Notes on a Banana

by David Leite

  I carefully heated the pan until a drop of water skittered across its surface. I greased the interior with a paper towel dabbed in butter and poured in the batter, cranking my arm, trying to make a perfect circle. Usually the crêpes looked more like giant eyelashes or great, self-important commas. What I lacked in elegance, I made up for in persistence. Eventually I made what I proclaimed were the finest crêpes known to man: round, thin, with the crispest filigreed edges. Bridget mastered the orange-almond salad. After particularly draining arguments, it was our peace meal.

  And that’s how I arrived at camp with a sizable paunch, and a plan.

  “Lose weight? That’ll be mighty impossible here at Birch Grove,” the orientation counselor said with far too much cheerfulness in his voice on our first day. “The food is just too darn good.” He was so relentlessly cheery, I half expected sunshine to shoot out of his ass when he bent over to fish out our paperwork.

  My Man Plan was a regimen of exercise, dieting, education, and self-reflection to get myself in the best physical, mental, and emotional shape to return to school and become the biggest star of the stage and screen the eighties ever saw. “Move over, Tim Hutton and Sean Penn,” I’d whisper while running laps on the track, “Joshua David Tealson is here.” That was my carefully chosen name, which, according to my study of numerology, would assure me great fame and fortune.

  The plan consisted of four parts:

  1.) Read plays. I had photocopied a bunch before leaving CMU. Ponderous things like The Iceman Cometh, Death of a Salesman, Buried Child. After running through those, I read anything I could find: postcards the kids got, the camp’s newsletters, mosquito-repellent instructions. It didn’t matter. The goal was to parse meaning from the words, as any brilliant actor does.

  2.) Write in my journal every night—without exception. After the kids went to bed, I wrung out every last hope. I was certain that by putting it down on paper, I was making it manifest. I was building my new life one paragraph at a time. That’s what all those self-help gurus were telling us in their books.

  3.) Lose weight. This was a bitch. I’d dropped about twenty pounds at CMU, mostly through deprivation and walking to and from school every day, but gained back about ten in New York. I wasn’t fat, exactly. Squidgy might’ve described me better, but I didn’t have the sharp jaw or flat stomach that were clearly the price of entry to stardom and leading-man roles. I vowed to reach an all-time low of 170 pounds. My secret goal was to be 169 pounds. Just having that numeral six in the mix gave me a thrill. No one would be able to detect a one-pound difference, and I’d never tell, but I’d always have the delicious knowledge that I had bent my body to my will.

  In the three weeks I’d been at Birch Grove, life had been planed down to all square angles: exact and perpendicular. Nothing, including my determination, was off, even by a degree. S’mores, the expected birthday cakes, and ice-cream socials didn’t distract—they didn’t even register. My attention was locked on the looks of surprise and thinly veiled jealousy I knew I’d see when I returned as a sophomore. I was eating about one thousand calories a day and trying to burn off five hundred. I was physically weak, but I considered that a badge of honor. My skin felt like raw silk, a sure sign that I wasn’t carrying any excessive water weight. My jeans from spring were now knocked out at the knees, and so loose they threatened to drop off me if I didn’t wear a belt, which I never wore. I would have cut a length of rope and looped it through my pants if it didn’t smack of Elly May from The Beverly Hillbillies. That was a secondary benefit of my Plan: I’d soon be dressing sharp. Successful men didn’t dress like hobos. They wore corduroy jackets with suede patches on the elbows, argyle sweaters, Calvin Klein white briefs, fabric belts, and penny loafers with real pennies in them. (Or if they could pull it off: dimes.)

  And finally the last, and most important, part of my Plan:

  4.) Be honest. The hardest step, and one that I could only manage while running. There was something about the metronomic thwap of my sneakers on the track at five-thirty in the morning, before a lodge full of kids came barreling at me, that allowed me to square with my most private thoughts.

  As long as I was in Bridget’s presence, I could connect the dots of my life. Buoyed by her intelligence and humor, I believed anything was possible: becoming straight; having sex, which at this point was still off the table; starting a family. She captured my attention and held it, like a glinting, sparkly object, and it was dazzling. But then she’d leave, and it was as if I would shake my head, breaking some sort of spell. In New York, she wouldn’t even be three blocks behind me on her way home when it started. My feelings for her suddenly seemed trumped up and suspect, and I was left wondering what the hell I was doing. Out of her orbit, I basked in the attention of men. Because of my weight loss, I was suddenly the object of their affection—at the casting agency, among Ron’s friends, in public. I thrilled to furtive smiles, lingering looks, handshakes that gripped a second or two longer than appropriate. The only difference was that while what I felt toward her was true, what I experienced with men was right.

  On the last lap, I could always smell the deep notes of caramel from warm maple syrup and the nuttiness of butter browning, wafting down from the cafeteria. My stomach protested, as it always did those days, but I ignored it. “Deprivation Before Adulation” was my mantra. I pumped my fists in the air like Rocky and made my way to the arts lodge. The closer I got, the more that hope would once again eclipse reality, and I would cast myself into the TV-movie version of me: tall, thin, heterosexual, soon-to-be father of two boys. In other words, I acted.

