The Paper Shepherd

by Olivia Landis

  Max landed on the floor with a loud thud and slid ten feet across the highly polished wood. Tony helped his friend up, feeling how eerily light he was. He seemed to have lost at least fifteen pounds in the seven weeks since Christmas. Even before Christmas break, he had been looking unnaturally lean. The referee called a foul on the other team sending Max to the free throw line. He made the second basket as the buzzer was sounding, winning the God Squad’s fifth game in a row.

  As Max and Tony left the gym, Tony took a long hard look at Max. Now that the seminary’s dorm was finally repaired from fire damage, they each had their own identical ascetic six by eight room, instead of sharing a room in the general graduate housing as they had for two years. Since they spent all their days now covered from head to toe, it was only during basketball games that Tony got to see how thin his friend was becoming. Max reminded Tony of the men he visited at the state prison on the isolation ward with antibiotic resistant tuberculosis, wasting away to nothing despite medical treatment, or like the patients he visited on the cancer ward at the hospital, their tumors robbing them of most of the calories they could ingest in a day. Despite his efforts, Tony couldn’t understand what was going on. He tried to gently inquire about Max’s health. Max insisted he felt fine. He was still running and playing basketball. Aside from the fact that he got knocked over far more easily than before (which simply meant more free throws and more points for his team) he didn’t seem too weak to play.

  Tony had gotten used to Max’s odd and fluctuating moods. But, this one was more distressing to him than Max’s usual highs and lows. For one thing, it was more persistent, going on daily for months. Second, Tony didn’t know who he could turn to for help if he couldn’t solve this problem on his own. He knew that people who were depressed often didn’t eat well, but he had seen Max depressed before. It looked very different than this. In fact, Max seemed unnaturally happy…no, downright giddy. It seemed as though absolutely nothing had consequences for him anymore. Finally, Tony was leaving on a missionary exchange in May. He feared that once he was gone, no one would pay much attention to his friend’s eating habits or physical health, including Max himself, who seemed completely oblivious to any negative consequence of his actions or inactions. Max, Tony was afraid, would simply slip through the cracks, unnoticed even to himself. Months, perhaps a whole year could go by, and…. No. Tony thought sadly. He’ll be dead in a year if he keeps losing so much weight. He has to be better by then. Doesn’t he?

  “You feeling okay, bud?” he asked as they walked into the food court. Max stopped with his hand on the handle of the door and eyed Tony suspiciously.

  “Yeah, I feel fine. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You took a pretty hard fall near the end there,” Tony said, trying to disguise his true concerns.

  “It’s nothing,” Max insisted. “Really, I’m fine.” They each got their food and sat down at their usual table in the food court. Max ate two bites of spaghetti and then moved it around in his plate with his fork like a reluctant four-year-old. Finally, he pushed his plate away.

  The sky was steel, or, Renee preferred, unpolished sword. She looked at the bowl of oatmeal in front of her. Her head was pounding but not as badly as she had expected. Mostly, she just felt nauseated.

  “Eat, Renee,” Sal encouraged her. “You’re not going to feel better if you don’t get something to settle your stomach.” Renee tried to make eye contact with her friend, but the action of rolling her eyes up sent a lightening bolt of pain through her skull. She looked back at her oatmeal.

  “I haven’t been that drunk since I was eleven,” Renee said plainly.

  “You are such a weirdo,” Sal replied, laughing dubiously. Renee closed her eyes and felt the steam from the oatmeal brush past her face. Why do I feel so sick? she wondered. I didn’t feel this bad last time. Then she reflected that when she had gotten sick ten years ago, she had had the good sense to vomit up everything in her stomach so it wouldn’t hang around to haunt her later.

