To Feel Stuff (8 page)

“We meant—” Marna started.

“I can't help it,” I apologized. “I want to do this. But I really can't.” Then, pushing my back as hard against the wall as it would go, I said, “I'm feeling distant from you.”

I looked hard into their faces, and I was figuring the physical space between us like time had suddenly materialized and dropped a chunk of itself into the infirmary. This is the best way I can make you understand what was happening then: I was at the head of the room, and they were near the mantel, and we were two different film frames from two different days, weirdly spliced together to form an optical illusion. I felt like if I tried to talk to Marna and David more, if I tried to explain, my voice would have to travel back twenty-four hours. And my words wouldn't make sense, and when the two of them replied to me, I swear I thought I wouldn't have a clue what they were talking about.

Marna redid the braid in her hair and watched me. I was out of my mind, and I felt so, so watched. David picked up a
National Geographic,
exhaled, and violently flipped through it without even looking down.

Finally, Marna snapped her rubber band and let go. “Do you just want us to leave?”

That's when I opened my mouth—or I guess I should say that's when my mouth opened itself, because that's more what it was like. Anyway, I sang,
“If I stay here with you, girl/Things just couldn't be the same,”
then stopped.

The heater clicked.

David dropped his magazine on the floor. “‘Freebird'? You're singing ‘Freebird'?”

“What's wrong with ‘Freebird'?” I asked, but I should have known.

“Listen, just because you've decided, for whatever reason, that your respect for us has flown out the window, does not mean that we deserve that disrespect, or that we have to stand around here and take it. You fucking cripple, I hope this is the drugs talking.”

“Suddenly ‘Freebird' is a sign of disrespect? It's a beautiful song.”

“Let's just go,” Marna said. She looked scared.

“And it expresses everything I want to get across right now,” I went on.

“I know you're going to snap out of this,” said David, and he threw one arm up on the wall and tucked his head under it, reminding me of a duck. “And when you do, I hope your apology, long or short or even fucking sung to me, is a good one.” Then he turned toward the wall completely and his neck bristled at me.

“Let's leave. He's sick,” Marna said, pulling on the hem of David's coat. She wouldn't look at me when she reported, “Your dad will be here this afternoon. Your mom said she'll be calling and updating you on the plans.”

“My dad's coming?” I asked.

“He's coming here to get you and take you home.”

“Hmm,” I said, to cover my own fear. I was thinking about going home and looking at my parents and brothers, and feeling like I wasn't a part of their group either. I knew they'd encourage me, tell me that I was going to recover and that the worst was now over.

What I thought in that moment, though, was that yes, maybe the worst was over, as far as there was a very slim chance of someone racing up to me during the next month and attempting another swipe at my knees. But what was really hurting was that a whole new worldview had taken me over, and that was a different kind of injury.

I glanced over to the other side of the room for you, but all that was there was your empty bed.

“There was a girl, a girl with black hair, and she was probably in the hallway when you came in. Did you see her?” I asked.

“There was a girl that let us in,” answered Marna. “She looked like that.”

“Why, who is she?” asked David.

“A girl. From here. Do you know where she went? Can you open the door and see if she's out there?”

David swung the door open, still pissed, and looked out into the hallway for me. I guess he just saw Vivian, because he said, “There's only a woman out there now with some animals. If you weren't being such an asshole, I would go and complain for you.” Even though, like I said, he was pissed, I was touched right through my druggy haze to hear some tenderness in his voice. “Health Services is no place for fleas and bird shit. It's dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” I remember saying, and leaning my head back against the wall.

Marna put her coat back on. “Anyway, your dad is coming later.”

“Thanks for passing on the message.”

“So we'll be seeing you. And. Feel better,” she said.

David held the door open for her and put his hand on her back. She passed by him. And then he disappeared.

This is the instant—I can pinpoint it because I felt it precisely as the door clicked shut—when I split from my old life. There were a few seconds when the door was still inches away from being shut, when I could have called out to them, “Come back! Please!” I almost did, with the intention of forcing myself to ease back into our friendship. I had fleeting thoughts about readjustment and temporary effects of trauma, and I swear, I almost cried for them to come back. But something inside me pulled in the opposite direction. And that opposite direction, to put it most directly, was you. And I don't think you'll take it as an insult when I finally acknowledge, on paper, that you're completely incompatible with other lifestyles.

Paxil CR: Get back to being you

 

As I went across the main part of campus, I limped with alternating legs. I switched my limp about every three steps. Both legs were tender. For a while I tried a slow gallop, since that movement felt somewhat comfortable. Then I went back to the limping, discovering I'm way too proud to gallop.

Because it was still early in the morning, there were only a handful of people outside—a photographer taking pictures of a snowgirl, a few joggers, and the kind of kids who head for the library as soon as they wake up. Everyone looked at me as I passed, but I don't think that anyone thought I was too unusual. In the spring of my freshman year, when I was out of the infirmary for a short while, I noticed that Brown has a large number of students with leg or foot problems. I was only walking around campus for a few months, but during that time I saw people limping, people stuck in wheelchairs, people with amputations, a girl with a clubfoot, some athletes with major sprains, and two lacrosse players with broken legs. I even met a sophomore who told me that he came back from summer vacation missing two toes. One of them was his big toe, and he was sad that he walked differently now.

It took me a long time to get through the main campus that day. It took me at least five minutes getting past the John Carter Library, and when I got to Wilson, the clock on top of it said seven forty-seven. I gave myself a few minutes to pause for breath in front of Sayles, and by the time I got to Salomon, I realized that I was pretty wet from my feet to my calves. The waffles were my northern star, though.

