Probation (29 page)

LAURA WAY BREWER, M.D.

PRACTICE LIMITED TO PSYCHIATRY

T
he address is smack in the heart of one of those leafy suburbs where the oak trees are older than the nation. So private, so quiet. Volvos for daytime errands and a Mercedes for a night on the town. Two children…no, no, it would be highly irresponsible of Laura Way Brewer, M.D., to contribute to the global overpopulation straining our exhausted planet. One-point-five children. A son and half-a-daughter, eviscerated at the midsection.

There’ll be a discreet side entrance. Dr. Brewer? I presume. So stylishly unstylish. A simple haircut with a light rinse that set you back a cool hundred fifty after tip. A silk blouse, single strand of pearls, wool crepe skirt, and European leather pumps, softer than skin. Bric-a-brac from the Asian continent scattered around the office, booty from her journeys. (God knows Dr. Brewer would never deign to do something as mundane as
vacation
.) Plush oriental carpets and ethnic wall hangings to soak up the interminable silences that are broken only by the sound of the half-a-daughter several rooms away, practicing piano. Pardon me, Dr. Brewer. Can you spare me your undivided attention? I’m not paying you to be distracted by your darling child as she fumbles her way through “Für Elise.” Don’t you want to know how salty a mechanic’s cock tastes at three in the morning in a shit-stinking rest stop on the interstate?

I made the appointment but didn’t keep it.

And God knows how I hate you. Sorry, not you, Dr. Brewer. We’ve never even met.

You, Reverend Matthew McGinley, S.J., M.D.

Or is it M.D., S.J.?

We never did get that sorted out.

How’s tricks up in the good old D. of C.? Hail the conquering hero. The whole town must have turned out to celebrate your triumphant return from exile in Mayberry and your liberation from us po’ bucktooth yokels with bad haircuts and cornmeal between our toes.

Oh, God, did I forget to tell you I’ve accepted the academic appointment at Georgetown? I’m referring you to Dr. Brewer. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with her.

Maybe your announcement wasn’t that harsh, but it felt that way.

Adios, amigo. Yeah, you got your problems, but the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry is wheezing close to seventy and they’re searching for young blood and there’s no blood younger and fresher and more deserving than mine.

Maybe those weren’t your exact words, but it’s exactly what you meant.

That’s terrific, Matt. I’m so happy for you. Maybe we can do dinner some night when I’m in D.C. We’ll catch up. You can ask me how things are going.

Great. Things are going great. You know my mother’s dead. My sister’s a bitch. She’s selling the house. I’m a gentleman of leisure now. My throat has been sore for weeks now, since the night my mother died. Staph, strep, gonorrhea, syphilis, maybe just postnasal drip? Who knows? Maybe I should get it checked out, but I refuse to set foot in one more doctor’s office, flipping through ancient copies of
People
and reading about forgotten celebrities whose moment has passed. Not that I don’t have time to spare. I haven’t worked since my mother died. I got fired or quit. I’m not sure which. My Born Again National Sales Manager sent flowers and a sugary sympathy note and left a holier-than-thou condolence on the answering machine. He waited a respectable seven days and left another message with my itinerary along the California coast. He sounded so pleased with himself, telling me how he’d chosen the trip with the
gorgeous
weather in mind, knowing how much I’d appreciate a break after the past few months. I never returned the call or any of the others he made in the following days. Finally, he left an angry message, demanding I return the company laptop, calling me irresponsible and threatening me with ugly references.

The estate is divided equally between Regina and me. She’s anxious to sell the house. She says we should capitalize on the hot real estate market. What she means is she’s afraid the ash from one of my cigarettes will ignite the carpet and burn her security to the ground. She’s not unsympathetic to my plight, but money is money and, as she points out, I need my share more than she needs hers. You need a change of scenery, she says, you need to get on with your life. She says she doesn’t think my antidepressants are working. I haven’t told her I’ve stopped filling my prescriptions, except for the anti-anxiety pills, of course, which I swallow religiously to put me to sleep, washed down with a six-pack and a couple of shots.

But I am getting on with it. Three days ago I dragged myself out of bed before noon and ran a razor over my face for the first time in weeks. My hangover tasted like spearmint mouthwash and my pants were spotted with coffee rings, but I looked respectable enough to the manager of the Charlotte outpost of the Barnes and Noble empire. He hired me on the spot, sales associate at minimum wage, and asked me to start the next morning. Startled, I backtracked and told him I wasn’t available for two weeks. I wouldn’t bet the ranch on me showing up.

