Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets (14 page)

He thinks. I start to think that he’s making all this up—that he doesn’t really get anxious.

“I think about something that makes me calm.”

“What makes you calm?”

“It’s personal.”

I get a little pissed.

“And if I tell you it won’t work. If I say it out loud it won’t calm me. It has to be like that.”

And that’s it. We’re back at the house and he’s out of the car. No lecture about getting organized. No more jokes. Just that vague wisdom and out of the car. I should be happy to have even that much. I am happy that he didn’t ruin my day. And maybe I didn’t ruin his.

I SCARF DOWN A BOX
of macaroni and cheese with some broccoli mixed in and retreat to my room. I need to call and ask Beth out on the date that I told my father I already have. It would be devastating to my fragile reputation if I ended up having to cancel the whole thing.

The trick is, of course, that a date is only a third of the reason I’m going to Fillmore’s. I need to talk to Jorie about Gina and see if I can figure out what is going on with this mysterious library argument. Plus, I want to spy on Sally to see if Derek should be worried about the guy we’re referring to as The Hype.

I call Beth but get her voice mail. I leave a message that’s brief and doesn’t say anything. Just a hi-call-me-back kind of thing. But I can’t wait for her to call me back. So I call again fifteen minutes later. Then I wait an hour. Call again. Then ten minutes. I don’t leave a message each time because that would make me seem psychotic.

All the missed calls, though. Hmm.

I call two more times before I give up and just assume I’ll see her at school and can ask her then. But what if she’s making plans
as I sit here?

Wait—she’s got a boyfriend. They have plans. Why wouldn’t they? Friday night? Young and in love? Of course—no. I shut my eyes and breathe slowly. I’m not going to let myself get all out of whack.

I sit up and feel the anxiety sweat bead out all over my body. I have to stop this or I’ll be up all night predicting doom for myself.

I bought a panic attack journal. Plain green with a gold design. It looks like it’s trying to be regal. The pages are lined, which I thought would help keep me organized. I haven’t written in it yet, but tonight seems like the night to ruin the pages with my thoughts.

It’s hard to know what to write, so I write: I’m anxious but not depressed. It’s worry; it’s worry about nameless things. It’s worry about embarrassment. It’s worry about letting people down for things that they don’t even know I’m supposed to do for them. I’m going to write terrible poems for the lit mag. I didn’t stand up for Jorie and I won’t be able to get her back to school or back home.

The journal has quickly become a way to reinforce anxiety.

After many rough attempts, I find this poem inside me:

It is too hot for crickets

and the wind has been blowing harder;

the remnant of some storm has come east,

less angry but still upset.

The trees lean into one another

like drunk men walking home

to wring out.

Their branches like bodies

twisted in sheets in a humid bed.

I listen for the continuation of rain

in the rumbling sound the heavy clouds make

as they drag their load somewhere else.

My pen falls out of my hand. I consider ripping the page out and throwing it away, but the poem is just a mood I’m in, not a confession. I close the book and lay it aside and fall back on my bed.

I press my palms against my temples and breathe. What did Dr. Dora say? I can call her but not for this. This is just a panic attack.

The trees. The trees.

I look up at my ceiling and breathe. I try to imagine each picture as part of its original whole and also part of the whole of the tree on the ceiling. Each picture has multiple dimensions. Or multiple existences.

Is this helping?

When I stop breathing and try to come back into the moment to see if the anxiety is receding, I lose control and get anxious.

Fuck! Fucking fuck!

I hate being this way! There’s no way to stop it. It’s my whole body acting against me. My body and my head—they want me to fail and stay locked in my room.

If I had more money I’d have gone to a second therapy session, but I won’t go again because it’s not worth the money or the time. Dr. Dora sucks.

I could go outside and hug a tree. But what will the neighbors say? My parents? The bats that flutter in our backyard some nights? Before I sabotage my only real active therapeutic option, I go outside.

I walk in the yard barefoot. The grass is icy but soft. I want to loaf in it.

I go back, deep into our yard, and see an oak tree. I go up to the tree that has preexisted me and might outlive me. I press my arms around the trunk and feel the bites against my inner arms. I itch all over my skin and I think about anxiety and medication and worry about losing myself or sinking further into this kind of stupid behavior. I can’t keep going like this.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I let it go. It might be Jorie or Beth or Derek or my parents. It might be government, watching me on a satellite. But I just want to stay like this.

It keeps vibrating; I can’t ignore it.

“Hello?” I say.

“James?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay? It’s Beth. You called a bunch of times.”

“I’m in my yard hugging a tree.” I think about what my father said and realize that I might just have killed the usefulness of this calming technique.

“Really?”

“I’m hugging a tree because I have panic attacks.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I have panic attacks and I get depressed. I’m not sure what the problem is.”

Beth asks if I’m okay again.

“All I know is that I want to be okay, but I can’t even do simple things that other people do.”

“Why are you having a panic attack right now?”

Beth sounds like she is concerned. She sounds like she wants to help me.

“I wanted to ask you on a date.”

“I gave you a panic attack?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like that.”

“No, no! It makes a girl feel pretty special.”

Is she smiling? Can I hear this girl’s smile over the phone line?

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t apologize! Tell me what would make you feel better.”

“Say you’ll have mozzarella sticks and soda with me. Say you don’t even have to think about it. Say you’ll go with me even if you never thought you would eat mozzarella sticks with a guy who hugs trees.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

Yes!

I REALIZE I’VE COMPLICATED MY LIFE
quite a bit. A date with Beth, questions for Jorie, fact-finding for Derek. Plus, yet another Friday night that I’m not in my room or pacing the house or fleeing out back to hug a tree. It’s a whole new world. What would Whitman say?

I do not know what is untried and afterward,

But I know it is sure and alive, and sufficient.

