by Steve Toltz
Everyone in the hall applauded. The townspeople regarded the box as a sort of oracle; because the suggestion didn’t come directly out of the mouths of our neighbors but was on paper and pulled ceremoniously from the box and read in the authoritarian tone of Jim Brock, the words were taken more seriously than they deserved, and were often followed with a frightening religious obedience.
“It’s not my fault it’s a titanic waste of effort raising sons under strict moral guidelines when children are so heavily influenced by their peers,” my father said that night over dinner. “One wrong friend and your kid could be knocked off balance for good.”
We all sat listening to him with trepidation, watching his thoughts whirl around his head like dust in the wind.
The next day he turned up at the playground at lunchtime. Both Terry and I ran for cover, but he wasn’t looking for us. Notebook in his lap, he sat on the swings and watched the children play; he was making a list of young boys he thought suitable to befriend his sons. Of course the children must have thought he was insane (these were the days before they would have simply assumed him a pedophile), but watching his fervent efforts to put me and Terry on the straight-and-narrow made me pity and admire him in equal measure. Every now and then he’d call over a boy and have a chat with him, and I remember being secretly impressed by his commitment to what was a seriously weird idea.
Who knows what they talked about during these informal interviews, but after a week my father’s list contained fifteen potentials: fine, upstanding children from good families. He presented us the results of his intensive research. “These are suitable friends,” he said. “Go out and befriend them.”
I told him I couldn’t make a friend out of plasticine.
“Don’t tell me that,” my father barked. “I know what making friends is about. You just go up and talk to them.”
He wouldn’t let up. He wanted updates. He wanted results. He wanted to see lifelong friendships parade before his eyes, and that was an order! Finally Terry had his gang “persuade” a couple of unsuspecting kids from the list to come over and hang out in the backyard after school. They came, shaking all afternoon, and for a while my father was placated.
But the suggestion box wasn’t. Eyes all over the town could see Terry carrying on with Bruno and Dave as before.
The next suggestion that came was this: I suggest that while his parents are not religious, Terry could use some spiritual guidance. It isn’t too late. Terry can still be reformed.
Once again my father was furious, though strangely obedient. This was to be the pattern, and as the quantity of the suggestions about Terry’s errant behavior increased and our family became a constant object of attention and scrutiny, my father cursed both the box and the “serpent” who put it there, but still he obeyed.
After arriving home from the town hall, my father argued with my mother. She wanted a rabbi to come talk to Terry. He thought a priest would do the job better. In the end my mother won out. A rabbi came over to the house and talked to Terry about violence. Rabbis know a lot about violence because they work for a deity who is famous for his wrath. Problem is, Jews don’t believe in hell, so there isn’t the same readily accessible chamber of fear the Catholics have up their sleeve to poison the nervous system of their youth. You can’t turn to a young Jewish boy and say, “You see that pit of fire? That’s where you’re going.” You have to tell him stories of the vengeance of the Almighty and hope he gets the hint.
Terry didn’t, and there were more suggestions to come, but don’t think the box was aimed only at my brother. One Monday night in the middle of summer, my own name was mentioned.
Someone should tell young Martin Dean that it’s rude to stare, the suggestion began, inspiring the whole room to burst into applause. He’s a grumpy boy who unnerves everyone by glaring at them. And he doesn’t give Caroline Potts a moment’s peace. I tell you, I’m no stranger to humiliation, but nothing has ever surpassed that mortifying moment.
A month later another Dean family suggestion was drawn from the box, this time aimed at, of all people, my mother.
Mrs. Dean should stop wasting our time with lengthy justifications as to why her husband and children are no-hopers. Terry isn’t just “wild,” he’s a degenerate. Martin doesn’t “march to his own drum,” he’s a sociopath, and their father hasn’t got “a healthy imagination,” he’s a bald-faced liar.
