by Terri Cheney
There were only two others in the dining room at that time: Jesus Christ and Chuck. I studiously averted my eyes from Chuck while dropping a quick half-curtsy in Christ’s direction, which I hoped would suffice for a genuflection at that early hour. It apparently did, because Jesus Christ scooted down and invited me to join them. I would have preferred to eat alone, but I didn’t want to be rude—or more important, perceived as rude, especially by Chuck. I grabbed a box of milk and a carton of Cheerios, and sat down at their table.
Chuck and Jesus were having quite an animated discussion about, of all things, the Virgin Mary. Chuck swore she was a brunette; Jesus insisted she was a blonde. I decided to throw my two cents in: “Well, I happen to know for a fact that Mary Magdalene was a redhead,” I said, sprinkling sugar on my cereal.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Chuck immediately reproached me. “Now we’re in for it.”
“What do you mean?” I started to ask, but then it was all too apparent what Chuck had meant. Jesus had reached a hand into his sweats and was enthusiastically fondling himself in plain sight.
“He does that every time you mention her,” Chuck said.
“Who?” I asked. “Mary Magdalene?”
Jesus groaned and redoubled his efforts. I was embarrassed and amused and frightened, all at the same time. I sought support from the only other person in the room: my eyes pleaded with Chuck’s for some sense of protection. He was, after all, almost a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than Jesus Christ. A big guy, with an even bigger disease. The instant our eyes met, he stood up, jolting the table so hard that all the milk sloshed out of my cereal and his orange juice carton went spinning onto the floor. Then he snatched up his plastic fork, scrambled eggs still clinging to it, and before I realized what was happening he had crossed over to my side of the table, grabbed me from behind, and thrust the tines of the fork up against my neck.
“What do you think you’re looking at?” he snarled in my ear. I didn’t know what to answer. I was afraid to move even the slightest bit, for fear he would puncture my throat with the fork. I fervently wished I’d paid more attention to basic anatomy in high school. I wasn’t quite sure where my jugular was, but I was pretty sure Chuck had it covered. So I simply held myself quiet and still, as still as I could, given the violent trembling that had suddenly overtaken my limbs.
Jesus had finished his self-ministrations by then, and his eyes had returned to their former sky-blue serenity. He smiled mildly at Chuck and stroked him on the forearm. I could feel Chuck’s grip around my windpipe begin to loosen, imperceptibly at first, and then all at once he dropped his arm to his side. The fork clattered to the ground, and I quickly kicked it under the table. Then my knees gave way beneath me, and I found myself staring up at the ceiling; and then, I have no idea how many minutes later, into the eyes of Jesus Christ.
“What’s your real name?” I asked him. “I mean, what name did your mother give you?”
“Henry,” he said.
“Henry, you just saved my life. How can I ever repay you?”
He helped me to my feet. We were still the only ones in the cafeteria at that early hour, except for the wait staff, which was busy rubberizing eggs and solidifying oatmeal. Even so, Henry whispered.
“I want you to forgive him.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “This is my ticket out.” Even as I was laying there on the floor, I was thinking how I could turn this incident to my advantage. It didn’t matter that my arms and legs were still trembling, or that a scream was tickling the back of my throat. A lawyer’s brain is always working—evaluating, calculating, debating the odds. The face of my first-year torts professor inexplicably popped in my head, and above it two words glared in bright neon: “foreseeable risk.” I knew that the hospital clearly had notice of Chuck’s dangerous quirks, because the day he’d first confronted me in the cafeteria, I’d made a point of mentioning it to the head nurse. “Oh, he’s like that with everyone” was her reply. At the time, I’d thought it a singularly inadequate response. Now it filled me with lawyerly glee.
“Seriously, Henry,” I said. “I’m out of here. They’ve got exposure, they’ll have to let me go.”
“If you report this, they’ll take him back to the locked ward and he’ll never get out.”
