Rabbits for Food

by Binnie Kirshenbaum

  “Good one,” Bunny says, and she thinks of Elliot, how he always says, “That’s funny,” instead of laughing. It occurs to her that maybe it’s not an affect on Elliot’s part; maybe he can’t laugh, the way she can’t laugh and Josh can’t laugh, either. Then all attention turns to the door as it opens wide enough only to allow the Music Therapist to slip through. “No way am I singing-along,” Bunny says. But the Music Therapist does not go to the piano. She, too, sits on the floor, her back against the wall. She could easily be mistaken for one of the psychos, the way she wraps her arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, rocking like a cradle. The obese girl who, that morning, poured maple syrup on her cornflakes, stands up and says, “I demand to know what is going on.”

  A month or so before, although Bunny wasn’t here to witness it, she’d heard that they were herded into the Therapy rooms when Edward took off his clothes and went racing naked through the halls. It took nearly an hour before they got hold of him long enough to inject a sedative.

  Time passes. Some of them fall asleep. Andrea nibbles at her thumbnail, the one painted orange. The other thumbnail is a ghastly shade of lime green, and Bunny tells her, “You’re messing up your manicure.” Andrea takes her hand away from her mouth, assesses the damage done, and then resumes nibbling. Josh is talking to himself but not so loud that Bunny can hear him. The Music Therapist has recovered well enough to ask if they would like to have a sing-along, but no one says yes, and then Ella opens the door, and tells them, although not in these same exact words, that the coast is clear. Activities will go on as scheduled.

  Andrea stops at the door to ask Ella what happened, and Ella says, “There’s nothing to worry about, hon.”

  Holding up her hands to show Ella her jelly bean fingernails, Andrea says, “It’s my birthday.”

  Countdown

  They have two hours to kill before dinner. Two hours here can feel like three days. Chaz convinces Josh to go to Group Exercise where they’ll do jumping jacks, push-ups, and run in place. Howie says he’ll go with them. Josh says “Okay” at the precise moment that Chaz says “No.” Then Chaz shrugs and says, “Yeah. Whatever,” and Howie trots along beside them like he is a dachshund or a corgi, some kind of dog with short legs. Jeanette goes looking for Nina, and Teacher has an appointment with his psychiatrist, an elderly woman whom he speaks of with high regard. Bunny can’t remember her name, but wonders if they’ll let her swap Dr. Fitzgerald for the elderly woman.

  Andrea tells Bunny that before dinner, she’s going to take a shower. “Wash my hair. Put on real clothes.” She is wearing a pair of jeans and a paper pajama top. “I even have shoes here. A cute pair of flats that I can wear.”

  “For your birthday,” Bunny notes, and Andrea drifts into talk about birthday parties she had as a child. “Every year, I got a new puffy dress. I didn’t have brothers or sisters, so my mother would go hog wild with balloons, streamers, party hats, and an ice cream cake from Carvel. I was a happy kid,” she says. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You liked the paper hats?” Bunny asks, and Andrea says, “Don’t all kids like paper hats?”

  Birds Without Feathers

  One by one, around the table, they all get the fish eye. Andrea suspects something is up. “What?” Josh asks. “Are you waiting for us to sing Happy Birthday to you?”

  “Yeah, right,” Andrea snorts. “That’s just what I want.” Then, as if that might actually happen, she looks hard at Howie and warns him, “Don’t you dare.” Howie is the only one of them capable of singing Happy Birthday.

  When they finish eating, Josh announces that he has a friend coming and goes to wait for him by the door. Chaz goes to the refrigerator to get the Pepperidge Farm cake. Bunny excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and Teacher says that he has to make a phone call. “But stay here, okay?” he tells Andrea. “Don’t go anywhere,” and Andrea asks, “Where would I go?”

  Howie, seated directly across from her, is grinning like an imbecile.

  “Do me a favor,” Andrea says. “Lose the smile.”

  “But it’s your birthday.”

  “Exactly.”

  From the four corners of the dining room, Bunny, Josh, Chaz and Teacher converge around the table. With varying degrees of enthusiasm and volume, they all wish Andrea happy birthday, and Andrea says, “I don’t believe this.”

