Down and Across

by Arvin Ahmadi

  With crossword puzzles, I always saw Fiora’s brain as this bad-ass, indestructible assembly line of downs and acrosses. But sometimes, assembly lines break. That’s why we were at the hospital. Fiora didn’t get into a car accident or anything physical; the wheels were in her head. She had a mental breakdown.

  “Fucking Benji,” Fiora said. She buried her face in her exceptionally pale hands, whimpering softly. Then she finally opened up.

  Fiora met Benji four months ago in Intro to Sociology. She was the student; he was the teaching assistant. Benji was older than Fiora by about a decade, which I thought was funny, because Benji is the kind of name you hear on the playground. He’s the twerp who pushes kids down the slide before they’re ready. That’s Benji.

  Fiora’s Benji was the son of a Belgian diplomat and was getting his PhD in sociology and marijuana, she told me. He made the first move. Fiora was never much of a class-goer, so Benji asked her to come in for office hours after the third week of classes. He demanded an explanation for her absences, and Fiora, desperate for an excuse and someone to talk to, told him about her mom’s letters—how they’d caused her so much stress. Benji looked at her with a combination of pity and intrigue. Without batting an eyelid, he urged Fiora to reconnect with her mother. “He was so confident with his prescription that I made up my mind. I booked a trip to Philly,” she said wistfully.

  The next week, Benji invited Fiora over to his apartment for a glass of wine. One thing led to another led to his bedroom. It was 100 percent consensual, she assured me.

  Two weekends later, Fiora saw her mom and her new family for the first time. It went better than she could have expected: Her mom hugged her tight, stroked her hair, and apologized in all the right ways. She was clean and even volunteered at a rehabilitation center for drug addicts. Her husband managed a chain of grocery stores, and they had the sweetest two-year-old. But still, when Fiora came back to DC, something didn’t feel right. Her heart thrashed against her chest and her vision turned splotchy.

  Fiora hadn’t had panic attacks since she was fifteen, so she checked herself into the hospital. She didn’t want to call her dad; she’d never told him that she was visiting her mom in the first place. So she called Benji.

  After he came to her side, their relationship changed. At least, it had from Fiora’s perspective. Benji became a constant presence in her college life, one that hadn’t included many friends up until that point. Benji was different from the premeds and sorority suckers. He had edge; he was an adult. They kept hooking up, and Fiora kept seeing her mom in Philly, and for the rest of the semester, life was peachy.

  “This summer, though, we’ve been fighting. That’s why I stole his bike in the first place—after he’d made a couple of douchey comments in a row,” Fiora said. “The morning after Saint-Ex, he broke up with me. I was half-awake, and he just started yelling at me about how I acted around Quentin the night before. Telling me I was immature, just looking for attention, that I would never amount to more than an atom in the universe.”

  Fiora’s voice was so faint, I could barely understand what she was saying.

  “Why would he say something like that?” I asked.

  An atom. In the universe. Just one atom.

  “Because he believes things, Saaket. For a while, I liked that about him. He had firm opinions. His confidence . . . It was dickish and arrogant, but I told myself it would always soften for me. I thought I was his exception.

  “Of course, now I see that I was being delusional.” Fiora rose slightly in the hospital bed, narrowing her eyes at nothing in particular. “I don’t need a fucking trust-fund baby telling me I’m worthless. No one deserves that. I spent a lot of time thinking about myself these last couple days, my sense of self-worth. And then Benji called this morning, all ‘What’s up, babe?’ as if nothing had happened. I told him he owed me an apology, and the balding bastard had the gall to demand one from me, so I hung up.”

  I bit the inside of my lips, afraid of saying the wrong words.

  “I should have felt like a champion, right?” Fiora said, her eyes reaching. “I felt like shit. Then I went to check my email, and . . . Do you remember the puzzle I wrote last summer, the one the New York Times accepted?”

  I nodded hesitantly.

