Whisper to Me

by Nick Lake

  With her going, the fog rushed back in, and I was enveloped in grayness again. I did a couple more laps of the rose garden, but my eyelids were drooping and pretty soon I went back in to lie motionless on my bed.

  Repeat.

  Repeat.

  Repeat.

  Weird thing though:

  Often, when I was looking at the blank white ceiling of my hospital room, one of those ceilings made of square panels of thin board, as if the whole building was made to be disassembled quickly if necessary, often, at those times, counting the white panels or watching a fly buzzing across them, what I would be thinking about was …

  You.

  You, climbing the stairs to the apartment. You, smiling.

  I didn’t really get it at the time, though I let it happen because when I was seeing you, strangely, I tended to feel calmer, more in control, more like some hand wasn’t going to reach down and take apart all those panels and the bricks of the walls, like children’s building blocks, and leave me defenseless on a bed propped up only by air and teetering scaffolding.

  It puzzled me though, because, like I said, you didn’t make a big impression on me when we met.

  Yeah. Right.

  DR. REZWARI: You understand now that the voice is not real?

  THE VOICE: (dim, like a person speaking in another room) Don’t listen to this *****. Don’t—

  ME: I don’t know.

  DR. REZWARI: It’s a hallucination. A product of your brain.

  ME: (crying) But I hear it from outside. Like any other voice.

  DR. REZWARI: I know. It’s difficult. But, like I said, I can help you. Are you still hearing it?

  THE VOICE: Cut her. Slash her face. Slash her ******* face, cut out her—

  DR. REZWARI: Cassie?

  ME: You could say that.

  Dad visited, a couple of days later, and I couldn’t even muster the energy to speak to him at first. He sat in the plastic chair in the corner of my room. There was a copy of a Graham Greene novel on my bed. Dr. Rezwari had given it to me, but even though I didn’t hear the voice anymore, I didn’t have the energy to read it.

  I was lying on my bed, which was what I did much of the time. There wasn’t even a view of the ocean out my window—just a redbrick wall.

  Dad handed me a local newspaper, like, I don’t know, he thought I had been really missing out on all the news about traffic zoning and the plan to build more community housing in Linklater Heights, and really needed to stock up on coupons for 99¢ BURGERS.

  “I’ll read it later,” I said.

  “The regulars have been asking about you,” said Dad. “Fat Joe. The Greek. Marty. They send their regards.”

  There was not even an echo of a thought in my mind about this information. Fat Joe, who liked to sit at the bar by the wood-fired oven of the restaurant and drink grappa, was no longer a part of my world.

  “Dad,” I managed. “I just want to sleep.”

  He nodded. It looked like there were more lines around his eyes and mouth than I remembered. “Okay, honey,” he said. “Okay.” He came over and lifted the sheets at the bottom of the bed and laid them over me, like I was a little kid. Then he reached out his hand to stroke my hair.

  “I’m sorry, Cass,” he said.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “I don’t know. For whatever I did wrong. For whatever … has made you like this.”

  “Nothing made me like this,” I said.

  Silence.

  “I just …” He paused. “You’re my life. I would sell my soul if it would make you better.”

  A wheel came off the mechanism of my breathing; it rasped and scraped in my chest, loose, broken. I hugged myself.

  I wanted to cry, but the risperidone wouldn’t let me.

  Okay, so that’s basically the bad stuff out of the way. I mean, apart from me trampling all over your heart but … Okay, that’s not all the bad stuff out of the way.

  I mean more: that’s the important bad stuff from before you. And I’m going to have to start summarizing a bit now; otherwise I’m never going to get this finished before Wednesday, and I figure I have to give you two days to read it. Your dad said you were going to college Saturday, so Friday is my last chance.

  So …

  Hmm …

  JUST SKIP TO WHEN YOU WENT HOME, CASSIE.

  That was the voice, speaking to me right at this moment, as I type this. I hear the voice again these days, but she’s my friend now. I know, I know. I’ll explain. Honestly, this will all make sense.

