“I don’t know,” Ed said. “Dr. Stern referred me.”
“And why did he refer you?”
“Because he couldn’t handle it.”
“Couldn’t handle what?”
“Whatever’s wrong with me.”
“And what do you think’s wrong with you?”
“Depression,” said Ed.
Fine arched his thick, straggling eyebrows, then reached for his teacup. “Say more,” he said, “about depression.”
“More?”
“What’s it like? How does it feel? Anything you want to say about it to me. Go ahead. I’m here with you.”
“Like I’m under water,” said Ed.
“In the sense that you feel like you’re holding your breath?”
“No. Like everything’s watery. Like I can’t move, except slowly. Like there’s a film over everything. Like I’m on the moon or under water.”
“On the moon.”
“Or under water.”
“Are you eating?”
“No.”
“Are you sleeping?”
“As much as possible.”
“Why?”
“Because then it doesn’t hurt to be depressed.”
“Hurt?” said Fine. “So it’s not just the sensation of being under water? There’s also hurt. Which feels like what?”
“Like being crushed. Squeezed in a vise. Like it’s killing me.”
“Killing you,” said Fine.
“Like I’m dying.”
“Dying,” said Fine. “And what’s that like?”
Ed sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Like death.”
“Have you died before?”
“No.”
“So how do you know what it feels like?”
“I don’t.”
“So why did you say you feel like you’re dying?”
Ed sighed again. Was Roger Fine a prosecutor? Was this cross-examination? But before he could speak, Fine suddenly said, “What’s with the sighing? Once again? Who’s doing all the sighing, Ed?”
“What?”
“It’s almost like there’s three people in the room. Me, the you who says he’s depressed, and the you who’s sighing.”
“I don’t get that,” said Ed.
“So who’s doing the sighing?”
“I don’t get it,” said Ed. “What’s the question?”
Fine put down his teacup, wiped his meaty lips with the back of his wrist, groomed his beard, covered a burp, and, through all of this, nodded. Then he said, “Who’s in the room?”
“You and me.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m me.”
“And who is me?”
Ed wanted to sigh, but held back and answered, “I know I’m not supposed to say my name, but that’s the answer—me. I’m me. I don’t know. What do you mean? Tell me how I’m supposed to answer.”
“I can’t tell you anything. Or not very much. Maybe a little.” Fine used his thumb and forefinger to indicate one inch. “The rest, it’s not for me to say. Who are you? I don’t know, either. I don’t know that. I wish I did. I wish it was that easy. You come in here, I tell you what’s wrong, I tell you why you’re depressed, and somehow, after that, you’re not depressed anymore? It isn’t like that. That’s not what we do here. I don’t have a crystal ball or magic tricks.”
“Then what do we do here?”
“We talk,” said Fine.
“About what?”
“About you.”
“What about me?”
“That’s for you to say. Anything you want. In here, anything goes. So tell me this—why are you depressed?”
Ed sighed, and Fine raised his eyebrows again. “I don’t know,” said Ed. But then, surrendering, he made something up. “A friend of mine died,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Fine. “How and when?”
“Just a few weeks ago. In a car crash. In eastern Washington.”
“A good friend?”
“A really good friend.”
“Someone you’d known for a long time? From childhood?”
“Yeah,” said Ed. “One of my best friends.”
“So there it is,” said Fine, sitting back. “Your friend died, and now you’re depressed.”
“Right.”
“But maybe it’s not depression—maybe it’s mourning. Maybe it’s grief, which is a natural reaction. Maybe that’s what brought you here.”
“No,” said Ed. “That’s not it. Something’s … wrong. Something’s different. This isn’t like anything I’ve felt before. This is just sort of … different.”
