “Wait. You have rights, kid. C’mere.”

  Not sure what to do, I stood where I was, edging towards the double doors that would be my exit. The cotton feeling of the room hugged at my mind and it was starting to get suffocating. I fished in my pocket and got out my tin full of pills. I took them only when I really had to. Maybe it was a bad idea to pop a pill where I was asking for more pills. I didn’t know. I just took one as quickly as I could. Hopefully they would be fooled into thinking it was a mint.

  The man leaned into the office and spoke loudly to the lady.

  “This boy needs a hand, please. He’s a bastard.”

  My stomach flipped. I didn’t know if I was going to be puking in a few minutes, but it was a safe bet.

&
nbsp; “I’m sorry,” he laughed, “I meant to say illiterate. Illiterate, not illegitimate. My old noggin! You need to get somebody to help him fill his forms out or he’s going to stare at them until the cows go home.”

  I hadn’t noticed the floor until right then, but the linoleum was periwinkle too. It had some kind of glitter in it, reflecting the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

  The lady came up to the counter and leaned over it to get a look at me. Her eyes went up and down my body like she was looking for the crazy parts.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Do you have your driver’s license?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know your social?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, it’s a start, honey. Is this your form? Let’s see what we can do. Give me what you have and just take a seat.”

  I nodded. Everyone was looking at us and my face was getting hot.

  After sitting down again, I just kept thinking that my pill better kick in because there was no way to get through the visit otherwise, and I was sure I wouldn’t come back another day to try again. The counter the lady was working behind had changed; it was made of glass and displayed decorative silver bowls full of purple pills, all shapes and sizes.

  It was only a few minutes before someone opened the door to a wide hallway and said, “Lysander?”.

  I stood quickly and went over to him. Wearing his periwinkle uniform, he smiled a glittery smile at me and ushered me into a wide hallway.

  “You look nervous,” he said. “You’re in good hands, don’t worry. Just follow me.”

  We went into a little room with all the things in it that doctors on TV have. I couldn’t stop bunching my t-shirt in my hands. I knew it made me look like a child or a crazy person, but I just kept doing it because there was nothing else for my hands to do. He told me to sit on the padded exam table, so I did, but it felt silly and uncomfortable. I let him take my blood pressure, temperature, and weight, but I didn’t know why it was relevant. Had I gone to the right clinic?

  “I’m Vince. I’m going to help you get set up. Have you always had a hard time reading?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “When did it start?”

  I tried to think. “Couple months ago.”

  “Can you describe what happens when you try to?”

  “Well, everything just moves around. It swims away.”

  His expression turned from friendly to worried. My stomach was queasy.

  “Do you have any other visual problems? Like, when you look at me can you see me well?”

  “Yeah, I can see actual people. The weird shit only happens with pictures. Photos. Sometimes there’s lights…” I considered telling him more, but didn’t want it to sound more serious than something some pills couldn’t fix. “It happens more when I’m stressed. It’s anxiety.”

  He didn’t comment, but nodded and wrote it down. Next, he used my ID and other cards to put some information on the forms, and asked for my address, phone number, social, and so on. I waited for long minutes while he scribbled the information. Standing and sticking his head out the door, he asked someone to make copies of the cards.

  He gave me a big smile. I could tell he was trying to be reassuring, but I was mostly reassured by the fact his teeth didn’t have any glitter, neither did the floors, and his uniform was gray. The benzos had kicked in quickly. It was a relief.

  “I’m going to push for the doctor to see you today. No promises, but I think you might be a special case.”

  “Thanks.” I really was grateful that he was being nice about it. I nodded a lot to try to get that across.

  He left me to wait. I didn’t move while he was gone. I’d imagined a lot of things about what the clinic would be like. It had taken me a couple of weeks before I’d convinced myself that I probably had to power through it for Clay’s sake. I needed to be functional for him. The thing about the country trip was the final push.

  When someone rapped lightly on the door and simultaneously walked in, I didn’t know how long I’d been there. She was a petite woman wearing a bright floral blouse and blue skirt. She introduced herself as Dr. Periwinkle and told me I looked shiny. It took me a moment to understand that her name was Dr. Fergus and she’d told me I looked stressed out.

  “I just need some medication,” I said.

  “Who prescribed them before you came to us?”

  My mouth opened and I made some awkward croaking noises before pulling out my tin of pills and showing them to her.

  “Where’s the bottle? It should tell you the name of your doctor on the bottle it comes in.”

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  “You bought them illegally?” She shook her head as if I’d been caught stealing cookies. “Do you know what they’re called?”

  “Benzos,” I said, feeling like a child.

  “Let’s get through these forms before we talk about treatments, alright?” She picked them up and asked me several minutes’ worth of questions about my levels of anxiety and depression and how they affect my life. She also asked me about my home life and personal history. I tried to downplay everything. When she was done with those, she sat at a tiny desk and clicked around on the screen while asking me so many things that I would forget all of them by the time I left. I knew I was acting normal with her so I was hoping I was just going to get some pills and be done. She checked my eyes and asked me about the lights I’d mentioned. I lied a little by saying it was just some slight chasers while I drove at night.

  By the time I walked through the dingy, earth-toned waiting room and out the double doors to the parking lot, I had a prescription in hand. It was for three days worth of pills. She’d asked me to stop buying and taking pills off the street, assuring me my insurance would make it all more affordable than a dealer. I might be given more after seeing a different doctor at the hospital the next morning. I wasn’t a fan of being sent to the hospital. They wanted to scan my brain. Knowing the tumor was there was enough for me. I didn’t want the details. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. When the nurse said I shouldn’t be driving, I told him my sister was picking me up and that she was in the parking lot waiting for me. They let me leave.

  The sun was high in the sky. When I got into my car, the dash clock told me it was past noon. I’d take the prescription to be filled, skip school entirely, and go to work. I would skip the appointment at the hospital, go on the trip, and think about my medical decisions when I got back.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lottie Age 17

  I LIED AND told people that my mom was a control freak who wouldn’t let me skate anymore. In reality, she was laid back about everything in life. I’d stopped skating because I’d created drama among the park regulars. I’d gotten pissed off and knocked a couple of assholes off their boards, resulting in one busted arm and a bleeding head. While everyone’s eyes were on the two boys, I’d snatched a cell phone from the bitch who had been goading me for weeks and dropped it in the mud by the drinking fountain, jamming it down into the muck with the end of my board, breaking the screen.

  I was unofficially banned after that. Nobody wanted me around. Mom tried to find me another place to skate but I was over it. The big dramatic scene had given me a burst of satisfaction and the park had turned almost boring after that. It was played out. I skated to get from place to place but I no longer tried to do tricks. The rumble of my wheels had been the center of my life for years. Abruptly, I’d started feeling childish when I skated. I was empty without it but I didn’t want to go back.

  Meeting Zander had been a huge turning point for me when it came to skating but also when it came to things that had put me in a deep rut. I doubted he knew he’d changed me. He wasn’t around to see what I was like before he came along. At first, I thought we might date, especially after he took me to the tree swing. He’d sent me literally flying into the air. He wouldn’t be the type to treat me as a fragile thing—his responsi
bility to protect. I hated when boys treated me that way. I’d always wanted a guy who would go on adventures with me. Zander had encouraged me to cling on to the worn rope and knowingly risk a fatal fall. He’d sat there smiling peacefully while I whooped and laughed at the ground far underneath me. I’d never met anyone who went looking for danger the way I did. I’d wanted him.