Sparta (53 page)

“So,” Claire said, watching him. “You're not going to tell me, are you.”

“No,” Conrad said.

“You know, we can't really have a conversation like this,” Claire said. “This is like taking a walk together and suddenly one of us falls down a hole.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “But I can't really help it. All of a sudden the ground is gone. And you know something? I don't like it any more than you do.”

“So we'll talk about something else.” She frowned, trying to spear something in the slippery sauce. “I brought some movies. And I'm going to spend the night.”

“Clairey,” he said, “don't do this to me.”

“Don't do this to me,” she said.

“You don't know how this makes me feel,” he said. “I feel like such a fucking loser.”

She stood up and leaned over the table. Her hair fell forward in wings. “You're not a loser. You're not a loser. You're just in trouble. Come on, Con. Please.” She began to cry.

“Claire,” he said, but he didn't know how to go on.

She spent the night, which he'd known would happen. There was no sex. His body was mute and distant, empty and unresponsive, as though he were on drugs. In bed he held Claire and kissed her hair and apologized.

“You knew about this,” he said.

“Yeah, and it's okay.” She curled up with her back to him, but close, tight against his body, so he would know she wasn't angry. He'd taken a pill. He went to sleep, but during the night he woke up to the nightmare of the man chasing him through the streets, the man he'd shot in Ramadi. He heard the footsteps, the echoes from the high walls. He had no weapon.

He woke up choking and calling out, his chest heaving. He didn't know where he was. The room was small and claustrophobic, with a strange perpendicular streak of light.

Someone put a hand on his sweaty chest.

“You're okay, Con,” she said.

He nearly screamed.
“That's enough.”
He yanked off the covers and threw himself out of bed. “
Christ.
Just don't touch me. Don't touch me.”

He stood on the floor, his heart thundering. Everything in his system was shouting
Go, go, go.
There was nowhere for him to go, nothing for him to do. The room was silent around him. Claire knelt on the bed, her face grave.

He stood still, his breathing quieting. There was nothing in the room. The curtains nearly met across the windows. In the gap was a bright strip of purple night. Outside was the distant swishing sound of traffic on the Drive. Shame began to fill him.

“Christ,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Claire.”

His body felt immobile, and he was stricken with shame and revulsion. He thought,
I can't do this anymore.

“I can't do this anymore,” Claire said.

*   *   *

Only fourteen more days. He could do that.

He drew a calendar page, a grid showing the weeks and days, and Scotch-taped it to the tiled wall in the kitchen. Every morning when he came in, he crossed off a day so he could see the approach of the appointment.

Nine days away, he got an email from Go-Go.

Hey Conrad, how's it going?

He should have known from the salutation, the formal “Conrad,” instead of “Dawg,” that it was bad news.

My co. is sending me back to NY for a week in February. I'll be back on the 23rd. Hope that's okay for you and you can find someplace else. Thanks you for holding down the fort. You can move back in when Im gone. Let's get together when Im back. Go-Go.

Conrad wrote him back:

Hey Dawg, gotcha on the apt. I'll be out by the 23rd. Thanks for the residency. We'll hook up when you're back. Conrad.

It didn't matter. He could go anywhere: Jenny's, Claire's, Katonah. Twenty-third. By then he'd be on the road to recovery.

As the appointment drew nearer, Conrad became calmer. The end was within reach. He wrote encouraging messages to Molinos, still in Hit:

Molinos: Hope things are going okay. I wish you'd take care of those pesky insurgents, keep them from blowing everyone the fuck up. I'm in New York. Nice here but I miss the MREs. Semper Fi. Farrell.

Each night he counted the days.

It was too much to expect the end of this, but he hoped for a lessening. He hoped for a kind of hope. He wouldn't define it exactly. He wouldn't use large words like
redemption
, or
grace
. He was hoping for something humbler, something small and private. He didn't feel entitled to anything large. Certainly he didn't feel entitled to religious help. His family went to the local Episcopal church in a loyal but intermittent way, but Conrad wasn't religious. He didn't take it seriously, the wafers and wine, the blood and flesh. He'd never felt any mysterious power from their pleasant local pastor. Since he'd never believed before, it wasn't fair to ask now for favors. And whom would he ask?

