He felt Ella’s eyes on him as he wrote on a blank page in the back. “Okay, chowderhead, you’re a poet. Write me a poem. ‘Orange Peels.’ Five stanzas. Free verse. Due Friday.”
JULY
Dr. Dorothy Zelig was in charge of the widely advertised new pet therapy program at Anchorage House, which involved taking exceptionally high-strung patients (like Maura) and helping them to relax by playing with dogs. Children who had suffered various abuses at the hands of grown-ups learned to accept love and to care for living creatures. Even if it sounded like hippie-dippy hogwash to him, Jacob had never had any issue with Dr. Dorothy personally until he was once again summoned to Oliver’s office in the middle of the day—this time for exactly the reasons he’d feared. He didn’t know how he’d missed spotting her, and he suspected she’d been hiding down behind some shrubbery on the far end of the graveyard and not at all walking one of the therapy dogs and minding her own business, as she claimed during the meeting in Oliver’s office.
“Gosford had to take a tinkle,” Dr. Dorothy declared, “and that’s when I saw Mr. Blaumann here and the patient Ella Yorke talking suspiciously out by the old statue.”
She spoke as if she were a witness in an episode of Law & Order: Pedantic Bullshit Unit.
“I wasn’t aware,” Jacob said, “that I was talking in an especially suspicious manner.”
Oliver, sitting behind his desk in full-on, serious Dr. Boujedra mode, eyed Jacob wearily. “So you don’t deny that you were with the patient outside the building?”
Jacob considered that it was essentially Dr. Dorothy’s word against his, and that Ella would probably deny everything if they spoke to her about it. But he didn’t want them talking to her about their chat, and giving her the impression that she had committed some sin just by having a conversation. And for another thing, fuck Dr. Dorothy.
“Yeah, no. I don’t deny it. Ella was clearly upset, and it was a nice day, and I thought some fresh air would put things in perspective. Legend has it that nice weather has a calming effect on human beings, but I’m just an orderly so I couldn’t say for sure. Obviously I’d have to do a longitudinal study with multiple placebo groups and write a seven-hundred-page dissertation to be qualified to say so in an official capacity.”
Oliver was upset, but Dr. Dorothy beat him to it. “This is what I’m talking about. A real lack of respect among the staff for the hard work and expertise represented by the doctors, and it is undermining the authority that we have among the patients.”
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. You got a D.O. from the University of Barbados, and you teach kids how to pet dogs.”
“Mr. Blaumann, I won’t tolerate disrespect toward the doctors here,” snapped Oliver. “Clearly you are aware that the code of conduct expressly forbids venturing outside the building in the company of a patient. So why did you feel it was within your rights to do so?”
Jacob had never heard him shout before—it gave him chills, how much it sounded like his father.
He knew he had no chance here. Despite the fact that he hadn’t said anything inappropriate to Ella, and certainly hadn’t done anything, he had legitimately broken the rules in letting her outside without permission. It was definitely a fireable offense, and it wasn’t like his record was sterling otherwise. For years he’d worn his contempt for this place on his sleeve—talking back to the doctors, calling in sick, cutting corners, arriving late, leaving early. He’d been daring them to fire him almost since he started working there. Losing the job now wouldn’t keep him up at night exactly, but if he told Dr. Dorothy to shove it, then he’d be gone and Ella would be on her own. On the other hand if he promised to give Ella a wide berth from here on out, there wasn’t much point either.
“Ella Yorke,” he began, much more flushed than he felt he had any reason to be, “is a very bright girl. We had a conversation one afternoon in Sissy Coltrane’s art room—”
“Dr. Coltrane,” Dr. Dorothy stressed.
“Okay, but she’s not a doctor though, she’s—”
“Mr. Blaumann, please,” Oliver urged.
“I’ve just got to say, all this doctor this, doctor that crap is getting kind of Second Commandment. ‘I am the Lord your doctor, thou shalt have no other doctors before me!’”
Dr. Dorothy nearly spit on the carpet. “Is he serious? He’s really out of his mind. Oliver, he’s—this kid needs help.”
