by Nick Lake
“Yeah. You still here?”
“No. Outpatient too now.”
“Good,” I said. When they let you out it means they don’t think you’re in imminent danger of doing something stupid. “You got an appointment too?”
“Done. Now I’m waiting for a ride.” She examined me. “You look ******* terrible, BTW.”
“What?”
It really was a tic, see?
“Your skin, your eyes, everything. Diazepam? Valium?” She peered at my eyes. “No. Haldol. Wait, no, that’s kind of a big gun, you’d be drooling more. Risperidone. Yep. Risperidone. I’m right, yeah?”
I stammered. “Y-yes.”
“You feel like you’re wrapped in cotton?”
Fog was how I thought of it, but, yes, close enough. “Uh, yeah.”
“Me too. You have to stop that shit, seriously.”
I shook my head.
Paris flicked her cigarette; it exploded on the concrete, sparking. “Afraid of the voices?”
I nodded. Then I shook my head. “Just one voice.”
“Same thing. Anyway, I stopped it. You can too. ’Course, the docs go ape if they find out. But the docs think drugs are the answer to everything.”
“You … heard voices too?”
She made an equivocal motion of her head. “Kind of. Visual phenomena. Apparitions. Which would sometimes speak as well.”
“Like ghosts?”
“Like ghosts.”
“And you still see them?”
“There’s a woman standing behind you right now. Half her face is missing.”
I whipped around, heart jumping.
“Kidding,” she said. She gave a wicked smile. “But yeah, I still see shit.”
“I don’t want to hear my voice. It … It wasn’t nice.”
She waved a hand, dismissing this. “You have to learn to deal with it, is all,” she said. “Dr. Lewis can help with that.” Then she leaned closer. Suddenly she was conspiratorial, serious. “Here,” she said. She handed me a card. On it was printed:
NEW JERSEY VOICE SUPPORT GROUP
Under it was a number and an e-mail address.
“Thursdays, at the bowling alley on Elm,” she said. “There’s a room at the back. If I’m not there, tell them Paris sent you.”
I looked at the card. “Is it … safe?”
She laughed. “It’s not a cult. It’s run by a super-respected guy. Dr. Lewis. It’s just … they’re psychologists, mostly. The docs aren’t on the same page as them. Though there are a couple who are coming over to the light.” She paused. “Who are you seeing? Rezwari? Yeah, she’s not one of them.”
“And the people in this group … don’t believe in drugs?”
“They begin with the principle that the voices are real, and are created by trauma, and must be accommodated, not silenced.” It sounded like she was reciting something.
“My voice scares me,” I said. Admitting this out loud seemed major.
Paris glossed over it though. She waved a hand. “Thursdays, seven p.m. You don’t have to go. But give it a chance. Those drugs they’re giving you are just putting a lid on things. They’re not turning the heat down on the range.”
I glanced at the paper bag she was holding, which obviously contained prescription drugs.
“These are antidepressants,” she said. “Different ball game. Without these, my life isn’t worth living, seriously. I’m not, like, antipsychiatry. Just the way they deal with people like you.”
“Which is?”
“Tell you you’re schizophrenic, or whatever. They did that, right?”
I nodded. It was one of my three possible diagnoses.
“Fill you with drugs. Treat the symptom, not the problem. Most people who hear voices, they’re not mentally ill. They’ve just suffered something. Lived through something really bad. And it manifests itself as a voice that seems to come from outside.”
My legs suddenly shook. There was an image in my head: blood pooling around a head, small white tiles. A baseball bat.
I put out a hand and grabbed her wrist.
“You okay?”
I gasped. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
She looked at me, and her eyes were lit with intelligence. “I would hazard a guess”—she talked like that sometimes—“that something bad may have happened to you when you were younger. Am I wrong?”
“No. I mean, yes, you’re wrong.”
My veins and arteries were alive, thin snakes writhing within me. I was so freaked out I didn’t even think to ask the obvious question.
