The Edge of Every Day

by Marin Sardy

  Tom was trapped in what activists in mental health circles often spoke of as the “revolving door” of care that people living with schizophrenia are commonly subjected to in this country—round after round of crisis care with little or no follow-up. This leads to patients deteriorating again, maybe getting picked up by police again, being delivered back to jail or the hospital, only to be released into circumstances in which they deteriorate again. There are many ways it can go, but the results are the same.

  As one more winter descended with Tom outdoors, I asked Dad if he would consider letting Tom live with him once more. He sighed and said, as he often had, that he felt strongly that it was wrong to enable him to avoid treatment. He wanted to keep pushing Tom to accept the housing that was available. But he also said that at some point, he had realized he needed to start taking care of himself as well as Tom. The last several years had been so taxing, endlessly and unremittingly, that he wasn’t sure he had it in him to care for Tom at home again, even if he had thought it was a good idea.

  So we kept searching for new approaches. Some seemed promising. I had begun seeing articles about larger cities that were experimenting with Housing First programs, which focused on housing the most vulnerable, difficult-to-help, chronically homeless people by giving them apartments with no strings attached. Traditional approaches required first completing other steps like engaging in treatment for mental illness or addiction. This new approach, which was proving to be surprisingly successful, would not have required Tom to acknowledge his schizophrenia or navigate a complicated system or even take medication in order to receive care and a permanent residence, but would have provided him with a home first, and then consistent support and encouragement in dealing with his illness—ideally as much as he needed. In Anchorage, a Housing First program had recently been launched for people with addiction problems, but implementation for those with mental illness was still years away.

  * * *

  —

  I returned home again in the summer of 2012, hoping I could help turn things around. At the very least, I could gather information about how Tom was getting by. Maybe what I found could give us a sense of how to go forward from there.

  Will came with me, his first trip to Alaska, and I wanted to take him to Girdwood and other favorite places, but I warned him that I wouldn’t leave town until I found Tom, and maybe not at all, depending on how things went with him. We spent the first day driving around, searching—up and down Northern Lights, up and down Fourth and Fifth Avenues. On the second day we went for a long walk on the Coastal Trail, partly so I could show it to Will but mostly to look for Tom. Dad suggested checking the two soup kitchens and the Brother Francis Shelter, where Tom stayed regularly when he wanted to sleep indoors. The first place we tried was closed, but the employees who were cleaning up recognized my description of Tom and said he was there often. Then we went a few blocks over to the shelter, where I asked about Tom at the front desk. “A white gentleman?” the woman asked. “Red beard?” Yes, yes. “Keeps to himself?” Yes.

  She knew Tom but wasn’t allowed to say if he was staying there, so she said I could leave a note on the bulletin board in the front vestibule. She also suggested that in the morning I try Bean’s Cafe, the soup kitchen next door. I tore a scrap of paper from my notebook and wrote down my phone number along with a few words to Tom. As I tacked it to the board, I glanced at the other messages that had been left. I had never thought about other people going looking for their homeless relatives—others like me, the ones with homes who knew and loved someone without. I felt silly for having never thought of that, and sillier still to be leaving my message. I was sure Tom wouldn’t call me. And though I told myself that at least he’d know I was looking, I realized he probably wouldn’t notice my note at all.

  I had somehow never felt so silly in my whole life. My helplessness, after so many years, had developed an edge that I kept cutting myself on. Our intractable failure sprang back on me, turning my love for my brother into a farce, making my every effort on his behalf appear stupid and moot. To be asking around for him like that—the whole exercise of it was absurd, incomprehensible even as it happened. Even as I walked next door to the café, as I asked the servers if they knew him, as a man told me yes, Tom had been eating breakfast there lately. Even as, the next morning, I walked again into the soup kitchen and found him standing at a bookshelf right by the entrance, scanning a paperback.

  “Tom,” I said, the word like a rock in my mouth.

