Circe

by Jessica Penot

  I went to his room alone to do the interview and found him in bed. It was almost 3:30 and he was sleeping like my wife in the morning. I tried to wake him verbally, but he did not respond. Finally, I had to shake him awake. When he did wake up, he regarded me without concern.

  "Do you know who I am, Mr. Benoit?" I asked.

  "Sure."

  "Who do you think I am?"

  "You're that girl's husband."

  "I'm your new doctor. My name is Doctor Black. We have to sit and talk for a while, would you like to get out of bed and get dressed so we can talk?"

  "No. I need to stay in the bed."

  "Are you sure? You would probably be more comfortable if you were dressed." I couldn't tell by looking at him if he had anything on underneath the covers.

  "No. I gotta stay in the bed."

  I shrugged my shoulders and sat down in the chair next to the bed. "Do you know where you are?"

  Mr. Benoit looked around him at the room and the beds. "I'm at Sal's."

  I began taking notes as he spoke. "You're at a hospital. Do you understand that? You are in a hospital."

  "Yeah, I remember now."

  "Do you know why you are here?"

  "Do you remember that time when Sal and them hitched that goat up to the house and went out to farm?"

  "No. I don't know Sal. I'm Doctor Black."

  "And then there was that dog when we were back in New York. What color was that dog? I can't remember. And then you shot it."

  "Do you know what State you are in?"

  "I'm in Louisiana."

  "You're in Alabama." I said, taking more notes as quickly as I could.

  "Do you know what day it is?"

  "It's Christmas and we're taking Mary Easter Egg hunting...."

  I couldn't really understand what he said after this, as his speech became garbled and frantic. I had to interrupt him after five minutes.

  "Do you know who you are?"

  "I'm John Benoit."

  "Good. Do you know how old you are?"

  "I'm 55."

  "Good. Do you know who the president is?"

  "Gandhi."

  I held up my pencil. "Do you know what this is?"

  "And then there was that time when...."

  "Do you know what this is?" I asked again, attempting to interrupt him. I couldn't. He kept on talking in a never-ending stream of incomprehensible babble. His thoughts were barely linked together and he leapt from one story to another without any provocation. Finally, he stood up in midsentence and walked from his bed to the closet. He had nothing on except a filthy white t-shirt and he scratched his balls as he walked. When he got to the closet, he began putting on more t-shirts. He kept putting on shirts, doing nothing to cover his filthy genitals or shriveled ass.

  "I think I have everything I need for today," I said as I left the room. Mr. Benoit didn't notice me leaving. He just kept on talking. I grabbed a mental health worker on the way out and told them to help Mr. Benoit get dressed. I made a note of their neglect in my report.

  * * * *

  I barely had time to finish my interviews by 4:30. I sat in Dr. Allen's office, hunched over her computer in the dark, like a gnome. She came in without a word or a smile and began putting paperwork in different files.

  "Things went well today," I said.

  "Ms. Gardner reports otherwise," she said dismissively.

  "Ms. Gardner doesn't know what she's talking about."

  Cassie turned and really looked at me. This was the first time I noticed that she might be attractive underneath her statuesque aloofness. Her eyes warmed a little and her lips parted, revealing chalk white teeth, like claws. "That's true," she responded.

  She returned to her work and I returned to mine. For a while I felt satisfied that I had been right. "But," she said as she walked out the door, "truth doesn't always matter. You have to be a diplomat with the treatment team. Everyone on the team has to agree or nothing gets done." She slammed the door behind her.

  "Then you should come to treatment team with me," I muttered under my breath.

  Around 5:30 Andy and John showed up and waited for me to finish my paperwork. They were both patient with me, excited by their own experiences on the acute ward.

  "I was impressed and frightened by the rapidness and efficiency of the entire unit," Andy said.

  "I wonder if it's not too efficient," John responded.

