Madness

by Marya Hornbacher

  She shrugs. "Have you thought about finding a new dentist?" she asks. "You could find one with a regular parking lot."

  I stare at her, astonished.

  "That's what a normal person would do," she says calmly. "If they didn't like going to one dentist, they would find another one that worked better for them."

  "But there's no reason!" I shout. "I should be able to deal with downtown and a stupid parking garage!"

  "Why should you?"

  I slump back in my chair, stumped.

  "See, the thing is, you've got this idea of normal that's not normal. Normal people don't do everything perfectly. You don't have to do everything perfectly to be normal. To be normal, you've got to kind of relax and let some things go. Your problem is that you're so used to being in crisis that your whole perception of yourself is as a fuckup, a permanent fuckup, never someone who gets to not be a fuckup, so you have to torture yourself and hate yourself just to be as good as everyone else. You're having a hard time realizing that you're not a fuckup anymore. You're entering a whole different period of your life where you are normal. And you're having a hard time getting used to it."

  I gaze out the window. "But if you're not trying to be perfect, then how do you know if you're doing things right?"

  "There is no right," she says. "There's the best you can do. And that's fine. That's normal."

  "The best I can do is sometimes completely fail," I say.

  She shrugs. "Fine," she says. "The rest of us do it all the time."

  Bewildered, I wander out to my car.

  I'm wearing a pair of pants four sizes too big and there are nine half-full coffee cups on my desk. Some of the cups also hold cigarette butts, some have mold, and one has an apple core. I've been in my office since, I think, last Tuesday; it is either Friday or Saturday today, maybe. I just went into the kitchen to get something to eat and found we have only condiments. I will be eating frozen spinach, pesto, and caper berries for dinner.

  Megan shows up. She wants to go to lunch. But I'm certain it is only seven o'clock in the morning.

  "It's noon," she says, standing in my doorway. "Can I come in?"

  "It isn't noon," I answer, opening the door wider and going down the hall. She closes the door and follows me to the kitchen. I stand there staring at the clock on the stove.

  "It's noon," I tell her. "How is it noon?"

  "Happens every day," she says.

  "What in the hell have I been doing? Did I just get up?" I ask.

  "I don't think so," she says. "You're dressed."

  I look down. I am dressed, more or less. "I don't know what I've been doing," I say, baffled.

  "Working," she says. "I called you at nine. You were working."

  "What was I working on?"

  "The book," she says.

  I stare at her blankly.

  Megan has her own weirdnesses. She has some issues with disorder and dirt, and occasionally has her rabid fixations. So, just as a special treat for some unsuspecting waitress, Megan and I sit down at a table in a new restaurant we're giving a try. We have been having lunch at the same restaurant every week for the past five years; we thought we'd venture a change.

  "I would like a cup of coffee with skim milk," Megan says to the waitress, smoothing her napkin.

  "We only have two-percent," the waitress says.

  Megan stares at me without expression for a good long while in silence.

  "Okay," she says finally, and picks up her spoon and squints at it.

  The waitress goes away. Then I remember I want coffee too, so when she comes back with a plate of bread, I order a cup, and we order lunch. She leaves.

  "Is it Friday or Saturday?" I ask Megan, scooting myself into the far corner of the booth, where I can keep an eye on the room.

  "Thursday," she says. "The day we always have lunch."

  "Right," I say, nodding.

  "When was the last time you left the house?"

  "Last week sometime." I crane my neck around the high-backed booth.

  "There's nobody there," she says mildly. I turn back around, fold my legs up under me, tuck my hands between my thighs, and cross my feet so that I am pretty much in a knot, my back pressed against the wall. I like to feel compact.

  Megan goes to the bathroom. When she comes out, she walks over to our table and stands there. I have switched to her side of the booth. I look up at her.

  "What was wrong with that side?" she asks.

  "It made me anxious."

  "Okay," she says, and sits down. "Can I wash my hands at your house?"

  "Of course," I say.

  "I forgot my wet wipes," she explains.

  The waitress comes back with my coffee and then leaves again. I spread my napkin out on the table, take a piece of bread, tear it into three pieces, lay them out on the napkin, and butter them with exactly one-third of a pat of butter apiece. It makes me calm to do this. Megan watches me. "I need a little plate," she says, and flags down the waitress.