The words
peace
or
forgiveness
were not for him, he knew that. How could he ask forgiveness for something he'd done deliberately? And besides, the words carried with them some kind of taint, some softness he wouldn't go near. Being hard, never asking for help, was the point. Needing peace or forgiveness implied weakness. There was the question of identity, and choice: you couldn't simply stop being what you'd chosen to become. Because then what were you?

He wouldn't allow himself to name those things—peace, redemption, forgiveness—but he knew they were there. At moments he felt them, their balm. In another world, he'd cut himself off from it. He suspected the existence of a kind of bliss, one that might accompany a surrender he could not make, and this caused him a pure sense of sorrow. Loss. If he surrendered, if he asked forgiveness for all he had done, how great were the implications? How much wrong had he done?

Those ideas—grace and forgiveness—seemed to exist in another part of the world. This was the third part, an upper layer, composed of aerial currents that, if you could only be carried up to them, would sweep you off. They would lift you above the clouds, above the great systems of violence and turbulence that stretched over the surface of the world, the systems that composed the weather, the storms of anguish and grief and despair. The storms of guilt and shame. You would be lifted from it, and those things would fall away from you the way water evaporates to become purified, an essence, a fine, rising mist.

He had no real hope for this; it was a kind of dream. What he had done made those things unavailable to him. But still he held in his mind the possiblity that it could happen. The possibility that he would find a way to that layer.

*   *   *

This semester he was taking another class: political economics. An introduction to the interaction between economics and politics, voting theory and elections. It started on the twenty-ninth. By then he'd have started his treatment at the VA.

He'd read up on this, knew what to expect, knew his rights. He was focused on the appointment, as though he were trekking across the desert and it was the oasis. He'd been traveling toward it for months. He'd watched its inverted reflection hovering above the horizon, promising shade, solace, rest.

 

26

On the twenty-second, Conrad received an automated message from the VA, leaving him a number to call back. The return call took over an hour as Conrad maneuvered his way through waits and transfers, recorded voices and announcements, repeating his name and ID and case number over and over until he was finally connected to a human voice, a man who managed to sound both official and offhand.

The man told Conrad he could have an appointment in Mental Health in three months.

“I've already waited three months,” Conrad said. “You're saying three more?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man. “That's what I can offer. That's how we work it.”

“How do you work it?” Conrad asked. “So no one can use it?”

“This is the way it works,” said the man.

“It actually doesn't seem to work,” said Conrad. “If someone needs medical assistance, why keep him waiting six months before you give it to him? If I had a broken leg, how would you describe this system as working?”

“Do you have a broken leg?” the man said.

“I do not,” said Conrad, “but that's—”

“Are-you-a-danger-to-yourself-or-others?” He rattled off the words like the names of train stations. “If you pose a risk to yourself or others, I can give you an earlier appointment.”

Conrad looked around the room, at the angular chair, the table in the corner, stacked with books. He rubbed the back of his head. He said nothing for a moment.

“Yes,” he answered.

“You are a danger to yourself or others?”

“Yes,” Conrad repeated. He drew a deep breath: focus. “And also I believe that the VA is required by law to provide an appointment within thirty days, maximum.”

“All right.” He sounded suspicious, as though Conrad might be pretending to be mentally ill. “Let me look for another date.” After a long time he came back. “February twenty-second.” The day before Go-Go came back.

“Right,” Conrad said. “Thank you.”

He leaned back against the sofa. Thirty days. He could make it.

*   *   *

On the day of his appointment Conrad got up early. He hadn't slept well the night before, and each time he woke, he had taken another pill, trying to hammer himself back to sleep. Jack's prescription had run out, but Conrad had gotten another from his mother—some doctor friend or colleague. Now the inside of his head felt as if it were lined with cotton, but also with electricity. He felt dumb but wired.