  “Oh hey, Marin,” he replied, then held up a finger. “Hang on a sec. I need to finish reading this.” He flipped quickly through the remaining hundred or so pages of the book, not reading so much as glancing at each page rapidly in succession, on toward the end. Will and I stood to the side, waiting awkwardly until he finished. It was clear he was not reading, could not possibly be reading, but his face looked like that of a man who was reading—focused, thoughtful, almost stern with concentration. Will looked baffled. I just watched, wondering what Tom was perceiving.

  When he finally set the book down and looked at us, I introduced Will and announced that he was my fiancé. Tom gave him a polite hello, shook his hand, and then turned back to me and ignored Will from that point on. Behind us stretched a long steel countertop lined with people scooping trays of hot foods. As we got in line, I told Tom I had lived in New York for a while and was now a writer. Momentarily intrigued, he began talking about a book he had written in his head. I nodded, feeling almost electric to be standing beside him again, filled with a sense that maybe I was about to fall down.

  Tom seemed much the same as before—clean and healthy enough but very skinny. His hair was quite long and tangled awkwardly over his forehead, and his clothes were oddly mismatched—a windbreaker under a rain shell under a sheepskin coat. He was still standoffish and his face was largely expressionless, but his eyes darted to meet mine for brief moments, revealing again the unshielded quality I had seen before. He asked no questions, didn’t wonder what I was doing in Anchorage or how long I would stay. But he kept talking to me. And as he spoke he leaned in, getting close so I could hear him over the din, gesturing with one hand as we sat at a long cafeteria table in the big square room.

  The conversation went on for nearly an hour, his usual preoccupations, as Will looked quietly around and I absorbed what I could. I asked all the questions—where do you sleep, what do you eat, do you need a hat, gloves, pants. But I got only obvious answers or no answers. I told him the family’s news: Adrienne was pregnant and would have a baby in a month or so, which surprised and cheered him. But I was a bit dazed just to be with him, and all I could think to say was what I had already decided to say. Tom, come by Dad’s house. Tom, here is some cash. Tom, I love you. Tom, I’ve missed you. Tom.

  Then, without preamble, he said, “The world looks at me, and sees a bum.” He shot me a glance, gauging my reaction. I stared, a little amazed that he knew what the world thought of him—wishing suddenly that he didn’t have to know it—and more amazed that he would acknowledge it to me. He continued, “But I know that I am not a bum. I am a saint. I am close to God.” With that, he closed his eyes and softly lifted his chin, as if retreating into a space where none of this mattered.

  Eventually he began to seem uncomfortable—more distracted, more nervous. I wondered if his voices had started up, or maybe had been there all along and now had worsened. He paused periodically and waited as if listening to something. “This is enough now,” he said.

  “Can I come back tomorrow?” I asked. He thought a moment.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking at me sternly. He stood, picking up his empty food tray. I watched his face, the form of it. The square jaw, the wide bone of his nose, the brow ridge pulling inward in thought and maybe fear. How much more often had I expected to see that face in my life? How many more glances had I expected from those eyes, comments from that mouth? I kept recalli
ng the time he admonished me, “Marin, stop being so hard on yourself.” I couldn’t even remember why he had said it or what we were doing. Just the way it came out, equally exasperated and encouraging. How much more of that, exactly—whatever that was? And how badly did I want him to tell me, right then, to stop being so hard on myself?

  “We don’t have to talk long if you don’t want to,” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  The next day I showed up alone, soon regretting it, feeling Will’s absence acutely. I still could not believe that this was our life—stepping across the parking lot to the cafeteria, past the clusters of men who idly watched me as I searched for the one among all of them who was mine. I had never felt so exposed, so raw. It all struck hard and mowed me down.

  I walked in and soon found Tom. But something had solidified overnight. He didn’t want to talk to me. Too quickly he was turning away, and I was asking why, trying to stall. He paused and said, “I can’t forgive you.”

