The Memory of Light

by Francisco X. Stork

  “Brain? Is that what you call the organ you’re using?” Mona replies.

  “I’ll take Grandma to the back porch for some sun,” Gabriel announces. “Anybody want to come?”

  “Vicky does,” Mona says, pushing me toward Gabriel and his grandmother. “Antonio and me are going to listen to some Cuco Sánchez. Grandpa, you dance?”

  “Don’t be too long,” Antonio says to us. “I’m a weak man.”

  “Whatever I do to you, you’re gonna like,” Mona coos.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” says Antonio. They laugh.

  Gabriel pushes the wheelchair through the hallway. “This is Grandpa and Grandma’s room,” he says when we pass through the first door. We stop in the second room. “This used to be Grandma’s workroom. She was a seamstress who worked out of the house.” The room holds a queen-size bed with a simple white spread and a dresser, but no pictures, nothing to indicate that it’s lived in. “We removed her sewing machine and stuff and bought some furniture at Goodwill,” Gabriel explains. “We’re trying to rent the room out. Hopefully, we can find someone who can take care of Grandma in return for room and board. Grandpa has been paying Chabela out of his savings, but he’s running out.” When we are going by the last door, he turns to me and says, “This is my room. You want to see?”

  I peek through the doorway. The room is about the size of Barbara’s walk-in closet. There is a small cot at one end, the thin camping kind that barely fits in a tent. A desk with a chair, a bureau, and an empty bookshelf are the only other furniture. The walls are bare except for a wooden cross above the cot. It’s as close to a prison cell as you can get. I’m about to move away when I see a stack of notebooks beside the desk. They are the exact same kind I use for my journal at home.

  “You write?” I try not to sound too surprised.

  “Sometimes,” he says, pulling me away from the door.

  “That was a big stack of notebooks in there,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you being so reticent?”

  “Reticent?” He laughs. “Did anyone ever tell you that you talk a lot smarter than you look?”

  “You’re changing the subject. Wait, did you just insult me?” I bop him on the shoulder and he grins. “What do you write? Be serious.”

  He pushes Chona’s wheelchair away from his room. “I put everything in those notebooks,” he says, no longer joking. “Thoughts, poems, stories, observations, prayers. Sometimes I just copy passages from books.”

  “But there were no books in your room,” I point out.

  “I gave them all away,” he says.

  I wait for an explanation, but I can tell that I’m not going to get one.

  At the end of the hallway is a porch with screened windows on all three of its sides. Dozens of magenta flowering plants hang from hooks on the ceiling. Sun streams in through one of the windows, and Gabriel wheels his grandmother to a patch of sunlight. “You sleepy, Grandma? You want to close your eyes and take a nap?” He sits in one of the two rocking chairs and invites me to sit in the other one.

  “Where’s Lupe? Is she home from work yet?” his grandmother murmurs.

  “Lupe’s my mother,” Gabriel says to me.

  “Lupe works too much, I always tell her,” Chona says.

  “She sure does,” he agrees.

  “There they are again.” She points with a trembling finger at a corner of the porch.

  “Who?” Gabriel asks, following her finger with his eyes.

  “The little kids. What do they want?”

  “They just want to keep you company, that’s all.”

  I sit up and stretch my neck to look out the window. Were there little kids out there that I didn’t see? Gabriel shakes his head gently and I understand.

  “I don’t mind them. They’re nice,” Chona says. “But sometimes they show up when I’m doing my business.”

  Gabriel giggles. “Tell them you need some privacy. They’ll go away for a little while if you ask them.”

  “I like the way they sing.” She closes her eyes, a smile on her face, her head moving from side to side, following the rhythm of some gentle lullaby. After a few minutes, her head stops moving. She’s asleep.

  We rock in silence. I want to ask Gabriel about the little children, but I decide not to. We hear Mona laugh inside, and we smile.

  “Mona and your grandfather really hit it off,” I remark. “I wonder what they talked about on the drive here.”

