Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets (9 page)

“What if you ask them to let her walk at graduation?”

“What am I supposed to do, go in there and plead with them to let her finish out the year? Give her another chance to cut my face up?” Gina presses her finger just under her tiny scar. I realize now that she has a tan and it’s not summer yet. She once dyed her hair with bright blue Kool-Aid and let my sister pierce her ears with a safety pin.

“Look, you can believe me or not,” Gina says, “but she started a fight with me.”

I wish liars just revealed themselves with a glow that others could see. But they don’t. And I don’t have the ability to read faces or tics or beads of sweat.

“Jorie got kicked out of the house because of all this, Gina. Literally dragged and kicked out of the house.”

“She’s probably better off.” She tosses her cigarette and pulls out her phone, dismissing me.

God! Everything she does is like from a movie. She’s going to be famous. Strangers will weep over her murder-suicide!

TONIGHT, DINNER WITH MY PARENTS
is a jovial affair. We begin with classy appetizers including Havarti dill cheese on crackers and some Rumaki. We discuss the latest showings at the art galleries in the city and schedule an outing to the Ritzy Cinemas to see the latest French film. Our main course: lobster ravioli in a blush sauce. For dessert: tiramisu. We tell jokes, laugh. I impress my father with my wit and even recite some Whitman to celebrate the culinary delights:

This is the meal pleasantly set . . . . this is the meat and drink for natural hunger,

It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous . . . .

I ask for a glass of wine and receive it without lecture—I feel adult, accepted, in the right place and the right time for the first time.

Of course, our real dinner is nothing like this. I’m just trying to ignore the empty spot at the table across from me where Jorie used to sit and roll her eyes whenever something eye-roll-worthy was said. Such as when my mother talked about how badly she wanted to apply for
The Amazing Race
with Jorie.

“Think about how much closer we would be, Jorie—traveling together, working together, winning together!”

“We wouldn’t win,” Jorie would say.

“Of course we would! I think we would.”

“I’m not sure a couple of Americans running around in foreign countries is something the world can handle,” my father would grumble. “You’d be walking targets. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that some of the people booted off the show were really kidnapped by terrorists.” This was followed by a stern insertion of his fork into his mouth, and then: “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Jorie. Show some respect for god’s sake.”

Tonight, I pick at my iceberg lettuce salad (nutritional content: none) and try to find some of the frozen cheese ravioli that have been cooked thoroughly enough to eat. (My mother mixes meat and cheese ravioli together; meat ravioli taste like the devil’s nuts.)

“Has Jorie called or anything?” I ask.

My parents are silent. Just hearing the name of the banished irritates them. Or maybe they easily erased her from their minds.

“I thought she’d call. I haven’t gotten an e-mail.”

“She doesn’t e-mail you?” the Brute asks. “Selfish.”

It’s like he’s mad on my behalf and that makes us buddies.

My mother doesn’t contribute to the conversation. My mother is like iceburg lettuce.

I carry around Jorie’s secret box of pain in my mind. Images of her weeping, alone, cutting herself, haunt me as the school days progress. I hand in some homework, I fail some quizzes, I pass some tests. Everything averages out.

One night I get a permanent marker and color my entire cast a shimmering black. It’s not black enough, though, and I feel like I should’ve done something more creative.

I ask Dr. Bird why I feel so depressed all the time.

Dr. Bird pecks at her wing and says I’m only as depressed as I feel.

“That’s a little circular.”

Dr. Bird trots in a circle.

“I’ve been taking pictures, but nothing comes out that good. I feel like I’m wasting money on film.”

Dr. Bird says the world gets less compelling when I’m depressed, so I’m just seeing pictures in a negative light.

This makes sense but doesn’t make me feel better.

