by Sara Shepard
I half smiled. I had taken a poncho from someone at a party; I’d told him it was an accident, but he wouldn’t let it drop. “The coat’s owner lives in the Bronx,” I said. “That’s an hour away by train.”
He opened Vogue to the middle. “You really shouldn’t go around stealing coats that aren’t yours. At least you could have taken one with money in the pockets, you know?”
“True.” I laughed.
He leaned in for a hug. He smelled as he always had, like cinnamon gum and soap. It was comforting to think that his smell hadn’t changed, even though everything else about him had. If I closed my eyes and breathed in, I could almost imagine him as the man he was when I was eight, the father in the leather-framed picture on the credenza. It had just snowed, and he was standing on a hill in Prospect Park, a plastic sled in hand, a red, pilly hat coming to a point on the top of his head. I was running toward him, burying myself in the soft folds of his coat, and in seconds we would pile onto the sled and go down the hill together.
There were certain things I wished I wouldn’t have turned my head to see. Once, I saw a car hit a bicyclist head-on, his spandexed body flying into the air and landing jaggedly on the pavement. He did a whole flip in the air. He may have broken his back, maybe his neck. I didn’t stand around to watch; enough people already were. Another time, I saw a Chinese man slap his kid, a six-year-old girl, across the face, as she was coming down the slide at a park. All she was doing was sliding.
My father used to make me look at skin cancer photos, to deter me against smoking or drinking or going into the sun without sun-screen or putting anything carcinogenic into my body. A woman had an enormous melanoma on her leg; it had gotten so bad that the black, puckered welt had eaten straight to her bone.
I could have walked right past the flyer last week without seeing it. There weren’t any others of its kind on other phone poles or parking signs. But my head turned that direction; I walked by it and saw it and there it was.
The Learning Annex Presents Meredith Heller, it said. Acting for Beginners.
And then a description: Pennsylvania native and stage actress Meredith Heller teaches you the basic techniques of acting. Beginners welcome!
It gave a date a few weeks in the future. And a location—the Mayflower Hotel, on Sixty-first Street and Central Park West. And a time.
There was no picture, but her name glowed like an isotope. Of course she had dropped Davis and returned to just Heller. And yes, she was from Pennsylvania. But how likely was it that she had become an actress? If a computer randomly came up with a possible fate, it wouldn’t have hit upon this.
After my father wrote my mother back, permitting their divorce, he attempted to hold it together. But eventually, something inside him just gave up. He stopped going to work entirely. He made the couch his permanent residence. And then he couldn’t do much of anything. He wanted to die, he said over and over again. Time felt painful. Every second felt painful. Like needles, like a branding iron singeing his skin. He was sick of things hurting.
I brought him cold washcloths and tried to listen. I filled out the medical disability leave paperwork and submitted it to his office. I knew the people at his NYU lab personally. Leon Kimball. Bethany the lab assistant. They smiled and patted my shoulder and all signed an oversized Get Well Soon card, of a cartoon cat with a plaster cast on its leg.
I stared at the Acting for Beginners flyer for a long time. People passed by. Some of them bumped into me. I was standing in the middle of the street in the East Village, near a bus stop. I tried to imagine the people that would go to an Acting for Beginners Learning Annex seminar: gray-haired, jowl-faced East Village types, the kinds who lived in rent-controlled apartments but still solicited for roommates. They would come and take off their shoes at the door and sit in a circle on the linoleum and get into the guttural humming exercises and the role-playing. And where would my father and I sit? In chairs? On the floor? We might stand at the back of the room, in the shadows. We might hide and make small noises and not participate.
I came home and didn’t tell him. We made spaghetti and I was the only one who ate it and I didn’t tell him. We watched television and my father moaned softly and I didn’t tell him. The secret beat in me like a second heart. Meredith Heller, Meredith Heller. Perhaps she did climb up on a stage and change completely. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To change?