  “Some things we’re better off not knowing,” Gabriel says, waggling his eyebrows. He moves Chona’s wheelchair a few inches back, away from the direct sunlight. Then he begins to rock again. After a few moments, he asks, “What made you sad back there in the truck, when you were thinking about your family?”

  “Oh,” I say. “I was thinking about something Mona said once.” I’m not looking at him, but I can tell that he’s waiting for me to continue. “My father and my stepmother, my sister … they can be jerks.” I feel strangely guilty at having said this out loud, but Gabriel laughs and I do as well.

  “Jerks as in they’re mean or jerks as in they don’t know any better?”

  “Mmm.” I think. “I’m not sure.” Scheduling a business trip on my birthday probably does not qualify as mean. But what about telling Juanita she cannot live with us anymore? Isn’t it mean to fire a person who’s lived with you and worked for you for sixteen years, who’s part of the family, because they’re sick and old and you don’t want to take care of them?

  “Go on,” Gabriel says, “give me one example of jerkiness.”

  “That’s so lame, isn’t it? Blaming our parents for our mental troubles.”

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “My father and stepmother … they have an image of what it is … to be happy.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know. The usual. Have goals. Do your best to achieve them. Be all you can be. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel says. “That’s the formula.” It is impossible to tell whether he’s being sarcastic. When I glance at him, he’s staring intently at the same spot where Chona saw the little children. “I don’t know what Antonio and Chona would do without me. Antonio can’t run his landscape business without me and he can’t take care of Chona by himself. They need me.”

  “Are you going someplace?” I joke.

  “Not necessarily,” he answers.

  I wait for more, but he’s silent. Then, “When you’re needed, goals and doing your best and being all you can be are not things you think about all that much. You just show up every day because someone needs you.”

  Is there anybody who needs me? The little elves are asking.

  “We need you,” Gabriel says, as if answering my silent question.

  “Who?”

  “Our little group. Mona trusts you. You make her feel smart. I’ve seen E.M. smile at you when he thinks no one’s looking. I can talk to you about anything. We need you.”

  There they were. The words I didn’t know I longed to hear until I heard them. People need me. Despite all the darkness and uglies and the little elves delivering inaccurate messages. I have not felt needed since the days I sat next to my mother’s bed and read poetry to her.

  I don’t know how long we sit there rocking gently in unison. Then Gabriel stands and slowly turns Chona’s wheelchair around. He offers me a fist as he goes by me and I bump it.

  At the end of our next GTH, Dr. Desai says, “Before we leave, I have a proposition for you all. We need more time together outside our meetings, so I’ve gotten permission from the hospital to have you four spend some time with me at my ranch. We would leave the day after tomorrow, provided I can certify to all administrators and insurance companies and lawyers that you are not in danger of hurting yourselves or others. I feel comfortable that I can do that, based on your outing to Gabriel’s house yesterday and what I’ve seen here and in our private sessions. We’d stay at the ranch for two weeks.
Emilio and Mona, you are eighteen, so we don’t need to get consent from your parents, but we will need to get the okay from your grandfather, Gabriel, and from your father, Vicky.”

  “My grandfather needs me,” Gabriel says.

  “Your grandfather is okay with your going,” Dr. Desai tells him. “I talked to him this morning. He’s coming this afternoon to sign the waiver the hospital requires.”

  “Will we have to milk cows and stuff like that?” Mona asks.

  “You will have the opportunity to do work assignments just like you have here, but they will be things you feel comfortable doing. Fritz, my dear husband, and our farmhand, Pepe, take care of the animals, and they would love your help, but there are other chores. It’s mostly a lovely place by the river where you can relax and reflect. We have good books to read. You can paint. You can go rafting and fishing. Sometimes we go into town to get ice cream.”

  “Yummy!” Mona exclaims.

  “What happens if we don’t want to go?” E.M. asks.