A visceral memory came back to me of that horrible room with padded walls and no windows. The narrow bed with the leather restraints. The tune of the yellow tinkles. Empathy began to invade my heart.
“He’s just like you,” Henry said. “He’s sick.”
Just like me? Just like me? He was nothing like me. He lived at the beck and call of a monster that made him do terrible, dangerous things. Whereas I—I sat down hard on the metal bench and watched Chuck heap mounds of sugar into his tea. Oh hell, who was I kidding? The truth was, he was exactly like me. I had a monster living inside me, too. Who else had commanded me to keep taking pills, handful after handful, just to kill the noise inside my head, when my father needed me alive and sane?
I realized then why I was avoiding all the other patients. They were all potential mirrors. What I really feared wasn’t the insanity of strangers. What I feared the most was my own disease. I was terrified I would catch a glimpse of myself in passing.
A few people began coming into the cafeteria then, accompanied by an attendant. The time was now or never. “Chuck,” I said, dropping my eyes. “Please pass the sugar.” Henry beamed at me, and oddly enough, I felt good.
I’d like to say that after that, we all became fast friends. But Chuck was carted off somewhere that very afternoon—shock therapy, was the word on the unit. Henry and I did become allies of a sort. He was good company, when his meds were working. We became mealtime buddies, along with several other patients whose symptoms were somewhat less frightening than Chuck’s: Theresa, a near-catatonic depressive; Jim, a manic-depressive who couldn’t stop talking, his every third word an obscenity; and Allison, who saw visions and auras and frankly didn’t seem that much crazier to me than the average psychic on Venice Beach. We shared the instant intimacy of the oppressed, finding endless topics of discussion in the apathy of the nurses, the incompetence of the doctors, the shocking injustice of the health care system. Mostly, however, we talked about what it was like to be mentally ill—the same subject we assiduously avoided in group.
“You seem better,” Henry said to me one afternoon, after I’d laughed so hard at one of Jim’s riffs of profanity that I’d spit up my tea.
I almost didn’t want to admit it, I’d become so safe and familiar with despair, but it was true. I felt better. And it apparently showed, because that afternoon, just a few days shy of my fourteen-day hold, I was told I was being released.
It was awkward saying good-bye to the other patients. I felt intensely guilty about leaving them, as if I was the only one walking away whole from a train wreck. So to assuage my guilt, I decided to stage a rebellion my last night there. I knew it was probably too little too late, but at least it was a start.
I assembled all five of the remaining patients and led them into the so-called occupational therapy room. There we pounced on the puzzles: we decapitated Mt. McKinley, we eviscerated Van Gogh’s Starry Night. We shuffled up all the sunrises and sunsets until they were no longer distinguishable from one another. Then we threw all the pieces together into one big pile on the floor, and we war-danced around it. We stamped, we stomped, we whooped and wahooed until the head nurse came running into the room and ordered us all to our beds. But by then the damage was done. No one would ever be able to make another mouthless Mona Lisa again. The age of one-eyed pharaohs and legless ballerinas was definitely over.
I left the hospital the next morning, and was never so happy as when the taxicab finally dropped me off at my own little gate. My house struck me as singularly beautiful somehow, for all its advanced state of disrepair. I walked through every one of the rooms, admiring the smooth white walls. I had never fully appreciated their purity before. For t
he rest of my life, I vowed to myself, I would never have anything else in my homes but plain white walls.
I sat down at my desk and stared at the phone. My answering machine flashed “Full.” I knew I had a great many calls, a great many explanations to make, but my first order of business had to be my father. As I picked up the phone to dial his number, I couldn’t help but think back to that very first Valium that had set this whole chain of events in motion. How terrified I’d been that afternoon, so frightened that all I’d wanted was oblivion. Well, I’d had my fair share of oblivion, and I had no desire for a Valium now. In fact, my body rebelled at the thought of any drug entering my system. I no longer wanted to fuzz the sharp edges with medication. I liked them sharp.
