Cage's Bend

by Carter Coleman

  I stand up and walk to the window. Like a god, I gaze down at pedestrians flowing along the sidewalks. One out of every two hundred of them is manic-depressive. You, I point my finger at an ant-man. Fifteen million manic-depressives from sea to shining sea. Some just starting to take off, months from where others are crashing in flames. Some free-falling into the blackest depression. Some, in utter loneliness, murdering themselves. Some holding steady, clinging to stability with lithium, Zoloft, and strict routine. Back at my desk I dial the number of the public defender in Santa Cruz.

  “Hello.” Mama always answers phones and doorbells with the most gracious, cheerful voice you’ve ever heard. She’s a born optimist, always sees the glass half full.

  “Hey, Mama.”

  “Hello, honey. How are you?”

  “Fine. Is Dad around?”

  “He’s out at a meeting.”

  “I thought Monday’s his day off these days.”

  “So did I.” She laughs. “Have you heard from Cage?”

  “Called an hour ago from the Santa Cruz County jail. Charged with stealing a boat.”

  “Oh my. Oh my.” Mom is silent for a second, perhaps holding her breath. “Well, at least he’s safe.”

  “Yeah. I imagine Santa Cruz is the country club of county jails. He says he didn’t take the boat, that some other drifters did, that he was just bringing it back.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he took it.” She sounds annoyed.

  “He got caught when he was returning the boat to the harbor.”

  Mom laughs painfully. “That’s . . . something.”

  “He’s got a public defender who sounds like a bright guy. I don’t see any reason to hire someone. Apparently the owner is really pissed off and some stuff is missing from the boat but with Cage’s medical history he thinks the judge will reduce the charge to a misdemeanor.”

  “The worst thing they could do is dismiss the charges and have him crazy on the streets.” Fear, anger, and depression harmonize in her tone. “This is our opportunity to get him into a place.”

  “He wants me to bail him out.”

  “You can’t!” Mom almost screams. “He’s likely to steal another boat, God only knows. Anything’s possible when he’s manic.”

  “Mom, I know. I know. But I guess I’ll go out there. You and Dad have been dealing with this for too long.”

  “I’m most thankful, Harper. You’re a good son. A good brother.” Her voice is high and sweet, then lower, serious. “He’s going to use every means under the sun to convince you to pay his bail. He’s going to manipulate the brotherly bond. In the flush of feeling and sympathy you’ll be mighty tempted. But—”

  “Don’t worry, Mama.”

  Lying on the bed in my boxer shorts at ten, I listen to the drunken kids going to the bowling lanes on University Place. Flipping back through my Palm Pilot, I calculate that this is the first night in two weeks that I didn’t see a girl or get somewhat drunk. It was sobering to talk to Cage but mainly it’s weariness. Watching The Sopranos on HBO, I listen to the digital recorder picking up messages from Betsy, Jessica, Caitlin. Then one comes through with the automated voice from California Correctional Communications, some kind of licensed daylight robbery that charges the beleaguered friends and relatives of inmates ten times normal collect call rates, as if they didn’t have enough grief. I accept.

  “Hey, brother,” Cage says.

  “Hey.”

  “Will you bail me out?”

  “We went through this all afternoon.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t believe you.”

  Cage hangs up.

  A minute later the phone rings again. I let the automated voice carry through the machine, then pick up at the last moment and say, “Yes.”

  “Hey, Harper. I’m sorry. Sometimes the phones disconnect.”

  “That’s okay.” I sigh.

  “I’m the only one who’s treating you straight. The lawyer wasn’t honest with you. Nobody’s told you the truth. I’m the one who’s telling you the truth. I didn’t steal the boat. I’m paying a penalty for something I didn’t do. I can’t get out and work and I was honest. I was taking the boat back. I could have ditched it anywhere in the Monterey Bay. All I’m doing is cooperating with everybody. This is my time of need. I don’t understand why I have to sit in jail.”

  “I told you that I’ll come out for the hearing.”

  “That’s in two weeks.”

  “Hang in there.”

