Suicide Notes (6 page)
Authors: Michael Thomas Ford
One day later and we’re back to five. It’s like there’s a line of crazies outside, and as one of us leaves they let in another one. Like at those supposedly cool clubs where some idiot in sunglasses stands at the door with a list while a bunch of posers beg him to let them in. But he only picks the really beautiful people. In this case, I guess he’d be picking the unbeautiful people.
Anyway, there are five of us again. Well, maybe four and a half.
I’ll explain. This morning at group there was a new person with us. A girl. At first I thought she was, like, seven or eight, but it turns out she’s twelve. She’s so small and skinny, though, that she looks like a little kid.
Her name is Martha. She sat in her chair hugging a stuffed rabbit. Her arms were wrapped around its middle and her chin rested between its long, floppy ears. She didn’t say a word the entire time. Cat Poop told us her name, but that was about it.
I asked him about her later, though, during our session.
“Can’t she talk?”
“She can talk,” he said. “She just doesn’t at the moment.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“You know I can’t discuss her case with you,” Cat Poop said.
“Come on,” I prodded him. “How am I supposed to make her feel like one of the family if I don’t know anything about her?”
“I notice you’ve been spending a lot of time with Sadie,” he said.
“What do you guys do, spy on us all the time?” I asked. “Or do the nurses secretly film us? Does Nurse Goody have a camera hidden in her hair?”
“Do you feel like we spy on you?” he countered.
This is another therapist trick, answering your question with a question, so that you have to keep talking. I decided to throw it back at him, so I asked, “Why, do you think I feel like you spy on us all the time?”
Cat Poop actually smiled a little when I did that. “You know we don’t,” he said. “We keep an eye on you, but we don’t spy.”
“That’s big of you,” I said. “It’s not like there’s much we can do around here, though.”
“You seem angry today,” he said, ignoring the fact that I was being a smart-ass. “Are you angry?”
Once he asked, I realized that I
was
angry. I hadn’t really noticed, but I was. And now I was even more angry because he’d realized it before I had.
“I’m fine,” I said.
We sat there for a while with neither of us saying anything. I figured I could probably go the whole session that way, but Cat Poop had other ideas.
“Does Sadie remind you of someone?” he asked me. “Maybe a friend?”
I knew what he was getting at. He wanted to know about Allie. I could have kicked myself for ever having mentioned her around him.
“She’s nothing like Allie,” I said, just to let him know I knew what he was hinting around about.
“How is she different?” he said.
“Well, for one thing, Allie isn’t locked up in a psych ward,” I suggested.
“Is that the only difference?” asked Cat Poop.
“You think I’m in here because of Allie, don’t you?” I said.
“I think you’re in here because you hurt yourself,” he said.
“But you think I did it because of Allie.”
“Did you?”
“No,” I said.
“Are the two of you close?”
“Can’t we talk about my dysfunctional family dynamics?” I suggested. “Or my fear of intimacy?”
“Is Allie your girlfriend?” he asked.
“Can we
please
stop talking about Allie?” I practically shouted. “Jesus, can’t you just get over that?”
Cat Poop wrote something down on his stupid pad. I thought maybe he’d finally given up on the Allie questions, but he wasn’t done yet.
“Have you and Allie been sexually intimate?”
Like that’s any of his business. I wanted to slap him. I hate to admit it, but I’d actually almost started to think old Cat Poop wasn’t so bad. But as soon as he asked me that, I knew he was a dirty old man. I mean, he’s only like thirty-five or something, but that’s old enough to be a dirty old man. The point is, he just wanted to hear about teenagers getting it on.
“What kind of pervert are you?” I asked him. “Can’t you just look at some porn? Or do you like hearing people talk about their sex lives?”
He didn’t answer the question. I didn’t expect him to. I’d caught him, and he was probably embarrassed. He should be. I mean, some stuff is just private.
“How many times do I have to tell you that nothing is bothering me?” I said.
“If nothing is bothering you, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to talk about why you tried to kill yourself,” said Cat Poop. “Can you do that?”
“Sure,” I shot back. “If I wanted to I could. But I don’t want to. Not with you.”
“Are you saying you’d like another therapist?” he asked me. “I can arrange that if it would help.”
I almost told him to go ahead and do it. Then I thought about having to answer the same stupid questions all over again. As annoying as he was being right then, at least I had Cat Poop trained a little bit. If I got a new therapist, I’d be starting all over again.
“No,” I said finally. “I don’t want a new one.”
“I’m honored,” said Cat Poop.
“But I’m not talking about Allie, or sex, or anything else that isn’t any of your business,” I warned him. “Just so we’re clear on that.”
