Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets (17 page)

Stay chipper, skipper!

Love, Jorie

Flip finds me crying over by the pizza prep counter. I expect him to freak out—what’s a guy supposed to do when he finds some stupid kid tearing up over the floured prep station?

I’m not sure how long he’s been standing there, but he doesn’t leave me alone. I start wiping my eyes and apologizing.

“It’s all right, guy, it’s all right,” he says. “What do you need? You want to go out back for a minute?”

I nod, thinking he’ll leave me alone, but he follows me outside. I’m not sure I can handle wisdom from Flip right now. But he just stands with me. He doesn’t look at me, he looks out at the broken-down fence that’s supposed to keep people from the back lot, apparently.

“I don’t know what happened.” I sniff, wipe my eyes, and try to compose myself.

“It happens,” he says.

I want to explain myself, but I hold off. Flip doesn’t know me. I’m already talking to Dr. Bird and to a therapist—no need to involve more strangers.

“I saw a movie once where someone was making food and they cried in it,” Flip says. “And then when people ate the food they all became so sad that they all started crying.”

I say I’ve never seen that movie.

“I don’t remember what it was called. A woman I dated made me watch it. I told her I didn’t like it, but that part made me really think. You know?”

I nod. I’m afraid to think about what kind of emotions I could be getting from food.

“It’s okay to cry. Men have to cry sometimes. You take a minute.” Flip goes inside.

I feel better but also worse.

All these thoughts of suicide suddenly seem childish. I can’t even imagine myself taking the steps to do anything. How did I come full circle so quickly? It’s like I shook off an entire weekend funk with one set of public tears.

Jorie, Jorie. The only thing that I keep hanging on to. She doesn’t need me to be strong for her. But she’ll be mad if I kill myself. It would be worse than abandonment. It would be judgment and rejection. It would be the thing she might want to do but cannot. I’d get to it first. Then what would she do? Cut herself more? Less? Would she get a gun or some pills? She’d just be sad and mad and alone.

Maybe I should get on some drugs. It doesn’t seem like the world or my brain will ever adjust to one another. I’m permanently lopsided. Maybe the drugs will keep me from crying at work.

I have to work another five days to afford a visit to Dr. Dora, though. And she said it might take a few more visits to really know for sure if I need drugs. And then it will probably take more time to get the drugs. And more time for them to work. By then I might be dead.

How come more people don’t kill themselves, if it’s this hard to stay afloat?

THE NEXT DAY IN SCHOOL
I think about Jorie’s stupid sign-off (
Stay chipper, skipper!
) and realize I still have a mission. I spend the first three periods of the day working up the courage to confront VP VanO or Kunkel. This time, it’s personal. Let’s do this. Rock ’n’ roll. All those action-movie-confrontation-scene clichés roar in my head.

During fourth period, I head to the principals’ suite, trying to work up the courage to ask Mrs. Berry if VP VanO woud see me for a meeting.

I walk up to the turret that Mrs. Berry barricades herself behind and ask for the vice principal.

“He’s not in right now but should be back. Is it important?”

“I need to talk to him about my sister.” I look off at the offices to see if Mrs. Berry’s telling the truth. I can’t tell from here.

“Your sister?”

“Jorie Whitman.”

“You’re Jorie’s brother?”

“Yes.”

“How is she?” Mrs. Berry whispers this, which draws my attention to her completely. “I worry about her.”

“She’s okay. I’m not sure—were you here when she got kicked out?”

“I’m always here,” she chuckles, and shuffles some meaningless papers.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Well, she was kicked out the day she fought with that Gina—you know that, right?”

“Yes,” I say. “And the vice principal told me about the laptop.”

“What laptop?”

“Mrs. Yao’s laptop,” I say with some excitement. More facts might exist in Mrs. Berry’s brain.

“Mrs. Yao’s laptop? Is that what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I handled the paperwork to get the laptop replaced. She said she dropped it. Did your sister hit Gina with it?” Mrs. Berry looks offended by the prospect.

