Probation (8 page)

He’d pinned me against the mattress. I tried to kick him away, but my feet flailed over his shoulders. Hey, little buddy, relax. His voice was calm, gentle, but he pressed his forearm against my neck with just enough force to let me know how easy it would be to break it. When I started to cry, he kissed me and told me how easy this could be if I only just let it happen. Push down, he said, push, push like you’re taking a big shit. The pain lasted less than a minute, just like he promised. I don’t want to hurt your little cherry, he said. He kept his word, riding me slowly and covering my face with little kisses. I sank back into the dream, deafened by the sound of wave after wave of warm salty water crashing over me.

I opened my eyes to a white ceiling. The room was cool and clean. I turned my head on the pillow and saw a plastic bag of clear liquid hanging from a metal hook. My eyes followed the tube down to the white bandage on the back of my hand. I was naked, exposed, sandbagged in ice packs. I let my eyes drift back to the ceiling. I felt my lips crack and split when I whispered a single word. Mom. I fell asleep, my hand in hers, knowing she wouldn’t leave the chair by my bed until I was safe again. Somewhere in the room, the old man was crying.

The hospital told them a trucker had brought me to the emergency room, delirious with a fever of one hundred and four. He’d said he found me half dead at a rest stop on the interstate. My mother always regretted he hadn’t left his name and address so they could thank him for saving my life. The doctors said it was meningococcal meningitis. Randy T and me both. Highly contagious, spread by direct contact, coughing, sneezing, sharing unwashed eating utensils. I let them believe it. I knew it was a long red snake that had poisoned me.

I spent all of September and the better part of October recovering. Chicago was out of the question; a medical deferral postponed my arrival in the big city until the winter semester. The plan was to get a head start on the Great Books except that the Batman and Robin were more engaging than
Gilgamesh
and the epics of Homer cried out for a graphic edition, illustrated by the artists of Marvel and DC.

“You’re still weak. Don’t worry, your powers of concentration will return by the time you get to school,” my mother reassured me.

But something lingered, a sense of dread that remained after the doctors confirmed the symptoms had resolved and I’d escaped without permanent neurological damage. I rarely wandered far from the Monument to Heat and Air, passing on the Clapton and Steve Miller Band tickets offered by Randy T. The promise of road trips and the lure of marijuana had led me to the cab of a tractor trailer, wrapped in a blanket and drenched in sweat. I preferred the solitude of my room, the lights ablaze through the night. I tossed and turned, sleeping fitfully, dreaming about endless stretches of empty highway leading to a dark strange city where no Dark Knight waited to protect me. The Joker of my nightmares looked suspiciously like a scarred and painted Jimmy Dean, mocking me as a coward, too sickly and weak to defend myself.

It seemed abrupt, a spur-of-the-moment decision, when I announced that Chicago seemed too cold, too far away, that college could wait a year, maybe two. Nocera Heat and Air’s payroll could accommodate me while I decided what to do with my future.

“Like hell it will,” my father announced, surprisingly calm and rational for a man prone to combustion and outbursts. “If you don’t go now, you’ll never go,” he said.

“What makes you such an expert on higher education?” I snarled.

I’d always known I could infuriate him. Over the past few years, I’d learned it was easy to one-up him. But never before had I known I could hurt him.

“I know you think I’m stupid. You’re right. I am. I know I’m not smart like you. But listen to me. Just this once. I’m not telling you. I’m asking you. Please.”

He walked away, defeated, his hopes and dreams for me having crashed and burned.

My mother waited until he’d left the room, then pounced, angry, accusing.

“All that man wants to do is help you. Why won’t you let him do that?”

Words once used to protect me were now turned against me, as compelling as they had been when they’d vanquished my father ten years earlier.

All that boy wants is to be with you. Why can’t you give him that?

Davidson College, close to home, familiar, an unlikely nest for predators and deviants, was thrilled I wanted to fill a space vacated by a first semester dropout. How different would it have all turned out if there had never been a bout of meningitis and a long red snake? Would I have blossomed in the Windy City or would I have been crushed like a bug by the profound thinkers nurtured in the intellectual hothouse of the University of Chicago? Maybe it all turned out for the best, my being cloistered in a humid, remote Southern outpost, my stature as the leading (and only) Trotskyite unchallenged, no one around to expose my limited comprehension of the vagaries of dialectical materialism. I sure did like to say those words, though. And the girl I would marry sure liked to hear them.

