Somebody Somewhere (15 page)

“W
hy am I like this?” I demanded as I sat across from Dr. Marek. “Information processing,” he replied matter-of-factly. Damn you, I thought. How the hell is saying that meant to fix anything?

Yet it did help. It helped me to stop blaming myself. It helped me to stop blaming other people. It helped me to see why I needed to help other people to make themselves understandable and why I needed to learn to ask questions in order to understand a whole world I had been meaning-deaf and meaning-blind to.

Dr. Marek was listening and understanding. He was listening with his ears, with his mind, and with his heart, and it hurt me to be aware of it. He struggled with my speaking words as I struggled to use “the world” language to describe a way of thinking and being and experiencing for which this world gives you no words or concepts. He didn't tell me I wasn't making sense. He didn't tell me again and again to stop waffling. He didn't tell me I was nuts.

Session after session this owl took my experiences as valid. He tried to explain gently to me how other people generally didn't have these difficulties, and that was why they hadn't understood. He explained how other people got all the bits working at once. How they managed to get the mechanics of so many things going at the same time was nothing short of a miracle. No wonder they couldn't imagine why I couldn't cope, thought I wasn't trying, or that I somehow wanted to be different. No wonder, in the face of my apparent intelligence, they were surprised and angered that they weren't making any sense to me and so assumed I wasn't listening or didn't want to. No wonder they were confused and hurt as to why I could talk so well and yet not converse “with” and so assumed I was merely selfish or arrogant as I continued rigidly on my own topics. No wonder they didn't know how I felt if I couldn't get emotional expression and words going at the same time and figured I didn't care or had no feelings, or they accepted as mine the caricatures of emotion I mirrored from their faces. If only I could understand
how
they got to do these things, I could work out the
difference between them and me and build some bridges. And yet they didn't just
do
them, they
were
them.

The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was “the world” slowly began to fall into place. As the impact hit me, it hurt. I looked back upon my past. The cost of ignorance left rocks in my stomach. The price of arrogant assumption left me burning up. At least now I had some answers. I had hope.

A
letter arrived in the mail. I had left the manuscript with a publisher in the United Kingdom. The letter said they were rejecting my book on the grounds that it ought to be with a larger publisher. They gave me the name of a literary agent who dealt directly with large general-interest publishers.

My comprehension when reading things word-for-word (as opposed to speed-reading) was as poor as my hearing. I grasped key words and reconstructed the rest for myself. I saw the word
reject
and was saddened. Then the Millers entered the picture.

The Millers were my landlords. They lived on the farm where my apartment was. I had seen them outside now and again and had ducked quickly behind the pillar outside my door or raced back inside (thinking, Oh, there's something I've forgotten).

The Millers were nice people by “the world” standards: bubbly and social. He was big and jolly. She was smiley and springy. The daughter was eyes and ears with a three-hundred-words-per-minute voice. The boy was tall and lanky with puppy eyes that reached out in silence. He looked a bit like Christopher Robin.

“Hi there,” said Mr. Miller, sending me through the roof. It had been almost two months since I had moved and it was about time I made the effort to be social. “Hi,” I said and went to race off. “How's the writing doing?” asked Mr. Miller. “Good,” I said.

The Millers knew I was a student and that I wrote. I had never mentioned what. I decided to mention the letter. I told Mr. Miller
that a book I had written had been rejected. “Can I take a look at the letter?” asked Mr. Miller. I was afraid but complied. “This is great!” exclaimed Mr. Miller. “You're not being told your book is no good. You're being told it is too good.”

The Millers talked to me about the wording of the letter. “So what's this book about?” asked Mr. Miller, “Are you going to tell us?” Gradually I told them. They explained the mechanics of how to respond to the letter, and the hunt began to find the manuscript that I had left in London and to have it sent to the agent this publisher suggested.

The manuscript reached the hands of the London agent within a week. A letter arrived shortly thereafter. The agent had read the book within forty-eight hours. It was going to be a best-seller. He wanted me to sign a contract.

I was invited into the landlord's mansion, where I met and fell in love with his fax machine. Here was a machine that sang in its own special language and brought people's words to me in a concrete, graspable form—on paper. It was to become my translator and the mediator between myself and the hordes of people about to knock upon the door to “my world.”

Faxes began in a trickle and became a torrent. I arrived home to a note saying there was a fax for me.

Mr. Miller greeted me at the front door beaming from ear to ear. I couldn't look at his face or it would all be too much to handle. As I read the fax, my hands shook. I hadn't understood it all but I knew it was saying that my book had been accepted not just by one publisher, but by several. The lives of Carol, Willie, and me were to be exposed to people all over the world. I was the most evasive person I had ever known and soon I would become the most public.

Mr. and Mrs. Miller looked like they were about to fall over backward. I wobbled like a drunk. I was getting a few words here and there with a lot of repetition, translation back to myself, and filling in the gaps. “Calm down,” said Mr. Miller. “I'll get you a cup of tea.” Mr. Miller was so nervous that he returned to the living room three times in a row with white tea (I only drank black tea without milk).

Mr. and Mrs. Miller sat there grinning. It was like watching a video on fast-forward, as their excitement and my ability to comprehend ebbed and flowed. I felt seasick.

