Raveling

by Peter Moore Smith

  Without looking up from his desk, Dr. Lennox said, as if sensing her nervousness, as if enjoying it, “What’s going on, Kate?” She could see that he was smiling, but she could also see that he didn’t mean it.

  “I think we should talk about Pilot Airie.” She entered the psychiatrist’s office. It contained the same kind of ugly brown furniture as Katherine’s. For some reason, here it looked appropriate.

  “Now?” Dr. Lennox said, irritated.

  “He’s experiencing fairly severe paranoia,” Katherine said, “so I’m wondering about the medication you prescribed. Perhaps—”

  His pen stopped moving. “Perhaps I should increase the dosage?” the doctor asked, his smile bigger than ever.

  “I think it might help.”

  “I’ll take another look at him this afternoon.” Dr. Lennox still had not looked at her directly.

  When he would see me, he would stare at my face for a long time, just looking. And my face would empty out like an upside-down pitcher pouring its contents onto the ground. Then Dr. Lennox would turn back to his desk, writing something, that faint sarcastic smile of his never leaving his lips, his hair quivering like a beehive.

  “Thank you.” Katherine stepped back out of his office and into the hallway. She exhaled. What was wrong with her?

  From her cubicle, Elizabeth smiled warmly. “Is everything okay, Katherine? Something I can do?”

  “No,” Katherine said. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just worried about a patient.”

  “Pilot Airie?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I could tell,” Elizabeth said, and her face was soft. “I could just tell.”

  Katherine walked over to Elizabeth, her heels clicking, saying, “What do you mean?” There was something wrong here, Katherine could feel it. Something wasn’t right.

  My own paranoia was infecting Katherine, perhaps. Like it was seeping through.

  Or maybe it was guilt about Eric.

  “He’s different from the other patients, that’s all.” Unlike Dr. Lennox’s, Elizabeth’s eyes met Katherine’s exactly, unblinking. “Different,” she repeated, “that’s all.” And her expression was genuine.

  Katherine felt frustrated. She blinked her eyes several times back at Elizabeth, deliberately holding her attention as she hadn’t been able to do with Dr. Lennox. “He has schizophrenia,” she said. “We don’t have any other patients like that here. And I don’t have much experience with… people like him.”

  “I was reading about it,” Elizabeth said, as if to ask a question. She turned her wide face away, indicating a college psychology textbook lying open on her desk. “Is he hearing voices?”

  “He was,” Katherine told her. “But now that he’s on medication he seems better. He’s still a bit paranoid, though—more than a bit, really—and that’s why I was talking to Dr. Lennox.”

  The red light on Elizabeth’s telephone lit up next to Katherine’s name. Elizabeth picked up, her forefinger indicating that Katherine should wait. “East Meadow Psychiatric In-Patient Clinic,” she said into the phone. “Katherine DeQuincey-Joy’s office. Can I help you?” She waited a moment, then said, “Please hold.” She looked at Katherine. “It’s his mother.”

  “Pilot’s?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  Katherine ran into her office. “Mrs. Airie?” she said into the phone.

  “Hello, Miss DeQuincey-Joy.”

  “You can call me Katherine,” Katherine said. “Please.”

  “Thank you,” my mother said. “I was calling about Pilot.”

  “Of course. I’m glad you called. I saw him just this morning.

  “Is he all right?” Her voice was hurried, concerned.

  “Well,” Katherine said, “the medication is helping tone down a lot of his symptoms. But I’m afraid he’s—”

  “Is he still hearing voices?”

  “I don’t think so, Mrs. Airie, no. He’s—”

  “That’s good.”

  “—still experiencing some delusional—”

  “Like what?”

  “He thinks, he believes his brother, he thinks your son Eric is trying to kill him,” Katherine said as evenly as she could. “And Mrs. Airie, I’m sorry I have to ask you this, but are you well? I mean, Pilot believes you have a, a brain tumor.”

  “Oh.” It was pained. I could see my mother touching her temple, her skinny finger caressing that blue-purple vein.

  “Is that—”

  “I doubt very seriously it’s a brain tumor,” Hannah said, almost complaining, virtually whining. “I’ve been experiencing some kind of trouble with my optical nerve. There has been some difficulty diagnosing why, that’s all.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m seeing ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Double images, like on television.”

  Katherine looked out the window to the highway, at the woods beyond it. “I understand. It seems that Pilot has taken this to mean, perhaps to mean more than it should.”

  “Yes.”

  “He also seems to think Eric is somehow responsible.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous, Mrs. Airie.” Katherine walked around her desk and sat down. “Pilot is suffering from the symptoms of schizophrenia, and he’s enlarging and exaggerating some of his feelings unnaturally.” Katherine wasn’t sure if she believed it herself. “I’m sorry to say it’s to be expected at this point. I’ve only just spoken to Dr. Lennox a few minutes ago, and I recommended that he increase the dosage of—”

  “That’s good,” my mother said, not interested in how much medication I was on. “Have you spoken to Eric?”

  “Not today,” Katherine said. She closed her eyes, thinking, Last night I did, last night I spoke to Eric. She felt her skin growing warm, her pulse quickening.