  Anyway, she’s right.

  So:

  I went home from the hospital some number of days later. Maybe ten days. I had a prescription for risperidone and another for paroxetine, which is an antidepressant that has a super-high incidence of suicide in those trying to come off it—a fun little fact the doctor didn’t tell me at the time. You can just assume that I met with Dr. Rezwari quite a few times when I was in the hospital but we didn’t really talk about anything. She just gave me risperidone and referred me to a counselor in the town to talk about my mother, when I was ready to.

  And that was it. They discharged me.

  Luckily, when I came back from the hospital, you and Shane weren’t there. It would have been amazingly awkward if you had been. You were out somewhere, working on the piers, I guess. I don’t know what my dad told you about where I had been; maybe he didn’t tell you anything, I mean, it’s not like he is accountable to the people he rents the apartment to.

  Anyway, I was glad you weren’t there.

  No offense.

  From the side window in my room, I could see a small corner of the beach. Just a sliver—between the roofs of two houses, crisscrossed by telephone wires. A V-shaped fragment of ocean. I sometimes used to focus on it and pretend I was on a ship floating over an endless ocean. It was something Mom taught me to do, when I was worried about something.

  I tried it, that first day home, but I didn’t have the energy.

  That day and the next, I just lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I also tried reading—there was no voice to tell me not to, or at least the voice was quiet now; muffled—but I couldn’t get past page one of any book I tried.

  I heard Shane come home at sunset. Dad was still at Donato’s. I looked out the front window of my room. Shane set himself up in the yard—he unfolded a lawn chair, sat down, and cracked open a beer. There was a six-pack by his feet. He didn’t do anything; he didn’t read or listen to music or call anyone. He just sat there and slowly drank the beers. Shane has the kind of mind that people who have had a mental illness envy.

  A couple of hours later, a white Ford F-150 with the Piers branding on it pulled up to the sidewalk. I saw you get out of it and walk over to Shane. He stood up, walked over to the pickup, and spoke to you for a bit. Then he gave you a high five. You joined him—he pulled up another lawn chair—and he handed you a beer. You were wearing a Piers uniform—khaki chinos, a pale denim shirt with the logo showing the two piers on the pocket. A CB radio was clipped to your collar.

  He’s not gutting shrimp, I thought. Because you wouldn’t have been driving that branded pickup truck if you were. I wondered what job you had gotten at the piers. I was interested. I watched you and Shane, drinking your beers, chatting. It was calming, somehow. But then you saw me at the window, and I ducked down, ashamed.

  You must have thought I was such a weirdo.

  The next morning I had my first outpatient appointment at the hospital. Dad was coming back from the restaurant to drive me at eleven. I went downstairs and out onto the porch. Five minutes later, I got a call from Dad on my cell. He’d insisted on getting me a new one to make sure he could contact me when he needed to. I didn’t mind so much—I wasn’t hearing the voice as often since taking the drugs, so the idea of invisible people speaking in my ear wasn’t as scary as it had been. It was a cheap cell; it didn’t even have the Internet. But I didn’t care.

  I pressed the Answer button.

&nb
sp; “Honey,” said Dad. “Chef has cut himself bad. There’s no one else here; I’ve got to take him to get it sutured.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, sorry. Can you ride the bus?”

  I closed my eyes. “Um, yes. I guess.”

  “There’s five dollars on the hall table. Sorry again, honey.”

  “He hates you,” said the voice, matter-of-factly. It was quiet now, the voice, and I hardly ever heard it, but occasionally I would get these bursts, like a radio catching fragments of speech from the ether. “He wishes you were dead, like your mother.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Huh?” said Dad.

  “Nothing, Dad. Nothing.”

  I hung up. Then I started walking to the street. I’d have to take two buses, I thought. The 9 and the 3. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make my appointment at eleven thirty.

