by Terri Cheney
I finished off my champagne and signaled for another glass. Our waiter, Jarrod, was a dead ringer for Cary Grant, complete with English accent. He certainly had all the requisite charm, even complimenting me on my dress, which is more than Alan had found time to do. In between courses, we held a running conversation while Alan chatted up colleagues. I learned that he was (surprise, surprise) an actor, and that he was about to open in an Equity waiver production in Hollywood.
“You should come,” Jarrod said. His hand briefly brushed against mine as he refilled my glass.
You have to understand what mania does to the skin: it lights up every nerve ending. The slightest sensation feels like a volcanic eruption—and there I was, swathed head to toe in silk, my flesh ripe with desire. And who was feeding me, pouring me wine, paying me attention? Not my date, but this gorgeous young man with the Cary Grant cleft in his chin. Alan was still talking to the man at the next table. Bridges are only kindling, I thought. I decided to torch this one.
I waited until Alan was looking in my direction, reached in my purse and pulled out a card. Smiling sweetly, I asked, “Honey, do you have a pen? I want to give this guy my phone number.” Alan shook his head, looking a bit bewildered, I thought. “Oh, never mind,” I said. “I’ll just use Jarrod’s pencil.” And I did, scribbling my digits on the back of the card and handing it to Jarrod with the most meaningful smile in my arsenal.
“In fact, Jarrod, what are you doing later tonight?” I asked, crossing my legs to expose a glimpse of garter. “Maybe we could have a drink after hours somewhere.”
Alan was stunned. Jarrod looked at him and beat it, mumbling something about the crème brûlée.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Alan demanded.
“Having fun,” I said, sipping champagne.
He reached over and took the glass from my hand. “You’re manic, aren’t you?” he asked.
Never, but never, call a manic person “manic” to their face. For some reason, when you’re in the very throes of it, the term manic sounds like the most degrading, insulting, offensive character slur imaginable. I suppose it’s like accusing a drunk of being an alcoholic: beneath the accusation is the threat that you’re going to take the drink away. So when Alan called me manic, I instinctively twisted away from him.
“How dare you,” I hissed, and got up so abruptly that I knocked the champagne bucket over. It spilled onto the table and all over Alan’s suit. I watched with satisfaction as the signature white cuffs grew piss yellow with wine. Then I turned and walked out of the restaurant.
He was right. I was manic. I knew it, but I couldn’t think beyond the moment. All that mattered was how I looked in my own mind, making the grand exit.
It took me a whole week to calm down, a long, miserable week during which the mania finally peaked and then crashed, giving way to unimaginable despair. I thought I knew depression in all its many flavors and layers, but never had I known a depression like this.
After two weeks off work (during which I claimed, as always, to have the flu), I finally dragged myself into the office. All I wanted to do was clear off my desk and apologize to Alan, but he was away on vacation. And he wouldn’t be back for another three weeks.
It took me only two to realize that what was wrong with me was deadly serious, more serious than anything I had suffered to date. It wasn’t just depression. It was a suicidality so intense and profound that I had to throw away the steak knives and turn all my pills over to my therapist for safekeeping. My psychopharmacologist again told me that I had to take a leave of absence. This time, for the first time, I listened.
It was supposed to be a three-week leave. But three weeks stretched to six, then nine, and still I was no better. I didn’t hear from Alan the whole time, and I certainly didn’t call him. I didn’t have the will or the energy to call anyone, let alone someone to whom I owed a serious apology. Plus, it seemed monumentally unfair somehow that I should have to apologize for the actions of someone I barely knew. Sure, I’d met that manic redhead before, the one who spilled the wine and walked away. We frequented the same mirror, I’d seen her in passing. But it’s not like we were actually related. As far as I was concerned, she’d hijacked my flesh, and I shouldn’t be held responsible for anything my body had done while she was in control of it.