  “Please help me get out of here, Harper. I haven’t lied about anything. Please bail me out of here. I’m climbing the walls. I’m starting to get psychotic. I’m clearly different from all the inmates. None of them are educated. It’s like a crazy house. I’m going crazy. I beg you. I’m afraid to go and take a shit. Harper, I’m your brother and I’m in a really crazy dangerous place and all I did was try to help someone.”

  “I’m sorry, brother.”

  “I’m sorry, brother,” he says in a venomous, prissy voice. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re manic, Cage. You might run. You might steal another boat.”

  “I’m not going to go anywhere. I like Santa Cruz. I’ll find a place to stay. I’m not making this shit up. If they sent bounty hunters, I could never rest. I’d always be looking over my shoulder.”

  “You don’t know what you’d do, Cage. You’re manic. You’re not in control. You might mean what you say but you’re so impulsive right now that your promises are no good, not even to yourself.”

  “I’m so lonely, man. I got here because I tried to do something good. I’m starving to death, brother. All these guys got big bags of food.”

  “Well, I expressed a hundred bucks to Garcia to put in your commissary. You can buy all the cigarettes and junk food that you want.”

  “People and promises.” Cage hangs up. Twenty-dollar exchange.

  I turn the phone ringer off and the volume on the answering machine down to zero.

  On Friday morning the markets are up and down like a runaway roller coaster. We keep trading hundreds of thousands of shares at the exact wrong moment. When we sell, the price jumps; when we buy, the price falls. Dooner’s on his feet, screaming at everyone, even Asgar and me. “Our execution quality is shit! Shit! Do you hear? What the fuck is wrong with everyone! Bunch of half-wits! I’m surrounded by midgets! We might as well be monkeys throwing darts at the Big Board.”

  “I’m just a monkey man. I hope you are a monkey, too!” I scream. “I’m a monkeeeeeeee!”

  “Can it, you hick.” Dooner glances at me with a hint of a smile. “You’re as overvalued as Amazon.bomb.” Then he slams down in his chair and starts pounding away on his keyboard.

  My phone lights up.

  “Yeah,” I grunt, pissed off, though I know Dooner doesn’t mean anything.

  “Har-puh.” Mama’s voice is like molasses.

  “Hey, Mama. Sorry. Markets are whipsawing. What’s up?”

  “I just spoke to Grandmother. Cage asked her for six thousand dollars for bail. She said she didn’t have it. He said, ‘Well, borrow it.’” Mom sounds on the verge of a wholesale crack-up and full of righteous anger at the same time. “He told her if she didn’t send the money, he was committing suicide. He told her that he was pushed down eighteen steps today. The junk he will say. Really a new level of thoughtlessness.”

  “It’s not Cage. It’s Mr. Hyde. His shadow’s running his whole psyche.”

  “I told her emphatically, ‘Mother, under no circumstances are you to accept another call from him. He’s bored and he’s trying to stir everyone up.’”

  “Grandmother can take care of herself. She’s been through worse.”

  “She’s codependent. She always puts everyone’s needs before her own. She has high blood pressure.”

  “Calm down, Mama. It’ll work out. You’re a believer. Give it to God. You have to let it go.”

  “If he should take his life, that would be tragic, but it wo
n’t be because of what we have done or not done.”

  “That’s right, Mama. Keep telling yourself that. You’ve done all you could. Besides he’s not going to kill himself. The good Cage will come back. You’ll see. But you’ve got to let the worry go. The stress is driving you crazy. Talk to Dr. Grant.”

  “Uuuh! What’s the use of throwing away a hundred dollars? God, after the tens of thousands Cage’s illness has cost. Grant can’t help. It’s not worth it just to vent.”

  “Right. Not when you can vent at me for free.”

  Mama half laughs. “Poor Frank. On top of all the dissension in the diocese, he has Cage and me to worry about. Promise me that if anything ever happens to me, that you will take care of Cage.”

  “I’ve promised you that, Mom.”

  “When I woke this morning, I thought, If I ever just don’t wake up, I want you to know how much you’re loved.”

  “I know, Mama. I love you, too. Why don’t you take a swim?”

  “I went at seven.”

