by Ned Vizzini
I give her the rap. There’s much more to add to it now, about being on Six North. About Noelle and the eating and the not throwing up and the sleeping, where I’m one for two.
“What’s it like compared to Friday, Craig?”
“Better. Much, much better. But the question is, am I really better, or am I just lulled into a false sense of security by this fake environment? I mean, it’s not normal here.”
“Nowhere is normal, Craig.”
“I guess not. What’s been the news since I’ve been in here?”
“Someone tried to gas the Four Seasons in Manhattan.”
“Jeez!”
“I know.” Dr. Minerva smirks. Then she leans in. “Craig, there’s one thing you didn’t mention that your recreation director did. She said you’ve been doing art while you’ve been here.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s nothing, really. Just yesterday.”
“What is it like?”
“Well, remember how I told you last time that I liked to draw maps when I was a little kid? It sort of came from that.”
“How so?”
“When they gave me a pencil and paper in arts and crafts, I remembered—well, I didn’t remember, I was actually prompted by Noelle—”
“That’s the girl you met?”
“Right.”
“From the way you describe her I can see a real friendship developing.”
“Oh, forget a friendship. We are totally going to be going out when I leave, I think.”
“You think you’re ready for that, Craig?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right.” She takes a note. “So how did Noelle help you?”
“She suggested that I draw something from my childhood, and that made me remember the maps.”
“I see.”
“And I started drawing one, but then Ebony came over—”
“You’re on a first-name basis with all these people.”
“Of course.”
“Have you ever considered yourself good at mak-ing friends, Craig?”
“No.”
“But you can make friends here.”
“Right. Well, here is different.”
“How is it different?”
“It’s, I dunno . . . there’s no pressure.”
“No pressure to make friends?”
“No, no pressure to work hard.”
“As there is in the outside world.”
“Right.”
“Tremendous pressure out there. Your Tentacles.”
“Yeah.”
“Are there Tentacles in here, Craig?”
I stop and think. The way they run things on Six North has become clear to me: it’s all about keeping people occupied and passing the time. You wake up and you’ve immediately got a blood pressure gauge around your arm and somebody taking your pulse. Then it’s breakfast. Then you get your meds and then there’s a smoking break, and then maybe you have fifteen minutes to yourself before there’s some kind of activity. That leads to lunch which leads to more meds and more smoking and more activities, and then all of a sudden the day is over; it’s time for dinner, and everyone’s trading salt and desserts, and then it’s the 10 P.M. cigarette break and bedtime.
“No, there aren’t any Tentacles in here,” I say. “The opposite of a Tentacle is a simple task, something that’s placed before you and that you do without question. That’s what they have in here.”
“Right. Your only Tentacles in here are your phone calls, which are what got you so down just now.”
“Correct.”
Dr. Minerva takes notes. “Now, here’s an important question, Craig. Are there any Anchors in here?”
“Huh.”
“Anything you can hold on to.”
I think about it. If an Anchor is a constant, there are lots of those. There’s the constant lite FM, which occasionally borders on dangerously funky, coming out of the nurses’station whether Smitty or Howard is behind it. There’s the constant schedule: the food coming and going, the meds being dished out, the announcements of Armelio. There’s the constant of Armelio himself, always ready to play cards. And Jimmy is always around going, “It’ll come to ya!”
“The people are Anchors,” I say.
“People don’t make good Anchors, though, Craig. They change. The people here are going to change. The patients are going to leave. You can’t rely on them.”
“When will they leave?”
“I can’t know that.”
“What about the staff?”
“They change too, just on a different time scale. People always come and go.”
“Noelle. She’s beautiful and smart and I really like her. She could be an Anchor.”
“You don’t want any of your Anchors being members of the opposite sex you’re attracted to,” Dr. Minerva says. “Relationships change even more than people. It’s like two people changing. It’s exponentially more volatile. Especially two teenagers.”
“But Romeo and Juliet were teenagers,” I point out.
“And what happened to Romeo and Juliet?”
“Oh,” I mumble. “Right.”
“And have we gone beyond that, Craig? Have we gone beyond thinking those thoughts?”
“Yes,” I nod.
“Because if you have those thoughts again you know you have to come back here.”
“I know. I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just… It would suck to kill myself. I’d hurt a lot of people and … it would suck.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Minerva leans across the table. “It would suck. And not just for other people. For you.”
“It’s not noble or anything,” I say. “Like this guy Muqtada who’s my roommate, he’s practically dead. He doesn’t do anything. He just lies in bed all day.”
“Right.”
“And I don’t want to ever be like him. I don’t want to live that way. And if I were dead, I’d basically be living that way.”
“Excellent, Craig.”
She stops. Like I say, the good shrinks know when to throw in a dramatic pause.
I tap my feet. The fluorescent lights hum.
“I want to pick back up on your Anchors,” Dr. Minerva says. “Can you think of anything else you’ve found in here that could occupy your time when you leave?”
I think. I know there’s something. It’s at the tip of my brain-tongue. But it won’t come.
“No.”
“Okay, not a problem. You’ve made a lot of progress today. There’s only one more thing we have to do: call your principal.”
