Laughing Down the Moon (4 page)

Whatever the case, Falina, Patrick and Veronica had each spoken separately to me regarding my emotional state. Each said it wasn’t like me to be so flat. I had to agree. Come to think of it, I had noticed other things as well. My skirts were hanging a bit baggier around my hips because I didn’t really have the high taste bud needs that I usually did, and I wasn’t getting excited about my social engagements. In fact, I had even skipped a few events. I wasn’t sleeping well. I’d been living an uninspired life lately, not feeling much of anything one way or another.

The test had been interesting. It had statements that I was supposed to rate as being like me or not like me to varying degrees. Most statements were straightforward and dull, but every now and then there would be a zinger, like “I like to swear when I get mad.” I wanted to respond, “Fuck yes,” but that option was not offered. And I would have felt guilty using the word in such a happily decorated place. Another test item stated, “I have met problems so full of possibilities that I have been unable to make up my mind about them.” What a beautifully crafted sentence. I answered that that statement was very like me.

“What I notice from my notes,” Dr. Browning said, still looking at me like she was going to say something that would just knock this funk out of me, “is that you have experienced a loss in your relationship. Then you experienced a loss in your home and therefore your work environment, since you work from home. First when you and your partner decided not to pursue a love relationship and then again when she moved out of your house.”

“Yes,” I said, probably quite unnecessarily.

“Then you began experiencing a series of mini-losses as you discovered that many of the friends you and Mickey shared did not know how to handle the end of your relationship,” she continued.

I nodded, not having viewed what happened with my and Mickey’s friends as losses, but now as I heard Dr. Browning’s words I realized that loss was exactly what I felt. I hated having to wonder which friends or acquaintances would still act the same and which would be different, weird or distant. I really hated the quietness of the house. Not even the combined efforts of the TV, mp3 player and the dishwasher could fill up the house the way Mickey had. Not that she was an unusually noisy person, but when she was there, I always knew she was there.

“You are not depressed,” Dr. Browning said. “You’ll likely be feeling normal soon without medication, but I do have a few other things I’d like you to try before our next meeting.”

* * *

So it was not depression. This was good. No one wants to hear she’s depressed. It’s not happy; it’s not celebrated. No one would ever buy tickets to a show called
Depression: The Musical
. I laughed out loud as I imagined the stage and the actors in a musical about depression. Everyone wearing cement shoes, having faces as long as Melpomene—the Greek muse of tragedy—dragging their knuckles on the ground as they moped across the stage and basically had a miserable time. I watched the cracks of the sidewalk pass under my boots as I walked home from Dr. Browning’s. The cement was littered with brilliant fallen leaves collected into mounds, and before I could trudge through them, the wind lifted and shifted these mounds like East Coast sand dunes. I kicked at one of the larger leaf dunes. Surprised at its lightness, I almost fell over at the lack of resistance.

What else would
Depression: The Musical
be like? It could be a tragedy where everyone offs themselves in the end, or it could be a satire perhaps, where the main character winds up losing all her friends due to the almighty sadness she drags around with her. Yes, that would be the heart of the musical, a tangible bag of sadness thrown over the heroine’s shoulder. The bag would wear her down slowly, slowly, ever so slowly until…until what? I didn’t know and didn’t have to wonder; I was not depressed. I didn’t have to star in
Depression: The Musical.
Give me a show like
Hilarity Ensues: A Musical Joy Ride
! I’d gladly star in that one.

According to Dr. Browning, I was experiencing the normal variability of life. According to me, I was experiencing an insipid period I’d refer to as The Funk. She said this could wear me down unless I attacked it head on, and she suggested a list of tasks that might bring back my edges. She prescribed taking a class of some sort that had nothing to do with anything I’d ever done in my life, adopting the homeliest animal at the Humane Society, attending social functions that I’d rather skip and watching some old TV shows from my teen years while reflecting on events I perceived as crises during the time the shows originally aired. It was an odd list that felt long despite its only having four items, but I was ready to give them a go.