I
tell Matt I’m Humpty Dumpty and he’s fucking with my head.

“That’s my job,” he says.

Okay, then, whose job is it to put me back together again?

He’s not happy with me tonight. He says he sees a pattern here and asks if I recognize it. I shrug my shoulders. I shouldn’t have told him about the “therapeutic” massage, complete with happy ending, in my hotel room in Orlando. He reminds me I’m on probation and the State of North Carolina wouldn’t look kindly on commercial transactions for sexual release. He asks whether I understand the meaning of the term
self-destructive
. I tell him he’s being melodramatic.

We move on to discussing medication. Or, rather, he’s talking about something called SSRIs and I stop listening. Something behind his right shoulder is distracting me. A small abstract watercolor. Not abstract exactly, more geometric. Squares and pyramids strategically aligned by color. It has to be new. I’ve sat in this room every week since late last summer and never seen it before.

“Is that watercolor new?” I ask.

“What watercolor?”

“The one behind you. The one with all the shapes.”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

I scan the room searching for further evidence of my waning powers of observation. Desk, chair, sofa, crucifix. Those I remember. This paperweight, the Venetian millefleur, I remember that too. The psychopharmacology reference guide on the side table. That I haven’t seen. That’s definitely new.

“You aren’t listening to me, are you?” he asks.

“Sure, of course.”

Actually I stopped listening when he told me what I didn’t want to hear. He’s gone too far. He’s overstepped his boundaries. He’s diagnosing me.

Depression.

“Call in FDR!” I say.

“What?”

“I have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

I think my stentorian Hyde Park mimicry is pretty funny, clever at least, but it doesn’t get a laugh. He’s holding a manila folder with papers attached by a strong metal clasp. A medical record.
My
medical record. I’m reassured by its brevity, just a few sheets of paper. It would be thick as the phone book if I were crazy. It had never occurred to me he was keeping a medical record. He’s not my doctor. He’s my
counselor
. That’s what the State of North Carolina ordered. Counseling. I pay him a lot of money and he counsels me to stay off my knees in public toilets. That’s the State’s only interest in making me do this, to protect its upstanding citizens from stumbling upon acts of depraved perversion when nature calls while they’re doing eighty miles an hour on its beautifully landscaped interstates. The State of North Carolina has no interest in
How I Feel.

I tell him he has it all wrong.

“How so?”

I can’t be depressed. Don’t depressed people sleep all the time? Lately, I can’t sleep long enough to finish a dream, tossing and turning and twisting the sheets between my legs. Don’t depressed people want to be alone? I’m constantly seeking out crowded rooms, noise, distractions. In fact, I crawl the walls when I’m alone, pacing, smoking, smoking, smoking. Aren’t depressed people passive? Not me. It’s easy to get a rise out of me these days. People stare at me from the safety of their own cars, shocked by my bulging veins and grinding teeth when we’re crawling at fifteen miles an hour. Don’t depressed people cry at the drop of a hat? Well, meeting one of the diagnostic criteria isn’t enough. Besides, it’s not as if I actually cry. It’s just that I feel like crying.

“It’s not a sign of weakness, you know,” he says in his professional voice.

“And it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he says.

“How would you know?”

Christ, I’m down his throat. He doesn’t react. He’s not startled, not taken back. He’s
observing
.

“I know because it’s a disease,” he answers. “Just like hypertension and diabetes. I’m writing you a prescription.”

“No.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

He’s slipping up. At least it shows he’s not completely complacent about this.

“Sorry,” he says. “Tell me why you don’t want to try medication.”

“I not only will not take them,” I declare, sounding like a petulant five-year-old, “I’ll never even get them. I’ll never have it filled.”

“You’re not being rational. That’s the depression talking.”

That’s the depression talking.

Where do they come up with lines like this? Do they teach them in medical school? Clever Diagnostic Quips 101?

“What are you feeling right now?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m not feeling anything.”

I’m lying. I’m feeling exhausted. Too tired to invest any more words and emotions in denying his diagnosis.

“You’re always feeling something,” he says.