  “You still have another two weeks of court-ordered observation. So if you decide not to come, you’ll stay in the hospital and continue our individual sessions here.” Dr. Desai can sound tough when she wants. Then she turns to me and asks, “Vicky, how about you? Do you want to come?”

  “It doesn’t really matter what I want. My father won’t allow it.” It’s a small miracle that he has allowed me to stay at Lakeview for this long already.

  “How do you feel?” Dr. Desai insists. “Could you use another two weeks with us before going home?”

  What comes to me at that moment is a rush of memories from the day before: the ride in the back of the truck, E.M.’s jokes, Mona dancing with Antonio, Gabriel and I bumping fists. When was the last time I felt that lightness? But as I look further, I feel beneath the lightness the presence of something dark and heavy and menacing — something old and familiar waiting for me to return home so it can rule again.

  This dark thing, I now know, is my depression. It is something I need to get to know, understand, tame if possible, but I don’t quite have the strength or knowledge to handle it yet. It has gone into hiding these past few days because I had help — it’s been five against one. But once I’m home, the odds will be in its favor.

  “Vicky,” Dr. Desai repeats, “could you use more time with us?”

  “Yes,” I say tentatively, “I can use more time.”

  “Let’s see if we can convince your father,” she says. “Your father and stepmother are coming to pick you up tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’ll talk to them then.”

  “What happens if they say no?” I’m surprised to hear that question coming from E.M.

  “Then I go home,” I answer. “Back to school on Monday.”

  “Vicky, you have to get them to let you go to the ranch!” Mona says.

  “My father will never agree. That’s a whole month off from school.”

  “It would’ve been longer if you killed yourself,” E.M. says drily.

  “Much as I hate to do this,” Mona says, “I have to agree with Evil Mind here. If you go back to school and the same grind and you’re not ready, then sooner or later you’ll end up missing a whole bunch more than just school.”

  “Pretend you’re brave,” E.M. says. “You can do that.”

  “Gabriel,” Dr. Desai says, “you’re awfully quiet today. What do you think?”

  Gabriel sits back in his chair and waits for my eyes to meet his. “It’s your life, Vicky, and your mental health. If you think another two weeks with us at Dr. Desai’s ranch will be helpful to you, you should fight for it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I snap.

  “It’s not easy for me to say,” Gabriel corrects me. “My grandfather is paying this friend of his to help him with the landscaping while I’m here. It’s hard on him not to have me back, and it’s hard on me not to be there. But my grandfather trusts Dr. Desai and he trusts me … that I will choose the best way to get well again. Your father needs to trust you, that you are doing what you think needs to be done.”

  Everyone is silent. I think all of us realize that’s the first time we have heard Gabriel admit, even indirectly, that he isn’t well. He looks at Dr. Desai and she nods to him encouragingly.

  “I owe you all an apology,” he says softly. “You all have talked about why you are here and I never have. I’ve been afraid to say anything because after I talk about … it, people see me differently. I … didn’t want to lose what we have, you know, our friendship.”

  Mona reaches over and puts her hand on Gabriel’s arm. “If I can be quote-unquote friends with Evil Mind here, don’t you think I could still be friends with you no matter what you have?”

  “Shush your trap and let the man talk,” E.M. commands.

  “Well, excuse me for living!” Mona replies.

  Gabriel smiles at me and I smile back.

  “I hear a voice,” he says, looking around at all of us. “I started hearing it about a year ago. It was a good voice, not scary. I guess you could call it religious. He — it’s a man’s voice — wanted me to do things to be closer to God, like getting up early to pray or spending more time with my grandmother. The voice stayed with me, repeating his requests, and wouldn’t go away unless I did what he told me.

