by Sara Shepard
‘Oh dear,’ my father said, as the train rocked forward. ‘A stalker.’
‘Right. She was pretty nuts. And you know the zoologist guy’s monkey he had to give up? He found out that the monkey is in town because he had a part in a movie. So he went to visit him on the movie set. It was at the Central Park Zoo.’
‘I love the Central Park Zoo,’ my father exclaimed. ‘Did the monkey recognize him?’
‘Y-yes,’ I said, hesitating, not really remembering.
‘Good,’ my father said. ‘I’m glad monkeys recognize people, too. Dogs certainly do. Even if you’re away for a long time, a dog won’t forget you.’
These weren’t people I knew. It was a plot synopsis of an episode of Friends I had watched two days ago. When my father had an earlier incident like this and asked me to tell him something, I’d told him about another episode of Friends, saying it was on TV, but he still didn’t get it. He was TV illiterate, and always had been. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
A battery, discarded on the floor, rolled from one side of the car to the other. The lights flickered on and off. And then it was Sixty-eighth Street, us. We got off, walked to the stairs, and climbed them.
The Saturday after I learned my father was going to have ECT treatments, I went to a party up at this girl Nadine’s house in the Bronx. Nadine was part of NYU’s biology program, too.
On my way there, I passed a Key Food grocery store. There was a kid on the crimson electronic rocking horse, screaming his head off. He tossed some Game Boy handheld thing on the ground every few seconds, and his mother stooped down to pick it up. When the horse ride ended, the boy whined that he wanted to do it over again. ‘Why don’t you ride the whale?’ his mother suggested, pointing to the lower, smaller whale ride right next to the horse.
‘I hate that whale!’ the kid screamed, and took off into the store. His mother picked up his handheld thing and followed him.
I tried to pass as quickly as possible. Every Key Food in the city had the same horse and the same whale in the front of their store. And every kid in the city loved the horse and hated the whale. But I loved the whale. He was so round and blue and happy. I worried that since he wasn’t making enough money for Key Food, they’d take down the whales and replace them with something else-machines with a claw-grabber and toy prizes, maybe, the ones toddlers always climbed inside. And then where would the whales go? To some warehouse? To a junkyard, to be destroyed for scrap? As I passed, I imagined finding a ceramic shard of a whale’s smile in some dumpster somewhere. It would be heartbreaking.
The party was in a high-ceilinged, crumbling brownstone. By the time I got there, the place was already humidly stuffed with people. Nadine had moved her rickety, thriftstore furniture to one wall and set up a couple of folding tables for plastic bowls of chips and jugs of liquor. Nadine’s black miniature poodle, his coat clipped so low you could see its black skin shining through, yapped from behind a baby gate.
I sat on the back of the couch and mixed equal amounts of rum and Pepsi into my cup. Then it became a splash more rum, and then hardly any cola at all. As I talked to people, a strange, soothing calmness came over me. So this is what drunk feels like, I thought. So this was why people got drunk so often. It felt like sliding into a pool on a hot summer day. So I drank more.
And then, it began to turn. At one point, I talked to Nadine herself. I’d always thought Nadine was kind of dorky-she’d entered NYU as an English major, and had part of a Yeats poem tattooed on her stomach. Our conversation started out normal, but then the whale ride popped into my head. While I was at this party, the whale was sitting in front of the grocery store, unused, unwanted, alone. My father was alone, too, sitting in the apartment in Brooklyn. He’d encouraged me to go to this party, saying I should get out more. I pictured him staring into an empty microwave, looking out the window, picking up a book and putting it down again. My eyes began to fill.
Nadine stopped mid-monologue. ‘Summer,’ she whispered, ‘are you OK?’
‘The whale…’ I said. ‘No one wants to ride him.’
She paused for a moment and lit another cigarette. ‘Did you take those pills Randall was handing out? I swear to God, they were laced with something freaky.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not on anything. It’s just that, the whale’s all alone, and I don’t know what to do.’
