3:57 PM: His mother is waiting in the parking lot. From the front door of the school he runs through the rain and into the cool dry air of the car. They have half an hour to get to the doctor’s appointment, which his mother tells him is all the way on the other side of town. The rain coarsens, slamming against the windshield, and at one point it becomes so heavy, the wind so strong, that they cannot see the bumper of the car in front of them. His mother pulls off the road into the parking lot of a shopping mall where they wait for ten minutes. “We have time,” she says. “It’s not that far now. How was your day?” “Fine,” he says. “What did you do?” she asks. “Lots of things,” he says. The drawing he did in art is stowed in a manila folder in his backpack and he takes it out to show his mother. “Who’s this?” she says, looking at the image of the old white house and Louise holding her candle. “It’s the woman who lives in the house next door,” he says. “What woman?” his mother asks, as if she does not know. “Louise. I see her every morning. We met through the fence. She lights a candle in her kitchen. Smoke comes out of the chimney. She’s one of my only two friends here.” “But that house is condemned, Copley. I didn’t know anyone lived there. You should have told us earlier.” His mother looks concerned and asks to keep the picture. Adults are always keeping his work, taking it away from him, and then, when he least expects it, returning it without explanation.
4:25 PM: The doctor’s office is in a brown brick three-story building. Unlike at his ordinary doctor’s office, where he had a check-up last week, there is no receptionist. He and his mother sit in the waiting room. There are magazines for adults, books for children, and various toys: plastic cars and trucks and wooden blocks. He has started paging through an issue of American Scientist when the door to the doctor’s consulting room opens and he asks them both to come in. Dr. Phaedrus looks like an older version of his father: shorter, fatter, balder, his blue and white striped shirt tucked into the waist of his gray slacks, held in by a gold-buckled brown leather belt that matches his tasseled brown leather shoes. He explains that he will be “speaking with Copley and Mom together and then Copley alone” while his mother waits in a different room than the one they started in. At the end he’ll “talk to Mom alone” and when the session is finished they will “exit through the back of the building,” so anyone in the first waiting room will not see them, and they will not see those who may be waiting. He asks why they have to do it this way since he does not understand why it is important that no one knows they are there. “To preserve privacy,” Dr. Phaedrus explains, “because some people don’t like others to know they’re coming to see me.” Dr. Phaedrus smiles and closes the door, puts some soft music on his stereo, and asks them to sit down on a brown leather couch that matches the doctor’s belt and shoes. Dr. Phaedrus sits across from the two of them in a matching chair and holds a pad of yellow paper and pen. The doctor stares at him for a moment and he stares back at the doctor and then the doctor begins. “I feel fine,” he says, when the doctor asks him how he’s been feeling, “I’m not sick.” “No one is saying you’re sick,” says Dr. Phaedrus. “But you’re a doctor,” he says. “Sometimes people go to a doctor so they can try to feel even better. Let’s think of it that way if we can,” says Dr. Phaedrus, “that you’re here to try to feel even better than you do already.” The doctor smiles, his teeth very white, his skin tanned and shiny, head almost bald except for a crescent of white frost that matches his teeth, so when he smiles it looks like a white ring is angled all the way round his head. “Tell me what kinds of things you liked to do in Boston,” says Dr. Phaedrus, “and what kinds of things you like to do now that you’re living here.” He thinks about the question for a moment and then begins to answer, conscious of trying to find good things to say about his new home, and not just about Boston. He tries to be balanced: not everything about Boston was great, and not everything here is terrible. The doctor listens, takes notes, and watches him in a way that reminds him of how he feels when he has to change for swimming. The doctor smiles and asks what he likes best about his new house and new school. He thinks and answers the questions: “I like how big my room is. I like having my own bathroom. I like having a backyard even though it’s too wet to go outside very much. I like the new kitchen.” “And school,” the doctor prompts. He thinks; there is nothing he likes about the school itself. “I like my friend Joslyn,” he says, “and I like the art teacher Mr. Cross and the swimming teacher Mr. Bruce and my language arts teacher Mrs. Abbot.” The doctor nods and asks him what he likes about each of these teachers, skipping over Joslyn entirely. He tells Dr. Phaedrus about how nice Mrs. Abbot is, how Mr. Cross liked his drawing today, and how Mr. Bruce looks like a movie star. The doctor nods, takes notes, smiles to himself, goes on nodding, takes more notes. “Now, I spoke with your parents last week and they told me that from time to time you pretend to be a toy soldier. Can you tell me why you do that?” It’s not about being a toy soldier, although sometimes when he does it he is thinking of the steps he learned in dance class in Boston, and he knows those were for the “March of the Toy Soldiers”; he often hears the music in his head. More frequently, however, he is not thinking about the dance steps at all; instead, he is becoming someone else, someone more logical, more stable, someone who does not have to act in ways his parents expect him to act, but he does not know how to say any of this to the doctor. “I don’t know why,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “Sometimes I just walk like that.” “And your dad says you put on a different voice, a funny voice,” the doctor says. “It’s not a funny voice. It’s a different voice. It’s still my voice. It isn’t funny, though.” “And why do you talk with that other voice?” “I don’t know. Because I want to.” The doctor frowns and writes for almost a full minute: while the doctor is writing he looks at the gold second hand creeping round on the watch his parents gave him for his last birthday. “Okay, I think it’s time for Mom to go in the waiting room at the back, and Copley and I will continue our conversation.” Dr. Phaedrus winks at his mother and shows her into the other room. When he comes back to sit down, the doctor clears his throat and says, “Okay, Cop, let’s get down to brass tacks, now that it’s just us two guys. Your parents said that you’ve been having some interesting dreams. Can you maybe tell me about that?” Dr. Phaedrus turns over a blank sheet