Calvin

by Martine Leavitt

  Susie: Everything okay, Calvin?

  She glared at Maurice.

  Hobbes: Babe!

  Me: Your boyfriend is a bonehead bully.

  I could say that because I knew Maurice wouldn’t do a thing to me if Susie was there.

  Susie: He’s not my boyfriend.

  Maurice: Bully? Strong word. I thought we were friends.

  Maurice threw his arm around Susie’s shoulders, grinned at me, and took a big bite of my sandwich.

  She slid out from under his arm.

  Maurice: Hey, where’s your sense of humor, McLean? This is the way men show our affection. Right, Timbit? We’re buddies, right?

  Susie looked from me to Maurice and back again.

  Me: Sure, Maurice. Buddies. Since first grade.

  Maurice: Susie, you want half my sandwich?

  She took it absently, and they walked away enjoying my peanut butter and banana sandwich. Susie looked back at me as if she was hoping I’d say something to Maurice, but I didn’t. I never did.

  Hobbes: I can’t believe you’re still putting up with that.

  Me: Depends on what you mean by putting up with.

  Hobbes: No wonder you brought me back.

  Me: I didn’t. I want you gone.

  But at that moment I sort of didn’t, Bill. I sort of liked him beside me in a corner of my mind, growling at Maurice and calling Susie babe.

  The kids in the hallway were looking at me funny, possibly because it appeared I was arguing with myself, so I headed to English to eat my apple and wait for class to start. I don’t know why I went to class—my life was over as far as school went. The project didn’t have to be handed in until the end of class, and maybe I thought one would float down out of space and land on my desk.

  All during class I was suffering the pains of the Damned Who Don’t Do Their Semester Projects, and I thought I could hear the tiny screams of my brain cells as they died of grammar-review boredom. They started to get so loud I almost couldn’t hear the teacher. She was looking at me, bending into that look, like she was seeing how repulsive I was for the first time, and suddenly she was revealed as the globular-faced alien she really was, and I understood that she was slowly turning the brains of young humans into a kind of gray smoothie and one day she’d stick straws up our noses and sip our brains out.

  Teacher: Calvin?

  I hadn’t heard her question, but I sensed that under those buggy eyes was a subtle mind.

  Me (politely): Could you rephrase the question, please?

  She paused. Was she onto me?

  Teacher: Where is the prepositional phrase in this sentence? I’m not sure how I could phrase it better.

  Me: In this sentence. That’s the prepositional phrase.

  She stared at me. I thought I could see her jaw bubbling, as if her mandibles would break free of her human disguise any moment.

  Teacher: Clever. But I was talking about the sentence on the board, not the one I was saying.

  I looked at the sentence on the board. By now about a million of my brain cells had gone to their deaths, victims of grammar, but I tried to summon the survivors. I said something, but only nonsense came out.

  Susie was looking at me like I’d sprouted a cancerous growth.

  Susie: Calvin—?

  All the colors in the room were a little too bright, the edges too black. Couldn’t she see the evil intent of the so-called teacher? Hobbes was growling, low and deadly.

  I stood up, but I felt wobbly.

  Me: Run, Susie. I’ll cover for you …

  Teacher: Calvin? Calvin, are you all right?

  But I wasn’t, Bill. Something was wrong and Hobbes was roaring in my ears and the teacher had morphed into her true alien self and I could see Maurice laughing, and that’s all I remember until I came to my senses in the hospital.

  Calvin’s alter ego Spaceman Spiff wakes up and discovers that he has been abducted by aliens and is now restrained in a sterile laboratory in their ship. It is obviously an interrogation room, but Spiff is stoic and defiant. They have assumed the thin guise of humanoids, and this, Spiff decides, has been done to trick him into being docile as they perform their hideous experiments.

  They poke needles into him and draw blood and ask him questions about the workings of his mind. At first Spiff refuses to give them what they want. He sees them conferring, deciding on the torture best suited to making him speak, and eventually they make him confess to everything.

  Spiff despairs of his plan to save the world from a hostile takeover.