“Okay, you win. I’m feeling depressed.”

Maybe that will shut him up. The clock says only twenty more minutes until I’m released. I’ve let him win. Maybe he’ll take pity and set me free early.

“Too easy,” he says.

“What?”

“Too easy. How does depression feel? What does depression mean to you?”

“Abraham Lincoln.”

“Excuse me?”

“Abraham Lincoln.”

“Okay. You got me there.”

“Abraham Lincoln. Diagnosed with depression one hundred years after he died. After he died, for Christ’s sake. What does that tell you?”

Eureka. He’s befuddled.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“It’s easy. Do you think one hundred years ago people walked away from the White House, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues, saying, ‘Man, Old Abe, Honest Abe, he seemed a little
depressed
to me today’? Of course not. They’d walk out and say, ‘Abe was awful quiet today.’ Or, ‘Old Abe seemed to be somewhere else.’ Or, ‘Abe was a little short-tempered, not like him to be that way.’ The word
depressed
probably didn’t even exist back then. Who invented it? Your buddy Freud? His buddy Jung? Hell, whoever it was, they got it wrong. Depression isn’t a disease. It’s a
description!
”

“So then tell me what it describes.”

“Huh?”

“A description has to describe something, right? So tell me what it describes.”

“You’re playing fucking games with me.”

“So why don’t you play along? You’re good at games.”

He knows how to play to my vanity.

“I’ll say
depression
and you say whatever comes into your mind. You’ve got one minute. I’ll time you.”

“Look, Matt,” I say, “I’m not one of your juvenile delinquent pinheads. If you want to play a word association game, just ask.”

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. He actually blushes.

He looks at his watch.

“Hold on. I need to smoke to do this.”

“Go!”

I waste the first twenty seconds finishing a drag on my cigarette.

“…Okay. Depression. Black. Block. Box. Weight. Dead-weight. Sink. Drown. Float…”

I’m stuck on float.

“Float…I see myself on my back, floating, bloated, bluish.”

Dead. No, not dead. Just not alive.

“Time’s up.”

“How’d I do?”

“Great! You won,” he says, clicking his pen.

“What did I win?”

“This.”

He scribbles on the prescription pad and hands me my prize.

“You’re going to take these, right?”

“Doctor’s orders!”

At the door, he does something he has never done before. He hugs me. I’m too surprised to hug back.

“Everything is going to be okay,” he says. “I promise.”

Manipulative bastard. He knows just how to get to me. I had no intention of filling the prescription, let alone taking the damn things. But the hug has broken my resolve. I can’t let him down. Spooky, I think as I drive away, I wonder if I’m becoming one of those creeps who falls in love with their therapist.

I
f I’d remembered tonight was Halloween I would have found some excuse to stay over in Davenport, Iowa. I could have called Matt to tell him I needed to cancel our session so I could take in the International Sofa Museum. What? They don’t make couches in Davenport, you say? This great city must be famous for something! Agriculture? Okay then, I don’t want to miss that exhibit of the world’s largest ear of corn. Who would? Sorry. See you next week.

Instead I dutifully boarded my flight to Charlotte, only vaguely aware of the black crepe paper and orange twinkle lights draping the airport newsstand. Even the pumpkin on the porch of Matt’s Queen Anne didn’t set off any alarms. I made it through the hour—no breakthroughs, no new insights, another buck and a half that would have been better spent on a blow job from an Iowa farm boy trying to make ends meet. Afterward, I trudged home, grabbed a bottle of beer, kicked off my shoes, and flopped on the bed, ready to tackle the mail that accumulated during the week.

Let’s see. Four envelopes from (who else?) the law firm of Dugan, Castor, and Mullen, LLC. One enclosing an invoice, the second several pleadings requiring review and signature, a third forwarding copies of correspondence from the enemy firm of McNamara, Kerrigan, Whiteside, and Greenberg, the gist of which is that I am a deceitful, repugnant lower form of life. The fourth, the bulkiest, is stuffed with mail addressed to Andrew Nocera, 12 Virginia Dare Court, High Point, North Carolina. Not much of interest. An alumni solicitation from Davidson College. A notice that my subscription to
Baseball America
is about to expire. (God damn it, Dugan, Castor, and Mullen, where are my back issues? What the hell am I paying you for?) Finally, at the bottom of the pile, is a letter from Kuperstein’s Jewelers asking me to please contact them to arrange to pick up the inscribed gold bracelet ordered July 7. Failure to respond within the next thirty days will result in the forfeiture of my (substantial) deposit.

