The Bridge

by Bill Konigsberg

  He opens to the first blank page and decides to write a song.

  He rolls his eyes. Not exactly the stuff of Spotify viral charts.

  He could be the next Ed Sheeran if he could just write the right song. It’s so frustrating. And worse, it’s so alone.

  He tries again.

  He looks at what he’s written and thinks: Yeah. Not my best. Not exactly what everyone wants to hear. I could call the album Kill Me, Please. It’s like his brain is jelly and thoughts are not connecting and not in a boy, what an amazing tortured artist sort of way. More like a Debbie Downer sort of way. Nothing grabs him.

  It’s the first night of his post-medication life. He now has one Petralor pill in him. Petralor. It sounds like the name of a heroine in a postapocalyptic novel, some girl whose family has died, who has to forage through this city for dead vermin to eat.

  A lot of his life is lived in his head, he realizes, which makes it all the more ironic that he is, as of today, diseased in the head.

  Jesus. If he can’t trust his brain, what can he trust?

  CHAPTER 4A: APRIL 21

  On Sunday morning, Aaron’s dad bursts into Aaron’s room without knocking.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  Aaron has been in bed for the better part of thirty-six hours, and when he sits up, his head spins.

  “Ready for what, exactly?”

  His arms and legs feel super restless, like he wants to do something—anything—that would get him out of his head. The other parts of him, though, are pretty okay with continuing to avoid the real world indefinitely. Yesterday, Aaron told his dad he was ready to venture out and they made a plan to see a movie, but in the shower the negative thoughts attacked, and he started thinking about his music career in the past tense, and realized that probably everyone was humoring him, and they all knew he was terrible, and the joke was totally on him, and by the time he got out of the shower, it was all he could do to get back into bed. His dad, it seemed, wasn’t particularly surprised when he came in all dressed for a movie. He simply sat on the bed and silently rubbed Aaron’s temples until Aaron fell asleep again.

  But today, apparently, is a new day.

  “Time to reprise Aaron Day,” his dad says, and Aaron rolls his eyes. Aaron Day was something he and his dad did right after his mom left. Aaron got to choose what they did, and his dad had no veto power. Aaron knew this was one of those things parents do to make up for divorcing, but he loved it nonetheless and still has memories of the candy binge they did, hitting eight different candy stores and loading up on all Aaron’s favorites. But now he’s seventeen and depressed, and he’s not sure he has it in him to make one choice, let alone six, or ten.

  “Is it, though?”

  His dad does that thing he does when he’s trying to be Cool Dad. It’s a bit like pantomiming, and Aaron has no idea why his dad thinks this is a good look. He pretends to grab for a gun holstered to his left side, and then does the same on the right side, and he pretends to shoot in Aaron’s direction as if life were a Western movie. “C’mon, partner. Think of all the fun we can have with you at the helm. We can drive to Pennsylvania and find a shooting range. We can … do a pottery class. A foreign film binge at Lincoln Center.”

  Aaron cracks up. “It’s like you know all my favorite things.”

  This makes his dad smile. “C’mon. Jump in the shower. This time we’re gonna make it, okay?”

  Aaron slowly stands. The blood rushes from his head again and he feels momentarily dizzy. “Deal,” he says.

  And this time, unlike yesterday, they do make it out the door.

  At the Time Warner Center, Aaron gets two Thomas Keller Oreos, which are as big as his hand and filled with white chocolate ganache instead of whatever they usually put in Oreos. When he’s scarfed those down, because it’s his day and it seems like he’s supposed to do unusual stuff, he makes his dad stop at a vendor for two dirty-water hot dogs, extra sauerkraut. They messily devour them on the way to the Bethesda Terrace in Central Park.

  “Does Mom know?” Aaron asks as they stroll.

  “I put in a few calls Friday and yesterday but haven’t heard back,” his dad says, dodging a young woman who walks like she’s in a speed-walking race despite wearing headphones and texting.