“Well, think about what you do want to talk about,” he told me. “We’ll pick up tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait,” I said as I stood up. “Oh, and by the way, you need a haircut.”
As I turned to leave, I saw him reach up and touch his hair.
Score one for Jeff
, I thought as I shut the door behind me.
When I got back to the lounge, the new girl, Martha, was there. She was sitting on the couch, still holding that rabbit in her lap. She was staring out the window at the snow.
I was going to go back to my room, but something made me go over to Martha. She didn’t even look at me when I sat down next to her. I kind of wanted to say hello to her. I mean, I know it’s not easy your first few days in the nuthouse.
“I like your rabbit,” I said.
Martha stopped rubbing the rabbit’s ears and looked at me.
“Does he have a name?”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“He’s your best friend, isn’t he?” I said, and she nodded again.
“I have a best friend, too,” I told her. “Her name is Allie, and I tell her everything. Do you tell your bunny everything?”
Martha nodded and held the bunny close to her, like she was protecting him.
“I bet he’s a good listener,” I said. Then I told her, “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. We can just sit here together.”
She buried her face in her rabbit’s fur, but I could see she was smiling. We sat like that for about an hour. I talked about some stuff, nothing important, and she sat there and listened. It didn’t matter that she didn’t say anything. I think she was happy just having company. I guess having a stuffed bunny for your only friend can get a little lonely.
My bandages came off today. I didn’t know they were coming off, so it was a little bit of a shock when Goody Two-shoes called me into the medical room after breakfast and pulled out her scissors. And it was even more of a shock when she unwrapped the gauze and I saw the stitches. I don’t know what I thought would be there—maybe some tape or something—but there were little black crisscrosses along my wrists, like tiny railroad tracks. Or animal prints. It looked like a mouse had run across my arm with muddy feet.
The stitches came out, too. That hurt a little, because the skin had healed around them. But Goody’s a whiz with her scissors and tweezers, and she got them out pretty quickly. Now I just have these reddish scars there. I guess I always will, although Goody says they’ll fade over time.
I don’t know if I want them to fade. That probably sounds totally freaky, but part of me doesn’t want to forget what it felt like, even though it hurt. If I forget about the pain, I might also forget that it was a really stupid idea to do it in the first place.
My mother told me once that having babies is like that. I guess she was in labor for something like sixteen hours when she had me. Also, it was the middle of July, and being super fat in the hottest part of the year wasn’t her idea of fun. All in all, she said, it wasn’t as beautiful an experience as they make you think having a baby is, and afterward she told my dad she would never do it again.
But she apparently forgot how much it hurt, because two years later she had my sister. Although that time she planned it so she’d be her fattest in the winter, when she could wear a bunch of clothes to cover it and she wouldn’t mind being warm all the time. And she had them load her up on painkillers the minute she started having contractions. Amanda only took, like, two hours to pop out, anyway, a fact my mother reminds me of whenever she wants to make me feel guilty. Then I remind
her
that nobody told her to go and get pregnant.
Not that I’m really comparing having kids to trying to kill yourself. I’m just saying that sometimes forgetting how much things hurt makes you do them again. And that’s not always such a hot idea.
I’m not even sure I want kids, by the way, even if I’m not the one who has to be pregnant. It seems too risky. I mean, what if you end up with a kid that’s just plain bad? Or stupid? It’s not like you can give it away or put it in a garage sale or something. You’re pretty much stuck with it for a long time.
I know now they have all these tests they can do so you can find out if your kid has three arms or is retarded or whatever, but you can’t test for everything. You can’t test for crazy, for example, or for bad taste in music and clothes and stuff. You can’t know if your kid is going to be someone you would actually want to have hanging around. You just have to take your chances. That seems like a pretty big gamble to me.
Not that I’d be having any kids right away, anyway. I’m only fifteen. I know, there are a lot of fifteen-year-olds out there having babies, but not me. I don’t need to mess up my life any more than it already is. So no babies for me. I’m glad we got that straightened out.
I don’t know how I got from my stitches to babies. Sometimes my mind goes in weird directions. Or maybe it’s the meds, which I’m still on. But Cat Poop says these are just antidepressants, and nothing too heavy-duty. Not like the Pez.
Anyway, after I got my stitches out, I went to show Sadie. I know I kind of freaked out the other day when she mentioned them, but the truth is, she’s really the only person who hasn’t treated them like they’re a big deal, and that’s sort of cool.
She asked if she could touch my scars, and I said it was okay. She ran her fingers over them like they were puppies, really softly, like she was afraid she might open them up again.
“I don’t have any scars,” she said, and she sounded kind of sad.
“Do you remember almost drowning?” I asked her. It’s something I’d been wondering for a while, but I wasn’t sure it was something I should ask. Now, since she was touching my scars and all, well, I figured it was as good a time as any.