There’s no doubt about it. Our family was a popular target, and the townspeople really seemed to have it in for Terry. My mother became frightened for him, and I became frightened of her fear. Her fear was terrifying. She would sit on Terry’s bed and whisper “I love you” as he slept, from midnight until dawn, as though trying to alter his behavior subconsciously, before it was altered for him. She could see that the townspeople took her son’s reformation as one of their top priorities; he had been their number-one pride and was now their number one disappointment, and when it was obvious that Terry was continuing to run around with the gang, stealing and fighting, another suggestion was offered to tackle the problem: I suggest the renegade Terry Dean be taken up to the prison on the hill to talk to one of the inmates and hear the horror of the life inside. Maybe scare tactics will work.
For safety, my father forced me along too, in case I took it into my head to follow my brother into a life of crime. We moved up the hill toward the prison, our real school, on the dirt road that came down the hill like an open wound.
It was arranged for us to meet the worst criminal in the prison. His name was Vincent White. He’d had a bad time inside: stabbed seven times with a shiv, face sliced open, blinded in one eye and left with a lip that dangled from his face like a label you just want to tug off. The three of us sat down in front of him in the visitors’ room. Terry had met Vincent once before, with Harry. “Bit surprised you want to see me,” Vincent said straightaway. “You and Harry having maritals?” Terry shook his head imperceptibly, trying to signal him, but Vincent’s one functioning eye was darting around the room, surveying my father. “Who’s this you got with you? This your old man?”
My father dragged us out of the prison as if it were on fire, and from that day on the Dean boys were forbidden to visit anyone inside. I tried to return once or twice to see Harry, but I was knocked back. It was a crushing blow. Now more than ever, I desperately needed his advice. I knew things were building to a climax that was obviously not going to go down in our favor. Maybe if I’d had the presence of mind, I’d have encouraged my brother to leave town when, soon after the prison incident, he had an opportunity to escape this awful mess I’d created.
It was a Friday afternoon, and Bruno and Dave drove up in a stolen Jeep loaded with their possessions and also other people’s possessions. They honked the horn. Terry and I went out to meet them.
“Come on, mate, we’re getting out of this shitty town,” Dave called out to Terry.
“I’m not going.”
“Why?”
“I’m just not.”
“You pussy!”
“You’ll never fuck her, you know,” Bruno said.
Terry didn’t say anything to that.
Bruno and Dave revved the car gratuitously before screeching off. We watched them disappear. I was in awe at how, after all the pain and heartache and drama and anxiety people cause, they so unceremoniously leave your life. Terry looked on the empty road without emotion.
“Who won’t you fuck?” I asked him.
“No one,” he said.
“Me neither.”
The next town hall meeting was on the Monday, and we were all dreading it. We knew the oracle had one more suggestion for Terry Dean. As we entered, we avoided the eyes of all those unfriendly faces, which looked to have experienced a fit of rage in childhood, then harnessed it for their entire lives. They cleared a space for us as we moved through. Four seats were left in the front, and my parents and I took three of them. Terry had stayed at home, sensibly boycotting the proceedings. I sat on the uncomforta
ble wooden chair with my eyes half closed, peering beneath my eyelids at a photograph on the wall of the Queen on her twenty-first birthday. She looked to be in a state of dread too. The Queen and I waited impatiently as we listened to the other suggestions. They held Terry’s off until last. Then it came.
I suggest Terry Dean be taken to Portland Mental Institution and be treated by a team of psychiatrists for his violent, antisocial behavior.
I hurried out of the hall into the unexpected brightness of the evening. The night sky was lit by a huge moon, not full so much as fat, hovering above deserted streets. My footsteps were the only sound in town, other than the barking of a dog that followed me for a while, excited by my panic. I didn’t stop running until I reached the house—no, I didn’t stop there. I charged through the front door and barreled down the hall into our bedroom. Terry was sitting on the bed reading.