  On Monday the black box is picking winners every time, outguessing our traders. Dooner used to say that he will never override a trader, because the box has no instinct, but lately I’ve seen him overrule Ronbeck on occasion, when Dooner’s own gut tells him that box is right. Dooner seems a little sheepish about Friday’s hysteria, but not enough that he wouldn’t tongue-whip everyone the moment our execution quality slipped. After a week dry I’m focusing well on my work. Second-guessing the box, hitting a high percentage of aces. Dooner wants to plan the Hong Kong trip the day after Cage’s hearing so that I can meet up with him, fly from San Francisco. Last night I dreamed that I loaded a gun with nickels and dimes and quarters. I was crying. I put it to Cage’s head. I couldn’t pull the trigger. My subconscious implying that Cage was emotionally nickel-and-diming me to death? For some reason Cage wasn’t able to call over the weekend and so I feel a little distance and relief from his pain.

  In the afternoon my stomach knots in dread as the automated voice comes over the speakerphone. You don’t have to pick it up. Don’t. You’ve bugged his public defender ten times, sent him money, talked to the jail psychiatrist, made sure he’s getting his meds. You’re gonna see him next week. You don’t have to listen to his manipulative shit. Then I picture him surrounded by guys in blue denim, scared, lonely, guilty. I pick up the phone and mumble, “Yes.”

  “Hey, Harper, you heard yet from Emma?” Cage’s voice sounds calmer than it has in a long while.

  “Sorry, bro, not a word.”

  Cage is silent for a time, then asks, “You thought much about Nick lately?”

  “Sometimes. Other day I remembered something he told me. What was it? . . . Why, has he visited you? Doesn’t he usually visit when you’re locked up?”

  “Even Nick’s ghost has forsaken me.”

  “The rest of the family hasn’t. Have you seen the psychiatrist again?”

  “I was reading Deuteronomy while a guy was screaming all morning, then the shrink came in and asked me if I was hearing any voices. I said, ‘Yeah, down the hall.’”

  I laugh. A glimmer of the old Cage.

  “They’ve got me rooming now with a guy who taught lit at Choate, did his dissertation on Dos Passos. He’s in here for arson. He’s an alcoholic in his late fifties. Says he didn’t do it. I’ve seen him get the DTs. Shakes like a Holy Roller. The inmates call him Smokey. They call me Sailor. Time passes pretty quickly when he’s telling stories. I been thinking about my plea, the jury’s point of view. A drifter. No address. A history of mental illness. I’m not processing info so well right now. I don’t know if I’m capable of making the right decisions. I hate to plead guilty to something I didn’t do.”

  “Why don’t you just admit that you took the boat?” I say slowly.

  “I’ve just accepted my position,” Cage says as if he didn’t hear me. “It’s like a burden off my shoulders because I don’t have the anger anymore. After all these dark nights of the soul in the county jail, surreal dreams. In the simple language of the Holy Bible I find renewal. I’m becoming a new man in jail, born again in the Holy Spirit. Last week I thought it was cool to be the jester.” He groans and laughs at the same time. “Now I just want to be cool like Robinson Crusoe until I’m out of here.”

  “Well, Cage . . . just . . . Garcia says if you plead guilty that they’ll just put you in a dual-diagnosis program.” I brace myself for a long list of reasons why he shouldn’t be stuck in with a bunch of dsyfunctional addicts and madmen for three months.

  Cage is silent for a few seconds, then breaks into a rap:

  It’s my turn now to mop the flo’.

  Mo’ fun to sail along the sho’.

  This jail be a fucking bo’.

  Later on, ya sex-addict ho’.

  He rattles a mop in a bucket and hangs up.