“I remember everything was green and quiet,” she said. “At first—when the air ran out—my chest burned. But then the pain went away, and everything was really quiet. I felt like I was flying. The next thing I remember is lying on the grass. Sam was breathing into my mouth and all these people were staring at me.”
I asked her who Sam was, and she said he was the guy who’d saved her. He’d seen her jump into the lake with all her clothes on, and he’d thought it was a little weird. When she went under and didn’t come up, he jumped in and pulled her out again.
“He’s called a couple of times,” Sadie told me. “You know, to see how I am.”
After that I had to go see old Cat Poop. The first thing I noticed was that something about him looked different. “You got a haircut,” I said once I realized what it was.
“Yes,” he said.
I wanted him to say that I’d been right about his needing to deal with his hair, but instead he launched right into therapy time. He reminded me that my parents were coming tomorrow for their weekly visit. Then he asked me how I was getting along with the other kids. I told him I was getting along fine, and he seemed happy with that.
I thought things were going too easily. Then Cat Poop said, “I see your bandages are off.”
Like he didn’t know. I’m pretty sure Goody would never have removed them without his permission. I looked down and said, “I guess they are,” like until then I hadn’t even noticed. “How about that?”
“How do you feel about seeing the cuts?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “I guess it means my career as a hand model is over,” I said. “That might take some getting used to.”
The doc looked at my face for a long time, so I said, “Seriously, it doesn’t bother me. They’re just cuts.”
I think he was trying to figure out how big of a lie I was telling. The thing is, I wasn’t telling one at all. Seeing the cuts really doesn’t bother me. Honestly, it’s better than having your wrists wrapped up like a mummy. Besides, as long as I wear long sleeves forever, I’ll hardly ever see them.
“All right,” Cat Poop said, but I don’t think he was totally convinced. “Then that’s it for today.”
All in all, it was a pretty good day. For one thing, I got Cat Poop to cut his hair, which I think is a totally huge achievement. Plus, I got my bandages off and didn’t freak out about it. I think I can honestly say that for the first time since I got here, I’m feeling more or less okay.
So my parents came again today. This time things went much better. At least I think they did. The only weird thing was that my mother kept staring at my wrists. Somehow I’d forgotten about the scars already and I wore a T-shirt. I tried to cross my arms and tuck my hands in, but I was afraid they’d think I was being hostile, so instead I just clasped my hands together and tried to keep the scar sides in. Still, she kept looking down there.
Cat Poop started off the session by asking my parents each to name one thing about me that they were proud of. You can imagine how excited I was about that, but actually it wasn’t too cringe-inducing. My father said that he’s always been proud of the fact that I do well in school, which is a pretty dad thing to say, very neutral and not too touchy-feely. My mom said she was proud of everything I did. Cat Poop asked her to be more specific, which made me want to laugh (but I didn’t), and she said she guessed she was most proud of the fact that I was a good person.
I’m not sure what a good person is, exactly. On the one hand, it could be someone who always plays by the rules. But someone can follow the rules and still be a real jerk, you know? In fact, some of the biggest idiots I know are people who follow the rules, usually because they make you feel like crap when you don’t.
Or maybe a good person is someone who’s always doing good things for other people. That sure isn’t me. I’d probably get kicked out of Boy Scouts if I was in it because I wouldn’t help old ladies across the street, if you get my drift. Not that I’m a jerk or anything; it’s just that other people aren’t always my main priority in life.
I kind of wish Cat Poop had asked my mom to be even more specific, but I think he thought she’d done the best she could. Instead, he asked me to tell my parents two things about them that I was thankful for. I thought it was a little unfair making me say
two
things when they’d had to come up with just one each, but I gave it a shot.
First I said I was thankful that they always made sure I had everything I needed, like clothes and food and a house. Second, I said I was thankful that they never made me feel bad about myself. I was thinking about Sadie when I said that, about how her dad always made her feel like she was a problem. I also thought about Alice and her mother’s boyfriend. I still have a hard time believing that any mom would let that happen to her kid, even though you read about it in the paper and see it on the news all the time. Until I met Alice, I always assumed it happened to “other” people, as in people I didn’t know. I guess there are a lot more other people than I thought there were.
After we talked a little more, they said they had a surprise for me. Amanda was with them. Cat Poop wanted to talk to my parents some more, so he told me to go into the room next to his office, which it turns out is almost exactly like his office except there’s no picture of a dog carrying a dead bird. I guess it’s for another shrink, although it looked like no one had used it in a long time.
Amanda was waiting there. When I came in she jumped up and gave me a big hug.
