by Homes, A. M.
“I don’t hear anything,” the wife says after a minute.
“Maybe he’s sleeping,” the husband says.
“You don’t just suddenly talk and then sleep,” she says.
“Okay, so maybe he’s reading.”
“I don’t think so,” she says.
“What does it matter, can’t there be a moment’s peace? Maybe he’s thinking.”
In this tiny bed, this tiny room, I have a moment of clarity. I am a grown man who has hardly grown. I am like Oskar in The Tin Drum, refusing to grow.
I am up in the night. There are light scratching sounds, and then it begins, an e-awh, e-awh, like a loose bedspring, like people having sex. At first I think that’s what it is—motel springs! The rhythmic squeaking of cheap, well-worn bedsprings. I listen at the wall—nothing. The other wall—the husband and wife talking. I listen to the floor—a television.
I glance at the hamster. He crouches, frozen, caught in the act, his beady black eyes meeting mine. The round chrome wheel is no longer spinning, but still gently rocking back and forth, its motion slowing.
“You?” I ask.
The hamster wiggles his nose. “Me?” he seems to ask, equally surprised.
In the morning, I wake feeling like I’ve been on a long journey and still tasting the steak from last night—not an unpleasant flavor, just not breakfasty.
My headache is gone.
I go to church with Nate. The academy chapel, built from enormous old stones—hauled all the way from England—is perfect. The Tiffany-glass windows illustrate various Biblical narratives. The school chaplain introduces a woman rabbi, who speaks as though she has been elected to remind us of what we already know: that we are human, flawed, and that with our humanity, our consciousness, come expectations of compassion, of kindness and acceptance. Something about her seems to be questioning rather than lecturing—she is asking us to ask ourselves what we think, as though she wants our opinion. “What does it mean to be of service?” she asks. “Is it something you undertake to put on your résumé, to get into college? What do you actually care about? Are you someone working within your culture or tradition, or are you someone who feels outside of it, left behind? The important part is to be part of the questions, to be engaged,” she continues. By the time church ends, we all feel lifted up, spiritually motivated, prepared to start the week anew. I understand what Nate likes about it: the quality of talk, the parental good counsel he’s not otherwise getting. On the way out, the young rabbi, the school’s chaplain, and the Headmaster, now in pants, form an ersatz reception line. It’s hard to get by without shaking hands. I don’t know why, but I’m tempted to say something stupid, like “Good Shabbos” or “May the Force Be with You,” but manage to keep silent.
We exit onto the lawn. Everyone in their Sunday best, bundled in winter coats, looks up at the blue sky, the high white clouds. In the center of the lawn, an enormous box is being opened, a thick old rope is being extracted, laid out. I see people digging into their pockets for gloves, others passing rolls of duct tape, people horridly taping their hands, tearing at the tape with bared teeth and passing it along. One woman wraps Ace bandages around both hands—like wounded paws. Everyone seems to have something on their hands: driving gloves, oven mitts, golf gloves, a piece of felt in each palm, a ski glove on one hand only.
“What’s going on?” I ask Nate.
The rope is now fully extended. It is heavy, old, the kind of rope you see when visiting ancient shipyards—not anything made today, not anything you could buy.
“It’s the tradition,” Nate says. “The weekend concludes with a tug-of-war, parents versus students. The rope dates back to the ship our Founding Fathers came to America on. It’s wildly old, and no one knows why it’s never broken. In theory it should just snap.”
“What’s the deal with the hands?”
“The rope hurts the hell out of your hands—it burns.”
And they’ve got cleats, golf shoes, soccer shoes, high heels that can dig in the dirt, snow chains—clearly this is serious business and they’ve planned ahead. Many of them take off their coats. “Better range of motion,” one fellow says. The men and women take positions along the rope, five men up front and then male, female, male, female, until the end, which is again all male. There are some who sheepishly stand off to the side and repeat their excuses—knee replacement, two hips, a shoulder eight weeks ago, quadruple bypass. There are a few boys in casts, on crutches, one in a wheelchair, and I wonder, was he in the chair before he came to the school or did it happen here?