  "No lie, the turnover is incredible." Andy turned and looked at me. Almost forgetting that there had ever been any animosity between us. "We did three intakes each today. MMPIs, intake interviews, TATS, mental status exams on all of them. You should see the reports we are expected to write. And in the morning, for treatment team, the team puts the social worker's write-up on family resources and combines our report, with the psychiatrist's medical exam together and they make a decision on the fourth day. Can you believe that? Most people are referred someplace else in four days. It’s amazing, almost like a machine. The people that move on to the second floor are kept there for two weeks or four weeks max. Their medication is stabilized, referrals are made, and they are out the door. The days of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are gone."

  "For better or worse," John said. "All praise to de-institutionalization and the ‘60s. I wonder if all of these people need to leave so quickly."

  "I'm done," I said. "We can go."

  "Dr. Allen must be a real slave driver," Andy said.

  I smiled at Andy for the first time. "I guess so."

  "We don't mind waiting for you, ya know?" she said. "Take your time if you have other stuff to do. We wouldn't want to get you in trouble with the witch."

  "The witch?"

  "Yeah, that's what they call her over on the other side."

  I laughed. I couldn't help myself, and Andy and I laughed together. "You're not as tight-assed as you try to pretend to be," Andy said with an impish grin.

  "Probably not, and you’re not half as annoying as you pretend."

  "I know. I talk too much. Sometimes I just start talking and can't stop. Truce," she said, extending her freckled hand.

  "Truce."

  "I may accidentally ask you about your parents again. Will this completely dissolve the truce?"

  "Maybe," I said. It didn’t take much for Andy to win me over. Maybe it was just that she tried. The hate dissolved with her playful banter and collection of gossip about different employees on the acute ward. I appreciated her subtle warmth. Most people were immediately rebuffed by my gruffness. They turned away from me and never looked back. Andy was different. She didn’t care that I had hated her or that I had been cruel. She forgave easily and although her babbling was irksome, I let go of whatever anger had been lodged in my heart before because she asked me to.

  The drive home was much nicer than the others had been. John and Andy chatted happily in the front, telling stories about patients and psychiatrists as if they were all equally as crazy. They laughed when I told them about Mr. Fat. I almost forgot that I had ever wanted to gut Andy like a pig. After a day locked in Cassie's noiseless oubliette, I found Andy's gregariousness to be a sweet relief. I learned to forgive Andy for being fat and loud and she forgave me for being distant and rude.

  So the first few weeks passed quickly. I loved the work and hated Dr. Allen. Andy and John filled my need to vent. They always laughed at my jokes about Cassie's thin ass or pale skin and they loved my stories. I found their stories to be a little bit of a salvation as well. I needed to hear stories about treatment teams that cared and worked hard until the patients got the treatment they needed. I needed to know that there was a parallel universe out there in which the Dr. Yoshis did more than laugh under their coats and the Ms. Gardners did more than follow the same list of orders that had been handed down to them for the last decade. I basked in the knowledge that what I saw wasn’t the entire truth. I saw the shadow side. I saw the piece of Circe that was stagnating like the swamp water it sat in. I saw only the dark.

 
They saw the light.

  * * * *

  Autumn comes slowly in the swamp. The land is wet and the heat lingers in the air well into October. I worked and time crept by. Cassie kept her distance and although our eyes met in the office I rarely caught sight of her outside of that.

  It was raining the morning I saw her with the police. I stopped dead in my tracks and moved backwards into the shadows. Curiosity pushed me backwards. I lingered in the corner, like a child listening to the conversation I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear.

  “How long has he been like this?” the policeman asked.

  “Since he got here. It’s unfortunate, but patients have rights now. We can’t tie them to the beds, can we?” she said coolly.

  “Doesn’t seem to bother you much,” the policeman said.

  “He was catatonic. His quality of life wasn’t good, and Mr. Hart didn’t know what he was doing. It was an accident between two men that no one cares about. Wherever John Blevins is, he’s certainly happier there than he was here.”

