Tweak

  That remains the toughest aspect of accepting this teaching for me. I just have a hard time—when I allow myself to really think about it—comprehending that there could even possibly be a God. But Spencer has given me food and helped get me a job and managed to get me somewhat stable. All I’ve done is follow his directions like my whole life fucking depended on it, and it seems to help.

  I look at that man, lying in the hospital bed in front of me, nodding out from the morphine in him. I read to him like I’m reading to a child—like I used to read to Jasper and Daisy. And suddenly I do feel like I belong somewhere.

  I keep reading. Spencer will snore for a moment, his face becoming slack and still—then he’ll jerk awake and will say something. He’ll look at me and I don’t know what he sees—thinks—feels. I look at him and want so badly to be authentically a part of it—really a part of his family.

  Michelle comes back around four thirty. I’m supposed to pick up Lucy at day care. It’s all been cleared with the people at Lucy’s school. Michelle has put on some makeup and her short hair has been washed and blown dry. She has an overnight bag with her.

  Michelle gives me specific instructions about what to give Lucy for dinner and whatever. I listen and feel nothing but proud that she trusts me enough to leave her daughter with me again.

  Driving back to their neighborhood, I stop at a local video store to get some videos for me and Lucy to watch. I look over the family selection at Cinefile and finally choose a couple of Jim Henson’s Muppet movies. I always liked those as a child. I drive to their house and start the water boiling for some pasta with butter and cheese for Lucy. I cook us some food before walking down the block to her preschool.

  I find her playing outside with two girls and a little boy. I just watch her at first, talking with her friends. I remember Daisy at that age. I remember volunteering with the first-grade teacher at her school in Marin. I spent my entire winter break from my school in Massachusetts working there. I got to know all the kids so well—which ones needed special attention, whatever. It was hard to leave them, you know? I mean, going back to college and all. Maybe it’s an example of what the twelve-step program is all about—helping others to help yourself. It seems like when I focus on helping others, it helps me not want to get high. I just wonder how I can incorporate that more fully in my life.

  So I call to Lucy and she runs over to me, giving me a big hug. I hug her back and follow her to pick up her blanket and her lunch bag and all that stuff.

  We walk back along the sidewalk, stopping to pick up little Tom to take him around the block together. Lucy is full of questions. Of course she wants to know all about her daddy and why he’s away. Michelle actually asked me to tell Lucy that she and Spencer were off making a movie tonight and that’s why I’m staying over. I don’t feel comfortable about lying, really, but I do it.

  You’d think it wouldn’t bother me after all the lies I’ve told.

  I heat up our dinners in the microwave and we play with these plastic horses for a while. I pretend to be a race announcer and the horses are running in the Kentucky Derby.

  Michelle calls several times to make sure everything is all right. Nothing’s really changed with Spencer—he’s still on morphine every four to six hours. There may be nothing more they can do than that and just let the virus run its course. Now that they’ve got him stabilized, they don’t think he’s in much danger. I guess I feel relieved, though I never really questioned whether he was gonna make it or not. I can’t even begin to comprehend what my life would be like without Spencer. I can’t let my mind go there.

  So I go sit down next to Lucy and we watch The Muppet Movie and then The Great Muppet Caper until it’s time for her to go to sleep. She nestles up against me all the while. Before bed I read her one of my stepmom’s books. I found it at a used place on Sawtelle the other day and bought it for Lucy. I’ve read the book so many times, about a little girl who moves into this neighborhood and struggles to make friends. It’s named after her mother, Henrietta—my step-grandmother. I haven’t seen her since I broke into her house maybe three years ago, when I was living on the street. I fell asleep in her basement. She found me under a pile of laundry and all I wanted to do was keep sleeping, but I was so embarrassed and scared and everything, that I just ran out of there.

  Nothing has really been the same between us since. She and her husband, Jeremiah, had been more like real grandparents to me than my dad’s or mom’s parents ever had.

  Henrietta took me on hikes along the cliffs of the Marin Headlands. We’d play dominoes together and she’d teach me about sewing and cooking and things. She was so smart about politics. We would watch the presidential debates together and PBS news. When I was maybe ten or eleven I remember taking the ferry across the San Francisco Bay with her and her husband. We docked at the Port of San Francisco and walked up to eat Chinese food in North Beach. She knitted me wool socks for Christmas and embroidered a heart on the ankle.

  I read the book, Henrietta, to Lucy.

  Looking at the drawings and everything, I think about my grandparents. I think back on the times we spent together. I’ve alienated so many people—destroyed so many relationships—and yet here I am, lying next to Lucy, reading her this book. And, if nothing else, what Spencer stresses to me over and over is that we only have this one moment: NOW.

  I am putting Lucy to bed. I am turning off the light and kissing her forehead.

  That is all there is. And I have this, for now. I just wish I could figure out how to keep my fucking mind from going all over the place—dwelling on all the loss and pain and everything I’VE DONE—then jumping off into the future to how impossible it all seems.

  It’s thoughts like these that used to make me stick a needle in my arm. I think about Spencer and what he would say.