“He’s not a kid, Dorothy, he’s twenty-eight years old. And as I understand it he’s having a difficult year, but Jacob, as a sign of respect in this workplace, you will refer to the doctors by their proper title, and that is final. Am I understood?”
“Does that mean I’m not fired then?”
There was a little flirtatious hint in Oliver’s eye as he said, finally, “You have to promise me that you will not engage Ms. Yorke any further without guidance from professionals. From doctors. My door is always open.”
Jacob reluctantly promised, and Oliver called the meeting to a close.
But as they were all standing up, Jacob turned to them both. “Can I just ask? Have you seen any kind of improvement, therapeutically speaking, in Ella Yorke since she came back?”
Dr. Dorothy gave him a dirty look. “That’s not something we can discuss with you.”
“Oh, come on. You tell us all the time which patients are doing worse, so we can keep a closer eye on them. What’s wrong with saying if one is doing better?”
Oliver, surprisingly, accepted this logic. “Ella’s actually been improving a lot since she came back. Her dosage of Prozac has been reduced. Dr. Feingold notes that she’s been participating more in her group work, and Dr. Coltrane has nothing but good things to report. In our sessions she is . . . optimistic. It’s a big improvement. In fact, if things stay positive, we all think she’s going to be ready to leave by the end of the summer so she can start school again.”
At this, Jacob smiled widely, and it seemed to confuse both psychiatrists—and even himself. Was he smiling smugly? Cryptically, sarcastically, menacingly? No. It was just an actual smile. A natural reaction to hearing something he’d been hoping to hear.
“Is there something—Jacob? Is there something we should be aware of?”
No end of things, he thought.
• • •
As punishment for the incident, he was put onto night shifts for the remainder of July, beginning the very next evening. After riding in on a bus packed with people heading home after a long day at work, Jacob arrived at Anchorage House just as the sun was setting behind the main gates. He’d been up since morning, spending the day alone in Oliver’s flat, watching television in his underwear. It was vaguely boring but hardly a punishment. More like a punishment for Oliver, for now Jacob would hardly ever see him except on weekends.
He was still in a fine mood when he went to the bathroom to change. He had been eyeing a few of the longer novels in the common area library. Anna Karenina? Did they assume the kids would simply never finish it? Not like there were trains around, but still. Either way he was rather looking forward to the solitude. Only as he stood up, about to leave, did he notice something on the stall a few inches above his head where he’d etched his heart a month ago.
Someone had turned it into the top of the letter R, in the word PRAY.
Whatever. Probably one of the visitors had done it. No big deal. He left the bathroom.
By midnight he’d abandoned the Tolstoy with barely ten pages read. Anchorage House was practically silent with all the patients in their beds. After another hour he was desperate for some kind of incident: nightmares or insomnia were common, but only rarely did they erupt into anything that required an orderly’s help. The doctor on staff was Patrick Limon, a slow-moving man in his seventies whose white hair burst Koosh-like from his skull and flowed seamlessly from his nostrils to his mustache and beard. In his white lab coat he glided from room to room, administerin
g the odd night dosage and then sliding off again.
Jacob walked the length of every hallway. Then he walked them all backward. Then he tried the stairs backward and nearly broke his neck. Finally he marched back to the bathroom, looked again at the defacement of his graffiti. PRAY. So imperative! He took out his keys and scratched a response beneath it, in gigantic letters: WHAT FOR? But he didn’t feel better. He checked his watch again. Four in the morning, and nothing left to do but tackle Dr. Limon and demand to be given a sedative. Something—anything—to stop the running commentary in his own head.
Once he’d heard beautiful whispering, poems begging him to write them down. He still heard whispering, only now it was considerably nastier. All you’ve done is get her hopes up. Why? So she can head on back out into the world only to find that it is exactly as twisted and black and sick and fucked up as she thought it was? She isn’t depressed, she’s just thinking fucking clearly. Mind your own business. Haven’t you learned anything? You can’t save her. You are not special.