It would have been a comforting philosophy, if I’d been capable of being comforted. But deep down I knew I was liable. Liable for everything I’d ever said and done to Alan, regardless of who was ruling my brain chemistry that day: the manic seductress or the anxious associate or the lovesick fool who sneaked daffodils onto his desk every Thursday. I knew how different each one was from the other, but it didn’t matter. They were all someone the world knew as me.
I finally managed to pick up the phone late one Friday night, not because I was feeling any better, but because I had reached the last gasp of despair. Part of me didn’t want to die. Not yet, not like this. I needed an infusion of hope, a reason why I should go on living. Who was the smartest man I knew? Surely Alan would have all the answers. If he didn’t, then no one did.
To my surprise, Alan was home when I called him. He even sounded happy to hear from me and concerned to know how I’d been. “First let me apologize,” I said, and a wave of relief swept over me when I was through. To my astonishment, taking responsibility for my manic misconduct didn’t feel like an admission of guilt. It felt like an acceptance of my illness, in all its many facets. It felt like surrender. This is who I am, I thought: sometimes manic, sometimes depressed, but always and inescapably manic-depressive.
“Just give me one good reason,” I said. “No, it doesn’t even have to be a good one. Just any reason whatsoever why I should stay alive. You know me. Can you think of one?”
The line was silent. I knew better than to interrupt Alan when he was thinking. At least, I hoped he was thinking. I hoped he hadn’t set the phone down and walked away in disgust. But no, I could hear his breathing—long, slow, steady breaths, which I assumed was a good sign. I shut my eyes and tried to match my breathing to his. It was the closest I’d felt to him in months.
“Okay, there’s something you should probably know,” Alan finally said, and to my surprise I thought I detected the slightest hint of a quiver in his voice.
“Yes?” I prompted, gently.
He cleared his throat and mastered the quiver. “I would marry you in a minute,” he said, “if it wasn’t for the manic depression.”
I heard the word marry, and I heard the words manic depression, but my mind refused to combine them into a sentence. “I’m sorry, I think I misunderstood you. Could you say that again?” I asked.
“You heard me,” he said.
“And that’s your reason why I should stay alive?”
“That’s one reason,” he said. “I just thought you should know.”
Call it cowardice, call it courage, call it whatever you will, but I kept silent until I felt I could speak without any overt anger. “Thank you, Alan, I’ll think about that,” I finally said, politely. “But it’s time for me to take my medication now, so I’d better say good-bye.”
“Good night,” he said.
“Good-bye,” I corrected, but I’m not sure he could tell the difference over the phone.
I lay down on my back and stared up at the ceiling and counted my dreams, one by one, as they vanished. Orange blossoms, bassinet, white picket fence: gone, gone, gone. “If it wasn’t for your manic depression,” he’d said. Well, if it wasn’t for my manic depression, there would be no me for him to marry, period. I’d be some other person entirely. I wouldn’t have those flashes of brilliance that he so admired, that made him want me in the first place. I wouldn’t have the volatility that maddened but intrigued him. Alan hated ordinary. That’s just what I would be.
Damn him for being so smart, and not smart enough to see this. I closed my eyes and let the anger radiate out to my fingertips. Depression had deadened me for such a long time, I’
d forgotten what pure, unadulterated emotion felt like. I cared again; I cared deeply. I was on fire. I was furious. I was alive. So Alan did have the answer after all, it seemed, although his words had a far different impact than he probably intended. Rather than inspiring hope of any kind, they ignited such a rage in me that I vowed to stay alive, just to prove him wrong.
By the time I was finally able to return to work, I discovered that Alan had left the law firm for a lucrative in-house position at one of the major studios. I was crushed. Not because I missed him, the anger had cured me of that, but because Alan was still the salt in my wounds. I needed the sting of him to remind me that I had survived.
Eventually, with time and a new medication, the anger subsided, and my feelings for Alan faded. I forgot his birthday. I forgot his favorite film. I forgot everything about him, in fact, except the sound of his voice telling me “if it wasn’t for the manic depression.”
