I Can Hear the Mourning Dove (15 page)

“It's unseasonably warm and dry,” I say. “The earth is parched and cracking, and the grass is brown and brittle.”

Miss Braverman is laughing. “Isn't this a fine thing; we come to visit Grace and the best we can do is talk about the weather.”

“Oh no, Miss Braverman,” I say. “It's perfect, really. The weather is a very appropriate topic. We are three women having tea together. Everything is so nice, I wish I could think of a better word, but it's just so nice. We have even eaten the cookie.”

She smiles and says, “You do understand that we miss you.”

“I believe it to be true. I'd like to tell you how nice everything is, but I'm afraid I'll start to cry again.”

Seven

10/14

Dear Diary:

Schizoaffective disorder
(manic or depressive or mixed)
is applied to individuals who show features of both schizophrenia and affective disorder. In the DSM-III classification, this disorder is not listed as a formal category of schizophrenic disorder, but rather under “Psychotic disorders not elsewhere classified.” This no doubt reflects the fact that schizoaffective disorder presents something of a taxonomic problem, and current controversy prevails over whether these persons should be considered basically schizophrenic or basically affectively disordered, or a group unto themselves. Probably most clinicians lean in the direction of the first choice, although the course of the disorder (rapid onset and rapid resolution) more nearly approximates that usually seen in the affective psychoses
.

I don't know why I have written these sentences in my diary. They aren't my own sentences, they come from a textbook; but Dr. Rowe said I could write whatever I wanted.

The cover design for Marx and Ginsberg's book is a whirling blue and white sky. It is a detail of a painting by Van Gogh called
Ravine in the Peyroulets
. Is it possible that Van Gogh lived with the sky voice? Did his spinning sky send him warnings?

My eyes scan the subheadings listed in the chapter called
The Schizophrenias:
Undifferentiated. Catatonic. Disorganized. Hebephrenic. Reactive. Progressive. Residual. Schizoaffective. Schizotypal. Process. Schizophreniform.

Too much data loses its meaning. It is very appropriate to have a Van Gogh cover on a textbook about madness, but I close the book and put it back on the shelves. I'm quite sure Marx and Ginsberg have studied lots and lots of cases in some hospital somewhere, but my brain can't absorb any more data about crazy people.

I am calm but bored. Sometimes the evenings are so boring. I don't like watching television or shooting pool or playing PingPong. Maybe I should take up woodworking. I would like to go home now; Dr. Rowe says I can probably go home in a few days, if everything goes well. If I do go home, the Surly People will be there and I'm afraid I will get scrambled again. It's discouraging to be suspended always in the same limbo.

I walk slowly down the north hall. All the doors on both sides are closed, but the green line leads me. At the shop door, the light is shining through the frosted glass. It's odd, at this time of night, for someone to be there. I stop and listen. There are creaking and cracking sounds, as if someone is prying boards apart.

I wonder if it is Mr. Sneed behind the door. My hand reaches out to touch the doorknob, but I quickly pull it back. Mr. Sneed is kind, but it could be someone else.

I have talked to Mr. Sneed about woodworking; I have told him of the times my father used to take me to the shop at the high school. Mr. Sneed teaches woodworking groups and spends a lot of time in the shop. He would enjoy talking to me, and I to him.

I reach out again and touch the doorknob. A knot is forming in my stomach;
what if it's not Mr. Sneed?
My hand turns the knob slowly until I hear it click. I push the door gently so that it eases open, about two feet.

It is Luke. I am standing and staring, and he is looking straight at me.

“What do you want?”

“I'm sorry; I thought it was Mr. Sneed.”

“Yeah, well, what do you want?”

The knot is hard and my pulse is racing. “I meant no harm, really. I just thought you were Mr. Sneed.” I stop talking as the words catch in my throat, and I hurry to moisten my mouth.

“Hey look, Red,” he says. “If you wanta come in and shoot the shit, that's cool, but don't stand there holdin' the door open, huh?”

“Do you mean we should talk with each other?”