It was going to be a surprise, not a gift tendered out of obligation to observe a birthday, an anniversary, or a holiday. I was going to smack my forehead halfway across the Pont de la Tournelle, berating myself for, once again, forgetting something, something so important I’d even tied this thread around my finger to remind myself, see? What now? Alice would ask, rolling her eyes, exasperated, resigned to losing our reservation at Les Bookinistes because, as usual, I’d left my wallet on the dresser. This, I just remembered this, I’d say, handing her a small box tied with a white ribbon. I’d smile and wait for her to throw her arms around my shoulders, overcome when she discovers an eight-thousand-dollar piece of armor worthy of Wonder Woman, inscribed with the silly words of the Barry White song I liked to croak in her ear.
You’re the first, the last, my everything.

I can hardly afford to lose the four-grand deposit in my current circumstances, but I certainly don’t have the spare cash to ransom the bracelet from those nasty Kupersteins. Ah well, easy come, easy go. Anyway, Alice might have raised a skeptical eyebrow, unmoved by sentimentality and a Gallic backdrop, suspicious of my motivations. Naw, I’m sure she would have grabbed my shoulders and covered my face with kisses, murmuring in French, thanking me, even though, lout that I am, I don’t understand a single word of the language.

Goddamn it, go away, I mutter, irritated by the shrill, insistent bell summoning someone to the front door. I can’t imagine who could be harassing my mother, who I assume must be in her room finishing dressing for a bridge game or a night at the movies with friends. I haul myself off the bed to investigate; I need another beer anyway. Halfway down the stairs, I hear my mother shrieking in joy.

“Oh Lord, I think you’ve just taken three years off my life!” she claims, thrilling the pint-sized Casper in a cheap, off-the-shelf costume.

“Boo!” he (or she) trills, turning to run down the walk.

“Be careful!” my mother calls. “When did you get home?” she asks, turning to me.

“A while ago. I came in through the kitchen.”

“Well, welcome home.”

“Do you want to go out to dinner?”

“I made lasagna. If you’re starved, I can heat a piece now.”

“Let’s go out. It’s my treat.”

“It’s Halloween, Andy! I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

Three little Jedi warriors and Yoda race to the porch. My mother is hopeless, not recognizing their costumes. She thinks Yoda is some kind of frog.

“
Star Wars
, Ma. They’re characters from
Star Wars.
”

“How the hell would I know that?” she carps. “Obviously I could use your help here.”

I’d like another beer but anticipate a gentle rebuke about setting a good example. But if I’m going to be roped into doing this, I ought to be given some slack.

“Just let me grab another beer.”

The kids come and go in spurts. I tell my mother I don’t remember Town Watch patrolling on Halloween and none of us ever wore silver reflecting tape over our costumes. Times have changed, Andy, she says, it’s a different world now. Years ago, my mother would have known all the kids by name. The masks are pointless since they’re all little strangers now. The costumes are disappointing. Only a witch or two, not a skeleton all night. Halloween belongs to Disney and Warner Bros. It’s trademark protected.

“Andy, leave some for the kids,” she scolds, catching me with my fist in the candy bowl.

“Ma, you could restock Wal-Mart with the candy you’ve got! Anyway, let’s eat.”

“Trick or treat isn’t over.”

“It will be if you shut the door and turn off the light.”

“Andy, what’s wrong with you?” she asks, chafing at my irritability. “You used to love Halloween!”

Did I?

Like you said, Ma, times have changed. It’s a different world.

Other boys collected Matchbox cars. For me, there were only the Famous Monsters of Filmland. And I was more than just a collector. I built my monsters with my own two hands from model kits.

My mother would cover the kitchen table with newspaper and I would spread out the airplane glue and little vials of enamel paint. I’d pick a time when I knew she’d be working in the kitchen. I wanted a witness to the creation. Patience, she’d say when I got too excited and tried to rush, you need to let the glue set and wait for the paint to dry.

