The Symptoms of My Insanity

by Mindy Raf

  “Yes, well, she really wasn’t looking too peachy when she came over,” I hear Mrs. Burk say. There’s a slurp-like clacking as the hard candy hits her teeth. “We looked at fabric samples for couches. But she just didn’t look like she had a lot of gas in her engine.” Slurp, clack, slurp. “And then she excuses herself and goes into my bathroom. And I hear her, you know, tossing up her turkey. I mean really tossing up her turkey.”

  Pam tries to interrupt. “Okay, okay, but when did she—”

  “So then she comes on out and she says she’s gotta jet ’cause she’s got the flu. And then she goes to get her things and she just falls on over, I mean right on the ground—the carpet, thank the Lord. And I scream. But then she’s sitting up right away. She is sitting up and she is saying that she’s fine and just to get her water. But when you toss your turkey and fall, you’re not fine. So I say I’m going to call the hospital. And then she gets all mad at me. And I mean she is walking and talking now, but I don’t want her moving a vehicle in her state. So I tell her that, and I offer to take her home, but she said to call you.” Suck, slurp, clack. “So, I hope I did the right thing by calling you.”

  “Yes, yes, of course! Good that you called. Yes, thank you. We’re on our way. Bye,” Pam says, hanging up.

  “Okay.” Pam sets her phone down between us, flashing me an anxious smile. “She’s gonna be okay, okay?” Then her features scrunch all the way over to the right side of her face as she mutters, “Hmmm, what was I … ? Oh! About today—listen, Izzy, he’s a cutie, he really is, but please, just don’t let having a boyfriend mess with your grades, okay?”

  I choke out a feeble “Yeah, okay.”

  A boyfriend? Yeah, right. Oh God. There’s a Rap-Room-mental-snapshot-slide-show going through my head that I can’t turn off. What happened? Did I overact? Was it my fault, or was Blake being the asshole, like he said? I feel my face go hot. I can’t believe I kicked him in the groin like that. Most girls let guys who are interested in them feel their breasts and more. But not me. I panic and perform spontaneous karate on their genitals.

  Why did Blake have to get so aggressive all of a sudden? He did get aggressive, didn’t he? Or maybe that’s the way it should be, all … forceful, and Blake’s just not really good at … at foreplay yet. Or maybe he is, maybe he did it right. Maybe he did everything right, and I was just too much of a violent, diseased prude to enjoy it.

  But no, he ambushed me. He held me down! And then he totally ignored me when I told him to stop. If you like someone that much, I would think you’d try and be a little more attentive and notice it when you’re holding the person down. Or when they’re screaming stop.

  I have to get out of this car. I just want to get out of this car and see my mom.

  “Uh-huh, okay sweetie.” Pam’s on the phone again. “No, no, we’re here now. Are you sure? Maybe you should just continue back and— Okay, okay. No, don’t worry. Just drive safe. Okay? Okay … bye.” Pam drops her phone back into her lap and pulls up to Mrs. Burk’s massive brick-paved driveway. “That was Allissa,” she tells me. “She’s on her way.”

  We walk up the short set of stairs that leads to a porch, which leads to another set of stairs, which leads to a really unattractive giant brown door with what seems to be gold-plated antler door knockers. Wow, Mom really has her work cut out for her with this job.

  When the door opens, we rush toward Mom, who’s sitting at an equally unattractive, massive, log-brown kitchen table, reapplying her lip gloss. I have to smile.

  “Linda, are you sick? You throwing up?” Pam attacks the seat next to Mom, her kitty cat clock eyes swinging fast. “Should we take you to the hospital? What’s going on? Talk to me. You look pale.”

  Mrs. B. gallops over to us and sets a pitcher of iced tea down on the kitchen island. Her heavily lined, once red lips are a thin crease of worry. She gallops back to the cabinet for cups, her potpourri and barbecue sauce scent lingering over us.

  “Did she look this pale when she got here?” Pam calls after Mrs. Burk.

  “Well, she’s definitely got more color in her cheeks now.” Miss B. sets the cups down before continuing to circle nervously around her skull-bowl-covered kitchen island. The animal-themed brooches on her red blazer disco-light the cream-colored walls.

