Easy Street, page 19
“I know that, Joanna. You totally have your mind. It’s just for the paperwork.”
“But I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy, Maggie.”
“No. You’re not crazy. Seeing a psychiatrist doesn’t mean you’re crazy. I’ve seen lots of psychiatrists.”
Silence.
“In fact, I’m seeing a new psychiatrist tomorrow morning. His name is Dr. Frank Nestor.”
Silence.
“You? You, Maggie? I never would have guessed.”
“Yeah, well, lots of people get psychiatric help—”
“But you live in a nice house. You live in a nice house in Hancock Park with Handsome Jim! I’m very surprised to hear that, Maggie. I’m very surprised to hear that you’re going to see a psychiatrist especially because . . .”
Joanna’s voice trails off, uncharacteristically, and she leaves her thought hanging.
“Joanna?”
“Especially because your mother,” she continues in a tone I’ve not heard from her, softer, younger-sounding than the voice I’m used to, before trailing off again, “you still have your mother, Maggie.”
I think of my mother and her slender fingers and how she would tap them on the steering wheel as she drove me to school. How impossibly lovely her fingers seemed to me. I remember wondering if all children think their mother’s fingers are beautiful or whether my mother’s were exceptional. Now, an image of Sunny’s hands, her fingernails and the thin black line, spread beneath the quick flashes in my mind.
“That’s right, I do. And I can’t imagine how hard it is for you to not have Sunny around. I sure know how much she loved you.”
“Okay.” Joanna slices through the softened mood. “Okay. So you’ll call the doctor?”
“Yes,” I concede, but then add pointedly, “if you’ll see the psychiatrist, I’ll call the doctor.”
“You will call the doctor and report the murder?”
“Yes,” I sigh. “I will call the doctor and report the murder.”
I’m generally not comfortable challenging authority and I definitely do not like the idea of calling a doctor’s office to question the validity of a death certificate, but this is exactly what I’m planning out the following morning when I drive into the parking garage of Dr. Nestor’s building. In the waiting room, I see six of those little I’m-here-notification switches stacked in a neat array near the entrance. I flip the one next to Dr. Nestor’s name, then sit down on an unyielding leather-covered couch. Two large paintings, depicting two sleepy pastel towns, loom over me on the opposite wall. The roofs of the houses in both paintings appear to shine, as if from reflected moonlight or an evening glow from the wide skies, and in the skies hover . . . skeletons?
I lean forward to double-check.
Yes, I’m pretty sure. That’s strange.
In the wide skies above the towns, barely perceptible skeletons float like wispy constellations against the purple night.
I rest my elbow on an end table displaying not one or two but three boxes of Kleenex, a gesture that seems rather dear but also a little overanxious. I fight the urge to take a Kleenex simply because they are so extravagantly offered. What if waiting rooms were places where people came to cry? As I look up again at the skeletons drifting lightly in the night, I imagine a chorus of loud sobs, soft whimpers, and wet sniffles, comrades nodding to each other while politely passing boxes of Kleenex to and fro.
Then, all at once, without the warning of a footfall or the click of an opening door, Dr. Nestor is standing there in front of me.
Whoa, that was like a magic trick, I want to say, but instead I just smile and try not to look startled.
“Maggie?” he asks, pointedly. I nod.
“Please come in.” He gestures to the door with a well-manicured hand.
Something about his precise features, pressed clothing, and swift movements speak to me of more than the typical practitioner worn down by the shuffling of insurance papers and the parade of unliftable depressives. He could be the one, I think, the one with the grand and gleaming answer. I sit down on a couch, put my hands on my lap, and look up. Everything about Dr. Nestor is pointy. His nose, his chin, and the line of his jaw seem drawn by a draftsman’s pencil, and his elbows and knees seem to have been shaped in the tool-and-die shop of a mechanical engineer.
“What brings you to my office, Maggie?”
