Lights On, Rats Out

by Cree LeFavour

  The magic scares me; it’s not a thing I chose. It chose me a long time ago and now it’s grown bigger, wrapping itself up in the burning, entwining itself with Dr. Kohl, fueling my desire to stop time. I sit on the edge of my bed and muster the courage to break the rules. This doesn’t come easily but I have twenty minutes until the next check mark goes beside my name, indicating I’m present. That’s twenty minutes of privacy and I need a fix on myself only a burn can deliver. Digging out a cigarette from my secret stash, I manage to light it. I’m in a panic. A nurse or patient is sure to smell the smoke. But I’ve gone this far so I hold the cigarette to my calf, pressing down with all my will, as I always do, until it becomes pleasure. But everything is wrong. There isn’t time. I can’t focus. I can’t turn the pain into anything useful. Cheated out of my only real pleasure, I snuff the cigarette out between my fingers, wrapping the butt in tissue. Now the superficial burn hurts—at least I have the mild, residual pain soon to form a blister filled with clear fluid. That’s something.

  Like a guilty teenager hiding the stink of burned marijuana, I sweep my arm through the air. Opening The Magic Mountain to the dog-eared page, I go to Hans Castorp’s familiar losses. His failure of courage comforts me, making me feel human. He’s my most sympathetic ally here, where time drags on formless and purposeless. I’m a mess. I taste salt on my tongue. It’s either a trace of a word I’ve just read or the residue of squandered heat, the crystallized remorse for everything I’ve done to land myself here.

  Allowing myself to relax into indifference, I doze, nightmares coming at me from a source I’d rather not know. Dreams of near-death escapes, knifing, slashing, and forced sex acts gather as if the most sadistic strands of my imagination have shown up for sport.

  I hold on to logic, breathing to steady my mind. I know I shouldn’t stay long at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, moving one place down amid the absurdity. I need to object to the pointless action and the nonsense, but the part of my brain I cool with a lit cigarette goes on uninterrupted. Before I yield to the pressure of doing myself real harm with a razor, I call Dr. Kohl from the pay phone in the hall, exchanging a $5 bill for the roll of quarters a busy white cap in the nest pushes through the med window.

  Wiping the receiver before I put it to my ear, stuffing the quarters down the slit, I register each making a satisfying click as it drops and falls into place. My fingers run up and down the ridges of the phone’s shiny metal cord. Listening to the rings, imagining them sounding on the other end, causes adrenaline to flood my limbs in great, terrible pulses. He’s there, at home in his house overlooking a stretch of Lake Champlain. His wife hovers nearby, the star of the graceful life spread around him. This is the airbrushed scene I’ve imagined every time I’ve called him.

  She picks up. I ask for him, my tone more polite than it’s been since I left his office a week ago. The familiar patience of his voice settles me instantly. My mind skitters into happiness by tapping the feeling of a static version of myself playing outdoors with Nicole. This childhood idyll is so clearly set in memory that it comes to life in a moment, flooding me with faith in Dr. Kohl’s promise of a better time. I’m seven, wading in Little Woody Creek, thinking I can catch a rainbow trout with my hands, touching the slippery bodies as they zip past. I’m wet and cold and the river rocks barely hold me but I don’t know that. It’s spring and, for the first time since the snowpack melted, I’m in shorts and a T-shirt and the sun warms me. This nostalgic fairy tale fills the bigger, badder losses. Joy. He’s close now. I can sense his presence as if I’m solidly in the room with him, 55 minutes to go.

  I tell, fingering the loneliness, the razors, and the cigarettes in my room. I make a show of disdain for the nurses who’ve missed them but, having no heart for it, I let it go, giving it all up to him willingly. The time goes too fast. Hard black plastic receiver in hand, I tighten my grip, willing the unidirectional seduction to last as long as I can keep it satisfied. Slipping. Metal on plastic, I put it away, releasing him back to his life.

  Spent, I lie on my back in my room in contact with the familiar scratch of the blanket, waiting for the inevitable shakedown. In less than ten minutes two nurses arrive to silently ransack my things—again.