  “I’m fine. Much better now. Really, it’s fine, Pam.” Mom smiles, putting away her gloss.

  I stare at my mother, just sitting there in one of her flowy tunic tops, smiling at us as if we’ve come over to play mahjong. It’s like I want to hug her and yell at her at the same time. “We should go to the doctor,” I say.

  “No, no. No need.” Mom waves my suggestion away with both hands and then for the first time since Saturday sends me a smile. “I’m going to Pittsfield tomorrow to see Dr. Madson for testing anyway.”

  Mom looks at Pam’s face and then says, “Please. Please, don’t look so worried.”

  I chew my lip and stare down at Mrs. B.’s orange-and-lime-green kitchen tiles. “Your appointment’s tomorrow?” I ask, just as Pam says, “What do you mean testing? Are you eating? You never eat, Linda, you eat like a pigeon on a diet. It’s not good.”

  “I’m fine, Pam.” Mom shakes her head at her. “Honestly, I think I’m just really dehydrated today, that’s all. But I just drank some water and I feel a hundred times better.” Mom goes on talking about her reoccurring cold, and her sinus drainage again.

  I don’t say anything. I just watch her breezily make it seem like we’re the crazy ones to worry about her and her health. And then the corset is squeezing me again. Except this time it feels like there’s something filling up my throat too, like I’m breathing in sand. I ask Mrs. B. for the bathroom. I think I might pass out. No, I can’t pass out, because I can’t go to the hospital, because then they would find some of that Rap Room pillow fungus in my hair, and then they would tell Mom, and then she would find out I skipped study hall to do inappropriate and immoral things with Blake and turn into ice-cold Iris again. But maybe it would be worth it if it would get Mom to the hospital right now. Maybe while I’m in intensive care being treated for nasty pillow inhalation, somebody would take a look at Mom and realize that she needs urgent medical attention too.

  Mrs. B. points me upstairs. Her bathroom is bigger than my entire bedroom. I jump as my cell vibrates in my pocket. Blake. I throw my hands over my mouth and swallow hard, trying to keep the contents of my stomach from coming up. I stare at his name flashing across the screen before shoving the phone back in my pocket. I inhale through my sand corset as deeply as I can, and then try to exhale all my Blake thoughts out. I can’t think about it now. Something’s really wrong with Mom, and I shouldn’t be thinking about anything but her right now. Oh God, my chest. It’s like I’m breathing through wet cement. I lean back against the wall and try to take a deep breath—but I can’t. And the ugly moose painting in front of me looks blurry. Is it supposed to be blurry? Don’t black out, don’t black out, don’t black out and hit your head on the bathtub. I repeat this, sliding my body down the wall until I’m sitting on an animal fur bathmat. I lean forward. I drop my head to the fur. I stretch my arms out in front of me, looking, I’m sure, like Allissa does when she starts her yoga videos. It kind of works. I take a shallow breath, start to feel the air pushing through the sand and cement, expanding my ribs. Then another breath, and it goes deeper, moving all the way into my back. I don’t know how long I stay down there like that, taking deep breaths on the bathroom floor, but I pop right up as soon as I hear every square foot of Mrs. Burk’s ginormous house fill up with a familiarly unpleasant sound.

  • • •

  I follow the sound to the kitchen—a hiccup, followed by a gasp, followed by a whimper, and topped off with a sob. Oh no, Mount Allissa has erupted.

  “Wait, so [hiccup] you [gasp] are just [whimper, sob] dehydrated?”

  Allissa loses all control over her body when she cries. Her arms flap around as if she’s trying to take flight, and she takes these reall
y shallow breaths that make her shoulders move spastically up and down. Jenna says Allissa has a 1980s-aerobics-class kind of cry. The thought makes me smile, before I remember that Jenna isn’t speaking to me … Before I remember that my mom’s not just dehydrated.

  Mom attempts to calm Allissa down while gesturing for me to get all her stuff together. Pam thanks Mrs. B. for everything, and then we slowly make our way down the front stairs. Allissa and Pam are on either side of Mom, holding on to her arms as if she might blow away. I follow behind carrying the rest of Mom’s stuff, including a tiny blue trash can that Mrs. B. gave us in case Mom “tosses her turkey again in the car.”