I tell him my story and end by explaining that the Paxil I’m taking is not working, that Klonopin taken at twice the dosage with alcohol helps, but not much, and that Valium taken with alcohol puts me to sleep—which works out great until I have to wake up.
Dr. Nestor gazes past me, face slack and eyelids half closed; searching, I imagine, through the stacks of some inner library. When his face reanimates, I know he must have located his idea, and I feel a surge of excitement. He’s going to propose the cure for my illness, and I will have reached—finally!—the end of this crazy journey.
Dr. Nestor’s eyes come back to rest on mine. Lifting his chin, he asks, “Do you know . . .”
“Yes?” I reply, my wide eyes and the upturned corners of my mouth declaring to him that I will faithfully adhere—for the rest of my life—to the next thing that comes out his mouth.
“. . . the Talking Heads song ‘Road to Nowhere’?”
I resist the urge to kick Dr. Nestor in his precise, pointy kneecap. He’s asking me about the Talking Heads? Those guys from the eighties with the shoulder pads who sang “Burning Down the House”? Sure, David Byrne may have been a delightful lyricist and the band may once have had mind-boggling cachet, but I’ve been hanging on the edge of his austere cowhide sofa for something along the lines of “You need to try Miracuwonderlum, a new drug chronicled in the medical journals I keep myself extremely up to date on, coupled with a groundbreaking form of talk therapy I practice which has been established through rigorous peer-reviewed, double-blind studies to be 100 percent effective with tall, facially asymmetric blond women suffering from OCD who grew up scared of going to hell and are currently suffering from a rarely described form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
“Wait, what now?” I ask, still processing, “‘Road to Nowhere’?”
He nods, widening his eyes like a child about to open a present. And then Dr. Nestor has shot to his feet, and before I can chart his journey, he is typing away at a computer and a document is being printed out and with almost no time having passed, I’m now holding a piece of paper in my hands with the lyrics to “Road to Nowhere.”
I stare at Dr. Nestor in shock for an instant, then down at the paper, then back up to him.
“What should I—? Do you want me to read it?”
He nods.
“Out loud?”
“No, no. To yourself is fine.”
Dr. Nestor stays standing there, pressing his palms together and holding his fingers up to his lips, clearly anticipating that the words I’m about to read are going to blow my mind.
Okay, I think. Let’s give it a go.
I read opening lyric, about knowing where we are going but not knowing where we’ve been but then . . . all I can hear is Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz.
I try the chorus.
“We’re on a road to Auschwitz. Come on inside. Taking that ride to Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz.”
Now I can’t even read! I wail in my head, as my face becomes hot and a blaze of fear runs behind my sternum.
Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz.
I smooth the drops of perspiration that have appeared in the crooks of my elbows down my forearms toward my wrists and focus on the page that is now shaking in my hands.
“We’re on a ride to nowhere. Come on inside. Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz. Time is on our side.”
Why is this happening? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this to myself?
Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz.
“I can’t,” I finally squeak, my scalp ablaze with Billy Graham tingles but somehow managing to keep the tears forming in my eyes from falling down my cheeks.
“The looping is going on right now, and it’s making it difficult for me to read.”
Dr. Nestor’s hands fall limply to his sides and his face loses expression, but he rallies. “Okay,” he says. “Well, you can keep that.” He resumes his seat as instantly as he abandoned it and offers, “Let’s talk about medication. I’d like to be rather aggressive about it.”
“Great. Aggressive is great.” Then I add, “Because . . . I’m really not doing so well.”
“Yes, I see. Well, I’d like to see you keep up the Paxil and Valium, start you on Remeron and Seroquel, which you will find, if you look them up, categorized as antipsychotics, but don’t let that scare you. Also, I’m thinking propanolol will help with the rapid heart rate and tremors you’re experiencing. How does that sound?”
“Okay!” I say, overly bright, covering the terror of being prescribed a wee fistful of drugs suitable for someone running around a blazing schoolhouse with a gas can in her hand shouting, “Fire is fun!”
“But no alcohol with these,” he says. “Okay?”