The cool damp tobacco smell of autumn wrapped itself around me and then vanished. I sighed and took another swipe at a pile of leaves. This time, however, I kicked more gently, and the leaves fanned out in front of me and fell like pillow fight feathers.

Wouldn’t yoga class count for one of Dr. Browning’s assignments? Before last week, I had never taken a yoga class. I had only done yoga with DVDs in my living room at home. Dr. Browning wanted me to try something brand new, so technically it should count. Part of me wanted to nitpick every one of her assignments, but each one made sense based on the information she had drawn out of me. This new class assignment made sense. But if I used the yoga class as my new class, I’d have to tell her about it, and I still hadn’t come to terms with the ass I’d made of myself in the non-laugh yoga class. Talking about it might be the very event that would push me out of The Funk and into a full-blown depression. So, no, then. I’d find another type of class.

Maybe a cooking class over on Grand Avenue or a creative writing class at the Loft, a literary center for writers, would do. A cooking class might help me bring back my appetite, but a creative writing class might give me the outlet that I craved. My column for
The Indelible
had grown bleaker and bleaker. All I wanted to do these days when writing it was burst out in humorous, irreverent quips that were the class clowns of my mind. The topics I found myself covering were so mundane that all I could do to stay even peripherally interested was to create cynical, sarcastic barbs in response to what I was writing.

Maybe a change in publication would do me well.
The Indelible
was a well-respected, well-established magazine whose full name was
The Indelible: The Final Word in Writing
. But if it were really the final word, wouldn’t there have been only one installment? That had always bothered me. But at any rate, my column focused albeit loosely on technology for writers. So for the last few weeks, as I considered looking for an alternative magazine, I wondered whether I just needed a change of topic, something other than about writing…but I hadn’t tackled any unsolicited articles to send out to other publications. Instead, I was mired in the sticky, unsavory here and now.

I barely remembered to take a left on Thirty-Seventh to avoid the crazy-looking cat that was no doubt plotting my death every time I walked by him as he perched on the porch railing. Safely on the sidewalk of Pleasant Avenue, I kicked another mound of leaves just as a murder of crows burst from the trees above me. For a moment their inkiness blotted out the weak sunlight and the flock became as one before scattering. I watched them seek new perches. As they cawed, one glossy ebony feather floated down to the sidewalk and landed inches in front of my boot. I bent down to pick up the feather and twirled it between my finger and my thumb. Its iridescence came from some unknown source, since it wasn’t the watery November sunlight being reflected off the tiny, separate fronds.

The crows stopped their raucous protesting. They eyed me, but not suspiciously. I eyed them back then offered them a thank you, silently so as not to rile them up again. I tucked the feather into my woven shoulder bag. A century or two ago, witches were often depicted with a crow nearby. The crow would be investigating a mystical token or poking at a shiny trinket with his beak, but the viewer would always know that the crow was doting on the witch. What would it be like to have a crow for your companion animal? Or for your familiar?

Lots of cultures had familiars. Pagans usually believed their familiars were real live animals that they connected with on psychic and emotional levels. Back in the day, familiars were thought to be animals taken over by fairies or demons who would carry out the bidding of their witches. In some Native American cultures, familiars weren’t real animals at all but rather spirits who offered guidance and protection. I saw them as friendly animals to learn from, so having a crow as a familiar would teach a person to be resourceful and curious. That wouldn’t be so bad.

Because it was the middle of a school day, the park across the street from my house was empty save for a shaggy beige dog leading around a lone walker. It was hard to say if it was a man or a woman with the amount of outerwear the person had on. The park became a different place at various times of day and through the range of seasons. In a few hours the park would be alive with shouts, balls and discarded jackets. But right now, it was quiet.

I turned my back on the peace of the park as I strode into my front yard. As I took the porch steps two at a time and entered the warm foyer, a sense of home made me forget about the crow’s feather for a while.

Chapter Four

Sibling Bribery

“Why are you calling and not texting?” Falina asked later that evening.