  “Mr. Hart bit Blevins' tongue out and let him bleed to death? That doesn’t bother you?”

  “No.”

  “This ward has had several unseemly deaths?”

  “This ward houses some of the most severely mentally ill people in the state. Accidents happen.”

  The policeman’s voice lowered, and the whispering became inaudible. I hesitated before stepping into the light. Cassie watched me closely as I slid into the office. Her eyes lingered on me, even as the policeman glared at her with hateful eyes. Even as the policeman scolded her in harsh whispers, all her focus locked on me. He might as well not even have been there. She hardly seemed to notice when he left.

  I went to my desk and spread my work out before me. I opened my files and began to work. Cassie’s heels clicked on the tile floor as she approached me. I tried to ignore her but her voice summoned me from my trance.

  “Do you eavesdrop often?” she asked coldly.

  “It’s hard to avoid a conversation held directly in front of our office,” I replied.

  “I don’t want to see you hiding in corners again, Dr. Black. Is that clear?”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  * * * *

  My wife's mother, Sadaf, had been a rebel in her own time. In the ‘60s, long before Western culture had learned to treat women as equals, Muslim culture still remained 100 steps behind. Sadaf had betrayed her family and her heritage to marry Pria's father, Frank. He had swept her off her feet and out of her mother's home. Sadaf's family had disowned her for years. She had lived as an exile for love.

  This is how Pria relayed her mother's history to me, although I found it very difficult to believe. The Sadaf I knew was a bundle of anxieties. She always wore a sari and bent in every direction possible for a 65-year-old woman to bend in order to stay true to her family and her culture. Sadaf was very close to her family in America, and made regular trips to India to see the rest of her family. She badgered her husband into sacrificing much of his own past so she could keep hers. She guilted him with everything she had given up for him and never let him forget each and every sacrifice she had made.

  It was largely because of this that Pria and I had been married in the traditional Muslim Indian style. Our wedding week remains rooted in the back of mind as an epitaph to every sacrifice Sadaf had ever made. Pria wore seven dresses during the wedding days, each beaded in gold. Each dress shines behind my eyes when I close them and think of her now. I wasn't supposed to see her on that first night. The Henna ceremony was for women only, but I’m not a man of honor, and I snuck in to peek at all of the women sitting on the floor cooing over my Pria. She sat on a large bed, draped in Indian silk, with her head obediently down, like a mouse. Her hair was covered and she held her knees under her chin like a little girl crying herself to sleep. There was singing and prayers and strange colored cakes. Pria was showered with gifts of heavy gold jewelry.

  Throughout the ceremony a spider clung to the wall behind her.

  I watched the spider make itself at home in the midst of all that splendor. It became as ornate and as large as the women in the room. The women who had spent hours wrapping themselves in elaborate folds of fantastic fabrics. Pria herself had taken four hours to get ready that night. I couldn't see her hands or feet from the doorway I crouched in, but I knew they had been painted with the intricate henna patterns that would mark our wedding day. I think that I was that spider. A creature longing for something human. I wanted her the way a spider wants a fly. I wanted to wrap her in my web and hold her there until there was nothing left. I wanted to own all the silk and all the gold and the soft brown skin that was Pria.

  I comforted myself with these images of her every night that Pria invited Sadaf to our house. I conjured those images in order to dispel the image of Sadaf sitting in front of me at the dinner table lecturing me about spending more time with my wife. I would leave whenever I could and sit in our little study pretending to read. Yet, I could never tune out their conversation. I couldn't shut out the noise that was Sadaf. In the six weeks we had been living in Mobile, Sadaf had already spent five full days and 14 evenings at our house.

  "Why do you let her talk to you that way?" I asked Pria.

  "Unlike you, I respect my family. I'm not going to tell my mother to go away just because I find her to be inconvenient."

  "She's not just inconvenient. She eats away at your self-esteem."

  "I've learned to tune her out."

