“Are you sure?”
I look down, and the answer is right there in my chest and it’s resounding. “Yes. I have bigger problems than you.”
“Ah, okay.”
“And you shouldn’t assume that everything is always about you.”
“Whatever. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Everything’s a lot better now, actually.”
“You’re acting like a total dick. Do you want to come out tonight?”
“I can’t.”
“Did Aaron call you? We’re having a big party at his house.”
“Right. I’m probably not going to be partying for . . . like … a while. Like ever, maybe.”
“Is everything okay now?”
“Yeah, I’m just… I’m figuring some things out.”
“At your friend’s house.”
“Correct.”
“Are you like in a crack den, or something?”
“No!” I yell, and just then President Armelio walks up to me: “Hey, buddy, you want to play spades? I’ll crush you.”
“Not now, Armelio.”
“Who’s that?” Nia asks.
“Leave him alone, he’s talking with his girlfriend.” Ebony taps Armelio with her cane.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I whisper at her.
“Who’s that?”
“My friend Armelio.”
“No, the girl.”
“My friend Ebony.”
“Where are you, Craig?”
“I gotta go.”
“All right.. .” Nia trails her voice off. “I’m glad you’re doing .. . uh . .. better.”
“I’m doing a lot better,” I say.
She’s done, I think. She’s done, and you’re done with her.
“See ya, Craig.”
I hang up.
“I think that’s over,” I say to myself.
Then I decide to announce it to the hall: “I think that that’s over!” Ebony stomps her cane, and Armelio claps.
Something deep in my guts, below my heart, has made a shift to the left and settled in a more comfortable place. It’s not the Shift, but it’s a shift. I picture Nia with her gorgeous face and little body and black hair and pouty lips and Aaron’s hands all over her but also with her pot smoking and the pimples on her forehead and making fun of people all the time and the way she’s always so proud of how she’s dressed. And I picture her fading.
I play cards with Armelio in the dining room until Bobby pokes his head in:
“Craig? It says on your door Dr. Mahmoud is your doctor? He’s making his rounds.”
twenty-six
“I don’t want to be here,” I tell him at the entrance to my room, where I catch him before he visits Muqtada. “I don’t think it’s the place for me.”
“Of course not.” Dr. Mahmoud nods. He has on the same suit he had on earlier in the day, although that feels like last year. “If you liked it here, that would be a very bad prognosis!”
“Right.” I chuckle. “Well, I mean, everybody’s friendly, but I feel a lot better, and I think I’m ready to go. Maybe Monday? I don’t want to miss school.”
Also, doc, right now the phone messages and e-mails are bunching up and the rumors are flying. I just talked to this girl—and I did okay—but the Tentacles are coiled and the pressure is rising, getting ready to pounce on me when I leave. If I’m in here too long, I’ll have that much more to do when I get out.
“We can’t rush it,” Dr. Mahmoud says. “The important thing is that you get better. If you try to leave too soon—suddenly, everything is better?— we doctors get suspicious.”
“Oh. Well, you don’t want the doctor who can sign you out of the psychiatric hospital getting suspicious.”
“Right. Right now, to me, you look much better, but maybe this is a false recovery—”
“A Fake Shift.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A Fake Shift. That’s what I call it. When you think you’ve beaten it, but you haven’t.”
“Exactly. We don’t want one of those.”
“So I’m going to be here until I have the real Shift?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’m going to be here until I’m cured?”
“Life is not cured, Mr. Gilner.” Dr. Mahmoud leans in. “Life is managed.”
“Okay.”
I’m apparently not as impressed by this as he would like. He arches back: “We don’t keep you here until you are cured of anything; we keep you here until you are stable—we call it ‘establishing the baseline.’”
“Okay, so when will my baseline be established?”
“Five days, probably.”
One, two, three … “Thursday? I can’t wait until Thursday, Doctor. I have too much school. That’s four days of school. If I miss four days I will be so behind. Plus, my friends. . .”
“Yes?”
“My friends will know where I am!”
“Aha. Is this a problem?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m here!” I gesture out at the hall. Solomon shuffles by very quickly in his sandals and tells someone to be quiet, he’s trying to rest.
“Mr. Gilner.” Dr. Mahmoud puts a hand on my shoulder. “You have a chemical imbalance, that is all. If you were a diabetic, would you be ashamed of where you were?”
“No, but—”
“If you had to take insulin and you stopped, and you were taken to the hospital, wouldn’t that make sense?”
“This is different.”
“How?”
I sigh. “I don’t know how much of it is really chemical. Sometimes I just think depression’s one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there’s so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”
“Ah. This is why you need to be in here longer, to talk about these things,” Dr. Mahmoud says. “You have a psychologist, correct? Have you called your psychologist?”
Shoot. I knew I was forgetting something.
“You need to call; your psychologist will come here to meet with you. What is her name? Or his?”
“Dr. Minerva.”
“Oh!” Dr. Mahmoud says; his lips curl into a far away smile. “Wonderful. Get Andrea down here.”
“Andrea?” I never knew her first name. She keeps it like a big secret. It’s blanked out on all her degrees. She says it’s part of policy.
