Prozac Nation (26 page)

We had a fourth roommate, Sindhi, a Pakistani woman who went out with my friend Paul. When she finally decided that she could just shack up with him, that her parents in Karachi would never be the wiser, we replaced her with a series of roommates, all of whom dropped out of school or dropped out of life as soon as they moved in with us. Jean-Baptiste, a French student of artificial intelligence at M.I.T., decided to return to Paris and learn to play the oboe within two months of living with us. Inigo, a British graduate student of American history at Harvard, decided to return to his family's farm in Shropshire and take up sheep-herding within a month of settling in. W.B., a recent Harvard graduate, stayed with us for many months, and even though we all loved him to death, his mental health deteriorated during his tenure as our roommate. One day he was an editor at
Sail
magazine, the next day a bike messenger, the next day he was applying to law school, the next he was moving to L.A. to write screenplays. Both he and I began to suspect that this was the apartment from hell, that a miasma of depression and confusion had infiltrated the walls.

In fact, when Alden left to go back to school at Barnard in New York because she was just a visiting student at Harvard, my friend Veronica moved into Alden's old room and promptly got depressed. Veronica was taking her second semester senior year off because she couldn't—simply
could not
—write her thesis. Every time she sat at her Macintosh to work, she got physically ill and claustrophobic and paralyzed, which is why she moved in with us. Of course, after only a few weeks on Kirkland Street, with the nasty breakup with her boyfriend and a sudden inability to get out of bed before four in the afternoon, the least of Veronica's problems was her thesis. Needless to say, except for Samantha, who was a Woman with a Purpose, which is in itself kind of fucked up, everyone in the apartment was certifiable.

So many people had lived in this four-bedroom apartment over the years that it reeked of adolescence relived again and again. Patches of acne medicine permanently encrusted the bathroom sink, and the mirrored cabinet was full of leftover Bactrim prescriptions and the like, remnants of urinary tract infections gone by. The apartment was cheap and big, with a Mop & Glo-ad type of kitchen, but no one ever seemed to stay in it for more than a year, knowing somehow that they were lucky to get out alive.

 

I become one of those people who walks alone in the dark at night while others sleep or watch
Mary Tyler Moore
reruns or pull all-nighters to finish up some paper that's due first thing tomorrow. I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece. I want all my important possessions, my worldly goods, with me at all times. I want to hold what little sense of home I have left with me always. I feel so heavy all the time, so burdened. This must be a little bit like what it's like to be a bag lady, to drag your feet here, there, and everywhere, nowhere at all.

It is October, too chilly for this kind of wandering. But I must move, must get farther and farther away from this fire that's going to burn all of me down. It is cold outside, but I'm crazy from the heat.

 

I wake up the afternoon after Halloween to darkness as usual, and I can't get out of bed. It is a Sunday, and Sundays are so drab, nothing to do but catch up on schoolwork and feel hung over and consume aspirin. The only thing good about Sundays when I was living on campus were the Cocoa Krispies for brunch, a supreme treat for someone who grew up on sugar-free Total and granola. But now, I tell myself as I lie on my futon on the floor of my room, I live off campus and there is nothing to eat in this whole apartment because going to the supermarket is too much of an effort for me because I have nothing else to do, and too much of an effort for Samantha because she has too much else to do.

Okay, I think, lying in my bed, Let's face it, girl, you live in fucking anomie here. Of course you're going crazy, Elizabeth. People tend to go crazy when they don't even have a container of milk in the refrigerator.

So I push myself up from bed as if I were a tape ejecting from a player. As I pad into the kitchen to make myself some tea, I decide to call my mother. What I need, I think, is to do something
real
normal. Something that's normal and that gives me a sense of connectedness with the world. Because right now I feel a bit like a tree cut from the ground on its way to the lumberyard for further cutting. And the thing about my mom is that she's totally nuts, but she's very normal. She pays taxes, she works for a living, she boils water without burning the pot. She's so far from my present surroundings that I think calling her will somehow transport me to a saner place. We used to talk every day almost, but we haven't lately because there's too much I don't want to tell her and too much she doesn't want to know. Our silence is a cooperative venture, although we still chat about nothing every few days. Maybe it's time we had a serious conversation.