  “Oh my, it got so dark out already,” Mom says, clicking her tongue and looking worriedly at Allissa. “Maybe I should drive?”

  “No, no, no,” Pam says. “Why don’t I just drive you all? Why should Allissa have to drive? You can both leave your cars here and tomorrow—”

  “I’m fine! I know how to drive!” Allissa says, jingling her car keys in the air. “My night vision has gotten a lot better.”

  I have to hand it to Allissa. She drives well under pressure tonight. So far we’ve managed to stay in one lane at a time. I’m not gripping the sides of the car, thinking every pair of headlights going by in the other direction could lead us to the white light. And she’s not even on her cell phone. My phone, on the other hand, is burning a hole through my pocket. I finally take it out and stare at it, dreading my messages.

  “Wow, I am exhausted.” Mom sighs, leaning her head against the window.

  “Well, you just need rest.” Allissa is squinting her eyes at the road in a way that makes Mom tighten her seat belt strap.

  And then Mom says it’s good Allissa’s back because she has a coupon for some kind of pedicure she forgot to give her yesterday, but I miss most of the paraffin-filled details because I’m listening to my voicemail from Blake. Or rather, my voicemail from Nate, Jacob, and Blake. A voicemail that makes me want to grab the mini trash can on the seat next to me and make good use of it.

  • • •

  My bedroom isn’t that big, but after twenty minutes of speed-walking from one end of it to the other, I’m out of breath. I retreat to my bed and I listen to the message again, probably for the tenth time in a row. Yes, that’s Nate Yube’s voice: Hi Izzy, it’s Blake … um, I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out tomorrow in the Rap Room, and talk! Ahahahahaha! And then that’s definitely Jacob cutting in: Izzy, I miss you and your— Then Nate cuts in again: Gimme the phone, gimme the phone. Izzy, I just want to say thank you for— But I don’t catch the rest because it’s all muffled, and then I hear Blake in the background: Gimme my freakin’ phone! And you can hear all this laughing, and I don’t know why I’m listening to it over and over again, because every time I hear it, I just feel worse than I did the time before.

  I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Blake told those guys about today. I mean, he obviously did. How else would they know? Oh God, how many of them know? And what exactly do they know? What did Blake tell them? Why would he do that?

  “Sweetie, you sleeping?” I hear Mom from outside my door.

  “No,” I say, checking my face in the mirror to make sure I don’t look upset, relieved I’m at least in sweetie territory again. “Come in.”

  “Hey, whatcha doing?” Mom leans against my doorframe in her pair of really loose-fitting pajama pants, sipping from an open bottle of Gatorade.

  “Nothing, homework.” I look up at her, taking a mental snapshot.

  “Allissa and I are going to watch a movie. I’m so tired, but I just can’t sleep. You wanna come down?” She puts down the bottle to button her cardigan over her pajama top.

  “Okay,” I say. “You feeling better?”

  “Yes, yes, much. I have to call Gretchen first thing tomorrow, though, and apologize again. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “You shouldn’t be embarrassed, Mom. You got sick. People … get sick.”

  “I know, I know, but I threw up in her bathroom, I fell down in her living room. I knocked over a vase of flowers.” She shakes her head, picking up the bottle and taking a small sip. “What a disaster of a day.”

  “Yeah …” I look up at her. “Mom, I really am sorry. I mean about Saturday. I didn’t mean to make things … worse for you. I’m sorry I did that. It was … really stupid.”

  “I’m sorry too, Izzy, I just …” She sighs. “I just worry about you guys so much, and it’s exhausting sometimes and—”

  “No, I know.” I nod. Mom gives me a small nod back and I watch as she concentrates on picking bits of lint off her cardigan with one hand. There’s not a chip off her manicure, her makeup is still perfectly applied, and not one hair is out of place. She’s such an expert at making herself look good on the outside that, even tonight, after everything that’s happened, it’s hard to believe that anything could be wrong on the inside.

  • • •

  The movie we end up watching is some really bad made-for-TV movie about an elementary school teacher who falls in love with this gas station attendant who ends up stealing the teacher’s identity and threatening to kill all her students. Just as the gas station attendant has broken into the teacher’s house for the second time, I start to nod off. When I wake up, the gas station attendant is locked up in jail and the teacher has fallen in love with the detective on the case. I see that Mom’s also asleep.