“Yes,” I say, “of course,” but think, Well, that seems a little extreme. But I can definitely cut down.
“Are you seeing a therapist?” Dr. Nestor asks.
“Yes, a woman named Lucy Rosenthal, who I love.”
“Good,” Dr. Nestor says. “What kind of therapy does she practice?”
“Narrative.”
Dr. Nestor frowns with a barely detectible eye roll, but one which still manages to inform me that I might as well be consulting a past-life regression therapist with a degree in “candles” who specializes in working with troubled cats.
“Hmm,” Dr. Nestor says. “Narrative therapy can be a fascinating intellectual pursuit, and for many it holds value, but I think you might, for the time being, benefit from the attention of a specialist.”
“I see.”
Dr. Nestor again stares past me, his eyes dimming as he consults some inner file, but then life is restored to the windows of his soul as he claps his hands together and actually says, “I’ve got it!” He pops to his feet again, dashes to a bookshelf by the window, and calls over his shoulder, “Have you heard of a type of therapy called ACT?”
“No, what is it?” I ask, sitting up sharply on the edge of the hard couch.
“ACT, acceptance commitment therapy,” he clarifies, plucking a book from the shelf and walking over to ceremoniously place it in my hands.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, the blue and gold hardcover reads in an ornamented typeface. The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Dr. Nestor taps the cover with his finger. “It’s an approach that emphasizes accepting whatever happens to arise in your mind and whatever sensations happen to pass through your body without trying to block out or get rid of anything.”
That’s perfect, I think. ACT is perfect, and it’s perfect for a person just like me. What I need to do is accept. I need to accept all the looping going on in my mind instead of trying to get rid of it.
“And committing to what really matters to you and enriches your life,” Dr. Nestor continues.
That seems good, too. I mean, those are all good words in that sentence, but mainly I’m excited about not trying to root out the looping and all the feelings of anxiety. ACT is going to be my thing. I’m certain of it. Dr. Nestor is a genius-saint.
Grateful, reverent, I hold my holy book, part it in the center with my left hand and riffle through its hallowed pages with my right, feeling the edges with my fingertips. I will read every word of Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy tonight in one consecrated sitting. I will pour a glass of merlot, and that will be fine since I’ll only have one. I will settle in under my blanket, Holly will curl next to my hip, a warm lump of dog, and I will savor every word of my new Bible.
“Thank you,” I say, resisting the urge to clasp the volume to my breast like a junior high school girl trying to pull a love letter into her very heart. “Thank you, Dr. Nestor. I will read this tonight.”
“Oh, good,” Dr. Nestor says, blinking. “But, um—that’s my copy.”
I shake my head. “Huh?”
I think he’s telling me that the Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life clutched to my chest is his and that he wants me to give it back. That can’t be right.
“What?” I say, affording the doctor the opportunity to clarify.
“That’s my copy of the book,” he says.
I look at him in disbelief. “Of course, totally, but can I . . . borrow it?”
“I’m sure it’s available on Amazon.”
My mask of unflappable niceness drops. I don’t pretend that everything is fine while internally rehearsing some rage-fueled revenge fantasy.
“Do you know?” I say in a clear and matter-of-fact tone. “That seems unkind, Doctor. I want to read this book tonight and the thing is that I am in bad shape, truly. I am truly in bad shape, and I am your patient, and I think it would be unkind of you to not loan me this book.”
“Oh, uh, of course,” the doctor says, glancing at his shoes, perhaps somewhat chastened. “Just bring it back next week.”
“Definitely,” I say, still wounded by his sudden stinginess, but pleased I addressed it and got what I needed. “Thank you.”
Joanna is standing five feet away from me in my kitchen and yelling into a wireless phone handset I have just given her.
“Can you hear me?” she shouts, looking me right in the face.
“Yes,” I say at a conversational volume, into an identical handset. “I can hear you, Joanna. It’s the same phone line. It’s just two handsets.”
“I can hear you, too!” she yells.