“Are you saying you lost a friend before, someone as significant and as close as this friend, and that on that occasion you mourned and grieved in a way that didn’t feel like what you’re feeling now? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Couldn’t it be grief instead of depression?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, then,” said Fine. “Let’s talk about grief. Let’s talk about loss. Because these things are a part of life. You’ve lost somebody, you’re grieving, naturally, but your life goes on, and the question is, how will it go on from this point? Now that your friend is gone?” Again, Fine showed one inch with his fingers, this time adding a wink and saying, “I think this is one of the few things I’m actually entitled to say. We’re talking about grief. Not depression, grief. We’re talking about how you feel about your friend, a person who was important to you. Why wouldn’t you grieve? Anybody would. And it doesn’t feel good, does it, grief. There’s a big hole in your life now—a place your friend used to fill. What’s going to go there? Or will it stay empty? Do you understand what I’m saying? About a hole? A loss? That’s what loss is—loss makes a hole. Grief is how you start to fill it in. I think you should just accept that grief. Let yourself grieve. Don’t fight it.”
“I don’t know,” said Ed. “Something isn’t right.”
“One thing we can do is prescribe,” said Fine. “Paul Stern’s got you on diazepam, but that’s not going to solve your problem. We could put you on something that would be ongoing and that would help you feel a lot, lot better, so you can get on with living your life.”
“No,” said Ed. “I’m not a pill person.”
“No one likes to be medicated,” said Fine. “But when you need medication, it’s good it’s there. Meds help many, many people, Ed. And I think the right one could probably help you while you’re getting over your grief.”
Ed sighed.
“You don’t have to decide now,” said Fine. “You can think about it, and we can talk it over later. And, of course, the decision is yours alone to make. You, not I, have to want it, Ed. I’m only here with you—only present.”
Later, in bed with a pillow over his head—and in between hating himself and thinking about death—Ed thought about whether he should take a mental-health drug. Alice discussed it on the phone with Roger Fine and, since the idea of a drug concerned her, too, decided that they should get a second opinion. After a swift and thorough vetting, she made an appointment with a therapist named Theresa Pierce who specialized in depressed adolescents.
Theresa Pierce met with clients in a low-ceilinged garret that smelled, to Ed, like old milk in a pile carpet. In its doorway, she put him in mind of Arthur’s Merlin—pallid, maybe even owlish, like someone who hibernated. She wore Lycra slacks, running shoes, and a zip-up boiled-wool sweater. Her large and unfashionable glasses, with their wood-grain frames and graphic bifocal bifurcations, made her eyes seem three times larger than was human, and magnified, especially, her glinting, liquid pupils. Pierce kept dog-eared books floor-to-ceiling, many with creased spines, tattered edges, and “Used” stickers, and her chairs—one for doctor, one for patient, but both hard Windsors—were arranged for maximum distance despite the cramped quarters. There she sat, remotely
, in her corner, not necessarily for or against Ed, dispassionately present, cryptic in aspect, and attentive behind her conspicuously huge glasses—everything arrayed to suggest, subliminally, that here was a woman of insight.
So as not to prejudice Theresa Pierce, Ed didn’t mention Roger Fine or the question of a mental-health drug. He told her that there was nothing wrong with his life and that he didn’t know why he was feeling what he was feeling—unhappy, uninterested in heretofore vitalizing pursuits, listless, withdrawn, preoccupied with bleak thoughts. Mired and catatonic. Under water, static, stuporous, and numb. Unable either to exercise or to eat. Mostly drawn to curling in the fetal position and covering his head so he could think, without distraction, perpetual dark thoughts. Pierce, in response, uttered not a word. Instead of speaking, she watched him unnervingly, recessed in her corner, a psychiatric cipher. She regarded Ed with such flagrant detachment, as he filled the empty space with words, that finally he said, “Don’t you talk?”
“Sometimes.”
“Isn’t this what they call ‘talk therapy’?”
“No.”
“What is it, then?”
“That’s hard to say.”
“What am I doing here?”
“So far, introducing yourself.”
He didn’t know how to respond to this and felt insulted by it, as if he’d said too much, or said the wrong things—but what choice had she given him? “If I don’t talk and you don’t talk,” said Ed, “then we’re just sitting here doing nothing in the same room together, instead of making progress.”