I dismiss Dr. Bird and write Jorie an e-mail:

Jorie—Hey. I’m having one of those days. A day like all the others, I guess, but it’s pretty thick and foggy here. I don’t know what causes this stuff. I try to find outlets, but nothing seems to really defuse the anxiety except more depression. Does this make sense? I know you have similar issues. I know you had that therapist. Are you still seeing her? Is she expensive? I think I need to see someone. I’m not sure how to get through a day without anxiety or anything. I guess things aren’t that bad. How are you? How is waitressing? Do you need anything?

Send me tree pictures.

Here’s a quote from Whitman:

“The clock indicates the moment. . . . but what does eternity indicate?”

—James

I have one of those hours of just waiting at my computer and refreshing my inbox while checking my Facebook page. But she doesn’t e-mail me back. Then I remember that she doesn’t have a computer or a phone and now I’m not even sure when I’ll see her again. I guess Derek can get in touch with her since his lady is Jorie’s boss. Seems like a convoluted way to contact one’s sibling.

After school the next day I have an e-mail from Jorie:

James—My therapist’s contact info is below. Good luck getting Mom and Dad to pay for it. I’m not sure if they’re just cheap or hateful. I only got two months before they stopped paying.

I attached a picture. I saw a leaf on the ground that was dried but still green. It curled in a bit like a dead bug. I broke it in my hand into pieces big and small. I took a picture of the pieces, close up. That’s the picture. That’s how I feel. Don’t feel like me or maybe don’t tell me you feel like me. It makes it worse.

—Jorie

As you can imagine, the next few days involve vomiting stomach butterflies, although I’ve started to imagine them as moths because butterflies seem too delicate and pretty to puke.

I try writing a poem about it:

Dirt-colored paper wings that tear easily when I swat.

Moths fly for my eyes, my mouth.

They want to be inside my stomach to flutter and puke.

I want to hold them in my palm to watch them,

To find something pretty to say about

The things that wake my anxiety.

That might be passable. It’s short, but I could see Beth printing it. She’s faced with publishing suburban angst by the other editor, so she might as well publish my angsty moth poem.

After my depression refuses to disperse for days, I sit at breakfast with the words “I need to see a therapist” on the tip of my tongue. My mouth would prefer to ingest rather than express, though, so I end up eating four pancakes the size of my head. Large pancakes on a mothy stomach will make for a sick afternoon, but then I realize I’m in for a lifetime of sick afternoons if I don’t speak up.

“Mom-I-want-to-see-a-therapist,” I blurt.

She’s at the counter putting dishes away. I think she heard me and is pretending she didn’t hear me.

“Mom?”

“What did you say? The plates were making noise.”

“I said I need to see a therapist.”

“What for?” She asks this in a concerned voice, but it’s concern for herself, not me. I’m very sure of this.

“I can’t really explain. I feel broken.”

“Well. Maybe you should talk to your father about this.”

The words
father
and
dad
mean very specific things in my house.

When he gets back from one of his real estate lunches, he seems like he’s in a good mood. Perhaps this is related to beer. Perhaps not. My grandfather’s relationship with alcohol, the way my parents tell it, could fuel a number of TLC specials about abused wives, lost jobs, and angry children. Still, my father’s anger never seems linked to alcohol—just to fatherhood.

I want to ambush my father with my request to go to therapy, but my mother ambushes me instead.

“James has something he needs to ask you.” She stands there in the front hallway, the look on her face pleading with my father to just get through the conversation quickly. I can’t tell if she wants to help or just erase my request from our family history.

Removing his jacket and shoes, he asks me what I need.

“I think I need to start seeing a therapist person.”

His arms flop to his sides and his shoulders droop in an exaggerated manner.

“Uck. This again? What good did therapy do your sister?”

“Dale,” my mother says.

“What? It’s an honest question.”

“This isn’t about her,” I urge, and that feels about 75 percent honest. “I have anxieties.”

“Don’t we all.” The Brute sits down at the kitchen table with me. “Therapy isn’t what you need. You just need to organize yourself. Figure out what you want to do in the world. College and work.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“No, it really is. You’re just at that age where you think everything is so horrible and terrible.”

