Trouble Page 17

  He said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “You sorry you have to listen to me. You’d rather be playing golf.”

  In general, such acid logic—the honesty of pure melancholia—was a rarity on the ward. More typically, patients spent the day doped up, in front of the TV: gowns littered with crumbs; running their hands over oily, discontiguous hair. They talked to themselves or with each other, conversations that never went anywhere, each participant a prisoner of his own quiddities.

  Schizophrenia destroyed people in two ways: first, by coring them of speech and affect, and then by slapping over the husk a wild mask of paranoia and delusion. Meds took reasonable care of the latter problems but had little impact on the former, with the result that patients often appeared not docile but crushed and impotent. Their language was alien, a mosaic of non sequiturs that could melt from innocuous to bizarre to sinister in seconds. Taking a history was like being stuck on an exquisitely difficult blind date.

  Have you been employed recently?

  Oh sure. Got to try. Got to keep going. Pratice makes perfect.

  What do you mean by that?

  I once thought about trying to see, but how many years did it take the prophets? Plenty. My father went for a lesson on the road. They went fishing.

  Fishing?

  What I said, practice makes perfect.

  They called it “flight of ideas” but the term didn’t fit. There was nothing elevated or soaring about these semantic wrecks, these verbal crash-and-burns. And if it was confusing, frustrating, or frightening to listen to, it was a thousand times worse for the speaker: living with a mind that gagged itself, wrestled itself, cut out its own tongue.

  Aside from the man afraid of the Polish conspiracy—whose membership rapidly expanded to include Bulgarians, Romanians, Russians, and the hapless citizenry of Djibouti—there was a woman who believed herself invincible and liked to drink, would drink anything, would chug a gallon of contrast dye; a man who talked to stave off the voice of his dead uncle, a priest, whom he described as “a little faggot living in my ear”; a bus driver who’d gotten into a scuffle with a cop over a purported threat of impalement (not necessarily false, said Dr. Hugo, citing Abner Louima); and a one-legged crack addict who insisted he was John Lennon. To prove his point, he would launch into “Sweet Home Alabama.”

  Jonah suggested that they try sending him to music therapy.

  “He gets too upset. He thinks he wrote all the songs.”

  You had to laugh. If you didn’t, you’d drown. All pain, from adolescent heartbreak to the throb of a burst appendix, originated in the brain. Mental illness, then, was a distillate of pain, pain without physical pretense. Just as heroin produced a euphoria unconnected to—and therefore better than—reality, psychiatric disorders created agony without referent or peer. The hallways of Big Green fairly swam with suffering. You saw it in the unwilled movements and bodily agitation; in the eyes that never settled; fearfully, constantly, seeking the next distraction, a new suspicion. You saw it manifest in a hundred piddling regulations: no pens, no safety razors; no nail clippers, CDs, cameras, cellular phones, or iPods.

  “iPods?”

  “They use the hard drives to cut themselves.” Bonita pointed to four screwholes in the Quiet Room ceiling. “We had to remove the smoke detector. Someone broke it open and tried to slash her wrists.”

  The suffering surged, foamed, receded, returned. Supplied by the patients, it was refracted in their families and friends: torn up yet bored; embarrassed at what had become of their loved ones; further embarrassed at being embarrassed; then angry for being made to feel embarrassed; then ashamed at having insufficient grace and patience. An awful negative feedback loop that Jonah knew like catechism.

  What got him worst was seeing his first Code. On a medical floor, Codes meant cardiac arrest. All available doctors would come running, swinging their credentials like tomahawks, ready to deliver badass emergency resuscitation; and—upon discovering, inevitably, that the situation had been stabilized—would commence to mill around, restless and disappointed, like the crowd at a political concession speech.

