The thing she couldn’t bear to watch most of all, the thing he hadn’t warned her about and she hadn’t expected, was how he was losing himself. The things she had loved about him were slowly slipping away. He didn’t joke around anymore and barely even smiled. A sadness was swallowing him up. It was like she was standing at the top of a hill, watching as he slid down backward with his eyes still focused up on her at the peak. Every day she would try to reach out her hand to him, urging him to grab it and help himself up before he slid down even further. Although his resigned look made her realize he’d given up and wouldn’t even bother to take her hand, she still wouldn’t stop trying.
“You wanna go up to the study and draw a little?”
No answer.
“Caleb?”
“Huh?” His eyes were still glazed over.
“Do you wanna go draw for a little bit?”
“No. I don’t feel like it.” His attention returned to the television screen, and the tiny fleck of hope she’d built up over the last few seconds was dashed. Over on the screen, a bearded man aimed his gun at a tiger. The dart shot out and hit the animal behind one of its front legs. It roared ferociously, its head darting in every direction, until its legs gave way and it collapsed onto its side. Three men approached cautiously, poking the tiger’s belly with the butt of the gun. Once the animal was fully unconscious, they dragged it into a cage and loaded it onto a pickup truck.
Caleb’s expression was empty. Could he actually be sleeping with his eyes open?
Back on the screen, two people in green scrubs with surgical masks that obscured everything except their eyes sliced the tiger’s side open. Their silver instruments dived in and out of the cavity, a voice-over explaining that this would be their only chance to reverse whatever damage had been done in the wild. The doctors’ white latex gloves were coated with bright red blood. Anna checked her watch to see if the hour was almost up and the program would end soon. Why would Caleb want to watch it in the first place? She didn’t have a chance to ask—his eyelids had become too heavy for him, and he’d given in to the sleep.
She tiptoed over to the television to shut it off. He hadn’t woken up, so she laid her blanket over him. He would fall asleep downstairs more often than not, and sometimes he wouldn’t wake up until the morning. Those nights she would sleep down there with him.
But this time, the weight of the blanket woke him. His eyelids opened back up very slowly and, when he realized what was happening, he pulled the blanket off of his chest.
“Why don’t you go up to bed?”
“No. I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s too early to go to sleep. I want to be with you.”
“I’ll come up with you. We’ll just go to sleep early then.”
“No, no.” He shook his head again to break up the sleepiness. She grabbed the remote that was resting on the arm of his chair and was about to turn on the television again.
“No, I don’t want to watch anything,” he said, taking the remote out of her hand. “We’ve been doing enough of that.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we could just talk. I would really like to talk.” He turned so that his body faced hers. She sat down on the arm of his chair and rested her feet on his lap.
“Okay. We can do that.” Now that the decision to talk had been made, what was there to be said? Before, their conversations had never been forced. Deciding to talk and setting aside a time to do it made it all so awkward.
“Um…So the basil I planted is beginning to sprout,” she said.
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, I knew it was late in the season to plant it, but I figured I’d try.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It probably won’t grow fast enough to eat before it gets cold, but maybe I can bring it inside in the fall.” Although he was paying attention, it wasn’t the way it used to be. Up until a few weeks ago, whenever she spoke to him, he would focus only on her, like she was the only thing that existed. But now he struggled just to make sense of her words, to grunt an affirmative answer when it was expected. She might crumble right there in front of him. The changes were just too much.
“So have you spoken to Samuel recently?” Her voice was forceful and unapologetic. His head jerked backward. They hadn’t spoken about heaven since he told her that he’d given it up. She didn’t know why she had asked and what made her think of it, but she felt a charge as the life came back to his face.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I just wanted to know if you’ve talked to him. You said it would be easy to give it all up. I want to know if that’s true.”
“Anna, I really don’t want to talk about this.” He shifted his body away from her so that it faced the television again.
“I do. We haven’t talked about it—actually we’ve ignored it—for weeks. I want to know.” He cracked his knuckles. Clearly he was uncomfortable, but she reveled in the fact that the vacancy was gone. The nothingness was at least being replaced by some kind of emotion.
“That stuff is in my past. I don’t want to bring it up now.”
“Well, I do. Just answer me.”
He turned to face her, head-on. “Fine. No, I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”
“So he didn’t care that you just gave it all up?”
“Please, I don’t want to do this.”
“Tell me. You said it would be easy to stay, and I want to know if it really has been.” She was relentless. He was clawing his way up the hill to her, no matter how reluctantly he was doing it.
“Just forget about all of it. The catatonia is under control; there’s no reason to dredge all this back up.”
Every part of her wanted to forget about it all, keep the doubts about his sanity from coming back, but instead, she started yelling. “We can’t just forget about it! It’s part of you; this is who you think you are. You can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist! And these drugs you’re on—” She stood up and swung her arm around wildly. “You were right about what they do. I hate them! It’s horrible. I’d rather—”
“You’d rather what? Live with practically a dead body for days at a time?”
