1. SAFETY. Ensure that your psychiatrist and the people close to you know what you’re doing.
I did not do this.
There is no simpler way of putting it.
I don’t even know why, really. I think it was the drugs. It’s like … You know when you’re walking in a swimming pool? And in some sense it’s analogous to walking on normal ground, the same motions are involved, the same mechanics, but you’re slower; the resistance is higher.
With the drugs I was on, it was the same. It was as if all the air in the world had been substituted with water, making every movement harder. I hated the drugs, and I didn’t want to take them. And I knew that Dr. Rezwari would tell me to take them, so I just … didn’t say anything to her.
I started stacking the unopened blister packs in my nightstand, piles of them. When I saw the doctor, I told her how much better I was feeling, how I never heard the voice anymore.
Which was a lie.
When the drugs went, the voice came back. It wasn’t there all the time, but enough, and louder now—telling me to run up and down the stairs, to keep my head down when passing anyone in the street, to clean my teeth fifteen times before bed, to slap myself, all kinds of things. But the voice was better than the walking in water.
Meanwhile, Dad started coming home early from the restaurant.
“You could come over to Donato’s, you know,” he said. “It’s still nut free.” Dad had eliminated nuts from the restaurant after my anaphylaxis at school. They weren’t allowed in the kitchen—the staff wasn’t even allowed to bring snacks with nuts in them to work.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Figures,” said Dad.
Instead, he would come back at seven o’clock and we’d eat together. Dad was a pretty good cook. I don’t think he was really interested in it, but he was a smart guy, and he’d spent the last decade running a restaurant. He’d make penne amatriciana, gnocchi con panna e prosciutto, veal marinara, prawns with garlic.
“****************. ******** stupid ******** ***** of a *****.”
That was Dad, working in the kitchen. He made good food, but he was always cutting himself and burning himself. His hands were covered in Band-Aids and scars, like he lived with a tiger cub.
After dinner, we would sit and talk. Dad didn’t know how to talk about feelings, that kind of thing. So he would tell the funny stuff that had happened at the restaurant. The lady who kept asking for more garlic bread, which is free, and they realized she was putting it in her purse, stashing it, to take home. The guy who didn’t realize the chili oil had chili in it, and covered his pizza with it.
“Your father is very boring, isn’t he?” said the voice. “I see where you get it from.”
“Shut up,” I said, under my breath.
“Honey?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
Dad nodded, nervously. “You know I’m here if you want to, ah, talk.”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
But of course he wasn’t; he just wanted to be.
There’s a gulf between those two things.
Then there was you. I barely saw you at all, except from a distance. We did cross each other once in the yard. You were getting even more muscles. Plush toys don’t sound heavy, but I guess when they’re in big bags and you’re throwing them up, I don’t know, ten feet onto a pier, they’re heavy enough.
Anyway, you were in your short-sleeved work shirt with the logo on it and I could see the new angles in your arms. You were tan, your skin full of sunshine, walking to your truck. In one hand was a book, I couldn’t see what it was, and the bend in your elbow and the outline of your bicep were the most incidental details on one sunny day in New Jersey, couldn’t matter to anyone ever, but also seemed to me like the fulcrum on which all existence was balanced.
“Hey,” you said.
“Hey.”
SHAKESPEARE WOULD HAVE BEEN PROUD.
“How are the stuffed toys?” I asked.
“Plentiful,” you said, shrugging. We walked together to the truck; I was heading to the library, I imagine.
“Well,” I said.
“Well,” you said. “Hey, listen, I dreamed about you the other night. The weirdest thing.”
I thought: He’s dreaming about me?
I was staring at you blankly, and you looked uncomfortable. “Yeah,” you said. “I was in the yard here, and you were at your window, watching me. Or … waiting for me, I guess. Like, beckoning me. But there was no door into the house; it was all bricked up. So I knew I had to climb up to the window. Except there were no handholds, nothing. And then my mom showed up with a ladder, which is weird because my mom hasn’t been around for … Well. Anyway. I put the ladder up against the wall and started climbing and … that was it. I woke up.”