The Blind

by A. F. Brady

  When I walk back into the living room, I see AJ’s face illuminated by the blue light of the television. He’s smiling at me as I make my way back to the couch, and before I can sit down, he pulls me onto his lap. I’m straddling him with my face to the wall behind the couch, and he’s pulling off my sweater. As I lift his arms up to remove his shirt, all my cares fall out of my head into a pile on the floor.

  Our clothes are strewn about his living room, and he’s lying on top of me on the couch. He pulls the cushions onto the floor, and a condom appears in his hand. My head is swimming and I can’t see him put it on, but when the empty wrapper flies by my head, and I feel him going in, I close my eyes and succumb to the rhythm.

  Flashes of Lucas pass through my mind as I realize that I haven’t been naked with anyone else in over a year. The panting is making my mouth dry and I reach for my bottle of beer as AJ kisses my chest and tenses his arms around me.

  I spill most of the beer onto myself and the couch, but I get just enough into my mouth. AJ is holding my lower back with one giant arm and bracing himself against the couch with the other. He’s looking into my eyes as he glides back and forth on top of me, and I start losing myself in his eyes, and it’s the most intense feeling I have ever had.

  He doesn’t look away from me, and the beads of sweat that are forming at his temples are the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. His mouth is hanging open, and he’s breathing heavily, but slowly. He takes his eyes off mine and buries his face in my neck, and I can feel his sweat sliding down my collarbone.

  DECEMBER 5TH, 9:21 A.M.

  I’m sitting in one of the smaller group rooms waiting for the first in this series of meetings for my psychological evaluation. I’m steeped in coffee and it’s making my jaw clench and unclench, and my hands are sweaty.

  I have a very clear image of what this shrink who is coming to judge me looks like, and I’m counting the seconds until she arrives. She will be tall, makeup-free, with frizzy, unhighlighted hair swept into an unkempt bun with a few bobby pins poking out. She’ll have horn-rimmed glasses that are slightly big, so they slip down her dinosaur nose when she talks, and she’ll wear a turtleneck with sleeves that are a bit too short over a pleated skirt that looks like curtains. Under all of this, she’ll have on oversize white Reebok sneakers that she bought in 1992.

  She won’t like me personally, but she’ll think I am excellent at my job. She will not tolerate my witty banter. She won’t find me amusing. As I’m thinking about this, and shaping how to behave in the face of this woman I’ve created in my mind, the door opens and a man walks in.

  I’m immediately relieved because I am much more comfortable with men than I am with women, and he’s young, just a bit younger than I am, looks to be about thirty-five. His rumpled hair is adorably unkempt. He seems to have had some trouble finding the group room, so he’s a little late. He sits with a thud and unloads the contents of his canvas messenger bag.

  “Hi. It’s Samantha, right? I’m Dr. Travis Young.”

  “Hi, Travis. I’m Sam.” I’m probably supposed to call him Dr. Young, but I don’t.

  “Sam, okay.” He fumbles with his things for a minute, and I realize if I met him under different circumstances I would be flirting right now. “So, I guess you know what we’re doing here, huh?”

  “Yes, sir. Time for the unbridled fun of a psych battery!”

  “Ha, well, yeah, something like that. The New York State Office of Mental Health requires that all employees in clinics and institutions such as this one have regular evaluations by external providers to ensure they are able to work with a psychiatric population.” He has spewed this rundown so many times, he’s boring himself.

  “Here’s a question, Travis: Considering that, by law, you can’t fire someone for having a psychological disorder, what’s the point of finding out if any of us have something? It’s not like if you find out I’m psychotic you can fire me for it.” I’m not flirting, but I’m not not flirting.

  “Well, technically that’s true, but if it’s deemed that an employee is a danger to herself or others, their supervisor will review the evaluation and usually recommend that said employee be moved to a position that doesn’t involve patient contact or access to confidential information.”

  “Oh, so just a demotion, then.” I say this with a smile, trying to charm Travis into liking me.

  Travis begins with the Beck Depression Inventory, a short assessment tool used to determine if I’m miserable. I imagine if I were filling this out for the first time, it would be quite different than it is now that I’ve taken and scored this test, formally and informally, probably a hundred times.

  I’m afraid there’s no possibility that any of our answers on any of these assessments could be considered wholly honest or truthful. We simply know too much to be able to accurately represent how we feel. I look at each of the inventory items, knowing exactly how the test was designed, how to score it, why the questions are worded the way they are, why there are so many similar questions, and I know what outcomes should be induced. Even though the test is structured to prevent manipulation, I can’t help but naturally formulate my responses according to what I know—what to say to appear depressed, and what to say to appear perfectly happy.

  I scratch my answers on the paper with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil. Travis is periodically glancing at me, like a proctor at the SATs, but generally minding the paperwork in front of him.

  I slide my completed BDI over to his desk and look hopefully for the next assessment.

  “Ah, done already. Okay. In the interest of time, I’d like to get a couple of the shorter inventories out of the way first; that way I will have a moment to score the ones you’ve finished while you’re completing the next test. Is that okay?” He’s shuffling through papers and handing me a copy of the slightly longer PDQ-4.