“Progress toward what?”
“Progress toward my goal of getting back to where I was before this depression started.”
Pierce now watched him with something like a gargoyle’s menace. Didn’t gargoyles, like Pierce, look stony, poised, attentive, unreadable, bent on overhearing you from the tops of buildings, and prepared, if necessary, to leap onto your head? “I wish you’d say something,” Ed said.
“Like what?”
“Like something helpful.”
Pierce reached under the frame of her glasses and pulled, gently, at the corner of her eye. Ed got a glimpse, from across the room, of the red, glistening surround in which her eyeball was set. In her dowdy sweater and running shoes, and with her Brillo Pad hair just slightly awry, she looked more like a mental patient than a doctor. “I have to tell you something now,” she said. “I feel I don’t have a choice but to tell you this directly. I have to tell you that I can’t work with you. We’re not a good match. I’m not the right person for you to see. It’s nobody’s fault. You didn’t do something wrong. But sometimes this happens when someone comes to see me. I wouldn’t want to waste your time and money when it doesn’t feel right.”
“What are you talking about?” said Ed.
“You should see someone else. I could recommend another person. I’m sorry. It just isn’t what’s going to happen—you coming here for therapy.”
Ed rolled his eyes. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Are you telling me to leave?”
“No. You can stay. At no charge. If you want to. But not after today. I’m sorry.”
“And sit here with someone who thinks she can’t help me? Why would I do that? What would be the point? This is really weird,” said Ed. “I didn’t think I was going to get blown off when I came in here.”
Pierce didn’t answer, so Ed went further. “How am I supposed to feel?” he said. “I’ve been rejected. Kicked out for not being—what? I don’t know. I’m a loser here. But you’re the wizard and I’m the nobody. You call the shots, I take them in the chest. This is just really wrong.”
“I understand,” said Pierce.
“No, you don’t.”
For the first time since he’d walked into her garret, Pierce rearranged herself in her chair. She sat up straighter. It made her seem larger; she expanded to fill her corner. “What I do,” she said, “is look at the parts so I can understand the whole. And I’ve been sitting here with you, looking at your parts, and, frankly, I don’t think I can go any further. I don’t think it’s wise for us to go any further. I think you’re better off not going further, Ed. Some people are just better off.”
“Well, I’m not ‘some people,’ ” Ed shot back. “That’s where you’re wrong. Because, me, if there’s something I need to know, I always want to know it, always, okay? That’s me. That’s who’s here. That’s who’s sitting in front of you right now. How could you know me after, what, twenty minutes? I don’t see where you get off dismissing me like I’m scum, like I’m nobody. Who do you think you are, doing that to me? I’m not listening to you about anything. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Look,” Theresa said. “I think you should find someone willing to prescribe, get on a drug, and enjoy your life for as long as you can.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” said Ed, and walked out.
But in the end, he’d gotten a second opinion. The drug—imipramine—erased his depression in six weeks, after which Ed felt back to his old self and ready, again, to meet his future.
Alice begged for mercy from a friend on the board, and soon Ed was installed in the eleventh grade at University Prep, the first-rate private school Simon attended. Once settled there, he had to give his younger brother credit for carving out a niche at their highly stratified academy, despite being—or because he was—younger than everyone else. Si was the interesting and eccentric nerd who’d skipped a grade and was possibly a genius; Si was the brilliant, gangly goofball who would be a billionaire one day; Si was, embarrassingly, Ed’s classmate, another junior. He had friends, even close friends—even female friends. He was wedded to a group of nerds that included two average-looking girls. They ran in a pack, played Dungeons and Dragons, and met late at night in a Jack in the Box. Ed was sure that Si was a virgin, though he also knew there were girls out there who would sleep with a guy who chewed his nails, drank chocolate milk, kept a pet turtle, and was proud of his ability with a Rubik’s Cube. Yet as much as girls might like Si for being bright, he was also too flighty, too easily discombobulated, and too geeky to get inside their pants.