  "Yes?" the waitress says.

  "I would like a little plate and an extra napkin. Please."

  "We're lots of fun," I remark.

  "I tip well," Megan says, lining up the pepper with the salt.

  We discuss the new series of paintings she is working on, work she's doing on the Iraq war, the sources of light and color so saturated they seem to bleed. We talk about the chapter that's driving me bananas, and my very weird writing process. We discuss the war, and our husbands, and how very odd it must be to be married to us, for we are, as Shakespeare said, passing strange.

  Our lunch arrives.

  Megan takes the top piece of bread off her sandwich, reorganizes the lox with her fork, cuts her cornichon into four pieces, takes a spoonful of soup, and says severely, "They should have put these beans through a food mill. They're disgusting this way. They have those things."

  "What things?"

  "Those skins." Megan proceeds to spoon every bean out of her white-bean soup.

  We agree that we like this lunch place, the Bakery on Grand. We agree that it is safe, and that we will come here again, and this will be our new place, and the decaf's pretty good. We are immensely relieved.

  Megan comes over after lunch, decides she can't wash her hands in my bathroom because there's a cat box in it, washes her hands in my kitchen sink, reaches her arms around me to give me a hug, keeping her hands in fists so as not to touch me, bangs me on the back, and goes.

  A fine time was had by all.

  When she leaves, I phone Medicare. For two hours—that's how long the call lasts—I try to make myself focus on and understand at least some small part of what they are saying, becoming increasingly convinced that they are making it harder on purpose. There is some snafu in my insurance coverage, and for the moment, no one will cover anything. So I have to enroll in a new plan. I have been staring at the booklets all week, these booklets that surely someone must be able to translate for me, because I can't make heads or tails of what they say at all, and every time I look at them I get overwhelmed and want to weep, and I flip pages frantically and make obscure notations in the margins, which confuse me even more, so I am doing what the doctors tell me—I am asking for help! I am on the phone with Medicare in the hopes that they'll help me figure out what the hell I am doing, and I listen intently while the person on the phone speaks some other language at me in a steady drone.

  "I have to say," I cut in.

  "Yes, ma'am?"

  "It seems a little silly to me that the whole reason I have Medicare is because my brain doesn't work, which means I can't understand a word you're saying, let alone what's printed in these massive manuals you send me, where one page refers to another page, which refers to some other booklet, which tells me to call you, whereupon I get an automated answering service that confuses me more, and now that I've got you, you tell me to call back on the fifteenth, which I will forget and will not therefore get myself enrolled in whatever program I am supposed to enroll in, which is
supposed to cover my drugs, but apparently does not cover Pap smears because they are not 'medically necessary,' and now my other insurance won't pay for anything because they figured out I have a mental illness, and you won't pay for anything because you think the other insurance is supposed to be paying, and I am pretty sure someone is in fact supposed to be covering my medical expenses, which are in excess of five thousand dollars a month, so I am pretty well just shit out of luck, is that what you're saying?"

  There is a little pause. Cautiously, the voice says, "Noooo..." And we start again.

  Eventually I give up and hang up the phone. I have done this every day for a week. I will keep doing it until one day, suddenly, it all makes sense. Surely, someday, it will.

  The phone rings. "What!" I shout into it. I pace in circles in my office.

  "Hey, sweetie!" It's Jeff, with his interminable cheeriness. Son of a bitch. I hate him. I wish he were here so I could work. I wish he would go away so I could work. "How's the writing going?"

  "Horrible." I plunk down in my desk chair and spin around in circles.

  "I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's great."

  "It isn't. It's crap. I spent three hours writing and then I read it and it was crap."

  "So what are you doing now?"

  I look at my computer screen. I am in a bidding war on eBay, attempting to acquire a purple silk smoking jacket with black satin lapels. I intend to wear it as a robe. I am also bidding on a gold ball gown that I have realized I cannot live without. "Research," I say.

  "Well, that's great! You've been avoiding research for days!"

  "Shut up. I have not."

  "Oh. My mistake."

  I have been avoiding research. He is only humoring me in my delusions of competence.