  I turned left on the sidewalk and walked to the bus shelter. I leaned against it to wait. No one else was there. I could see joggers and Roller Bladers passing, one block closer to the ocean, but here in the residential layer, layer three, nothing moved. There was a time I would have listened to music or something, but I didn’t. It was weird: there were moments, like then, when I almost missed the voice talking to me. I mean, it had made me do terrible things, mostly to myself. But it had been company, you know?

  Now I had no one, and I was living in permanent mist, obscuring everything, making it woolly and still.

  I was just thinking that when I saw a gleam of white, and then you were there, sitting in the driver’s seat of your Ford pickup truck.

  “Hey,” you said.

  I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. I noticed, close up, that your eyes were a shade of green I had never seen before: river green. But flecked with gold. A slow river, dotted with ocher leaves.

  Sorry. But it’s true. You have amazing eyes.

  “You need a ride?” You made a face. “Sorry, that sounds creepy. I mean, it’s not a pickup line. It’s just, you looked kind of down. I thought you might need a lift.” You swallowed. “I’m on break. I have till—”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t need a lift.”

  A pause.

  “Uh, but, thank you,” I added.

  “S’cool,” you said.

  You didn’t drive away, and admittedly I had just been thinking about how I was lonely, so even through the fog I was living in, some glimmer of desire for human contact obviously shone. At the same time I was kind of surprised that the voice, even though it was mostly gone, didn’t say anything about you. Usually the voice hated if I spoke to someone.

  So …

  I figured I would speak to you.

  When I say it like that it sounds ridiculous, makes it sound like such a radical decision, but it was. But also, I’m telling you this for a reason, because I think you thought I was being standoffish, and I wasn’t, not deliberately.

  “What’s with the truck?” I asked in a lame attempt to make human contact.

  You smiled. Then you opened the door and got out. You stood by the Ford and did a little bow, kind of showing off but mocking yourself at the same time. When you straightened up, I watched the muscles in your neck move. “You’re looking at the Assistant Plush Manager for Two Piers,” you said.

  “What?” I said. I flashed back to meeting Paris at the hospital, how I had said the same thing. It was like a tic with me.

  Suddenly you looked self-conscious. You straightened up. “Oh, uh, it’s stupid,” you said. “I just … I’m delivering plush.”

  I looked at you blankly; at least I assume I did, because you had an uncomfortable expression on your face.

  “Stuffed toys, you know? For the stands. Prizes. I get them from a warehouse in town, and I drive down onto the beach. Throw them up to the guys on the piers. To restock.” You gestured with your thumb toward the open back of the pickup truck.

  I looked: there was a plastic bag in there, the size of a person, full of Angry Birds.

  “After my break, I’m taking those to Pier Two,” you said, filling the silence nervously.

  “They have an assistant manager for that?” I asked.

  You shrugged. “Like I said, it’s stupid. Really, I’m just the plush delivery guy, but they gave me that title. You wouldn’t believe how quick the stands run out of prizes. And there are a lot of stands.”

  I wasn’t really interested in the stuffed toys, which is sucky of me, I know. I was still amazed that the voice had said nothing about you. I hadn’t even had my risperidone that morning; it made me too tired to do anything, so I’d skipped it, which I knew Dr. Rezwari would bust a gut about if she knew. The voice had stopped with the threats. It didn’t seem to tell me to hurt myself anymore or that it would kill Dad or whatever—I don’t know if that was the drugs—but it would still sometimes insult me, sometimes curse about stuff.

  I thought for sure it was going to say something like, “He knows you’re ugly,” or whatever. That would have been its style.

  But that’s the thing about you—you’re an insulator. A muffler. You silence the voice.

  Then the little mike on your shirt buzzed.

  “714, come in,” said a crackly voice, sounding reedy through the small speaker.

  You reached up and pressed a button. “714.”

  “What’s your 20?”

  “On my break for another half hour,” you said. “Then I’ve got a delivery to Pier Two.”