  Psych Codes, on the other hand, meant that a patient had gone violent, pitching furniture around the room; threatening to injure or attempting to do so. Jonah’s second day on the job, while conducting an intake interview, he heard the page, the shouting, and leaned his head out to see if he could help. A young woman, frothing at the mouth, delivered imprecations and sobbed as several brawny nurses and one cop fitted her into four-point restraints and dropped a syringe into her thigh. She fought and fought and then she was still, dead still, flash-frozen, spittle trickling down her slack cheek. Though he knew they were acting in her best interest, Jonah could not bear to look, because the girl had black hair and he attributed features to her face that he knew weren’t there.

  OVER THE LAST five years of his life he’d mastered the art of splitting himself in two, the better to cope with divided loyalties and morals. That week, however, he achieved a new level of dissociation.

  Professional at work, he soothed his patients and participated in the ward’s gallows humor. His superiors praised his knowledge and remarked on his maturity. He had a knack for keeping people calm, they said. He said he’d done some charity work.

  The moment he left the hospital, though, his heart began to pound, and he found himself plagued by the same sorts of ideas he heard all day long from people he knew to be severely—clinically—paranoid.

  You are a great artist.

  Now we can create together.

  He saw her ogling him as he hurried to the subway. Heard her snicker when he slipped going up his front steps. Streetsigns and shop signs, festooned with her visage, sprouted and then receded as he turned to look. Crossing 12th Street, nearing the elm—her elm, the spot where she had greeted him every day for two months, thrown her arms around him like he was a war hero—knotted his throat, brightened the low-grade nausea that nagged him all day long.

  On Thursday night, he took out his DSM-IV and flipped to the section on anxiety. His own behaviors fell across an alarmingly wide range of disorders, so that he could not simply shoehorn himself into GAD or PTSD. This in turn worried him further: worse than cracking up was doing it without a validating nomenclatural imprimatur.

  The key difference between him and his patients was that they feared the impossible; whereas the movie of him was him. The other stuff might be fake (he prayed it was; that angry snip kept tunneling up through his consciousness), but he was real. The fight was real. A genuine tape of a fake stabbing that had led to a mistaken but actual death.

  If the lawsuit accused him of misreading the situation, leaping to attack the Dangerous Ethnic Man—that was true, wasn’t it? Why had he assumed that the man was the attacker? That Raymond had been carrying a knife and mumbling to himself; that Eve had been crawling and screaming—none of that seemed as salient now as the clues and traces of clues that something had not been right. He should have asked why a woman would be walking alone in a lousy neighborhood at that hour. He should have noticed how slowly she’d been moving; should have noted the choreographed quality, the mise-en-scène of it all. He should have seen the reluctance in Iniguez’s face, obvious when watched from a different angle and without the lens of adrenaline. He should have spotted the camera; should’ve called the cops instead of rushing in to play savior.

  And why hadn’t she said anything? Too busy zooming in. Oh that’s great, so spontaneous, I’m loving it, LOVING IT, brilliant, give in to the moment and run with it baby run run run run run.

  He had made the worst mistake possible. And she had managed her angles.

  Certainly she was taking her time, allowing him to digest this new information; though he believed she might appear at any time: as she had that first night on his sofa, as she had in the bookstore. Had she been following him then? Why not. Maybe she had been following him before that. Maybe she had set the accident up. How far back could he spool out this insa
nity? The answer, if he wound himself up sufficiently, was forever.

  In the meantime he would take no chances.

  On the second Monday of his new rotation, before leaving for work, he peered out the window and saw a woman in a puffy coat waiting up the block, a size and shape close enough to hers that he took his bag and went creeping idiotically down the fire escape. As he reached the ground he discerned that it was not Eve but an old man smoking a cigar.

  He thought No chances.

  For days he had trouble sleeping. The DVD sat buried in his desk, its presence pushing up through the wood. He kept waiting for the room to burst into flames.

  He told no one. Who would it help. Not him. Not Raymond Iniguez or Simón Iniguez or Roberto Medina. These people already wanted to string him up, and admitting that he’d made a mistake—however well intentioned—was not likely to earn him Most Favored Nation status. Moreover, he had no one to tell. His parents? Vik? Lance? All they could do was freak out. Belzer?