  * * *

  That’s how it was, Bill. One minute I was this normal kid who uses his mind, and the next minute I was transmogrified into a kid whose mind uses him. I tried to figure it out, but how do you use your mind to figure something out if your mind is the problem?

  I just kept thinking, me my name is Calvin, and why do I have a tiger purring in the corner of my room? I kept thinking this over and over until it occurred to me that it was possible something cosmic was happening here. Maybe Calvin was so real to so many people that on the day I was born, which was the day the last Calvin and Hobbes comic came out, maybe all that love and sadness people felt … I opened up my mouth to get my first breath, and I just sucked it in.

  I wasn’t sick. I was Calvin come to life!

  Thinking about it like that, it was like all these pieces came together.

  Of course, people probably wouldn’t believe me. But hey, anytime something amazing happens in the universe we should pay attention, shouldn’t we? When something is hard to believe, maybe it’s the universe shaking things up a bit. Maybe it’s saying, you haven’t got me all figured out by a long shot. It’s saying, I have a sense of humor, too.

  * * *

  I was lying there thinking about that, Bill, when my mom came in looking like she forgot to wear makeup and brush her hair. I knew she looked like crap because she was worried about me. Dad was right behind her, looking like he did at tax time, sort of tight and spooked.

  Mom: Hi, Calvin.

  Me: Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.

  Dad: Son.

  Mom: I love you, Calvin.

  Mom wasn’t the gushy type, so I knew things were pretty bad when she said she loved me so early in the conversation and it wasn’t even my birthday or anything.

  Mom sat down on my bed. Dad didn’t say anything, just kind of smiled, ruffled my hair.

  Me: Dad, don’t be sad. You were a good dad. Sometimes the polls were pretty low, but you weren’t about the popular vote—you were about building character.

  He bent down and put his forehead on top of my head.

  Dad: My boy.

  Me: Maybe if you weren’t so strict. Maybe if you’d gotten me all the Christmas presents I asked for every year.

  Dad: That must have been it.

  Me: And TV—if you’d let me watch more TV.

  Dad nodded.

  Me: And making me take baths and go to bed at a reasonable hour and not letting me chew tobacco when I was six. I always thought it might push me over the edge. Oh, and don’t forget you never built me that backyard ski lift. Ultimately everything is the parents’ fault.

  Dad: Everything.

  He said it low and soft.

  Me: But remember: just because your polls were low a lot doesn’t mean you don’t have big fans. Doesn’t mean some people don’t love you so much.

  A man came in wearing civilian clothes—jeans and a golf shirt.

  Man: Hello, Calvin. I’m Dr. Filburn.

  Me: Doctor, huh? Where’s your degree?

  Doctor: I have my diploma framed on the wall in my office. Would you like to see it?

  Me: I hear those can be faked.

  Dr. Filburn smiled. He was tall and had great muscles and looked like the kind of guy all the women in the world would probably want to date. He asked my parents if he could talk to me alone.

  They went out and then the doctor asked me about what happened at school. Soon I was spilling the beans about Hobbe
s and my projects and Spaceman Spiff. I opened up about all that personal stuff, and he comes back with, you probably suffer from maladaptive daydreaming and the auditory hallucinations indicate you may have a more serious illness.

  I decided to be polite.

  Me: I’ll take your thoughts under consideration, Doctor, but you should know that I wanted to go into neuroscience. I know brains. I might even have some.

  Doctor: I’m sure you do. Let’s invite your parents back in.

  He asked them questions about their parents and siblings, and if I did drugs, and if they had noticed this or that or the other, and then he said he suspected that I may have had a schizophrenic episode but it would take observation over a period of time to confirm his diagnosis.

  Mom listened to the doctor and nodded and tried to look like he’d just said I had a bad case of hangnail, and Dad looked like he wanted to punch him.

  I kind of drifted off while he explained all about the brain to my parents and told them that schizophrenia was a family of psychiatric disorders, how it can be confused with other disorders, how symptoms range from slightly to totally disabling. Every time he said the word schizophrenia it felt like needles in my eyes, but then there was Hobbes sitting just out of my sight, yawning and licking his chops.

