Storm Tracker 7

 

 

            There's good stuff on channel seven today. Good stuff. They've got this new weather forecasting thing, Storm Tracker 7. I think they mentioned it at least thirty times during the news at noon. They say it can pinpoint the exact location of a storm down to the very street that it's on. I don't really see what's so special about that; any idiot can look out their window and see if a storm is coming down their street. But they seem pretty hyped up about it over at channel seven.

            I would stay in this recliner all day, watching channel seven, wrapped up in this blanket-- this blanket, it's got little pictures of landmarks from my hometown embroidered on it, cute-- but today, today is doctor day. Wednesday.

            Upstairs, in the little brown-tiled bathroom, I shower and what the heck, I even shave, not that he'll be looking down there. He's not that kind of doctor. But I've got nothing better to do. I've got this little waterproof radio that hangs from a cord around the shower head, and it's on the oldies channel, because that's what my dad turned it to after I left for school. As I soap up, "Sloop John B" comes on, and I switch it off quickly. I don't need Brian Wilson moaning to me how the cook came and ate up all of his corn, and this is the worst trip he's ever been on, cry me a river.

            I towel off in the Vietnam rain forest steam that permeates my bathroom after a hot shower, which is all I take. It is two-forty. I would be in biology right now, if I were still at school.

            I'm going back to school, of course. This is what my mother calls a vacation. The school classifies it as medical leave. Three weeks I've been home now. It was only supposed to be a week, but that Sunday I was supposed to get in my car and drive back to school, I just couldn't do it. I just laid in bed and cried. So my mom and dad called the school, and then they called the doctor.

            “There’s nothing wrong with it,” my father told me the first time he drove me there. They had taken my car keys for the first two weeks I was home. “A lot of people go.”

            “You don’t.”

            “No.”

            “Mom doesn’t.”

            “But a lot of other people do.”

            “There’s nothing wrong with me, Dad.”

            “I know, honey.”

            “No, you don’t. I’m just freaked out right now. I’ll get over it.”

            “But don’t you want to get back to school?”

            “Would you stop talking to me like I’m five?”

            “We’re just worried about you.”

            So now I have to go to the doctor.

 

            The doctor. Three times a week, I see this doctor, Dr. Wallechinsky. He makes me call him Wally. He's all right, I guess. His office is in a nice building with a pond out front with geese in it. The geese are the best part about visiting the doctor.

            It's always the same at Wally's office. Three-fifteen, arrive, sign in. Three-eighteen, sit in the red leather chair, unless that bitch with the relationship issues is in it, which she usually is, in which case sit as far away from her as possible, or else she'll tell you her life story, which is about as interesting as televised ping-pong.

“Back so soon?” she asks me. She doesn’t seem to realize how much sitting in a doctor’s waiting room is like going to the bar. If you see the same people there every day, then you have the problem, too.

“Every Wednesday.” Three-twenty, pick up a magazine, sometimes People, sometimes Psychology Today.

“And Monday and Friday.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid. I’ve been on that schedule for four years.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Sure. It gets easier. And believe me, I know. I—”

“I don’t care,” I tell her, and study the magazine in my lap. She huffs like a sitcom banker for about three minutes and is quiet. I’m sure she’ll tell Wally about me, and how her relationship with me is crumbling, just like it did with Bill, Sarah, and the last three people she shared the waiting room with.

Three-thirty, go in to Wally's little Fortress of Solitude office, with all these inspirational posters framed and hanging everywhere, and this big metal statue of an eagle soaring over no doubt amber waves of grain and purple mountains' majesties.

            Today, he wants to talk about the panic attacks again.

            Why do I have them, he asks? Like I'm a medical expert, why do I have them? Like I know. I tell him I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about all the stuff I have to do, all the things I'm going to have to go through, all the shit I have to take, just to make it until the next day, when more shit comes, and I just panic. I don't know why. If I knew why, I tell him, I wouldn't be here. He laughs. He's humoring me.

            "It's not funny," I say. I don't lay on the couch. If I lay down, he'll probably try to take advantage of me. You hear about it all the time on channel seven news, some pervert doctor who tries to cop a feel when he thinks his patients are at their most vulnerable. I sit with my arms and legs crossed.

            "Have you ever had these panic attacks before?"

            "Sixth grade. When I had to do this science fair project." The science fair project. "I had to grow these plants, right? But the plants, they weren't growing the way they were supposed to. They weren't growing at all. You know, they say make this hypothesis and it doesn't matter if it comes out how you think it will or not, but you know, that's a load of shit, because you're not going to get a good grade on a science fair project about these plants that don't grow. Any idiot can not grow plants."

            "So, your plants wouldn't grow."

            "Would you stop making fun of me, please? Jesus."

            "I'm not making fun of you."

