Lisa, Bright and Dark

by John Neufeld

  Then she turned, walked out of the game room and out of the house altogether, exhausted.

  13

  M.N. bounced back.

  Elizabeth reminded us both that if we were going to try to help Lisa, we had to expect almost anything. It was good to care about Lisa, and to love her in a way, but there would be times when we couldn’t allow ourselves to be hurt or upset by her.

  So M.N. got all fired up again. She dug out her library card and began to devour book after book, calling me up at all hours to read bits about schizophrenia or about paranoia—getting excited by each new piece of information and each new discovery.

  It was marvelous therapy. For M.N. Pretty soon, though, both Elizabeth and I could see where it was leading. M.N. began diagnosing everyone. No one escaped. No one was free of neuroses or symptoms, latent or overt. She was having a field day.

  Among others, she analyzed Mr. Bernstein, Mr. Milne, Miss Strane our calculus teacher (that was a marvel!), her own father, my father, and both of Lisa’s parents. It was about then that I remembered the saying, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Whoever said that first must have known M.N. was on the way.

  But when we talked to Lisa, it was M.N. who talked least. I could see why. Though she had pretty well recovered, M.N. was still wary of Lisa.

  Not Elizabeth, though. Elizabeth seldom spoke but when she did it somehow mattered more than when M.N. or I did. She seemed to be a step ahead of Lisa. It was she who could calm Lisa if she needed it, or guide her thoughts in a meaningful way. I was fascinated by everything she did, but Elizabeth and I never really got any closer as friends.

  Oddly, M.N. and I did. One of the changes that took place after that one afternoon’s disaster was M.N.’s renewed spirit, as I said. But she had lost confidence, too. Lisa was a shock for M.N. who had always been the brightest, the most hardworking, the best-liked girl around. She loved to organize, to arrange, to be chairman. And she was good at all these things.

  All of a sudden, M.N. wasn’t in charge of anything, and she wanted to talk about it. She needed a confidante. And as M.N.’s confidence sank, mine miraculously rose to the surface. I could have sworn I actually felt myself growing up, maturing. Naturally, just when I was beginning to feel that maybe I did know a little about life, M.N. jumped ship and swam to her father.

  I gather M.N. decided if she could involve her father in what we were doing, she would be reinstated as chief, leader, executive-in-charge. It hadn’t yet occurred to her that Lisa, one individual human being, simply wasn’t going to be taken over or solved or maneuvered to M.N.’s satisfaction.

  So M.N. talked to her father, and he told her what she told me long ago he would say: that it was a dangerous thing to do. That we were playing in a swimming pool in midwinter that could be drained at any minute, leaving us all open to pneumonia, and probably drowning Lisa at the same time. But, and this must have been what M.N. counted on, while Mr. Fickett thought we shouldn’t have been involved, he thought he might be able to do something we couldn’t if he were involved.

  So Mr. Fickett got hold of Mr. Milne, our English teacher. He decided that what had to be said would count more coming from real-er, more serious and responsible people than from dopey teenagers. When M.N. told me this I got a little hot, but I remembered that it wasn’t who did the trick that counted, it was whether the trick was done at all that could help Lisa.

  The problem was that while Mr. Fickett wanted to help Lisa, all he and Mr. Milne really knew was what they had either heard from M.N., or what Mr. Milne had seen in school in only one of Lisa’s classes. It wasn’t a lot of ammunition.

  Still, all the Shillings could do was say no, they didn’t agree and weren’t about to admit their daughter was going nuts; or yes, they did see the danger and would spare nothing to help her. It was a 50/50 chance of getting through.

  So Mr. Fickett made an appointment pretending, I guess, that it had something to do with the church. It sounded a little dishonest for a minister to get his foot in the door that way, but I figured Mr. Fickett was old enough to handle his own conscience. The cause was what was important.

  When Mr. Fickett and Mr. Milne arrived at the Shillings’, Mrs. Shilling had gone out, no doubt busily pretending to be some sort of society lady, which she badly wanted to be, fooling no one but herself. (I may have mentioned that she’s not my favorite lady of all time.) This left just the three men, M.N. said, which suited everyone fine.