I curled my feet under me on the fainting couch and cupped my cell phone to my ear. “I’m lazy,” I answered, “and I didn’t want to have to explain why I didn’t read your text when it came in.”

“Yeah, why didn’t you read it? That was days ago!” Falina said.

“Uhm, long story. So, what did you mean when you texted that Mom and Dad finally did it?”

“Really?” Falina spouted. “You really think you’re going to get off without telling me the story now? Nice attempt at changing the subject—really highlights your evasion tactics.”

“What evasion tactics?” I tried for a light tone of innocence, but I had raised my little sister too well. She was a savvy one.

“Nice,” she said, “real nice try. You can tell me your story first. Then I’ll tell you about Mom and Dad, or you can not tell me your story and live in ignorance.”

“Or I could hang up and call Mom,” I offered.

“Oh, come on!” Falina cried, “Just tell me! You always text back immediately! And here it is, what, twenty-four-plus hours! What’s up? Did you lose your phone in an embarrassing place?”

I shifted my phone to the other ear and reached around behind myself to see what was making me uncomfortable. Behind the throw pillows on the fainting couch I discovered my big leather-bound Book of Shadows. A Book of Shadows could be compared to a prayer book or a cookbook. Some Pagans, Wiccans, and other witches used the books to write down their intentions, rituals and spells. Many people also recorded the outcome of their spells, but I rarely remembered to go back in and do that. My Book of Shadows had started out as a blank journal, but now it was over half-filled with handwritten charms and spells that I’d tried over the years. I set it on the table in front of me, reconfigured the throw pillows and got comfortable again. Did I really have to tell Falina about the whole fiasco?

“Okay, no,” I caved. “I decided to try a laugh yoga class after Patrick had told me about it, so I joined the Y.”

“Laugh yoga?” Falina asked.

“It’s supposed to stimulate your core and get you breathing more deeply. So anyway, I showed up at the class and it wound up not being laugh yoga. That’s all.”

“That doesn’t really explain why you didn’t text back to me,” Falina pointed out.

“Well…” Painful as it was, I told her what happened.

Falina was laughing on her end of the call. I actually smiled, hearing her laughter. Falina had that hiccupy, sometimes silent laughter, so I always pictured a wave ebbing and flowing when she really got going. I knew her pretty, pale face would be luminous with her eyes screwed up tight and her mouth thrown wide open. I listened to the soundtrack of her amusement and began to feel a little bit better.

“I guess I single-handedly dispelled the myth that all Asians are good at yoga, so there is that,” I said. My self-induced smile was rueful.

“Well,” Falina said as soon as she got herself under control, “you know what they say: there’s nothing like a good old Tupperware party to help you forget your worries!”

“Who, exactly, says
that
?” I felt better, but not better enough to attend a Tupperware party with her.

“I do,” she said, “I’m throwing one at a teacher’s house near Lake Calhoun, and I think you’ll enjoy it. It’ll certainly take your mind off yoga,” she coaxed.

Falina had sold Tupperware for years. She was good at it, with a whole bunch of people selling Tupperware underneath her—her “crew” she called them, but I’d never been to one of her parties. That suddenly seemed peculiar to me, but at the same time I wasn’t sure if she had ever read one of my articles. How could we be so close yet not have any firsthand experience with what the other did on a day-to-day basis? I remembered Dr. Browning’s advice about saying yes to social events that presented themselves to me. Damn it.

“Okay, tell me about Mom and Dad while I make up my mind about your party,” I bartered.

With a mixture of disbelief and awe in her voice, Falina told me their news. My eyebrows rose higher than they did when I had been trying to assume the smiling cow face yoga pose. I told Falina I’d go to her Tupperware party as I tried to digest the news she had just delivered about Benji and Elly Satou, our Mom and Dad.

Book of Shadows

Spell for Finding My Familiar

Three days after the New Moon cast the circle.

Set out a dish of dirt collected from a footprint

and a bowl of clear, clean water.