He pulled open the curtains. The sky was overcast; a soft gray cloud cover layered over Queens. The river below was pewter, with flickers of silver where the wind ran across it. Conrad took a shower, then shaved carefully. He didn't want to show up with nicks and blood all over his neck. He put on good clothes: clean khakis, a proper shirt, a tweed jacket. He looked in the mirror, straightening the tails of the jacket, examining himself. This was like a job interview. Actually, he should be going in unshaven and unwashed; he should look homeless. Wasn't he trying to persuade them that he was crazy?

His head still felt stuffed and unresponsive, but he felt good. He ate a bowl of cereal, pulled on a parka, and headed out. He'd buy coffee on the way, get his head in shape. Outside it was cold, with a gusty, exhilarating wind that flapped at him erratically, changing directions and swirling small bits of trash into tiny tornadoes.

His appointment was for eight-thirty. He stopped for coffee on the street. He wanted not a cinnamon-mocha-tofu-latte from a fancy shop, but a plain regular black from the stand on the corner—two dark-skinned guys up inside a tiny, shiny mobile cabin. He stood in a line of people on the sidewalk waiting for coffee and bagels, everyone shifting from foot to foot, hunching their shoulders from the cold. When it was his turn, Conrad asked for one black, no sugar. The man was round-faced, with black hair and big bags under his eyes. He grinned at Conrad and said, “Okay, boss!” as though they were buddies. Conrad smiled back. It was starting out to be a good day. He was on the subway by seven-thirty, sipping his coffee as the cars rattled along underground, heading south fast. Everything was going right. He was awake, dressed, caffeinated, and on time, hauling balls across town. Today was the day, and he was on it.

He got off at Twenty-third and walked east toward the VA. The street was crowded, already noisy and bustling. He liked being part of this surging tide, fast and full of energy. It was a downtown, blue-collar group, the men in knitted watch caps and parkas, the women in puffy coats and limp synthetic scarves, pushing strollers, or in tight jeans and high boots and short parkas, their arms linked. Trucks and buses groaned past, funneling exhaust into the cold air. Cars honked: everyone was already pumped up, on their way.

Conrad arrived at 8:10. Early. He wanted his record here to be perfect. He pushed through the slow revolving door. The black guy with the beret was on duty again, standing by the low oval counter. He gave Conrad a friendly chin-up of recognition. Conrad nodded back, grinning. A good omen.

At the admissions booth Conrad gave his ID number, and was sent to a different floor. This waiting room, too, was full. There were some other men his own age, from Iraq and Afghanistan, but more of them were older: Vietnam vets with grizzled sideburns and gray faces and drooping alcoholics' eyes. Everyone looked at him when he came in; no one spoke.

Conrad checked in at the counter. This receptionist was a man in his fifties, with a round head and very black skin. Conrad filled out the forms and sat down to wait. He felt both restless and tired. Anticipation kept him on edge; his foot twitched to a jerky rhythm as though he were listening to music. He kept checking his watch; he didn't want to be a pain in the ass. After an hour he went up to the counter again.

“Hey there,” he said. “My name's Farrell. Just checking on my appointment. I think it was for eight-thirty. It's now nine-thirty.”

The man looked up at him indifferently. He wore square black-rimmed glasses, and the whites of his eyes were deep yellow. “Everyone in this room has that same time of appointment,” he said. “We'll call you when it's your turn.”

Conrad sat down. He should have brought a book. He'd have brought the fucking
Iliad
if he'd known he'd be here for most of the day. He didn't like the sight of the silent vets, all of them summoned for the same time, all of them ignored, all waiting patiently, their time considered valueless.

Conrad had earned this appointment, he had earned it by every moment of the last four years. He had the right to this meeting, with someone from his own world who'd understand him, know what he'd been through. Someone who knew and respected him. The long minutes began to feel like insults.