  “Well, they take forever to actually publish them. Sometimes years. After I got off the phone with Benji, I found out they’re running my puzzle in the paper next week.”

  “Fiora!” I burst out. “That’s incredible news.”

  She looked at me with ferocious gratitude and a dollop of pride.

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t understand, though. How did you get from there to here?”

  “Saaket . . . I couldn’t even muster a smile. That’s what did it. I knew I should have felt happy for myself; I just couldn’t. I thought about taking another dose of my antidepressants and anxiety meds, but I stopped myself and came here instead.”

  Empathy stirred inside of me. I wanted to tell Fiora she was a warrior. I wanted her to know I was proud of her for telling off Benji. For the puzzle that would be printed a million times over. For taking care of herself. But I didn’t want to overstep.

  “Why did you call me?” I asked gently. My voice was hardly audible over the ambient noise of the hospital. Heart rate machines beeped in the background. It struck me that each rhythm was unfazed by the others, like blinking car turn signals. That every one of these sharp beeps belonged to a person who, like Fiora, had endured. This seemed like a profound realization at the time.

  Fiora looked off to the side.

  “I would have tried calling Trent, but he has an important networking event today at the Cato Institute. So I called you.”

  “And your dad?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s useless. My dad was never very ‘hands-on’ with his parenting.”

  “But shouldn’t you let him know—”

  “That I’m in a hospital bed? I’ll tell him later. Maybe tomorrow. He’ll pretend to be concerned, ask if I need to switch therapists, switch my medication or something. He’ll pay the hospital bill and send more money. He’s too busy with the paper business and his rotating cast of big-boobed bimbos to actually care, Saaket.”

  Once again, I was at a loss for words. I didn’t know how to react to the reality that there were parents out there who didn’t prioritize their kids over all else. I couldn’t believe that wasn’t a guarantee—a constant in Fiora’s life.

  “Your dad . . .” I said, searching for the right words. “I guess he just . . .”

  “I promise you he doesn’t care. When Grams died and my mom left, my dad shut down and never rebooted. I told him I was seeing Mom again—he knew about the letters—and all he had to say was ‘Make sure to let Dr. Daniels know.’ That was always his style. He’d send me to shrinks, and of course shrinks don’t know how to parent, so they did what they do best.”

  “Bullshit?” I said.

  “Prescriptions,” Fiora said. “The most fucked-up cocktails of medication. More pills than anyone should see in their lifetime.”

  I thought back to my session with Dr. Sparrow. How I expected her to take one look at me and cry, Adderall! Two a day! All your problems will be solved! Because what I wanted was a quick fix. An easy way out. What’s easier than popping a pill?

  I straightened my back a little bit. Fiora continued: “Between therapy and crosswords, I’ve stayed pretty sane. But Benji broke me.”

  “God damn it, Fiora,” I whispered under my breath. She nodded.

  I felt a rush of blood to my head. I also felt relief. Half my relief was for the wrong reason—for my own mental health, a privilege I had always taken for granted—but the other half was for Fiora.

  “I don’t understand how a girl like you could let anyone affect you like that.”

  She pressed her eyes shut, bobbing he
r head back and forth slowly. “Well,” she said, opening her eyes. “It happened.”

  I squeezed Fiora’s hand, because the tighter I held her, the more confidently I could guarantee she was alive. That she would be okay. Fiora spread her fingers free.

  “I guess the cat’s out of the bag, then, isn’t it?” She laughed softly. “I’m not such a free spirit. Life gets to me. Sometimes . . . I take my downs and acrosses seriously.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Guess so,” she echoed.

  Almost simultaneously, we both let out a deep breath. She looked down at her fingernails; I cracked my knuckles, two by two.

  “Hey,” I said, poking at her with hopeful optimism. “Now that you’re going to be a published cruciverbalist, I think we need to celebrate properly.”

  “Oh yeah?” Fiora smiled.