In the moment before he can answer, I relive the terror of the hallway at school, the Surly People with their painted swastikas and their hot breath and their groping fingers, and the cruel shadow of Mr. Stereo. The one called Luke is probably one of them; I should leave now.

“All I'm sayin' is, either come in or get out, but don't stand there holdin' the door open. I want it shut.”

I don't know what it is that makes me hesitate. I should leave now. If I went inside the room I would be all alone with him, and that would put me at risk. I looked at the Surly People through the slits on my balcony and it terrified me, but I had to go on looking.

Something I don't understand is leading me. With the panic still locked inside me, I step across the threshold and inside the room. I close the door behind me.

Immediately, I sit down on a shop stool near the door and begin to take deep breaths. My father used to take me to the shop at the high school and sometimes I helped him build things. Luke is prying apart some dirty skids, the kind used by forklifts. He is using a small crowbar and his well-defined muscles are bulging. The rusty spiral nails are ripped out screeching.

I sit and watch. I feel conspicuous and uncomfortable, but for some reason my panic is subsiding.

After a few minutes, he takes a break and lights a Marlboro. He slouches against a workbench.

“What are you working on?” I ask timidly.

“I'm tearin' some of these skids apart to get the lumber. These two-bys are solid oak.”

“Are you going to build something?”

“I was thinkin' of makin' a couple coffee tables. It would beat the hell out of makin' more of those horseshit ashtrays and candy dishes.”

It reminds me of what my father would do; make something useful or beautiful out of something discarded. But it seems absurd, comparing Luke to my father.

“It sounds like a nice idea,” I say. “But the skids. Where do they come from?”

“I got them from the parking lot.”

“You mean you left the building?”

He takes a long drag and exhales some irregular smoke rings. “Well, they sure as hell weren't gonna walk in here all by themselves.”

He is frightening and yet I chose to be alone with him. A sign on the door says,
NO ADMITTANCE
.
STAFF ONLY
. I ask, “Are you supposed to be here?”

“In a way,” he says. He smiles, and his teeth are straight and regular. He has such a nice smile, and so much hygiene, but I have seen his anger and I suspect his brutality.

“Please,” I say, “I don't understand.”

“I was watchin' TV up in the lounge. I was bad-mouthin'
The Cosby Show
, and it got Sarbanes and a few others all unglued. Mrs. Higgins told me to go find somethin' to do. So here I am, with somethin' to do.”

“But wasn't the door locked?”

“Of course. You've heard of the old credit card trick, haven't you?”

“Yes, but do you have a credit card?”

“No. I have a library card. It's made of plastic, like a credit card.”

“If you have a library card, it must mean that you read books.”

“Yeah, from time to time I do. Hey look, Red, is this gonna be ‘Twenty Questions' or what?”

“I'm sorry, I meant no harm.”

“Yeah, well, don't wet your pants. I've never kissed ass in my life, and I'm not gonna do it in this hospital.”

My pulse has quickened again and there are tears stinging my eyes. I blink them back. “I'm sorry, really I am. I am only trying to make conversation to the best of my ability, but I'm not very good at it.”

“Yeah, okay, like I'm sorry I got stiff with you. I'll get twenty questions when I go to court, I don't need it now.”

“I forgot that you have to go to trial. Please forgive me. I only meant about the books that we may have something in common. I read books all the time. Dr. Rowe and my mother think I read too much because it is a solitary activity which I use as a means of withdrawal. When I'm flat out I don't read at all, I lose interest in just about everything.”

“I wouldn't know about that,” says Luke. “Most of this shit about psychopaths and stuff goes right over my head. Most of what I read is stuff out of the sixties. That was a time when people took no shit. They stood up to just about every bullshitter there was, and told them to kiss ass.”

“My father was active in the Vietnam protest movement,” I say. “He was even in the march on Washington in 'sixty-nine.”

“Your old man sounds like a cool dude.”

“He's dead now. He was very dear to me, we were like best friends. My Uncle Larry died in Vietnam. His name is inscribed on the Vietnam monument in Washington, D.C. Sometime I would like to go there and run my fingers over his chiseled name; it would be comforting because it would prove he wasn't overlooked.”