  Josh says that denial, refusing to believe, is the first stage of grief.

  “But she’s not grieving.” Howie is confused. “She’s happy.”

  “Howie,” Josh says, “do you know where you are?”

  As if he were dealing cards, Josh distributes the paper plates, and Jeanette asks, “Has anyone seen Nina?” Chaz slices the Pepperidge Farm with a plastic knife, taking care not to get crumbs on the gifts wrapped in paper without tape or the origami hats, which are folded in the same way as hats made from newspaper, except these hats are made from wrapping paper, yellow with red polka dots. The bold colors are almost too much amid the drab shades of beige.

  Howie tells Andrea that Evan made the paper hats, and Bunny wants to know, “Who’s Evan?”

  Teacher raises his hand.

  Andrea is about to open her birthday card when Nina arrives. Instead, without taking her eyes off Nina, Andrea puts the card down on the table. Except for the many bits of dried blood on her head that glisten beneath the thick coat of an antibacterial ointment, Nina is bald.

  “Oh, baby,” Jeanette wails. “What have you done?”

  As if Jeanette’s question were not rhetorical, as if it weren’t all too obvious what she’s done, Nina says, “I yanked out my hair.” And as if yanking out her hair were an excellent reason to be inordinately proud, she adds, “All of it. Every last strand.”

  “But why?” Jeanette asks. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  Why? Because the impulses of mania fly like bats at night, that’s why.

  Nina takes no notice of the pizza or the cake, but she zeros in on the paper hats. “Party hats! I love party hats.” Nina takes a paper hat for herself. The antibacterial ointment that coats her head oozes through the yellow and red paper, and Bunny flees the table.

  Who to Blame?

  It takes two cups of water and a fat wad of tissues before Bunny can tell Ella that she is sorry. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry about what, hon?” Ella asks, which is all it takes for Bunny to fall apart again. Ella fills the Dixie cup for the third time, and she waits for Bunny to pull herself together well enough to articulate the reason for her apology. If there is a reason, which isn’t a given. Ella is all too familiar with the Depressives apologizing for what boils down to being alive.

  Between sips of water and gasps for air, Bunny explains how she’d seen Nina hiding in the big armchair, how she watched Nina twirl her hair around her finger, how she did nothing but walk away. “I thought she wanted to be alone,” Bunny says. “It’s my fault.”

  “Hon, you mustn’t think like that. You’re not the least bit responsible.”

  “Yes, I am, because I just lied to you. I didn’t care if she wanted to be alone or not. I wanted to be alone.”

  “Come on, hon. Do you really believe that if you’d sat with her she wouldn’t have done what she did?”

  Bunny knows that had she not left Nina alone this morning, Nina would not have yanked out every hair on her head. If Bunny had gone and sat with her, Nina would’ve had to wait until after lunch to yank out every hair on her head. But what you know and what you believe don’t always squarely align, and Bunny believes it is her fault; a belief revealed in a sound Bunny emits; not loud, but unholy, and with her back to the wall, she slides to the floor where she sits like a rag doll. “Please,” she pleads. “I want to go home. Please. I don’t want to be here.” She pounds her fist on her thigh. “Please.”

  Ella kneels down and
takes hold of Bunny’s hand. “Come on, hon,” and in slow motion, she rises, easing Bunny up alongside her. Then, Ella puts the box of tissues in front of Bunny. Sick to death of being told to blow her nose, Bunny wipes her nose on the sleeve of her sweater, while Ella taps a pill from a vial into the cup of her hand. “Here you go, hon,” she says. “This will help you sleep. You need to sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” Bunny tells her.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You don’t know what I want.”

  “Tell me, then.” Ella is kind, her voice caring. “What do you want?”

  Bunny’s eyes narrow in anger. “What I want,” she snaps, “I want you to erase Dog Therapy from that fucking Activities Board. There is no fucking dog.”

  The Gift of a Sandwich

  Bunny’s head is too heavy and it hurts.

  “Trazodone,” Andrea says. “That Trazodone knocked the crap out of you. That shit is no good. I keep telling them. Trazodone is no good.”

  “I don’t know,” Teacher disagrees. “I do okay with Trazodone. But forget Seroquel. Seroquel turns me into a zombie.”