  Sal had tried and succeeded in making sure Renee’s twenty-first birthday was as exciting as anyone could imagine. By the third bar, she stopped counting how many drinks men sent Renee after finding out it was her birthday. She’ll forgive me for the nausea, Sal thought. At least, I hope she will. Renee pushed the raisins around her oatmeal with her spoon like a reluctant four-year-old. I’m very lucky to have a friend like Sal, she thought, reflecting that, as much as she wished she wasn’t hung over right now, she would have had no one to spend her birthday with otherwise. Everyone else in her life had either left her or she had chased them away. Other people at school had quickly given up on trying to socialize with her when they realized that their invitations were almost universally turned down in favor of work or studying. Sal alone hadn’t given up on her. And, Sal’s leaving in three months, Renee thought to herself. The time was going to fly by, Renee was sure. Now that her much anticipated twenty-first birthday was over, the fabric of time would rush forward, featureless and with no markers to indicate its speed. It might as well be May and graduation already, it was so close. Renee’s heart sunk. She pushed her bowl away and put her head down on the table at the Midwater Diner. She reached her hand across the table and grabbed Sal’s hand, the only thing she could do for now to feel like Sal wasn’t really slipping away.

  “Sal,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “You know I’m thankful every day you’re in my life?” Sal rubbed Renee’s shiny brown hair. I’m going to miss this weird little kid when I graduate, she thought.

  “I know, honey. I know.”

  50

  Max sat alone in a booth at Pugs. It was the third week of the fall semester. Without Tony around, there was no reason to go to Jake’s to drink high brow sherry or barter music for free imported beer. Max was satisfied with diluted, Luke warm domestic drafts. He ordered them mostly out of habit. The more he lived by habit, the less he had to think. The less he had to think, the faster his life went by. The last major event he could remember in his life was his crisis of faith in the chapel. He felt that had happened a few seconds ago. The last event in his life noticed by anyone else was Jay’s wedding. Although Max knew that time had elapsed, he could only remember a few minutes of the intervening life, as though his brain was a motion activated camera that only recorded when something unusual enough happened to turn it on. Max sought to minimize the events that would stand out and force him to experience any memory of his life. Unfortunately, other people kept imposing them upon him. If I could just get everyone to forget me, he thought to himself, I could probably go years without realizing I was alive. I wish!

  Max put down his mug and opened the card that had come for him earlier in the day. It was an annoyance, one of these bookmarks in time Max was trying so hard to avoid. As he opened the envelope, Max knew exactly what he would find. A photo of a wrinkled, pink baby in a blue knit cap fell out. Max picked it up. The baby’s tiny eyes were wrenched shut, his tiny hands were balled into tight fists. Made in His image, he thought. What blasphemy. Max was still unsure about the existence of an all powerful, all knowing being he could call “God.” What he was sure about was that if there was an Almighty, he had not begun his supernatural existence looking like this small bundle of flab and flannel. What an ugly kid, he thought. Are they all like that when they’re new? Max read the accompanying card. It’s a boy! it proclaimed in white block letters on a blue background. There was a stork in the bottom right corner. Yeah, right. If only that was where babies really come from, maybe mom would get to be a grandmother after all, he thought melancholically. Maybe she would stop hating me.

  Michael James Holstead, Born September 9th, 1999. Seven pounds six ounces. Terrific, Max thought, putting the picture back in the envelope. I suppose I should call and congratulate them. He already knew he wouldn’t. He had known about the baby before the card even arrived. Jay had mentioned over the summer that Jen was pregnant to explain her conspicuous absence from t
he dart board at Buck’s. To Max, this was a medical condition of Jen’s that required she stay away from alcohol, second hand smoke, and the bothersome aromas of heavily cured meats. In Max’s mind, it remained completely unconnected with the inevitable production of another human being. Michael Holstead only became real to Max when his mother had mentioned Jen’s new son. Eleanor had called a week ago to tell Max he had left some of his books at home over the summer and to ask if he wanted them sent to school. The arrival of this flabby, pink person had been just one more bead on the string of uninteresting anecdotes that made up their infrequent conversations.