He was partly right, of course. Alan was always at least partly right. Every Sunday I sit on the same park bench, and I watch the inside pass me by. If it wasn’t for the manic depression, I think…but no; I refuse to listen. There are other voices here, far more deserving. Across the park, a nanny in gold velour sweats pushes a child on the swings. Even from this far away, I can hear the child laugh.
17
“A lady doesn’t scratch,” my mother used to warn me, in her “company manners” voice. She never told me what a lady ought to do with her itches. Suppress them, I suppose. That’s what ladies did with all their natural urges: they resisted the temptation to scratch.
Well, I was itchy all over, and not just my skin. I squirmed in the chair, trying to get comfortable, then Greg’s cell phone rang again. Banning cigarettes in restaurants was a major step toward civility. Now we need to ban cell phones as well. But for once, I welcomed the rude distraction. While Greg was talking, I slid my hand under my napkin and scratched the length of my left inner thigh, back and forth, up and down, over and over until the itch finally subsided. By the time Greg hung up the phone, I was back to being a lady again, both hands neatly folded on top of the table, a polite smile poised at the edge of my lips. To look at me you would never guess that just beneath my pearls my heart was throbbing like a jackhammer. You would never smell the sweat. I was too sweetly perfumed.
But all afternoon, while I was dressing for this date, I had been so nervous I could barely function. Buttons refused to obey my trembling fingers. My mascara smudged, my lipstick smeared. This was torture. And yet this was, ironically, what I’d been hoping for most of my life: normal. For almost a year, I’d been on a medication that evened out the exaggerated highs and lows of my manic depression, that brought me as close to plain old sane as I’d ever been before. It was the longest stretch of sanity I’d known in twenty years. Perhaps that’s why my fingers fumbled. It’s hard to apply your makeup artfully when you barely recognize yourself in the mirror.
It was never this difficult to dress when I was manic. I just grabbed the sexiest jeans or the slinkiest dress and the highest pair of heels in my closet. Dressing was even easier when I was depressed. Nothing looked good on me, period. Nor did I ever expect it to. So I settled, inevitably, on basic black, which suited my pallor and mood. But how was I supposed to dress for normal? What message was I trying to send? I was hardly the manic vixen anymore, nor was I the graveyard ghoul. But both were ghosts inside me, and they chose my wardrobe. So I compromised, tossing out anything too ravishing or too repressed, because I was no longer a creature of extremes. This left me with very little to choose from, so little that I sat down on the bed, surrounded by piles of rejected clothes, and had myself a good cry. Who would have thought, after all these years of longing for it, that normal still meant feeling, and feeling doesn’t always mean feeling good.
I went into the bathroom to wash my face. Could these be the lips that had kissed so many men? They looked like a child’s lips now, pale pink and slightly puffy from crying—and yet there was a hint there, a something knowing in the corners. I looked down at my wrists. Three long white raised scars traversed the veins, relics of a dull, desperate razor. It seemed my body remembered my extravagant moods, no matter how hard my mind tried to forget them. But normal lived on inside my eyes. They shone with the remnants of a few stray tears, but they didn’t blaze and snap like wildfire, nor were they as dull as sodden coals. They were simply eyes, looking back at me, wondering what next. As if I knew.
I heard my mother’s soft, low voice: “You can always tell a lady by her pearls.” I appraised my face, my normal eyes, my experienced lips. Yes, I could play a lady. I needed a role, I felt naked without one, and neither mania nor depression would do. So thank God I’d gone to Vassar: I knew how proper ladies should look and act. I knew what to do with my hands (keep them folded and quiet). I knew how to cross my legs (always at the ankle, then tilted slightly to the left). And I knew what to wear: pearls roped loosely at the neck, and a simple black dress with kind lines. My depression wardrobe was teeming with black dresses, so I picked the least severe of the bunch and tried it on with the pearls. At last, a costume that fit.