  “If Trazodone works better for you than Seroquel, then you are the exception. But for everyone else, Trazodone is the worst. I keep telling them. No matter what, I am a nurse. They shouldn’t blow off what I tell them, but do they listen?”

  “No,” Josh says. “They don’t listen. No one listens,” and Bunny lets her head drop to rest on the tabletop. Drifting from consciousness, she hears Andrea say, “They hand that shit out like gumdrops, but they give me grief over codeine. Codeine. Big fucking deal.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Chaz asks.

  “Big fucking deal to that, too. Who hasn’t tried suicide?”

  “I tried,” Howie says. “I almost did it. I would’ve done it.”

  “We know. Pam saved your life,” Andrea says. “You can shut the fuck up now.”

  No matter that Bunny cannot stay awake. To go to her room to sleep is Not Allowed. Like a boxer in the ring having taken one punch too many to the head, she wobbles and weaves her way to the living room, where she drops into the big armchair. Too tired to notice the strands of Nina’s hair that cling to the nubby upholstery, Bunny falls into a deep and troubled sleep. She dreams of harsh fragments of light stabbing the soft darkness, and that her brain is a steel ball rolling loose in her skull; the visual depictions of a violent headache.

  Who knows for how long she slept, but she wakes to find Josh sitting in the chair across from her. He is reading The Atlantic from fourteen months ago. “You missed lunch,” he says.

  Bunny sits upright and wants to know, “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I saved you a sandwich. Peanut butter.” He holds out the gift of a sandwich for Bunny to take, and he apologizes that the bread is going stale.

  She puts the sandwich on the seat of the chair next to hers. “You’re a good person,” she tells Josh. “You don’t deserve this.”

  “None of us deserve this,” Josh says, but Bunny disagrees. “I do. I don’t know what I did, but I must’ve done something terrible. People don’t like me.”

  “I like you,” Josh says, not in a coy or flirtatious way, just as a simple matter of fact, which fills her with gratitude; gratitude which escapes without warning, without so much as a catch in her voice, in a rush of tears spilling over, as if Bunny were a fountain and the flow were perpetual. He aches to touch her, to comfort her, as he aches, as all of them ache, to be comforted, but even if it were Allowed, he’d be afraid. He imagines that to hug her would be like what happens when a man dying of starvation eats, when he eats too much and his stomach explodes. Still, to die from too much food is far nicer than to die from no food, not so much as a bite of a plum. He watches Bunny cry. He wishes she would eat the peanut butter sandwich.

  It’s often genetic, this disposition of melancholy. In the winter months, Josh would come home from basketball practice after school to find his mother sitting in the living room, in the dark. He’d turn on a lamp. One lamp in a dark room casts the saddest glow, and Josh would kiss his mother on the cheek. Always, she was listless. Always, she said, “You’re a good boy.” Always, he made supper. Supper, she called it. Not dinner. Supper. Canned soup with crackers and cheese; spaghetti; scrambled eggs, and together they ate the supper that he prepared. After supper, he would go to his room and cry. The dog he had as a boy used to lick his face dry. If there were a dog here, the dog would lick Bunny’s face dry, too. Then, the dog would eat the peanut butter sandwich that is sitting on the chair.

  But, there is no dog.

  “Andrea is right about the Trazodone,” Josh says. “You should tell Ella not to give you Trazodone again.”

  Bunny nods, and then she asks, “Does it scare you?”

  Josh isn’t sure what Bunny means by “it,” which “it” scares him, but whichever it is, it doesn’t make much difference. “Yes,” he says.

  He picks up the peanut butter sandwich and holds it out to Bunny. “You have to eat something.”

  Bunny accepts the sandwich, but instead of taking a bite, she tears off a piece of crust, which she studies like she suspects there is something off with it. Mold or poison. When she is more or less satisfied that it is safe to eat, she pushes the crust of bread into her mouth, as if her mouth were already full.

  Things Worth Knowing

  They are late to dinner, but they are in no hurry to get there. Bunny is glad that she can’t see Josh’s face because they are walking side by side, and because of how tall he is. She doesn’t want to see his face when she says, “Before, when I asked if you were scared, I was talking about ECT. Are you scared something might go wrong?”

