by John Neufeld
She dressed as she had on her good days, before she went away, and told everyone she met that they, too, should have a little breakdown of their own, just to be able to sit at the water’s edge and catch the rays.
After school, to M.N., Lisa said something different. The place her parents had sent her had been, really, a rest home. (I admit, when M.N. told me this, I was a little annoyed. But only because I think of the Shillings as first-rate villains who never have positive thoughts about Lisa at all.) They had phoned ahead and spoken to a resident doctor. But they hadn’t told him about the scene under Mr. Milne’s desk, or about the blood and the stupidity of it, just about Lisa’s “tension” and need for a change of scene.
So, when she arrived, and after some weird sort of entrance exam or interview or whatever, Lisa was ignored by one and all. Worse, the other patients were all old people. There was no one to talk with, no one to talk to, no one to help her at all. The place let her do as she pleased, gave her three decent meals a day, and let her alone. For the six weeks she was there, Lisa got up each morning, walked out onto a pier, sat down, and looked at the water looking back at her. Nothing more. She hadn’t a thought in her head, she told M.N., except maybe one: that she was going bats, that she really was out of her mind.
M.N. said that Lisa said this with a laugh. That obviously it wasn’t true, as anyone could see. I wasn’t sure. It had already occurred to me that Lisa’s brightness in school that day was sham. That she must have decided that crazy was what she was and, having given fair warning, she would enjoy it.
But for the first few days after her return everything seemed pretty much as it had been before. Even Brian was attentive. He walked Lisa through the halls between classes, took her to a movie and dinner, and it seemed as though they might, after all, get back together again. We all thought this would be a good thing.
But then things changed. Lisa came to school one morning dressed for a dark day. She spoke to no one and ate lunch alone, ignoring one and all, rebuffing anyone who tried to talk to her. Brian took one look and never looked again.
M.N., with her usual look-on-the-bright-side manner, decided that this was only a temporary mood, almost a kind of joke. Lisa had been gone so long her teachers had decided to let her continue her courses without makeups. With that problem out of the way, there shouldn’t have been any “tension” since she had said she could live perfectly well without Brian. There was no reason for her to be “that way” more than a day or two, M.N. said. I decided, though I didn’t say so, that the phrase of M.N.’s, “no reason at all,” was exactly right. It was not reassuring. For, by this time, though I had never been one of her close friends, I was truly worried for Lisa.
Things got worse instead of better. Lisa slipped back into her dark days’ mood altogether. She would answer her teachers’ questions but only in a whisper. Once, when she was called on in calculus, Lisa looked around guiltily and seemed to shrink before she got up from her desk. Then—as though hiding from everything in the world—she tiptoed to Miss Strane’s desk and whispered, in her ear, the answer to the question!
It was hard enough watching, and harder still for most people to watch without laughing or making fun. But what happened was that everyone in the class that day realized that something really was wrong with Lisa Shilling. So she was allowed to behave as she wished, without snickering or catcalls or cruelty.
For most of Lisa’s classmates were sympathetic. The word was out. People were as careful as they could be around her. We tried our best to adjust to her so as not to jar her any more than was necessary. We ignored her when she seemed to want this, and when she wanted friends, we were available. In other words, we were scared to death of what was happening in front of our eyes. We didn’t need to know why it was happening. It was happening, and it needn’t have happened to Lisa alone. It could have happened to any of us.
What did make me mad, though, was that the school staff was also scared. I know one isn’t supposed to seek a double standard of behavior, but I still got mad when I thought of it. Naturally, you couldn’t count on Bernstein to do much. But Lisa’s other teachers could have done something, even if only telephoning the Shillings. Instead, they too seemed to want to believe that Lisa’s behavior was “normal” and nothing about which to be alarmed. Maybe they thought, as we had, that Lisa was putting the whole school on. But after a while you could see this wasn’t true. You just wondered what she would do next.
