Carry the Ocean

by Heidi Cullinan

  Bob introduced everyone to David and Jimmy, and his wife, Andi, and his two daughters, Caitlin and Trina. I hadn’t met the daughters before. They didn’t smile and stayed close to their mother. I could tell David and his sisters and his mom weren’t like Bob. They were afraid of autistic people and thought we were retarded. I put on my best behavior, remembering all my social interactions and cues as best I could, but they still treated me differently than they did Jeremey. All Jeremey had to do was smile, and they relaxed.

  David didn’t like anyone. He told his dad he wanted to go to his cell, which made Bob angry. They went inside David’s room, all of his family, and his aide stood in the hall looking as if he wanted to flap until Tammy and Sally came over and talked to him.

  When David and his family stayed inside his room for a long time, some of the residents went to their rooms or the lounge, but Jeremey and I stayed. David made me nervous, and I wanted to learn more about him. It’s important to know your enemies.

  Jeremey leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “Can you hear them through the door?”

  I nodded and kept listening.

  Jeremey got out his phone and wrote in a notepad, Anything good?

  I put my hand over my ear, and he let me listen without interrupting.

  Jeremey waited patiently while I listened, recording the conversation with my computer brain until I could tell they’d started talking about boring things. Taking Jeremey’s hand, I led him to our apartment and sat with him on the couch. Jeremey didn’t say anything, only sat patiently, waiting for me to tell what I’d heard.

  I’d heard a lot.

  “David doesn’t want to be at The Roosevelt. He thinks we’re a bunch of R-word freaks, and he’s angry his father put him in here. Bob told him everyone at The Roosevelt needs somewhere special to live, how some of the families cried when they found out about it because they were so grateful. There was nowhere else for their loved ones to go with as much support and independence. He told David this included him, and David got angry. He said his dad should just let him die. How can my life be worth anything now? he said.”

  Jeremey sat up straighter. I couldn’t read the complicated emotion on his face. “Oh. That’s not good.”

  “Then his mom started crying, saying Don’t you dare give up, David. She talked about how good the facilities here were, how great Sally and Tammy are, how this is better than the care she could give him at home. She said she hoped he understood she wasn’t kicking him out but that The Roosevelt could give him more than she could.”

  “What did he say then?”

  “That she shouldn’t give him anything but a clean way off this bus. I don’t know what that means. They didn’t ride a bus here, but the stop is close. Does he think it will be too loud? It’s usually a Cybrid, a hybrid bus, and they’re remarkably quiet.”

  Jeremey’s expression was still too complicated for me to read. His lips were flat, his eyes big and round like sad, but his lips were tight like determination. “He’s making a metaphor. He’s feeling suicidal. I suppose that’s to be expected, after such an intense change of how you think your life will go. That’s sad, though, that he feels this way after two years, and with such amazing parents helping him. I can barely get my parents to pay my rent, but Bob built an entire independent living center for David.”

  “David is a bully and a jerk. He’s going to be trouble.”

  Jeremey frowned and shook his head. “I bet it’s more complicated than that. But I agree, I don’t think he’s going to fit in easily here.”

  We stayed in the rest of that first night, so we didn’t find out anything more about David. I had class early the next morning, so after sex with Jeremey, I got on the bus and went to class. I saw David that afternoon when I came home and went to find Jeremey. Jeremey was sitting under his favorite tree, and David was with his aide not far away.

  His face was easy to read that day and every day: he was angry, and he hated The Roosevelt as much as I loved it. I tried to avoid him and not make trouble, but David was mean, and he was bored. If something wasn’t trouble, he made it that way.

  One day when I got off the bus, Jeremey was there waiting for me, smiling and excited. “I’m so glad you’re home.” He took my hand and pointed toward the railroad tracks. “I was afraid you’d miss it. We saw it coming on our walk, and I came to meet you so you could hurry to see it too.”

  He pulled me faster than I would have liked, but when I came around the corner and saw what was coming down the tracks, I was glad he’d pulled too hard.

  It was a train, but it was a train different than anything that had ever gone down that track since I’d been watching it. It was a big black steam engine, and when it came close to the track, it pulled its whistle. My skin got goose bumps from the sound. It was so strange and beautiful, and so was the engine. All the cars talk to me, but this one was old and amazing. I wished the train would stop so I could touch it and learn everything about it.

  Almost better than the steam engine, though, were the cars behind it. Passenger cars. Old-fashioned passenger cars, with people inside hanging out the windows, waving.

  Half the residents from The Roosevelt were at the end of the street, facing the tracks, waving and watching. David was there too, but I ignored him and everyone else because this was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen on my train tracks. I couldn’t stop myself from humming and rocking and flapping in happiness as I stared, counting and memorizing the number of windows and wheels and identifying markers on each car. When the train was gone, I’d go look it up online to see what it was and why it was here, but right now it was in front of me, and I was so happy I felt like electricity.

  I was so happy I forgot other people were present.

  Jeremey was fine. He smiled a big, bright smile at me when the caboose passed out of sight and the train was gone. Sally and Tammy did too. The autistic boy, Mark, who lived next door to us, didn’t look at me, but from the way he’d watched the train, I knew he’d enjoyed it as much as me. In fact, all the residents had.