  “For what?” I asked, sinking inside. Again, he focused inward and then gave me a suspicious look.

  “For your crimes.” His face was a wall.

  I didn’t ask what crimes, just said a few more things, trying to soften the moment, hoping to wriggle past the rejection, though I could see in his eyes that there would be no appeasing him. Abruptly, he turned away and got in line for food. I stood in my spot, unable to move, staring at the back of his head for what seemed like a long time. Finally I noticed people looking at me and I turned to go. That was the last time I ever saw him.

  There Is the Urge to Find Meaning

  There was the dream about the raven. I climbed alone into a box canyon to find it there, sitting on a boulder among several small, mossy pools. Behind it, stones piled up to create a wall blocking off the back of the canyon. Geometric sandstone cliffs rose above us, vertical and marked with innumerable cracks and crevices. We were in our own room, still and quiet and separate.

  The bird sat askew, one wing lopsided, falling forward slightly and hanging low. Broken. It looked at me and did not move.

  I worked my way toward it and still it didn’t move, only cawed at intervals. So I stepped through a stream to the far side of the boulder and climbed up. It hopped lightly as I sat down beside it, but it stayed. We looked at each other, two feet apart. I was so close I could see the bright yellow skin that rimmed its eyes.

  There was the fact that it was not a dream. Only seemed like one. Seemed far removed from the ordinary fun of our camping trip—of friends and Will and his kids and the Colorado River tributary we had played in all day.

  A pale bone was visible at the joint of the wing, and a touch of red that once had been blood. “How did you break your wing?” I asked, thinking. The bird’s head cocked one way, then the other. It cawed. Its eyes, as it peered at me, were a bluish slate gray. It examined me as if I were a mystery.

  Then I saw that its bill curved sharply at the tip, to the left. It was misshapen, a soft bend, not unlovely. “Oh,” I said aloud, “deformed.” It cocked its head again. I felt alarmed. What was happening here? It was then that I saw its gape: At the rear corners of its bill were two small, bright yellow flaps of skin. “But you’re a baby!” I said. Barely a fledgling.

  The bird cawed. I gazed at it a long moment. The broken wing, the gape, the fearlessness, the inquisitive eyes. The misshapen bill. I added it up. “You fell out of your nest,” I said. And the tears just fell out of me. I let them flow down my cheeks without wiping them away.

  * * *

  —

  My brother was in jail that day, and I was glad. It meant he was warm, and fed, and likely taking medication. He had been arrested a week before for aggressively reacting to a woman who, seeing him walking in traffic, had pulled up and admonished him to get out of the roadway. He had lashed out at her, elbowed her in the forehead, gotten charged with misdemeanor assault. I was grateful to her. It must have been apparent that he was homeless. I had almost cried when I learned she wasn’t hurt. And then I wondered what she thought of him.

  The day before, at the campground, I had watched four young men in the site beside ours. I happened to glance over as one skillfully walked a slackline strung between two trees. I took in the shaggy brown hair, the lean bare torso, the long shorts. My face crumpled just as Will walked up, saw the boy, looked back at me, and said, “Your brother?”

  “He looks so much like him from behind.”

  * * *

  —

  I wandered back into a box canyon, alone, and found a raven, beautiful and dying. This bird was born, had a mother, lived briefly in a red rock enclave deep in Arizona’s Havasupai reservation, and met me before meeting its end.

  We sat there for long minutes as I talked my way through the clues, putting the pieces together. The bird cawed occasionally, cocked its head, its eyes so open, so wide—wide on the inside, absorbing everything.

  “You’re going to die, aren’t you?” I said. I looked up into the high cliffs, searching for the ledge with the nest from which he must have fallen, wondering how many days this bird had had on this earth. How many more there would be. I couldn’t save him, I knew. We had hiked a long way in.