  “Okay,” said the voice on the other end of the radio. “I need five medium Tweety Birds and ten large SpongeBobs to Pier One, when you’re done.”

  “10-4,” you said, and signed off.

  “10-4?” I said. “Seriously?”

  You held up your hands defensively. “I think all the guys on the piers wish they were cops. They believe they’re characters in an Elmore Leonard book or something.”

  “A lot of them eat in my dad’s restaurant,” I said. “The real cops too. I’d say they’re more Carl Hiaasen than Elmore Leonard. They’re the kind of guys who wear novelty socks.”

  You leaned your head to one side, intrigued. “You like books?”

  I shook my head. “Used to.”

  I could see the curiosity on your face, but you didn’t press. I think you heard something in my tone. “Well, okay,” you said, backing away.

  Me: repelling people since seven years old.

  I saw the 9 bus then and jerked my head at it. “That’s my bus,” I said.

  “You sure I can’t drive you? In a noncreepy way?”

  “I’m sure. Thanks.”

  You smiled a tentative smile. That was one of the things that impressed me about you: another guy faced with what I’m sure was a pretty frosty demeanor from me might have felt hurt, rejected. But you stayed nice. I think you really did just want to help. “Catch you later,” you said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I KNOW: It’s like Romeo and Juliet all over again, isn’t it? Dialogue FOR THE AGES.

  Of course, I didn’t feel anything though. I didn’t have, for instance, butterflies in my stomach. I couldn’t feel anything, because of the drugs.

  No. No, that’s not true. I think I did feel something for you, even then, but it’s like when I was sedated—I know I felt it, but I can’t remember it. Which sucks in a whole other way, as if my memory is taking you away from me, erasing you. When I look back on myself in those days I see a dead person walking around, dressed up in new skin. Even then, standing at the bus shelter, in the light, with you by your truck, it was as if everything was a little too shiny and unmoving, like everything was behind glass, even the sun.

  Then you drove off and I got on the bus and went to my appointment, where Dr. Rezwari asked me if I was hearing the voice anymore and when I said no, not really, she pretty much just shoved me out of her office right away. She’d given up even on offering me books by this point.

  Here is the thing: if you hear a voice, it is very important to those like Dr.
Rezwari to make it stop, and keep it stopped. This is because they are afraid the voice will tell you to hurt other people. And yourself, of course. So they load you up with risperidone until you’re nothing but your own shadow, and they call it a day.

  I don’t blame them for this. I get it.

  It’s just—if she had, only once, asked me when the voice started. Or why I thought I heard it, or anything about it. What it sounded like. Who it sounded like.

  If she’d asked those questions, then maybe I would have gotten better sooner. Would have been spared a trip to the ER.

  Anyway.

  You probably remember that whole conversation at your car differently, of course. I am quite sure you were confused and maybe even a little hurt by my flatness, I mean; in those days I could barely motivate the muscles of my mouth to smile. That’s the thing. Our versions of reality always differ, even when we’re supposedly sane.

  But I thought you were cool, even right then at the start. I want you to know that.

  I think it was maybe a week later that I saw Paris again. I hadn’t really seen you in that time. I mean, I’d passed you and Shane on the lawn a couple of times, drinking your beers, and I’d seen you drive past in your truck, sometimes laden with bags full of Elmos or Beanie Babies. We’d said hello and stuff. Had some epically awkward interactions in the laundry area—Dad and I used the same machines—some painful false starts.

  “Oh, you wear T-shirts too!”

  That kind of thing.

  Awful.

  Anyway, I was on my way out of the hospital from seeing Dr. Rezwari and Paris was standing there smoking by the revolving door. It was hot, and she was wearing a string vest. I mean like an old man’s mesh tank top; you could see everything.

  “Hey, Fortune Teller,” she said.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She was leaning against the wall right by the door, in the cool blast from the air-conditioning inside; the air in town was muggy, full of rain that needed to fall. “Appointment?” she said.