Madness (25 page)

I go to the desk and ask for the scissors. They say I can't have them. I say why not. They say, not safe. I say yes they are. There is nothing wrong with scissors. They aren't sharp enough to cut your throat. They remark that saying things like that is why I can't have the scissors. I shuffle back to the young man and flop into my chair.

"They won't let us have any."

"Why on earth not?"

"Because I have been known to cut myself."

"Did you use scissors?"

"No. Exactly."

"Exactly," he repeats. "The help here isn't what it used to be."

I nod.

"Maybe you could just yank it out," he suggests.

"No," I say, sighing. "Then it would be uneven."

"True," he says. He looks down at his notebook. It is warped, as if he dropped it in water. The pages are completely covered in tight black scribbles and little pictures and hieroglyphs here and there. He turns the notebook around and starts writing in the white space, which is so small I can barely see it. "I'm writing down the system," he says.

"Show me," I say.

He looks at me, deciding if I can be trusted. "It's secret, you know," he says.

"Oh." I sit there, trying to read it upside down, but realize it's written backward. "That's cool," I say. "Backward."

He looks down. "Yes," he says. "I'm very talented."

"You are," I agree.

He ducks his head, shyly. "Oh, okay," he says, scooting his chair over and showing me the notebook. We peer at the page, which is completely unreadable. He points out lines and pictures as we go.

"So what this is is the explanation. You see here, where I've written down the beginning of the system—the man is explaining it a little bit at a time, and between times I work out the equations, which are an advanced physics-calculus-history of the system, which is mathematical, which is the answer, to the questions I have—we
all
have, rather—about the ways in which the plan is worked out."

"What man?"

He taps his skull with his pen. "The man in here."

"Oh," I say, nodding. I take a guess. "Is he short, sort of egg-shaped, with sometimes a blue shoe, but sometimes not?"

He bangs the table, thrilled. "Yes!" he cries. From the desk there is a voice saying to keep it down as it is night and other people are sleeping.
"Yes!"
he whispers. "That's him! Do you have him too?"

"No, I'm no good at math. I can't even learn languages. Maybe he's God."

He leans over his notebook, agog. "Do you really think so? Wow. Maybe he is."

"Well," I say, smoothing my hands out over the air. "Actually, the system itself is God. It's an elegant mathematics, that are God, and he is the angel who comes to give you good tidings of great joy."

He shakes his head slowly, amazed. "How do you know so much?"

"Oh," I say, waving it off. "Actually, I don't know much. For example, I've never heard him explain the system. I just studied philosophy in college. So he is the argument for God, at least from the perspective of Kierkegaard, who I pretty much agree with, because, well, I've seen the little man, and I get flashes of how the system
looks,
but not how it works. Because obviously, he's telling you, because you understand math."

He stands up and shakes my hand thoroughly. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Hey, no problem," I say. "I'm just glad I could help."

"Oh, you have," he says, still shaking my hand. He bows low, grabs his notebook to his chest, and says, "My meds just kicked in, so I have to go listen to the man."

"Sure, go," I say. "Myself, I sleep during the day."

"We'll talk more about this later," he says, straightening up and setting off down the hall, which leads God knows where.

The next day, or another, the young man with gold hair, whose name might be Peter, but I have forgotten since the last time he told me, goes loping by, talking at a great speed and gesturing grandly, following on the heels of one of the staff members, who is ignoring him, though not in a mean way. Jeff and I watch the loping young man as we munch on our snack.

"Who's that?" Jeff asks.

"I think his name might be Peter. Don't quote me on that."

"What does he have?"

"Bipolar. He's psychotic right now." Peter, or whatever, spins on his heel and follows the staff back in the other direction. He waves his notebook over his head. "He has a mathematical man in his head," I mention to Jeff.

The staff person passes us, Peter close on her heels.

"I knew it!" he cries, jabbing his stub of a pencil into the air. "This is all part of the plan, isn't it?" He looks absolutely delighted. He spins around and notices us, and sits down next to Jeff on the couch. He shakes Jeff's hand vigorously, then turns to me.