  “The hall received a call from the patient’s psychiatrist in Vermont. He reported that she has just called to say that she had razors and cigarettes hidden among her belongings in her room. A thorough search was made of the patient’s belongings and razors were indeed discovered. The patient was continued on SO throughout the week.”

  I watch them but it’s as if I’m not there. Buddenbrooks isn’t so loyal this time; taking a beating to the spine, it gives up the razor in a flash of silver. The second falls from Tolstoy. It rests on the floor for a moment right where it lands. It’s a harmless object without intent but I can’t remember ever being able to look at a razor without thinking about cutting myself with it. It’s almost a relief to see it go.

  My carrot for getting off SO dangles: therapy. It can proceed when I’m allowed off the hall. I need an unstated number of clean days to earn the status of Hall Escort. That’s not all. The doctor–nurse–social worker powwow to determine the length of my stay, plan of treatment, diagnoses to rule out, and therapeutic activities will now take place on the 23rd, three days later than planned. I’ll be asked to join them in conclusion so that they can tell me all about myself. Finally end the SO? Begin a pharmacological experiment? Give me a Rorschach and then some? All I want to know is how long I’ll be here. I could do with a lit cigarette and privacy. Days—7 days to go.

  CHAPTER 25

  Looking-Glass Cake

  I’ve been warehoused for nine days. The TAG Heuer watch I ordered using the hall pay phone arrives. Long since inspected through the plate-glass window of Tick Tock Jewelers, 185 Bank Street, Burlington. I don’t have a lot of nice things but I wanted this one. Now it’s mine. As Dr. Kohl liked to say, I “cathected objects not people,” which is a fancy way of saying I form deep emotional attachments to objects in ways that are unusual and perhaps even harmlessly pathological—if there’s such a thing. Depositing emotional investments in objects rather than people protects against the possibility of rejection while providing an idealized connection that, unless I lose the object, remains under my control.

  That’s why my favorite pink sweater isn’t just a sweater—it’s a talisman. I’ve prepared myself to form a particular relationship with the watch as a symbolic barricade against the tyranny of time here, on the inside. The watch also represents a tentative gesture toward rapprochement with the 11s, as if by so subtly acknowledging their power, the power of the numbers on the watch I will worship, I can get on their better side.

  The contrasting fair blue face of the watch, bright as Turkish tile, is framed by the stainless-steel bezel; and the industrial link bracelet wraps snugly around my left wrist, locking into place with a satisfying click. The heft of it balances the bulky white gauze encompassing the whole of my right arm. The cat’s-eye glow-in-the-dark painted hands move precisely as the second hand sweeps around the face smooth and sure as time itself. I’ve never bought such an expensive object nor worn anything I’m so certain I like. It augurs trickery. If I’m locked in B-1’s regimented space to be mandated by a clock—waking, rounds, smoking, mealtimes, bedtimes—I’ll be worthy of keeping the hours. As it turns out, the Amex and dirty pay phone are still good for something.

  The monotony of routine builds as the days span out, my frustration mounting as the consciousness of imprisonment in the absence of “treatment” of any kind accumulates. They’re testing me? Or am I just going to be warehoused? This is it? I’m doing what I can to conjure the good stuff: the self-contained lightness and purpose of cross-country skiing over a well-packed track when the temperature hovered around freezing, allowing just enough friction for glorious speed; the irrational joy of watching a snowstorm from the window as the shapes of familiar objects lost their edges, softening into mere bumps of downy white; lis
tening to my father read a book I’d heard thirty times before just so I could stop movement while loping around inside the world the illustrations brought to life …

  Cards and gift boxes begin to arrive. My twenty-sixth birthday is upon me: 9/20/91. I choke on the flood of goodwill. The sickening vulnerability I feel when I think how all these cards and gifts come from people who now know I’m not what I once seemed is more than I can absorb. New friends, old friends, coworkers, family—they’re coming as if in answer to a whistle to suffocate me with their well-intentioned sympathy. I suppose my family has spread the word in an effort to yield a virtual deluge of support. My cheeks flame at the thought of how ungrateful I am, while the embarrassment churns in my stomach, slowly turning to cement.