My mother puts a glass of iced tea down for him. The glass seems to start sweating as soon as he touches it.

“Your father may be right, James.”

“I think this is something more.” I want to say “more serious,” but they’re both looking at me like I’m a spoiled brat. Maybe they’re right. People in the world suffer from greater calamities than I do. I eat, I have clothes, I have a house. I read about people around the world who survive on less than a dollar a day. I read about how there are hundreds of millions of widows living in poverty. I see ads for kids who are born with ragged lips and jagged teeth. I don’t have anything like that. I just wake up with a deep hatred of myself. How selfish is that?

“You guys are probably right,” I admit.

“Of course we are. You’re probably just getting ideas from Jorie. And look how that turned out.”

This, though, is not excusable. I have four response options:

Get up, stomp up stairs, slam the door, ignore them when they begin banging on it.

Get up, go outside, climb a tree, and come home when we’ve all buried our emotions.

Get up, tell my father he is a tremendous prick, throw his iced tea across the room.

Get up, tell my mother she gave birth to fucked-up kids because she married a fucked-up man.

Despite all the options, I pick the quiet one involving trees because I am a coward with nothing to be sad about.

DEREK GETS ME A JOB
at the pizza shop and it’s the kind of thing I guess everyone has to suffer through. Plus, I need money for therapy.

I come home reeking of grease, of all things. Not pizza, just grease. I have to put my work clothes in the washer immediately, otherwise the stench infects my entire room. Who knew pizza baked in such a horrible stench?

Because my arm is in a cast for a while longer, I’m just a register jockey who wipes down the booths with an old rag. All the other register people are girls. Derek says that most pizza shop owners hire teenage girls to run the register because they have a fetish for cute girls in T-shirts that smell like grease and wear their hair in ponytails.

“It’s really one of the lesser-known fetishes,” he says with a laugh as we take out the garbage one night.

“Are there websites?”

“Probably. But they’re all in Italian so you’d have to look up ‘
adolescente pizza grasso ragazze
’ on Google.”

“Seems like too much effort.”

The job pays me under the table, a concept that had to be explained to me a couple of times. I can’t grasp the concept of an entire pizza place that officially pays no employees. Is the IRS that stupid?

When I tasted the pizza I realized that they probably didn’t make enough money to attract any attention. How is it that in this day and age a pizza place can exist and make terrible pizza? Seriously, if you put ketchup on cardboard and barely melted some store-brand cheese you’ll be more satisfied because at least then you wouldn’t have dropped ten bucks.

But what do I care, really? I need a hundred bucks a week for therapy sessions that my parents won’t pay for and won’t know about.

Whitman would love this pizza shop. Everyone reeks of labor even though only two of the seven employees really work (I do not include myself in this list of workers, please note).

Whitman would say something like:

Look! The stained shirts,

the hands that knead themselves into the dough, shaping a world

from yeast and water and flour!

These five young men standing by the hot oven sweat

the sweat of generations,

the recipes, the love, the burdens!

He did not write this, but narrating the world like Walt Whitman makes me smile. Even when it comes out sounding homoerotic.

As I’m Whitmanizing and wiping down an orange booth, the doorbell tinkles and in walks Beth with three other girls I recognize but immediately ignore.

“Hey!” I say. I haven’t told her I’ve become Pizza Boy, but what does it matter? Do I even have a chance to win her away from her boyfriend? Can girls get over the smell of grease?

“I didn’t know you worked here,” she says, and her friends furrow their brows (I’ve stopped ignoring them since they’re clearly judging me).

“I need a little cash.” I want to tell her why. She’ll understand, or at least tell me she understands. But confessing the need for mental health services in a pizza shop in front of three judgmental girls and my boss seems ill-advised.

Beth and her friends move to sit at the booth I’ve just wiped down, but I shoo them into one that isn’t damp. (Of course, the booth-cleaning rag gets rinsed out maybe three times a day, so the other booths, while dry, are probably dirtier.)