  "I'm never going to write again." I heave a sigh.

  "Yes you will."

  "No I won't! I haven't written all week! I might as well just sit around eating truffles."

  "Maybe so. But I think you're stewing something. You're just about to write."

  "About to write! Always about to write! Never writing! I am a waste of human space," I say glumly and slump in my chair. I raise my bid on a standing ashtray without which my life will be completely incomplete. "I think I'm depressed," I say. "But maybe I'm just sick." I can never tell if I'm depressed or just sick. I don't believe in being sick. I drive myself crazy trying to work when I can't because I'm sick. "Do you think I'm sick?" I ask, feeling my forehead.

  "No."

  "You see? I'm just being lazy!" I crow, triumphant, and pound the desk with my fist. "And I'm never going to write again! Do you want a new set of golf clubs?"

  "What? No." I bid on them anyway. They look sort of retro. I decide I'm into retro, and type in retro. "Are you on eBay?" he asks.

  "No," I say. "Yes. I haven't bought anything yet."

  "Try not to."

  "What do you care? It's my money."

  "What are you buying?"

  "Ball gowns."

  "Oh," he says.

  "I'm not writing."

  "You'll write tomorrow. I can tell."

  "How can you tell? Yes!" I yell, having just won a bid for a child's antique desk. Next: find child's chairs.

  "Maybe I'm manic. Maybe that's why I can't concentrate."

  "Maybe you're a complete lunatic."

  "I'm going to buy you a pair of plaid pants. What?" I ask, distracted.

  "Nothing. Keep at it. Good job."

  "Thank you. I will." I win the bid for a kilt.

  I hang up and reach for my cigarettes. Remembering that I've quit, I go down the back stairs and fetch them out of the garbage can, hoping that no one is watching me dig through the trash while only very marginally dressed.

  I don't write for a week. I'm driving both myself and everyone who knows me totally insane. Half the time I'm hysterical and pacing, half the time I'm in bed. I keep books there with me; it makes me feel more productive. I hate myself. I get horribly depressed. I lie in bed, trying to decide how I will kill myself. One thing is for sure—I can't hang myself because Jeff would find me and would be upset and I would feel terrible. I will drown myself instead.

  I wake up in the middle of the seventh night.

  I have it. There it is. The thing I've been trying to write. I creep down the hall to my office. I emerge three days later. The chapter is done.

  And then it's evening, and Jeff's home, and we're sitting on the deck looking out over the wildly blooming world, and the sun is making its way lazily down the sky, not in any hurry to end the day. I go up to bed eventually, read, take my handfuls of pills, turn out the light, and sleep.

  Well, sleep off and on. Lately the sleep has gotten a little messed up. I'm sure it means nothing. I don't have time for things like that. So I ignore it.

  May flows into June and summer's arrived. I feel human again. A little superhuman, really. I can do anything. I'm unstoppable. All that craziness—it's over, and it's never coming again.

  Except that it is. The rest of them see it before I do. My mood goes up and up, bobbing above me, and I dangle by its string, going higher every day.

  Maybe, though, this time I can come down easy, like I did this winter. Maybe it won't be too bad. I've worked so hard. In the brief instants of insight when I feel this coming on, I feel so helpless and frustrated that I want to scream. I did what they said. I tried. I did my best. And it wasn't good enough.

  But that's the way it goes.

  Summer 2007

  When it comes, it comes quietly enough. One morning I am suddenly, acutely aware that I am extremely happy. It's a fine, bright day, and I'm feeling rather grand. I fling my arm out before me, which admittedly is a little odd, in a gesture intended to signify my magnanimous state of mind. Sally forth! I am overcome with a sense of possibility—which clearly means that I should go shopping.

  Entirely possessed of my senses, and in a very good mood, I buy nine Coach purses, twelve Coach scarves, and six identical Coach hats, items I obviously need immediately, urgently. (Though of course one can overaccessorize, and in certain regrettable moments one has in fact vastly overaccessorized, wearing for example more than one hat, a winter scarf around the neck, a silk head scarf, Gibson Girl short pants, black bug-eyed sunglasses, earrings in only the left ear, and a totally inappropriate baby-doll T-shirt one has impulsively purchased which reads Hot Buns.) It is important not to look cluttered.