Can you see what the obvious question would have been?
Take a moment.
Yes.
The obvious question would have been:
If that’s true, if it comes from trauma, then what happened to you?
“Okay, then,” she said. “Fine. You just remember what I said.” She thought for a second, then she flicked some invisible hair from her ear and looked right at me. She was wearing no makeup at all and was pale and skinny, but I still almost had to look away from her; it was painful, her beauty, like looking at the sun without those weird shades that have a slit in them that people wear for eclipses. “Pop quiz,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Obamacare: Pro or con?”
I closed my eyes. “I’m tired. I can’t—”
“Oh please,” she said. “I aced an Anthropology midterm at Rutgers on Xanax and methadone. On which note: Marcel Mauss.”
“What?”
“Marcel Mauss,” she said, stressing it this time.
I thought for a second. My brain was so slow. “Uh, magic. Or sacrifice?”
“Both, actually.” She gave a soft clapping mime. “Back to the start. Obamacare: Pro or con?”
“Pro?”
“Good. Word association. Pro.”
“What?”
“What word do you associate with the word ‘pro’?”
“Choice.”
“Good answer. ‘Life’ would also have sufficed. Next one: leather.”
I hesitated for a moment. “Notebook.”
“Martin.”
“Amis.”
“Eleanor,” she said.
“Rigby.”
“Good. I would also have accepted ‘Roosevelt.’ ”
“I think you might be crazy,” I said.
“Wiser minds than yours would agree,” she said. “Next one: procrustean.”
“Bed.”
“Pan.”
“Echo.”
She frowned. “Echo?”
“In one version, Pan wanted her, and she said no, and so he had his followers tear her apart. But the earth loved her, so it kept her voice in the stones and the trees and the caves. To cut a long story short.”
“Wow,” she said. “You taught me something. Doesn’t happen often. I was going for pipes, or Dionysus.” She looked at me funny.
“What is it?”
“I knew I recognized you, that first time. You go the library, right?”
“Ye-e-e-s. You?”
She did a comical big-eyes thing. “Are you serious? No. But I pick up books for school sometimes. Books are expensive shit. Anyway, you’re a big reader, huh?”
“Yes. I mean, I was.”
“Risperidone stop you reading?”
I nodded.
“Told you, you have to get off that stuff. Yeah, I saw you, I remember now, you had a load of books … about murder or something?”
“Yeah.”
“Light reading.”
“It was … you know what, forget it.” It had made so much sense at the time—the idea that the voice was a victim of the Houdini Killer, a remnant left behind. If I said it now it would just sound insane.
“Well, anyway, I like you,” she said. “You’re okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” She reached into a front pocket of her skinny jeans and handed me another card. Her dark eyes were warm on mine, like black asphalt heated by the sun. �
��E-mail me if you want to hang out.”
I glanced down at the card. It had a silhouette of a girl sitting on a chair, legs wide. Under her, embraced by her legs, was:
CAM GIRL. GLAMOUR. PRIVATE PARTIES.
INSTA: @jerseygirl95
There was no phone number, just an e-mail address: jerseygirl95@_____.com
I looked up at her.
“She’s a ******* whore,” said the voice, but not loud, as if it were coming from the other side of the parking lot, by the Dumpster and the trees, shimmering in the heat.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot to mention, I’m a glamour model. Or, you know, aspiring. It would drive my dad crazy if he knew. Which is a big part of why I do it.”
DR. REZWARI (making notes on her pad) Do you ever hear the voice now?
ME: (lying) No.
DR. REZWARI: You’re sure?
ME: (lying) Yes.
So, you see, it wasn’t just you I lied to.
I checked out Paris’s Instagram feed—I know how to do that; I’m not a total Luddite. It was basically photos of her in bikinis and underwear, sometimes modeling things that had obviously been sent to her free, and I was surprised to see that she had 39K followers.