The next day, I met my father at his psychiatrist’s office at New York Presbyterian, the whole way up on Sixty-eighth Street—I was going to take him out to a quiet dinner afterward. Dr. North popped his head into the waiting room, a weary smile on his face. “You want to come into my office for a sec, Summer?”
My father sat on a leather couch, and Dr. North settled at his desk. When I sank down into a leather chair adjacent to the big picture window that looked out onto York Avenue, Dr. North said, “So. We’re thinking of treating your father with electroconvulsive therapy.”
I looked searchingly at my father. “Are you serious?”
My father shrugged, then looked at Dr. North. “Are we?”
“Now, we talked about this,” Dr. North encouraged him. He turned back to me. “Medication isn’t working. We need to try something else.”
“I don’t want to feel this way anymore,” my father volunteered.
So don’t, I wanted to say. Just turn it off.
“ECT has come a long way. It’s very humane,” the doctor said.
Dr. North proceeded to explain how it would work: They put a patient on muscle relaxants and administered a shock that produced a seizure in the brain. The only way the doctors could see the seizure was through a tiny twitch in the patient’s foot and by a computer recording of the patient’s brain waves. Once the brainwaves settled down, the seizure was over.
It was like rebooting a computer, Dr. North said. Afterward, many patients felt better.
“How?” I asked.
“How what?”
“How do patients feel better? How does it happen?”
Dr. North scratched his head. “Well, it’s not definitive. We think that the shock releases neurotransmitters in the brain, which helps to lift the depression.”
“I’ve heard it’s because it causes brain damage,” I said.
My father shifted on the chair, making the leather crinkle.
“It doesn’t.” Dr. North slid his platinum Rolex around his wrist.
“Will he feel it?” I asked. “What happens when he’s done? Are there…scars?”
“He won’t feel anything. When he’s done, he might feel sleepy, or calm, or sometimes anxious…it can vary. And no, there aren’t scars.” He chuckled. “The major side effect is memory loss, especially right after. Just bits and pieces, though. Little things. Nothing important.”
My father said he had to use the bathroom before we left, so I had a few moments alone with Dr. North. “Is this really necessary?” I whispered to him. “I mean, he’s gone to the hospital a lot, yes. But isn’t there some other medication he could try? Something…else?”
The doctor fiddled with his burgundy tie. “Nothing else is working.”
“But he’s not even that sick,” I protested. “Not always, anyway.”
The doctor looked at me very evenly. “If you’re worried about how it might affect his mind, it won’t. And believe me, it’s safe. It’s not cruel. He won’t even feel it. And as for memory, he might forget simple things, like names. But not permanently.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Experience and research, Summer. We’re professionals, and it’s a difficult decision, one that I know is hard to hear. But having diagnosed your father with the best of our ability, we think this will help him.” He cocked his head. “He’ll need support through it. You have to believe it will help, too. You have to have faith.”
That was what it came down to—faith. I had to believe, just like people believed when they went to church. But I had believed—I’d believed in the medi
cine and the psych ward and the therapy and time off and staying here in my childhood apartment instead of living in NYU’s dorms. I had believed in not seeing friends, not having a boyfriend, rushing home after classes in order to make sure he was all right, keeping things even and steady. It went back as long ago as the day of my grandmother’s funeral, when I wanted to run back to Philip’s house and apologize for Steven pulling me away. But I didn’t. I hated, too, that I’d told Philip about my mother and the snow globe incident, that I’d let him see such a flawed side of me. Then again, sometimes I wondered if I’d done it as a defense—so he’d know I was messed up, so he’d know to stay away.
“Is this kind of thing genetic?” I asked Dr. North.
He looked uncomfortable. “Well, there are some findings that say it might be. But it’s hard to tell. But even if there are genetic links, a combination of environmental factors have to be at play, too. One generally doesn’t work without the other.”