  He pulled up outside our house and saw me watching him through the window. Cleveland got out of the car—an old Chevy even then—and instead of walking across the lawn to our front door, he waved to me. I stood inside the window and pointed to my chest. The policeman smiled and waved again, telegraphing that I should come outside.

  It had been two weeks.

  “Pilot,” he said when I got close enough.

  I looked at his face.

  “I just want you to know,” he said, “that if you ever want to talk to me about something, about something maybe you’re afraid to tell anybody else, well… well, you just go ahead and give me a call.”

  It seems to me I could see individual blades of grass on the lawn across the street. I could hear particular wheels against the pavement on the highway. “Okay,” I said.

  “Anytime,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be now. Doesn’t have to be anytime soon.” He smiled.

  “Okay,” I said again.

  “Now,” he said, “I’ll go in and talk to your parents.”

  “I’m really sorry,” my brother said. “I guess you were expecting someone else.” He stood in Katherine’s concrete hallway with his hands in his pockets, his face like a begging dog. This was not his customary face.

  “I just ordered a pizza.” Katherine stood in the doorway of her apartment clutching a twenty-dollar bill. “I thought you were—”

  “—the pizza guy, obviously. I’m really, really sorry. I just, well, I was going to call you, but—”

  With her other hand she held together her old blue terry-cloth robe, stained from years of wear. The air between them was like the moment before a concert, everyone taking their seats. So Katherine gave my brother a look of forgiveness, her green eyes softening. “Why don’t you come in, anyway?” she said. “Even if you’re not the pizza guy.”

  “Thanks.” Eric walked into the apartment, looking everywhere, taking everything in.

  “You have an unlistened-to message.” He indicated the answering machine, the red light-emitting-diode number blinking steadily.

  “Michele, my sister.”

  “H
ow do you know?”

  “I was here when she left it. I didn’t pick up.”

  He nodded. “Younger or—”

  “Younger,” Katherine said.

  “Are you close?”

  “Not really.” Katherine walked across the room. “It’s small,” she said, meaning the apartment. “And not—” She searched for the right word.

  “Decorated?” Eric offered.

  “Not decorated,” she said with a laugh. “That’s it.”

  Eric removed his hands from his pockets. “I went by your office and Elizabeth told me you had just left for the day. I looked up your address in the hospital personnel directory. I would have called, but I figured you’d be on your—”

  “I was just changing.” Katherine gestured toward her bedroom. “Do you mind if I—”

  “No, please,” Eric told her. “Go ahead and do what you were doing. I’m embarrassed now. I guess I didn’t—”

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” Katherine said. “You wanted to talk about Pilot, right?”

  Eric was silent, meaning yes, she thought. Or meaning something else. She suddenly felt extremely ugly.

  “Let me throw some jeans on.” She turned her face away. “And I’ll be right back.” Katherine went into the tiny bedroom and located a pair of faded blue jeans in a pile of dirty clothes. Did she have a blouse that wasn’t wrinkled? A sweater? Anything? Jesus Christ, what the hell was he doing here? She threw her robe off as quickly as possible and—to hell with underwear—pulled the jeans on. Then she slipped her arms into the least dirty white cotton blouse. It wasn’t too wrinkled, she hoped. She knew she had worn it at least once. Buttoning, she opened the bedroom door and slipped quickly into the bathroom, shouting, “One more minute.”

  “Take your time,” he called back.

  The bathroom light had broken her first week here, and only one bulb above the mirror burned. Katherine had been keeping the door open whenever she used it. But now she had to squint in the dim illumination. Was her makeup all right? Fuck it, she thought. She was hideous anyway. Who cares? She left the bathroom and saw my brother at the door paying the Pizza Hut guy.

  He turned around. “Good news. Your pizza’s here.”

  “Let me pay you for that,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Well,” Katherine sighed, “you can share it with me, at least.”

  “I really apologize again for just dropping in out of the blue,” Eric said, closing the door and handing her the pizza box. “Obviously“—he waved his hand around—“you haven’t even properly moved in yet. It was rude of me to—”

  “Stop apologizing.” Katherine rolled her eyes, sinking to the floor. “Have a slice of pizza.” She folded her legs. “No chairs,” she said. “But the floor’s clean.” She patted the space beside her. “Sort of.”

  Eric sank down, too, legs bending. Katherine wondered how long it had been since he had sat like this.

  “I spoke to my mother,” he said seriously. He wore a dark brown suit today, the perfect color and weight for the weather. It had volumes of fabric that draped across his body like a flag. His tie was goldenrod. Katherine noticed the monogram on his Egyptian cotton shirt.

  “Yes.”

  “She told me that you felt Pilot still had some symptoms.”

  Katherine held a slice of pizza in front of her mouth. “He’s no longer hearing voices, he says, which is very good, and it means he’s responding well to the medication. However, he’s—how shall I put this?” She placed the slice of pizza on top of the pizza box. “Pilot’s suffering from paranoia. It’s not uncommon, I’m sure you know. But it means he may need more medication, or perhaps if he doesn’t respond to that, he’ll require some other antipsychotic.” She tried to appear as calm as possible about this, as if it meant nothing. She picked up the slice again.

