A Self Made Monster (20 page)

“Then it couldn’t have been all bad.” He waved a hand at John’s frown. “Those humorless, good for nothing leaches. Gives them something to gossip about before their lunch break, doesn’t it?”

“Still…”

“Okay, you have a point.” Actually, Alex was foggy about what he had done. He remembered only tearing up a copy of his novel
The Best Year of His Life
in front of his freshman composition class. One alarmed student ran out of the classroom.

“I just took too much medication.”

“There’ve been rumors of a—well, of your condition. Just rumors.” John spoke gently, as if comforting a sick friend.

“I do have bad headaches,” Alex confided. “Sometimes they cross my eyes. Maybe my medication discourages the, well, discourages my inhibitions.”

“—Headaches?” John marveled that a headache would drive a man to tear off his own shirt. Not to mention tear up his own novel.

Alex struggled to remember what he had done. “Tell me what the rumors are, and I’ll tell you what really happened. After I get a laugh from the exaggeration.”

John related what he had heard: Alex had stopped in the middle of an English 101 lecture, complained of the heat, and removed his shoes. A few minutes later, he had torn off his shirt. A student giggled nervously, so Alex folded his arms across his chest and announced that he was a world-class author and was therefore a libertine in the social graces.

“Are my sources accurate so far?” John asked.

“A little.” He recognized one of haloperidol’s notorious side effects: delusions of grandeur. “What happened next, according to your sources?”

“After your tore off your shirt, you tore up a copy of your novel. Then you yelled that the shirt and the book were equally useless to you. That they were both just trappings. Or that they both trapped you and had to be destroyed.” John scratched his chin. “At this point, I’m sure the rumors make the truth unrecognizable.”

“Unrecognizable,” Alex agreed.

“And you implored the students to do the same.”

“Rip up their shirts?”

“And photos of their parents.”

“I think I said photos of their siblings,” Alex smiled.

“Whatever.”

Alex tried to remember, but his vague and fractured recollections refused to cohere.

“Since the class was reading Thoreou, I suppose you were trying to dramatize the reading,” John suggested. “The need for simplicity, the seduction of possessions, and all the usual clichés.”

 
“I’ve never compared myself to Thoreau.”

“Of course not. But really, Alex. You can imagine all the freshman coeds, burning up the phone lines that evening to their mothers and fathers. The Dean has had five phone calls from worried parents already. And one from a major contributor.”

 
“I should have known,” Alex sneered. “It’s about money.”

“Of course it’s about money,” John snapped. “You’re smart enough to know that. And spare me the Thoreau nonsense. He isolated himself in the woods. You really don’t want to do the same, do you?”

“But it was the medication.”

“For a headache. Yes.” John stood up, peered out his office window. “How is your more serious condition?” John asked delicately.

“It’s no secret I have mild schizophrenia,” Alex noted almost cheerfully. “Actually, my case comes closest to what’s called ‘simple’ schizophrenia. You know, the retreat into silence, the inability to participate in life emotionally. The occasional odd response to things.” Alex adopted a broad German accent. “But you take zee medication und you vill be fine!”

“You’re not having a relapse?”

“No.”

John smiled weakly.

Alex solemnly removed his glasses. The pain was extreme: his eyes felt like pincushions, pierced by a thousand pins. “As I said before, I’m fine. If the administration wants to force me to see a doctor, then—”

“No! It’s nothing like that.” John shrugged. “We’re just concerned.”

“I appreciate your concern. I guess I got out of hand yesterday. But you know how dull classes can be near the end of the semester,” Alex deadpanned.

John nodded.

“It wasn’t the medication, I think, as much as the pressures of writing my manuscript.”

“You’re writing again?” John instantly forgot about Alex’s odd behavior. “Is it coming along? Are you happy with it?”

“Sort of,” Alex lied. He had not written a word. But the Eccentric Author role mitigated odd behavior.

“What’s it called?”

Alex blinked. “
My Life as a Dead
Man
.
”

“Good title.” The old envy bit into John’s stomach, like a dormant ulcer come back to life. “What’s it about?”

“It’s—like I said, I’ve only written a chapter or so. But so far it’s about a guy who’s dead but doesn’t behave appropriately.”

“Does he know he’s dead?”

“Yes. But he keeps going to work, takes his kids to the ballpark, kisses his wife—”

“A horror story?” John asked skeptically. He disdained horror fiction.

“Sort of. It’s gruesome, sure. But it’s also funny.” Alex nodded enthusiastically. Excitement lifted his voice and his mood. He rolled his fingers against his thumb, wished he had a pen to record his ideas.

“Funny?”

“Sure. Because he’s dead, and everything’s got extra humor for the deceased.”

John blinked at Alex.

“It’s all a metaphor for, uh, for society’s deadening effects, how it sanctions proper behavior and punishes nonconformists.”

John again hated Alex. “I’m glad we straightened this matter out,” he said officiously.
 
I know the administration will be thrilled to know you’re writing again. It’s been such a damned long time, hasn’t it?” He opened the door and bid Alex good day.

Back at home, Alex dropped a haloperidol into a glass of beer and began writing. The words came slowly. Alex felt like a clogged water faucet that merely drips. But he persisted. When he got stuck, he bit his wrist and tongued the wound. After an hour, he paused for a cigarette and re-read his work:

Terrence’s mother was a martyr. Every day, she reminded her husband and her child that she sacrificed. “I gave up my youth for you two, and my beauty, and my promising singing career.” She sighed, ran her wrinkled hands over her leathery face.