My new landlord certainly didn’t seem to mind the Crown Royal blended on my breath. He was eager enough to take the check. In two or three days—or is it four or five?—I begin my new life as an inmate in one of his $600-a-month cells, complete with barred windows and chipped enamel sinks. I’m looking forward to meeting the other prisoners and spending time with their screaming babies and drunken spouses. We’ll all shout to be heard over the shrieking televisions. My sister offered to loan me the down payment to buy, but I’d rather serve my sentence at the Magnolia Towne Courte than in a luxury condominium with ceiling fans and hardwood floors and a wide balcony.

The contents of the Monument to Heat and Air are being put in storage. The move is scheduled. The movers are coming to pack everything into boxes and cartons and haul it off to a cinderblock storage compound near the airport. Regina says the charms of the listing—the crown moldings, actual plaster on the walls—will show better stripped to essentials and slapped with a fresh coat of paint. I’ve got my instructions to tag the few bits and pieces my prison cell can accommodate. She’s called and left several messages, not confident of my ability to accomplish even this one small duty. She’s right. I haven’t lifted a finger yet. The movers are coming…when? Tomorrow? I’m confused, uncertain when she left the message.

My mother’s bed, a dresser, an upholstered chair, and a television are all I need. I suppose I ought to poke around the kitchen and toss a coffeepot and bottle opener into a box. I need to pack my clothes. Everything else can collect dust in the storage compound.

It’s one o’clock. Not too late for an early start. I’ve had two cups of coffee and a half pack of cigarettes. Time to crack open a beer and get to work. The phone rings and I let it spill into the answering machine. It’s just my sister again, asking me to pick up, please. I ignore her and go to the front door to retrieve the morning paper. I keep forgetting to stop delivery. Need to put it on my to-do list. I skim the pages, looking for a headline about a body found in a city Dumpster, young white male, identity unknown, sandy hair, dressed in a nylon warm-up suit. Nothing. Somewhere out there, Douglas is still “working,” singing “I Love Rock ’N Roll,” dodging his angry supplier, finding refuge for the night.

Why didn’t you believe me when I told you I loved him, Matt? You told me you were concerned about my state of mind. You urged me to follow up with Dr. Brewer and gave me a prescription for Ativan. I promised I wouldn’t take them with alcohol. You gave me a number in Washington where you can be reached twenty-four/seven. Your messages are more and more frequent, pleading with me to call. Dr. Brewer has told you I didn’t show for the appointment. You’re threatening to call my sister if I don’t respond by ten o’clock. I’m not sure when you left that last message.

I should go upstairs and throw my underwear and socks and shirts in a suitcase. Maybe the movers will never come. Maybe they’ll come, but they’ll take pity on me and refuse to pack and haul, their consciences unwilling to let them throw me out on the street. I need a little nap. I can’t drag myself farther than the sofa. I close my eyes and my thoughts drift to a packed church, filled to capacity. I feel the heat of the bodies in the pews behind me. An ancient crone is pumping away and the organ is groaning. My sister sits beside me, whimpering and dabbing her eyes. Her husband puts his arm around her shoulder. Her sons stare at the casket resting before the altar. Dustin, her younger boy, tries to comfort his sister, sweet and awkward and self-conscious as he rises to the occasion. My heart is racing. All these people and the church feels empty, just me and the coffin.

Then a warm body slides into the pew. A small hand takes my larger one and gives it a soft kiss. My wife—no, my ex-wife, my friend—has taken pity and rescues me from my solitude. She stays with me through the interminable service and the long ride to the cemetery. She’s obviously pregnant and Sweeney the Son fetches a folding chair, setting it at the graveside. She ignores his kindness and stands by my side in the oppressive heat. She presses her left hand against my back to steady me. I feel her wedding band, not the one I slipped on her finger, through my damp jacket.

Later that night, I sit on the patio, drinking and smoking and counting the moths fluttering in the porch lights, while my sister and her husband, who’ve re-occupied the Monument to Heat and Air since my mother died, eat pizza and watch
Die Hard
with their kids. Little Dustin, looking younger than his years in his Tweety Bird nightshirt, comes seeking quieter companionship, an old board game under his arm.