Or something like that.

I get ready for this date like it’s the only date I’ll ever have. I shower though I haven’t raised a stink. I shave though I shaved yesterday and my face does not yet demand daily shaves. I consider wearing a Life Is Good baseball cap but then figure I should put some effort in and do my hair. I have a tube of barely used gel. I try to make my hair look like Johnny Depp’s—a bit of casual whisking of hair across my forehead. My hair’s not long enough to go all Justin Beiber and it’s a bit too thin to look like the
Twilight
guy. I’m not sure these examples will even appeal to Beth.

My mom comes up and asks me if I need a shirt ironed.

“No, Mom.” She looks like she needs something to do. My parents think this is my first date. I guess it doesn’t count if you meet someone down the beach and then make out against the fence around a mini-golf course.

“Is my hair okay?” I ask to make her feel needed.

“Well.” She considers it. I have no idea if my mom even knows what cool hair is supposed to look like. Inviting her to even comment could be disastrous, because if she does something stupid with it and I change it, her feelings will be hurt. And if she does something cool with it I’ll never stop thinking about how my mommy had to do my hair.

Am I going to be able to kiss Beth with a mommy-approved haircut?

She actually doesn’t do much, yet I feel a little better about the mess of hair that I normally ignore.

“So, is this girl someone in your classes? Your father wouldn’t tell me much.”

“She runs the literary magazine.”

“Interesting! She’s a reader, then? I always knew you’d fall in love with a reader.”

“It’s not love, Mom. We’re going to Fillmore’s.”

“You know what I mean.”

I think about all the things my mother could mean about knowing whom I’ll fall in love with. Has she always known this? Has my mother spent her life thinking about my future when I can barely think about my present? It must be terrible to be so hopeful and to wait to see if your hopes and predictions come true.

I think about Jorie and her secret box of pain and the fact that I hug trees and talk to a fake bird therapist and secretly see a real therapist behind my parents’ backs. Did my parents think of any of that? Did my mom raise me to be the kid that gets hit by a bus trying to save a bird? Did she and my father think for even a second that it was kind of cool that they raised someone who cared enough about an injured animal to risk his life in the road to save it?

For some reason I assume that my parents are embarrassed by me. Rather than being
not what they wanted,
I’m just
not what they expected.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask something kind of important?” Fearing she might jump to a conclusion, I stress that it’s not about my date.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been trying to get Jorie back into school. I haven’t told anyone. But I’ve tried to get the vice principal to reconsider her expulsion. Do you think if I can do that, she could come live here again?”

I’m earnest, calm, hopeful. My mother’s face is all worry. Perhaps the great anxieties of the world pass down genetically. I picture my father hiding his secret to being calm and my mother hiding her anxieties.

“That’s up to your father.”

“I feel like he’ll say no unless you say yes.”

“I’m not sure Jorie will want to come home.”

“Let’s say I can get her back into school. Just for the last month or so. So she can graduate.”

“Is this something she wants?”

“I haven’t told her yet. But I think it would be good for her to just finish school the way everyone else does. Counting down the days. Sitting through a long boring speech.”

I could tell my mother that Jorie’s life sucks, that her friends seem nice but irresponsible, that her apartment has flying ants, that her job runs her ragged.

I don’t, however, reveal any of that or the secret box of pain or how she can’t afford therapy but needs it, desperately.

“I’ll think about it, James.”

In my mind I hope all the chaos and anger my mother feels about Jorie will be ignored. I hope that my mother’s apparent respect for me will help.

In the car, my father doesn’t say anything.

When he pulls in the parking lot, he curses all the cars.

“Thank god we’re not coming here for dinner. We’d never get a parking space. Jesus.”

“I might have to bribe the hostess to get a table,” I say.

“You need any money?”

Normally I refuse help from my father because it usually comes with stern instructions, lectures, fake wisdom, and the knowledge that he’s the villain of Jorie’s life and maybe mine. But a few extra bucks never hurts.

“I could use some. Just in case.”

Despite his offer, my father begrudgingly gives me twenty dollars from his wallet. He probably drops more money on strangers.

I resist the urge to increase my anxiety further by mentioning Jorie. Hopefully my mom will talk to him.

“Have fun tonight,” he says. “When do you need to be picked up?”

“I’ll call.” I wave my phone.

“Not too late. I have an early morning meeting.”

“I might get a ride back with Derek. He knows some people here.”

My father drives off.

Inside, I ask the hostess for a table for two in Jorie’s section. Beth isn’t here yet, but I figure the wait will be long.

“Jorie isn’t here, actually,” the hostess says.

“She always works Fridays.”

“She actually doesn’t work here anymore.”

“Since when?”

“I think a few days ago? I don’t know.”

A waiter pushes the hostess aside so he can grab a stack of thick menus. She curses him and he huffs out an apology.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I really don’t know; I’m really busy.” She calls out three names, parties of four, six, twelve. Friends out for a good time. A sign by the entrance reads
FILLMORE’S: WHERE YOUR FAMILY IS TREATED LIKE THE FIRST FAMILY!

I go back outside to wait for Beth and to breathe, slowly.

I text Beth to tell her I’m outside. When the phone vibrates a moment later I assume she’s going to cancel. Why not?

Be there in two minutes. Hooray!

I hum songs to myself and stand near one of the young parking-lot trees. I touch the trunk and hum and breathe and wait.

Beth shows up looking adorable. And when I say this I want it to be clear that I value adorableness in girls. I can acknowledge
hotness
in girls. I know what all the standards of
hotness
are. I know that legs and ass and blond hair and big tits and skirts and tight shirts and lipstick and all those things mean
hotness.
But I have to admit that only some of those things really matter to me.

I cannot pretend to be unaroused by
hotness.
I just don’t want to spend time with
hotness.