  Josh admits that initially he was scared. “For the first few rounds,” he says. “But not anymore. Why?” he asks. “Are you thinking about it?”

  “No,” Bunny tells him. “No. I’m trying to think about nothing.”

  When they get to their table, Andrea stands up to show off her new yellow T-shirt. Running her hands down the front of it, as if stroking the embossed cat, she says, “You guys are too much.”

  Teacher says, “Yeah, it was a big night.”

  The quiet that follows is the unspoken “elephant in the room,” although to associate Nina with an elephant, regardless of context, is always going to be wildly inaccurate.

  “The worst part was how happy she was,” Chaz notes, and then after a pause, he says, “Or maybe that was the best part.” Nina was elated by her self-desecration. While it wasn’t quite doing away with herself, it was doing away with a part of herself. With each success comes confidence.

  Jeanette pushes away her plate. “I can’t eat,” she says. “They took her. My baby.” Jeanette wipes her nose with a napkin. “My Nina. They took her to a hospital in Boston. To some specialist.”

  “McLean’s,” Josh says, and then, as if he thinks an explanation is warranted, he adds, “I went to law school near there.”

  Josh is a lawyer? How odd. Not odd that he is a lawyer, but odd that, until this minute, Bunny knew no such thing about him. At a party, you could clock it: from the moment of introduction to the moment of having heard all of it—that he is a lawyer, what kind of law he practices, where he went to law school, and if he graduated in the top of his class—would come in at under forty seconds. Yet, how is it that, after how many weeks of being something like bunkmates going through loony-tunes boot camp together, she knows next to nothing of the practical matters of Josh’s life beyond what happens here? How did it never occur to her that he has a life beyond here, just as he knows next to nothing of her life beyond the dark despair of it? Why don’t they engage in polite cocktail party conversation? Perhaps uncover shared interests or friends in common? Could it be because, what difference could any of it make? Could it be that this, only this, that they are here, is all anyo
ne needs to know about any of them?

  Prompt: The Fruits of Labor (300 words or less)

  It was summer, night, and there was a ripe cantaloupe in the refrigerator. I was sprawled on the couch, probably watching television because, as if there were lead and not blood in my veins, I was too tired to hold open a book. Too tired for no reason other than seasonal sloth. The couch, although shabby, was not yet in shreds because the cat we had then, Angela, our little angel, used her scratching post unlike Jeffery, the cat we have now—no genius, he—who uses the couch to sharpen his claws, which is why the couch is in tatters. Why Jeffrey thinks it necessary to sharpen his claws is beyond me. It’s not as if he uses them for anything, although now that I think of it, Angela’s claws served her no purpose either.

  Because I couldn’t rally so much as to get myself up from the couch, I asked Albie if he would cut the cantaloupe, would he bring me a slice. “On a plate,” I had to say. He said, “Sure,” and to my surprise, just like that, he got up from the chair and went to the kitchen. My surprise stemmed from the fact that he did not say, “Sure. Give me a minute.” Because it is something like a near-death experience for Albie to put aside whatever is engaging him, as if so much as a moment’s interruption would be the point of no return, you could be pretty sure that “a minute” would be well longer than sixty seconds. Moreover, Albie is a master procrastinator. For example, when we moved into our first apartment together, the bedroom was in dire need of a fresh coat of paint, but Albie told me not to bother hiring someone. “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “When?” I asked, and Albie said, “Soon.”

  Need I mention that when we moved out of that apartment, nearly three years later, the bedroom had yet to be painted? But most emblematic of Albie’s gift for putting off what can be done now until forever and his impenetrable focus on the task at hand was when I had the flu, what might’ve been, according to me, the most extreme case of the flu in recorded flu history. My head clanged, my bones chattered like teeth, and my nasal cavity, now hermetically sealed, allowed for not so much as a molecule of air in or out. Dragging myself from my sickbed, where I’d been listening to the cold November rain drumming at the window, I found Albie at the kitchen table preparing transparencies for a lecture on the evolutionary adaptations of marine mammals that regularly inhabit the Arctic Ocean, about which he’d have been more than happy to answer any questions, but I had, at that moment, only one question: Would he go to the store to get me some NyQuil.