“That's a bummer about your old man and your uncle, Red; some of your phraseology is pretty weird though.”

“My father and I used to go for walks at Allerton. We went several times a week in nice weather. Our house was on the Allerton estate, near the park.”

“I know the place you're talkin' about,” he says. He is grinding out his cigarette butt on the floor. “It's downstate; I've been there.”

“You've been to Allerton Park?” This information makes me uneasy.

“A couple of times for drug seminars. We got this new supervisor at Clark House last year named Spellmyer. About the first thing he did was load us all up and take us there for drug seminars.”

“They use the mansion for conferences and seminars,” I say. “But are you a drug user?”

He waves his hand. “Hell no. I've smoked a little pot from time to time, that's about it. You tell that to a bullshitter, though, and he figures you're a junkie or a dealer. Or both.”

It still stuns me that he's been to Allerton. “Did you like the park?” I ask him.

He shrugs and says, “It was okay. There wasn't much action there. You got to remember, we were listenin' to bullshitters day and night. There was this huge statue of a naked guy with his arms out; we climbed up and put a rubber on his pecker.” He laughs harshly at the memory.

He's talking about the Sunsinger. “A rubber?”

“Yeah, you know; a condom.” He laughs hard again.

He's talking about the Sunsinger. The Sunsinger greets the morning sun every day; he greets the eye. You must remember what Dr. Rowe says: the eye is a delusion just as surely as the voice is. But Luke defiled the statue; he is Surly, why have I chosen to be here with him?

He's not aware that I am embarrassed or offended. He says, “Anyway, gettin' back to the subject, I figure I was born into the wrong time in history. I've got a few paperbacks back in my room at home—
Slaughterhouse Five
and one called
Soul on Ice
, and a real good book on the Hell's Angels.” He takes off his headband, wipes some sweat from his forehead onto the back of his wrist, and then puts the headband back on.

Without a warning, he wants to change the subject. He asks me what I'm in for.

“I thought I already told you,” I say quickly. “I'm crazy wild and I don't fit in.”

“Yeah, but there has to
be
something. With me, it was pullin' Johnny's plug; that's what I'm in for.”

“I was molested and it was too traumatic. It precipitated my current psychotic state. Once I tried suicide but it didn't work. They put me in for the longest time and gave me shock treatments.” I need to be very careful—the sky could return at any moment if I reveal too much. He defiled the statue.

“You tried to snuff? You shouldn't do a thing like that.”

“Please, I was so desperate, I don't think I could explain it. Besides, didn't we agree that there are worse things than death?”

“Yeah, that's true, but not for a person like you, with a good mind. I have a lot of respect for a good mind.”

Is he trying to encourage me? What kind of conversation this is I know not. “I don't mean to be quarrelsome, but I think it would be better to be stupid and in control.”

“When you tried to snuff, how did you do it?”

“I cut my wrists in the bathtub. Please, there is static; I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

He shrugs and says, “That's cool. It's up to you.” He begins putting lumber away in the lower cabinets.

I say, “I would rather talk about your foster homes.”

He shrugs again. “What's to say?”

“Please, I would never be impertinent. I've always been so close to my mother and father, I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up without a family. Did you ever know your parents at all?”

“No. And I only lived in a foster home once. Mostly, it was group homes. Right now I'm livin' at Clark House; they moved me there from Haig House.”

“Why did they move you?”

“I got expelled from East High for gettin' in too many fights. That's why they put me in Clark House. Clark House is for bad asses. I guess somebody thinks I'm a bad ass.”

He fights. He is brutal. But the static has diminished and I feel I will not get scrambled. I would like to ask him about the fighting, but I am afraid.

He says, “When I was goin' to East High, these guys were squeezin' me. They wanted me to join this gang called the Silkworms. I told 'em to shove it; I never join gangs. If you're a member of a gang, it means you don't go your own way. They couldn't handle it, so they put me on their list.”