I was startled by the transformation. Not only my eyes but my body looked somehow more capable, more at ease, as if they knew what to do next. I summoned up the memory of high tea in the Rose Room at Vassar: the beautiful, gracious women with their white gloves and witty remarks. I was one of them once. Perhaps I could be again.
But the Rose Room, with its quiet, faded elegance, its stiff damask linens and heirloom silver, seemed a long, long way away from the hip, buzzing restaurant that Greg had taken me to. The bar was packed with gorgeous young women in whispers of black, and older, slightly paunchy men with predator eyes. The tables were placed so close to one another that you had no choice but to eavesdrop, to the extent you could hear at all. It’s practically impossible to hold a meaningful, intimate conversation at the top of your lungs. And then there was the cell phone, ringing every five minutes, snapping any thread of conversation I managed to get going.
Maybe it was for the best, I thought, when Greg’s phone rang again. I didn’t know what to say, anyway. While I scratched my inner left thigh, I wondered why I was still so ill at ease with this man. He was, without a doubt, the most ambivalent man I’d ever dated. He liked me intermittently, in between his other women. I never knew when he would call, or not call, or want to see me, or ignore me altogether. He was a “player,” and the worst thing was, I knew it and I still hung around. When he was present, it was worth it. He was kind and generous and charming, so much so that occasionally somehow seemed better than never at all. And I didn’t really want commitment, anyway. Just a little consistency.
But his ambivalence fired up my competitive streak and made me long for his attention even more. What did he want? Over the course of the past few months I had tried on role after role—pal, seductress, mother—but none of them seemed to make any difference. Tonight, I tried on lady. I knew that Greg had a snobbish side to him, so there might be some appeal. But watching his eyes rove hungrily over the lithe young bodies at the bar, I could tell it wasn’t working.
The situation felt hopeless. But there was a way out, a surefire solution just within my reach: the wine list. I’m really not supposed to drink. Alcohol destabilizes me instantly, plus it interacts adversely with every one of my drugs. But just because it’s so forbidden to me, it was suddenly all that I desired.
The table to my immediate left had just ordered after-dinner drinks, and they were so close I could smell the bite of brandy in the air. I watched them swirl their glasses while they talked. When they drank, I closed my eyes and swallowed, too, trying to conjure up the feel of liquid fire down my throat. I remembered brandy. I remembered vodka, too. Salt still tasted like tequila sometimes, summer still smelled like vermouth.
Alcohol was alchemy, instant mood magic. Whatever I was feeling at that moment, I knew that I could feel different, and soon, with just a few sips. More likely than not, I wo
uld start to get manic, and then at last the words would come, more words than I possibly knew what to do with, more words than could ever fit into my mouth. The ease would come, too, the blessed nonchalance. Because when I’m manic, I may think you are fascinating, but I don’t particularly care what you think of me. I already know that I’m fabulous.
But what a wonderful time we would have together, for those first few sips, at least. Then there’s no telling which way my mood might go. I might soar to the ceiling, giddy with laughter, drunk on my charms. Or I might just suddenly deflate and collapse right in front of you, a soggy heap overflowing with tears. Either way, I’ll demand another drink.
I looked over at Greg, chatting on his cell phone, oblivious to the time bomb that was ticking away right across the table from him. I thought to myself, it will serve him right for ignoring me. He’ll have a hard time pretending I don’t exist after a couple of drinks. I’ll be so incredibly charming, maybe he’ll forget about all those other women for a while. As if in a trance, I watched my hand steal of its own accord past the dinner plate, over the menu and around the salt shaker to the wine list. “I’ll just study it to kill time while he’s on the phone,” I thought, although I noticed that my fingers were trembling a bit as I turned the first page.
Then I forgot everything: Greg, the swirling snifters, the other women at the bar. I was thoroughly absorbed, and by such fascinating characters: Perrier Jouët, Dom Pérignon, Châteaux Margaux. I knew all of them so well, their traits, their subtle idiosyncrasies. I knew the legends of their births. I knew them better, in a way, than I knew Greg.