  Wake up, David!”

  I bolted upright. It took a few long, heart-banging seconds to orient myself. I patted around for my glasses and looked at my watch. It was after midnight.

  “Get up! Come on!”

  “Shhh!” I was afraid the three girls yanking at me would wake up the dozen or so boys scattered across the floor in their sleeping bags.

  After another month of sixteen-to-eighteen-hour days with only two days off, Bridget and I had walked into the camp’s administration office and called it quits. The counselor wasn’t so sunny this time. I was wiped out after a year at CMU, but tacking on the month in New York City, along with the bone-weary exhaustion I felt from having to keep packs of kids in the arts lodge delighted, interested, and entertained, had proved too much. I was running on fumes. Our last duty before leaving was to look after those campers who had stayed on for more than one two-week session. During the changeover weekend, when kids slumped home and new ones barreled in to take their places, Bridget and I had to oversee a ragtag group of campers from different lodges.

  I stumbled over to the girls’ side of the lodge. Bridget looked up at me; her expression said, Be gentle. She was comforting a girl, eleven or twelve at the most. The girl had her face burrowed into Bridget’s neck, and she was rubbing the girl’s back. The rest of the girls sat in a circle, sniffling and crying, the hard light casting long, sharp shadows along the floor.

  “What happened?” No one spoke. “What happened?” I said louder.

  One of the girls who had gotten me spoke up: “We were playing at hypnotizing each other, and then Jennifer screamed.” The other girls nodded. Clearly, she was the ringleader. Just scary parlor tricks, I thought with relief.

  I knelt down. “Are you okay, Jennifer?” She burrowed her face deeper into Bridget’s shoulder.

  “Just go to sleep,” I said to the group. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand,” said the leader. She cupped her hand over my ear and whispered: “She remembered her father burning her with cigarettes. We saw her skin get red bumps.”

  What? I mouthed to Bridget. She shook her head. She was at a loss, but watching Jennifer cling to her, I recognized the mine shaft the poor girl had tumbled down.

  I sat on the floor. A few of the others inched closer, bug-eyed. Bridget and I spent the next hour or so telling stories and tryi
ng to make them laugh. I watched Jennifer. Even though she had crawled back into her sleeping bag, I could tell she wasn’t hearing or seeing us. She was now looking at us through the wrong end of that telescope.

  The next morning at breakfast, I caught a glimpse of her. Her hair was a mess, and she was still in her pajamas. She sat at the table, staring right through her tray of food. I walked over from the boys’ table and sat down across from her.

  “Jennifer?” Nothing. “Jennifer, sweetie?” Still nothing. “Jenni—” She looked up slowly. The horror I saw buckled me. It was like I was looking into a mirror at my eleven-year-old self. Her face was vacant, sallow, almost catatonic. But it was her eyes that got me. They were pleading, asking for help, but there was also a sense of resignation. Whatever unimaginable cycle of pain she would be returning to, it seemed as though she knew it was inescapable, like a ruined record, playing the same phrase over and over again.

  The familiar flashpoint of cauterizing heat ignited in my chest. Flee, defect, escape, cut and run.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Bridget, as calmly as I could.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I looked at Jennifer and the other girls, then back at Bridget. “Nothing. Don’t worry.” I went over to another counselor and asked him to watch my boys, then I trotted outside and leaned against the wall.

  Calm down. Just calm down, I repeated to myself. You can handle this. You’ve felt this a hundred times before. This is nothing new. I tried to picture Dr. Copley and all he had said about anxiety disorders, but as I’d tried to tell him back then, it wasn’t the panic I feared—that was like a mortar shell going off: explosive, loud, knocking you off balance. It was the aftermath I dreaded. Months of that lead-dead feeling of inertia, the inability to focus, the insomnia and loss of humor, the hypervigilance—that feeling that I just didn’t give a fuck about what happened to me anymore. But nothing could stanch that dread from licking its way through my arms and legs as I stood there. My breathing became so pronounced, my lips started tingling.

  After House of Wax, I hadn’t gone more than a year or two without some kind of episode—but they were always manageable, something deep breaths and frenetic activity could tamp down. This was the worst I’d experienced in the eleven years since. I couldn’t get the image of Jennifer’s face out of my head. I began beating my head with my fists. STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! I shouted. I suddenly saw myself spending the rest of the summer—six long weeks—at my parents’ house with nothing to do but obsess. With that, I ran: past the arts lodge, into the field, and onto the track. On the far turn I bent over, lungs burning, put my hands on my knees, and cried. I knew that no matter how hard I tried, no matter what kind of game face I put on, I couldn’t outthink this, outtalk this, outpray this. Just like Jennifer. It was back, and I was helpless. I looked up at the faultless blue sky.

  “You can’t do this to me! Not after all I’ve accomplished.” No answer came.

  In the cafeteria, Jennifer’s counselors had returned from their days off, and she had sidled up to one of them. Bridget pulled the other three aside and explained what had happened, asking them to watch her carefully. I crouched down beside Jennifer and grabbed her hands. “You’re going to be fine, sweetie,” I said, trying to sound unshakable. “I promise.” I can’t imagine she believed me, because I didn’t believe it for myself.