  Cage

  My little brother smiles from the other side of thick Plexiglas. Walking toward the row of booths, I can read his lips: Hey, Cage. He looks genuinely happy to see me. My spirit flickers brighter, like a match lit in a dark room that burns for a few seconds before the gloom swallows the flame. I feel my face stretch into a smile, flooded with snapshots of him all the way back to the cradle. Trim, sunburned, longish hair in Nantucket ten years ago. Lanky, awkward six-foot crew-cut senior at Louisiana Episcopal. A freshman with bangs and a mouth full of braces. Bucktoothed with a bowl cut in a lower-school uniform. A beautiful brown toddler with long wavy hair. Closer, I see that he’s turning soft above his cream button-down. Sallow skin. Cloudy eyes. His jowls are heavier than at Christmas. In the wavering reflection on the captive side of the glass, I see myself, leaner than Harper. I look fitter, stronger, faster, but appearances belie reality. My mind is flawed. I’m just as smart. I could have been a whiz-kid programmer, almost. But God gave me the defective brain. Why me?

  Genetic roulette, I mouth.

  He shakes his head, then raises his eyebrows. What?

  I want to hug him tight just for a second, rub our family genes together. Feel the touch of someone I love, and all I can do is sit down on a plastic chair and pick up a plastic phone and put my hand to the plastic glass.

  “Up close, Harper, you look like . . . shit, Harper.” I laugh. “I couldn’t see you so well in court. You’ve been partying way too much, haven’t you?”

  Harper grins like a kid caught with his hand in the liquor cabinet. “Kind of a shock seeing you up in the docket in a long row of orange jumpsuits. What’s with the shaved head?”

  “I thought I got lice in here.” That’s sort of true. I can’t help exaggerating the conditions. Harper seems to pick up on it.

  “Looks pretty nice as far as jails go from what I can see,” he says. “New. Clean. Small.” He stares at the side of my head. “You got a scar that looks like a cave painting of a dog.”

  “Where a guy hit me with a broom.”

  Harper smirks, wondering whether I’m lying. I’m not sure. I did get hit with a broom. Ten years ago in the place I do not name. I’ve never seen the scar, too far back, over my ear and usually hidden by my hair.

  “The judge seemed reasonable,” Harper says. “Santa Cruz seems like a cool town. Run by ex-hippies. Could be worse. You could of ended up in the San Francisco County jail. That would’ve been grim.”

  “Providence,” I say, “washed me up here to recover.”

  “Maybe,” Harper says. “The older I get, the less preposterous the idea of God seems. Happenstance, providence, whatever, you washed up in a good place. I checked out the Frontier House. It’s a kinda long, low ranch on a couple of acres up in the redwoods. No fences or anything. The, uh, inmates—”

  “Mental health consumers,” I correct him.

  “Whatever. They looked nice enough. Not too fucked up or stupid.”

  “Did I see you talking to those two Harbor Patrol cops in the back of the court?”

  “Yeah. I asked them if they believed that you did it. They said yeah. One of them said you were luck
y to have a brother like me.”

  I felt a twinge of envy. The good brother, the successful one, the semialcoholic womanizer. “You’re a good brother, Harper. You didn’t have to come out here. Thanks for putting the money in my commissary. You have no idea how good a Snickers bar can make you feel. They don’t give us enough to eat. That’s my main complaint about this jail. I’m hungry all the time. ”

  “You’ll be out soon.” Harper smiles. “At Frontier they said a bed would open in a few days.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “That’s true.” He looks somber.

  “And you’ll be gone. Hong Kong. New York. What a life.” The envy wells up in me. My résumé for the last decade is a long list of little jails and nuthouses. Now it’s time to start over again. The Frontier House. “The Frontier, that’s where I’m stuck. The Frontier of mental illness.”

  “Don’t look so pessimistic.” Harper puts his hand on the glass. “You can build a nice life out here. You got the ocean. Redwoods. Surfing. Mountain biking. A first-class county mental health program from what I can see.”

  “Everyone here dropped so much acid in the sixties they have to have a good program.” I make Harper laugh. Suddenly I want to cry. I clench my fists, trying to summon up the energy and drive to pull myself up, persevere, prevail. “God I’ll be glad to be out of these fucking coveralls.”

  “I bought some khakis and sweaters and T-shirts at the Gap today,” Harper says. “I left them for you at Frontier.”

  A cop walks along the booths, passes behind Harper, calling out something. Harper glances over his shoulder, then says, “Time’s up. Hang in there, brother. I’ll swing through town next week on the way back to New York. Love you.”