  Wear a sign says Please Sue Me, why doncha. Cmon, kiddo, what’s done is done.

  He had no crime to report—except his own. Eve hadn’t done anything besides talk oddly and get him off in public places. She’d never threatened him, never made a suggestion of harming him. She would never. Because, of course, she loved him.

  That was what was so disarming about his anxiety: transformed into a basketcase at the flip of a switch, he knew he had flipped the switch himself. Having made the slightest gesture, she stood back to let him stew in silence, knowing that his dark imagination, his overcooking guilt engine, would provide the rest. A sickening litany of maybes. Maybe he was a murderer. Maybe she intended to do to him what she’d done to Raymond. Maybe she would do nothing.

  Silence; maybe; terror. Three synonyms in the modern lexicon: one way to win and an infinity of losses.

  He was eating himself from the inside out.

  You are a great artist.

  And she believed he liked it.

  Without a clear sense of the tape’s legal ramifications, he balked at calling the police or the DA. He didn’t consider himself a criminal. He had acted decisively at a moment of crisis. Human error. People nevertheless liked to assign blame; they sought moral deep pockets. Spreading the tape around was the surest way to bring the consensus to bear on him and, maddeningly, him alone. As far as he knew, it wasn’t illegal for Eve to stand by and say nothing.

  Or maybe it was. He had no clue. Either way, she didn’t seem overly concerned about sending him a copy, knowing, perhaps, that he’d be too scared to show it to anyone else. She was right. Glued together in a private truth; a universe of two, exactly as she wanted.

  • 19 •

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2004.

  INPATIENT PSYCHIATRIC SERVICE, WEEK TWO

  BONITA SAID, “You’re buzzing again.”

  ID UNAVAILABLE

  He switched off his phone and resumed eating his burrito. “It’s my mom.”

  “She must really like you, that’s the sixth time in the last ten minutes.”

  “Is it?” He fanned himself with his oily paper plate. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  THAT AFTERNOON HE came up from the subway at First Avenue, and there she was, umbrella-less in the rain, outstretched arms forking the pedestrian traffic, and grinning, grinning.

  “My love.”

  He pivoted like a wooden soldier retreating into the body of a clock and turned onto 14th, ducking into a Subway sandwich shop and running to the counter, coming face-to-sneeze-shield-to-face with a pimply kid who said Can I help you.

  A stack of cheese with hard edges; a bucket of gloppy tuna fish; gray cold cuts.

  Behind him, two men in painter’s jeans and construction-company sweatshirts devoured meatball subs. They were built like armadillos, all neck and shoulders. One of them wore a Giants cap with a long, flat, stickered brim; the other a blue bandanna, tied sweatband-style, that moved as he chewed and studiously pored over the nutritional information printed on his napkin. Cap said, “Yo man, you learnin some shit?”

  Hoping to wait her out, Jonah bought a large drink, his grip on the proffered cup shooting fault lines across its waxy surface. He stood at the soda dispenser, back to the storefront, adding one half-inch spurt at a time, letting that fizz out completely before adding another. The meatball eaters got up and left. When the cup was full, Jonah poured three inches out and started again.

  “No refills.”

  Jonah said, “Is there a woman outside, brown hair, about five-three, wearing a purple skirt and a down jacket?”

  “I don’t see nobody.”

  Leaving the soda on the counter, he exited and went east, hurrying past delis and Immaculate Conception and the post office. He began to feel safe, he’d gotten away from her, good job, Superman and then a hand fell on his shoulder.

  He flew one hundred eighty degrees, bumping into a white girl with cornrows who yelled Asshole and speed-sashayed away, her negligible frame lost beneath gigantic jeans with dirty, curling cuffs.

  Eve laughed. “You’re agitating the natives.”

  A neon sign outlining MILLER TIME coppered her hair. He had never seen her in braids before; they took five years off her already young face. She was beautiful, no way around that, and he unexpectedly began to get hard, and had to shove his hands into his pockets, tamping down desire by picturing the bombed-out body beneath her coat.

