by Scott Hale
He texted his supervisor a reminder of where he was, what he was doing here, and when he expected to be finished. She responded almost immediately with a “Sounds good.”
Dario pocketed his phone, and his stomach rumbled at the smell creeping through the third-floor door. It was the smell of cinnamon and bread, with an underlying aroma of marijuana. Compared to the odious odor lifting off the river, it might’ve well been the fragrance of heaven itself. The mixture reminded him of his grandmother and aunt—the two biggest potheads he’d ever met in his life.
So he breathed it in—the memory and the nostalgic pores carrying across his mind—pulled open the door, and stepped onto Oblita Vesper’s level.
After everything—the stories about Brooksville Manor, and Jam and Michael’s strange behavior and warnings—what Dario expected to find on the third floor in no way matched what was actually there. In fact, this part of the Manor put his own apartment complex to shame. The floor wasn’t carpet, but spotless tile checkered with red and black diamonds. The walls weren’t painted, but wallpapered with a seamless, spotless pattern of pink, art nouveau-styled flowers set against a soft, green field. Gone were the buzzing fluorescent tubes; in their place, small chandeliers hung—twelve in all, one for each apartment on this floor, they cast their sleepy light up and down the windowless hall. Given the state of the Manor and the neglect shown to it, Dario couldn’t believe these decorations had been part of the original construction. In a place where half the community was hoping it would fall into the river, who the hell had taken the time to transform a part of it into what was, more or less, a Victorian hideaway?
Oblita Vesper seemed the obvious answer. But she was probably on a fixed income that was just enough to keep the grave away. Dario didn’t know what he had stumbled into, but he kind of liked it. He liked when people went against the expectations placed upon them. It was too easy to assume, too convenient to stereotype. He liked to think people were more than what the rest of the world had decided they could be, even if they became exactly what the world decided them to be. Too often he had too many clients who had no idea who they were or what they wanted. They constantly sought out answers for problems they couldn’t begin to articulate. So maybe the residents of Brooksville Manor were freakish to most, but hell, at least someone here knew what they wanted. With that alone they were doing better than most.
He was looking for apartment 312. Apartment 306, the first that he passed, had the door open. Inside, a skinny man with no legs was sitting in his wheelchair, masturbating to TV static.
“Just watching a sex tape,” the man said, never taking his eyes off the television, never losing rhythm. “Oh yeah.”
Dario tried not to look at the man’s penis, but like passing a car accident on the highway, he did anyway. He waved the man off as he got off and continued down the hall. His naivety had come and gone, and cynicism was setting in again. His wife said he was of two minds. She didn’t know how right she was.
He continued on, past 307, where someone was crying behind the closed door, and jumped. Out of 308, a little girl with tourniquet-tight braids bolted, a squirt gun in her right hand, because her left hand was missing at the wrist. Before Dario could say anything, her mother, stocky and out of breath, ambled awkwardly through the doorway. She had a squirt gun, too, and her drenched shirt told Dario she was losing this fight badly. The mother’s smile was more gum than teeth, and more pain than happiness in that glowing grimace. This woman was an amputee, too. She was missing an index finger on both hands; from the way she walked, she seemed to be missing toes, too.
The little girl grinned at Dario.
Her mother mouthed an apology, checked her watch, and then, eyebrows raised, gunned down her daughter until they both made it around the bend.
When it came to conducting therapy, one’s environment could be just as important, if not more so, than the mental illness they presented with. It would be hard for anyone to manage acts of aggression when they were surrounded by groups of people who taunted them on a daily basis, or bullied them on the first of every month for their government assistance. When one’s apartment is ravaged by bed bugs and a complete lack of attention from the landlord, depression and guilt over one’s own squalor isn’t all that unimaginable. A person with schizophrenia might not prosper living with a reluctant relative with thin walls or prying company. Just as someone sexually attracted to children, possibly from their own sexual abuse, might not be able to resist the temptations before them with a school in their backyard.
Environment could be a cause, or it could be an aggravator. If Oblita Vesper was to be believed, then this was the first time in her life she had reached out to professionals for help. Dario refused to believe the fact her living in Brooksville Manor, a hive for all sorts of urban legends, and on the third floor, where the physically disabled had a run of the opulent halls, could be chalked up to pure coincidence.
Encouragement, curiosity, or a court order often led to clients coming into Dario’s office. But regardless of the reason that brought them, the catalyst for doing so was almost always the same: They could no longer cope.
So what had really brought Oblita Vesper’s name into their office? Her name was awfully well known and, in some ways, respected for someone who supposedly had crippling social anxiety. The body dysmorphia was starting to make more sense given her neighbors, but with that train of thought, did she find her surroundings repulsive or empowering? Or was it something else? Something in the environment? On an appointed hour? For a place frozen in time, maybe it made sense for everyone to be obsessed with it.
Speaking of time, Dario was going to be late. With an hour to complete the intake and dinner with the wife at six-thirty, he couldn’t afford being locked up here all evening. Twisting his wedding ring off his finger, he took out his wallet, dropped it in its usual bulging pocket, and, fighting fatigue, reminded himself to give a shit. Social work was, if nothing else, a balancing act after all—an unstable harmony of function and feasibility, like most things in life.