  18

  THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES

  When we arrived in New York, Bridget drove me to Penn Station and sat with me as I waited for the train to take me back to Swansea. In the car on the way from camp, I hadn’t been able to focus. Half-listening to Bridget, I reminded myself that there were times I had experienced these implosions, and occasionally—well, rarely—they didn’t take hold. Life was disrupted for a day or two, as if I had outrun it, and all it could grab hold of was my pant leg before I shook it off.

  Knowing I was going off to be alone for week after endless week, I found my need for Bridget mushrooming. I didn’t want to let her go. She had become an anchor, a talisman of my new life, not the hobbled, blinkered life I was returning to, with its reminders everywhere: the bedroom with the antique-car wallpaper, the snack bar, the gouge in the kitchen title where the glass I’d thrown at my mother had exploded.

  “Come back with me,” I pleaded.

  “Now?”

  I nodded my head.

  “I can’t, you know that.”

  “Come visit, then. My parents will love you, I promise.” She looked at me, dubious. “It’ll be great.” As long as I had Bridget with me, I believed I was protected. She was my mathematical proof of growth, my 180-degree validation of where I was a year ago.

  “We’ll see.”

  I felt reset, like a top that coggled dangerously out of control but hit a chip in the pavement and righted itself.

  Sitting there, I saw an effeminate, overweight young man. As he talked to his friends, he rolled his eyes, made droll, exaggerated expressions, and flapped his hands. (Put your wings down! I remember my mother endlessly telling me when I was growing up.)

  “I feel like that’s how I come across,” I said to her, nudging my chin in his direction.

  “Oh, noooo,” she said with the kind of compassion one might show a child who put his underwear on outside of his pants. She planted her chin on my shoulder and surveyed the crowd. “Let’s see . . . ,” she said. “There,” she added, “against the pillar.” I followed her finger. She pointed to a trim, masculine man with a friendly, open face.

  I began to well up. “Really? You’re not just saying this because I’m—” I twirled my index finger near my temple and whistled.

  “Listen to me,” she said, grabbing both my wrists. “You’re as sane as they come, David.” I buried my face in her neck, just like Jennifer had done, and cried. She pulled me tight. “It’s okay,” she whispered in my ear. “You’re going to be fine.”

  I pulled away and looked into those enormous, loving eyes, as if to say, I am, right? I truly am going to be okay.

  Sleepy, I made my way to the snack bar on my first morning back. In front of me was a banana with “Welcome home, Son!” and “We love you!” scrawled across it. Little hearts and stars freckled the skin. Nearby was a glass of room-temperature cranberry juice—“for your plumbing,” my mother was fond of saying. For as long as I could remember, my mother had been touting the healing power of Ocean Spray.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked, coming up from the basement with an armful of folded laundry.

  “Great.” I hadn’t. I’d woken up nearly every hour, until finally I’d given in and lain there, waiting for the sky to lighten so I could get up. I’m used to getting up early at camp to go run, I told myself. But it was a lie and I knew it. At camp, I’d had to drag myself out of bed.

  The day was sheer, unrelenting hell. By bedtime that night, six massive panic attacks had thundered through me. They were so frequent that instead of counting the years or months between attacks, or “breaks,” as I called them, I was now counting hours. The longest I went was two.

  For some reason, talking to people about it helped. It was like I was able to infect them with it, pass it along like cooties, and they would take it with them as they left. I cornered Uncle Tony, Dina, Paneen, a cashier in the card store in the mall, even Bob Ledoux, a high school friend I hadn’t seen since graduating. But as soon as I was alone again, I would get an iron-pipe swipe to the knees, and I’d crumble onto the bed, wringing my hands.

  The next morning, I closed my bedroom door behind me and flipped through the Yellow Pages. My finger trailed down the listings until I found a small display ad. I took a deep breath. When I was a kid, I had memorized the telephone number in case of an emergency, the same way I had memorized my mother’s work number and address. It hadn’t changed.

  “Driscoll Mental Health Center, how can I help you?”

  I considered hanging up. This was the place Kevin, my paranoid-schizophrenic cousin, visited. I was burning with shame.
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  “Yes, I’d like to make an appointment to see someone.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “I don’t feel comfortable speaking about this with you; I’d rather speak to a counselor.” There was a pause on the end of the line. I could swear it was filled with judgment.

  Finally: “Address and telephone, please?”

  “I live in Pittsburgh, but I’m visiting my parents. And I can’t have anyone calling me here.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a local facility for the residents of the Greater Fall River area.”

  “I know,” I said through exasperation, “but I grew up here, and it’s a fucking emergency.”

  “If it’s an emergency, you should go to the emergency room.”

  “It’s not that kind of emergency.” I explained I wasn’t suicidal, nor was I homicidal, at least not yet, but I needed to see someone right then.

  “The best thing I can do is put you on a waiting list.”

  “How long will it take to see someone?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Since we can’t call you, you’ll have to call back each morning.”

  I slammed down the phone.

  “Everything all right in there?” my mother shouted from somewhere in the basement.