  “Beautiful,” Aaron says.

  “You know she never listens to messages.”

  Aaron almost says, You know what might get her attention? Telling her that she almost lost her son to the Hudson River. But he doesn’t say it. The sun is out, he’s finally outside, and he doesn’t have the energy to fight.

  Nice that your parents have that option, Tillie says in his head. Mine didn’t have a choice about whether or not they’d be told.

  Aaron shudders. His dad doesn’t notice.

  When they arrive at the Bethesda Fountain, with its gallant angel overlooking all the activity, there’s an impromptu concert going on. A busker stands in the center of a tan circle between the terrace and fountain, and he’s surrounded by a swarm of New Yorkers. He has a guitar, a harp, a couple wind instruments, and a drumbeat emanating from a keyboard.

  They stop and listen. The guy records loops of each instrument, one at a time, so that the drumbeat is suddenly joined by a flute, and then the guitar broadens the sound, and a harp punctuates with a harmony, and finally his voice, like the voice of that Bethesda angel behind him—fluttering, diving down, lifting up. Aaron’s bathed in sound that shivers the peach fuzz hairs on his arms.

  He looks at his dad, who is swaying to the music, as if in a trance, and Aaron is filled with palpable love and something that feels like grace, like for a second he sees his dad and he’s so damn happy he didn’t die four days ago, so damn relieved, and he wants to memorize his dad’s profile, that slight curve down in his nose, because it all seems so fleeting right now, so random, how another choice could have so altered this moment and every moment forever after. He could so easily not be right now. And what would that experience be like, to terminate being? Can you cease to exist and still know?

  In a moment that overtakes him, he grasps his father from the side and hugs him, and his dad, as if he knows, as if he understands exactly why this music has led to this embrace, turns and suddenly there, on the Bethesda Terrace, a father and son hold on to each other for dear, precious life.

  And all is good in the world.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, Aaron sees a guy maybe a year or two older than him glancing their way and whispering to his friend, who wears a Yankee hat, who laughs at whatever his friend whispers.

  Aaron’s heart drops.

  He doesn’t want it to. He needs it not to, but it’s as if he’s allowed himself to be seen, and now he’s been judged, as if this awful kid sees the terrible truth about Aaron and his dad that he can’t possibly know because he is Aaron, and his stomach falls into his groin and he lets go of his dad and looks away and all that beauty of that moment, gone, judged as stupid, corny, weak.

  Averting his body from his dad, Aaron can feel the eyes of his father on him, and he wants to pull away. He wants to walk away. The world is so terrible and something so pure has been tarnished and he wants to cry out but can you even just imagine what the kid would say about that?

  “Let’s just go,” Aaron says.

  His dad, incredulous, says, “What? What happened?”

  And Aaron won’t tell, ever. It’s all too embarrassing, being Aaron. So he just says, “I need to go. Now.”

  On the walk home, Aaron’s mood drops to that all-too-familiar place where he feels no one can touch him, he is untouchable, unreachable, in an impenetrable vacuum.

  His dad speaks softly to him. “I dealt with some depression when I was your age. A little older. Came home from college late freshman year and Nan took care of me for a while.”

  Aaron doesn’t look at his dad. “I didn’t know that,” he says.

  “I never told you. Didn’t want to burden you but, yeah.”

  “Did you—�
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  Aaron can feel his dad shake his head without looking at him. “I sure thought about it, though. It felt like I’d been sad my whole life and it was never going to get any better. Depression does that. It changes your brain and makes you think things that aren’t true.”

  Aaron thinks, What things? Maybe the stuff about my music? Like, that I suck?

  “I’ve been worried forever that you’d have to go through it, too,” his dad says.

  “Well,” Aaron says, monotone, “here we are.”

  In the evening, back home and safely in bed, Aaron notices a pattern. Days start better, end worse.