of paper and raises his pen. “Dreams?” he asks, understanding that he has, in fact, been brought to a doctor who helps people with sleeping problems. “Yes, Copley, dreams. I believe you’ve been having some unusual kinds of dreams since you moved here from Boston. I’m very interested in dreams, and in the way people remember their dreams. You’ll actually be helping me, you know, if you can try to remember some of them.” He is unsure what kinds of dreams he should report. He remembers many of his dreams. In the last several weeks he has been dreaming, night-to-night, about working on a particular drawing. He tells Dr. Phaedrus he began the drawing on one night and continued it on subsequent nights, improving it, expanding it, making the colors brighter: it has been, literally, a dream with sequels. “A recurring dream, a dream you keep having, which is always the same?” asks Dr. Phaedrus. “No, it’s different every time. It’s like chapters in a book.” He thinks this is interesting but Dr. Phaedrus looks bored and asks him if there are any other dreams—about his father or mother or about friends at school or friends he left behind in Boston. In fact, he remembers a dream about his mother drowning, and he woke up to find he was crying, and he spent the whole next day so upset he could not even look at his mother; he decides this is too private to share with a doctor he has only just met, who, in any case, clearly thinks his most interesting dreams are boring. “No,” he says, “I can’t remember any dreams like that.” Dr. Phaedrus mumbles to himself, writes something on his pad, sighs, and looks up at him. “Is there anything that’s been bothering you, Copley? Is there anything happening at school that you don’t feel like you can tell your parents?” He thinks about Mrs. Pitt and the other boys, but says no, nothing at s
chool, except for the fact that there’s meat in all the lunches. “And you don’t eat meat?” “It’s not just me. My parents don’t eat meat either.” The doctor makes a note. “And what about at home? Is there anything maybe happening with one of your parents that you don’t feel like you can tell the other one? Is there anything bad happening?” Dr. Phaedrus asks. “What about with your grandparents?” He thinks about his mother’s father, Grandpa Chilton, who is kind and funny but who they rarely see, and then he thinks about his father’s parents, Grandpa Arthur and Grandma Ruth. They don’t see them very often either. The last time they saw his father’s parents was before Christmas last year. His grandfather came into his bedroom at night after dinner and balanced him on his knee. He looked straight into his eyes, smiled, and then suddenly grimaced, gritted his teeth, and said, “Copley, I want you to know your opinion doesn’t matter at all. You are no one. You are nothing.” As his grandfather was telling him this, his father came into the room and he has not seen his grandparents since then, not even before they left Boston to move here. “I want you to know this is a safe place,” says Dr. Phaedrus, “a place where you can tell me absolutely anything that comes into your head. You don’t have to keep anything from me. You can trust me, Copley.” He looks at Dr. Phaedrus and decides he has nothing to lose; he has told his parents about the man in the house and they don’t believe him, so perhaps Dr. Phaedrus will, and then something can be done, although what exactly he thinks should be done about it he can’t say. The earth spins several thousand more feet around on its axis to let a faint patch of sun through the window. It hits his face and he squints; Dr. Phaedrus adjusts the blind. “Is that better?” Dr. Phaedrus asks. “Yes, that’s better. There’s a man in the house,” he says, his hands beginning to shake. “What?” “I said there’s a man in our house. I told my parents but they don’t believe me. I’ve seen him more than once. He’s really tall, taller than Mr. Bruce. Like a giant, except not a giant. I know giants don’t exist. I mean, I know there are really, really tall people on earth, but that they’re not magical or anything. I know it’s a . . .”—he looks for the word—“genetic problem they have. This man isn’t really, really tall, but he’s definitely tall.” “And you’ve seen him more than once?” Dr. Phaedrus asks. “A few times. On the night after we moved in, I think I was sleepwalking and I woke up outside. I walked out the front door. I was walking down the lawn, and then this man picked me up. I didn’t recognize him. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. I was really scared. He was so big and he carried me like I didn’t weigh anything. He carried me back inside the house and he locked the door and then I walked back upstairs, really slowly, so he would think I was still asleep, but I wasn’t. I told my parents but they said it was a dream.” “And was it a dream?” “I don’t know, maybe, except I saw him again. He was in my room in the middle of the night. He didn’t think I could see him but I could and I spoke to him. I told him I could see he was there. He was sitting in the corner next to my dresser. He said my room was his son’s room. He asked me if I was his son. He sounded angry.” “And were you scared?” “No, I wasn’t scared, not that time. I recognized him. I was scared the first time, and that time I screamed, but the second time I’d already seen him.” “But if he was a stranger, why didn’t you scream the second time? Why didn’t you call your parents?” asks Dr. Phaedrus. “If a stranger was in my house, I’d scream.” He thinks about this and wonders why he was not afraid the second time. He does not have an answer. In fact, he knows now that he is unsure if the man’s presence was or was not a dream. He remembers seeing the man outside the window and is fairly certain he was awake when that happened, but the movement of the furniture this morning, and his parents’ belief that he is the one responsible for the rearrangement, has unsettled his sense of what he has experienced and what he has imagined. He is no longer sure what he may have dreamed, and what he may have experienced in real life, nor is he sure that dreams are not, in fact, just a different room in the house of REAL LIFE than the ones we walk around in during the day. “Do you think maybe it was a dream?” asks Dr. Phaedrus. “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. He held me the first time. I felt him holding me. I didn’t dream that. And I saw him this morning as we were leaving the house.” The truth is, he isn’t sure, but even if he dreamed it, it still might be true. He dreamed they would leave Boston before his parents ever told him they were going to move. He dreamed they would live in a house that looked something like the one they live in now. He has not told his parents this. It’s another thing they don’t know. He also dreamed they would not be living alone.