  Except for one. David hadn’t watched the train. He’d watched me.

  He stared at me from his chair, and I wished his face were more complicated. I could tell exactly what he thought of me. To him I was a freak. Probably he’d think that even more if he knew how much I’d been counting. But he’d seen me flap and rock and heard me hum.

  He looked at me the way the jerks on campus did.

  Bob Loris was a nice man, but his son was not. Sally and Tammy called David that poor boy when he wasn’t around. So did my mom. Even Jeremey felt sorry for him.

  I didn’t. He might be in a wheelchair and have a damaged spine, but I didn’t like him at all. I didn’t wish he were dead, but if he found somewhere else to live, that would be okay with me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jeremey

  I should have been happier about my life.

  I had a boyfriend who I fell in love with more every day. I hadn’t said the word to him yet—I had said I loved him when I was trying to kill myself, but that was more of a goodbye than a confession. I told him in the hospital too, that first day, but that was possibly drugs. If I had loved him then, I loved him more now, but I couldn’t tell him because I was too scared. I knew, though, someday I’d tell him. I had good medication that kept me even-keeled, enough that with regular sessions with Dr. North, I felt better than I could ever remember feeling. Some days depression made it so I had to stay in bed, but not often, and I never felt as overwhelmed as I used to feel.

  My parents were still weird, but they were paying my bills and not trying to mold me into somebody I couldn’t be. I had an incredible place to live, and after my stay at the group home, I knew exactly how precious The Roosevelt was, how lucky I was to have it.

  I had so many things to be happy about, and in a way, I was. Except not all the way. I’d never feel
the same kind of easiness other people did. Happiness and peace would always be something I worked hard to have, even if my external life looked like a 1950s sitcom. I understood this, but that knowledge still made me sad and lonely thinking about it. I was sure my life could be more. I wanted more.

  One of the things I wanted, really wanted, was a job. At first I’d wanted to continue staying in our apartment watching TV all day, but Dr. North pointed out that discontented feeling wouldn’t go away with another Cake Boss marathon. I started looking at options for employment, and without consciously meaning to, I became fixated on the idea of a good job making that last piece of disquiet fall away. The trouble was, I couldn’t find a good job. I couldn’t find any job that I could work at for more than a few days.

  Something was broken in me. I swear I wasn’t this way when I started my senior year of high school, but I was certainly a mess now. And then Dr. North pointed out something that made everything worse.

  “While your depression was more pronounced before, it seems your anxiety has taken over, at least temporarily, as the more predominant force.”

  I straightened. “So what, they can switch around whenever they want?”

  “You will always have both, but yes, you’ll have times where one is more dominant than the other. It’s perfectly natural.”

  Easy for him to say. I felt as if he’d pulled up a cloth on the table, revealing that instead of a thousand-piece puzzle to solve, I suddenly had ten thousand pieces, all of them gray. “Basically you’re telling me, while I’m calming one down, the other goes out of control.”

  “No. Not at all. Think of it as managing dual currents. Sometimes one is stronger than the other. Sometimes they both are. You can’t maintain a perfect calm, but you can accept and control these two elements.”

  I sagged in my chair. “It’s all so impossible. I want to be better. I want to be fixed.”

  “Fixed is a dangerous term. This isn’t a little box we’re ticking so I can give you a different colored pill. This isn’t an infection we’re eradicating. We’ve been treating you and finding solutions for your situation since the day we had our first session. These are life-long conditions. Right now the condition most difficult for you to manage is anxiety. So let’s talk about what’s making you anxious.”

  We talked about what made me anxious every single day we met after that. A lot of things made me anxious, but everything overwhelmed me when I was working. It was something to do with possibly letting my employer down. It didn’t matter how nice and understanding they were—certainly the library staff had seen everything, between clientele and staff members like Darren, but none of that mattered in my head. It was like living in the aisles of Target every day at work. All I wanted to do was scream or curl into a ball, and usually that’s where I ended up by the end of the day.

  I was so ashamed of myself, so embarrassed. Sally and Tammy told me not to be—so did Dr. North, Marietta, even Althea. Emmet told me not to worry about it, that I could work at The Roosevelt, helping. It was true, I could do that. Sally and Tammy always needed another pair of hands. But I worried what would happen when I screwed that up too. I worried, a lot, about what happened to somebody so worthless he couldn’t keep any job, anywhere.

  Sally and Tammy gave me tasks to do, but not many, and I could tell they were jobs that didn’t need doing, that if I melted down, nothing serious would come of my failure. They were also solitary jobs: folding laundry, doing dishes, cleaning out bathrooms. Ashamed as I was that this was all I could do, I did feel better for doing them. In fact, I felt more anxious and disconnected when I wasn’t working, and I started finding staff to ask for jobs so I didn’t sit on our couch and go nuts until Emmet came home from school.

  One afternoon when I went to find Sally, she was in the hall with David, having an argument while down the hall Stuart wailed bloody murder about God only knew what. I hung off to the side, trying to be polite and wait my turn for her attention, but David didn’t look ready to relinquish her anytime soon. His left arm jerked in time to his anger as he angled his head to the side and shouted at Sally.