Apartment 309, and again, the door was open. Dario peeked inside and found only a dimly lit living room with an air conditioner on full-blast. He could hear a toilet flushing somewhere deeper in the den, and the metallic clicks of a walker or cane on tile.
The single chandelier above apartment 310 was out. Had it always been? Dario could’ve sworn it hadn’t been, but the heat had also robbed him of his memory of the trip here, so what did he know? Someone was home behind the scratched-up door, though. Two people, maybe. He could hear them in there, cleaving through dinner ingredients on a counter or cutting board.
Coming up to 312, Oblita Vesper’s apartment, Dario paused mid-knock as the door to 311 creaked open behind him. He waited a few seconds for whoever it was to come out, or for the door to shut, but neither happened. Whoever it was, they were watching him. He could feel their burning gaze upon the back of his neck, the searing judgment that came with their sharp breaths.
Dario ignored them and knocked twice upon Oblita Vesper’s door. The wood was humid to the touch, and left his knuckles glistening.
“You’re man enough,” apartment 311 whispered behind him.
Dario couldn’t make out whether the speaker was male, female, or some combination of the two. Instead of turning around, he made two fists and waited.
Apartment 311 started playing with what must’ve been the chain lock and mumbled, “Thank you.”
As apartment 311 shut their door, apartment 312’s opened, and there, at last, she stood.
If Oblita Vesper was sixty-five, then she was an easy sixty-five going on forty. Time had been kind to her, and if this place was frozen in time, then so was she, because not only did she look younger than she claimed, but she had the quality of someone who had just climbed out of a bath. It wasn’t that she was wet—it was the way her cult-style hair fell well past her hips, and the way it stayed together; the way her skin was simultaneously pale and subtly flushed. She was attra
ctive in the way people from old, black and white photographs were attractive: bred out features made soft by the light, or emboldened by the dark; and intensely alien in how she carried herself, as if she were a subject who had stepped straight out of its portrait. She wore no jewelry, perfume, nor make-up, but she was well-kempt, and the clothes she wore—a modest blouse and blue jeans—were, except for some occasional fraying and dark stains on her cuffs, clean. He searched her for tattoos and scars. While he couldn’t locate the former, the latter leapt out at him almost immediately. Oblita Vesper had two vein-like scars that ran from the corner of her mouth, down her throat, to somewhere underneath her shirt. They looked fresh.
“Hello,” Dario said, cheerfully. He extended his hand: “Dario Onai, from the Brooksville Community Health Center.”
Oblita Vesper smiled and took his hand. “Oblita Vesper. It seems we both have strange names, Mr. Onai.”
“Dario is fine.”
Still holding his hand, she said, “Italian… and African?”
“Yes.” Was she rubbing his wrist with her thumb? “Father was Italian. Mother was African. She was fiercer, so we took her last name.”
Finally, she let go of him. “It is a shame those things a woman still has to fight for these days—” Oblita’s eyes went dim, “—but please, come in.”
Dario did as he was told and went with Oblita across the threshold.
For a social worker, home visits could prove to be invaluable in the therapeutic process, as they often times gave glimpses into an unguarded realm of the client. The smell of the home and the condition it was in; the decorations and décor, if there were any at all; the evidences of excess and the phantoms of frugality; the state of the bathroom, the bedroom, and contents of the kitchen—all of it meant something, even if it didn’t mean much at all. Were there pictures on the wall, and if there were, who or what was in them? Was the home a place where someone was living, or just getting by? Was it the best they could do? Or was it all they told themselves on a daily basis they deserved?
In some ways, a home was what inhabited it. What was it, then, that inhabited the apartment of Oblita Vesper? Staring at it from the entryway, Dario couldn’t be sure. If the hallway had been the corridors of a museum, then the apartment of Oblita Vesper was a veritable gallery. It was a studio space that, by illusion or architectural trickery, seemed to extend beyond the confines of the Manor itself. The color palette was red and white, and a pinkish tone bordering on bloody milk. The walls were the very off-putting off-white, while the bed, tables, couch, and loveseat were deep, Valentine’s Day red. The carpet was white, and so, too, were the curtains; the appliances—the refrigerator, microwave, CRT television, phonograph, and police scanner—were white as well. Everything appeared to be placed very particularly, so much so that Dario imagined there must be chalk outlines underneath each piece of furniture. There was no garbage, nor were there any dirty clothes, or hints of the insects that would enjoy nesting in either.
Other than the color of the apartment, which, morbidly, reminded Dario of the birthing videos from high school health class, there was something about the place he couldn’t place. Was it a sound? Or a presence? It was definitely the walls. Something in the walls. Scratching, maybe, like birds or rats, or even squirrels stuck or trying to come through. Dario had the same thing happening in his attic. His wife liked to give him a hard time and say the only thing he should be worrying about were all the bats in his belfry. If Oblita was sixty-five going on forty, then his wife with all her old person mumbo jumbo could’ve easily been Oblita’s opposite.