  His heart is hurting again and he’s not really sure why, or what constitutes a broken heart, because he hasn’t had his heart broken. He’s never been in love, or at least not with anyone who loved him back or knew that Aaron loved them.

  None of this makes sense, he thinks as he lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. His dad is hanging out with him, sitting in the blue rocking chair across the room, reading a book of essays. This thing? It’s a sham, Aaron thinks. Dr. Laudner made him take a test and diagnosed him based on it. He could absolutely, one hundred percent have answered the questions differently, and then the diagnosis would have been different.

  “Do you think maybe I’m faking?” Aaron says.

  His dad looks up. His reading glasses make him look like an owl, a bit. “What?”

  “Maybe I’m faking. Like maybe I just need to try harder to be normal, and I have these, like, dramatic tendencies, and I’m making the problem bigger than it is.”

  His father puts his book down and takes off his glasses. “What are you talking about? You’re depressed, Aaron. You’ve been depressed for a while. Even you aren’t that good an actor. Why do you think you’re being dramatic?”

  “I don’t know. I just. I don’t believe in this, maybe.”

  “You don’t believe in how you’re feeling?”

  “Well, what kind of god would allow a person to have a brain that undermines them, or even kills them? That doesn’t make sense.”

  His dad leans forward. “I hear that. What’s the emotion? What are you feeling, Aaron?”

  Aaron resists groaning. Sometimes his dad can’t help but bring his work home with him. “I don’t know. Sad. I mean, who wants to live in a world with a god that’s so mean? It’s so … disappointing.”

  “Disappointing?”

  Aaron’s eyes tear up. “I don’t want to be here. In that kind of world. It’s all so bleak.”

  The rocking chair squeaks as his dad drags it toward Aaron a couple inches.

  “That’s depression, Aaron. What you just said. That’s your brain on depression. I know. I’ve been there, kiddo. It sucks.”

  Aaron just stares at the blue paisley sheets below him. “It really does.”

  His dad tilts his head and gives him that super-supportive smile that he should really patent.

  Aaron smiles back and he knows, without seeing it, that it must look like a sad smile. And suddenly all the unsaid stuff feels like it’s tickling his uvula.

  “I’m sorry,” he says when he can’t keep quiet any longer.

  “Whatever for?”

  “You shouldn’t have to have a son who has a broken brain. You didn’t sign up for this.”

  His dad kisses him on the top of the head and grasps his hands.

  “I most definitely did sign up for this,” he says.

  Aaron knows it’s the truth.

  The hand squeeze tells him it’s true. But he can just barely feel the truth of it.

  CHAPTER 5A: APRIL 22

  At therapy on Monday, Aaron learns that Dr. Laudner celebrates weird things.

  The doctor gives him the same test he took on Friday. Aaron tries to answer the questions as accurately as possible, because he wants—needs—to believe the diagnosis. He’s still not convinced this is real.

  He hands the test over and watches the bearded doctor as he scores the test this time, the way he mouths words while he reads. Then Laudner looks up, smiling, and hands him the test back. On top is the score: thirty-seven.

  “Moderate depression,” the doctor says, a big smile on his face. “That’s a huge difference in three days. Massive, actually. The meds often take weeks to work. Congratulations!”

  Aaron imagines a surprise party, a banner reading Congratulations! You’re moderately depressed! hanging in the doorway.

  “Yay,” Aaron says, deadpan. Dr. Laudner smirks. He’d be a decent audience if Aaron were to be a comedian.

  “So how are we feeling today?” the doctor asks as he waters the fern that sits directly to his right. He did this same thing Friday. Aaron imagines it as a nervous tic his doc has, that he does it at the start of every appointment. He imagines a waterlogged fern being taken out of the doctor’s office on a gurney.

  “My emoji would be, like, not a sad face. I mean. I’m still kinda sad, but. Maybe more of a constipated face.”

  This makes the doctor laugh. “Is that becoming something of a problem?”