I am watching and suddenly remember George and me playing tug-of-war, me pulling with all my might and then George suddenly letting go and me flying backwards, crashing through a window—ending up essentially sitting in the broken glass. “I’m still a mess from yesterday,” I say to Nate. “So I’m going to pass on this one.”
“No worries,” Nate says, hurrying off to secure his spot on the line.
A shot is fired—I glance up and see the Headmaster holding an ancient pistol. The air stinks of gunpowder, and his hand is singed black and appears to be smoking.
The contest has begun. I become fixated on a woman in a boiled-wool jacket, her hair band pulling dyed blond locks out of her face, her lips rolled back, teeth clenched, pulling on the rope like her life depends on it.
“I notice you keep staring at my wife. Do you know her?” the man sidelined with an amputated half-leg asks.
“She looks familiar,” I say, not because it’s true but because I have nothing else to say.
“She’s a Middlebranch,” he says. “The family goes back a very long way—one of them was Ben Franklin’s roommate in France in 1753—kept one hell of a journal.”
“How did you meet?” I ask.
“I was a student here, and she and two gals from Emma Willard came over to visit her brother. Odd that you marry someone that you meet at fourteen, don’t ya think?” he says.
“Might be the best thing, there’s great clarity in youth,” I say.
“Why aren’t you pulling?” he asks.
“Stroke,” I say. “You?”
“Goddamned colostomy,” he says, patting his stomach through his coat. “Had cancer the size of a grapefruit and they rerouted everything. They swear they’re going to reconnect the pipes, but I’m not so sure how.”
A groaning sound from the line distracts us. Someone splits his pants, a woman grinding down breaks a tooth. The adults pull and pull and pull, digging in as intractably as toddlers. Each side is so determined, so sure not only that they will win, but that in winning, in defeating the other, there is some greater gain.
“Pull,” the man on the parent side calls.
“Pull,” the boy on the student side calls.
“Pant,” one of the women calls, “remember your Lamaze.”
The seams of the Middlebranch boiled wool are pulling, stretching—white fibers, threads, are showing. It is truly a power struggle, and I get the feeling the parents are the ones desperate to prove something, what or why I’m not sure. And then, suddenly, as it all seems about to explode, the boys have the rope and are doing a strange improvisational victory dance across the lawn—Martha Graham gone wrong.
The parents gather themselves up and dust themselves off, and the weekend is suddenly over. Within minutes, the fathers and mothers are hugging their sons, bidding them adieu.
Nate gives me a powerful squeeze and thanks me for coming. “Let me know you get home safe,” he says.
“Will do,” I say.
As I’m walking to the car, the man married to the Middlebranch tells me this is the way it goes—the adults rarely win. And the academy likes to keep the parting short and sweet: the boys will finish the weekend with study hall and a suckling pig for dinner, that’s the tradition. Tomorrow is Monday, a school day, and these future captains of industry, titans of banking, orthopedic surgeons, and accountants to the stars all have homework to do.
I quickly settle
back into the routine at George’s house, and on Thursday evening, as I’m relaxing, rereading John Ehrlichman’s Witness to Power, George’s psychiatrist telephones.
“We’ve reached a second stage. The team thinks it would be useful for you to come and spend some time with us.”
“In what capacity?” I ask, fearing that I’ll have to somehow “enroll.”
“Think of it as a supervised playdate,” he says.
“Can I leave if I’m not having a good time?”
“In theory, yes,” he says.
“In theory?”
“There’s really nowhere to go, but we’re not going to hold you hostage.”
“All right, then,” I say.
“And you’ll bring the dog?” the doctor asks.
“I could do that,” I say—noting that the one thing missing from my otherwise great time last weekend was Tessie.
I pack a bag for myself and one for the dog. In Tessie’s I put a giant Ziploc of kibble, a smaller bag of dog biscuits, treats, toys, some poop bags, and an old towel to sleep on. In my bag, a change of clothes, pajamas, toothbrush, and a Ziploc of my new “medications,” along with the instructions, which I have to reread daily; otherwise I can’t remember in what order they are to be taken.
