by Amy McNamara
“Mamie Wells?” a voice booms from the inner room. “Please come in.”
Dr. Lang is a fat man with a kind face, a bit older than my dad. He looks like a well-dressed academic. He sits behind an enormous antique-looking oak desk adjacent to a long leather couch. Bookshelves line the room, some books, a boxed Freud action figure, one of those weird mossy-looking air plants. And unlike his terrible little waiting cell, thank God, this room has windows. Huge old ones overlooking the quad.
“Good to meet you,” he says, lifting his girth from his chair a moment to lean across the desk and shake my hand.
I don’t know what I expected, but formality of the handshake makes my eyes fill. This guy’s serious. And unlike the sessions I had right after the accident, I’m going to really remember this one. I sit on the couch. Look out those windows. Skyward. Imagine Cal at Cornell, on a quad like this one. Walking to one of his classes. The treetops are bare.
“So.” He pats a fat orange file on his desk. “Coming here wasn’t your idea, was it?” He clears his throat. A deep sound.
“No.”
“Are you here under duress?” He doesn’t look at me when he asks this, he looks at some notes instead. That orange file is mine. He has a file on me already.
“No. I mean, I’m here. It wasn’t my idea, but I came.”
He writes in the file. Lifts a page, reads something. I wonder if my mom sent my records up to him. He reaches to his left and picks up another file, a blue one, pulls out more papers. Slips them into the orange sleeve.
Then he lets the file fall shut and looks at me. Sets his pen down. Folds his hands on top of his stomach.
Silence.
I stare him down. This seems like a trick. Like under his unwavering gaze, I’m just supposed to spill. No thanks. Whatever I say will be reshaped, lobbed back. I remember that much. Mom cycled me through more than a few of these kinds of appointments.
“How are you?” he asks, finally.
What a stupid question.
“I’m fine. And please call me Wren.”
I clear my throat. It feels tight and unreliable.
“Okay, Wren. You had a calamity last year, I see.” Gestures to the file.
Calamity.
“Your mother seems concerned about how you’re dealing with that.”
I nod.
“How do you feel you’re dealing with that?”
What kind of questions are these? This is what we’re paying for? A shrink from central casting to ask me the psychological equivalent of what’s up? I look away from him.
“I’m fine,” I say again. “I mean, I’m—how do you want me to answer a question like that?” Anger creeps into my voice. Tips my hand. He knew it would. I see his game. Dr. Lang, one; me, zero.
He leans back, executes another silent doctor move.
“I’m fine.” I say it with more certainty. Maybe this is how it works. This is the trick. He’ll get me to repeat I’m fine so many times that when I leave I’ll be convinced, happy, well-adjusted. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.
“Your friend died.”
A calamity. Tears start pouring down my cheeks, even though I’m not crying. My eyes are doing their own thing.
“And there was more, too, wasn’t there?”
I nod.
He waits.
“We were in the middle of a fight. I wasn’t hurt, really. It made me sad. It makes me sad. I just want to be quiet awhile. It made me sad.”
I have a second of panic that I’m going to start repeating that and not be able to stop.
Deep breath.
Another.
I run the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my eyes.
“How are you sleeping?” he asks after a minute. Picks up his pen.
“Like a baby,” I lie.
“Really?” he says, “Because I have it in my notes that you have a pretty regularly filled prescription of a benzodiazepine. Do you experience panic attacks?”
I shake my head. Doesn’t sound like something I’d want in my file.
“When are you taking the pills, then?”
“I take them if I wake up in the night. Which happens sometimes. Or if I can’t fall asleep. That’s all.”
My heart does a weird little beat. I pull my sleeves down over my hands.
“You sound defensive,” he says, appraising me. “No need. I’m not accusing you of anything. You’re taking them when you need to. That’s exactly what you should do.”
He makes a quick note on a notepad while he says this to me, without taking his eyes off my face. It’s weird, a little amphibian or something.
“Have you noticed a recent change in your sleep patterns or your appetite? Your day-to-day general energy level?” Eyes on me.
“I feel the same way I’ve felt since I came up here.”
“And how’s that?”
I’m silent.
“How do you feel? Since you came up here?”
“I want to be alone. Quiet. I want it to stop being everyone else’s business how I deal with things.”
He nods. “I understand that.”
Writes some more notes.
I exhale. I’ve been holding my breath. Can’t seem to get it right. Breathing.
He leans back in his chair and then forward again. It makes a tired squeaking sound.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions to assess whether or not you might benefit from taking an antidepressant.”
I shake my head. No way.
“No?” he says.
“They made me take one after the accident. I hated it. I felt dull and weird.”
He checks my file again, more notes.
I start to bounce my knee. Look back out at the bald treetops. Fight an overwhelming urge to ditch this appointment now. Stand up, say thanks but no thanks, and walk right out his door. Free.
“Would this have been during the period of time in which you were electively mute?”
Electively mute. God. There’s a name for everything. I look at him like I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
“The antidepressant,” he says. “Were you taking it during the period of time in which you did not speak?”
I nod. Then shake my head.
