Marco jumped back, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. She had closed her eyes and started a thin, high-pitched, atonal whistle. She stopped and waited. Whistled again for a minute or so. Waited, listening, and then she opened her eyes and lowered her hands. The swelling dissipated and her skin returned to its normal texture and light coffee color.
I couldn’t seem to interrupt his monologue. I was kind of trapped, but curious.
“The University confirms,” she said. “You’re not registered. And, Dr. Monitor on the first floor tells me you have no chart with us. Do you have a supervising caregiver in this city or are you a transfer?”
“How can I get you to believe me?” Marco asked her, aware that his voice sounded whiny.
“I’ll believe you the minute you start telling me the truth or making sense,” she said.
“Give me a lie-detector test,” Marco said.
“All right,” she said.
A small black cube entered the room from the side and attached to the back of Marco’s head. It began making sounds like an electronic soprano recorder, and a video image appeared on the wall behind the console. It began with a pan of the oak tree. Next, a pan of a house with red paper stuffed everywhere, red cloth hanging from lamps, and a red Celtic cross in the front hall.
The doctor sang a loud, sharp note, and the picture dissolved. “God, I hate that color!” she said, rubbing her eyes like they burned.
“Stop!” I didn’t mean to yell, but I was breathing hard. My eyes were wide open. “Stop,” I said again in a softer voice. “What are you doing?” I was trying to keep myself from either punching him or running out of his house. “What are you saying? Where did you get that story?”
Marco continued to sit in his meditative position. “I’m just telling you what happened to me. You said you wanted to hear it. Do you want me to stop?”
He was so calm. This afternoon he’d been nervous, but now he was like a monk.
“How did you know about the red stuff, the cross?” I asked him, still trying to get my breathing back to normal.
“I’m just telling you what went on. Do you want me to shut it off? Not tell you any more?”
I did. I really did. Not another word!
“No,” I said, “keep talking.”
“All right,” Dr. Gila said, and the video resumed.
The scene moved to the closet, to a woman with red forehead and chin, swaying, grimacing, hands pressed over her ears, singing.
The video was interrupted by a silver tube entering the room and handing the doctor Marco’s leather jacket, which was making a series of loud clicks. The doctor unfolded it and the metal puck floated up to her eye level, stopped clicking, made some tones, and then glided out with the tube.
The doctor sang a short phrase and the black box beeped.
When the box left, the doctor went around to the back of her console and sat down. She took a deep breath and sat looking down in the direction of some sliding switches beside her keyboard. Thinking.
“This is serious,” she said, not looking up. “How long have you had this condition?”
Marco ran.
But not far enough.
4000 Treatment
Marco was put in a room where one whole wall was a window looking out on some kind of wildlife preserve. The room itself was small and comfortable, with a bed and overstuffed chair. There was a toilet and a shower behind a translucent curtain, and a sink and refrigerator thing that dispensed ice and cold water. Fruit and rolls sat in a basket on the table. Somehow—was it magnetism?—none of the furniture would move, not even the basket. The room had its own daylight, and it smelled like it was right next to a waterfall.
Beside the basket on the table was a floating computer screen, but you could see through it like the tree Marco had stood under in the field. On the table under the screen was a button outlined by amber light. Marco pressed it and the screen lit, but nothing else happened. He let it go and the screen resumed its previous state.
Marco sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window. Brightly colored birds flew tree to tree. Very large gray squirrels darted across the grounds, up trunks, and into branches. Auburn deer with white streaks on their sides grazed or slept on the rough blue-green grass. Flower gardens on the far perimeter. The sky was a vivid blue. Marco felt his ear. The translator thing was still in place.
Back at the screen, he pressed the amber button and spoke. “Where am I?”
The screen had a soothing voice. “Sector Four One Zero Five Interborough Health Conglomerate.”
“What does that mean?” Marco asked.
After a pause, the screen said, “Ask a more specific question, please.”
“What is the purpose of this place?”
“Regional center for human healing,” the screen said.
“I’m not sick,” Marco said.
Silence.
“I need help,” Marco said.
Silence.
“What year is this?”
“4000.”
“How do you cure mental illness?” Marco asked.
“How would you like to be cured?” the screen asked.
“I don’t … What are my choices?”
“Accept it and do nothing, take compounds to restore optimal brain function, consent to electro-stim surgery.” The screen was pausing briefly between each option. “Live communally with others possessing similar proclivities, undergo radical organ exchange, authorize yearly psychotropic injections, attend University support interventions for enculturative skill-building—”
“What would be the purpose?”
“Developing tools to cope with perceptual differences.” The screen paused again. “Sign up for glandular implants and genetic reprogramming, wear portable neurotransmitter enhancement devices, and, of course, see an integration counselor if you wish.”
Marco considered these options.
“Are you ready to begin?” the screen asked.
“I actually live a ways from here,” Marco said. “What could you give me that I could take with me?”
“How far away?” the screen asked.
“Two thousand years.”
“I’m afraid you will need to stay here a while longer,” the screen said.