The only person I know who wasn’t afraid of Lisa was Elizabeth Frazer. For some reason, Lisa had again drifted in Elizabeth’s direction and used her in an odd way, as a shield from the rest of us. And Elizabeth still didn’t talk to her, or seem to pay her any mind at all.
One day, as M.N. and I were walking home from school, she stopped short, grabbed my arm, and looked at me happily. “That’s it!” she said. “We’ll just have to do it!”
“What?” I asked.
“Help Lisa ourselves, of course. Obviously no one else is going to. Her parents don’t believe anything is wrong. Most of the teachers are chicken. We can’t set Lisa up with doctors.”
“How are we going to help, then? You don’t even talk to her anymore. She won’t let you,” I said.
“I know, I know,” M.N. agreed. “Still, we ought to be able to turn somewhere for help. And you’ll have to be in on it.”
“Me! I hardly know her. She doesn’t even recognize me most of the time. She’s your friend, not mine.”
“Well,” M.N. said, “that may be true. But you’re my friend. You’ll just have to help me help her.”
That kind of reasoning is hard to beat. So I stood there, waiting.
“We have to convince Lisa’s family that she’s in real danger,” M.N. said after a moment. “We’ll go to her house and tell her parents what’s happening in school, and that Lisa wasn’t kidding, after all. They can’t help but be upset and they’ll have to get some professional help for her.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Shilling?” I said. “They won’t even admit there’s anything odd going on.”
“They will if I can get to them,” M.N. answered. “And, just in case they don’t, while I’m at their house you can talk to Mr. Bernstein. He’ll make them see.”
“Bernstein! You’ve got to be kidding! He’s about as forceful as Prissy in Gone with the Wind.”
“Well, anyway, as a backup, just in case the Shillings don’t understand me, they might understand him. You’ll just have to do it.”
“What on earth am I going to say to the man? That Lisa’s ready to be committed? He won’t believe me. I’m not even certain myself that it’s true.”
“What,” said M.N. in her coldest voice, “exactly would convince you? Another session under Mr. Milne’s desk?”
I shivered. “All right,” I said. “All right. I just don’t know what I’ll say is all.”
“Neither do I, to her parents. But it’s got to be said, just the same, whatever it is.”
And that was the beginning of the Fickett-Frazer-Goodman Psychiatric Clinic. Barely the beginning.
7
The next day, as soon as school was out, Mary Nell got Brian to drive her to the Shillings’ house while I went looking for Mr. Bernstein. M.N. wanted to get to Lisa’s mother before Lisa herself came home from school.
I dawdled a bit since I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to tell Mr. Bernstein. About ten minutes after the final bell, though, I was standing outside his door when he himself appeared, on his way home.
“Oh,” I said, backing away a little.
“May I help you?” Mr. Bernstein asked. He stood in the doorway and looked at me with a funny little smile. Hopeful, I supposed. “Is there something I can do for you?”
I tried to smile back. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute or so?”
“Ah, yes,” Mr. Bernstein said and retreated into his office, motioning me to follow. I did and he closed the door as I sat down.
Mr. Bernstein’s office was hardly more than a large janitorial closet, which I guess pretty well indicates how high he was held in the estimation of the school. Perhaps it was a state law, I thought to myself, that each school had to have a guidance counselor or whatever, for obviously no one thought too much about it. I had the feeling I was one of the few people who had ever walked into Mr. Bernstein’s office without having been sent there.
“Now then,” he said, “I don’t know who you are, do I?”
“My name is Betsy Goodman. But it’s not because of myself I came,” I said fast
“Oh? Who then?”
“Lisa Shilling.”
“Miss Shilling,” he sort of whispered and stopped smiling. He leaned back in his chair and swung back and forth in it in very small arcs for a few seconds. “What is it, then, that you want?”
“Mr. Bernstein, she needs help. Real help, more than you probably have time to give her,” I said, congratulating myself for tact.