He couldn’t handle another hour, let alone another month, of this solitary confinement—which is what it was. How did these kids do it? Two hours left to go. There was no way. He was never going to make it. After another twenty minutes he’d decided to just leave. It was long overdue. He could probably walk to the bus station in an hour and then just go right on up to Boston. He sure as hell couldn’t stay here. He went to his locker and took his real clothes—not even bothering to change into them—and then went back to the common area and grabbed Anna Karenina, thinking that if he got picked up by some creepy trucker, he could at least club the guy with it if he tried to get fresh.
As he shoved it into his bag, he spotted Ella’s portrait still hanging, gray, on the wall in the dark. She’d be back at school soon, and not even too far behind schedule. He worried, though, that she might get depressed again when she found out he’d quit. He figured he had better leave some kind of goodbye, so he tore a page out of the back of the Tolstoy and went over to the chessboard, thinking he’d write something and leave it there for Ella to find the next day.
Only when he sat down he found there was already a piece of paper wedged under there. He’d sworn he’d checked earlier, and there was no way Ella had left her room, but there it was—not a poem this time, but a letter, which read:
Hope you get back on your old schedule soon! Paul was up here watching group as usual. Did you know he picks his nose? There was a guy in here last year with OCD who picked his nose so much that they had to actually put mittens on his hands. I asked Dr. Wilkins about it. Rhinotillexomania. It’s a real thing! Before Maura, I had a roommate with OCD, and when she got nervous, she would pluck out her eyebrow hairs. The doctors warned her that it wasn’t like when you shave your leg hair. It doesn’t just grow back, but she couldn’t help it. After a week she didn’t have any eyebrows left! She tried to draw them back on with eyeliner, but it looked totally deranged, so I found a pen and shaded them a little, and that looked a little better, but then it came off in the shower a few days later. I told her we could just do it again . . . it wasn’t like I had anything better to do, but she said it was pointless. I heard they sent her someplace down in Florida that specializes in OCD. I kept thinking, “She’s right. It is pointless.” Was she going to spend her whole life drawing her eyebrows back on every time she showered? Someone told me they can tattoo them back on again, but that’s got to be pretty obvious. And if they ever did grow back, wouldn’t she pluck them out again? It wasn’t like walking around eyebrow-less was making her less anxious. So it was doubly pointless. Pointless squared. Just a pointlessness spiral, and then I got stuck in it. That’s how I get about things. That’s why I’m here. That’s what my parents don’t see. For them it’s easy to just say, “Well, it could be worse! She could have plucked out her eyelashes too!” and they’ll actually laugh about it and then go eat soup. I mean, hypothetically. They don’t eat, like, odd amounts of soup. It’s just that they do soup things. They do normal everyday soup things instead of, I don’t know, caring. You’re the first person I’ve met here, or really anywhere, who doesn’t just go eat soup. I hope that’s not weird to say. That day you talked to me about my picture was the first time anybody in this whole place ever asked me about something like that. Nobody looks closely. Not the other kids here. Not even doctors whose job it is to look. Everybody’s just got their nose in their own soup. They say they care, but they don’t put poems in books for me to read. They don’t tell me I can be a poet or call me chowderhead. They talk to me about “adjusting my expectations for the world.” And how I need to be realistic and just accept that this is how things work and that life is unfair and some people just don’t get to have eyebrows, which is at least better than being a baby who is born starving and sick which is at least better than being raped and murdered and I ought to be happy that I am smart and well-fed and have loving parents and clothes and a house and all that means I won’t have to think about those other things which aren’t in my control anyway so that’s why I’ve just got to “work on me” and stop worrying so much so I can get better and get out of here and do something with my life, which is a precious gift I never asked for. I know, I know, I know. Anyways, I hope you get back to your old shift again soon because Paul is the worst.
Jacob sat there a long time, reading the note twice more in the dark. He stared down at the pieces on the chessboard, both sides still trapped in their zugzwang, equally poised to lose. But then what was so bad about losing? he wondered. At least then you could start a new game. Worse to stand there forever. Idly by. Taking time off when there was so little time in the first place.