5:15 PM: “Now I’m going to ask you a very important question, Copley. Are you ready?” “I’m ready.” “Okay. So my question is, can you tell me where you are?” He thinks about the question and looks around the room. “You’re going to answer me truthfully, aren’t you, Cop?” He nods and knows what he must say: “It looks like I’m sitting in your office.” The doctor frowns: “You say it looks like. What does it feel like?” “I don’t know,” he says, “it doesn’t feel like I’m really here. It feels like I’m already somewhere else.” The doctor makes a note and without looking up says, “And can you tell me where you feel like you are?” He was dreading this question but also knows what he must say. “It feels like I’m in the air.” “In the air? Do you mean flying?” the doctor asks. “No,” he says, “falling. It feels like I’m falling through the air, like toward the ocean, from an airplane, but never hitting the water. I think that’s how it feels.”
5:20 PM: He has finished his conversation with Dr. Phaedrus, who asks his mother to come in while he waits in the rear reception room. He listens at the door as the adults talk. The doctor says he is worried about his “ability to tell reality from fantasy” and worried about his “flat affect while describing what sounds like a disturbing experience, even if it was a hallucination. It seems like he’s experiencing pretty frightening episodes and I think we should treat this with medication, and continue to see Copley on a regular basis to check up on how he’s doing.” He hears his mother clear her throat and cough before she speaks, “But what do you think it is,” she says, “that’s making this happen?” “I don’t want to jump to a diagnosis,” the doctor says, “but I do think he’s quite a sick little boy. This has been a very distressing move for him. He’s having difficulty making friends, and from the little he said about his new school I have the sense that he’s not particularly happy there. What we need to do right away is help him sleep through the night, to put a stop to the nightmares, help him begin to regain his equilibrium.” “Will that cure it?” his mother asks. “I don’t think we should be thinking in terms of cure, Dr. Noailles. This is probably going to be a chronic condition, something that we’ll need to continue monitoring. I also think maybe he should see a dietician. He looks undernourished.”
5:40 PM: His mother’s face is as wet as the road. They stop at a grocery store and run inside. Because of the rain it just looks like she’s wet, like they’re both wet, which they are, but in fact they’re both crying. She picks up a few things for dinner and then they stop at the pharmacy counter and wait while the pharmacist fills a prescription. He understands these pills are for him but there is nothing about him that feels unwell. He does not understand how he can be sick with a disease that has no cure. “I’m not sick,” he says to his mother as she takes the white paper bag from the pharmacist. “I know you’re not, honey,” she says, and then he knows she is a liar. They go to the row of checkout counters at the front of the store. He can see two different bottles of pills in the bag. If he needs two different kinds of pills then he must be really, really sick, but sick in a way he does not feel, or at least that he does not feel at this time: sick in a way that is only going to get worse, that needs constant monitoring. If his mother is crying, it must be more serious than he can imagine. He wonders if he might be dying. He is not ready to die but the thought of dying does not make him sad. Instead, he imagines it mi
ght be a great and strange adventure, yet another room to explore in the house of REAL LIFE. He remembers a dream he had a few nights ago. The dream took place in their old apartment in Boston. He came in the front door and put down his bag on the chair in the hall and hung his jacket in the hall closet. He went looking for his parents, first in the living room and dining room, then in the kitchen, in their bedroom, in the bathroom. He looked in all the closets but couldn’t find them. Finally he opened a closet in their bedroom and discovered a room he had never seen before. His parents were sitting in that room with a little boy who looked like him but had blond hair instead of brown. His parents were different, too: they were both thin and blond and looked like Mr. Bruce and Mrs. Abbot. This is your brother, Copley, they said in the dream, and he knew he had to kill the other boy.
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