Because the other side of Brown Street has that slight upward curve, that part of the walk took even longer. I'd be embarrassed to put myself up in a race against an eighty-year-old. I used the low brick wall that runs along the sidewalk to steady myself, and I tried to ignore my shitty lungs and the pounding of my heart by looking down the rows and rows of brownstones on the other side of the street. It helped to focus on the vanishing point where the streets dropped off down the hill.

After about twenty more minutes, I think, I finally reached Meeting Street. Once there I decided to take the descending slope with a sideways shuffle, so gravity wouldn't throw me into an accidental jog. When I got to the bottom, I smiled without even knowing that I was going to smile; I felt somewhat accomplished. A middle-aged woman with a knit turkey sweater reading “Gobble, gobble” in red yarn was going into Emery-Wooley, and she held the door open behind her until I also made it through.

The woman disappeared into the Brown Card Office, but I went farther into the basement. At the soda and candy vending machines I knew I was getting close. Next I came to an open door and stuck my head inside. Because there were wooden tables and plastic chairs and air that smelled like cinnamon, I figured I had done things right.

After stepping into the dining hall, I was stopped by a guy sitting at a folding table.

“Excuse me, I need your card.” He had a gigantic chemistry book open on the table and one knee propped up on an orange chair. His hand was upturned in the air, and his thumb and forefinger twitched for me to place something in between them.

“The card,” I repeated. During the short periods of time before (and between) my illnesses, I had an ID card like everyone else. I'd forgotten that you needed it to let you into buildings and to eat meals. I couldn't believe how out of touch I'd gotten. I hadn't seen my card for at least a year and a half.

When I didn't reach into my pocket, the card swiper looked at me with an “Are you retarded?” expression. “I need to get it from you. So I can swipe it. So you can eat,” he said.

“I don't have a card on me,” I told him.

“Well, are you on meal plan?”

“Motherfucking meal plan,” I thought. Then I remembered that too—that you signed up for your meals ahead of time. I definitely didn't have a meal plan. “Yes,” I said. “It includes breakfast.”

“Here's your alternatives. You can pay for your breakfast, and I'll take your SIS number if you know it offhand, and then all you have to do is go to Food Services by the end of the week and file for reimbursement. Or else you can just go back to your room and get your card. If you lost it, the card office is over there.” The card swiper pointed out the door.

I looked the opposite way, toward the inside of the dining room. A Hispanic man in a hair net and a chef's uniform was walking toward a table, carrying a thick waffle on a plate. He took a seat and began to spread strawberries across the top of his waffle. Two women joined him, also Hispanic and also carrying waffles. Their hair nets were even like waffles. Their skin was the color of the edges of the waffles. I wasn't hungry at all, just determined to get a waffle.

“I don't have any money on me,” I told the card swiper. “What else?”

The card swiper lowered his hand and returned to flipping through his book while shaking his head. “Look, I'm not the breakfast fairy. If you're asking me to let you in for free I can't do it. If you can find someone who will let you use one of their guest credits, then you can do that. Otherwise, you're out of luck.”

Three girls who looked like they'd just come from hockey practice came into the V-Dub and handed the swiper their cards. They never stopped their conversation.

“Do you want to share a cab to the airport?” one asked.

“What time is your flight? It's not worth it for me to be sitting there for ten hours,” said another. They all had ponytails and the roots of their hair were stiff from dried sweat.

“Eleven twenty.”

“That's not bad. I can have breakfast there, I guess, or study. What are you doing, Becca?”

“Train tonight,” the third said.

For only a second I thought about asking the girls not if I could borrow a guest credit—because I didn't want to be beholden to them—but if any of them knew a girl who used to get bloody noses all the time.

More people were coming into the dining hall, none of them familiar. A delivery guy for the
Brown Daily Herald
showed up and dropped a pile of papers into the metal rack. You were the headline. I picked up a copy to see if it would tell me something personal about you, but the article was only a fancified police report.

Suddenly, the card swiper switched from glaring at me to flipping out. “You can't stand there all morning! Do you think if you wear me down or something I'll let you in?”

“I'm figuring out what I'm going to do,” I told him. I was considering swapping out goals, wondering if my brain would let me do that or if I'd feel disappointed no matter what. Going somewhere else seemed impossible.

“There's nothing you can do. You don't have your card, you don't have money, and it looks like you don't have friends,” the card swiper said, his face as orange as his chair.

“I know. I know.”

His mouth was open, even in the pauses between his words. “You can't stand there! You're making me nervous, standing there.”

To that my left middle finger rose, seemingly on its own. My mom had a hypnotist friend who came over one time and tried to tell me that a big balloon was tied to my finger, and that I should let my finger go where the balloon wanted to take it. My finger had done nothing that day. But in the V-Dub, my finger rose. I stared at the tip of it, wondering why it was so white. The white was startling, especially considering that it was white even against the extreme whiteness of my normal skin.

“Fuck you, I'm just doing my job. This is how I pay for my books,” said the card swiper.

The white resembled the white of a blister. It was iridescent and pulsing like it had pus underneath it. When I opened up the rest of my hand, I saw that my four other fingers looked the same. Then I realized that they all felt the same, too, like I had snow globes inside of each tip. Then I realized that my nose and ears felt the exact same way.

“You flipped me the bird. Great, powerful. Go.” The card swiper was still talking.

I turned my hands so that the undersides faced him, and I asked, “Do you see this?”

“Is that the newest insulting hand gesture all the cool kids are tossing around?” The card swiper's eyes were wild, locked on mine, and he was ignoring my fingers. “I don't care! I don't care, okay?” With both arms he pushed himself away from the table and out of his chair, sending a few pages of his book flipping. “I'm getting someone from administration to deal with this. I need to study.”

Sighing at the trouble of it all, I wandered back out of the V-Dub and into the hallway. A guy with glasses too big for his face was heading for the door, and I stopped him before he reached it. I held up my fingers.