The next day the window showed an ocean tide pool with the lowest two feet featuring the underwater view. Anemones waved, hermit crabs scurried, starfish clung to their rocks. From time to time a cod or some rockfish scooted by.
“I may have been asking the wrong question,” Marco said, “because you keep thinking that I’m the person who needs help. I’m not. I’m looking for help for other people. Please tell me how a person who lived in 2007 could fix mental illness.”
The screen stayed quiet for a few seconds. “Do you mean, what was the cure for mental illness in the year 2007?” it asked.
“Sure,” Marco said.
“Where?”
“In California, the United States, uh, Earth.”
“I am sorry,” the screen responded. “I am unable to access primitive records. But I have a speculation,” it said. “Would you like to hear it?”
“None?” Marco said.
The screen remained silent.
The next day the window showed a high mountain lake, fir-covered banks, fish jumping, nesting eagles, no underwater view.
“What is the purpose of the window?” Marco asked the screen.
“Treatment,” the screen responded. “Quieting, grounding. An aesthetic focus to displace anxiety and confusion, should you choose.”
“How do I get out of here?” Marco asked.
“I think you know,” the screen said.
“What if your system has made a mistake?” Marco asked.
“Prove it,” the screen said.
After a while, I realized that Marco had finished talking. I don’t know what time it was. Late. I opened my eyes. Marco’s were closed. I was spooked. I had so many questions, but I had to get out of there. I had to think.
I left without saying a word.
Out in my car, I sat with my hands on the wheel but I didn’t start the engine. There was a glow that illuminated the fields. Reflected city lights, maybe, I couldn’t find the moon. A wormhole, I thought. Yeah, and I’m Bill Gates. I don’t think so. Is a thing like a time portal or another dimension even possible? I would ask Hubie. And how did Marco know about the Lizards and the red, about Mom’s delusion? I turned the radio on and turned it right off again. Shook the steering wheel. Tried to relax my jaw. It didn’t help.
I don’t know whether you push things out of your mind because you just don’t know how to deal with them, or whether that’s a good habit or a bad habit. But it’s what I did right then with the story Marco had told me.
When I got home I sat in a chair in the living room in the dark, looking out the window at the empty street and the shadows that shifted and leaned like ghosts marching.
Surveillance
I woke up thinking about school and feeling kind of sorry for myself. Some junior year, worried every day that Mom would go off. I rarely thought about school, even when I was there, and just did enough homework to get by. My grades had all dropped to Cs since Dad left. I wanted to give up. Just quit. Get baked and go for a low-altitude record. Maybe that’s what Dad did. Maybe he was the smart one.
A memory pooled in my mind. I don’t know where it came from. I saw Mom screaming, twisting in Dad’s arms. He had her pinned standing up, his hands clasped tight so she couldn’t get a hand free and hit him. Her eyes were wild, and she was spitting and cursing and yelling that we were all going to be killed.
I was eight or nine and I remember my head was buzzing. I couldn’t get hold of what I was seeing. “What’s the matter with Mom?” I kept yelling that, kept asking again and again, and Dad was yelling back, “Nothing! Go to your room. Go on! Go back to sleep!” A broken record, until he got hold of the keys and pulled Mom kicking and screaming out the front door. I heard the car start but I didn’t move. Just stood there. Stood there until my eyes got tired, and then went back to my bedroom.
We didn’t talk about it. Ever. Haven’t still. I remembered the feeling, like the earth had come apart. Feeling that my family was disintegrating right in front of me. I didn’t think anything would ever be the same again. But I remember Dad fixed us breakfast the next day and said Mom was visiting people and wouldn’t be home for a few days. And that was that. I did the push-it-out-of-your-mind trick, and I don’t think I thought of it again until this morning. And now I had a cramp that got me running to the bathroom.
Before I left for school Wednesday, I called the police and asked for Patrolman Dullborne. He wasn’t in yet, so I left him a message asking if he would meet me at school that afternoon. The phone rang as soon as I had set it back in its cradle. Hubie.
“Heard you had a little more trouble yesterday,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “Mom’s back on the Lizard thing.” I reached up to rub at my hair, wishing I had taken the time to shower this morning. “She’s not too bad, I guess. They didn’t admit her, just held her awhile to restart her medications, so she’ll probably be coming home sometime early afternoon.”
“My mom said to tell you to let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.”
I could hear Mrs. Ludlow’s voice in the background. “Thanks, Hube. And tell her thanks, too.” How did the Ludlows always seem to know when my mom was off the beam? I bet the local nursing grapevine. “I’ll be all right,” I told him. “Betty Lou whats-her-name from the County is helping us. I’ll see how Mom’s doing when I get home from school.”
After I hung up, I remembered something that Dull-borne had asked me. I wondered about the drugs. Has Mom been using something else to make herself feel better? She used to do pot every day until her doctor told Dad that it was interfering with her psych meds, changed the brain chemistry balance that enabled her to think right. Dad and I had searched the house and gotten rid of her stash, and since then, I had been pretty sensitive to any marijuana smell around the place. I didn’t think she’d been back to pot again. But something else? I wondered if she had any visitors lately when I’d been at school. Hmmm.