“Good. Okay, so when the doctor calls back, we’ll both be able to hear what he says and talk to him together.”
“When we report the murder.”
Maybe Joanna’s not being paranoid, though. Maybe she’s on to something. I review the facts as I turn off the receiver and lay it on the counter. First, Reyna asks Joanna, who controlled Sunny’s checkbook under Sunny’s guidance after her surgery, to pay a higher monthly rate for Sunny’s care. Then, Joanna says no, they can’t possibly afford that. And then, subsequently, but like right-away subsequently—the next day, in fact—her mother turns up dead. Finally, her physician somehow signs her mother’s death certificate without knowing she’s even deceased.
Is it possible that Reyna didn’t actually murder Sunny outright, but did delay responding when Sunny went into cardiac arrest? I mean, that’s plausible, right? But could she have actually forged the signature on a death certificate? No, that’s ridiculous, unless . . . somehow she arranged to have the signature forged? Do paramedics sign death certificates? Could she have convinced or bribed a paramedic to forge a signature? That’s even more ridiculous, but it’s equally ridiculous for a doctor’s signature to appear on a death certificate when that doctor doesn’t even know the person has died. And Joanna said Sunny’s doctor called because she had missed an appointment, so he must not know she’s dead, right?
“The doctor’s receptionist said he’d call in the afternoon,” I tell Joanna, “but she didn’t say exactly when. Do you want to swim in the pool while we wait?”
“What if he calls while I’m in the water?”
“Well,” I say, walking outside and placing the handset by the edge of the pool, “the phone will be right here, so you can just swim over and answer it.”
“Like a mermaid,” Joanna says brightly. “I can swim over like a mermaid and answer the phone.”
“Perfect,” I say.
Two hours later, Joanna, white-faced with sunscreen, is still bobbing in the water, held aloft by Ruby’s bright yellow arm floaties. I lean out the kitchen door, my mind swirling with loops, and call to her, “Wanna sandwich?”
“Okay.”
“Turkey?”
“Okay. Do you have mayonnaise?”
“I do.”
“But not mustard.”
I walk to the refrigerator, imagining Josie Rose and little Babette bobbing in the pool instead of Joanna, buoyed by matching yellow floaties. Would they be yellow? Yes, I think, bright dandelion yellow.
I imagine the two girls, my two girls, swimming with their friends while the sun plays on the palm trees and reflects off the water. Josie and Babette are older now, but I can still see all the many incarnations they’ve been through as they splash around before me.
I deliver the sandwich, with potato chips and four Oreos, on a plastic plate.
“Okay,” Joanna says, swimming toward me and sitting on the steps. “You found mayonnaise?”
“Yes. It’s in there.”
She accepts the plate without looking up at me.
I stare at her for a moment. “You know, thank you is a great thing to say after someone brings you a sandwich with chips and Oreos on a plate.”
“Thank you,” she tosses out as she peels the bread back. “Is that mayonnaise?”
“Yes, I told you it’s mayonnaise.”
I return to the kitchen, feeling ridiculous for my absurd demand for gratitude, and am twisting the bread bag closed when the phone rings and the caller ID displays KAISER PERMANENTE.
“Pick up your phone,” I yell to Joanna, reaching for the handset I’ve left on the counter. “Pick up your phone!”
“Now?”
“Yes, now! Press the green button.”
I press my green button and say “Hello.”
“HELLO!” Joanna shouts into her receiver from the side of the pool. “CAN YOU HEAR ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
“Yes, Joanna,” I say, covering my receiver. “We can hear you.”
A disoriented male voice inquires, “Uh, is this Maggie Rowe?”
“Yes, this is she,” I say, too formally.
“Hello, Maggie. This is Dr. Reed returning your call.”
“Hi, Dr. Reed. Thank you so much for calling me back. I won’t take up much of your time. I know you’re busy.” I have a thing about doctors where I’m hyperaware of wasting their time. I’m pretty sure for every minute they talk to me, ten people die.