  Aaron nods dramatically.

  “Petralor can do that. I can give you something,” the doctor says, and Aaron puts his two hands together and bows in his direction.

  Dr. Laudner says, “So let’s talk about school. Let’s talk about a plan. Had you asked me on Friday, I would have said you were going to be out awhile. Now I have to say I’m simply not sure. Do you think you’d want to go back this week if you keep feeling better?”

  “Yeah. I dunno. Maybe?”

  “That about covers all the options,” Dr. Laudner says.

  “I like to make sure I leave no qualifier unturned.”

  “You’re a smart kid, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty, I guess. I don’t get the grades of a smart kid, but that’s probably on account of my not enjoying the whole homework thing.”

  “Ah. What do you enjoy instead?”

  “Not. Not doing homework.”

  “Ah. And do you sit in silent prayer when you are not doing this homework?”

  “Sometimes I write songs.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s great.”

  “Well, depends who you ask, I guess.”

  “Say more about that.”

  Aaron crosses his arms over his chest. “Well. My dad likes my songs. When he listens to them, anyway. And that’s not fair, ’cause he does listen to them, he just didn’t that one night, the night before the … you know. I sent out a YouTube clip of a new song to a bunch of people, like seventy. I got two hits.”

  “Ouch.”

  The doctor saying this has a funny effect on Aaron. It’s like he expected the doctor to make excuses for other people—they’re busy, or whatever—and when he doesn’t, it makes Aaron’s jaw feel tight.

  “Well, usually I get more. I mean, I’m not a total loser. I’m not …”

  “Say more about that. Do you think I think you’re a loser? Because I don’t.”

  Aaron throws his head back in frustration. “Never mind, okay?”

  “Okay. But I’d like to come back to that sometime, okay?”

  “Oh, good,” Aaron says, and the doctor grins again, which makes Aaron feel a little bit more understood, at least.

  “So … going back to school. What feelings come up around that?”

  Aaron shrugs. “Scared, I guess.”

  “So let’s see how you feel tomorrow and make a decision then. Sometimes normalizing life is the way to go. Sooner rather than later. Let’s talk about the fear, though. What’s the fear for you? That it will happen again, what happened?”

  Aaron rubs his forehead. “More like dealing with people about it. Everyone’s going to know I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy. You suffer from depression, like many, many other people. You had a frightening episode where you nearly attempted suicide. What’s actually going to happen, if you’re at all like my other private school patients, is that all day long people are going to treat you like their own private confessional or th
erapist.”

  “Oh, good,” Aaron says. “That sounds fun.”

  Dr. Laudner takes a sip of his coffee and crosses one leg over the other in a way that makes Aaron wonder if he’s gay. Aaron thinks about the fact that the doctor has a penis in his pants and a butt around the other side and how weird it is that every man he passes on the street has both, and how do men even deal with everything, and what even is sex? And how is it that people don’t just combust from strangeness, from this odd desire, and his dad must, too, ew, ew, ew, and god would it be so, so good to finally get to—and how normal the perverted, and how perverted the normal, and it’s all just about enough to make you go insane.

  “So what’s on that interesting mind of yours?” the doctor asks.

  Aaron shrugs again.

  “I’m thinking it’s time to push you a bit. We’ve stayed pretty general to this point, but I want to get a little deeper now. Medicine is just one of the tools we use here. The pills are there to help you with the chemicals in your brain. We also do talk therapy. And so far, you’ve been a little—uninterested in that part. Why, do you think?”

  Aaron glances around the office. He has so many books on his bookshelf. The one he always sees is called The Road Less Traveled, and because he’s Aaron and there’s no cure, he keeps reading it as The Roadless Traveler, imagining it’s a story about a traveler who refuses to take roads. And then he thinks about highways, and different states, and whether sex feels different depending on what state you’re in. Then he looks up, realizes he’s being stared at by a doctor, and scratches his left temple.