  “Talk to God about it, don’t talk to yourself.”

  So I try again. I say a sort of mantra, over and over, “God, thank you for my life today. Thank you for guiding me. Thank you for protecting me.”

  I leave Lucy’s door cracked open slightly, just like she wants it, and say good night.

  Praying helps some, though I can’t get my thoughts to slow down and stop torturing me with my past. I’ve come to rely on prayer, but it is only a minor anesthetic. Still, it is better than nothing. I hold on to it—not knowing anything better.

  Thinking about all this stuff, I can’t help noticing how sort of cultlike the whole thing is. Not in the financial sense—it’s not like I’m giving Spencer or any of the people money. And honestly, they’re not really demanding anything of me. But everyone does follow these very specific teachings and doctrines. And, like any other cult, they have offered me a place to feel safe and a part of something whereas before I was anchorless and had no direction.

  But then I feel guilty questioning any of this—like I’m betraying them all. I guess I just struggle with belonging to any organization. I always feel like I should be able to do it on my own. My ego tells me I’m better than this twelve-step crap. I want to rebel against it, though of course, I don’t really have any options. If this doesn’t work for me, then nothing will and I’ll die strung out on drugs. This program has to work. It has to.

  Instead of turning on the TV, I pick up one of the twelve-step books I’ve got in my bag. I try to find some solace in the pages. I read over the chapter outlining the second step, all about coming to believe in a Higher Power. It’s like I’m trying to pull so much meaning out of each word—maybe more meaning than is actually there. I absolutely want recovery. I need recovery. I am trying as hard as I know how to make this work. If I can turn the key somehow—unlock whatever—then I will finally find the peace offered in this program. I dig into every syllable—falling asleep like that, searching.

  DAY 234

  Spencer’s still in the hospital, but the worst is over. He’s so weak and pale. He can barely walk to the end of the hall and back. The only good thing, he says, is all the weight he’s lost.
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  “Death-bed diet,” he calls it.

  I’ve been working at the hair salon the last few days, even though Michelle has been gone. I’ve stayed with Lucy every night since Spencer got sick. I’ve visited the hospital as much as possible. It felt good to be so busy, though I haven’t been able to ride my bike or anything like that. Honestly, it’s so hard for me not to exercise. I just have this feeling of total failure when I don’t do it. Last night, however, I was able to go to a twelve-step meeting with some of my friends. None of them seem as crazy obsessive about everything as I am. It’s strange ’cause I had the same feeling in high school that I have here in the fucking twelve-step program. It’s like, well, it just seems so easy for everyone else and so difficult for me. I turn from these extremes of feeling on top of the fucking world—to feeling so despondent. They don’t have to struggle like I do—or maybe that’s just me comparing my goddamn insides to everyone else’s outsides. But I swear to God, I just seem to wrestle with everything more than anyone else.

  I talked to my father today on the phone. I called him this morning before work. We talked for almost an hour. I told him everything that was going on with me—how Spencer is in the hospital and all. He let me know a little about how Jasper and Daisy are doing. He still seems very protective of them, like he is trying to keep me from getting involved in their lives. When I asked to talk to them, he refused. I understood, but it made me cry some after I got off the phone.

  My dad is not willing to help me with rent or give me any money at all, but he did offer to help pay for me to get into therapy. He believes very strongly in psychiatry and was worried when I told him I’m not on medication. I’ve been on different antidepressants since I was eighteen. None of them were ever like a miracle drug or anything, but they did seem to help me from falling down as deeply into my depression. I admitted to my dad that I was concerned about being off all my meds.

  Spencer, of course, is intensely against taking any kind of medication for psychiatric reasons. You really can’t even talk to him about it. You see, according to him, God should be able to cure everything that’s wrong with me. Mental illness isn’t really given any consideration. And of course I’m not denying that his teachings have been very powerful and have really helped, ’cause obviously they’ve changed my whole life. That is the truth. Not only am I not using anymore, but I’m not fighting cravings all day. In some ways, I can’t even relate to the person I was, living out of my car—fucked up and crazy. What else can I attribute that to than following Spencer and the rest of the people in this twelve-step thing?

  But at this point, I just feel like things shouldn’t be so fucking hard. The depth of my isolation goes past anything I’ve heard my friends talk about. I’m interested in another opinion. So I accept my dad’s offer and he helps set me up with a psychiatrist here in West L.A. Her office is not far from work and I made an appointment for this afternoon. I haven’t told Spencer, but I figure he just doesn’t understand this sort of thing. About two weeks ago I broached the subject with him on a bike ride. We were just going easy, spinning along the bike path that goes from Marina del Rey to Hermosa. Spencer didn’t even let me finish my thought before going into a long monologue about the myth of antidepressants and the corrupt, manipulative drug companies.

  The truth is, I agree with him in a lot of ways. The solicitation of different medications through marketing is just disgusting. I can’t tell you how many doctors I’ve known who write prescriptions with a pen given to them by Zoloft—or drink from cups advertising Wellbutrin. But I don’t think that takes away from how much certain medications can help people. Even though I never found that antidepressants solved all my problems, they did help some. And even if it is a placebo, the fact that these drugs can make things easier, well, I have to at least give them credit for that. So I don’t feel like it is harmful or wrong or anything to experiment with psychiatric drugs—under a doctor’s supervision, of course.