"I knew it," he repeats, satisfied, picking up a tattered magazine, crossing his legs, flipping through the pages, throwing it back on the table, uncrossing his legs, throwing his arms over the back of the couch, and looking around as if taking in a sunny day in Havana. He shakes his head. "This whole thing," he says, gesturing at the psych ward, the patients and visitors and staff. "They're telling me it's not part of the plan. But I
see the plan.""
He looks at Jeff and smiles very wide. He leans toward him. "
You
see the plan, don't you?" he demands.

"Of course. It's plain as day," Jeff says, and offers him the bag of chips.

The next time we see Peter, he's possessed, and a horde of hospital security has come to hold him down. His parents watch from the corner. Security hauls him off to the padded room. His parents look around, then slowly sit back down on the couch.

The visitors sit at tables, or in circles of chairs, with their person. The visitors watch their person, not knowing what to say. They talk to their person about anything they can think of except what's going on. The people who have visitors have not yet lost everything. Some of the visitors stare at us, rudely, stupidly, as if we don't see them staring, and in truth some of us don't. But some of us do, and we catch their eyes, and they look away quickly, embarrassed, afraid of us, wanting to stare at us some more.

Most of the people with visitors are near enough to sane that they can recognize them, can say, at least, hello, even if they then
retreat into their private worlds. The visitors look away from their person, sometimes glancing uneasily at them. They often sit with their arms folded tight across their chests, as if to defend themselves from the madness around them. When their person talks, they look up eagerly, hoping the person will suddenly seem sane, as if he might suddenly break out of his torpor or confusion or delusion or manic agitation and begin talking sense to the visitors, who want nothing more than for this person to stop being how he is.

The visitors dread coming when this is new to them, sometimes even when it's something they've been doing for years. The new ones don't understand what's going on. Some of them resent their person for what they see as willfulness, or weakness. They can barely disguise the anger or disgust that flickers across their faces. Their voices, when they speak, are accusing, or sarcastic. Some of them have for months been telling their person to snap out of it, to cheer up, to get herself together, to stop feeling sorry for herself; they're the ones who are visiting a depressed person, not anyone psychotic. The visitors of a manic person watch their patient with wide eyes, moving quickly to try and follow the hyperkinetic movements and rapid stream of speech and leaps of logic. Many of these visitors, usually family members, speak in low voices, trying to soothe their person, bring him or her back to reality. But there aren't as many visitors for the manic people. Nor are there many who visit the schizophrenics.

Those who visit often, who for years have driven the same route to the same hospital to be let onto the same floor to scan the same room to find the same person, look tired. They sit closer to their person than the others, and their conversation, what there is of it, is a little easier. During the silences, they glance up and absently watch the other patients, not judging them like some visitors, but feeling for them, and feeling for the patients' visitors as well. All the visitors are shut out, and they can only wait for the meds to work, for the episode to pass, for their person to be returned to them, shaky, unsteady, needing their help to reenter the vast, confusing world. At the end of visiting hours, they will get up, go back through the locked door, worried as always, and very, very tired.

One day, when I am still manic, I am more than alert, I am alive with the whizzing and spinning of my mind. My boss and another editor from the magazine where I worked a thousand years ago come to visit me.

All day, I have been waiting. I have a joke to tell them. I am having a hard time keeping it to myself. I grin and squirm. I think I will die if I can't tell it soon. I thought it up, and it is a most fabulous joke, a joke such as I have never heard, let alone come up with myself. So I have been hopping around all day, going to my stupid little groups, and I've read all the colored worksheets, and made all the little coin purses in art group, and done all the little brainless breathing exercises the group leaders tell me to do.

This is how I thought up the joke: my boss sent me flowers. But get this—they came in a vase! And the vase was made of
glass!
They inadvertently sent me glass! So the staff had to take it away and put the flowers (tulips and daffodils) in a plastic bucket. Which, in my opinion,
completely
ruined the effect. But never mind that. I have a joke. I watch the clock, bouncing in my seat, dying for visiting hours to come. I
cannot
wait.

So my boss and the editor arrive, and I unleash my joke.