I could ask Mr. Bellarmine next door. I knew he had retired sometime last year. His wife had cancer and died a couple of years before that, and now he lived alone and kept a pretty good eye on the neighborhood. Mom had called him a snoop. Of course, Mom was paranoid. I thought it was kind of early to go across the driveway and knock on his door, but I figured I’d do it anyway. If I had Mr. Bellarmine pegged right, he’d been up and organized since dawn.
“Visitor?” Mr. Bellarmine asked, his brow creasing. “Who? That long-haired bozo in the black car? I thought he was just delivering liquor. She’s not supposed to have liquor, is she? Never buttons his shirt? Those motorcycle boots? I never liked that look.” He was standing in his doorway, holding the screen open. “Come in if you’d like,” he said.
He looked like he was dressed for work, in a sportcoat, gray hair carefully combed, shoes shined. He caught me sizing him up.
“It doesn’t do for a person to let himself go, just because he’s retired,” he said, explaining, not apologizing. “Want breakfast?” he asked.
I shook my head.
This visitor was not good news.
Dullborne got me out of Chemistry, which was great, because I was lost somewhere in the nomenclature of inorganic compounds. We walked away from the classroom and over by the stairs, where we had some privacy.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s about my dad. I found him in a bar between here and Lake City, but I’ve already talked to him once, and I don’t think he’ll come home and deal with Mom unless you make him.”
Dullborne took off his dark blue patrol hat, ran his hand over his hair, and put the hat back on. “I can’t do that,” he said. “It’s not legal. It’s not even my jurisdiction. That’s County. Sheriff’s department. But it doesn’t make much difference, because they won’t do it either. A law officer can’t make your father come home and take care of business.” He shifted his weight. “A sheriff could arrest him if there was a warrant out for a crime your dad committed, but I don’t think that would help you any, unless maybe it wound up getting your mom some back child-support money. The law can’t really force anyone to behave like a good husband or father.”
I tried to mask my disappointment. “But, uh, but I thought you said to call you if I needed help.”
“With your mother,” he said. “I can help you if your mother gets out of control and becomes a danger to herself or others, but I can’t help you with your father unless he breaks the law. I’m sorry. Has Betty Lou followed through?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She’s supposed to come by later today and see that Mom’s settled in okay. She might still be there when I get home from school.”
“Yeah, well, I got to go. Sorry I couldn’t be much help.”
“No, yeah, I mean, I understand. Thanks for coming by. One more thing?”
He waited.
“If a guy was giving Mom street drugs, would you arrest him or scare him off? I mean, you asked me before if she was using drugs. Maybe she is. Would you help with that?”
He was rubbing the bridge of his nose again.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Call me if you find out something for sure.”
I watched him walk down the stairs to the ground floor. Now what was I supposed to do?
Vice Principal Onabi answered that question. “Get back to class!”
Rude, Blued, and Tattooed
When I got home after school, a guy was sitting on our couch. While I was standing in the front hall, looking at him, Mom came in from the kitchen and handed him a can of beer. She saw me when she sat beside him. Her eyes were red and didn’t seem focused. She was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. She looked away quickly and brushed her hands against her jeans, a thing she often did when she was nervous.
“Ben,” she said. Her voice was rough,
probably left over from screaming at Dullborne. “Ben,” she repeated, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t answer. She always felt embarrassed when the police had to take her in.
I had so many feelings. I was mad at her for stopping her meds and getting crazy again. Sorry for her. I knew she felt humiliated.
I didn’t know what to say. This was the third time we’d played this scene this year. Nothing I could say would do any good. She’d promised lots of times that she would take care of herself and do what the doctors told her to. I felt like yelling, and I felt like crying. I wouldn’t do either in front of this guy.
I felt like slapping her. As if hurting her physically would knock some sense into her. Right. And an image passed through my mind like a commercial. I was in my room packing. Taking the few things that mattered to me anymore: the photo of Mom and Dad, the framed academic award I got for being the top of my seventh-grade class, my first-place sophomore wrestling trophy, and my fly rod. And then I was walking out the front door, going to live with Hubie. Sweet!
The guy caught my attention, shifting his position on the couch. He hadn’t looked at me. He kept staring at the wall across from him like it had a newspaper taped to it, or maybe he could see out the window and there was something fascinating happening on the lawn.
I didn’t say anything and neither did he. Mr. Bellarmine had been right. He was wearing heavy boots and his shirt was open. He also had tattoos all over his arms, and he was outhouse ugly.
I walked to the coffee table.
“What are you doing here?” I said, a hard edge in my voice.
He looked at me then. Like I was a bug that had lit in his food. He stood up. He was an inch or two taller than me, but probably didn’t weigh as much. Wasted, thin, with a little pot gut. He had scars around his eyes. Broken glass? Knife? And the teeth I could see were stained yellow and brown, at least one missing from both top and bottom. Scraggly mustache.
Lizard People Page 4