As soon as she picks up the phone, she starts yelling about something. Partly it's that she called a few days ago and I haven't gotten back to her until now, partly it's that she's just received a pharmacy bill from Harvard and she wants to know what all this medicine is about, partly she yells because that is what she does. I come from a family of screamers. If they are trying to express any emotion or idea beyond pass the salt, it comes in shrieks. So my mom is the opposite of composure, and I am calling her with the sole hope that her maternal stability will seep through the fiberoptic lines.

I almost say to her,
Mommy, I'm coming to you with a need, and you're going to have to fill it, or at least fake it for a while, because I need you to be a motherly mother who believes I can do no wrong right now.
And you know, I feel so desperate that I would say it if I thought it would work.

But it won't. There have been countless times when she's been hysterical and I've begged her to calm down because she is the only adult in my life I can trust and when she gets crazy I feel as if the bottom is slipping and sliding out from under me, but this doesn't stop her. She does not look at me with comprehension or recognition, as if what I'm saying makes enough sense for her to stop screaming. She never steps back and sees that her behavior is inappropriate or disproportionate, or, worst of all, not productive. She keeps screaming. And I sit around plotting and planning, wondering what I would have to do to shut off the noise, what state of desperaton would I have to achieve before she'd realize that the way she's carrying on is killing me.

Rest assured, it's not going to happen on this dreary Sunday afternoon. I get off the phone with my mother, worse for the wear, and wonder what's left.

 

I dialed Rafe's number, something I'd been meaning to do for four years, after I hung up with my mother.

I didn't know what I was expecting—I'd met him only once, during my junior year of high school when I was looking at colleges and visited Brown—but salvation would have done the trick. Rafe was a friend of a friend, we'd been introduced only because his parents were suing each other over the same issues mine were, he didn't talk to his dad either, and our mutual friend thought we might enjoy exchanging notes from divorce court. I think we had, but that was four years ago.

I didn't know how to tell him that it was up to him to save my life now.

When he answered the phone, I almost remembered the voice. “Hello? Is this Rafe?”

“It is.”

“Hi, Rafe, my name is Elizabeth, and I'm a friend of Jim Witz's. We met a few years ago when I came to Brown for a visit because I was choosing schools.”

“Uh-huh.” No sign of recognition.

“Well, anyway, at the time Jim introduced us, I think mainly because I had all these problems with my father and you had similar ones with yours . . .” I could tell by his lack of responsiveness, his failure to sigh or groan or do anything to suggest he knew what I meant, that he'd completely forgotten the encounter. “Anyway, you probably don't remember, it was just one evening so long ago,” I added to keep from embarrassing myself.

“Maybe if you told me what you look like, I'd remember,” he suggested.

“Well, you know, the truth is I came up there the first week of your freshman year so probably it's all a big haze to you now.” Just answer the question, Elizabeth. “But since you ask, I have very long light brown hair and dark eyes, and I wear black a lot, which probably makes me sound like every other girl you know.”

“Yeah, well, that pretty much covers almost everyone around here.”

“Look, the real reason I called”—what
was
the real reason I called?—“is that, um, I'm trying to track Jim down and I thought you might know where he is now that he graduated.”

“No idea.” So much for that pretext.

“Okay, well, then I guess I won't bother you with this anymore.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said, finally showing some enthusiasm. “You can't hang up. You still haven't told me what's happened to you since I met you a few years ago.”

“But you don't remember anyway.”

“Well, I do vaguely.”

!!!!!!!!!!