Terrence had never heard his mother sing or even hum. When his father was on his deathbed, Terrence asked, “Did Mom ever sing?” Father shook his head. “Was she beautiful?”

Another shake. “I don’t even think,” father sighed, “she was ever young, either. Or maybe she just went straight from nineteen to fifty.”

Terrence was forgiving, however, and he tried to look beyond his mother’s self-absorption and lies. He imagined that his mother sincerely wanted to contribute, to struggle, to sacrifice. Was it her fault that she possessed no beauty or talent to sacrifice in the first place?

On the day of his high school graduation—mother could not come because she believed she suddenly had a Dowager’s hump—Terrence decided to become a martyr for his mother’s martyrdom. He would be a doctor.

And he did.

He treated the poor and the demented, the dishonest and the devious.

“I’m not in it for the money,” he proudly told his fellow physicians. He loved beating them over the head with his purity, and they hated him.

Even his mother grew weary of his sacrifices. “I’ve worked my fingers to the bone to put you through medical school. Why can’t you show your gratitude by buying me a car, or a new house?”

“I’m not in it for the money.”

“Cheapskate!”

Nobody cared when Terrence was run over by an ungrateful patient. Few people attended the funeral. Those who attended struggled to hide their disdain, and they criticized him as soon as he was buried. His mother dabbed tears from her painted, bony cheek and sniffed, “All I did for him, and I’m left with nothing.”

Inside his casket, Terrence chuckled at their complaints.

That evening, he clawed his way from the grave. His muscles were stiff, and he had to pull the mortician’s stitching and cotton from his mouth. He limbered up with a stroll around the town. Then he went home, got a good night’s rest. The house was empty, as his wife and children were staying with relatives across town. He resumed his practice the next morning.

Nurse Kane was speechless when Terrence walked into the clinic, and she never spoke again. But she kept working for Terrence—where else could a mute nurse work?

BUT THAT BASTARD BROTHER OF MINE.
 
When I see him again I’ll pull each finger off his hand. I’m the best thing that ever happened to him. He tried to make his reputation off me, trotting me out in front of his moron colleagues to demonstrate my “progress” from schizo to nearly-functioning citizen. Their white coats, their smug nods, their whispers just out of earshot.

“I know you’re talking about ME!” I screamed, and my brother patted me on the shoulder. “Not you. Your condition.” His smug smile.

“Of course, and gentlemen, controlling the schizophrenic’s inappropriate emotional responses takes time”

“You let me go back to sleep!” I closed my eyes and covered my ears. I couldn’t stop laughing, laughing at them. My bastard brother needed me. I didn’t need him. If he died tomorrow, I’d laugh for a week and then I’d be FREE.

Alex crossed out the final four paragraphs, paused for another cigarette. The paragraphs were another explosion of drug behavior. The medication had done all it could do. Now it was turning on him. It still helped him concentrate, and it slowed the physical changes: no more suddenly red hair, or feminine titter, or smoker’s cough, or cluster headaches. But its efficacy would wane, and the side effects would increase: dry mouth and throat, sore eyes, the bursts of grandiosity.

And now, the four paragraphs of ranting.

Haloperidol had stimulated the withdrawn part of Alex’s personality, dragging it toward daylight. But the withdrawn part was angry. The withdrawn part was again raging at long-dead David.

After a second beer—no haloperidol chaser—Alex stretched out on the couch and mulled over the writing.

He liked the character Terrence. But why does he have to be a doctor?

A doctor: Terrence the doctor was David, his brother.

Alex laughed like a gleeful child. I couldn’t have revenge in life, Alex thought, so I’ll have it in a book. That bastard minced my brain with pills. Now I’ll mince his life in a book.

Before nodding off, Alex decided to replace the name Terrence with David. The name reverberated in his skull. The name became a mantra, and Alex chanted it in his sleep. Then he dreamed.

But the dream was not fiction.

It was a documentary of the day he was born again:

On the day he was born again, Alex was visiting David before meeting his publisher. David was using the visit to evaluate his brother’s condition; if Alex seemed too agitated or withdrawn, David would accompany him to the publisher.

“You seem pretty good,” David allowed. “You’re taking your prescriptions?”

“Sure,” Alex lied. He avoided David’s gaze by studying his broccoli. Then David’s pager sounded and David rose from the table to call the hospital. Alex was left to play with his food for a few moments. “We gotta hurry!” David called, running past Alex. “Knife wounds, and Vic and Mary are out of town!” David did not want to leave Alex in the house.

Alex’s stomach twisted. He hated hospitals. David ignored a red light and cursed a slow moving van. Alex was in the back seat, face between his knees. He kept asking David to inflate the tires. “Maybe they’re going flat,” Alex pleaded. “We might get in a wreck.”

“Relax, Alex. Here.” David thrust two tranquilizers into Alex’s hand. Alex stared at them. “Damn it. You’re meeting your editors in two days. Take them!”

Alex swallowed them and lowered his head. He was ashamed to be seen like this, and he was angry at David for bossing him.

David double-parked outside the emergency entrance, told Alex to follow him, and ran inside. A nurse held up four fingers, indicating that the patient was in room four.

The patient lay on a cot. His knees were drawn to his bloody chest, and his hands trembled. Alex peeked over his brother’s shoulder at the patient’s contorting face. Alex imitated the patient by contorting his own face.

“Settle down, Alex.” David put a firm hand on Alex’s shoulder and directed him to a corner. Alex cooperated, but he kept imitating the patient.

The nurse studied Alex as he waited in the corner.

“He’s fine,” David assured. “He’s between medications, and he’s meeting his publishers on Thursday.” He winked. “He’s not fond of meeting new people.”