  “Mr. Shilling,” M.N.’s father began, “we have a problem.”

  “Which I gather,” Mr. Shilling said, “has nothing to do with your church. Unless Mr. Milne here is a deacon or something.”

  “Not me,” Mr. Milne said smiling. “I’m one of those sandwich board carriers you see, whose church comes in the form of believing in man.”

  “Which, in theory, is the best kind of religion,” Mr. Fickett said. “No, the problem is your daughter, Lisa.”

  “Is she in trouble?” Mr. Shilling asked. “Has she broken into the church? Looted her classroom?”

  “Of course not,” Mary Nell’s father said. “You know your daughter better than that.”

  “That’s very true,” Mr. Shilling agreed quickly.

  “What you may be unaware of, though,” Mr. Fickett went on, “is that Lisa is in more serious trouble, a kind that calls for special handling.”

  Mr. Shilling laughed harshly. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you’re not going to tell me she’s pregnant!”

  “Not,” Mr. Milne said, “as far as we know. If she were, I can’t think it would be so amusing as you do.”

  “She’s ill, Mr. Shilling, mentally,” Mr. Fickett said.

  Mr. Shilling stopped chuckling. “Do I understand you, Reverend? Are you about to tell me Lisa is losing her mind?”

  “It seems to us that that, in theory, is the present danger,” Mr. Fickett replied.

  “Your daughter said the same thing to my wife not long ago,” Mr. Shilling said, “no doubt at my daughter’s urging. At the time, as I recall, neither my wife nor I was much impressed by their logic.”

  “You should have been,” Mr. Milne said. “It might have made a difference in terms of time.”

  “A while back, an imaginative child came to tell my wife that Lisa was going crazy. I’m not unreasonable, and I’m not a villain. But what’s the evidence? What do you see we can’t?”

  “Well, I see her every day in school,” Mr. Milne answered. “I can honestly say her behavior is anything but strictly rational.”

  “Does it vary so much from your own?” Mr. Shilling asked.

  “Well, I admit I’m not over consistent,” Mr. Milne said, smiling politely. “But I don’t think I appear to have separate personalities. I don’t have the ups and downs your daughter has. I don’t hide from the world half the time and then shout to be recognized by it the other half. And, I’m afraid, when I make a mistake, I don’t imagine an entire class has laid a deliberate trap for me. I accept the results of my own behavior.”

  “Mr. Shilling,” M.N.’s father said, “your daughter has admitted to her friends that she thinks she’s ill. That she is frightened. In theory, you are the person who can best help her.”

  “I agree,” Mr. Shilling said. “I really do. And I’d be the first to help if I thought Lisa were really experiencing a trauma of some terrible kind.”

  “You don’t think she is?” Mr. Milne asked.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea whether she is or not,” Mr. Shilling said. “All I can tell you positively is that we—my wife and I—don’t see signs of anything disturbing. Lisa’s behavior is as normal as it’s ever been.”

  “But what about the reports from her school?” Mr. Fickett asked. “Don’t they disturb you at all? Isn’t there a chance that we might be right? After all, you sent her away for some reason.”

  “Yes, we did,” Mr. Shilling admitted. “We were told to, and we could, so we did. Since then, there haven’t been any other incidents like that first one
. We see nothing different. Gentlemen, I’m a very busy man. I travel a great deal. When I am here, I can’t tell if anything abnormal is happening or has happened unless I’m told about it. No one has said anything further. Lisa has done nothing more. She goes about life as she chooses. She does what she feels is right and in tune with our way of living.”

  “I think she’s marching to another tune now,” Mr. Milne offered. “I agree with you. If you can’t see it, perhaps it isn’t there. But that’s mental illness. It can’t be seen. Be grateful sometimes it can be sensed.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Mr. Milne,” said Lisa’s father. “But my nose just isn’t as keen as yours. Lisa’s never been a timid child. When she wanted something, she always said so. She wants something now—God knows what!—and she’s saying so.”

  “That’s unjust,” said Mr. Milne.

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Shilling said. “Maybe it’s not that simple.”