He waves his hand. “Make an appointment with her; then we’ll be that much closer to coming up with your treatment plan and getting you out of here as soon as possible. We will try for Thursday.”
“Not before Thursday.”
“No.”
“Thursday,” I mumble to myself, looking across the room at Muqtada’s prone lump.
“Five days, that’s it! Everything will be fine, Mr. Gilner. Your life will wait. You just participate in the group activities and call Dr. Minerva. And when you grow up to be rich and successful, you don’t forget me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Can please you close the door?” Muqtada asks from his bed.
“Mister Muqtada, you are the next: how come you are always sleeping sleeping sleeping?”
Dr. Mahmoud walks past me. I call Mom to report the news, and then I call Dr. Minerva. She says she’s sorry I took this turn for the worse, but it’s always two-steps-forward, one-step-back.
“If this is my one step back,” I tell her, “what am I going to do next: win the lottery and get my own TV show?”
That’d be a good TV show, actually, I think. A guy winning the lottery in the psych hospital.
Dr. Minerva can’t come in tomorrow, because it’s Sunday, but she says she’ll be in on Monday. I’m momentarily surprised by the distinction. In Six North, there probably won’t be much difference.
twenty-seven
“They say there’s gonna be a pizza party tonight,” Humble tells m
e at dinner. Dinner is chicken tenders with potatoes and salad and a pear. I eat it all. “But they say that every night.”
“What’s a pizza party?”
“We all chip in the money and get pizza from the neighborhood. It’s tough, because no one ever has any cash. It’s like a big deal if we get pepperoni.”
“I have eight dollars.”
“Shhh. Don’t go announcing it!” He stops chewing. “People in here don’t have any money. I don’t have two cents to rub together.”
I nod. “I never heard that one before.”
“No? You like it?”
“Yeah.”
“What about: I don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”
“Nope.”
“What about: I got Jack and shit and Jack left town.”
“Heh. No! Where do you get them all?”
“From the old neighborhood. Gimme a ringy-ding. Catch ya on the flipside. It’s the best way to talk.”
“A ringy-ding, what’s that—a call?”
“Don’t ask yuppie questions.”
Humble scans the room for people to talk about. He enjoys talking about other people—he just enjoys talking, I’ve discovered, but he especially enjoys talking about other people—and when he does so, he puts on a peculiar sort of voice that’s not quite a whisper, but is pitched at such a low monotone that no one notices it. He also seems able to throw it so it feels like he’s speaking into my left ear.
“So I suppose you’ve become familiar with our lovely clientele here on the floor. President Armelio is the president.” He nods over at Armelio, who has finished his food first and is getting up to return the tray. “You see how fast he eats? If you could harness a quarter of his energy, you could power the island of Manhattan. I’m not joking. He should really work in a place with people like us. He has such a good heart and he’s never down.”
“So why is he in here?”
“He’s psychotic, of course. You shoulda seen him when they brought him in. He was screaming his head off about his mom. He’s Greek.”
“Huh.”
“Now there’s Ebony, She of the Ass. That is def initely the biggest ass I’ve ever seen. I’m not even into asses, but if you were—man, you could lose yourself in there. It’s like its own municipality. I think that’s why she needs the cane. She’s also the only woman I’ve ever known who wears velvet pants; I think you have to have a butt like that to wear velvet pants. They only make them in extra extra extra large.”
“I didn’t even notice them.”
“Well, give it a while. After a few days you start to notice people’s clothes, seeing as how they all wear the same stuff every day.”
“Things don’t get dirty?”
“They do laundry on Tuesdays and Fridays. Who gave you your tour when you came in?”
“Bobby.”
“He should’ve told you that.” Humble swivels his head, then turns back. “Now Bobby and Johnny"—they’re at a table together, as they were at lunch—"those two were some of the biggest meth-amphetamine addicts in New York City, period, in the nineties. They were called Fiend One and Fiend Two. The party didn’t really start until they showed up.”
That must’ve been such a feeling, even through all the drugs, I think. To come into a house and have people well up and greet you: “All right, man!” “You’re here!” “What’s up?” That was probably as addictive as the amphetamines. People sort of do that to Aaron.
“What happened to them?” I ask.
“What happens to anybody? They got burned out, lost all their money, ended up here. Got no families, got no women—well, I think Bobby has one.”
“He talks on the phone with her.”
“You can’t tell from that. People pretend to be on the phone all the time. Like her"—he pitches his head at the bug-eyed woman who was standing behind me when I was talking with my family— “The Professor. I’ve caught her on the phone talking to Dr. Dial Tone. She’s a university professor. She ended up here because she thinks someone tried to spray her apartment with insecticide. She has newspaper clippings about it and everything.”
Humble turns: “The black kid with the glasses: he looks pretty normal, but he has it bad. You notice he doesn’t come out of his room a lot. That’s because he’s scared that gravity is going to reverse and he’s going to fall up into the ceiling. When he goes outside, he has to be near trees so, in case the gravity stops, he’ll have something to hold on to. I think he’s about seventeen. Have you talked to him?”