“The time line’s a little sketchy for me,” I say, finally. “I stopped taking it as soon as people stopped watching me swallow everything.”
I close my eyes. Remember how calm I felt then. Quiet.
“And when did you begin speaking again?”
“August, I think? So my mother would let me leave. I wanted to leave the city. Come up here. She wouldn’t let me go if she thought I was totally off the deep end.”
He raises both eyebrows. Here we go.
“And that’s how you felt? Feel?” He looks right into my eyes like he’s going to mesmerize me. “Totally off the deep end?”
I could laugh. Out loud. At him. Instead another tear slips out. I summon my inner hard-ass. Fail. More tears. Without taking his eyes off me, he slides a box of tissues across the desk. It makes him look like an alien or something when he multitasks like that. It’s spooky. I take one of his tissues and ball it up. Wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand.
“I’m fine.”
He sighs. I don’t think they’re supposed to do that. He makes another note in my file. I want to tear the thing off his desk and stuff it in my bag. It’s mine. More knee bouncing.
“Your mother mentioned that you’d had another period of mutism more recently. I’m curious, what do you feel those do for you? The times when you stop speaking?”
I’d do it now in a heartbeat if I could find my way back into it. I don’t tell him that. How it shows up. Waits for me. That it shrinks other people. Buys me some space to breathe. I tunnel backward into myself and feel better. Far away from everything.
Long silence. He waits like we have all day.
“I guess it makes me feel insulated or something. Like I don’t have to answer to people if I don’t feel
like it.”
“Wren, have you thought about suicide?”
My body jerks at the words. Like he’s shocked me.
“Like I would tell you,” I say, before I can stop myself.
Doesn’t faze him. He keeps his eyes on me.
“Do you have a plan?”
I look away. I don’t have to do this. Sit here. Answer these questions. I don’t even have to come here again. In fact, I can probably leave right now. Tell my mother it went great. He can’t report back to her, I’m eighteen. I have a right to privacy. Doctor-patient confidentiality.
“Wren, I asked you if you had a plan to end your own life?” His voice pulls me back from the angry storm in my head, eyes calm on me. He’s prepared to wait it out.
I’m silent. Can’t open my mouth. I don’t. Haven’t. Of course I don’t. No more so than the next guy. But I can’t say it hasn’t occurred to me.
Then it occurs to me that maybe the next guy never thinks about things like this. That I am way more messed up than I think I am. I sink a bit into his couch.
“I have an ethical obligation,” he says gently, “if I feel you’re at risk, to intervene. I know we’ve just met, and you’re not here entirely of your own volition, but if you’ll bear with me while I establish a few things, then we can get down to finding a way to help you feel better.”
Feel better. Not likely. It seems so totally beside the point. Only I don’t know what the point is, either.
“No,” I say, finally, “I don’t have a plan.” I cross and uncross my legs. “I mean, who hasn’t thought about it once or twice?”
I suddenly want to convince him that I’m fine. Don’t want this conversation on my record.
“I’m not scheming about how I’m going to end it all,” I say. “Besides, it would kill my father, my parents. I couldn’t do that to them.”
He nods at the mention of my father. “You’re close to him? Your father?” he asks.
“I guess.” I shrug. “Now.” Now I’m in his orbit. Only I’m not sure what that means anymore, really, to be close to someone. It occurs to me that I’m really not close to anyone, not right now. Makes me feel a little strange.
“Okay . . .” He drags out the word while he makes more notes. Doesn’t look at me this time, at least, while he’s writing.
“I mean, my mom and I are close, too, I guess, but Dad’s different. He’s more laid-back. Doesn’t pressure me to do stuff.”
More notes. He nods while he writes. Whether he’s recording something I’ve said or making notes for himself is unclear. I shift on the couch.
“Did I pass the test?”
I’m going for snide but fail. I sound sincere. And there are no take-backs.
He looks over his glasses and gives me what I’m sure he thinks of as his reassuring smile. Like we’re in cahoots and have just had a moment. Dr. Lang sets the pen down and leans back in his chair. Crosses his hands over the top of his stomach again.
“So, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on? Why your mother suddenly feels you need to see a psychiatrist.”
“It’s not sudden. And it’s because she’s that way.”
I feel a wave of hate toward her for making me do this. Sit here. With this guy.
Silence from Dr. Lang.
“I made a mistake. An unbelievably stupid misstep, and then we crashed, and she can’t just let me off the hook awhile—to deal. She’s probably mad at me. She’s the one who needs to be in here talking about everything.”
My hands are fists in my sleeves.
He nods at me slowly, like he’s processing something.
“By ‘misstep,’ you’re referring to your pregnancy?”
He must have read the whole damn file before I got here.
I nod.
Silence.
“I was so close to being done, high school, childhood—”
Tears.
“I’m never irresponsible. It was so stupid. I have no excuse for it, either. I did this one totally dumb thing, and it wrecked everything.” I want to dissolve into this couch, shrink up and blow away. I wipe my face with my sleeve.
His pen rises like a judge’s gavel, hangs there a minute.