“Why?” Mr. Bernstein asked. “She’s had a good rest. Didn’t she come back beautiful and rested? What more does she need?”
“More than that,” I said, not really sure what it was Lisa did need. “I think she really is going out of her mind and nothing here can stop it.”
“What is it you want to do?”
“Well, I—you have to impress her parents with how sick she really is. You have to make them see she’s in real trouble and needs … needs some kind of treatment. Maybe even a full-time psychiatrist or something.”
“I don’t think they want to listen to anyone,” Mr. Bernstein said. “I have the feeling that the Shillings don’t want to know anything about sickness. Even in their daughter. Besides, I’ll tell you something. They wouldn’t listen to me, even if I called them.”
“But why not?”
“My dear Miss Goodman, are you old enough to understand something? No one likes to have their lives intruded upon. If I call, they’ll think I’m criticizing the way they raise their children. And I would have to give them good reasons for interfering.”
“Well, there you are!” I said. “If you have to give them reasons to convince them something is dreadfully wrong, then you just tell them what’s been happening. None of us cares whatever else you tell them, as long as it works.”
“They would care,” Mr. Bernstein said, suddenly very quiet. “They would care, indeed they would. And they would care it was me who called them.”
Mr. Bernstein sat motionless for a moment, turned away from me and looking up at the ceiling, and said again softly, “They would care it was me.”
For a minute I was stopped. But then I decided this was no time to reassure Mr. Bernstein that not everyone worried about life in the same ways he did. So I leaped in another direction instead. “Well, then,” I said brightly, “maybe the way to do this is to tell Mr. Jackson. They would certainly listen to the principal.”
Mr. Bernstein swung around to face me. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he said.
“But why? If you can—”
“Because it could be misinterpreted, Miss Goodman. If Mr. Jackson knew and did anything, it would seem as though it were a disciplinary problem. And you know the Shillings wouldn’t buy that. Besides,” he said thoughtfully, “that isn’t the case. I’ve heard about this girl again from her teachers. And I think you’re right. It wasn’t just examinations or that boy. It is different, worse, deeper. But I have to find better reasons, and that isn’t easy without talking to Miss Shilling herself.”
“Then we’ll persuade her to see you,” I said quickly.
But Mr. Bernstein got nervous all over again and began his little swinging motion in his chair. “No, no. I don’t think so,” he said quickly, under his breath. “No, not yet.” He turned around in his chair and looked at me without blinking, deciding, I guessed, whether to be honest or not. “I promise you that if I find a way to do something, I’ll do it. But you must not depend on me.” He looked very sad. “You must not depend on me.”
I was still a moment, and I think I was staring. I couldn’t believe him. Sitting there, swinging, he just announced he was of no use, no value, and he wanted me to understand!
“So,” Mr. Bernstein said suddenly, smiling now, “we’ll look into this together, then.” He stood up. “I’m glad you came to see me, Miss Goodman. We’ll certainly look into this. O.K.? O.K.” He was relieved.
I stood up, too. “O.K., Mr. Bernstein,” I said quietly. “O.K.,” and then I turned to leave.
“Miss Goodman?” Mr. Bernstein called. I stopped and turned around again. “Miss Goodman,” he said, “try to see. Try, yes?”
“Yes, Mr. Bernstein,” I said. “I see.”
That evening after supper, M.N. and I met at her house. I was dying to find out what, if anything, had happened at the Shillings’.
“Nothing,” Mary Nell said.
“Nothing? What do you mean? Something must have happened.”
“Not really. I never got any farther than the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?”
“The kitchen. I got there and rang the front doorbell. Mrs. Shilling came and looked through the curtains. Seeing it was only me, she motioned me to go around to the back. So I did. She was kind enough to let me stand just inside the backdoor, on a doormat, for the next few minutes.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“True,” M.N. agreed. “In fact, you have just summed up Mrs. Shilling’s reactions altogether.”
“She didn’t believe anything?” I asked.