            "Yes, you are!" I can hear my voice rising, and I try to stop myself. "You're just like that fucking counsellor at the school, you are. What, do you think I'm just here because I'm too lazy to be at school? Like I'm faking this whole thing?"

            "I didn't say that--"

            "Just because my dad didn't sneak into my room at night when I was little and make me jack him off there can't be something wrong with me?"

            "Now please--"

            "You think I don't get depressed because your kids don't get depressed, Wally? Do you know what I think about? About how one day, I'm only going to have eight hours of life left. And then it'll be seven, and then forty-three minutes, and then I'll be dead, and then I'll have been dead a minute. One day, I can measure the rest of my life in seconds."

            "That's not going to be for a long time," Wally says softly, handing me a tissue. I didn't even notice I was crying. I blow my nose into it, inspect the snot, and continue.

            "And that I could be sitting around, never suspecting it, and any given day could be the anniversary of my death, and I just don't know it yet. I might die twenty years from today, Wally. Twenty years from right now. And I don't even know it. I'm just sitting around waiting for it to happen. And sometimes it just seems easier to not wait."

            "Why don't you tell me about the science fair project?" He hands me another tissue.

            "I just want to be normal, Wally," I whisper. "I don't want to be like this anymore."

            "Who says you're not normal?"

            I shrug and don't answer. He's not an idiot, he knows who says. I look at his feet.

            "Eddie?" he asks. He sounds annoyed. No one wants to hear about Eddie anymore. Not even my shrink. Not a good sign.

            "You brought it up, not me."

            “You can’t keep dwelling on this.”

            “Why not? I don’t have anything better to do.”

            “As long as you keep doing this to yourself you’re never going to get back to school. Is that what you want? To stay at home forever? Crying about some jerk?”

            “He’s not a jerk.”

            “Then what are you crying about? Get back in your car and go back to school! If he’s not a jerk.”

            My face contorts itself into the jowly, half-assembled mess it assumes when tears threaten, and he hands me another tissue, drawing in air through his porous nose and exhaling it sharply. “I can’t help it, Wally. I can’t. I know he’s a jerk. But what can I do? It’s all I think about. He is.”

            “You don’t even try to think of anything else.” He pauses. “Except death. And if those two things are equal in your mind…”

            “What am I going to do?”

            He sighs. "The panic attacks," he says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. "You're still having them at home?"

            "No."

            "Why not?"

            "The Xanax, I think."

            "That's good."

            "I'm all out."

            "I told you only to take it when you needed it."

            I shrug. "I'm all out."

He writes out a prescription for Xanax and hands it to me. "Only take it when you need it," he cautions, standing up. Which means yet another highly productive visit has come to an end. "Friday," he says, walking me to the door.

            "For sure," I mutter, and walk out.

 

            It looks like it's gotten darker outside since I went in. The carcass of a goose lies in the middle of the road. It wasn’t there before, someone must have killed it while I was in the doctor’s office. I think about getting out of the car to check it out, but if someone was ruthless enough to kill a harmless goose then I don’t know why they wouldn’t go after me, engine gunned, “look, Ma, a three-pointer!” I’m surprised there are no babies around it, quacking or honking softly in its internalized ear. I guess that would be too melodramatic, though. Or else they got the babies, too.

            At home, I throw my car keys on the kitchen table, undress right there, leave my clothes in a pile. My arms crossed, Polish bra, I run to my room and put on my pajamas. On a corner shelf in my room are these two plants, cuttings from the ones that wouldn't grow in the sixth grade. I gave myself an ulcer over that, Wally doesn't understand. An ulcer, in the sixth grade, over some plants. They started to grow two weeks after the science fair was over. I got a C in science that year, the only C I ever got. It would have been worse, if the backboard for my project hadn't looked so nice. Didn't stop me from getting into college, I guess, but I never forgot it.

            Eddie is a science major. His plants would have grown.

            "You think you're different from everyone else?" he told me on the playground one night. It was right next to the college, a ten minute walk, at most. It took Eddie half an hour. We sat on the monkey bars, looking up at the sky. "You think you've got problems? Everyone has problems."

            "I didn't say I was the only one with problems."

            "You know what they called me in middle school?" He looked at me.

            "It doesn't matter," I said.

            "They called me fat ass," he said. "Faggot and fat ass. Eddie Ferroni, the faggot fat ass."

            He looked at me.

            "You're not fat," I told him.

            He walked away from me and hasn't spoken to me since.

 

            Downstairs, in the living room, away from the plants, I'm the lump under the blanket, watching TV. I like watching TV. I'm good at it. There's a message on the answering machine. I saved it. But I don't think I want to listen to it again.

            It was Carrie. She sounded apprehensive. "Hey, just me, wanted to let you know... Eddie called me today. He wanted your home phone. I hope you don't mind..." beep beep beep beep beep, the machine cut her off.