Nadine looked away uncomfortably. Then she smiled and laughed at some guy break dancing in the middle of the carpet, and moved toward him, done with me. I pushed my way past her and ran for her bedroom, knowing I’d given away too much.
Nadine’s bedroom was empty. I climbed into her canopy bed, which was piled high with everyone’s coats, and pulled the curtains around the sides to conceal me completely. I had never been on a bed like this before. It reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge’s bed, the one he sleeps in when the various ghosts of Christmas visit.
I burrowed under the coats, inhaling their owners’ separate smells-cloying perfume, cigarettes, shawarma. The rum zoomed through my veins and my skin heaved, rising and falling like the bellows of an accordion. I heard the doorknob to the bedroom turn once, but someone said ‘oh’ and quickly shut it.
And then I didn’t want to be under the pile of coats anymore. I slid out and opened the canopy’s curtains. The sound was everywhere again. I considered climbing out the window, but there was no fire escape. I opened the door a crack and peeked out. Everyone had gathered in the main room. I had an easy shot to the door. I wouldn’t have to say goodbye.
I did one more thing before I left: I looked back at the pile of coats and picked one off the top. It was a fringy poncho with tribal designs, jagged edges, and a drawstring neck. I didn’t know whose it was; I couldn’t imagine anyone at this party wearing something like this.
I put it on and cinched it tight. I wasn’t me anymore. I was someone who wore ponchos. I was Native American. I slid out of the room and dove for the door. No one said anything. No one was looking.
The ECT clinic was also at New York Presbyterian, a few buildings down from Dr North’s office. The waiting room wasn’t nearly as plushy or nice, though, but instead trapped in the Seventies, with gold patterned carpets and green, fakeleather couches.
A thin, pasty doctor motioned me into the hallway behind a door. His name was Dr Frum, which I immediately changed to Dr Frown, due to his humorless expression. ‘This won’t be too long,’ he said. He went through the same thing Dr North had told me last week: they would give my dad a sedative to put him to sleep, attach electrodes to his head and one to his foot, and then put over a hundred volts of electricity into his brain. They tracked the seizure’s progress by the twitching of his big toe. When the twitching stopped, the seizure was done. Then they just waited for him to wake up from the anesthetic.
‘We make a printout of the brain activity during the seizure,’ Dr Frown said.
‘Can I have it?’ my father asked hopefully, listening too. As if it were something he’d hang next to his diploma from the Pennsylvania State University medical school.
Dr Frown looked alarmed, then said no. He turned back to me. ‘He’ll be in and out in no time.’
A nurse took my father’s arm. My father pumped a closed fist in the air, like he was pulling on a tugboat horn. Toot toot, I’m off.
‘Can I watch?’ I called after them.
Dr Frown and his nurse exchanged a look.
‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘I’m a biology student.’
The nurse smiled at me. Dr Frown was already leading my father into a small room. The door shushed shut, and I turned around, temporarily unsure of my bearings. As I retreated back into the waiting room, the receptionist caught my eye. She tilted her head and clucked her tongue. She was short and round, with square fingers. There were packages of unopened bags of pretzels, cakes, chocolatecovered raisins sitting by her phone. She had one of those soft, lovely faces; people probably noticed her all the time and thought, You could be so beautiful,
if you weren’t so heavy. I could feel her trying to meet my eye, but I looked away.
I faced a window that looked out onto York. Down seven flights was a Tasti D-Lite, a liquor store, a small hovel that made duplicates of keys but barely had room for anything else. Next to the shops was a park, which consisted of a few benches and a basketball court. Six or seven guys were playing a very loud game of basketball. Even from this high up, I could hear their hip-hop music blaring out of the boom box they’d set up on one of the benches.
I heard a small clicking noise coming from the back of the office and looked up. What were they doing now? Were the electrodes hooked up to his head? Had they given him the anesthetic? How did electrocution erase depression, anyway? Was it like spraying on disinfectant and wiping away the grime?