My clumsy hands could attach the arms and legs to the trunk and mount the head on the neck. It didn’t take a lot of skill to slap paint on the body. But the face needed her delicate touch. Wow, she’d say, this is the best one yet! She would promise to do a really good job so she didn’t spoil it. My little heart would race as she very, very carefully, painted the eyes and the lips and the brows. When she was finished, my monsters looked just like the picture on the box.

The old man put shelves above my bed for my collection. I slept under their vigilant eyes. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. I loved them all. But there was a special place in my heart for my favorite. The Bride of Frankenstein. Regal, silent, austere, she was the most fascinating creature I’d ever seen. I never tired of watching her make her grand entrance in the last minutes of the movie, always hoping that this time, she would walk away from the rubble when the castle collapsed and escape into the horizon as the credits rolled. When I was nine years old, my mother asked me who I wanted to be for Halloween and I shouted, without a moment’s hesitation, the Bride of Frankenstein, of course!

Our costumes were always her October project. That year, my sister was a chubby little Tinker Bell in tights and buckle shoes spray-painted silver. My mother spent a week turning chicken wire and cheesecloth into gossamer wings. My costume was simpler, several yards of muslin for the shroud and ACE bandages to cover my arms and legs. She bought a cheap wig at a discount store, shellacked it into a beehive, and painted skunk stripes at the temples. She gave me a chalk-white face and black brows and red lips. She drew raccoon circles on my face since nature hadn’t blessed me with Elsa Lanchester’s pop eyes. I looked in the mirror and saw the Bride of Frankenstein.

She took our picture and warned us one last time to watch out for cars and not to touch the candy until we got home. Regina was scratching and twitching, already anxious to shed her costume. The shoes pinched her feet, so she kicked them off and tossed them in her trick-or-treat bag, ruining her tights on the sidewalk. She approached the whole thing as a job, an annoyance to be suffered, the price for the payoff.

It was the best night of my life. I zombie-walked the streets, arms stiff, pointing straight ahead. I rotated my head counterclockwise, leading with my chin, doing all of the Bride’s jerky robot bird moves. I let my sister do the talking when the neighbors answered the doorbell. Trick or treat, she said without enthusiasm. Then it was my turn, after the candy was tossed in the bag. I dropped my jaw and did a perfect imitation of her high-pitched squeal. EEEEEKKK! I was a hit. Everyone laughed and told me what a good Bride I made.

My sister shredded every vestige of Tinker Bell as soon as we got home. I stayed in my costume, wanting this night to last forever. We were upstairs in my room fighting over Milky Ways when we heard the old man’s voice below. I couldn’t hear what my mother was saying, but the tone of her voice was explanatory, conciliatory. Her words made my father angrier. He said she was responsible, that she indulged me, that he was the laughingstock of the neighborhood. The guy down the street had just accosted him in the driveway, taunting him about my performance.

“You know what they call him?” the old man screamed, so angry he was near tears.

“Annie, ANNIE!”

That’s how I learned the difference between laughing with you and at you. I stood up and ripped off the wig. I tore it apart and stomped on the pieces. Gina looked up from her trick-or-treat bag, mouth full of chocolate and eyes full of wonder.

“I like your costume, Andy,” she said. “It’s better than mine.”

She dumped her candy on the floor and stacked all the peanut butter cups, our favorites, in neat—for her—towers of orange and brown wrapping. I knew she would eat all hers first, the opposite of me, who saved the best for last, after the popcorn balls and hard candies and plain milk chocolate.

“Here,” she said, pushing the peanut butter cups toward me. “You can have them.”

The next morning she would crawl into her daddy’s lap and he’d ask if she had a good Halloween. She’d say it was okay, but she didn’t get any peanut butter cups, knowing he’d drive to the Piggly Wiggly and buy her an entire box.

“Is it broken?” she asked, looking at the pieces of wig on the floor.

“I think so.”

“Mama’s going to be mad.”

“No, she’s not.”

“Yes, she will. She yelled at me for ruining my stupid costume.”

It was the first time I understood the mother Gina knew was different from my mama just as her daddy wasn’t my old man.

“Do you wanna play Clue?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“You can be Miss Scarlet,” she said as she pulled out the box. “I promise I won’t tell.”