  Matt sends packages with mix tapes—Tuck and Patti, John Hiatt, Bonnie Raitt—mail, and reports of my cat. One of the packages contains my XL red Woolrich union suit and the note, “I thought you would also appreciate having your jammies because they’re so comfy to snuggle in.” This was the boyish charm I’d fallen for. I feel my grandmother’s warmth and affection in spite of the Hallmark card featuring a mouse holding a birthday cake on a background of peach paper, “For a Special Granddaughter,” and inside “With many loving wishes for a birthday that will bring / All that’s bright and happy and the best of everything!” Indeed! The endless cheerful notes and small gifts from my father’s wife, Faith, contain no pity, just concern, warmth, and generosity. My friends send lighthearted postcards about nothing. I appreciate their lack of pained earnestness.

  The ongoing gifts of well-thumbed fruits, nuts, and vegetables and lengthy letters from my dad made me weep, a mix of longing and humiliation flooding me at the extent of his generous efforts to cheer me, fix me, support me in the ways he knows best. As a broken object I’ve let him down, my failure to remain intact putting emotional demands on him we’re both uncomfortable with.

  “Enclosed you’ll find a late birthday present, gleanings from the farmers’ market this A.M.—hope it all gets there in reasonable shape. I worry about the carrots and tomatoes. The plums, from baker Edie by the way, may seem like little bullets but try one, you’ll like ’em. Same with the nectarines—‘Should be eaten out of hand, crisp like an apple!’ says the grower. The almonds are from the backyard and I dried the figs.” Followed by, a week later, “In the package are a few more Jonathan apples. We’re really right between the early and late apples and next week should give me better fruit pickings. The dried fruit is organic—no sulfur.”

  I treasure my sister’s wacky sheets of recycled paper from Boise, usually the back of a political poster she’d been putting up around town, often decorated with line drawings of small animals that manage to combine cute with weird, every other available space filled with her tiny writing. Brave, my sister operates differently from me. Her vulnerability, enthusiasm, and optimism match her natural generosity. The raw truth of her letters, her concern, and her expression of how important I am to her make me really cry—a messy state I try to avoid. I put the letters away.

  I want to be in the world freed of the apparatus of thinking about being in it. The letters of my name on all this mail are one random trail, meaningless. I spell nothing. I don’t bother much with seeing myself through others’ eyes; I’m too busy seeing myself through my own eyes and everything about this scene feels unreal. I’m confused by all the goodwill.

  The birthday. Some party venue this is. The only cake they had was white, so they delivered their oversize sheet of sugar. I imagine it passing through a metal detector or sliding beneath an X-ray so the orderlies can check for razors. Or was it one of many in a dedicated basement birthday cake freezer stacked with white cakes identical to mine? I imagine the slabs thawed overnight in the dark kitchen so that at 11 A.M. the following day the cooks in their whites could send the cakes up. Wherever it came from it looks like all the other grocery store cakes I’ve ever seen, except the French groove tip used to pipe along the base has so many finger dents the frosting looks unintentional. Two pink sugar paste flowers hard as dry mud form a cluster—if you can call it that—in the upper right corner. Settling in to a dirge played as a birthday song, the colored wax melts, fiery stubs closing in on roses and icing. Covered in wax. A wish? Quick, blow the fire out. Parceled and sliced … Pink rose frosting flower for me, please. It’s my birthday. The cake is all sweetness suspended in slippery shortening. I chew in faith, swallowing. A wish? Did I blow out candles? Or is it a dream, this birthday cake and the gathered ghouls chasing bites of cake around paper plates with useless plastic forks? Garbage heaped: clear plastic bell, cards, gifts, crumbs, pink roses, uneaten lettering, smudged frosting. Fill it up. Overflowing with kind thoughts and good wishes, food dye, and flour. Dump it. This party’s over. Rather than cake I eat confusion for afternoon tea. As Alice says, “I’ll never go THERE again! It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!” Party? Birthday party? Tea party? But of course: “‘You don’t know how to manage Looking-glass cakes … Hand it round first, and cut it afterwards.’” I didn’t know.

  CHAPTER 26

  Characterologic

  Today is the day. Once I hear the locked door of the unit slam shut I know the rest of the patients on the hall have gone to breakfast. It’s so quiet I can hear the words coming from the TV someone left on across the hall two doors down.