  Dr. Filburn stopped talking and all three of them looked at me.

  Me: Am I still going to grow up?

  Doctor: I’m pretty sure you aren’t terminal.

  Me: Okay. So can I go home now?

  Doctor: I’d like to keep you for a few days—to run some tests, come up with a plan for therapy and medication that will help you manage your symptoms and get you back to school. It’s important to start treatment in young people as soon as possible. We’ll change the course of treatment if the provisional diagnosis is wrong.

  I thought it was time to reveal my new brilliant idea.

  Me: This could all be cleared up pretty easily without medication. I just need Bill Watterson to make one more comic strip. Only one more comic strip, or even just one panel, of Calvin at age seventeen, healthy and well, with no Hobbes in it.

  Doctor (staring):

  Mom (staring):

  Dad (staring):

  Me: I’ve thought about it a lot, and I figured out that Bill Watterson and I have some universal connection. He made me this way and he could unmake me this way.

  The doctor looked at my parents.

  Doctor: This is one of the common symptoms of schizophrenia: delusions of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or a special relationship with a famous person.

  Me: Okay. But listen. I was born on the day, the very day, Mr. Watterson published his last comic strip and wrote a letter to the public saying he was done. Isn’t that right, Mom?

  Mom: Well, but we didn’t know—

  Me: And then! My parents named me Calvin!

  Doctor:

  Mom: Yes, honey, but you know we named you Calvin because your dad had just finished his PhD thesis on Calvinism. We’d never even heard of Calvin and Hobbes.

  Me: Okay, but tell the doctor what Gramps did.

  Mom: Well, he brought you a stuffed tiger—

  Me: And put it in my bassinet right there in the hospital and said he wasn’t going to have a grandson of his named after a man like John Calvin and by putting the tiger in my bassinet and calling the tiger Hobbes he renamed me even though my name was still Calvin.

  Dad: This is all true, but—

  He meant real.

  Doctor: You have an interesting family. That does not mean Bill Watterson controls your destiny or can help you in any way.

  Dad: Seriously, Calvin. You think you were made by Bill Watterson? I mean, I was there when your mother and I made you, and you don’t want to make me tell you about it.

  Me: I’m just like Calvin. You can’t argue with that.

  Mom: You’re not like him. You—

  Me: Have you read the strip?

  Mom: Yes. Once. Your grandfather made me.

  Me: So how am I different?

  Mom: You have five fingers.

  Me: Four fingers were symbolic.

  Mom: Of what?

  Me: Of how hard it is to draw hands. I have blond hair like him. I still have my red wagon.

  Dad: Everyone’s wagon is red.

  Me (to Dad): You wear glasses.

  Dad: So does your mom, unlike Calvin’s mom.

  Me: Maybe she wore contacts. I build the best snowmen on the block. And my first-grade teacher’s name? Miss Wood! How close can you get to Miss Wormwood? Huh? Huh?

  Mom: I admit, it’s unusual, all those coincidences, but that’s just what they are: coincidences.

  Me: Is everything weird and unexplainable that happens in the world a coincidence? Are you sure?

  Mom: Yes. I’m sure.

  Doctor: Calvin, Bill Watterson has no ability to help you, and he doesn’t have any wish to. Unlike me and your parents. We’re going to do everything we can to get you well.

  I didn’t argue anymore. I didn’t want Mom to be even sadder than she already was, watching her son Spaceman Spiff crash and burn as he entered the atmosphere of Planet Schizophrenia.

  Doctor: I think Calvin needs some sleep. We’ll talk again in the morning.

  Mom: Yes, sleep sounds good.

  Dad: We’ll see you tomorrow, okay, Calvin?

  Me: Okay. G’night.

  My parents and the doctor left the room together, and Mom started crying before she was out the door.