  And so began the rest of our day. The nurse walked into the room, and Fiora asked her for paper and a pen. She winced a little when Fiora said the word pen, because pen equaled potential harm, but she brought us one anyway. Fiora flattened the sheet of paper on a book and drew a large, gridded square. I’d learned a lot since our last crossword session, and Fiora had been through a lot. So we started over.

  Every now and then as we constructed this new puzzle, our hands and arms brushed. When this happened, I didn’t pull back. Neither did Fiora. Instead we would both freeze, on purpose. It was like each time our bodies touched someone whispered into our ears, Let the moment happen. And then Fiora would tilt her head, and I’d wonder again: Should I pull back? But I didn’t. So Fiora kept smiling, and we kept freezing together, and we melted into puddle after puddle of puzzle ink.

  “GOODNESS, THAT’S . . . that’s right out of a movie.”

  I was back at Professor Mallard’s office Thursday morning, filling her in on Fiora’s incident and the whirlwind day that followed. I felt guilty for skipping a day of research, but Professor Mallard didn’t seem to care; she was fascinated by my story.

  “So you’re telling me,” she continued skeptically, “Fiora—this girl you befriended by chance on the bus to DC—she had an anxiety attack yesterday morning, and you were the first person she thought to call?”

  “She doesn’t have the best relationship with her dad,” I said.

  Professor Mallard’s eyes wandered off to the side. “That’s a shame.”

  “Fiora doesn’t really have a lot of friends,” I explained. “At least, from what I can tell. Just this one guy Trent who she grew up with—he moved here from Charleston—and I think she has some crossword puzzle friends. I mean, I don’t think she wants more friends. She’s incredibly spontaneous. One of those really independent, confident girls. I’ve only known her one week and . . . well, I can’t help but feel lucky. She’s definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone in some ways,” I said. I chuckled to myself. There was no way I could tell Professor Mallard about Jeanette and the pickup challenge and the night at Saint-Ex. “Anyway, I can’t help but worry about her after yesterday.”

  Professor Mallard was still staring off to the side of her desk. “Where did the crossword puzzles come from?” she asked absently.

  “Oh man. Fiora is obsessed. She’s been solving crossword puzzles since she was a little girl, and now she writes them. She’s a really good constructor,” I said.

  Professor Mallard looked back at me and forced a smile. “The psychology of puzzles is interesting. Many studies link puzzle solving with exceptional cognitive skills. Memory search. Problem solving. Facial recognition. Intuitiveness.”

  “What does that say about Fiora?” I asked impatiently.

  “What do you think?”

  I gave Professor Mallard a funny look. “You’re the brain expert . . .”

  “I wouldn’t worry about Fiora, Scott. Of course it’s within reason, as a friend, to be worried after her breakdown yesterday. But the way you describe her, with this penchant for crossword puzzles . . . Her brain is wired a certain way. She likely moves fast, yes? She likely makes quick, intuitive decisions.”

  Professor Mallard hadn’t even met Fiora yet, and she understood her better than I did. “So, you’re saying she’s ‘likely’ impulsive?” I asked. It made sense. All signs up until now pointed to Fiora being 100 percent, no-telling-what-she’ll-do-next impulsive.

  “I’m saying the same way she jumps from box to box, puzzle to puzzle . . . It’s likely she’s already moved on from yesterday’s incident. She has a bigger issue than this ex-boyfriend, yes, but she’ll deal with it. The irony is that you’re still worried about her.”

  I bit my lip. “I worry a lot,” I said. We were thinking the same thing. That’s why I’m here in DC, in your office—because I couldn’t stop worrying about my future. Because I was desperate to get gritty.

  Professor Mallard smiled in a familiar way. Her smile had arms, and they wrapped around me and squeezed tight. It was my mom’s smile—the way she smiled on my first days of school and my birthdays. Growing-Up Smiles. That thin and sympathetic curvature of the lips always said the same thing: You’ll be fine.