It feels like months since I drove George’s clothes up to the “facility.” It’s far, much farther than Nate’s school. Driving there is like taffy pulling: with every hour, the place gets farther away. Halfway, I pull off into one of those odd wooded places marked “Rest Area.” There are a couple of long-haul trucks and port-a-johns at the edge of the parking lot. I recline my seat, close my eyes, and am dreaming of Nixon’s creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, his passage of the Clean Air Act, the Marine Mammal Act, the Safe Water Drinking Act, the Endangered Species Act—the Magna Carta of the environmental movement—only to be woken by a tapping on the window and Tessie’s startled bark.
A man stands by the car, his fly unzipped, his anxious swollen gray underwear poking through at eye level. “Looking for love,” he says through the glass, voice muffled, hips wiggling. I look up at his face, unshaven, wild-eyed. I lunge for the key, grind the ignition, and floor it out of the parking lot. Tessie lurches forward, losing her balance, and bangs into the dash. I slow, let her get her footing, and am back onto the highway, trying to maneuver my seat upright while gunning the gas pedal.
As I am driving, speeding farther and farther upstate, I keep having flashbacks…. The guy was erect, bulging out of his pants, and wanted me to what?
“How could he have thought that was appealing?” I ask Tessie.
It’s late afternoon when I make the left at the mailbox marked “The Lodge.” Tessie growls at the man at the gatehouse, who ignores her and asks me to open the trunk, which I do. Cleared to enter, I park and let Tessie out. She bounds towards the main building, wanders into the flower beds, and immediately lets loose with a load of diarrhea.
“What’s the dog’s name?” a burly man carrying a walkie-talkie asks.
“Tessie,” I say.
He crouches, failing to notice the beastly smell. “Are you a good dog, Tessie? A soft, fluffy dog, Tessie? A kind dog, Tessie, not a big mean bitey dog, not a growly-wowly dog?” The dog licks his face. “I knew it,” the guy says. “You are a kissy-wissy dog.”
With Tessie’s name and mine officially on the list, the staff are friendlier this time around, although, admittedly, I do approach the front desk expecting trouble. I drop my bags on the counter, and practically demand, “Search me.” The receptionist all too willingly unzips the bag, pulls my big baggie of medications right off the top, and calls for a supervisor, announcing over the intercom, “We have a drug check at the front desk.”
“I’m not sure you’d call prescription medicine a bag of drugs.”
“We speak our own language,” the receptionist says. “Would you like a cookie and a cup of tea? The supervisor may be a few minutes.” She points to a hot-water pot and a tin of Danish Butter Cookies. I accept a cookie for myself and one for Tessie.
“Is that a therapy pet?” the woman asks.
“No, just a dog,” I say.
The supervisor appears and lifts the Ziploc bag high, holding it up against the glare of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling as though it’s a kind of X-ray machine. She gives the bag a shake, a kind of jingle bells, and hands it back to me. “In your room there is a lockbox like a hotel safe. You keep your medications in there at all times. Do you have any metal, cameras, recording devices, or weapons?”
“Nothing beyond whatever the CIA planted in my head,” I say.
“Humor is easily misconstrued,” the supervisor says.
“I’m nervous,” I say. “I’ve never been in a mental hospital before.”
“Nothing to be nervous about—you’re just visiting, right?”
A young man appears; he looks like a high-school student, but introduces himself as Dr. Rosenblatt.
“We spoke on the phone,” he says, shaking my hand. “I know that last time you were here you didn’t get much of a sense of the place, so I thought we’d start with a tour. The grounds were laid out by the same fellow who designed Central Park and Paris,” Rosenblatt says, leading me through the main “pavilion” and out the back door.
“Nice,” I say, noticing the dappled afternoon light on the rolling hills. “It’s like a national park.”
“We call it a campus,” Rosenblatt says.