“No!” I tell her, but she’s already at it, pulling out her cell phone, which is apparently allowed up here. “Yes, I’d like the number for Executive Pre-Professional High School in Manhattan.”
“You can’t you can’t you can’t” I say, leaning across the table, grabbing at the phone. Luckily the blinds are drawn so no one can see in here; if they did they’d probably have me sedated. She gets up and walks to the door, points outside. Do I want security in here? I sit back down.
“Yes,” she says. “I need to speak with the principal. I’m returning a call of his to one of your students regarding a health and legal matter. I’m the mother.”
A pause.
“Great.” She cups the phone. “I’m being connected.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” I say.
“I can’t believe you’d be worried about me doing this . . . yes, hello? Is this Mr. . . .” she looks at me.
“Janowitz,” I mouth.
“Janowitz?”
I hear an affirmative mumph through the line.
“I’m Dr. Minerva, calling for your student Craig Gilner. You called him before at Argenon Hospital psychiatric facility in Brooklyn. I’m Craig’s licensed therapist and I’m right here with him; would you like to speak with him?”
She nods. “Here you go, Craig.”
I take the cell phone—it’s smaller than mine, more buzzy. “Um, hello?�
��
“Craig, why’d you hang up on me?” His booming voice is light and gentle, almost laughing.
“Ah … I thought I was in trouble. I thought I was being expelled. You called me, you know, in the hospital.”
“Craig, I called you because I got a message from one of our teachers. I just wanted to tell you that you have the school’s full support in everything you’re going through and that we’re more than willing to have your semester repeated, or given over the summer, or for work to be provided for you where you are now, if you should miss enough days to warrant that.”
“Oh.”
“We don’t pass judgment on our students for being in the hospital, my goodness, Craig.”
“No? But it’s, like, a psychiatric—”
“I know what kind of hospital it is. You think we don’t have other kids in these situations? It’s a very common problem among young people.”
“Oh. Uh, thanks.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’m doing better.”
“Do you know when you’ll be leaving?”
I don’t want to tell him Thursday and then have it be Friday. Or next Thursday. Or next year.
“Soon,” I say.
“Okay. You just hang in there, and whenever you come back, we’ll be waiting for you at Executive Pre-Professional.”
“Thanks, Mr. Janowitz.” And I picture it in my mind: me going back to school. My little group of friends—only they’re not even my friends anymore—buffered by this new collection of girls who like me because I’m depressed and teachers who are sympathizing and the suddenly nice principal. It’s something I want to get excited about. But I can’t.
“See, was that so bad?” Dr. Minerva asks. And I have to admit that it wasn’t. But it was kind of like getting told that the prison is happy that you’ve been granted a temporary reprieve but we’ll be right here with open arms to take you in when you come back.
“The plan right now is to discharge you Thursday, Craig, and I’ll be here to talk to you on Wednesday, all right?” Dr. Minerva asks. I shake her hand and thank her. I tell her what I tell her when I feel really good about talking to her, which is that she knows how to do her job. Then I go back to my room and draw some brain maps. I’m excited for tonight, for Armelio’s big card tournament.
thirty-five
“O’kay!” says Armelio. “Everybody here?”
We’re back in the activities lounge. Johnny, Humble, Ebony, and the Professor are here. Everyone shaved today—it turns out that the shaving rule is only enforced on weekdays—and they look ten times better. Even Rolling Pin Robert, pacing the halls outside, looks serviceable. I’ll have to remember that: shaving can make even a psych patient look good.
“Huh.” Johnny exhales. “Bobby’s still at his interview.”
“Yeah,” Ebony says. “Craig lent him a shirt. You’re so nice, Craig.”
“Thanks.”
“When are you going to do more of your art?”
“Maybe tonight, after cards.”
“That’s right, buddy, cards is what we need to focus on,” Armelio announces. He stands at the head of the table, which is covered with paint drops, crayon marks, and ink smears over uneven wood. In the middle is a plastic container with the buttons, separated into four even partitions. It looks like at some point the buttons were ordered by size or color, but now they’re all mixed up—every conceivable hue, shape, and ornamentation. They look like jewels.
“I don’t want any of my buttons missing at the end!” Joanie says from the back. She’s at the other table, reading a romance novel and supervising.
“That’s right, we’re still looking for the Blue Button Bandit,” Humble says. “Anybody who can suddenly keep their pants up, we’re going to be very suspicious. Watch out for Solomon, that means. And Ebony.”
“I told you once, stupid, to stop talking about my pants.”
“Okay, everybody ready?” Armelio asks. “Take your buttons!”
Our hands dive into the middle of the table, grabbing fistfuls. We pour the buttons in front of us and use our fingertips to spread them into a one-button-thick layer. Armelio gets to judge whether we have an equal amount.
“Humble, put back six buttons. Ebony, put back ten. Johnny, what’s going on, buddy? You have like two hundred buttons too many!”
“I got a button bonus,” Johnny says, and just then Bobby comes into the activity room.