On the page from the book he’d ripped out, he wrote first in huge letters, “MAKE THE WORLD ADJUST ITS EXPECTATIONS OF YOU.” Then he added, in smaller letters, “Assignment: Write me a sestina about soup for Tuesday. And a sonnet about eyebrows for Sunday.” Then he folded it up and placed it back under the chessboard.
AUGUST
Solitude, it turned out, was something you could get used to, like anything else. Jacob finished Anna Karenina in two weeks and came up with a complete lesson plan for Ella. He continued to communicate with her via the chessboard, discussing poems along with whatever was going on during the daylight hours: Maura had a crush on one of the new patients named Roy, Paul’s nose-picking was continuing, and Sissy was teaching them all to crochet, though they had to use cumbersome plastic hooks that nobody could hurt themselves with and they were forbidden from making scarves or anything with long sleeves. There were a lot of potholders happening. Ella was attempting a beret. Also word must have somehow gotten out that Dr. Dorothy was the one who had ratted on Jacob, because someone (Maura) had apparently stolen her glasses during a dog-petting session (not even at Ella’s behest) and dropped the pieces into a vent.
Oliver had promised to get Jacob back on days just as soon as things quieted down (i.e., when Ella went back to school). Jacob didn’t hold it against him, but he worried that their time apart didn’t seem to be doing Oliver much good. He was increasingly despondent even on weekends. They still had sex in the morning on Saturday, and after that he seemed interested only in the television. Jacob sat through some political chatter about the Chelsea Clinton wedding. Oliver got a little choked up at the “candid” photos of old family moments: Bill and Chelsea and Socks watching a movie at the White House, Chelsea walking through an African village with her mother and making funny fish faces at her father.
“They’re so sweet together,” Oliver said.
“I guess,” Jacob replied. He wasn’t really paying much attention, flipping openly through the collected Keats, trying to choose which poem to excise when Oliver next went to the bathroom.
“I always wanted to have a daughter,” Oliver said, searching the cracks in the ceiling.
“Hmmm,” Jacob said, temporarily distracted by a commercial for the Stone Culligan movie. Had they really named it “Death Be Not Prou
d”? There ought to be a law.
Oliver trimmed his toenails, which he knew Jacob disliked witnessing, then changed the channel to BBC America, where an episode of Coupling was on.
Jacob watched as much as he could stand of the perilous minutiae of modern quirky relationships—about ten minutes—before he complained. “Can we watch something else?”
“I like this show.”
“You’re not even laughing!”
“I don’t laugh at everything I like.”
“It’s a situation comedy. You’re supposed to laugh at the hilarious situations they’re in.”
“I’m laughing on the inside.”
“Hilarity isn’t a cerebral thing, Oliver. You can’t wryly observe hilarity.”
“I can,” he said simply. Someone on the show walked out of a closet without clothes on.
“HA HA HA HA HA,” Oliver said.
Jacob smacked him with a pillow, and Oliver pinned him against the mattress, and they ended up having sex again. Afterward Oliver changed the channel to a nature show—a peace offering that kept Jacob in bed through lunchtime (cold cereal and half a banana, still in bed)—and they talked for a while about the oceans. Stunning, alien creatures that inhabited the depths. The British documentarian explained the reproductive cycle of the common Sydney, or gloomy, octopus. A little baby octopus floated there on the screen, about the size of a quarter, with pinkish flesh so translucent that a red lump of a brain was visible, floating behind its eyes.
Oliver began sniffling.
“It looks like a Martian from some crap B movie! Why on earth are you crying?”
“Look how small it is. You can literally see the big black ocean right through it! And the parents don’t stick around to teach them how to survive out there. They just know.”
“It’s an arthropod, Oliver. You are projecting onto an arthropod.”
“Octopuses,” Oliver sniffed, “are cephalopods. And they are highly intelligent creatures. They are one of the only other creatures with the ability to empathize.”
Why We Came to the City Page 30