  What’s the point? Max thought to himself, putting his mug to his lips but barely sipping the bland liquid inside. Why do they have to involve me with this? Why can’t they just let me disappear? Why can’t they just forget me and let me forget myself? What in the heck is the point anyway? He already knew the answer. Evolution had programmed in the mind of every animal the drive to reproduce. The survival of living things depended on it. And mammals, particularly humans, were born so defenseless, that evolution had to fool parents into finding such disgusting and helpless creatures adorable so that the parents could stand to raise them to adulthood. All duped by our own chemistry, Max thought. St. Paul was right. Why have kids? We all die, children or no. We are all half dead already.

  It was an unusually warm day for September as Pat McCleod pushed open the double glass doors of the Brighton University Behavioral Health Center and crossed the street to the opposite lawn. Salome Stevenson had lifted off from Kennedy Airport in New York City a few months earlier, leaving Ivana Humper just a memory among the clients of the Fox Tail exotic dance club. Since then, Renee’s life had fallen into an unbreakable 24 hour rhythm: wake, gym, 10 hours at the coffee shop, sleep. She did this 6 times and then had one day of wake, church, 8 hours at the coffee shop, sleep. She did this for 15 weeks in a row. Now that the school year had started, she had six days a week of wake, class, gym, study, work for 2 hours, sleep. On the seventh day, she exchanged church for class. She lived by habit, one foot in front of the next, every hour accounted for. Although she dedicated her considerable brain power to her classes, with her applications to veterinary school already submitted, she no longer had any reason to think about her life as a whole. She never had to consider variations on the future, to weigh different paths against one another. She just charged forward along the tracks she had laid for herself as mindlessly as a train, not steering. She found life now passed in a blur with no distinct memories to measure the passage of time. Months felt like minutes.

  And so it was that when Pat McLeod approached the picnic blanket where she was studying in the park on that particular day, she felt as though it had only been a few minutes since their last chance encounter. She stacked up some of her text books to make space on the blanket for him. Pat, had been relieved that Renee never took him up on the implied open offer to become his patient at the Behavioral Health Clinic. He deeply cared about her and knew she needed therapy. He also enjoyed being with her. But, it was miserable seeing her and knowing he could not have a relationship with her. As complicated and marginally ethical as their history had been, any recorded clinical contact had occurred when he was a third medical student and didn’t sign notes. Now that he had graduated and had a license to lose, Pat felt far more apprehensive to be more than a friendly acquaintance to this mysterious woman. So, when he saw her outside his office window, on a public lawn with no clinical context and hundreds of witnesses around who could confirm no romantic contact was taking place, he jumped at the chance to check in on her. Pat took the implicit invitation to sit down.

  “Pat,” Renee said, beaming.

  “Tiar. Good to finally see you again,” he replied.

  “Finally? It’s only been a few weeks.”

  “Thirty,” Pat corrected. “It’s been thirty weeks since I ran into you in the clinic.”

  “Oh goodness,” Renee caught herself. “Has it been? Well, how are you?”

  “Good. And yourself?” Renee thought for a while.

  “Good… I think. Really very good.” Pat squinted his dubious response.

  “You don’t sound sure,” he said neutrally.

  “No,” Renee answered. “I’m sure. I guess. I mean school is good. Applications are in for vet school. Work is good. I’m healthy. No major problems brewing. I think I’m actually okay.” Pat nodded at her, hoping she was right.

  “Well, great,” he said to her. “If you think you’re good, then I’m happy.”

  “It’s just,” Renee started again. “I guess I’m so used to having a crisis come up every few months. Something happens that devastates me and I have to figure out how to rebound from it. When nothing is wrong, I feel nervous.” Pat nodded again.

  “So, you’re nervous?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” Renee tried to clarify. “I’m… nothing. Which is fine. Nothing is better than fine. It’s just hard to describe.”

  “Well try,” Pat said, realizing he was dancing dangerously close to the line of this becoming therapy. Renee looked around the park, trying to gather her thoughts. Finally, she took a deep breath and started again.

  “When I was nine, I had to fly to America alone to live with a stranger,” she began.

  “I remember,” Pat said, knowing the story well.