I dialed the telephone and let it ring—once, twice, and then a familiar Kansas twang answered. “Hello?” said the voice I loved dearest in all the world.
“It’s me,” I said. “I’m back.”
10
I met the doctor of my dreams at my father’s deathbed. I wasn’t exactly looking my best, but Alex didn’t seem to mind. Two weeks later I was back in the ER, this time on my own. Grief burns like hell, but it doesn’t cause a 104-degree fever. I knew what that thick yellow sticky stuff coming up from my lungs meant. I didn’t care.
Alex’s hand was on my forehead when I woke up. His eyes were brilliant, like emeralds lit from behind. I love green eyes. And black hair. And well-worn scrubs. Then he smiled, and they tell me I fainted.
He came to see me several times after I was admitted, although technically I wasn’t on his turf. He brought me books—we both had a thing for F. Scott Fitzgerald—and read me passages out loud. What can you do when you’ve just lost your father and a green-eyed doctor leans over your hospital bed and recites, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past….”
I was charmed, but reluctant to respond. Dad’s death had drained me of all the softer emotions, plus I was still smarting from my recent breakup with Rick. (Despite all my agonizing over the ethics of our illicit affair, he had finally been the one to call it quits.) So I didn’t allow Alex to get too close, but apparently it was close enough. He kept on coming to see me, even after I was released from the hospital.
Pursue and retreat; pursue and retreat. This quickly became the rhythm of our relationship. He’d call, I wouldn’t answer. He’d ask, I’d say no. Then one day, out of nowhere, I’d call him back. I’d say yes, of course I want to get together, what took you so long to ask?
Valentine’s Day. The reservation had been almost impossible to get, and the pressure on me to show up at a scheduled time was almost more than I could bear. But who knows what stars had aligned in my favor that night? I was all aglow—skin, eyes, hair, it all worked, even that less-than-little black dress that made me shiver with immodesty.
There were candles at our table. The waiters were gracious, the sommelier was impressed by Alex’s choice, and the Chilean sea bass was perfect. Our conversation seemed lighter than usual, drifting from subject to subject, barely touching down before it floated away again. And then he stopped talking altogether, leaned over and took my hand. My God, I thought, he’s going to propose. “You’re so perfect,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”
I could have told Alex that I was manic-depressive. He’s a doctor, he might have understood. But I chose, rightly or wrongly, to say nothing, just smile, and say nothing still, until he finally looked down at his menu. When he raised his head, he said, “I’m getting tired. Do we really want to stay for dessert?”
He probably wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. A real illness has symptoms that show up on tests, is evidenced on the flesh. But I’d kept the real ups and downs out of Alex’s sight, hidden behind unanswered phones and declined invitations. I was “perfect” when he saw me because I was perfectly hypomanic: three-quarters of the way to mania, at that point where all things, but mostly the person you are with, seem utterly fascinating. I don’t need candlelight then because I am naturally incandescent. If I smiled at you, you caught the glow. If I touched you, you felt the fire. You never realized how cold you had been until we kissed.
Maybe if I had said “manic depression” just right—with my eyes and not my lips—he would have sighed with relief and told me all the ways that we could treat it. But it’s one thing to be clinically compassionate. It’s something else altogether when that perfect girl of yours sits across from you at dinner, and she’s somebody you’ve never met.
We did end up staying for dessert that last night—raspberry something with white chocolate mousse. It was delicious but mine tasted vaguely of tears. I excused myself and went up to the ladies’ room. I stared at the mirror. He wanted imperfect? I’d show him just how imperfect perfection can be. I’d start returning his phone calls when I was manic. I’d talk and talk, I wouldn’t let him get off, wouldn’t care if he had an emergency. Or maybe I’d ask him over in the midst of a really bad depression….