  "You have not. All she does is criticize and make you feel guilty for not doing enough for her or the family, or for forgetting some stupid Indian tradition that we don't give a crap about anyway."

  "You don't care about it. Emphasize yourself in this picture, because I care about my heritage."

  "You’re as Christian as you’re Muslim and you don't really believe in either faith."

  "It's not just about faith. It’s about family and tradition and all that other stuff."

  "You don't care. You just feel guilty about not caring."

  "I care. I'm sorry if it’s inconvenient for my mother to be here. If it is, just tell me and I'll spend more of my weekends with them. She's sick and she's old and she's accomplished amazing things in her life and she deserves respect."

  "She's histrionic and borderline and the only reason she cries and whines so much about her physical ailments is because she knows it gets her the attention she wants."

  "Why did you marry me?"

  "What?"

  "Why did you marry me?"

  "I love you."

  "If you love me, you have to love all of me and that includes my mother." Pria gestured towards a picture of her mother. The picture was terrible, depicting Sadaf as a plump, sullen old woman.

  "I have no direct animosity towards your mother. I just don’t believe that she’s a positive factor in your life. She makes you feel bad about yourself and demeans you."

  "I don't think you care how I feel. I don't think you ever think about anyone but yourself. If you did care about me, you might think how it feels to wait alone for you every night until 8:00. You leave at 7:00 a.m. and get back at 8:00 p.m. and when you’re here you only talk about work. I didn't mind when you were in graduate school, because I knew how hard it was, but now I have options. I don't have to sit alone and wait for you and you just get mad at me every time I don't. If my mother comes over, she's bad for my self-esteem. If I go out with my friends, they are introducing me to unsafe places and negative factors in society. I don't think you want me to do anything but wait for you."

  "I can't believe you. I've given up so much for you. I've given up more than I can count. I gave up my internship. I've given up night after night that I could have been working, doing better than I've done. I gave up my freedom, climbing, and an eclectic sex life. I could have had any woman I wanted. Any woman. I chose you.”

  "You’re so conceited." Pria’s face was a tapestry of anger and disgust. She shook a little as she crossed
her arms over her chest. She stood staring at me like a lion ready to pounce.

  "And you’re still your mother's little puppet."

  "I don't need this from a man who has spent his entire life trying to be his father. Sometimes I wonder how far you go. Do you just mimic his career and mannerisms, or do you mimic his affairs and drinking? Do you expect me to become your mother? A beautiful, soulless showpiece?"

  I didn't know what to say. She had never been so biting before. She rarely commented on my family or my past. I hadn't even been aware that she had known so much about my family. Her knowledge disturbed me.

  "What do you know about my father's life?" I slouched a little, allowing my hands to rest by my side.

  "Your mother is a lonely woman and everyone knows that you were the one who comforted her.” Pria was cold and different. I thought of Cassie. I thought of her cold, granite eyes. My wife had become the statue. The witch.

  "You only get one half of the picture if you talk to my mother. This is irrelevant, in any case. My past has nothing to do with this conversation. We were talking about your mother."

  "That's right. My mother. My mother needs me; you can either accept that and leave me alone, or expect to see a lot less of me." She squared off assertively. Her stance became almost masculine.

  "I didn't know it meant this much to you."

  "I don't want to end up alone when I’m her age. I want my children around me and I believe you get what you give. I want to be what I want from my own children."

  I smiled at her and kissed her on the forehead. "That's fine," I said. I walked away from the conversation feeling numb. In my mind I saw all the places I could have gone without her. I saw all the things I could have done. I loved her, I told myself. I would be true to her, I reminded myself. But I was becoming bitter.

  * * * *

  Cassie was a good supervisor in many ways. She read all of my reports before I presented them at treatment planning, and she always handed them back to me dripping with red ink and her sardonic sense of humor. I was learning from her. I was learning how to diagnose and assess and I had report writing down to a fine art. She even left little Post-It notes with suggested interview questions. Despite my loathing of her, I had to admit that she was a good psychologist.