  Anyway, I have to leave work a little early to go to the appointment on Wilshire. The low-hanging clouds and fog of summer mornings have burned away and it is clear and hot and penetrating as I pull away from the salon. I’m picking up Lucy again from school. Spencer and Michelle finally decided to tell Lucy the truth about Spencer’s illness and I’m gonna drive Lucy to the hospital to see them. Spencer is still bedridden, but without all the tubes and everything that made him look so scary. Lucy seemed to know something was going on anyway, so I’m glad they finally told her.

  I pull into a small parking space outside the high-rise office building. I finally had enough money to buy the new Secret Chiefs 3 album that came out while I was in San Francisco, so I’ve been listening to it over and over. As I turn off the car, the music stops abruptly and the afternoon heat makes it hard to breathe. There’s an elevator that takes me to the third floor—all mirrors. I look at the fake marble flooring—anything so I don’t have to stare at myself. The doctor, a woman named Rachel Levy, has her office set up just like any other psychiatrist’s office I’ve ever been to—with the little light you switch on to call them and let them know you’ve arrived.

  I take a seat in one of the cushioned wicker chairs, flipping through a New Yorker magazine. I always go right to the movie critics’ page. Reading the reviews is like a religion for me. It’s always been like that. In fact, I’m so engrossed in this review by Anthony Lane, I don’t even notice the mousy woman with too much makeup and a short, conservative haircut who opens the door. She has to call out to me at least twice.

  I stand up quickly, introducing myself, looking at the purple business suit she’s wearing. We shake hands awkwardly. She has long, polished fingernails, and as she leads me into her office, I notice some very plain watercolor paintings of L.A. beaches that look like they were purchased from one of those touristy Venice galleries. There are also tons of medical books on the walls and a few framed diplomas.

  I sit in the corner of the long couch while she sits in her upholstered, all-business power chair directly across from me. We both cross our legs.

  Her earrings are ornate and dangling. I wonder if maybe this visit is a mistake.

  “So what brings you here today?” she asks.

  I’m not at all sure where to start, but I try to find a jumping-off point and just go through my story as quick as I can.

  At first, you know, I’m a little embarrassed. I feel like maybe I’m just too shocking for this kind of frumpy woman. But, in the end, I figure I’m here for me and so I just lay it all out there as best I can. I talk for maybe half an hour without her doing much more than just nodding her head. When I finish, she just sits a minute, nodding like she’s been doing. She makes some contemplative noises, then stands and goes to retrieve a large reference book from off the shelves. Still saying nothing, she flips through it until she finds the page she’s looking for. She hands the heavy volume over to me. The heading is “Bipolar disorder (manic depression).”

  “You see those bullet points there?” she asks.

  I scroll my eyes down the page. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me if you can relate to any of those.”

  I read over what she’s given me—a list of symptoms for what they characterize as mania. It talks about feelings of grandeur, decreased need for sleep, excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high risk of painful consequences—like doing drugs, sexually acting out, or whatever.

  I can relate to every last one—every last fucking one.

  On the next page is a list of symptoms of what they call major depressive disorder. Mostly it’s just feelings of extreme hopelessness or lack of interest in normal activities. They describe feelings of worthlessness and wanting to die.

  “Do any of those seem relevant to you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “They all do.”

  “They all do?”

  “Yes.”

  She sits quietly a minute. “Now, here’s what I’d like to try. I mean, if you’re up to it.”

  ?
??I am,” I say. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  She smiles but doesn’t laugh. “From what you’ve described,” she says, in her most professional-sounding voice, “you have a form of mania, or bipolar disorder, that is classified as ‘rapid cycling.’ In other words, you cycle from elation to desperation throughout the day so fast that you yourself don’t know which feeling to follow. In these cases, I have known drugs like lithium and Depakote to be extremely effective. I’d also like to start you on a simple antidepressant. Maybe something like Prozac would be beneficial. I’m not sure. I would even like to start you on a mild antipsychotic, like Zyprexa, just to make sure your moods don’t overtake your strong desire to be sober—if that is genuine.”

  “It is,” I say.

  That is the truth.

  “But to start,” she continues, “I’m going to write you a prescription for Depakote and Prozac. Hopefully with these two drugs we’ll be able to calm down your mood swings enough to let you focus on your day and not be so overwhelmed all the time.”

  I thank her. It all seems to fit. “Overwhelmed” is the perfect way to describe my general state of being. I take the flimsy piece of prescription paper she gives me with a true sense of hope and excitement, and tuck it in my wallet. On that simple piece of paper is a promise of some normalcy.

  I get up and shake her hand again. We make an appointment for the following week. She wishes me luck and I just walk outta there with my head down. I take the elevator back to my car. The sun’s still up and the heat stifles me to my very core. I wish it would rain.