  “No,” he said.

  “No what? I haven’t said anything worthy of reply. Unless you mean to dispute my statement about the natives and agitation and so forth, in which case, I concede. It was a throwaway comment anyhoo.”

  “I’m not talking to you.”

  “This is public space, Jonah Stem. We’re standing in the middle of the street. And why shouldn’t I come here?” She gestured to the towers of Stuy Town. “Fond reminiscences. Childhood. A stroll down the lily-lined lanes of youth. Why have you been avoiding me.”

  He turned to go and she came in front of him.

  “Get out of the way.”

  “You’re being very rude,” she said. He started around her and she danced back. “I take it you received my gift?”

  He removed her hand from his arm and walked on.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “You’re sick,” he said.

  “Tsk.”

  “I called the police.”

  “No you didn’t,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “You’re being rather cold, don’t you think?”

  “You want to do fucked-up stuff like that, find someone else.”

  “But you’re so good at it.”

  He said nothing.

  “I’ve waited for you to no avail. I tried waiting for you in the morning but you never seem to come out, either. What gives? I call and you don’t answer. Do you get my messages? I love you. Then I said to myself, said I, Eve, you should go straight to the source. I went back to the hospital but you weren’t there. Hence today’s plan. Well, it worked. Why are you walking away.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “It’s been three weeks, you must be exploding.”

  Again he tried to go around her, but she got in his way and puckered up and threw her arms around his neck. Startled, he jerked back, pulling their bodies flush.

  “Let go.”

  “Is this about another woman?” she asked. “Is this about Hannah?”

  “Let go of me, Eve.”

  “Don’t you see that I love you?”

  “For the last time: let go.”

  She kissed his chin, his neck. “I’m better than her.” He was pushing her away, twisting his face away from hers, keeping her at bay but barely. Then the strain on his back octupled: she had lifted her feet up and was dangling from his neck, so that he wore her like a living necklace, a rapper’s berserk accessory. His spine torqued and pain shot through his trunk and he emitted humiliatingly feminine grunts. She sucked at his face. Think of her as a child, you can’t hit a child when
ever it makes you angry. He would not hit her. Anything but that, because he knew she wanted him to. He ground his fingers into her solar plexus; she responded by using both legs to tourniquet him at the waist, trapping one of his hands. He would not hit her. He pressed a thumb into her throat, pushed it harder, it could not have been less natural for him to do this but he had to. He pretended that he was strangling an inflatable doll. His thumb disappeared in her neck up to the first knuckle; he felt her windpipe giving in. And she hung on, gagging, her saliva running down his neck. He could not bear her weight. He fell to his knees. Immediately she capitalized on his lack of balance by springing on top of him, her belly to his back, her head near his tailbone, flattening him facedown on the wet sidewalk. She clamped her thighs around his head: his neck was a champagne bottle and his skull a stubborn cork. Her pantyhose sandpapered his cheeks. She sunk her fingernails in his hamstrings, her nose in his ass, as though she intended to munch through the seat of his pants. He had never seen the ground in the City this close-up before. Filth gummed up the cracks in the sidewalk, got under his fingernails as he tried to do a push-up and his wrist slid through an oatmealy glop of cigarette butts and newspaper.

  He got partway up when a suckerpunch of light caused him to slip and fall. A skinny kid in an NYU hoodie stood focusing a 35mm. Jonah cursed at him through a blinking field of red dots and green pennants and he sauntered away. Two women passed; one of them muttered Filming. What the hell was wrong with New Yorkers that they could watch people wrestling in the middle of the sidewalk in the rain and comment solely on the situation’s aesthetics? He needed a superhero wannabe, someone like him, who’d read about his deed in the paper and spent nights prowling Manhattan, awaiting his chance. Although for all he knew it looked like he was the bad guy.

  With a heave he straightened up, dumping her on her back. On her way down she grabbed his shirt, causing his top button to pop off. She latched onto his leg like a fungus round the base of a tree.