  “The reason I’m here is because six months ago, the voice started to ask me to do certain specific things. He asked me to give away everything I didn’t need. So I gave away my laptop, my iPod, my books — all my wonderful books. That one really hurt. Then he asked me to fast for a few days, just bread and water. The last request, he asked me to live on the streets for a week like a homeless person. That’s the one that got my grandfather worried. While I was away, he talked to Dr. Desai. She’s my grandmother’s doctor. When I came back from living on the street, he brought me here to see her. Dr. Desai wants to make sure that what I have is not the beginnings of schizophrenia. My grandmother may have something like that. This is how it starts, they say. First silent, persistent thoughts, then whispered words, then full-blown delusions.”

  There is silence.

  “There are other things too. The sense that I’ve been singled out for something special.” He looks briefly at me and smiles shyly. “Seeing connections everywhere. Signals and messages just for me. Being aware of a reality that others don’t see.” He stops. His eyes focus on a spot on the floor as if one of those realities just appeared to him. He shakes his head and continues, “These, they say, could also be symptoms of schizophrenia. The onset of it, they call it.”

  Silence again. I wonder if we are all thinking what I’m thinking — that what Gabriel has is more serious than we ever imagined.

  It is Mona who speaks first. “But what if the voice asked you to, I don’t know, make the world a safer place by getting rid of Evil Mind here? Would you have to do what it said?”

  “He wouldn’t ask me that … I don’t think. The voice is not like that … hasn’t been like that.” Gabriel’s words come painfully slow. He is breathing hard and perspiration moistens his forehead. “The voice … before I began to hear it, I felt worthless. It all felt worthless. The voice asked me to do something with my life. It told me my life matters.”

  After another long, uncomfortable silence, Dr. Desai says, “Thank you, Gabriel. Does anyone want to respond briefly? Then I think we’ll wrap up this session.”

  E.M. goes first. “It don’t matter much to me what goes on inside your brain. It’s what you do that counts. You’ve done good by me, so … that’s all.”

  Then Mona. “I always suspected that you had it worse than most of us. The worst mental illness in the world is to try to be more good and more perfect than is humanly possible. If you got a voice telling you to be a saint or whatever and you’re obeying it, that’s real bad. Not that I have any experience with trying to be good. So you’re a sick human like the rest of us, big deal. I still like you.”

  “Thanks,”
Gabriel says sincerely.

  It’s my turn, and I have no idea what to say. I’m proud of Gabriel for telling us, but I’m also scared. Scared that the voice is too powerful for Gabriel to control. Scared for me too, because I will be alone soon and I don’t know if I can fight my own voices.

  I look at Gabriel. “I’m glad you told us. I … I’m just glad.”

  Gabriel deserves much more, I know. But that’s all I can say.

  At eight the following morning, Margie tells me that my father and Barbara are waiting for me in Dr. Desai’s office. Mona is taking a shower. We didn’t say good-bye because she expects me to be strong and convince my father I need to go to the ranch, but part of me thinks I may never see her again.

  They both stand when they see me.

  “You look good,” my father says. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” I say.

  “You fixed your hair,” Barbara says.

  “More or less,” I respond, smiling, touching the side of my head.

  They sit on the sofa, their legs touching. I sit in the same wooden chair I always use during my sessions with Dr. Desai. My father picks up one of the figures of Ganesh and holds it up to Barbara questioningly. Barbara shrugs. She doesn’t recognize it. We look at each other in an awkward silence. Dr. Desai is late.

  “What time did you reschedule the meeting with the architects?” my father asks Barbara.

  “Nine,” she answers, glancing quickly at her watch.

  They look at me in unison.

  “She might have had an emergency,” I say.

  “How are you really?” Barbara asks me, meaning it. She is wearing a beige skirt and a white blouse with ruffles. Her golden hair is pulled back and tied in a bun.

  “Okay,” I say. She wants more, I can tell, something more confiding and intimate, but Barbara and I have never been on intimate terms and I don’t feel like starting now.

  “Are you ready to come home?” my father asks.

  I have anticipated my father’s question. It’s your mental health. Fight for it. Pretend you’re brave.

  “I think Dr. Desai wants to talk to you about that,” I say.