  “I’m going outside. Nobody has to go with me. I’m going to sit under the fucking tree and stare at the goddamned clouds, all right? I don’t need a babysitter for that.”

  “I understand your frustration, but you haven’t been here long enough for us to learn how far your independence can go, and I don’t have the call button for your chair yet. Missy will be back in fifteen minutes. You can wait that long.”

  Missy was one of David’s many aides. I got the idea David didn’t like her as well as he did Jimmy.

  “She texted and said she’d be late because one of the prescriptions wasn’t called in. If I wait for her, it’ll be time for my evening shitshow.” He waved his right arm at her. It was so strange to watch, like a club attached at his shoulder, awkward and uncooperative as he screwed up his face in anger. “I want some fucking time to myself outside. I’m not gonna die sitting underneath a tree.”

  Sally was just as angry, but when she waved her arms, they worked fine. “I have twelve other residents to take care of, and one of them is waiting for me right now while I argue with you.”

  “So go to him already, Jesus.”

  “David. I cannot leave you unattended yet, not out there without your call button. What if your chair fell over? What if—”

  “I don’t give a shit. If I die, I fucking die—”

  “You’re not going out unaccompanied right now, and that’s final.”

  David’s face got red, and he started to sputter, unable to swear anymore, he was so angry. Except it wasn’t just that. He was frustrated. Helpless, furious, completely unable to control his life enough to go sit outside alone. I understood why Sally couldn’t take him—people down the block had to be able to hear Stuart howling—but I felt awful David had to ask permission and have a chaperone for something as simple as going outside to sit in the shade.

  A thought occurred to me, and almost as quickly it tumbled out of my mouth. “I could go with him.”

  I hadn’t spoken loudly, but David turned his head toward me in the same lopsided way he’d done to Sally. I held still, nervous and unsure as he looked me up and down. “Jeremey, right? You live with Train Man?”

  I winced at the nickname, remembering how much Emmet hated David. I wondered if I shouldn’t do this because of that. But how could it hurt to sit outside with David for a few minutes?

  I glanced away, self-conscious. “I wouldn’t mind going outside with you. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to help you if your chair fell over, but I could go get help. Plus, I have a phone. I could call Sally or even an ambulance. I mean—that’s probably too much. But I can help. If that would be okay with you.”

  David grinned, and I blushed. He was handsome enough most of the time, but when he smiled, he looked like a young Hugh Jackman. The smile evaporated as he tilted his head toward Sally. “Go help Stuart. My new best friend Jeremey’s going to take me outside.”

  Sally glanced from David to me and back again. “Jeremey, you’re sure?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure, but I did want to help. “It’s fine.” I was pretty sure I could sit under a tree with a quadriplegic without having a panic attack. Though if it turned out I couldn’t manage that much, I was going to ask Dr. North to up my prescription on something.

  “Okay.” Sally pointed a finger at David. “Behave.” She lowered her finger as she addressed me. “I’ll be in Stuart’s room if you need me. If he gets hurt, don’t bother finding me. Call 911 first.”

  “Fucking Christ.” David rolled his eyes as she hurried down the hall.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I wasn’t so sure of myself now, alone with David. I wished Emmet wasn’t at school so he could come too. Though as much as Emmet hated David, that probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. “Wh-wha
t do you want me to do?”

  It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d said nothing or made a sarcastic remark about how he didn’t need help, but instead he said, politely, “If you could hold the door open, that would be great. I know it’s automatic, but it doesn’t stay open long enough for me. Dad says he’s going to fix it, but the repair guy can’t come until next week.”

  “Sure. No problem.” I hurried to the door, held it open wide and waited patiently as he navigated his chair through. It did take him a long time, largely because he kept overshooting his angle, heading for the frames instead of the center.

  “Sorry.” His cheeks reddened and he glowered as he tried again to make the approach. “I suck at driving when I’m pissed.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not in a hurry.” I remembered he said he wouldn’t have much time outside and added, “If there’s something I can do to help, let me know. But don’t rush on my account.”

  It might have been my imagination, but he relaxed a little after that, and it wasn’t long before he found the correct angle and went sailing through…to the next set of doors. I hurried around to open them too. They both opened out, which was great for this direction, but he’d have to drive off to the side on the return trip while I opened the inner door. I frowned. Doors kind of sucked, for wheelchairs.

  “No worries.” David breezed through the last barrier between him and the outside, and he sped up as he headed down the ramp, letting out a lusty sigh at the bottom. “Damn. I feel as if I got a reprieve from prison. Thanks, bro. Owe you one.”

  I hadn’t ever been anyone’s bro before. Folding my arms over my belly, I came hesitantly around the side of his chair. What was I supposed to say? I felt panic start to spiral, but I set my teeth and didn’t let it take hold. No. All I had to do was stand here and be his live-action help button. If he wanted to talk to me, he’d talk. If not, I didn’t mind enjoying the moment of quiet.

  He enjoyed it too, shutting his eyes and tipping his head back in the chair’s headrest so his chin stuck up toward the sky. “Perfect fall day.”