A “campus” complete with a bowling alley, golf, and tennis. All of it enough to make insanity look appealing. Tessie loves the tour; she pees and poops multiple times. Rosenblatt ends the tour at a part of the estate slightly off the grid—a long, low building that looks like an old upstate hunters’ motel. “We use this building for a variety of purposes, including as housing for our guests. If security seems a little high, you’re not seeing things. We currently have a former presidential hopeful in-house. We need to be extra cautious: paparazzi have been known to sneak through the woods and so on.”
“Interesting,” I say.
“We treat a full range of issues.”
“Is losing an election an issue?”
“It’s very stressful,” Rosenblatt says. “We’re known for our ability to manage high-profile clients: our remote location, low staff turnover, private airport fifteen minutes away are all on our side. A few years ago, we had a major movie star who had a face lift that got infected, ended up looking like an entirely other person, almost lost his mind.”
“How’d you treat that?”
“Encouraging him to grow a beard until he felt comfortable,” he says, as though it was obvious.
Rosenblatt unlocks the door, ushering me into a room that could have been designed by a Martian who read books in translation about American history: everything is red, white, or blue—or brown. All of it conspiring to seem entirely Yankee, Norman Rockwell, and good for one’s health. The furniture is Ethan Allen, wooden, 100 percent made in America, a style I guess best described as Colonial—I think I’d nickname it “safe” and “timeless.” The hangers don’t come off the rod in the closet, there is a battery-operated electric clock, the lamps all have very short cords. On top of the dresser there’s a small basket with two bottles of water, a protein bar, and some dried cranberries, in case you have to go into survival mode. And as an ironic antidote to the faux-homey approach, a large red-and-white glowing EXIT sign hovers over the door. It’s all like a flashback to an America that never existed, America as it was dreamed by Ozzie and Harriet. On the night table next to the bed, there’s a notepad featuring the logo of this place—an excellent souvenir if you’re into the ephemera of insanity.
I think of Nixon’s furniture: The beloved brown velvet lounger that he used to nap in after lunch in his “private” office in the Old Executive Office Building, around the corner from the White House. I think of the “Wilson” desk Nixon requested for the Oval Office thinking it was the one used by President Woodrow Wilson, but
instead receiving the desk that belonged to former Vice-President Harry Wilson, within which, in 1971, Nixon had five recording devices installed. The desk, now back in its original location, the Vice-President’s Office within the United States Capitol, has since been used by Walter Mondale, George Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden. I have no idea what happened to the “bugs” Nixon had wired from the desk down to an old locker room in the White House basement. I look around the motel room and wonder about bugs of all kinds, electronic and bed—there’s been extensive news coverage about epidemic levels of bedbugs.
“Are conjugal visits allowed?” I ask Rosenblatt.
“Up to the doctor,” Rosenblatt says, forgetting that he is a doctor.
Noting that there is no television in this room, I ask, “Does George have a TV?”
“No television on campus, but we have movie nights on Fridays.”
“At home, he has a television in every room. He can’t bear to be alone. Even when he’s peeing he needs someone to be talking to him. You do know he ran a network?”
Rosenblatt nods.
I go on, waxing poetic about George. “He changed the face of television. George was singularly responsible for shows such as Your Life Sucks and Refrigerator Wars, My Way or the Highway, Doctors in the Off Hours.” Rosenblatt doesn’t seem to be listening. I throw in a couple of titles that I make up myself as a kind of test, like Better Dead Than in My Wife’s Bed, and Rosenblatt’s head bobs along. “Not much of a TV guy, are you?” I ask.
“Don’t own one,” Rosenblatt says. “Never have. Would you like a glass of water?” he asks Tessie.
“She’s more of a bowl dog than a glass half empty,” I say, still on a roll. As I’m unzipping Tessie’s bag and digging out her bowl, she finds the bathroom and has a nice long drink from the toilet.
“So—where did you do your medical training?”
“Harvard,” he says.
“And how’d you end up here?”
“I’m an expert on electroshock,” he says. “As a teenager I treated my cat for extreme anxiety with a home electroshock system, which has since been adapted for use in third-world countries.”