  “Hey,” I whisper to Allissa, who looks like she might be sleeping too.

  “Hey,” she whispers back, sitting up. “Should we wake her?”

  “No, let her sleep.” I cover Mom with a blanket.

  Once we’ve successfully tiptoed upstairs, I say, “Hey, Allissa?”

  “What’s up?” She stops. The sparkly circles under her eyes from where her glitter eye shadow ran down shine in the dim hallway light.

  “Maybe … maybe we should have taken Mom to see a doctor today.”

  “Well, isn’t it better if she waits and sees Dr. Madson tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I guess, but—”

  “But what?” Allissa sighs.

  “Well, okay, so you know I read a lot about PMP online, you know? And I didn’t think this particular problem … might actually be a problem, but then I saw something—read something on my computer that Mom had left— Well, I know the facts vary and, I mean, it’s a case by case, I know, but still … I think based on what I read that—”

  “Izzy, what are you talking about? I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m saying that it’s just that a lot of the people in Mom’s web groups, they’re not doing well. A lot of them aren’t doing well at all and now I think that—”

  “No.” Allissa puts up a hand. “I don’t want to know about any of those people, okay? Just keep all that medical research stuff to yourself.”

  “But Mom herself wrote—”

  “Mom’s fine, Izzy!”

  “I know she is. But what if—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She whips around and stalks down the hall to her room.

  “But we have to talk about this,” I say, following her.

  “No. You have to talk about this, because you like talking about this, because you know that Mom relies on you … to know all of this stuff, but I—”

  “What do you mean Mom relies on me?”

  “You know she does. Like this summer? She’s like, Oh you go and live on campus and take that job because Izzy’s here, Izzy’s going to be my caretaker.”

  “You wanted to stay home and take care of Mom last summer?”

  “No, no, I just wanted her … to … Just forget it.”

  “Allissa, I don’t think Mom chose one of us to— I think she just knew that you had—”

  “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Just … like … I just wish you would stop being so negative all the time. You’re such a constant downer.”

  “What? I’m a what?”

  “Have you ever thought th
at maybe what Mom doesn’t need right now is all of your blatant negative energy?”

  “Negative energy?” I repeat, feeling like I’ve been slapped. “What do you mean my bl—” But Allissa cuts me off, putting her hand up in front of my face as if she’s warding off my bad vibes.

  “Please, just … forget it. I’m going to bed.”

  And before I can say another word, she’s disappeared into her room, and I hear her bedroom door shut tight.

  • • •

  I wake up later in a sweat to the sound of Mom climbing the stairs. My hands ache and I realize they’re clutching my pillow, which I’m holding against my body for dear life. My dream is already sliding away, and I grasp at it, trying to remember.

  Mom and I are in the kitchen and I’m helping her peel potatoes. And everything’s fine, except when I glance over at her, I notice that her hands look bony. Her whole body looks bony, and she’s wearing this hideous neon tunic that’s like seven sizes too big. She turns to me and says, “Good job, Izzy,” and she squeezes my shoulders. Then my potato and peeler start melting down in my hands. The kitchen walls are closing in on us. The ceiling starts dripping down to the floor. Everything’s melting, and I’m wobbling where I stand on a single kitchen tile while Mom and her oversized neon tunic float off in the other direction. I try to grip the countertop to steady myself, but everything keeps moving and melting and Mom’s floating farther and farther away. I attempt to jump off my tile toward her, but my legs melt down into my feet. And the worst part is that Mom doesn’t seem to care, she’s just shrugging her shoulders as she floats away.

  I sit up in bed and grab my sketchbook from my dresser, needing to do something physical, to move that mental snapshot of floating Mom out of my head somehow, to get rid of my negative energy.

  I once read this article on some website about the power of positive thinking and how it relates to physical illness. There was this therapist/doctor/guru guy, I forget his name, and he said that water molecules are super-sensitive to our emotions, and so because our bodies are made up of so much water, negative thoughts can make us sick, even negative thoughts we get from other people.