“No.”
“He doesn’t really talk. I don’t know how much they can do for him.”
The guy looks up at the ceiling fan above the dining room, shudders, and forks food into his mouth.
“Then there’s Jimmy. Jimmy’s been here a lot. I’ve been here twenty-four days, and I’ve seen him come and go twice. You seem to like him.”
“We came in together.”
“He’s a cool guy. And he has good teeth.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
“Pearly whites. Not a lot of people in here have that. I myself wonder what happened to Ebony’s teeth.”
“What’s wrong with them?” I turn.
“Don’t look. She has none, you didn’t notice? She’s on a liquid diet. Just gums. I wonder if she sold ‘em, tooth by tooth. …”
I bite my tongue. I can’t help it. I shouldn’t be laughing at any of these people, and neither should Humble, but maybe it’s okay, somewhere, somehow, because we’re enjoying life? I’m not sure. Jimmy, two tables away, notices my stifled laughter, smiles at me, and laughs himself.
“I toldja: it come to ya!”
“There we go. What is going on in his mind?” Humble asks.
I can’t help it. It’s too much. I crack up. Juice and chicken tender bits spray my plate.
“Oh, I got you now,” Humble continues. “And here comes the guest of honor: Solomon.”
The Hasidic Jewish guy comes in holding up his pants. He still has food in his beard. He grabs his tray and opens a microwaved packet of spaghetti and starts shoveling it into his mouth, making slurping, gulping groans.
“This guy eats once a day but it’s like his last day on earth,” Humble says. “I think he’s the most far gone of everybody. He’s got like a direct audience with God.”
Solomon looks up, twists his head from side to side, and resumes eating.
Humble drops to a true whisper. “He did a few hundred tabs of acid and blew his pupils out. His eyeballs are permanently dilated.”
“No way.”
“Absolutely. It’s a certain cult of the Hasidics: the Jewish Acid-Heads. There’s like a part of their holy writings that tells them it’s the way to talk to God. But he took it too far.”
Solomon gets up, leaves his tray disgustedly at the table, and moves out of the room with alarming speed.
“He’s like the Mole Man, back to his hole,” Humble says. “The real Mole People are the anorexics; you don’t even see them.”
“How many people are in here?” I ask.
“They say twenty-five,” Humble says. “But that’s not counting the stowaways.”
I look around. Charles/Jennifer isn’t in the room.
“Did the, uh, you know, Charles? Did he leave?”
“Yeah, the tranny’s gone. Left this afternoon. Tranny hit on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Smitty lets him do that. Gets a kick out of it.”
“I can’t believe he’s just gone. They don’t, like, throw a party for you when you leave?”
“No way. People here don’t want to get out. Getting out means going back to the streets or to jail or to try and fish their things out of an impounded car, like me. Your kind of situation, with the parents and a house: that’s rare. And also, with so many people coming and going, we’d be nuts to try and have a party every time. We’d end up like Fiend One and Fiend Two.”
My tray is a mess from the food spraying out. “Y
ou crack me up, Humble,” I tell him.
“I know. I’m a great time for everybody. Too bad I’m in here instead of onstage getting paid for it.”
“Why don’t you try going onstage?”
“I’m old.”
“I have to get some napkins.” I rise and go out to Smitty, who hands me a stack. I return, wipe off my tray, and start in on the pear.
“You have a secret admirer,” Humble says. “I should’ve guessed. I know how you operate.”
“What?”
“She was just here. Look at your chair.”
I get up and check it. There’s a piece of paper lying there, face down. I flip it around, and it says HOPE YOU’RE HAVING A GOOD TIME. VISITING HOURS ARE TOMORROW FROM 7:00-7:05 P.M. I DON’T SMOKE.
“See? Your little girl with the cut-up face just left it.” Humble gets up. “I had a feeling. Now you’re starting to look like a rival male. I might have to keep my eye on you.”
He deposits his tray and gets in line for his meds. I fold the paper up and put it in the pocket where my phone used to be.
twenty-eight
“Craig! Hey buddy! Phone!”
I’m sitting with Humble outside the smoking lounge for the 10 P.M. cigarette break, thinking about where I was at the last 10 P.M.: just getting into Mom’s bed. Humble doesn’t smoke, says it’s disgusting, but everyone else in here does, practically, including the black guy who’s afraid of gravity; and the big girl, Becca, both of whom I thought were underage. Armelio, Ebony, Bobby, Johnny, Jimmy … no matter how nuts they all seem, they have no problem migrating to the upper left of the H and sitting down on the couches quietly to wait for their particular brand of cigarettes, which I learn the hospital does not, in fact, provide for them—they come in with the packs themselves and the nurses keep them in a special tray. Once they pull a cigarette out of their respective packs, they walk single file through a red door, passing Nurse Monica, whose job is to light everybody up. When the door closes, the smell drifts out from under it and you hear talking—everybody talking all at once, as if they saved their words for a time when there was smoke to send them through.
“How’re you doing for your first day, Craig?” Nurse Monica asked me five minutes ago, as she closed the door. “You don’t smoke, I see.”