  “No problem. You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I’ll be a very good patient.” My adorable smile and accommodating attitude are lost on Dr. Travis Young.

  I hate this inventory. We don’t use it much here, and I hate it because everything sounds too familiar. It feels like some asshole wrote this thing for me, and the statements feel intrusive and belligerent. Asshole statements like “Sometimes I feel upset.” What the fuck am I supposed to say—false? No, I’ve never felt upset before. Especially not now, while I’m taking this asshole test? I push my pencil hard to circle either the little T or the little F on the answer sheet.

  I hand Travis my responses and the list of statements, avoiding the niceties I employed earlier. Wordlessly, he hands me the following test. I sit down at the table, and the back legs of my chair wobble. I shift back and forth to measure the degree of unsteadiness, and decide it’s better to abandon this chair and find another one.

  I’m standing next to a row of seats, pushing down hard on the backs and shaking them to see if they quiver. All of these chairs suck. The last one in the row seems to be the sturdiest, so I pull it across the floor to the edge of the table. I sit back down and resume the testing. I’m watching Travis watching me.

  I’m filling out the California Psychological Inventory, which practically offends me, because this couldn’t possibly be used to ascertain anything from seasoned professionals.

  I trudge through more true-false questions developed to see my innermost psychological workings, and I’m thinking the same thing I thought before: assholes. This one is longer than the others, should take me the rest of our allotted session time to get it done.

  I look up to catch Travis scoring the assessments I’ve just completed. His face isn’t betraying any thoughts he may have. I try to concentrate on finishing this up quickly, so he doesn’t have time to get a bad impression of me.

  I stand before him with my completed CPI, and I see he has all the scoring sheets in front of him to expedite the process.

  “You finished?”

  “Yeah.” I smile again, giving him another chance to notice me.

  “We have a
nother meeting scheduled for later this afternoon,” Travis informs me. “I’m going to use this time to review the inventories you’ve given me so far, and later we can discuss them, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” I didn’t realize the two hours were up already. “I’ll see you this afternoon, then.”

  As soon as we finish, I walk into my office to compose myself. I’ve been giving these tests to patients for years, and still whenever I walk away from them I feel like I have been probed and exposed and left naked in the rain. The questions are all designed to ensure that you can’t lie. There are all these little mechanisms in place to work out the inconsistencies. And now we’re turning these powerful lenses onto each other, and it just feels fucked up.

  “David.” I don’t have to yell through the wall for him to hear me, but today I really need him to come in.

  “Yeeeesssss?” He isn’t screaming back.

  “Can you come in here, please?” I can’t have him upset with me for the way I behaved on Thursday night at Nick’s, so I’m making an effort to pull him back in.

  He doesn’t respond and instead walks through my door, still drinking his morning coffee. “What’s up?”

  “Ugh, I just had part one of the probe. The shrink is hot, but it still feels like a soul gouging.”

  “That’s delightful, Sam. I’m so excited to have my soul gouged tomorrow.” David doesn’t bother coddling me, because he knows I will reject it.

  “It’s a fucking nightmare. I suggest we go drink this whole icky feeling away as soon as possible.”

  “Don’t you have another one this afternoon?”

  “Yeah. I can’t wait for all this to be over.” I’m fidgeting in my drawers, looking for something to eat.

  “I have to go to group. What are we doing for lunch today?” David is walking out.

  “I don’t know. What did you bring me?” He closes the door with a tight smile as I say this. I wonder if he finds me irresistible or wants to throw me out the window.

  DECEMBER 5TH, 2:49 P.M.

  I walk to the staff bathroom to find the Out of Order sign on the door again. I key it open and go inside anyway. I can’t be asked to fix my face in the other bathroom and run the risk of letting patients see me grooming myself like a real human being.

  I’m locking the door behind me. I check my teeth in the mirror, looking for poppy seeds from the bagel I had before meeting Travis. I’m delighted to see that I look reasonably good today. I have no war wounds to hide with that horribly cakey makeup that makes me look a million years old. There are no swollen red eyes resulting from hysterics or alcohol-induced dehydration. I guess my plan to take it easy this weekend in preparation for the evaluation did have a positive effect.

  I peer into the stall to see if the toilet is noticeably blocked or broken. It looks perfectly fine to me, so I unzip my pants to pee. I squat and hover, and when I’m finished, I don’t flush, just in case it would cause an overflow.

  In the staff lounge, I pour a steaming cup of fresh coffee into someone else’s mug, and dump in two tiny buckets of cream. I wonder how this cream doesn’t spoil and every other dairy product needs to be refrigerated.

  I walk back into the evaluation room and see Travis has finished scoring the three assessments I took this morning, and he’s ready to continue on to the next phase. A Nalgene water bottle has appeared from his bag and is sitting on the corner of the desk. It’s filled with something opaque.

  “Hi, Samantha. You ready to get back into it?”

  “Yes, I’m ready. Thank you.”

  “Good. Let’s get started with some of the interview questions.”