“No!” I whisper strongly. “The vice principal says she threw it at Mrs. Yao, but Mrs. Yao says that’s not what happened.”

“I didn’t know about that.”

“This is why I’m here.” I tell Mrs. Berry about the report VP VanO read to me and how Gina might know more than she’s willing to admit.

“Well, Gina might be lying.” Mrs. Berry looks around. I feel like a spy or a detective. Someone with a secret purpose.

“
Why,
though?”

“Gina was there in the library with your sister.”

Someone should take my picture and put it in the dictionary entry for
exasperated.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk to a counselor?” Mrs. Berry suddenly suggests. “Students seem to like Miss Tebler. She is better at the more social aspects of everything.”

I feel her eyes dart over my shoulder. Not surprisingly, I see VanO and Principal Kunkel chatting over by one of the offices.

“Mrs. Berry,” I whisper, “just tell me what happened with Jorie.”

In a regular voice, Mrs. Berry says she’s going to make an appointment for me with Miss Tebler for a few days from now. She hands me a slip of paper and tells me to make sure I show up on time.

Go,
she mouths. As I walk past VanO, I suppress the urge to grab him and shake answers out of him. He’s frail enough to break apart in my angry hands. But Mrs. Berry must know the danger, because she calls out to the heads of the school that they have messages waiting.

Out in the hallway I look at the note and see that Mrs. Berry has written:

Tebler’s on vacation until Monday.

Come @ 9:30a.m.

She knows.

AFTER SCHOOL I RUN
up to my room. I don’t need to be home to call Dr. Dora, but I feel the most comfortable when buffeted by my room’s four walls. I plan to whisper in case my mother decides to listen outside my door while pretending to put away some towels.

As I listen to the phone ring all I can do is hope to get her voice mail. I don’t think I can admit out loud, in my house, where the walls have ears and the door has eyes, that I want to hurt myself.

I get Dr. Dora’s voice mail. The universe favors me.

“Dr. Dora, this is James Whitman. Your new patient. Who you met last week. I was calling to see if I could get in to see you next week and if there’s a way I can pay later. I’m having trouble with money. I hope you understand.”

I end the call and immediately whisper: “I want to die. I want to die.”

I distract myself from this thought by calculating how much money I have, how much I can get, how much I need. I start thinking about things I can sell—books, DVDs, CDs, clothes. I bag up some things and feel like I have too much crap anyway. I should sell it all or just give it away. I should minimize. I should not have things for myself other than the necessary amount of clothes, a pair of shoes, a toothbrush. Everything is expendable.

At work, I ask Flip if I can make more money somehow.

“Well, I don’t need any drivers,” he says. “I got Derek and my dummy nephew. You can’t even drive.”

“Can I make pizzas?”

“No, guy, you don’t have the hands.” He holds up his hands as if to prove the point.

“Have you even ever looked at my hands?” I hold up mine in response.

“I don’t need to look. I know! You need the hands of a man to make pizza after pizza.”

I want to tell him that I’m more than capable of spreading ketchup on cardboard. I want to tell him that my hands can put up with all the burns and grease and flour. But he’s shaking his head.

“I hired you because you are Derek’s friend. He said you needed a job, I gave you a job. I have three nieces that will need a job soon too. They won’t ask for more money. They won’t ask to make pizzas.”

“Are you firing me?”

“Not yet.”

This is the same guy who didn’t mock me for crying. Now he’s a grinning bastard.

The night mopes on. I ring a few people up. We get a bunch of big orders. A Little League coach comes in and pays with a hundred-dollar bill. It sits below the cash tray in the drawer for an hour, taunting me. That’s therapy. And medication. That’s my life—literally. I can pay for sanity. Or, at least, I can pay for a break from insanity.

How long would it take Flip to notice missing money? He can’t even write down orders the right way. I’ve seen him labor over the register at night.

Perhaps if I littered some bills on the floor, over near the trash or something. If he went crazy looking for the missing money and saw some on the floor he’d think the money got dropped, maybe thrown out. It might work.

