Maya eats with a few girls toward the back of the room. Far away from the überrich kids in the middle of the lunch tables. Today she looked over at me and I looked away, pretending that I hadn’t just been staring at her. It wasn’t convincing.
So anyway, Dwight and I sit together. Sometimes I talk, but mostly he does. I know more about him than I ever expected to know, actually. Like how he’s been an altar boy since middle school. And a vegan since he was nine because he saw a chicken beheaded on his great-aunt’s farm. And a Columbian Squire since his mom filled out the form and made him start going to meetings with his grandfather. If you don’t know, the Knights of Columbus is a Catholic organization made up of wrinkly old men and their sons who raise money for charities and sometimes political campaigns that focus on Catholic values, like having as many kids as humanly possible and not eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Ian and a lot of the guys in my classes were Squires. Dwight got roped into it early, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.
He doesn’t mind when I don’t talk, which is nice, especially when I see something weird and I’m trying to concentrate on not seeing it.
Like today, when the mobsters in pin-striped suits showed up in the cafeteria. I winced when the gunshots went off, but the drug held up nicely.
“Are you okay?” Dwight asked.
“Yeah, fine,” I told him. “Headache.”
I watched as the last mobster’s body fell to the ground, draining blood all over the clean linoleum floor. The mobsters had even twitched a little when they died, for cinematic effect. I looked into their pale dead faces for a second. They looked like extras from The Godfather. The mob boss stared directly at me before slipping out the door and vanishing into a sea of uniforms.
My hallucinations are a familiar cast of characters. I’ve seen the mobsters before, but this was the first time I’ve kept my seat when the guns went off.
Progress.
DOSAGE: 1 mg. Same dosage. Appears more antagonistic than in previous sessions.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
“So tell me about your father?”
Well, shit. That didn’t take long. Only four weeks in and we’ve already diagnosed the cause of all my problems. The epicenter of my delirium. The real reason I am the way I am.
My daddy done left me.
That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it? That I’m emotionally scarred because my dad didn’t want to stick around to be my dad? Or that I blame my disease on him? That would be easy.
You can’t blame a disease on someone. Even if I wanted to. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Do you really think I’m so much of a loser that I need someone to blame? Anyway, the disease is from my mom’s side.
My dad is just an asshole. This is an undeniable truth. He left when I was eight.
When he didn’t come home for dinner one night, my mom told me he wasn’t coming back. I remember how she’d looked when she said it. Like all the blood had been drained from her face. She didn’t cry. She just looked tired.
That’s why my dad is an asshole.
My mom was always tired. Every day she got home from work, she was exhausted. And he never tried to make it any easier for her. It’s better that he left because he couldn’t be what we needed anyway. No, not couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
I’m not sure where he went right after he left. If Mom knew, she never said. And I didn’t ask.
A few years after he left, I got a letter from him. I was eleven and I used to grab the mail before my mom got home. The return address was somewhere in Barstow, California. I tore it up after I read it, but I remember what it said.
Dear Adam,
I’ve started this letter to you so many times and haven’t had the strength to send it. Your mom was always the good one. The one who knows what to do in any situation. She makes problems disappear like magic. That’s who she is and that’s why I fell in love with her.
But me, I’m the problem and I couldn’t keep breaking her heart while she waited for me to be the man she needed.
As for you, I think you’re better off without me. And I want you to have the best chance for success. I owe you that at least.
Dad
Not “Love, Dad.”
I didn’t write back or tell my mom about the letter he didn’t have the “strength” to send for three years. How much strength does writing a goddamned letter take, anyway? And it was 106 words. I counted. That really wore you out, didn’t it, Dad?
At least he was honest. He knew he was a coward. He knew my mom deserved better.
But the truth was that he didn’t really love us. When you love somebody, you try to be better.
So I don’t miss him.
DOSAGE: 1.5 mg. Increase in dosage appears to be showing positive results. Subject notes an increase in the appearance of hallucinations, but reaction to hallucinations remains minimal. Excellent progress.
SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
This relationship is weird because you already know that my doctors increased my ToZaPrex dosage. You already know that there are side effects, and because you are a Harvard-educated psychologist, you know what those side effects are.
But I’m in a good mood and the drug is working well, so I’ll tell you about “my experience” with the increase.
The headaches come and go. Mostly when I’m in crowded places where there is a lot of movement. And there’s some sensitivity to light. And increased hallucinations.
Rest assured, I’m very aware of what is real and what is not. I don’t have those moments of panic I used to, like when I wasn’t sure if my bed was actually on fire. But I see stuff I shouldn’t everywhere. There’s the man in the suit with the big metal briefcase that always spills open, flinging money everywhere. And the woman with the huge dog dragging her across the lawn. Then there’s the weird shadowy guy who hangs out at the edge of my line of sight, always dashing into an alleyway. The mobsters. Rebecca. A few others I only see once in a while.
With a last name like Petrazelli, I guess it makes sense to you that I would see mobsters. They are practically required images for all Italian male schizophrenics, right? I’m not sure if my mobster hallucinations are due to my heritage or to the fact that my mom was obsessed with the Godfather movies.
Don’t tell her that. I’d hate for her to blame herself for any of my crazy.