            What if Eddie calls me?

            What if he doesn't?

            The sky has gotten darker now, and the wind butts its greasy forehead into our clean windows. My father is a compulsively clean man. When he sees the spattering of dead bugs and leaves on the windows, he'll go out and wash them, rain or not. I don't think it's going to be not, though.

            I sip my Coke and wait.

            When my parents come home, I don't tell them about Eddie. They hate Eddie. They think it's all his fault I'm home now. They're probably right. If anyone should have to see a shrink, they tell me, it's Eddie, not you. I don't disagree. One night, he got really drunk and started talking to me about this girl he had dated in high school, Lydia, and how she cheated on him with some guy on the golf team.

            “It was just high school,” I told him.

            “Jesus.” He turned away from me, rubbing his wrist over his forehead.

            “Oh, come on, though. High school. Come on. Everyone cheats on everyone in high school.”

            “You didn’t even date in high school.”

            I felt my eyes begin to sting, like heat-ray vision installed wrong, pointing into my head instead of out. “So? I knew people who did. I wasn’t like a hermit or something.”

            “Whatever. No one ever cheated on me before.”

            “So did you break up with her?”

            “No, we’re married now. She lives in my closet. Stupid.”

            No one understands. How much I was in love with Eddie. It was disgusting.

            “I just asked a question. I didn’t think it was that hard.”

            “She broke up with me,” he said, toying with the edge of a Ferrari poster. He tried to get people to call him Ferrari Ferroni for awhile, but it never caught on. “Right before prom, too.”

            “Yeah?” I inched closer to him and he shot me a look that could only be described as fear of leper contamination, and I inched back.

            He nodded. “I already had the ticket, though. So I still went.”

            “With who?”

            “Just by myself.”

            “I did that my junior year.”

            “Yeah, well.” He scratched his neck under his collar. “Of course I get there and she’s there with Steve Portner.”

            “The golf guy.”

            “The golf guy. He used to be my friend, too. Like in tenth grade. And they were making out everywhere in that fucking party center. And this one time they were slow dancing she looked over at me and laughed.”

            “So she was a bitch.”

            “No!” He stood up, leaving me on the floor. My face was hot, red, I’m sure, and he stared down at me like Satan judging the lesser devils. “Well, yes. But I was still in love with her.”

            “So what happened after prom?”

            “Nothing.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean I don’t want to talk about it.”

            “That’s fine—”

            “Look.” He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, producing two shiny wormlike scars, one on either wrist. They couldn’t have been very deep, but they were there, hidden usually under wrist watches or long sleeves or friendship bracelets. “That’s what I did after prom. Okay?”

            And before I could say anything his forehead was on my shoulder and he was crying, his tightly clenched teeth pressed against my neck. He didn’t even give me a chance to be angry. He was like that. Not this time, though. He's not going to hurt me again.

            I'm quiet all through dinner, tense. The food tastes like ash, and I wash it down with thick milk, rancid in my mouth. How was work, it was fine, how was work for you, how's Wally? He's fine, I mutter. He's an ass. My parents laugh. They think mental illness is funny. I excuse myself.

            Outside, it's getting ready to storm. See, who needs Storm Tracker 7? The storm is at Kramer Drive right now. I don't need TV to tell me that. But there it is on the screen, 6:25, Kramer Drive. It's amazing.

            At seven, the phone rings. I want to vomit.

            My mother hands me the receiver. "It's for you," she says, and in a lower voice-- "it's a boy."

            I'll take it upstairs.

            "Hello?"

            "Hey."

            It's Eddie.

            "What?"

            "What's going on?"

            "Nothing."

            He sighs shortly, exasperated. "No-- I mean-- why aren't you at school? What's going on with that?"

            "Nothing." Then: "What do you care?"

            "Shut up."

            Outside, the storm is raging.

            "What do you want, Eddie?"

            "I wanted to see how you were."

            "I've been out for three weeks. You haven't talked to me since the playground."

            "Are you sick?"

            "No."

            "I don't get it."

            The point is, Eddie, you treat me like shit and it drove me over the edge, don't you get it? I'm not here to entertain you, I'm not your fucking puppet. You can't treat someone the way you do and expect them to be all right with it, because they can't, even the strong ones can't, and I'm not strong. But that's not what comes out. It's trapped in my stomach with the ash and rancid milk, a thunder of its own.

            "Yes, Eddie, I'm sick." It's resigned, flat.

            "Mono?"

            "Yes, Eddie, it's mono."

            "Are you coming back soon?"

            "What do you care?"

            Long silence. "I miss you."

            Thunder rattles the house. The storm is at Kramer Drive, right on schedule. "All right, Eddie. Take care."

            I think I will go back to school tomorrow.