  A life only a few weeks long—an intelligent, emotional life—spent entirely within this canyon room. The low boulders on which his droppings hung, signs that he could hop about. The crystal stream trickling through crystal pools. The brilliant green moss, the water ferns. The shape of the sandstone. A decent life, it seemed, however short.

  I tried to feed the bird some salami. He darted for it and I watched him fumble with it in his malformed bill, awkwardly trying to toss it back down his throat before accidentally dropping it into a still pool. We peered down over the edge of the rock, together, at the sunken salami. Then as we stared at each other, he looked back at me as if abashed and I registered the depth of his ignorance. I felt the oops hanging between us, and he seemed to ask, But can you give me some more?

  I gave him some more. He couldn’t even eat without messing up.

  * * *

  —

  It was nearly a year since I had seen Tom last, one of only a handful of times in a long decade. So often in places, in circumstances, I could barely imagine. Soon he would agree to let his assault case go through the mental health court, and would accept treatment as part of his sentence. The court would order him to make an appointment at the local community mental health center and work with staff there to develop a plan of care. A probation officer would be assigned to him to monitor his progress. But as long as he was rejecting Dad’s help, the onus was entirely on him to make it happen. He would have to keep track of the phone number, remember to call, figure out where to go, catch a bus or two, and show up on time—all on his own, all without a daily dose of his antipsychotic. And that was just for the first appointment. It would take many to achieve anything lasting. This is what was required of a homeless man with severe, chronic, untreated schizophrenia. It was virtually impossible.

  * * *

  —

  There is the urge to find meaning. Maybe dreams always mean something. They are fictions. In them every image can be taken as a cipher, with every strange scenario hiding the useful metaphor, the one that rings true, revealing the problem that has secretly preoccupied you and is maybe the reason you remembered the dream. But in life, things are what they are. First and foremost, perhaps only and entirely. This bird was not a metaphor. He was alive. And yet it is odd: how perfect the setting, the series of events. I felt that the bird had a message for me, but although I tried I could not read it.

  What did I appear to be, in the mind of this bird? Ravens, I knew, are ingenious problem solvers. They have language too—some forty calls with which they speak to one another. They form attachments, strong bonds, just as we do. Perhaps they share the same symbolic consciousness—the capacity for thought, inseparable from la
nguage—that we feel to be so human. Perhaps they, too, can find meaning in things.

  I, a being that appeared out of nowhere, sat beside him, spoke to him, gave him food, and then departed, returning to the unreachable place from which I had come. Was I an emissary from another world? Did I seem, to the bird, to have a message? Were we one another’s envoy?

  * * *

  —

  After I left our boulder to explore the canyon, I saw the mother. She flew overhead, and I turned back to see the young bird hopping from stone to stone, attempting to follow her as she passed over, cawing a loud, scratchy crack. She returned the call from high above, the same harsh note from her sleek silhouette, but she did not stop.

  The next day Will climbed up into the canyon and found the bird dead. I had refused to join him, not wanting to see. He took a long tail feather and gave it to me for remembrance.

  I once heard Leslie Silko say that sometimes, ceremony is the only resolution we can have.

  Later I plunged from the top of a waterfall. There was a moment when I hung in the air, having jumped but not yet falling. The world was all blue and the water so very far beneath me. This jump, I told myself, is for my baby bird. I shut down my fear.

  Down in the deep pool, the world was again all blue. I descended slowly, my body a V. I hung in the water.

  Vagabond

  Did I know, then, that we would lose? Ten years had passed since I first suspected Tom had schizophrenia, and it was only taking a greater toll. Months later, as Christmas neared, Dad saw him walking and stopped the car. Tom looked ragged and Dad asked him several times to come by the house, suggesting he get some good winter clothes, but Tom declined and soon politely turned to go. “I am definitely a persona non grata these days,” Dad noted. So it continued. A few months later, when Dad spotted him again, Tom waved but changed directions and kept walking. Dad was at a loss. “I don’t know which is more difficult,” he wrote, “seeing him or not seeing him.”