“No,” she said, trying to control herself now. “I want to live with you, who you really are, without all the sadness and deadness that this stuff makes you feel.”
“Well, I’m not going off of it. I haven’t had a stupor in weeks. It’s working.”
“It’s not working. It’s killing you! I wouldn’t be able to live without you, Caleb. I’d—I’d just die.”
He slumped over, like she’d just shot him in the stomach. But then, to her surprise, he jumped up out of his chair. “Do you think I like feeling like this?” he bellowed, jerking his arms around. “I know what’s happening here. I feel like every day I’m slipping away more and more, I’m losing…” He stopped, but she knew what he was going to say, because she could see it happening up close minute by minute. Calmer and quieter, he continued. “But at least I’m here with you, and you don’t have to go through what you did on the boat.”
“I would rather lose you for a few days at a time than live with someone who isn’t you. Why can’t you trust me?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you. I won’t make you take care of an invalid, bathing me, making sure I don’t starve to death, cleaning up after me. It’s disgusting. You don’t deserve it.”
“That’s not how I see it at all. You’re not even trying to see it from my point of view.”
He walked over to her and stood very close. “I told you I’d always take care of you. I can’t do that if I’m sitting in a chair, drooling and out of it. This is how I want to live. I know it’s not perfect, but I’m doing the best I can.”
She was so frustrated, so angry, that she wanted to scream at him, make him see that he was being completely unreasonable. He was trying to be noble and good, but why couldn’t he see how his attempt to drug himself i
nto normalcy was killing himself and the life they’d built? She scoured her mind for the words that would miraculously make him come to his senses, but there was nothing left to say.
“I’m going upstairs to read,” she said coldly, and turned away.
For the first time since coming to the cabin, they spent the evening apart.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The knocking on the door woke Caleb up. His arm ran up and down the sheets searching for Anna, but they were cool and empty. He slept much later than her almost every morning now. And all day he would drag the drowsiness around with him. It weighed on him like an extra twenty-five pounds.
The blue digits on the clock came into view.
“Damn,” his voice cracked once he understood what the numbers were telling him. It was almost noon. He’d wasted half the day. Again.
Lots of sounds filtered into the bedroom: the lock on the front door, the gentle whine as it was pulled open, Anna, and then a man. One memory began to fight its way through the fogginess that had become a fixture in his mind.
Dr. Hillman. It was Dr. Hillman downstairs.
And then he thought about the why, and miraculously he remembered, which had become unusual. Anna was getting her sling off today. Her voice was definitely buoyant. Somehow his heavy limbs listened to him and pulled him out of bed. He slipped on a pair of jeans that was lying crumpled on the floor and then pulled a white T-shirt out of the dresser. He didn’t want to miss this. It wasn’t often anymore that Anna’s voice was so happy.
His knees cracked as he took each stair, his hand gripping the railing on the way down since he was dizzy. Anna sat next to Dr. Hillman on the couch. The sling was off and the doctor was moving her arm around in a huge circle.
“Caleb, good to see you,” the doctor said brightly, returning his attention quickly to the arm in his hands.
“I’m free!” Anna sung out. She was smiling with both her mouth and her eyes, and it made him feel warm.
“Finally,” Caleb answered. “Now you can start pulling your weight around here.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Everything’s looking good,” Dr. Hillman said, placing her arm down gently by her side. “Just don’t do anything silly. Your arm is weak and you’ll have to build up your strength slowly. Make sure you do the exercises I showed you.”
“Okay, I promise not to overdo it.”
“Do you have any questions before I go?”
Caleb wondered whether or not she’d mention her own medication to the doctor. Yesterday he had noticed the empty tan prescription bottle lying at the bottom of the bathroom trash can. He didn’t say anything to Anna about it, and she didn’t mention anything to him. In fact, she never talked about panic attacks anymore.
“Nope. I’m cured,” she said happily. He didn’t know what to do. It’s not like he had a right to talk to her about her medication after the choices he’d made. But he wanted her to be well, to be happy.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything else?” Caleb asked uneasily, searching her expression to see if she understood.
“I’m fine,” she said with annoyance.
“Then I’m off,” the doctor said as he walked toward the door. “Caleb, I’ll see you in the office on Wednesday, and we can reassess how everything’s going.”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Caleb answered blandly as he walked over to get the door for him.
The worst part of being on the pills was going to the appointments. Dr. Hillman would sit behind his big oak desk with Caleb on the other side, and the voice of Dr. Blackwell, muffled over the speakerphone, would fill the room. He’d listen with gritted teeth to the smugness of the bodiless voice, forced to answer the same inane questions over and over. Then the doctors would consult, using all kinds of medical jargon that Caleb couldn’t understand even if he wasn’t drugged almost to unconsciousness. It probably had something to do with dosages. With just a word Dr. Blackwell could make it so that Caleb felt more or less focused, more or less tired, more or less anything.