“You have to get out of here!” I shouted. I found a sports bag and threw his clothes into it. “They’re coming! They’re going to put you in a mental institution!”
Terry looked up at me quietly. He said, “Stupid bastards. Was Caroline there tonight?”
“Yes, she was, but—”
I heard footsteps tearing down the hallway. “Hide!” I whispered. Terry didn’t move. The footsteps were almost at the door. “Too late!” I shouted uselessly. The bedroom door swung open and Caroline ran in.
“You have to get out of here!” she shouted.
Terry gazed at her with bright eyes. That threw her off balance. They stared at each other, unmoving, looking like strangely arranged mannequins. I was utterly isolated from the energy in the room. This was a shock to me. Caroline and Terry had a thing for each other? When did this happen? I resisted a strong impulse to pluck out my eye and show it to them.
“I’m helping him pack,” I said, breaking the moment. My own voice was unrecognizable. Caroline liked Terry, maybe even loved him. I was furious! I felt drenched by all the world’s rain. I coughed impatiently. No one looked at me, or gave any hint that I was among them.
She sat on the edge of his bed and drummed her fingers on the blankets. “You have to leave,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
I looked to Caroline to see what her response would be. “I can’t go,” she said finally. “But I’ll visit you.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Sydney. Go to Sydney.”
“And hurry up about it!” I shouted so loudly that we didn’t hear the second round of footsteps.
Two men came in, eager early members of a lynch mob. They took on the role of a strong-arm taxi service. Terry put up a futile struggle while more people filed into our house, all with hostile, determined faces. They dragged him outside, his face bled white in the moonlight.
Caroline didn’t cry but held her hand over her mouth in a twenty-minute gasp while I was in a frenzy, screaming myself hoarse at my parents, who stood helplessly by.
“What are you doing? Don’t let them take him!”
My mother and father cowered like frightened dogs. They were afraid of going against the oracle’s command and the unstoppable will of the townspeople. Public opinion had them on the back foot.
My father said, “It’s for the best. He’s unbalanced. They know how to fix him.”
He said this as he signed the necessary paperwork and my mother looked on, resigned. Both wore obstinate grimaces you couldn’t have removed with a hammer.
“He doesn’t need fixing! I think he’s already fixed! He’s in love!”
No one listened to me. Caroline and I stood together as they dragged Terry away to a mental asylum. I looked at my parents incredulously, at their inexorably tepid souls. All I could do was uselessly shake a clenched fist and think how people are so eager to become slaves it’s unbelievable. Christ. Sometimes they throw off their freedom so quickly, you’d think it was burning them.
Transcendence
It’s not that insanity is contagious, although human history is littered with tales of mass hysteria—like the time everyone in the Western world was wearing white loafers with no socks—but as soon as Terry disappeared into the crazy house, our own house became a place of darkness as well, starting with my father, who came to his senses a week later and did everything in his power to spring Terry from the hospital, only to discover that once you put someone under forced psychiatric care, the administrators take that care as seriously as the money the government pays them to do the caring. My little brother was judged to be a danger to himself and others—the others mostly being the hospital staff he fought to break himself out. My father petitioned the courts and consulted numerous lawyers but soon realized he’d lost his son in a tangle of red tape. He was stuck. As a result, he started drinking more and more, and though my mother and I tried to slow the momentum of his downward spiral, you can’t stop someone from taking the role of alcoholic father simply by telling them it’s a cliché. Twice in the months following Terry’s internment he lost his temper and hit my mother, knocking her to the floor, but you can no more easily wean a man off the part of Wife Beater than you can convince a woman to flee her own home by assuring her she has Battered Wife Syndrome. It just doesn’t do any good.