  “Growth mindset, Scott,” Professor Mallard said.

  “Everyone worries and everyone fails. I get it.”

  Professor Mallard pressed down on a stapler. She tilted it over to reveal a single staple, which she swept into the waste bin.

  “Failure isn’t permanent,” she said. “Grit is the ability to learn and fail and learn some more. That ability is fluid, not fixed. You have the power to change.”

  Dear Professor Mallard,

  Last week, Fiora mentioned a gritty artist named Marina Abramovic. I’d never heard of this woman, so I decided to focus my research today on her life and art.

  I was astonished with what I learned. Marina Abramovic is a world-famous performance artist who, time and time again, has pushed herself to the limit (and past it!) for her work. She is very avant-garde. In her first performance over forty years ago, Abramovic cut herself twenty times with twenty different knives. She recorded the sounds and tried replicating each cut, not because it looked gory or cool, but to explore her body’s limits and her state of consciousness. It’s meta, isn’t it? The performer is the performance, and as a viewer, you’re supposed to get inside her head. What is she thinking? How does she go on? How is she making herself go on? Is she even thinking?

  Abramovic has put on hundreds of other thought-provoking, inflammatory (sometimes literally) performances over the decades. She has disciplined her mind in the most unique way to let her audiences’ minds run wild.

  My findings are attached.

  Sincerely,

  Scott Ferdowsi

  As I was closing out my tabs, Professor Mallard poked her head in the door.

  “Marina Abramović,” she said, giving the cluttered office floor a look of disapproval. “Interesting choice.”

  I shrugged. She looked up, just barely missing my eyes.

  “You know, Scott, my dad was a big fan of hers. I haven’t jumped into your research yet, but did you happen to come across her bow-and-arrow piece?”

  “Of course. Rest Energy.”

  “Yes!” Professor Mallard’s face leapt, and our eyes finally met. “My dad was simply obsessed with her Ulay collaborations. He believed they were too good for this world, Marina and Ulay, as artists and as a couple.”

  “They sure were something,” I said, remembering how they had walked the length of the Great Wall to end their twelve-year relationship.

  “They were absolutely nuts, but so were my parents. When I was seven, they recreated Rest Energy for Halloween. My mom carried the bow and Dad carried the arrow, and every house we stopped at, he would load the bow and pull it back and aim it at her, and they’d laugh like maniacs. ‘Trick or treat!’ Can you imagine? I was mortified.”

  By this point, Professor Mallard had fully entered the office and was actively recreat
ing the scene, pulling back an imaginary bow and bending over to laugh herself.

  “They were intellectual goofballs,” she said, bent over her knees and shaking her head. “As grown up as you could be in Oakland back then.”

  “What did you dress up as?” I asked.

  “I think I was a surgeon that Halloween,” Professor Mallard said, moseying back toward the door. “I believe that’s what I wanted to be at the time.”

  Her expression turned sober. Finished with the story, but still longing.

  “Thanks for your help today, Scott.”

  I headed straight to Tonic after a full day at Georgetown. I had a six-hour shift ahead of me with Trent. I was working hard these days, but I liked my work.

  Fiora had already called Trent and told him about everything that had happened the day before.

  “What do you think is next?” Trent asked, stacking clean glasses behind the bar like a house of cards. I thought he’d stop at the second or third level, but he moved on to the fourth. Very precarious.

  “She keeps on keeping on,” I said, quoting a cheesy Tumblr post I saw once.

  “No, I mean with, like . . . you. You and DC, you and Fiora. She’s officially single now, you know.”

  I sighed and pressed the glass I’d just dried against my forehead.

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty happy these days doing research with Professor Mallard and working with you. And with Fiora, I don’t even— I mean, even if I did . . . Like—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, look at me,” I blurted. “She wouldn’t go for me. If I did.”

  Trent stopped wiping the bar and tossed his dirty rag at me.