“Is it possible,” he says, setting the tip to the page, “that on some level”—he drags the words out while he writes something—“On some level you allowed yourself to get pregnant in order to conflict with your mother’s plans for you? She tells me you two had some struggle over your choice of schools?”
It takes the wind right out of me. He thinks I did it on purpose? It’s all my fault, everything that happened. And he can see it as plainly as I can.
“It’s just something to think about, for you to chew on until we see each other again.”
There’s no air in here, in me, because the doctor is breathing it all up. Great sucking breaths that tear away all my defenses, all the ways I’m hiding. I close my eyes. Open them again, fast. I don’t want to give him anything else for his notes.
He sets the pen down and looks up at me, smiles. How can he smile at me, knowing who I am?
“This is a good start for us, Wren. We have options. Sometimes grief leads to depression. In some people. We’ll keep talking, once a week at first, then every other week until we feel like we have a handle on things. I’d like to explore with you some of your thoughts about the accident you were in and how you feel about your role in it.”
I shiver. Pull on my coat. We’re near the end. He said so himself.
“You’re a strong girl,” he says, glancing at my coat. “I can see that. We’ll work together until you feel you have a better perspective on what happened. Okay?”
He eyes my face for a response. I couldn’t move it out of its stony shock if I wanted to.
“Before you go, let’s see if we can’t get you up out of the bottom, reconsider your options. Something mild, better suited to you than what you took before?”
I nod, dumb. Start to get up. He raises his hand to stop me. I sit down again.
“Your reaction to what’s happened isn’t uncommon.”
I nod, sure, whatever, because I’ll never get out of here if I don’t.
Encouraged, he goes on, “I’m talking about another antidepressant. You’re working very hard right now; it doesn’t have to be so hard.”
I nod again. I want to get out of here so badly it tastes like metal in the back of my throat.
He flips open the orange file. Consults a fat handbook. More questions. About my weight. Energy. Sleep. Appetite. He draws a little diagram on a blank sheet of paper. About the brain. How different drugs affect it. There are lots of arrows up and down.
Finally I leave his office, shaky, clutching a handful of new prescriptions and an appointment reminder card.
I cross the quad to the parking ramp. Look at the papers in my hand. Sleeping pill refill. Pocket it. Two kinds of antidepressants. Appointment reminder card. Chuck them in the first trash can I pass.
The steering wheel vibrates under my hands when I hit seventy. I need some fast miles between me and that appointment.
Do you have a plan?
Do I have a plan. I keep my hands firmly at ten and two like they taught us in driver’s ed. Try not to look into the headlights of every oncoming car. I could never take another person out with me. But his words are like an itch.
I have to get a grip. I’m losing it. I pull onto the shoulder. Open the window. Let the icy air hit me.
I can’t shut it off. The feeling that everything’s ruined. My life. Patrick’s. His family’s. Cal, Mary’s fellowship—I ruin things. I’m done for. I can’t go back to who I was before. Back to being clueless. Like there isn’t an ax over all our heads all the time.
I can’t see any way out—I’m stuck between my old life and what? No matter what you do, what you want, how much you want it, it ends badly. For all of us.
I pull back onto the road. It’s dusk already and Dad will start watching for the truck soon.
&nbs
p; it
was
dark
WHEN I GET BACK, the studio’s lit up bright, and it’s quiet in the house. I’m glad. I take a long shower, then sit with my legs under me in the dark by the window and watch the moon on the careless water.
The appointment clings to me. Makes me feel icky, ashamed. Sitting across from Dr. Lang. The way he kept looking at me—like I’m the kind of person who has to be looked at like that. By a shrink. All those questions. I want to pack up and disappear. But there’s nowhere else to go.
My phone rings. Breaks the quiet. So loud I jump. Dig it out of the bottom of my bag. It’s Mary. Hail Mary, Holy Mary.
“Wren!” she says. Her sunny voice.
“Hey.” I try to make my voice sound normal. I pull off one notch above totally flat.
A pause. She misses nothing.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
“Of course. I miss you! What’s going on?” I deflect her question, a little more energetic this time.
“Oh, nothing and everything. You know. I’m back. Settling in again. It’s good to be here. But I miss you guys, of course—all of you. Your dad, the studio crew, Cal.”
I’m silent at the mention of Cal. Nothing to say.
“I haven’t heard from you, what’s new?”
I swear she brightens in inverse relation to how dark I feel. We either balance each other or cancel each other out.
“Not much.”
I try to laugh. It’s the gospel truth. I stretch my legs. Yawn. It’s just me and my reflection, hanging out. Good times.
“My mom came up for a couple of days. So there was that. It went okay, I guess.” I try again. “Mostly we just miss you. Dad keeps calling the new dude Mary. Drives him nuts.”
I’m sort of making this up, but I have to say something.
“That’s funny,” she says in a kind of weird voice.
Silence.
She’s calling for a reason. I should have known.
“So . . .” she drags the word out a bit.
“Yeah?”
I wish she’d just drop it on me already. Cal asked her to call. Wants her to tell me he’s moving on.
“I was on the phone with Michael the other day, and he said he thought maybe you’re seeing a fair bit of Nick Bishop?”