Maybe I shouldn’t steal an exact amount. Maybe I should steal a hundred and seven dollars and forty-three cents, or something, so that they don’t think it’s just big bills missing.

Maybe I should just knock over the tip jar toward the end of the night too, confuse things more.

Maybe I could just bash Flip over the head with one of the metal pans he uses to store pepperoni.

When did I become so despicable?

As the night progresses I pocket fives and tens, but then I get greedy and take the hundred. When I get home I’ve got enough money for therapy and enough anxiety and guilt to keep me up for three years.

DR. DORA ASKS ME
how I’ve been. I say there’s no easy way to answer that.

“Anxious?”

“Yes.”

“Depressed?”

“Oh, yes.”

She asks me to tell her how I felt this weekend, but when I begin to tell her
why
I got depressed, she stops me.

“No, James. You have to listen carefully—I want to know
how it felt.
Not
why you felt it.
”

I’m a little perturbed by this splitting of hairs.

“I think it’s important that you know why, though,” I urge.

“I will ask you the
why
later. First, let’s go through the
how.
”

I sigh and look off to the right. There’s a crappy picture of a gray-toned sailboat in a bright silver frame. It’s got seagulls. I freaking hate seagulls.

“It felt. Depressing.”

“Do better than that.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t leave my room.”

“Good. What else? Did you do anything in your room?”

“I slept. I stayed in bed. Didn’t eat. Didn’t shower.”

“Did you check e-mail, Facebook, cell phone?” She’s poised to write down my answer.

“I think so. But not as often as normal. My phone was off, actually.”

She nods and writes. I answer a few more questions and feel even stupider for having been depressed.

“Did you think about suicide?”

I hesitate.

“James?”

“Yes.”

My eyes water. It’s too much, all this turning inside out. I feel like I’m always turned inside out. That my nerves have become extra sensitive because of all this exposure to the world.

“What stopped you?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Are you going to go home and kill yourself, then?”

“No!”

“Something stopped you.”

“I got an e-mail from my sister.”

She asks me why this, of all things, stopped me.

“Because. I don’t know. Because she seemed to know I needed a message at that moment. And I know she probably had to borrow someone’s laptop just to send it. And that probably was the only reason she borrowed the laptop. So I had a moment where I felt like someone was thinking about me.”

Dr. Dora appears as if she’s about to ask me something, but my brain has to explain.

“I’m really guilty. All the time. I feel really guilty about Jorie.”

“Why are you guilty?”

“Because I didn’t help her! I didn’t stand up for her, ever. When my parents said things about her, I just agreed that she caused trouble or didn’t try at school. I agreed! And then the night she got thrown out I didn’t come to her rescue. I didn’t stand up with her or run outside to help her up! I didn’t call my dad an asshole for being such a goddamn . . . tyrant! I didn’t! I didn’t do anything.”

I’m crying, but I can speak. I keep speaking. I keep trying to talk through the guilt, to pull it out of me and toss it into the air where it will die like a virus, but the barbs and hooks of guilt hold strong in my lungs. My lungs hitch as I cry.

“She got in trouble for things that I did and I didn’t own up to them. And she never even thought it was me. I used my parents’ credit card to buy stuff online and they said it was her, that she was buying stuff for her and her friends. She never even asked if it was me. They yelled at her for two hours and hit her—they didn’t even think it was me. They didn’t think I was capable of screwing up.”

I think about the money I stole just to have the benefit of this confession and I cry more. I feel like I’ve been crying forever, but I can’t stop it. I have to keep going until someone tells me something that will make this all work out.

MENTALLY, I HAVEN’T BEEN
in school. I’ve been attending, but the assignments cover topics that merge with things that aren’t really part of school. In history we’re learning about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who wrote some songs about dancing and sex. In physics we’re learning about time travel, perpetually. In English we’re reading
The House of Seven Samurai.
In gym, it’s all the same, of course. My gym clothes smell like they haven’t been washed since November. Have I been to school this year? Ever? Has someone else been acting as me?

Derek sits with me at lunch even though his friends from his grade all clearly think he’s a dork for doing so. It’s been five days since we last spoke.