The basketball players liked to scream at one another, saying things like, throw it here, you fuckin’ pussy, nice one. There was one guy with semi-greasy blonde hair and a moustache who dominated the ball, springing up to the hoop and sliding it in. I watched as he pranced around with his chest puffed out, guessing he was probably one of those self-assured assholes who harassed women out his car window simply because he could.
‘Those basketball players,’ the receptionist said, making me jump. ‘I have to apologize. It’s a new thing, them playing here. We’ve had a lot of complaints.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘They’re not bothering me.’
‘No really, they’re animals.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Why aren’t they working? Middle of the day.’
‘It’s fucking out of bounds,’ said a voice from the basketball court.
The receptionist pursed her lips. I gripped the seat, her tension suddenly infectious. They were annoying. All of a sudden, I wanted to shove something through the window to make them shut up. A brick, perhaps, something heavy. I wanted to hurl it at the loudest player down there-the shirtless guy with the scraggly moustache-and scream, Have some respect. Do you know what’s happening up here?
I pictured the brick hitting his head and cracking it open. I saw him falling awkwardly, a pool of blood running out from his head, his greasy face contorted, the other men flocked around him. My vision narrowed. My thighs trembled and knocked against the arms of the chair. The zigzag designs on the carpet blurred.
When I opened my eyes a few seconds later, the waiting room was still and bright. The receptionist marked something in her book and absentmindedly placed a pretzel on her tongue like it was a pill. The basketball game continued. When the ball hit the hoop’s rim, it made a loud, clattering sound like a piece of the earth splitting open.
And then the nurse was touching my arm. ‘Miss Davis?’
I shot up.
‘Do you want to see your father? He’s done.’
Her expression was bland, almost obtuse. He was done? How long had it been? ‘Do I?’
‘He would like you to, I think.’
She led me through the door to a long, fluorescent-lit hall. Near the window were two people in wheelchairs. I could see my father’s hair poking up over the wheelchair’s back, his hands curled over the arms.
‘Why is he in a wheelchair?’ I whispered. ‘Can’t he walk?’
‘No, he’s fine. It’s just for recovery, so he feels more comfortable.’
They’d made him change into a faded, worn hospital gown. I had a foolish thought, although I didn’t realize until later how foolish it really was: my father’s hair wasn’t standing on end. And his ears weren’t bleeding. I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but maybe that. When I got a few steps away from him, I coughed, thinking he’d turn, but he continued to look out the frosted-over window, blinking and blinking, his teeth gnawing at the middle portion of his bottom lip. I peeked at the person next to him, a woman in her thirties. Her head lolled to one side, her eyes remained closed.
‘Dad?’ I said softly.
He still didn’t turn. I walked around to face him. His face contained no expression whatsoever. His eyes followed me, then landed on me. I felt him taking me in. He was looking at me like he was watching television; anticipatory, with no idea what would happen next, but not really so concerned either way.
I had no idea what to do. Sit down, continue to stand? Tell him who I was? Wait?
‘Summer,’ he finally said, his voice dry.
‘Yes.’ It came out like a gasp, like a release of air. ‘Dad. Yes. Hi. It’s me. I’m here.’
‘Summer.’ He swallowed hard.
‘How are you doing? Are you okay?’
‘I…’ His movements were slow, his mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. It’s just the sedatives, I told myself. They haven’t worn off yet. But there was something else, too: a void. It was like his whole past had been wiped away. Like he had no idea who he was.
The alarm on his watch started to go off. He looked around, puzzled, then located the sound on his wrist. He stared at his watch, then at me. Desperately. He coughed, moved his neck from side to side and then slowly, so slowly, edged his hand toward the watch. He tapped the face gently, as if he feared he might break it. When that accomplished nothing, he tried pressing a button. When the beeping continued, he looked at me again. I shrugged back at him, just as desperate. We were two different species trying to communicate.
‘I don’t…’ he said, then looked down and tried another button. The alarm stopped. He stared at it for a while, perhaps wondering if it was going to start again. The woman in the wheelchair next to him still hadn’t moved. The silence was louder and more penetrating than the beeping. My ears rang and rang.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
He put his hands back on the wheelchair’s arms. Every movement seemed tentative. The lines in his forehead were gone.