  “The simple fact is,” Mary Nell’s father said suddenly, “that if you don’t help your daughter, someone else will. We owe it to her.”

  Mr. Shilling spoke very quietly and very slowly. “Mr. Fickett,” he said, “this is not a film. If I don’t help Lisa, you can’t. I’m not irrational or unfeeling. Don’t start imagining you can claim either her mother or me is unfit as a parent. We’ve given Lisa everything she could want. She’s been free to live her own way, choose her own friends, form her own ideas. She’s well fed, decently clothed, publicly educated. There’s nothing wrong with Lisa’s upbringing any more than there is anything wrong with those who brought her up, or with you and your family.”

  No one spoke for a minute. I guess Mary Nell’s father was trying to think of something really devastating to say, and Mr. Milne was waiting to find out what it was going to be. But they waited too long.

  “Goddamn you!” Lisa screamed, twisting around a door and nearly leaping into the room. “Go on! Go on! Don’t stop now! Think of something, do something, do anything!”

  “Lisa!” called her father furiously.

  “No!” she shouted back. “I want help! I need help! I need it! Do something for God’s sake! No, do it for my sake!”

  She turned, already running, and disappeared.

  14

  Elizabeth spoke first. “The trouble with reasonable adult human beings is that they collapse when they meet other reasonable adult human beings. We don’t.”

  We had decided immediately, when we knew that Mr. Fickett and Mr. Milne hadn’t found that devastating argument we all needed, what to do next. The vague idea we had had about group therapy simply had to be put into action. We had to get Lisa to open up, to lean on us and depend on us and to share her illness with us so that it wouldn’t seem so frightening, so lonely.

  Mr. Fickett had come to us earlier to say that he thought the best thing we could do was not get involved any further in Lisa’s problems. That perhaps her parents would come around by themselves and realize what she needed.

  I think Mr. Fickett was beginning to worry that all this might be having an “unhealthy” effect on the three of us. But he was worrying about the wrong thing. He knew he was right to be concerned, but he didn’t want to be concerned about the right thing.

  “At least they tried,” M.N. said. “Maybe Mr. Shilling just needs time to think.”

  “He wants the time not to think,” Elizabeth said quickly. “He’d like to forget the whole thing.”

  “I would too,” I said, “if I were in his place. It can’t be any fun having people tell you your kid’s going nuts.”

  “But you wouldn’t ignore that,” Elizabeth said.

  The doorbell rang then, and M.N. went to let Lisa in.

  Before this, though, M.N. had formed a plan. She had a legal-size pad of paper and a pencil on her father’s desk to take notes on. Elizabeth and I were supposed to be as natural as possible and get Lisa to free-associate. This was one of M.N.’s new terms, which meant to start talking about one thing and then float on to another, and then on again to something else, finally sitting there blabbing about whatever came into your head. M.N. had read somewhere that when someone did this, he dropped “clues” as he went along that any half-witted listener could decipher and understand.

  M.N. had decided to be the half-wit.

  “Hi,” Lisa said as she came into the room ahead of M.N.

  “Hi,” I said, wondering instantly if that meant something special to M.N. now.

  “Well,” Lisa said, sinking down onto the floor in her usual wrapped-up position, “we didn’t win the game, did we?”

  “Not yet,” Elizabeth said.

  “I scared the hell out of Daddy, though,” Lisa said happily. “I don’t remember trying to do just that, but that’s certainly what I did. He’s still drinking.”

  “At least someone else tried to help for a change,” said M.N.

  “I wonder if trying is the whole thing,” Lisa answered. “Not really, though. I mean, I don’t really wonder. It’s just something you say.”

  Mary Nell scratched something on her pad. Loudly. I winced.

  “How do you feel?” Elizabeth asked Lisa.

  “Tired. Always tired,” Lisa said. “What it is is that I never get any rest. I mean, when I’m asleep, I’m not.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, my mind doesn’t stop any more,” Lisa said. “It’s more than just having a lot of dreams, one after another.”

  “Do you have a lot of dreams?” M.N. asked, pencil poised.

  “No,” Lisa said, thinking a moment. I could see M.N. was disappointed. “It’s like being in a lecture course. I’m being talked at all the time.”