Paris liked to take her clothes off, clearly, but she was smart. Or maybe I should say, and she was smart. To avoid any implication of contradiction.
She loved books. She loved knowing stuff. She was a college student.
I liked her.
The voice did not like her. It called her “that ******* whore” and other stuff that was even worse. But it didn’t say much when she was around, and it didn’t threaten me about seeing her; it didn’t say much ever those days, and when it did it was kind of dulled, as if coming from the other side of a window. Looking back, I think that was not just the risperidone working, it was also because the voice knew that Paris was offering a different way of dealing with things, one that didn’t involve drugs. The voice hated the drugs, because they muffled it, suffocated it, a pillow over a mouth.
EDIT: I hated them. The voice is me. I understand that now. Even you probably do, just from reading this. But I didn’t then of course.
I guess it was maybe a week after I saw her at the hospital that I e-mailed Paris. I hadn’t seen you much—even though Dr. Rezwari kept telling me to get to know you. It wasn’t easy. You were working most of the time, or you were hanging out with Shane. You would wave to me, but I didn’t feel like you were interested in me or anything; in fact I was convinced I had offended you by being cold when we spoke, and not accepting your offer of a ride.
So I just lay in bed or sat in the kitchen or whatever. I’d just spent a whole day sitting in Dad’s study watching millipedes crawl all over a log, and my brain was mush. I had the impression that I was locked out of my own body, floating somewhere above it.
I wanted to feel stuff again.
I set up an address: echo@_____.com
And I e-mailed Paris one word:
HELP.
It was a Thursday. The day when the voice support group met. I think unconsciously I knew that. Paris e-mailed me back exactly fifty-seven minutes later. When you are watching millipedes crawl, you are very conscious of the passage of time. Her e-mail said:
CALL ME. 800-555-5555
I took out my cell and dialed the number.
“Jerseygirl95 here, I’m wet and in front of my camera and—”
“It’s me, Cass.”
“I know. I was just ******* with you.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry. Tell me. What’s up?”
“The drugs.”
“Yeah, I thought so.” The kindness in her voice made me almost want to cry. Dr. Rezwari wasn’t kind. I mean, she wasn’t some kind of monster. But she didn’t really care. You could tell. I could tell.
“You said there was a guy, a—”
“Already done. Dr. Lewis doesn’t think you’re ready for group, but he’ll meet you before. Massey Bowling Alley, six p.m.”
I looked at my watch. Two hours. “Okay,” I said. I must have sounded pretty bummed because Paris said:
“Come see me now. I’m close to there.” She gave me the address of her condo.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes! Come hang out. Meet my roomie.”
I wrote a note for Dad. It took me a while to think what to put in it. I couldn’t say I was meeting a friend; he knew I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t think he would be cool with me hanging out with someone I’d met at the mental hospital. He and I had been living together like two people made of bone china, scared to bump into each other.
In the end I wrote:
Gone to see a movie. Love you. Cass.
Most likely he wouldn’t be back from the restaurant before me anyway. I left the house. I passed your apartment, but of course you and Shane were working. I walked the whole way—Oakwood is a small place, as you know, and Paris didn’t live far away.
Her condo was just back from the boardwalk; a fifties building like a pink iced cake, with white balconies like wings. I rang the bell, and she buzzed me up.
When I got to the door, another girl opened it. She had red hair, but I thought it was probably dyed—it was a really bright color. There was a tattoo on her arm of a kind of pinup woman from the forties or something, and she was wearing a vintage dress and her hair was swept up with bobby pins.
“I’m Julie,” she said. “Paris is in the kitchen, making cookies.”
I must have looked surprised.
“She bakes,” said Julie. “I know. Go figure.”
“I’m Cass,” I said. “Um, hi.”
“Nice to meet you, Cass. Go on through—I’m heading out. I have a team meet.” She picked up a pair of roller skates by the door and slung them over her shoulder.