‘My neck hurts, I think,’ he said. ‘And my arms. And my jaw.’
‘So it hurt, then?’
‘Did what hurt?’
‘The…’ A nurse walked by a few yards away. She glanced at me. Is this normal? I wanted to ask her. Is any of this normal?
‘How do you feel?’ I asked my father again.
His eyes moved up toward the ceiling as he tried to think. ‘Feel? I don’t know.’
‘Do you feel sad?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Do you feel…happy?’
‘Happy?’ He ran his hand over his chin. Was his chin unfamiliar, too? His hands? When we went home, would he look in the mirror and not know himself? ‘I don’t know,’ he said, with a certain amount of fatigue, but also a certain amount of wonderment. ‘I don’t really feel anything.’
He made a groan and put his head against the wheelchair’s back. ‘I’m going to close my eyes for a minute.’
‘Okay. That’s fine. Take all the time you need.’
While I sat there with him, I composed a commentary in my head, as if this were a documentary about ECT and I was the narrator and I already knew how the story would end. This was Richard Davis’s first appointment, and by far the toughest. After this, he began to miraculously recover. Says Lawrence Frum, the doctor who administered the treatments: ‘This is the best outcome from ECT I have ever seen in my practice. This man has a new lease on life. It is simply astounding.’
I changed my high, thin voice to a deep, assured one. Faith, I thought. Yet again, I turned everything over to faith. I revised the documentary script a few times to make the outcome better and better. My father would eventually practice medicine again. He would eventually run a hospital. My mother would wash up as something plain and somewhat pitiful, maybe a telemarketer or sales clerk, her drama career hitting a dead-end. We would get through this, and he’d come out a hero. It made me feel better. It really did.
14
The computer’s screensaver drew fractal-like scribbles. Once the image became an impossibly tangled ball of yarn, it dissipated and a new drawing began. I watched it for a while.
I touched the monitor and there was static. The keys on the keyboard felt like teeth.
In the past two months, I have hidden under a pile of coats at a party and not gotten up when they called my name at the dentist’s office. I have also given a fake name when a woman from a marketing survey called home and, just yesterday, I bought a postcard off the street and addressed it to my great-aunt Stella in Cobalt, PA. I wrote about horses and windmills and signed it Beatrice A. Haverford.
I stared at the sentences, astounded that my hands had created them. I pulled the cursor over everything and hit delete.
When someone is severely depressed, he often doesn’t want to take his medicine. But you cannot be angry at him. You cannot blame him and you cannot blame yourself. You just have to accept it and realize that it is something out of your control and not get angry. Except it is angering, so you find yourself getting angry at other things, like strangers, or garbage bags that don’t open properly, or your purse, when you can’t find things at its bottom.
I looked out onto the Promenade. There was the typical lineup of nannies with strollers, old people leaning over the railing, the resident homeless woman with her shopping cart of junk. She was splayed out on one of the benches, her head rested on a carefully tied garbage bag of empty Coke cans. There was a little smile on her lined, dirty face, as if she was terribly pleased with her makeshift pillow. It jolted things into perspective-it was unclear when this woman had last slept in a real bed or eaten a real meal, and yet she seemed more grateful and content than I was.
It was the day after my father’s first treatment. He and I had come home from his first ECT appointment in a cab-I didn’t want to subject him to the subway. At home, he lay on the couch, staring at the wall. After a while, he started crying. ‘I can’t think,’ he kept saying. ‘This is horrible, I can’t think. What the hell happened to me?’
I tried to tell him what happened. He signed the papers, I said over and over. He agreed to this. But I can’t think, he kept repeating. I can’t feel. In the end, I called Dr North; he prescribed a sleeping pill. I begged the pharmacy to send someone to deliver it; I was afraid of leaving my father out of my sight, but also knew he wasn’t capable of leaving the house.