  “What I didn’t tell you is that my parents actually left me at the airport with a ticket. Didn’t even wait for the flight to leave. Just dumped me at the gate, filled out the forms for an unaccompanied minor, and left. Well, the airline over sold the flight or something…Something was going on I couldn’t make sense of… I was nine, alone with strange adults and not sure what they were doing on my behalf. I thought I was going to have to live at the airport… or try to walk home… or hide in a delivery truck and hitchhike somewhere. I was terrified. Instead, they just bumped me up to first class so the flight attendants could keep a better eye on me.” Renee appeared distracted by a man on the lawn playing frisbee with a Labrador retriever. Following her gaze, Pat was not sure she was actually looking at them.

  “And?” Pat prompted. Renee suddenly jerked her head, as if waking from a memory.

  “And, it was really comfortable. It was so nice. The seat was nice. The food was nice. The people were kind to me,” she remembered. “No one was yelling, like the house I had just come from. No one was cursing and accusing me of things, like the house I was going to. It was just… nice. But, it was a 9 hour flight I have 3 seconds of memory from. It was a non-event. It was not a real thing. It was a way to get from one place to another.” Pat contemplated this analogy.

  “And, that is where you are right now?” he asked. Renee nodded. “For how long?” She raised her eye brows.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “If I get into the school I want, I’ll be in school for another 5 years from now. Can I stay on autopilot that whole time? Can I dedicate all of my thinking to school and none of it to life? Can I just work hard and be okay with myself and be… comfortable with who I am? Is that me now?” She didn’t know if she was asking herself or Pat. Can I just be okay? She echoed inside her head. Can I stop wrestling with self-hatred? Can I forgive myself? Can I stop trying to dig into the greater truths of good and evil?

  “What about other people?” Pat asked.

  “My classmates and teachers seem fine with me,” she said plainly. “They seem to think I’m okay. The other students at the Catholic Student Association seem to think I’m fine. They are nice enough.”

  “I mean, what about love,” Pat asked, pointedly.

  “What about love?” Renee retorted. “Is that really something I need right now? I have God’s love. Finally. I really believe that now. I have compassion… for stray and sick animals and stuff. That is a form of love. There is even a saint for that. I love myself… finally… I think. I mean, I’m okay. I don’t hate myself. I am working on loving myself. That is big progress.” Pat mulled over this. She did actually sound okay.
Can it be that simple? He asked himself. Can this poor, tortured girl really be okay now? He knew there was nothing “simple” about the treatment she had had. She had had thirty two weeks of individual counseling with Dr. Colton. She had dedicated her mind to it as urgently as if it were one of her beloved biology classes. She had devoured the material for dialectical behavioral therapy, for cognitive behavioral therapy, for any 3 letter acronym they could throw at her. If he had any faith in his profession at all, he should be satisfied that this would be the end point, that anyone who truly engaged in meaningful therapy could one day be okay. But is she? Is she really? Can it be that simple?

  “Well… great,” Pat said. “I am really happy for you, Tiar. You really do seem okay now.”

  “Dr. Colton is a great therapist. But I really have you to thank, also,” she admitted. “After my experiences on the ward, I was doubtful anything could help me. I never would have given him the chance to if you hadn’t shown me that sometimes, someone is really listening and trying to understand.” Pat blushed, trying to eschew her praise. This was the exact kind of blending of friendship and clinical relationship that would get him in trouble if anyone had been around to hear. But, nobody was. Pat pushed a little further.

  “Then, how do you stay okay? I mean, how do you not fall back into all those old worries?” he probed.

  “You mean, the big ‘what if?’” she asked tentatively.

  “Yes,” Pat said. “The big ‘what if?’ How do you maintain all the great progress you have made if the big-what-if happens?” Renee’s face changed. Her smile was gone. Her posture became as tense as sitting on a picnic blanket would allow. She shook her head.

  “No,” she spat out. “No, I have not thought about it. But, that can only happen if I go back there, and I’m not going back there. Never. Never, ever. So, it doesn’t matter. And maybe learning to not think about it is why I am okay now.” Pat stared at his friend sympathetically, so thankful his life had not given him any memories to be this frightened of remembering.