“Well, let's see, I'm a junior at Harvard now, I'm studying Comparative Literature, I write a lot, other than that I think it's pretty safe to say that nothing eventful has happened to me in the last few years.” A miscarriage, a prelude to a nervous breakdown, nothing eventful. “And I still don't talk to my father, though it's not for lack of trying.”

For some reason, we talked about what bands and authors we liked, and then he started telling me about his plans to return to Minneapolis, his hometown, after graduation, to try to make it as an actor. He told me that he just finished starring in a run of an updated version of Moliére's
Tartuffe.
He told me that he wished I could have seen it, it was great. And I thought to myself, as women do, Why does he wish I could see it? Is it because as an actor he wishes everyone could see his performances? Or is it me he wants there?

In the meantime, I told him that I was really sorry that he couldn't tell me where to find Jim, but now I had to go. “But good luck with everything,” I said. “I hope it all works out for you.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait, wait. Just let me get your number in case I'm ever in Boston.”

“Why would you want that?”

“Well, so I can call you when I'm up there. Maybe we can meet again or something.”

“Oh, I see.” So cool. Elizabeth, you have never been so cool in your life. “I suppose that would be fine.”

“I might even be there really soon. A good friend of mine is from Cambridge,” he says. “And my roommate's from Arlington.”

“Oh, how nice,” I say. How nice. “Well, give a call then.”

 

Two days later, on Tuesday night, I was back on the phone with Rafe.

“Hi, it's me again,” I said when he picked up, as if we were already familiar. “Listen, this may sound strange, but I was thinking, um . . .” Um. “Could I come visit you this weekend? I really need to get away from here, and I don't really have anywhere else to go but home, which isn't—”

He cut me off with laughter. “The funny thing is,” he said, “for the last couple of days, I've been trying to figure out ways I could get up to Boston so I could see you.”

By 4:00
A.M.
on Friday night, we had been to a play, we had been to a couple of parties, and we had been back at Rafe's house a couple of hours, and he still hadn't kissed me. And I didn't know what to do.

Rafe's apartment was quite nice, the kind of place that the Brown housing office awards you with as a senior. He shared it with two roommates, and a friend who got thrown out of a fraternity occupied the attic space. But even at that very late hour, nobody was home except Rafe and me. We sat and talked on the day bed in the living room. I was half scared that he was actually going to suggest that I sleep there since he was very sensitive about the fact that I'd recently been through this gynecological nightmare, and he was probably the kind of guy who would think that separate beds was the right thing to do.

I was petrified that this really was going to be just a weekend away, some time to regroup and return to Harvard a bit refreshed. I was so scared that Rafe was not going to be my salvation after all, and I couldn't deal with that. He had to be.

He had to be.

And just when I was feeling completely ominous, thinking that I could have spent this weekend doing, well, frankly, my Space, Time, and Motion papers instead of hanging out with a guy who wants only to be caring and compassionate and politically correct; just when I was remembering there were so many things I should have been doing, that I am not here for anything other than salvation; just then, when I could stand it no longer, Rafe finally kissed me.

Saved.

 

I see him every weekend. Sometimes that means from Friday to Sunday, but more and more often it means from Thursday to Monday. When we are together, all we are is together. No work gets done, no play rehearsals, no cleaning, not much cooking. The three days that I am in Cambridge, I struggle to get through what I have to, to do my reading, to write my papers, to wash my laundry, to go to my new job at Lamont Library, even to attend classes. But it is so hard to care about anything or anybody at Harvard. I live in complete darkness, hoping each day that Rafe will call me or planning to call him.

Every so often, I look around at my apartment. I see that all the posters that I so carefully chose and taped to the living room walls in September are falling as the cold freezes the stickiness out of the tape. I know they need reinforcing, but I let them slip onto the rug and onto the sofas and onto the wing chairs. There are several bags of garbage accumulating in the kitchen, and I know that if someone doesn't do something about it we are going to have rats living with us. I know this but somehow can't seem to remember to pick up one of the bags on my way out in the morning. Can't remember anything except
Where's Rafe?