"...so it's
incredibly ironic!"
I crow at the end, my arms wrapped around my legs, rocking back and forth with glee. They smile nervously at me, the way people do when they don't get the joke and are hoping there's a punch line coming. I look at them in their idiot confusion and roll my eyes and lean forward to emphasize my point. "I can't have
glass!"

Again with the nervous smiles.

Amazed by their stupidity, I throw up my arms. "So I could
kill
myself!
" I shout, and begin laughing so hard at my excellent joke that I have to hold my stomach.

Now they laugh, and nod, aghast. "Oh!" they say, nodding. "Yes!"

When Jeff comes to visit that night, I tell him the joke all over again. He finds it hilarious. We laugh our heads off, getting it
totally"

"I don't think they liked my joke," I say sadly.

"That's weird," he says, handing me my decaf Americano. "It's a
great
joke. I'm sure they just didn't get it."

"They're stupid, then. It's totally
obvious."

"Totally," he says. "Do you want to sit in the chair?"

I look up at the chair. "Okay," I say, feeling pretty agreeable. Standing up from the floor, I notice that I am wearing my pajamas. My hands fly up to my hair. "Oh my God," I say, eyes wide. "I'm in my pajamas!"

"You are indeed," he says, unpacking a snack. "So what? It's not like you're going anywhere."

"I must have been wearing my pajamas when they came! I am
totally embarrassed!
What are they going to think of me?" I groan and flop down in the chair.

"I'm sure they didn't even notice," he says mildly, and hands me a paper plate.

"I brought you Mrs. Crow," announces Ruth, sliding onto the couch and squeezing my knee. Ruth is a twitchy, wiggly, skinny-legged person, very beautiful, always in motion, with enormous
eyes and spidery eyelashes she frequently bats, to excellent effect. Mrs. Crow, a stuffed crow wearing a skirt and a rainbow ribbon for a belt, is the talisman. Whoever is in trouble, me or Ruth, gets to have Mrs. Crow until she is well.

Nothing fazes Ruth, or Megan, or really any of my friends. They have their own quirks and eccentricities, and, in several cases, their own diagnoses. To them, my madness is just a part of me, something that happens, and they come to see me, and I am useless company, and I sit there, profoundly grateful that they are there but unable to tell them so.

Christi, Ruth's partner, pulls up a chair facing us. Christi is schizophrenic and visits Unit 47 fairly regularly herself. "How's it going?" she asks me, throwing an arm over the back of the chair. She wears a fine hat. I want it.

"Not so good," I answer. "I'm totally confused."

"That'll pass," she says.

"Will it?"

"Always does."

I raise an eyebrow. "Okay," I say. "If you say so."

"So," Ruth says, tucking Mrs. Crow in next to me and handing me my decaf Americano, making sure I have it in both hands before she lets it go, "who's in here?"

I look around the room. "That guy, over there, he's bipolar." They look over at him. "He had a wife and a kid but he doesn't know what he did with them. He hasn't seen them in a while."

"That sucks," Ruth says.

"He says he used to be the CEO of the government." I pause, uncertain. "Does the government have a CEO?"

"I don't think so," says Ruth. "He doesn't really look like a CEO." He wears a pair of loose, dirty gray pants held up with a length of rope, a white eyelet nightgown, and a pair of tennis shoes full of holes. His toes stick out.

"Course, you never know," Christi says. "Maybe he was a CEO before all this."

"Could be," I say. "Exactly. Like that lady over there." I nod toward her, and they look. The woman, who wears a red suit, is sitting at a table, bent toward the paper on which she is scribbling intently. When she gets to the bottom of each page, she lifts it with a flourish and sets it down on one of several piles she has stacked neatly around the table. She lays the page down, straightens its corners, then does it again. She does it several times.

"That's a patient?" Ruth asks.

"Why else would she be in here working?" Christi asks, cracking up. "It's not like this is a library and she came here because it's nice and quiet." As if to punctuate this, a roar comes from behind us, and we turn to see a man standing up in front of several visitors, his arms lifted to the ceiling. "Lord!" he cries. "Will you tell these idiots that I have
seen
what I have
seen,
and that I must
get out of here so I can spread the word?"