No. Not even in my wildest revenge fantasies could I imagine him seeing me then. Nobody sees me then. My doctors never do, and no one ever will, because I turn into something so foul and loathsome that even I have to drape towels over the mirrors until the worst of it passes. I don’t have the will then, or the desire or the energy to force myself out of bed long enough to bathe. My hair turns lank and oily, the sheets grow stale, and tiny demons ooze from all my pores. My mouth is the only muscle in my body that will move, and even then I sometimes have to force it open and closed with my hands. But still I eat, and eat, whatever’s in the house. Sugar straight out of the box. Pasta, cooked or uncooked, who cares? Furry cheese. I eat until I fall asleep, and then I wake and eat whatever is left on my pillow. Ten pounds of depression, and that less-than-little black dress barely fits one of my thighs. This is hardly narcissism: it’s a genuine crisis, if you’re dating a man who’s only ever seen you in a perfect size six.
That perfect size six stared back at me from the ladies’ room mirror. What would be so unforgivably awful, I asked it, if I were to muss up my hair and rub off my mascara, and go rejoin Alex with this little raspberry seed still stuck between my front teeth? What if I didn’t reapply my fading lipstick tonight, tomorrow, or the next time I saw him? Or what if I snapped one of the buttons off the back of my dress? Normal people go out missing buttons, I see it all the time.
I knew the answer. I can’t do it because I simply can’t afford to look disheveled in public. A hundred years ago, insanity was diagnosed by appearance—the so-called science of physiognomy. We haven’t come all that far since then. I know the snake pit is still alive and writhing because I’ve been there, except now it’s called County General. I was in County for two weeks once following a suicide attempt, and not a single patient strapped down in the locked ward beside me was well-groomed, even clean. But then neither was I, after lying in my own urine for hours, unable to kick free of the sheets. Insanity looks bad and smells even worse.
So when you have a tendency to go mad every so often, it isn’t safe to be unkempt, ever—not in your manner, your speech, and especially not in your looks. Sometimes I think that a hundred-dollar haircut is all that stands between me and a fourteen-day hold.
Still, I felt like I owed Alex something. He had given me back the illusion of normalcy, the idea that life actually revolved around decisions like: does the blue sweater go better with my eyes than the green, and what shoes should I wear with this dress? And so it was my thank-you present to him to always show up pretty and well-dressed and happy to be alive. It was the most I could give: the appearance of sanity.
Needless to say, I left the ladies’ room that evening with smooth hair, perfect teeth, fresh red lips—and all my buttons intact.
11
I hadn’t planned on being manic. For months, I’d looked forward to the writing workshop I was scheduled to attend at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. David’s death had convinced me that it was finally time to get serious about my writ
ing. But first, I’d get a long, deep massage, soak in the hot tubs, slow down, and rejuvenate. Work had been particularly hectic of late, what with back-to-back trials and screaming studio bosses and a cocaine-addled client who couldn’t keep his hands off the phone.
Esalen was the perfect place to find my breath again. Picture twenty-seven acres of wild wood, green lawns, and gardens, bounded by cliffs that drop off into the sea. A carefully cultivated quiet nourishes thought, a silence disturbed only by the boom and crash of the ocean.
Silence: my least favorite sound when I’m manic. I wanted to talk, I needed to talk, words pressed up so hard against the roof of my mouth I felt like I had to spit to breathe. One doesn’t spit in Paradise; and it doesn’t make a very good impression on the first day of a workshop. I desperately wanted to connect with these people and belong to this place, to pass as a writer among writers. So I managed, by clamping my jaw shut and sucking on my tongue, to get through most of the introductory small talk with responsive nods and a tight-lipped smile. By the time we finally turned to writing, my pen was frantic with all the things I’d left unsaid.
I made it through the night. I even made it through the next morning and three-quarters of the afternoon, at which point I excused myself after a violent fit of coughing. By then the words were backed up so deep in my throat that even tongue-sucking couldn’t keep them down. I ran to the edge of the cliffs, where the boom and crash were loudest, and howled. I howled like a moon-sick dog until the sky finally turned black and every light in every window was extinguished. Then I crept back into my bungalow and pretended to sleep.
