I am six, reading on the floor of our living room in Ashland. Aunt Isabel, visiting from Boston, is sitting at my father’s old rolltop, writing a letter. Dad pokes his head in the room. “Iz, I need my desk back. You done?” Aunt Isabel doesn’t stop scribbling. “I look like I’m done, Bareth?” Dad rolls his eyes, flares his nostrils. “What’s a bareth?” I ask, looking over my book. Aunt Isabel smiles, her head still bent over her letters. “That is,” she says, pointing to my dad. I look at him quizzically. “I thought your name was Barry?” Aunt Isabel shakes her head. “You thought wrong, little lamb.” I love all her nicknames, but Dad is not amused. “You writing a novel there, Iz?” She doesn’t answer. “Isabel, I’m talking to you.” “No, you’re not,” she says. “You’re making fun of me.” Dad sighs, mutters something about the futility of correspondence, leaves the room. I go back to my book for a few minutes before asking, “Who are you writing to, Aunt Isabel?” “My doctor,” she says. Then, setting her pencil down, she turns to me. “Writing sort of . . . rounds off the sharp edges of my brain, you know?” I nod, but I don’t know; with Aunt Iz, I rarely do. “Tell you what,” she says. “When I go back to Boston, you write to me. You’ll see what I mean.” I consider this for a moment. “Do I have sharp edges, too, Aunt Iz?” She smiles and laughs, and I don’t know why. “Maybe, little lamb. Either way, you should write. It’s better than succumbing to the madness of the world.” Here she pauses, glances at the door where Dad had just been standing. “And cheaper than pills.”
Sound returns. The steady hum of the bus engine, and Arlene’s voice, warm and wet. “Are you all right, Mim?”
I keep my good eye on the passing landscape. “We used to make waffles,” I say.
A brief pause.
“Waffles, dear?”
“Every Saturday. Dad mixed and whisked while I sat on a wobbly stool and smiled. Then I poured the mix into the waffle maker and . . .”
Another pause.
“Yes?” says Arlene.
“What?”
“You stopped in the middle of a sentence, dear.”
Aunt Isabel’s last line echoes in my head. Cheaper than pills . . . ills . . . ills . . . ills . . .
I turn, set my jaw, and look Arlene squarely in the eyes. I choose my words carefully, devoting attention to each syllable. “I think my dad is a good man who has succumbed to the madness of the world.”
At first, Arlene doesn’t respond. She looks concerned, actually, though I can’t be sure if it’s due to my answer or my behavior over the last few minutes. Then . . . her eyes flash, and she nods. “So many do, my dear. So many do.”
We ride in silence for a while, and I don’t know about Arlene, but it’s nice to sit that close to someone and not feel the incessant need to talk. The two of us could just be. Which is what I need right now.
Because I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay.
4
Abilitol
I BEGAN MY sessions with Dr. Wilson just over a year ago. His many framed degrees assured everyone that he was an actual doctor, and not, as I feared, a professional clown.
“Tell me what you see here, Mary.”
“That’s not my name, Doc. Or . . . didn’t my parents tell you?”
The doctor’s lips curled into a coy smile. “I’m sorry. Mim. Tell me wha—”
“Wrong again,” I whispered.
Dr. Wilson looked to my father for help, but that well had dried up long ago. “Okay, then,” he said. “What is your name?”
“Antoine,” I said, straight-faced.
“Mim, that’s enough,” said Dad. “Answer Dr. Wilson’s questions.”
Most girls my age had long ago stopped telling the truth, and simply started saying what everyone wanted to hear. But sometime during middle school, or maybe even before, I’d made a choice about the kind of kid I was going to be, and more importantly, the kind of kid I wasn’t going to be.
“Mim?” prodded Dr. Wilson. “Can you tell me what you—”
“Where’s your bear, Doc?” I interrupted.
“I’m sorry. My what?”
“Wait—don’t tell me you’re a bear-less doctor.”
Dr. Wilson furrowed his brow and looked to my father.
“Dr. Makundi’s waiting room had a”—Dad sighed, as if he’d rather say anything other than what he was about to say—“it had a life-sized grizzly. Stuffed.”
“Did it?” said Dr. Wilson. His smile had a certain juvenile quality I recognized immediately.
He thinks he’s better than Dr. Makundi.
I picked up the ink splotches and leafed through them one by one. “Penis, penis, penis . . . Wow, is that a labia?”
“Mim, God, please,” said Dad.
I slapped the cards down on the desk, then held up both middle fingers. “Tell me what you see here, Doc.”
Dad stood, looked to my mother, who sat quietly with her hands in her lap. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either.
“It’s okay, Mr. Malone,” said Dr. Wilson, motioning for him to sit. Then, turning to me, he said, “Remember what we talked about, Mim. Remember the importance of verbally expressing exactly how you feel. Sometimes a thing doesn’t seem real until we say it out loud.”
I rolled my eyes. “I feel angry and—”
“Start with your name,” interrupted the doctor, holding up his hands. “Your full name, please.”
“I am Mary Iris Malone.”
“Go on,” he whispered.
I lowered my voice, because as I’d learned some time ago, a whisper was louder than a scream. “And I am not okay. I’m angry. And bored. And I think Dr. Makundi is a hundred thousand times better at being a doctor than you are.”
Wilson’s smile was infuriating. “And what about the voices, Mim? Have you had any episodes lately?”
“You make it sound like, I-don’t-know . . . epilepsy or something. Like I’m drooling and convulsing all day.” I picked up an inkblot card. “And aren’t inkblots, like, completely medieval? What’s next, a lobotomy? Shock treatment? God, it’s like Cuckoo’s Nest in here.”
Wilson nodded, unfazed. “We can be done with the inkblots if you’d like.”
“Yes, I’d like. Very much, I’d like.”
Pushing his chair back from his desk, Wilson opened a drawer and pulled out a stereo that looked as if it’d been shot from a cannon. He thumbed through a book of CDs. “How about some music? You like Vivaldi?”
“Makundi had Elvis.”
“I’m afraid I only have classical.”
Shocker. “Fine. Bach, then. Cello Suite Number One?”
He shuffled through the CDs, pulled out a Bach double disc. “I’m fairly certain the first cello concerto is on here.”