I leaned against the wall. Was this all curled up in his DNA? If I studied hard enough, would I be able to decipher and treat it? As much as I tried to forget about Mr. Rice spouting out nonsense to my tenth-grade class, I couldn’t—not quite. Wouldn’t it be nice if our DNA explained everything? Wouldn’t it be nice if I found one of my mother’s stray hairs clinging to a sweater she’d left behind, put it under a microscope, and suddenly understood what had driven her to leave us? I could swab the inside of my father’s cheek and decipher why he had crumbled. I could inspect my own blood and absolve or convict myself. What else was possibly genetic? Messiness? Laziness? What about abandonment? What about duty—what, exactly, kept me here in Brooklyn, while my brother was okay with leaving? Perhaps my actions really could be attributed to a malformed piece of DNA that wasn’t coding for the right protein. Perhaps genetics controlled things minute as my dreams and my day-to-day actions, and I was bound to my decisions long before I made them. If I saw all that under a microscope, at least I’d know it was something deeply set inside of me, something I couldn’t change.
“What am I supposed to do if this doesn’t work?” I asked Dr. North.
“What are you supposed to do?” Dr. North repeated.
“Yes. What am I supposed to do?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, try not to let this take over your life. I know it’s sometimes unbearable. But it’s not your fault. It’s really not.”
The day after that was a Friday. I went into a sporting goods store on lower Broadway and asked an overweight, sloppy woman behind the counter if I could see a stun gun. It was smaller than I expected. “Is it on?” I asked. She nodded. I hit the switch, watching the metal prongs toss the blue sparks back and forth.
I held my hand out. A hot snap went through me. “Jesus Christ!” the saleswoman screamed. Two boys who had been looking at hunting rifles gawked. The surprise of the jolt had caused me to drop the gun to the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?” the saleswoman said.
I picked up the Taser and handed it back to her. My heart was racing, probably from the surprise. My thumb and pointer finger felt blue and numb from where I’d shocked them. It took only a minute or so, though, for the feeling to come back.
thirteen
On the morning of his first procedure, my father and I sat together on the subway, legs touching, even though there was hardly anyone else in the car. He pretended to be very interested in the Captain Morgan ad across the aisle. In the ad, people leaned on each other, holding half-empty tumblers of rum. All of them had fluorescent-green, swirly mustaches penciled in above their upper lips. Captain Morgan peeked out from behind a lamppost, girlish in his frilly shirt. The Captain was here, said the slogan in slashed green graffitilike print.
My father turned to me. “Now, if something happens, I want you to at least keep Wesley. I’ve contacted a rescue organization for the others. The number’s on the fridge.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“I’m just saying.”
An Asian woman came through the car selling batteries, little plastic noisemakers, plastic key chains, seek-and-find word puzzles, Skittles candy. The loot was in a large box strapped to her chest. She waved the noisemakers in our faces and pantomimed a light show with a laser pointer. Something about the laser pointer reminded me of the statement I had tried to write this morning for my fellowship. Explain your inspiration for pursuing a scientific career. I had sat at my laptop, eating pretzels out of the bag, thinking and thinking and thinking. I knew I wanted to study DNA when a substitute teacher stood up in front of our class and told me that all of our secrets, every single thing about us, is coded within our DNA, and if we look hard enough, we’ll be able to figure it out. He was asked to leave after that, and later we found out he’d doctored his whole résumé. Still, what he said had a huge effect on me, greater than anything any other teacher taught me before or since.
I had erased it and started over.
Although I would like to take this fellowship, I probably can’t. I shouldn’t, in fact, pursue medical school, either, because my father likes to drill pieces of glass into his arm and that takes up a lot of my time. I’m sorry.
My father had dressed up for the occasion, wearing a button-down shirt and carefully ironed khakis. His loafers were shined and his fingernails were clipped and he put his contacts in, although he was blinking furiously, not used to them yet. He hadn’t shaved or gotten a haircut, but his hair was combed, his beard a bit less scraggly. At first he came into the kitchen wearing a tie, but I told him to take it off. I couldn’t imagine him lying there on the bed, electrodes hooked up to his temples, wearing a tie.