“You do roller derby?” I asked.
“Yep.”
I’d watched a movie about roller derby with Mom once. So I knew a tiny bit about it. “What’s your, like, player name?”
“Player name?” She raised an eyebrow.
I felt stupid then. “I don’t know what you call it … but don’t you have, like, crazy names that you put on your shirts and stuff?”
“I was messing with you. I knew what you meant. And, yes, I do. One Thousand Mega Joules. ’Cause I’m Julie, and I study—”
“Physics?”
Julie smiled. She wasn’t pretty—her face was a little blunt—but her smile was like the sun when it hits the ocean on a gray still day, and even though the water is flat, matte, it flashes. “Close. Chemistry.” She turned to face back into the apartment. “Hey, Par, this one is smart.”
“I told you,” said Paris’s voice, from an unseen corner of the condo.
“Kitchen’s on the left,” said Julie. “See you soon, I hope.” Then she whisked out. She was someone with her dial always turned to full, Julie. She still is.
I followed the sound of Paris’s voice, across a smooth wood floor. There was a small hall that went straight into the main living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked over the beach and ocean, like you were sailing over it. Just to the left, I could see the first pier jutting out over the wide expanse of sand, the Ferris wheel slowly turning. There were a couple of armchairs like you see in magazines—curved metal bases, leather stretched over them. A coffee table made of polished driftwood. It did not look like a student’s condo.
I turned left and into the small kitchen. Paris banged the oven door shut. “I’m baking cookies,” she said. “For the occasion. They’ll be ready in a half hour.”
“Wow,” I said. I was worried about cookies and my allergy, but I didn’t want to put a downer on things.
“I know. I will make someone a fine wife one day.”
I smiled. “Someone eligible, I hope,” I said.
“Oh, Mother!” she exclaimed, in a surprisingly good British accent. “He hath two hundred a year, and a good house.” She did a curtsy. “I ****** love those old books. Austen and stuff.�
��
“Me too.” I would have said more. I would have said that I had loved Austen anyway, or I would have asked her if she knew that Jane from the library was actually Jane Austin, but I was wiped out from the walk. I just waved vaguely at the living room and reached out for the countertop to stabilize myself, and Paris looked stricken.
“Sorry! Sorry! Go sit down.” She ushered me ahead of her.
I sat on one of the armchairs. It kind of cradled me.
Paris sat opposite me; hooked her leg over the side of her chair. She fidgeted for a second, then leaned over and grabbed a piece of purple paper from a pile on the end table. She started folding it—some kind of origami.
When it was done, she held it up in front of her, and it obviously passed inspection because she smiled.
“What’s that?” I said. My best guess was some kind of bird—pointed head, arched wings.
“Crane,” said Paris.
“Cool. You like origami?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“So …”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s this thing. The thousand cranes? You have to make a thousand of them, and when you do, you get one wish. It’s like this old Japanese—I don’t know what you would call it—folk tale or belief or meditation or some kind of mix of all of them.”
“A thousand?”
“Yeah. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth a wish.”
“I guess not. So how many have you made?”
“Two hundred and sixty,” she said. She glanced at the purple crane in her hand. “Two hundred and sixty-one.” Abruptly, she got up from the chair—a motion like a spring uncoiling, quick and elastic. “Come look,” she said.
Paris led the way to a door at the other end of the room. She opened it and flicked a switch—bright electric light burst into being, illuminating a room that was obviously hers. Mess of clothes on the floor, a king-size bed nearly disappearing under books and magazines and plates of food—just a kind of tunnel to climb under the covers like a rabbit.
And all over the shelves on the walls, in among the beer glasses and photos and teddy bears, standing on every available surface: cranes. Paris pointed up and I looked; there was a string from the light shade to the wall, and on it more cranes were hanging. It seemed like more than two hundred and sixty. They were all colors—mostly white, but also red and green and blue and silver and gold.