Si was also a night owl. His bedroom featured half-empty Coke cans and smelled as if the window had never been opened. He had dozens of video games, hundreds of comic books, and a shelf of programming manuals. Slowed in February of his sophomore year by an emergency operation to remove a gangrenous appendix, Si had come back in earnest that spring when it came to late-night video-game coding. He talked about coding constantly. He disseminated demos on floppy disks in labeled sleeves. With input from friends—and critiques from Ed—Si made progress on an Apple II effort, which was to code a game called Martian Mangler for paid magazine publication. Ed, exploring progressive demos of Martian Mangler, had to admit that Si was good with graphics and had assembly language pretty much down pat, but as for creativity, that was nil. Martian Mangler was thinly realized, and worse, derivative. It looked like a cross between Asteroids and Ultima, but with neither the exhilaration of the former nor the depth of the latter, it played like electronic checkers. Though Ed tried to tell Si all of this, Si refused to hear it. He kept insisting he’d invented a pot of gold when what he really had was a flop. Or so Ed thought until inCider paid Simon $100 for Martian Mangler. After that, it was $150 for Arcturan Attack and $200 for Venus SkyTrap. Si entered a game called Moon Buggy Blaster in UpTime’s design competition and won $500 in prize money. On letterhead he started calling himself Programmer-in-Chief at King Software, Inc. By the time his junior year started, his late-night friends had to compete with friends he made on bulletin boards, and his Dungeons and Dragons habit was addressed not at Jack in the Box but in MUDs. Simon even had a digital girlfriend who called herself HackAttack, but Katie for their one-to-one chats. Ostensibly she lived in Saratoga Springs, went to Skidmore, and was the cousin of the drummer for the Misfits. But who knew? She might be fifty and a perv with sideburns.
On Dan’s fi
ftieth birthday, Ed and Si withdrew to Simon’s lair for a round of Heavyweight Boxing. For an uncoordinated guy, Si had dexterous thumbs, which translated into fancy footwork in the ring and effective punch combinations. He liked to give Ed advice before he knocked him out, such as “Use Super Punch” and “Down and right for the head.” Si was high-speed instructional and “helpful” while pummeling Ed or inducing his submission. Ed gave him these small victories as part of a program of long-term guilt assuagement. They’d both gotten too old for the old forms of hostility and, in an exploratory vein, were creating new ones.
After three knockouts, Alice called them to the table for a bouillabaisse, a Caesar salad with anchovies, and a carrot cake—Dan’s favorites. During dinner, the Kings listened to Traditional Music of Madagascar in tribute to Dan’s interlude as a UN doctor, and after dinner, Dan’s brother and sister each called to rib him for having arrived at fifty and to have conversations about offspring, niggling health concerns, and the endgame afflictions their father was enduring in an assisted-living facility in Pasadena. “Ed’s first choice is math at Stanford.… Simon’s number-one choice is Caltech.… Alice is busy but giving a lot of thought to what she wants to be doing now that the nest is nearly empty.…” Simon gave Dan a sloppily handwritten certificate for five free car-washes, Ed gave him a book by a Jewish doctor, and Alice gave him a dachshund, bringing it up from the garage on a leash with a red ribbon around its neck. Dan had reservations. “This is very nice and thoughtful,” he said, “but I don’t think I really want a dog.”
“Daniel,” Alice answered, while the new dachshund slobbered, “the boys are off to college before long. My thought is that we substitute this dog. I got him at the pound. He’s eighteen months. He’s smart, he’s neutered, he’s house-trained, he doesn’t bark. He’s not too big and he’s not too small. And I’ll be frank. You don’t get exercise. You say you’ll take a walk, but it’s just talk, you don’t do it. This way, you won’t have excuses, darling. You’ll be one of those guys you see on the street, walking the dog every morning and evening.”