Dario smiled, rubbed his finger where his wedding band had been, and said, “Thank you so much, Ms. Vesper, for meeting with me today.”
Oblita waved him off, went to the refrigerator, and half opening it, offered: “Bottle of water?”
Typically, social workers were encouraged not to accept anything from clients, but Dario nodded, anyways. Many of Brooksville’s population in the lower socio-economic range were from the nearby mountains, where niceties such as offering a guest something to drink were taken as seriously as Sunday Mass. He didn’t know anything about Oblita, not even after seeing her funky ass apartment, so he wasn’t about to step on her toes right before their big dance.
Dario grabbed the top of the kitchen chair and asked, “May I?”
Oblita, carrying a bottle of water for him and her, nodded.
He placed his bag on the ground, his ass in the chair, and waited until she was sitting opposite him.
“This summer has been too damn hot,” Oblita said, sliding him the bottle of water.
He took it and nodded. “Not a fan.”
Oblita’s gaze narrowed on his hands. “Divorced?”
“Oh—” he touched the pale mark on his finger from the wedding band, “—still married.”
Oblita bit her lower lip. “You really a therapist? Or a gentleman caller?”
“Ah, ha, uh… no, no. It’s… habit. Some of the individuals we work with have done some very violent… things. Some have… gone out of their way
to track down service providers. Just a habit.”
“I take it you do not find me to be a threat?”
Dario shrugged. “I’m sure you’re a force to be reckoned with when you want to be.”
Oblita leaned forward, resting her head against her palm. “Mm, perhaps.”
“Well, we do have a lot of paperwork to get through today—”
“Shame.”
“—but mostly, I really just want to get to know you.”
“Of course.”
“But I’m the stranger in your house, so I feel like I should properly introduce myself.”
“Sure.”
“Again, my name is Dario Onai. I’m a licensed independent social worker from the Brooksville Community Health Center. I’ve worked there for about four years.”
“Do you like your job?”
“I do. What about you?”
“I don’t work.”
“Used to?”
“I was a glorified gardener, if you will.”
“Oh. Very cool. Do you miss it?”
“I still garden on the side, but I just couldn’t stand the people I worked for. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve changed.”
“You’re sixty-five.”
“Sadly.”
“You look about half that.”
Oblita Vesper twisted her mouth in a smile. “And who says therapists are useless? I feel better already. I think it’s just from being around all the plants all the time.”
“Your referral came from your PCP, Isabella Ødegaard. Was that her idea, or yours?”
“Hers. And then, after I thought about it, mine.”
Dario nodded. With his foot, he nudged his bag closer to him.
“I have a lot going on. I have no one to really talk to.”
“Family?”
“No,” Oblita said, sharply. “And I feel guilty about things. I’ve lived in this building since it was built, you know?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And I haven’t ever really left it since.”
“It sounds like you have so much on your chest these days, it’s almost as if you can’t breathe.”
“Exactly.” Oblita bit her bottom lip again. “Yes.”
Dario took two pens out of his pocket. He could tell by the way she was sitting and speaking that she was ready to move forward. He leaned down, took her folder from out of his bag; and from that folder, he removed a small stack of intake paperwork and laid it out before them. He handed her a pen. Therapy was supposed to be a collaborative effort, not the therapist telling the client to live their life the way the therapist would themselves. If she wasn’t doing this for her, at least, eventually, then what was the point of doing it at all?
One by one, signature after signature, they went through the process together. The consent to treatment, the notice of privacy practices, and an explanation of HIPAA (Health Information Portability and Acc
ountability Act) and how it related to Oblita and how it protected her. They went through the billing for her insurance, and her releases of information, if she ever wanted Dario to speak to or be spoken to by anyone else in regards to her treatment (she didn’t). All that remained were the physical and the mental health status exam, and whatever Dario could manage to get for the diagnostic assessment.
Well-kempt, attentive, euthymic, oriented, without any obvious delusions or paranoias—Dario checked the appropriate boxes while never breaking eye-contact with Oblita.
“I know that you said you have lived in the Manor since it was built, but have you lived in Brooksville all your life?” Dario asked.
“I have not.”
Dario’s head twitched. Something about her voice, the way she answered him.
“What about yourself?”
“I’ve bounced back and forth between the Brooksville, Bedlam, and Bitter Springs tri-county area a lot.”
“Had a hard time making roots?”
Dario hummed. “You?”
“I’ve made roots here just fine,” she said, “but a lot of moving around before then.”
“You said you’ve lived here since the Manor was built?”
Oblita nodded.
Dario said, “I bet you’ve seen it go through a lot of changes,” but what he really wanted to make mention of was how that was impossible; how the building was older than she was by a few years, and if she did do a lot moving around before coming here, then there was no way she had been here since the ‘50s. But this was their first session. Confrontation was a tool not to be used lightly.
He went on: “Do you have any siblings?”
“A brother, but he passed away some time ago.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you. I think of him often.”
There it was again. The strange inflection in her voice, almost like an accent.
“Mother and father?” Dario asked.
“Gone as well.”
He made a sympathetic noise, said, “Were you close to them?”