“Nothing. Yes, she knew Lisa was a little on edge. Lisa had told her herself that—”
“On edge! She’s already in midair!”
“You know that, I know that, and Lisa knows that. Mrs. Shilling doesn’t,” M.N. said. “Furthermore, she didn’t appreciate the fact that I, a presumptuous sixteen-year-old child, should come to tell her about her own family and how to run it, thank you very much.”
“Well, that’s certainly plain enough,” I said.
“Mrs. Shilling is nothing if not a plainspoken woman,” M.N. said with a mean sort of smile. “Anyway, she knows her family well enough to take care of it, she said. Hadn’t she just spent God knows how much money sending Lisa away for six whole weeks to do nothing but laze around in the sun dreaming?”
“It’s not as though she couldn’t afford it,” I said.
“I said that, too. I couldn’t help myself. That’s when I was shown off the doormat and into the driveway,” M.N. said with a shrug afterward. “You know, I feel sort of like Chicken Little. What the hell would have happened if the sky really had fallen in?”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We wait here for Lisa. She said she would come by in a little while. I decided to ask her over so we could tell her we know and understand, and that we want to help.”
“Do you really think she’ll come? Or listen?”
“I don’t honestly know,” M.N. admitted. “I just hope so.”
8
So we had our first session with our clinic’s one and only patient, Lisa Shilling.
For Lisa did show up that night. Maybe it was out of loyalty to Mary Nell. Perhaps it was only to escape her own family for a few hours. Or maybe it was because she knew how dangerously close she was to hitting the bottom of the gulch. Lisa is a very smart girl, if I didn’t mention it before.
Anyway, she arrived looking worse than we had ever seen her because she came at night. The bell rang and M.N. ran to get it. She opened the door and gasped, for Lisa seemed as though she had come from another world. Her clothing was entirely black, and she had makeup on we had never seen before—dark lines beneath her eyes, and coal-black above them, which made her eyes seem to be six inches back in her head. The whole effect made her face longer, paler, and just plain scary.
I stepped forward as quickly as I could while M.N. was recovering, because we had decided it was important to get Lisa into the house without being seen by any of the Fick
etts, parents or kids. I took Lisa’s arm and led her into the Reverend’s study, closing the door behind us as fast and as quietly as I could.
Lisa was motioned into a chair while M.N. and I sat side by side on the couch facing her. M.N. didn’t speak right away. She couldn’t take her eyes off Lisa. This wasn’t the best thing in the world for her to do.
“Do you mind!” Lisa said quietly but sharply.
“Oh!” M.N. said. “I am sorry, really. There’s no reason, I suppose.”
Lisa nodded and swung her swivel chair around to the bookshelves behind her. M.N. looked at me, pleading for me to help but I didn’t. At least not right away. After all, this was M.N.’s idea, her party.
“You certainly know how to make a person feel at home,” Lisa said suddenly, still looking up at the bookshelves. “Here’s one of my favorites. Principles of Abnormal Psychology, by Maslow and Mittelmann. It’s an absolute knockout of a book.” Then she swung around to face us, straight on. M.N. coughed.
I couldn’t help myself. “Lisa,” I said, “we believe you.”
“What do you believe?” she asked me haughtily.
“That you really are ill,” I said. “That it’s not just a temporary thing, or a phase or anything.”
“Yes,” said Mary Nell finally. “Yes, that’s right. We know.”
“Well?” Lisa asked.
“Well,” M.N. said, at a loss. “We want to help somehow, if we can. How can we?”
“How can you indeed,” Lisa echoed. “How can anyone?”
“But there must be something to do,” I said. “We know you’re not going to get help from your family. M.N. went there this afternoon and tried to talk to your mother about it.”
“You did?” Lisa said, for the first time showing some interest. Her voice softened a little. “I could have told you,” she said, mimicking her mother and speaking through locked jaws, “if you had asked, that you wouldn’t get anywhere that way.”