  * * *

  Midnight, and I was still thinking about you, Bill, and me, and Hobbes, and Susie my ex-friend or frenemy or whatever she was. She was part of it, too. Half the night I thought about how I could convince you to do just one more comic strip, one starring seventeen-year-old me, alone without Hobbes. Just me, but without this illness. That’s when I came up with my plan to prove my ultimate fandom so you would draw me that strip. I knew it would make me better. You could make me better, and make Hobbes go away.

  Once I had my plan I could fall asleep, even though Hobbes was snoring.

  The next morning Dr. Filburn came ridiculously early.

  Me: Sorry, but I don’t display symptoms before breakfast.

  I said that even though I could hear Hobbes taking a cat bath.

  Doctor: Good to see you, Calvin. How was your night?

  Me: Great. When can I get out of here?

  Doctor: What’s your rush? Aren’t we treating you well?

  Me: Can’t you just, you know, open up my skull and adjust the dials a bit?

  Doctor (smiles):

  I decided to try reasoning with him.

  Me: Grammar did it to me. Grammar and two big semester projects. I’m pretty sure if I could just eliminate grammar and homework from my life, I could just go home and be normal again.

  Hobbes: Were you ever normal?

  Me: This is all your fault, you flea-bitten, mangy furball—

  Dr. Filburn studied me like I was a smear on a microscope slide.

  Doctor: We’re going to run some tests on Monday to see what’s going on in that brain of yours.

  Me: A tiger. A tiger is what’s going on.

  Doctor: I don’t want you to worry. I’m sure we can help.

  Me: Don’t worry? I’m not worried. Why should I be worried? Just give me a choice between this and being boiled in oil and I’ll go from there.

  Doctor: Having a mental illness isn’t a kind of death, Calvin. Not these days.

  Me: Yes, it is. It’s the death of normal. Maybe you haven’t heard, but normal is what teenagers aspire to be above all else.

  Doctor: Okay. So what’s normal?

  Me: Do you have a mental illness?

  Doctor: No—

  Me: That’s normal. Normal is not sick. Normal is when you get to decide what’s wrong with the other guy. Normal is blending in, like not having a psychotic episode in the middle of school, which makes you stand out.

  Doctor: Calvin, do you know how many people in Nor
th America suffer from schizophrenia? I’ll tell you. Over two million. You’re not alone.

  Me: Wow. If we were mutant zombie killers we could have taken over the world long ago.

  Doctor: Many people with schizophrenia are very highly educated and make significant contributions to society. You want to go to college? Get a good job?

  I didn’t say it, but suddenly I wanted it way more than I’d ever wanted anything before. I just wanted to be normal, ordinary, boring, and have a normal, ordinary, boring life.

  Doctor: You can do pretty much what you want. Most people improve greatly on medications and lead productive lives. Nobody dies of schizophrenia.

  Me: Unless they kill themselves.

  Doctor (nodding): The risk of suicide is much higher. You’re not planning to hurt yourself, are you?

  I thought about my plan, but I was sane enough to know better than to tell him about it.

  Me: No, but I do have a man-eating tiger here who is just waiting for me to weaken up. Which gives this whole thing a certain time sensitivity.

  Hobbes growled and the doctor cleared his throat.

  Doctor: Calvin, you are a very creative young man, which actually fits with some theories about people who experience hallucinations. Artistic people and highly creative people have a lower than expected density of dopamine receptors in the thalamus, as do people with schizophrenia. What that means is, your filter doesn’t work as well as so-called normal people’s. You’ve got this high flow of uncensored information coming in. In some people, that barrage of information makes them a genius in their field. We just have to get those negative effects under control, and then you can go have a great life—be the next John Nash or Salvador Dalí. We understand nowadays that it’s not like you’re either psychotic or not. Everyone is on a continuum.

  Me: As in the space-time continuum?

  Doctor: People can’t be divided into happy people and depressed people. There are gradients. Some people only have the rare sad day, and some experience crippling depression. Most are a mix of both. Same with psychosis. I get a song stuck in my head, and you have a tiger stuck in your head. We’re not fundamentally different. You stay with us here a few days, and we’ll get you on a treatment plan that will alleviate your symptoms. Okay?