He moves with his normal loping gait, leaning back with my shirt on. He stops at the end of our table, makes sure he has our attention, raises his right hand, shakes it in the air like he’s doing a magic trick, and then slams both his fists down on the table so his arms make a ‘V’shape, as if he were Chairman of the Board. He grins:
“I got it.”
Silence holds the room.
Joanie starts the clapping from the back, slowly, but with reverence and purpose. Then Armelio joins in and the tempo starts to spiral.
“All right!”
“Congratulations!”
“Hooray for Brooklyn scumbags!”
“Bob-by! Bob-by!”
In a small room, eight people clapping can be a lot. The posters seem to shake with the applause. As it gets louder there’s howling and hooting and cheering. Tommy gets up and gives Bobby a bear hug, the kind that you can see between two men who’ve known one another for twenty years, who’ve been Fiend One and Fiend Two, for whom one’s victory counts just as much for the other.
“Bobby, buddy, you the man!” Armelio walks over to the hugging pair and smacks Bobby’s back, nearly toppling Bobby and Johnny.
“Wait a minute,” Bobby says. He extracts himself from the hug and holds up his right hand. “Before we get too crazy, ‘cause I see the buttons are out, I gotta thank this young man over here.” He walks toward me. “This kid literally gave me the shirt off his back—this blue one right here—and he didn’t know me from Adam, and there ain’t no question, without him, I wouldn’t have gotten this home. This new home.”
I stand up and Bobby hugs me, his big bony hands wrapping around my back, and I feel the smooth old skin of his cheek and the well-knit fabric of my shirt doing a better job on him than it ever did on me. I think about how much this means to this guy, about how much more important it is than going to any high school or getting with any girl or being friends with anybody. This guy just got a place to live. Me? I have one. I’ll always have one. I don’t have any reason to worry about it. My stupid fantasies about ending up homeless are just that— the fact is that my parents will take me in anytime, anywhere. But some people have to get lucky just to live. And I never knew I could make anybody lucky.
If Bobby can get a place to live, I think, then I can get a life worth living.
“Thank you, kid,” Bobby says.
“It’s nothing,” I mumble. “Thanks for the tour.”
“All right, guys, we gonna play cards or what?” Armelio asks, but Bobby stops him.
“One more thing: I’m really sorry, Craig, but I accidentally fell in something on my way back from the interview.” He turns around. There’s a . . . wait a minute . . .
There’s a giant piece of dog shit ground into the back of my shirt, right above his belt.
“Ah …” I can’t believe I didn’t smell it. Did I touch it when I hugged him? “Ah, Bobby . . . it’s okay . . . my mom can wash it out—”
“It ain’t real!” Bobby reaches back and pulls it off, throws it at me. It bounces off my shirt (a tie-dye T-shirt that everyone on Six North likes) and lands on the table in the buttons.
“It’s plastic! I’ve had it since the eighties! Ha! I love it!”
Armelio cracks up. “Holy crap! Look at that! It looks like something my mom would leave in my bedroom!”
Everyone stops, turns.
“President Armelio, we did not need to know that,” says Humble.
“Your mother would defecate in your bedroom?” the Professor asks.
“Who said th
at?” Armelio asks. “I was talking about plastic—what’sthematter with you?”
“Everybody just cool it a little,” says Joanie, standing up with her book at her side. “Let’s have fun, but keep calm.”
“All right, who gets the doodie button?” Humble holds up the poop. “I think it counts for two.”
Bobby sits down and we ante up. The game is poker, seven-card stud. I’m no good at it. The hands start and people begin betting crazy, throwing in three or four buttons right at the beginning. I can’t match them. I have a limited number. And I don’t seem to be getting any good hands. So I fold. I fold three times in a row. The third time, Johnny says, “You might as well bet. It’s just buttons.”
“Yeah,” Humble says. “Let me show you a secret.” He reaches into the button container and takes out a handful. “See?”
“I see,” Armelio says, looking over his cards. “Don’t think that’s not cheating, Humble. Any more and you’re out.”
I laugh and bet six buttons.
“What am I out of, exactly?” Humble asks Armelio. “The button jackpot?”
“Be nice,” the Professor says.
“Oh, listen to her,” Humble jerks his thumb. “Trying to be the mediator.” He leans in to me. “Don’t let her grandma look fool you. She’s a real hustler.”
“Excuse me?” The Professor puts down her cards. “What do you mean, ‘grandma?’”
“Nothing, you just have that little old granny look about you, to lull people into your trap of playing good cards!” Humble gestures at himself disbelievingly.
“You’re saying I’m old.”
“I’m not! I’m saying you’re a grandma!”
“Humble, apologize,” Joanie says from the back.
“Why? Grandmas are wonderful things.”
“For your information I’ll have you know,” the Professor says, “that unlike certain people around here I act my age.”
“Oh, so now I’m a liar?” Humble asks, standing up.
“We all know that’s what you are,” says the Professor.
“Peo-ple .. .” Joanie warns.
“If I’m a liar, you know what you are?”
“What? You better not call me old because I’ll take this cane and whack you in the head right in front of everybody.”
“You ain’t taking nothing of mine!” Ebony holds her cane close. Quietly, she has far and away the most buttons.