  However, now possessed of this fine, fine collection of hats, I make a trip to all the vintage and antique stores in the Twin Cities in search of a hat rack, which rack should be pewter. While at these stores I become distracted by and violently attached to: a curiously tiny writing desk, several large buffets, an entire set of spectacular crystal glasses (for white wine, red wine, martini, highball, lowball, cordial, brandy, and aquavit) (I haven't had a drink in years), a deeply significant dining room set, a somehow Dutch-looking and incredibly tacky tureen, a green velvet couch with broken springs and wear marks on the arms, several fake diamond rings, a horrid red paste choker I intend to wear "to the theatre," and a number of florid lamps. I buy them all.

  This is good. This is life. I am brilliantly, thrillingly, violently alive.

  I'd been doing fine. My medication was working beautifully. And then I went on vacation. The flight back was a redeye, and that was the trigger, something that small: one night without sleep, the tiniest bit of jet lag—two hours' time difference—and I was off to the races.

  So of course I'm not the least bit tired, and spend the day running around, fixing, cleaning, planning to save the world next week. I don't have the slightest idea that I'm spinning off into the stratosphere—lack of insight, one of the first signs that hypo-mania is morphing into full-blown mania. You have no idea that your symptoms are symptoms; they seem like completely reasonable behavior to you. Today, you think, is a good day to get things done, and indeed you get things done.

  I wake up in a splendid mood, the sleep deprivation bothering me not
at all. I sit down to write for eighteen hours and nearly wrap up an entire section of this book, about seventy pages. Jeff comes home at some point. I ignore him, keep typing, obsessed, my cheeks flushed, fingers flying, heart pounding in my chest. "Out!" I shout at him without looking up from my computer. "Writing! Can't stop now! Almost done!" He goes away.

  A minute later I simply must talk to him. I pound down the stairs and find him in the kitchen, looking surprised. "We're moving to New York!" I shout, turning and sliding around the hardwood floor in my socks. The dogs bark wildly, as excited as I am, clearly getting it completely. Jeff loosens his tie. "Okay," he says, turning back and continuing to chop whatever it is he is chopping. I crash into him, pulling on his shirt. "I've decided to start a public relations company! Sorry to be so loud! I'm just extremely, extremely excited!" I hop onto the kitchen counter and wiggle my feet. "Have you eaten anything?" Jeff asks, putting a pot on the stove. I roll my eyes and sigh loudly. "Pain in the ass!" I cry. "Completely boring!" I fly out of the room and up the stairs into my office and get back to work.

  Eventually I come tearing out of my office, cackling with glee. "I finished it!" I shriek, sliding down the hall, crashing into the wall, heading into the bedroom. "Finished!" I shout. Jeff looks up from his book. I dive headfirst onto the bed, flip onto my back, and kick my legs. "I'll finish the book by Friday! Isn't that marvelous?" I demand, sitting up. "Let's watch Law and Order. Quick!" I climb under the covers, fully dressed and wearing shoes. "Hurry! We must watch it right now! Is there any chocolate?" He passes me the box and turns on the TV. I gaze at it intently, becoming totally absorbed in seconds flat.

  Somewhere between scenes, I start sobbing. Startled, I look at Jeff. "It is so fucked up!" I wail, putting my head in my hands. I sob terribly, as if someone close to me has died. The odd thing is, I'm not even slightly sad. Between gasps and snorts and sobs, I explain this to Jeff, who is perfectly cheerful. "I know," he says. Handing me the box of Kleenex, he says, "I think you wrote a little too long today." "Noooooooo!" I wail, sliding down onto my back and flipping over on my front. Pounding the bed with my fists, I bury my face in the pillows, sobbing even harder. Jeff puts his hand on my head and says, "Anything I can do? Do you need me to sit on you?" (Sometimes I feel uncontained, and he does that. It works very well.) "No," I sob. "I'm fine. Nothing wrong. Had a perfectly nice day. Sorry about this." "No problem," he says, and keeps watching TV. I sob myself silly, then abruptly stop. "Better?" he asks as I sit up. "Just fine," I say brightly, wiping off my face. We settle in and continue as before.