  “Can’t you tune out once in a while?” Elizabeth asked. “I mean if you’re listening to a lecture, your mind wanders around anyway the minute the thing gets dull.”

  “Not with me,” Lisa said. “I’m made to listen. It’s as though I have to understand everything very fast because there’s going to be a quiz when it’s over. So I listen, straining to catch every funny sounding word and trying to put all the meanings together so that if I’m called on I won’t fail.”

  “Who’s your teacher?” M.N. asked, raising her head from her busy scribbling.

  “No one person in particular. Lots of people. English people,” Lisa answered.

  “Umm,” M.N. said, nodding. “I see. Go on.”

  But Lisa started to laugh instead. And so did I. I think we had both caught a picture of M.N. with a beard and pince-nez, nodding sagely.

  “Shall I lie on the couch, M.N.?” Lisa finally asked. “Wouldn’t that be better?”

  “Yes, it probably would help,” M.N. said seriously. “Just make yourself comfortable and keep talking. Say anything that comes into your head.”

  Lisa got up and went to the couch and stretched out on it. There was a funny glint in her eye. Elizabeth looked at me and winked, motioning toward M.N. Lisa assumed a thoughtful pose.

  “Well,” she began, “I do have funny dreams once in a while.”

  “Oh!” M.N. said, turning to a new page of her notebook.

  “Yes,” Lisa went on. “Mostly in color and wide-screen, with fantastically good soundtracks.”

  “You feel you’re in a theater, watching a movie?” M.N. asked.

  “That’s it exactly!” Lisa cried, a little too quickly. But she caught herself.

  “Tell us about your dreams,” said Elizabeth in a very deep, very phony tone. Mary Nell was writing frantically.

  “Well,” Lisa said slowly, “usually they all start the same way.”

  “Yes?” M.N. said, writing madly.

  “Yes. There’s a kind of fog on the screen, swirling around and around, changing colors all the time. And just when I think it’s beginning to clear—”

  “Yes, yes,” M.N. muttered.

  “It gets thick all over again,” Lisa said.

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Very interesting,” Elizabeth growled low. “Very interesting.”r />
  “Then, of course, there’s music, too,” Lisa continued.

  “What kind of music?” Mary Nell asked.

  “Mostly rock,” Lisa answered. “Lots of times it’s Mrs. Robinson.”

  “Really?” M.N. said happily. “Really? That’s incredible.”

  “I know,” Lisa said. “Anyway, finally the fog begins to clear, and I can see very tall, very straight pine trees. Just the tops of them.”

  I checked. Mary Nell was in ecstasy: head down, lower lip pulled in, a happy scowl on her forehead, and all the time her hand flew across and back on the pad, pencil bobbing up and down measuring her excitement. Poor M.N.

  “The trees seem to come from nowhere, just a kind of greenish-bluish fog, and the music goes on and gets sort of weird, sort of Ravi Shankarish. You know?” Lisa said.

  “Go on, go on,” M.N. answered. “Don’t stop.”

  “Well, finally the fog clears, and you can see that the trees grow in a desert.”

  “A desert,” M.N. repeated.

  “Yes. It’s brown and dry and very hot, but there’s no sun at all,” Lisa said.

  “No sun,” M.N. chorused.

  “And then I see it. Crawling through the sand.”

  “What? What is it?” M.N.’s head came up fast.

  “It’s a … it’s a…” Lisa played it out. “Well, it’s a sort of snake.”

  Mary Nell stared at Lisa, and then got purple.

  “A snake,” Lisa said again. “And then suddenly there are lots of snakes, all around, all crawling toward the same thing.”

  Elizabeth started to giggle and so did I. Mary Nell was horrified. I guess she couldn’t yet see where Lisa was leading her, and Lisa has had a tendency since she’s been ill to be a little raunchy at times.

  “They’re crawling through the sand, going around microphones—”

  “Microphones!” M.N. gasped.

  “Slithering through a sea of waving fingers—”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Moving toward a huge, enormous, gigantic—”

  “Don’t!” Mary Nell screamed. “Don’t say it!”