  I sit back down in my stable seat and clutch my coffee. I keep the mug up to my face and blow at it. Travis begins by asking me about my upbringing. He sits with one leg crossed tightly over the other, his thick socks showing under his cuffed khaki corduroys.

  “Well, I grew up outside the city. Small town a little over an hour north of here. Went to private school from kindergarten through twelfth. Grew up with my mom, no siblings.”

  “And your father?”

  “I never met him.” I blow at my coffee. “Don’t know much about him.”

  “Were your parents ever married?” He doesn’t look at me as he asks this.

  “Nope. As I said, I really don’t know much about him at all. My mom told me stories when I was younger, but they were very conflicting, and I don’t know what’s true.”

  Travis jots down some notes on a yellow legal pad, and I wonder how much he already knows.

  “Go on.”

  “Um, well, I went to Vassar, and—”

  “Right, I have your résumé here. I mean go on about your upbringing. Tell me more about your mom.”

  “Well, she died while I was at Vassar.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Standard shrink response. You’re not sorry, Travis. This is exactly what you wanted to hear.

  “Yeah. So, I guess I’m an orphan now. Never knew my father, my mother died when I was twenty, and here I am.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Aneurysm.” I hate talking about this. My mother died of a massive brain hemorrhage after a ruptured aneurysm, and even the words make me feel sick to my stomach. She was living alone in the house in Newburgh that her parents left her when they died. From what I could make out, she seemed happy. She was pals with the neighbors, and they did suburban shit together like share gardening tips, and bring each other baskets of dill and asparagus.

  I would see her whenever I came home from school, but I couldn’t bear to stay in her house. After one or two nights there, my anxiety levels skyrocketed, so I’d have to go back to campus, or take the train into the city and stay with friends.

  She told me when I left for school that by going away from her—moving out of her house and leaving her alone—I was slowly killing her. She’d been feeding me the Kool-Aid my entire life, and I never had a different reality to help me figure out that her way of relating to people was dangerous and unstable. I thought it was every kid’s upbringing to spend nights wondering if you would wake up with an angel or a monster. Turned out that wasn’t quite the case.

  “That must have been hard for you.”

  “Of course that was hard for me, Travis. My mother died. I wasn’t there when it happened. Although the doctors told me there was nothing anyone could have done, and the speed with which the hemorrhage consumed her was unstoppable, you don’t just tuck these things into your pocket and move on with life. It was a fucking nightmare, and the aftermath was no picnic, either.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no picnic’?” Oh, my God, I liked this guy when he walked in the door. Now he is every psychiatric caricature I’ve ever seen. He might as well put on a tweed sports jacket with suede elbow patches and start smoking a pipe.

  “I mean it was a mess. My mom hadn’t worked for a long time, and although she kept up the impression—to me and everybody else—that she was perfectly comfortable financially, she was actually drowning in debt. I had to sell the house—immediately and well below market value—just to pay everything off and give her a decent funeral. I had to have her cremated because there wasn’t enough money for a burial plot.

  “She had made zero end-of-life plans and had no will, so New York State gave me all of her things, and everything was useless. It all went for pennies at a tag sale right before the house sold. It was like a final fuck-you to a twenty-year-old kid who still couldn’t figure out which way was up. So, yeah, no fucking picnic.”

  “Did you always have a rough relationship with her?”

  “Travis, this is a psychological evaluation that you are administering to the entire staff of a mental institution. The results of which are going to OMH to see if staff restructuring is needed. Is it really relevant to you to find out the juicy details of my relationship with my mother when I was a kid?” Asshole. Voyeur.

  “Well, you’re one of two staff psychologists here and you’re obviously familiar with th
e assessment tools you completed earlier in this session. I’m just trying to ascertain why you may have shown high scores on most of the Axis Two, Cluster B criteria.”

  “What?” I sit up straight. “Personality disorders?”

  “Yes. On all the inventories.”

  DECEMBER 6TH, 11:13 A.M.

  Richard places his hat on his papers at the corner of my desk, as he does every other fruitless Tuesday morning, and turns his attention to whichever newspaper he has decided to begin with today. My frustration levels are already high, and my tolerance is lower than it should be. I’ve just been told that I scored high on personality disorders, which is absolutely impossible. I feel like the tables are unfairly turned with these OMH assholes here digging into my personal life, and I can’t even get a patient to respond to me.

  Although he’s been talking, it’s doing nothing to help me figure out why he’s institutionalized. I just want to do my job and get to the bottom of this enormous, unknowable man. I have his nearly nonexistent file open on my desk, and blank documents open on my computer screen, on the off chance he decides to cooperate with me. I’m feeling more and more useless with each passing week.

  “Richard.” I use my coach-talking-to-the-star-player voice. “How about we get going on your patient file?” I tap the sheets on my desk with the eraser end of a pencil.

  “I’ve been in this institution for quite some time now. Haven’t you gotten all the information you need from me?” He scowls.

  “Actually, no. You haven’t answered any of the questions I’ve asked you, and I’m still unclear about your goals for treatment.”

  “My goals for treatment are the same as everyone else’s.” He looks back down at his paper and sighs in frustration as he uses his finger to trace back to where he left off.