Like my father, my mother oscillated between madness and sadness. A couple of nights after Terry was taken away, I was preparing for bed and said aloud, “Maybe I won’t brush my teeth. Why should I? Fuck teeth. I’m sick of teeth. I’m sick of my teeth. I’m sick of other people’s teeth. Teeth are a burden, and I’m sick of polishing them every night like they’re the royal jewels.” When I threw my toothbrush down in disgust, I saw a shapely shadow outside the bathroom. “Hello?” I said to the shadow. My mother came into the room and stood behind me. We looked at each other in the bathroom mirror.
“You talk to yourself,” she said, placing her hand on my forehead. “Do you have a temperature?”
“No.”
“A little warm,” she said.
“I’m a mammal,” I mumbled. “That’s how we are.”
“I’m going to the pharmacy, get you some medicine,” she said.
“But I’m not sick.”
“You won’t be if you catch it early.”
“Catch what early?” I asked, examining her sad face. My mother’s reaction to having put her son away in a mental asylum was to become a maniac for my welfare. It didn’t happen gradually but all at once, when I found I couldn’t pass her on the stairs without her crushing me in an embrace. Nor could I leave the house without her buttoning up my jacket to the top, and when that still left a little expanse of neck exposed to the elements, she sewed an extra button on so I would be always covered to the lower lip.
She went to the city almost every day to visit Terry and always came home with good news that somehow sounded bad.
“He’s doing a little better,” she said in a distraught voice.
I soon discovered these were nothing but lies. I had been forbidden to go to the hospital because it was assumed that my weak psyche wasn’t up to a battering. But Terry was my brother, so one morning I went through all the motions of a boy preparing for school, and when the bus thundered by I hid behind a thorny bush I later burned for pricking me. Then I made my way to the asylum by hitching a ride with a refrigerator repairman who laughed snidely the whole way about people who don’t defrost.
Seeing my brother was a shock. His smile was a little too wide, his hair unkempt, his eyes vague, his skin pale. They made him wear a hospital gown so he might remember at all times that he was too unstable for a zipper or button-up fly. Only when he joked about the electricity bills for his shock therapy was I convinced that this experience wasn’t going to destroy him. We ate lunch together in a surprisingly cozy room filled with potted plants and with a large picture window that had the perfect view of a teenager with a persecution mania.
Terry turned dark in reference to the suggestion box. “What fucking tit put that there, I’d like to know,” he growled.
At the end of the visit he told me that he had not had one visit from our mother and that while he wasn’t blaming her, he thought mothers were supposed to be better than that.
When I arrived home, she was in the backyard. It had rained all afternoon, and I saw she had her shoes off and was digging her toes in the mud. She urged me to do the same because cold mud oozing through toes is a pleasure greater than anyone could imagine. She was not lying.
“Where are you going every day?” I asked.
“To visit Terry.”
“I saw him today. He said he hasn’t seen you.”
She said nothing and squelched her feet as deep in mud as they would go. I did the same. A bell rang out. We both looked up at the prison and watched it a long time, as though the sound had woven a visible path across the sky. Life up there was regulated by bells that could be heard inside every house in town. This bell signified it was time for prisoners’ afternoon exercise. There would be another bell shortly to stop it.
“You can’t tell your father.”
“Tell him what?”
“That I’ve been to the hospital.”
“Terry said you haven’t.”
“No, a regular hospital.”
“Why?”
“I think I’ve got something.”
“What?”
In the silence that followed, her eyes fell to her hands. They were white wrinkled things with blue veins the width of telephone cords. She let out a little gasp. “I have my mother’s hands!” she said suddenly with surprise and disgust, as if her mother’s hands hadn’t actually been hands but hand-shaped lumps of shit.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“I have cancer,” she said.
When I opened my mouth, the wrong words came out. Practical words, none of the words I really wanted to say.
“Is it something they can take out with a sharp knife?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“How long have you got?”
“I don’t know.”
It was a dreadful moment that got more dreadful with every passing second. But hadn’t we had this conversation before? I felt a strange sort of déjà vu. Not the type where you feel as though you’ve already experienced an event, but the feeling that you’ve already experienced the déjà vu about the event.