“Sure, I’ll play with you,” I say, grateful for the company. “You can be Miss Scarlet if you want. I promise I won’t tell.”

I lie on my back, dozing, debating whether to pop another pill to put me under for the afternoon. I think that tarantula might be tearing my throat apart. I can’t swallow and drool is dribbling from my mouth. Perspiration drips from my eyebrows. I stumble to the kitchen but cold water from the faucet doesn’t soothe my burning eyes. I trip over my feet and fall face first into the sink, splitting my lip. My blood tastes like roast beef, rare. I wrestle with an ancient ice tray, spilling the cubes on the floor. I pick up the one closest to my foot and press it against my throbbing lip. I feel a long hair dangling on the tip of my tongue. I try to flick it away, but it has a will of its own, clinging to my bloody finger by its steel gray root.

I go upstairs, searching for an aspirin to dull the pain. My medicine cabinet’s empty except for my trusty Ativan, an exhausted tube of toothpaste, and a used Band-Aid. I’ll try my mother’s. Surely one lonely Bayer survived the wholesale disposal of her pharmacopoeia. The last of the prednisone, Compazine, and Lomotil has been flushed down the toilet. The septic tank’s probably developing muscles from all the steroids it’s swallowed. What’s left? Tweezers, cotton balls, and cuticle scissors. And one lonely hidden prescription bottle, dated over a year ago, when the word
lymphoma
was only a Latinate obscurity in the
Family Medical Dictionary,
when my mother’s sore throat meant nothing more than a bacterial infection brought on by the change of seasons. A simple cephalosporin, a ten-day regimen,
Take Until Completed.
My poor mother, usually so compliant, ignored the instructions on the label and stopped taking the pills when the pain subsided. Maybe it upset her tummy, maybe she felt like being defiant just once in her life. Six little striped capsules are left. Not too old, probably still effective. If one works, two will work even faster.

I swallow one, then another. I should start packing, but my mother’s rumpled bed is more appealing. I crawl under the covers, wishing I had a beer, but I’m too tired to walk downstairs. The label said
Take Until Completed
. She didn’t, leaving six in the bottle. Maybe that was her fatal mistake. The causes of cancer are a mystery, that is, beyond the obvious things like cigarettes and charred meat and Three Mile Island. Maybe that innocent sore throat started a chain reaction that eventually consumed her body.

It could have been what killed her. That or a million other things. It doesn’t make much difference. All that’s left of her is her bed. And even here, it’s hard to find any trace of her. I’ve slept in this bed every night since my sister left and spent most of my days propped against the pillows. There’s no television in the bedroom, just a small clock radio still tuned to her favorite station. I listen to happy talk, armchair psychologists and financial advisors and brand-name chefs and celebrity interviewers more famous than the celebrities they interview. It’s all white noise filtering any intrusions from the world.

My mother would hardly know this bed anymore. I haven’t changed the sheets. I prefer body smells to fabric softener; they’re rich and warm, fecund like the good earth. Like the boxers I haven’t changed in days. No wonder my crotch is itching like hell. Scratching just makes it worse. I should be ashamed of myself. What would my mother think if she saw me wallowing in her bed in this condition?

But she’s not coming back. And if she could, she’d probably just pull the covers up to my shoulders and tell me to try to sleep. Or maybe she would haul me out by the ankles, yank me by the hair, deliver a swift kick to the ass, and tell me to shape up.

I kick aside the bedsheets and stick my hand in my boxers, lazily scratching my balls. A rash is spreading beyond my crotch, across my belly, over my chest, up to my head. I sit up in bed, pawing myself like a bipolar chimpanzee on a manic swing. A shower might help. The water is tepid, as cold as it ever gets in the dying days of a Southern summer, and relief lasts only while the water is running.

I turn off the water and reach for a towel. I’m red, a bright flaming scarlet. My body is a lunar landscape of angry hives. I drop the towel on the floor, barely recognizing the monster in the bathroom mirror. Huge welts creep across my face. My body is going haywire. Alarm bells are ringing inside my ears. No, it’s just the doorbell. No, it’s too shrill for the doorbell. Can’t be the doorbell. Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses come calling these days, trying to rescue my soul with copies of
Watch-tower
.