  My brother seemed to let this sink in before asking, “Did he say, did Pilot tell you what his paranoia was about?”

  “There are a couple of things,” she answered, taking a small bite and swallowing. “He’s worried that your mother has a brain tumor that is affecting her eyesight somehow—”

  “Our mother is having problems with her eyes, that’s all.”

  “She told me.” She said this without pausing: “Pilot’s also convinced that you killed your sister.”

  Eric put his slice of pizza back into the box. “Oh, shit.”

  “And that you’re going to kill him, too.” She was about to take another bite. “Or something like that. It’s not entirely clear to me at this point.”

  He shook his head. “Well—”

  “Eric.” She put the pizza down again. “These kinds of delusions are very, very common in schizophrenia, and they’re what we call positive symptoms. In other words, they’re in addition to what’s normal behavior. In most cases, medication can eliminate positive symptoms. He’s just very confused, that’s all.”

  Eric was nodding like he knew all this. “It’s not the first time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pilot has accused me of, of things before.”

  “Of murdering your sister?”

  “Of things like that,” he said. “Yes.”

  But this wasn’t true. I had never accused my brother of anything. In fact, I have spent my life protecting him.

  “Whatever’s going on in Pilot’s brain right now,” Katherine said, “is extremely disordered and confusing, especially to him. He’s more or less living in a completely different reality than we are. He also believes, for instance, that the woods tried to swallow him.” She laughed a little at this. “None of these things are even remotely rational.”

  Eric picked up his pizza slice again. “I heard about that one,” he said grimly. “About the woods, I mean.”

  “I’m still trying to see if there was a trigger,” Katherine said. “Is your mother’s optical problem—”

  “I looked at her myself,” Eric said. “It’s a mystery, if you want to know the truth. For some reason, she’s seeing ghostlike images.”

  “But she doesn’t have a serious—”

  Eric gestured with his pizza. “She doesn’t have cancer. I mean, she hasn’t been in for an MRI yet, but it seems more like an optical-nerve problem to me, a virus, at the very worst. What upsets me,” Eric said, “is that my own brother—that he’s afraid of me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m a doctor,” he said, “but I still can’t think like one when it comes to him.” His tone was almost argumentative. His face avoidant, eyes everywhere—all over the room—but on Katherine.

  “It’s hard.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I’d like him to cycle through some more medication before I ask him too many questions. Counseling is pretty limited with patients like Pilot. Well, you know about that. There’s no need for me to probe too deeply. I’m just looking for—”

  “Are you using cognitive techniques?”

  “Sort of.” Katherine shrugged. “I use whatever works. I just want to make sure he understands that he’s sick, and that he can help himself get better.”

  “Sounds like a good approach.” Eric had eaten only one slice. “Thanks for the pizza.” He didn’t even finish the crust.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you something better.”

  “Please, I shouldn’t have—”

  “Stop apologizing.”

  He smiled and nodded. “Sorry.”

  “Your father,” Katherine said, “is he—”

  “I can’t get ahold of him right now. He’s flying around somewhere. He goes flying, him and Patricia, his girlfriend, all over Florida, out to the Caribbean.”

  Our father was somewhere in the clouds above us, at that moment. I was in the clinic listening to the whir of a little airplane engine way, way up in the sky. In the bed next to me, a man named Harrison was talking to himself, pleading for someone’s forgiveness.
>
  “He sounds like an interesting person,” Katherine said about our father.

  “He’s an asshole.”

  Katherine got up from the floor with the pizza box in one hand and carried it to the little faux-marble kitchen counter. “I don’t have anything to drink,” she announced. “Nothing but water.”

  “There’s a nice place nearby,” Eric said. “Would you—”

  “Tonight I think I should stay in,” Katherine said, thinking she would have to stop this here, she would have to maintain professional standards of behavior.

  “But what about Friday?”

  “Friday….”

  “Dinner?”

  Why was this so uncomfortable? She felt her heart beating. Why did he have to be so handsome?

  She gave in, more to herself than to him. “Okay.”

  Eric rose from the floor. “I won’t apologize again,” he said. “I’ll just leave.” He extended his hand, and this time Katherine took it without worrying if he saw hers. He had seen her in her bathrobe and had still asked her out. What difference were bloody fingertips going to make?

  She closed the door behind my brother and stood still for a moment, hand resting on the cold doorknob. She hadn’t flirted this time, at least. At least she had seemed relatively professional—hadn’t she? Relieved, she went back to the pizza and finished it off. She’d skipped lunch today, as usual, squeezing in more time for her clients. She’d have to give me some time, she thought, a few days at least, before we spoke again. She wondered if there was much hope for a real recovery. Despite the new medications, schizophrenia tended to be a degenerative disease. These people—we—could maintain control, she knew, but most of us never functioned quite normally after a major episode.

  She went into her dark, little bathroom and ran water into the tub. While it was filling, she stood in front of the sink and removed her makeup. She brushed her teeth. She put her hair in a towel. She thought of me. She thought of how much Eric was concerned.

  Katherine thought of her sister, Michele, her long thin body, those soft eyes.