  The Diagnostic Summary and Master Treatment Plan are ready. I’m scared. Ten days on SO lockdown, my determination wilting, the delusions of persecution folding in on me as if I’m an empty box of lo mein. They have my razors, cigarettes, and matches. They’ve never seen the minor burn on my calf—it’s been covered by pants or pajamas. If my mind is under close scrutiny my body, with the exception of the burns the nurses and doctors know about, remains unexamined.

  I’ve not left the hall, slept uninterrupted, or been alone for more than twenty minutes. Masturbation, the only sort of abandon I can come up with that doesn’t involve reading or lighting a cigarette, presents difficulties. Timing dictates all. The door is never fully closed, as per the rules. How would it be to belong to Dr. Kohl—to feel his hands on me? The thought is all I need of desire. Once I’m in motion, of course, the danger of getting caught adds a frisson. I rub one out, but its insufficiency only heightens the desire to burn a fresh hole in my skin.

  I shouldn’t be thinking about this as I stand here facing a circle of professional eyes pointing their X-ray vision at me. Do they know I’ve fallen in love with my shrink? It’s entirely unoriginal, after all. Whatever’s in their minds, they’re ready to report it to me, judging from the stacks of paper they’ve amassed. Nurses’ data must be the bulk of the material layered into the authority and observation skills of the doctors on rounds, who pop their heads into my room every weekday morning. The data must be thin; I haven’t had a sustained conversation with anyone since I arrived. The collective aura put off by their doctor–nurse–social worker regalia gives them the authority they need. I’m listening for the answer to only one question: “When can I leave?” I stand timid, the bandaged arm a pink elephant announcing itself—except it’s white. I’m wearing my high-tops, black pants, and favorite sweater for safety.

  Present at the meeting: Dr. Robin Weiss, Primary Therapist; Dr. William Simons, Attending Psychiatrist; Georgine Schildknecht, RN; Janet Cohen, LCSW; and Terry Wilpers, OTR/L. Their report contains what I already know:

  The patient has been withdrawn and isolative on the hall, spending time pacing with a Walkman on and reading quietly on the hall, avoiding contact with other patients. She appears to choose which staff and occasional patients are worthy of her attention and will be cooperative and will be talkative and forthcoming with them while excluding all others … The patient is clearly very intelligent and verbal and is extremely motivated to engage in therapy … She appears to have signs and symptoms of depression over the last couple of years. There is clearly evidence of personality disorder and a question of dissociative behavior as wel
l.

  They make me sound so likable … so much fun.

  The first thing they do is hand me my schedule:

  A. Individual Therapy, Dr. W., 3 times a week for forty minutes [sessions are even shorter on the inside]; B. Attending Rounds, Dr. Simons, daily for ten to fifteen minutes; C. Family Therapy as arranged; D. Activity Groups, most lasting 50 minutes to an hour, including Art Therapy, Communication Skills Group, Cooperative Task Skills Group, Individual Task Skills Group, Recreation Therapy, Dance Therapy and Pre-Discharge Planning.

  Despite the official-sounding titles the activities aren’t anything more than a foil. I suspect they can be dispensed with. Quietly disregarding the bulk of the schedule should do the trick. Glancing at the list, I don’t imagine I’ll be so busy as all this. I’m not interested in the daily schedule of any single activity—I’m looking for evidence of the total duration of my stay. I scan the paper again.

  Rounds. Okay. There’s no avoiding rounds.

  Straight therapy I’m eager to begin. I have nobody to talk to. I don’t expect more than a welcome distraction. I see I’ve been assigned a female therapist, Dr. Robin Weiss, as per Dr. Kohl’s request. It certainly should eliminate the annoying distraction of erotic transference. He must not think much of my fidelity.

  Art therapy. I’m tempted by the idea even if it’s a pilloried psych ward cliché. Painting and drawing calm me.

  I glance at the next three items, each under the broader category “Group.” I’ll talk to the doctors if they talk to me. I’ll talk my way around the nurses’ rules as much as possible. I’ll let the social worker know how much I value her advice on halfway houses, grooming, holding down a job, and paying bills. But I’ll do nothing in a group.