“Tell me something,” my dad said.
“Something what?”
“Something about your life. Did you give that coat back yesterday?”
I sighed. “No.”
“What were you doing yesterday, then?”
“Nothing. Reading. I don’t know.”
He made a clucking noise with his tongue. “My daughter, the thief.”
“I didn’t steal it. It was an accident.”
“Uh-huh.”
The train’s doors opened. The echoing sounds of a platform performer rushed in; a black man in dirty jeans and a brown, tattered sweater strummed a guitar and belted out “Redemption Song.” He was good, but everyone was ignoring him. I could still hear him as the train pulled away.
“Well, tell me something else,” my father goaded. “Just talk.”
I flared out my hands. “I have to write a statement,” I blurted out.
“For that fellowship, the one I told you about.” The one I didn’t tell you everything about. “They want me to write an essay about why I want to be a scientist. And…and just about me, in general.”
“And?”
I wrapped my hands around my knees. “And I don’t know what to say.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just…I’m not good at that sort of thing.”
My father settled back against the plastic seat. “Aren’t you becoming a scientist because of me?”
The subway rocked and rattled. Across the aisle, Captain Morgan whispered into a girl’s ear. He looked like a transvestite. “You?” I repeated.
“Well, sure. I always wanted you to study science. Your mother always wanted you to go into liberal arts, something like English or journalism or maybe even PR, like she was doing. But you picked science. I’m glad you did.”
It was that he just assumed. Like I didn’t have a mind of my own, like I couldn’t come to decisions for reasons unrelated to my past. The anger was palpable, like a paper cut slicing into my finger. I thought about what he’d said years ago in relation to his sickness: I hope this never happens to you. He just assumed we were coasting on the same fixed path in every regard, and there was nothing I could do about it. On one hand, it was what I believed in, but on the other, it was exactly what I fought against.
I looked away. “It’s not
like I want to go into dermatology.”
He looked away, too, and I knew I’d hurt his feelings. Why didn’t I just say yes, he was an influence? Yes, I liked science because he did?
“I probably won’t even take the fellowship, anyway,” I mumbled. “What’s the point of writing anything?”
“Why wouldn’t you take it?”
It’s in Ireland. Which is a million miles away.
“You’re lucky you have the opportunity to succeed, to go out into the world and do things,” he said. “You’re so lucky you can just go and do that.”
I suppressed a groan. You can get up and do things, too. Stop making me feel bad about it. “It’s just not very good timing.”
We faced front. The same Asian woman with the plastic toys barreled through again. A young girl across the aisle bought a hot-pink plastic gun. She pointed the gun at her little sister. When she pulled the trigger, a firing noise sounded. My father shifted his weight. “I told you about how when I got in that car accident, I looked right into the deer’s eyes before we crashed, right?”
“Yes. I guess.”
He stared straight ahead, speaking out of the side of his mouth. “I actually didn’t realize Kay was hurt when I first saw her. I thought she was just sleeping.” He let out a small, aching laugh.
I peered at him, waiting. I never knew what to think when he brought up the accident—he only gave little pieces of it at a time, and I never was sure how to read them. The unsettling smell of urine floated through the air, then disappeared. In the next car, a baby began to wail. My father leaned his head on the window and closed his eyes, apparently choosing not to say anything else about it.
It was getting so hot in the car. The train ground to a stop, more people stuffed on, some of them leaning over us with their sweaty armpits to read the subway map. I had the urge to dart through the gaping subway doors, up the stairs, and through the turnstile. Maybe I could run through the streets and hide in a doorway or a dumpster. I could nest by the recyclables. New York was so big and complicated, it would take a while to be found. I pressed my feet more firmly into the floor, ready to stand up and do it. But then the doors wheezed shut, and the subway took off again.