I was having enough trouble grasping that this was about
my
book. I felt out of control; other people would see my words. I had a compulsion to find every copy and tear it up and burn the pieces. The Millers had a word called “rabbiting.” They were rabbiting on about fame, success, and a whole range of dictionary concepts that had no significance for me. These were words associated with TV and circuses. They had no connection to my life.

The Millers had visions of lunches with publishers and interviewers, hotel meals, and dinnertime conversations. All of this would only be six months away. They were a pair of fairy godmothers getting Cinderella ready for the ball.

The Millers invited me to dinner. I hadn't been to dinner in people's houses very often. The times I had been invited I hadn't coped very well. My ability to perform had been my only inner map by which to navigate. As Carol, I never had to understand anything that happened, I just had to look good. “Got to go to the toilet,” I would say, smiling manically, disappearing in a flash. “The world” gone, I stood in front of the mirror wishing I could escape into it.

My God…dinner!

Sitting back in the Millers' kitchen, my mind hit twenty panic buttons at once. No! I shouted silently, but nobody heard me. “Here you go,” said Mr. Miller, planting a plate of food in front of me, “eat.”

I felt like I was in a straitjacket and tried to remember to breathe. I started to tap something. Act “normal,” I told myself. I began to trace patterns, play with my fork, and fold the tablecloth. I told myself off.

On automatic pilot, a fork was lifted by my hand to my mouth and I ate something. I had no idea what it was. I took it on trust that it was something better than a shit sandwich. Taste, hunger, and recognition of what I was doing were unplugged in a coiled mass at my feet. I was too busy keeping up with just being there.

“How's the food?” they asked. “Food,” I said, quickly looking at
what they had named: a plate of shapes and smells and colors and textures. “Good,” I prompted myself, with the standard answer to go with questions about food. “Good?” I blurted, not sure I was passing but hopeful. Something inside screamed. “Be yourself,” I said to myself but I had no time to work out how. The Millers launched into blah-blah-blah and I became a word processor as emotions took a back seat.

I must have cost them a fortune in dinners. They could see it was hard for me. Their insistence upon inviting me back seemed somehow sadistic by “my world” terms. Yet I was the crazy one if I didn't understand their apparent irrationality. They were so much better than me at putting up with things, so it was best to at least appear to understand.

Their “friendliness” was so direct it drove me crazy. My mind reminded me it was time to go to their house again. My eyes found fifteen things I
had
to do before I left. My feet went to the door, my hand opened it, and my body moved outside. My mind reminded me of something I'd forgotten to do. Back inside I went and shut the door. Ten minutes and fifteen more things later my feet made it to the door again. The worst part was that I liked the Millers.

My feet took me down the path to their door. My hand reached out and touched a flower, and my nose smelled it. That's why I'm here, said my mind silently. I'm here to do this.

Upon reaching the door, my hand made a fist and went automatically to knock. It stopped in mid-air an inch off the door and fell back by my side. I looked at the bell. My feelings got excited and my mind replied with mental images of manically ringing and ringing and ringing the bell. I pressed it and my hand stopped dead. Good.

Mrs. Miller answered the door. My feet stayed put. My stomach went to walk out on me, my heart tried to escape through my throat, and my torso was backing away without my stubborn legs. “Hi,” said Mrs. Miller beaming. “Don't just stand there, come in.” The fact I liked these people seemed insane.

“Why do you keep feeding me, when you know I hate eating here?” I asked. “Training,” answered Mr. Miller with a salesman's
smile. “Training” became a catch phrase in the Millers' house. A silent squeal rose in the back of my throat but was strangled. “Training” translated to “social torture” in the “my world” book of definitions even if by “the world” terms they were committed people with good intentions.

I
didn't have to meet one publisher. I had to meet two and decide which one I wanted.

Tall and square, the first one resembled an insurance salesman. As he entered the Millers' place, he handed me an advertising catalogue for his company. I examined the picture of the ocean on the cover. What am I meant to do with this? I wondered.

Mrs. Miller arranged to be there. If it was a conversation about varieties of garden pest, I'd have managed, but this guy was here to discuss me in book form.

He spoke confidently. Yet he was too self-assured and his ego dwarfed mine by comparison. He had sensationalistic ideas about the book, leaning on the side of exploiting the childhood abuse angle. Easy for him, I thought. Some men have no idea what it is like. He took Mr. Miller aside to discuss the deal. I realized he considered me more as an oddity with some intelligent bits rather than an equal human being. I smiled to myself. One down, one to go.

The next publisher had bright red hair and looked like the children's storybook character Holly Hobbie. She had a whisper of a voice to match. She was stiff as a board and shook like a sparrow confronted by a cat. I liked her even though her anxiety made me feel I was a psychopath. She was not at all self-assured, so there was enough social space to find myself present in her company. It is hard to make a decision when your body and voice are present but your sense of self is absent. Holly Hobbie made it easier.

She was about to go. I remembered the other guy with the company advertising catalogue. “Do you have anything to give me?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, producing three glossy picture books of
landscapes of the Australian outback and tales of childhood and the plight of Australian Aborigines. This woman knew she was taking a person on board, not just a meal ticket. I decided to work with her. The book was on the road to publication.