But one thing he couldn’t do was pry into his brain and try to pick apart everything that he knew was true. The memories of angels and heaven were safe and sacred inside of him. He would never have to listen to Dr. Blackwell rant on and on about rhythms and figments of his imagination again. He was free to miss Samuel, miss his studio, miss the peace, feel the loss.
“Have a good day,” Dr. Hillman shouted back once he passed through the doorway. Caleb shut the door softly and turned around to find Anna staring at him through narrowed eyes.
“I know what you were getting at, so don’t even pretend not to know what I’m talking about,” she said.
“I just want to make sure you’re ready to go off of it, that’s all.”
“Don’t think for a second that you have any kind of say in my medical treatment. I can make my own decisions, just like you, even if they affect you.” Her face had an I’ll show him expression. He smiled by accident.
“It’s not funny.”
“I can’t help it,” he said, unable to wipe the smile off of his face. “I’m sorry; you’re right. I made the decision about my meds, and so should you. I won’t mention it again.”
“You better not. So, I was thinking,” she said slowly, “that maybe we could try out the whole fooling around thing now that I have two functioning arms.”
“Uh—I…” What could he say? He hadn’t been with her in that way for such a long time. Those damn drugs. They’d drained him of everything. Soon after he began taking the pills, he stopped functioning in that way. He could hardly function period. He missed her desperately, but the anger and shame wouldn’t let him admit what was happening. It was just another weakness that he couldn’t overcome. “Not right now,” he said as gently as he could. But when her mischievous smile faded and her face hung, devastated, he hated himself for not having told her what had been happening to him.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you, Anna. God, I miss you so much,” he said, pulling her to him. “I just can’t, not with the pills, they make it so…” He’d always been so open with her, teaching her that sex was nothing to be ashamed of, but now he was the one who couldn’t be honest. “Side effects,” he mumbled, upset with himself for being such a coward. He couldn’t even look her in the eye.
“I didn’t know,” she said sadly. “Don’t worry about it.” But he could tell that she was worried about it, like it had something to do with her. He had no clue what to say, how to make her realize that it wasn’t her. So he said nothing.
She broke the silence. “So what do you want to do today?”
The sadness was still there, but she was trying her hardest to hide it. He wanted to make everything better, right away, and so he answered without even thinking it through.
“I think I’m going to go upstairs and draw.”
“I’m so glad,” she answered with genuine brightness. “I’ll come up with you. Maybe I’ll do some writing. I miss being up there with you while you’re working.” She stood up and pulled him behind her up the stairs.
While he followed her, the reality of what he had promised to do sunk in. Not only did he have no interest in drawing, the thought of it was repulsive. The ideas that used to pop into his head, the feelings that went along with them, even the way his hands would move, all of it was gone. No more creativity; it had vanished in a matter of days. He couldn’t stand to sit in front of the paper, confused and unable to work through any kind of idea. So he had given it up. Another casualty of trying to be normal.
But he couldn’t disappoint Anna, and so he dragged his feet up the stairs. It seemed like a lifetime ago that the pencils and pastels and paper had been stashed neatly away inside the desk. He pulled out a drawing pad and some charcoal. Maybe if he didn’t have to deal with color, if things were simplified, it might work.
Anna grabbed her notebook from the end table and lay down so that her body stretched across the length of the couch. Her neck sunk into the throw pillow t
hat was propped against the arm of the couch, and she balanced the notebook on her legs, sighing contentedly. At least she was happy.
He turned his attention to the blank piece of paper staring menacingly back at him. His hand came into view from the right, gripping the charcoal so tightly that the flesh of his fingers turned white. He willed himself to think, think about what to do next, but that was never how it was before. His hand just used to start moving, obeying a vision that would introduce itself to him quietly and in its own time. Now there was nothing there, only his recognition of the nothingness.
The seconds passed.
The page was still blank.
He forced himself to make a mark.
As he did it, his hand shook and the line he drew was bumpy and uneven. The line meant nothing to him. It made him feel nothing. As he stared at it, the nothingness turned to irritation, then confusion, then to fear. He couldn’t look at the pathetic line anymore. His angry hand ripped the paper from its spiral spine and crushed it, shoving it into the trash can underneath the desk. He didn’t even want to touch it any longer than he had to.
Then there was another blank piece of paper staring back at him. He flipped through the drawing pad. There were hundreds of blank pieces ready to take the place of those he threw away. He couldn’t stand to look at the blankness, but he also couldn’t bear to draw another meaningless mark. And he was so tired. Get up from the desk, leave the room, go anywhere just so long as I’m away from here.
“I’m kind of hungry,” he blurted out, shoving the chair out and away from the desk. “I’m going to get something.” He tried to avoid looking at Anna directly; he didn’t want to see her disappointment. He focused on the doorway and didn’t look back.
Straightjacket Page 20