“Watch it,” I told her. “First mom, and now you. This hugging stuff is starting to scare me.”
“You jerk,” she said, but not in an angry way. “You scared me. Don’t ever do that again.”
I still wasn’t sure how much she knew about why I was in the hospital, so I was a little nervous. Again, I tried to hide my wrists by sticking my hands in the pockets of my jeans.
“It’s okay,” Amanda said. “They told me. Besides, it’s not like you could hide the bloodstains on the carpet. There was a
lot
of it.”
“They let you see it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I snuck in. At first they tried to tell me you sliced yourself opening a CD with a box cutter.”
She rolled her eyes, and I laughed. That’s totally something my parents would do. I could just see Amanda demanding to know the real story.
“Are you really okay?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m fine.”
She gave me a look like she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t say anything. I knew she wanted to believe that everything’s all right, and even though she probably had a million other questions, she didn’t ask any of them then.
Then I noticed her hair.
“I dyed it,” Amanda said.
“No kidding,” I said.
Had she ever. Her hair is naturally this kind of blondish red, just like my dad’s. Now it was a lot more red. In fact, it was
really
red. Like a cherry Popsicle.
“Relax,” she said when I didn’t say anything for a minute. “It’s just Kool-Aid. But don’t tell Mom. She thinks it’s permanent.”
I laughed. It felt good. I hadn’t had a real laugh since I woke up in the hospital. “I won’t,” I promised. “Why are you torturing her this time?”
Amanda shook her head. “No reason,” she said. “It’s just fun.”
That’s what I love about my sister. She does things just because she wants to. I know you’re not supposed to think your little sister is cool, but by now I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t exactly do things by the book.
Amanda sat down on the couch, and I sat in a chair across from her. “What’s the word around school?” I asked her. My heart raced a little as I waited for her to answer. I don’t really care what people think about me most of the time, but disappearing and ending up in the hospital are a little more serious than breaking out in zits or wearing the wrong sneakers.
“That depends who you ask,” said Amanda. “The popular theory is mono, although I’ve also heard that you have cancer, hepatitis, and maybe a brain tumor. Oh, and for about a day and a half you’d run away because mom and dad caught you doing drugs.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Does anyone know the real reason?”
“If they do, they didn’t hear it from me,” she told me. “I’m sticking with mono.”
Then I asked her the one question I was really interested in hearing the answer to. “Have you seen Allie around?”
“Yeah,” Amanda said. But there was something in her voice that sounded weird, as if she really didn’t want to talk about it. So of course I made her.
It turns out Amanda saw Allie at lunch about a week after I came to the hospital. She thought Allie would want to know that I was okay, even if she couldn’t tell her exactly what had happened, so she went over to her and started talking.
“But all she did was kind of nod,” Amanda said. “She was sitting with this guy, and it was like she didn’t really want to talk to me.”
I told Amanda that we’d had a fight about something, but that it wasn’t a big deal and Allie would get over it. I know Amanda didn’t buy it, but for once she let it go. Like I said, she’s pretty cool. Not that I’d ever let her know that. I have to keep her in line somehow or she’ll think she’s the boss of everything.
“Anyway, you’ve got to get out of here soon,” said Amanda. “They’re driving me nuts.”
I knew she meant my mother and father. I could just imagine what they were like to live with now. I’m surprised they hadn’t installed security cameras in Amanda’s room. And now her Kool-Aid hair made even more sense. Knowing Amanda, she’d done it just to
make
them worry.
“Sorry about that,” I said. And I really was. I mean, it’s not Amanda’s fault that I’m in here.
“I can handle it,” she assured me.
We just sat there for a minute, like we’d run out of things to say. But it wasn’t awkward or weird. It was kind of nice. Amanda was treating me the way she always does, not like I’d done something crazy. Then Cat Poop opened the door and my parents came in. I don’t know what he said to them, but they were all smiling again, like circus clowns. I wanted to hand them some balloons.
“We’ll see you next week,” my mother said. She looked like she was going to hug me again, but I moved so that Cat Poop was between us and just said, “Okay. See you then.”
No one else tried to hug me, although I know Amanda would have if my parents hadn’t been there, and that would have been okay. They all said good-bye and left. I’m sure they were as happy to get out as I would have been if I was leaving with them.
It made me think of Mrs. Christensen. Mrs. Christensen is about seventeen million years old. She’s a friend of my grandmother’s, and she lives in a home now because her entire family is dead. Every Christmas we have to go visit her. We take her a fruitcake and some presents, like slippers and chocolate and whatever. We spend about an hour with her, and it’s the longest hour in the history of time. The home smells like old people, and even though they put up all of these decorations, it’s still depressing. Mrs. Christensen always acts like we’re her real family, but we aren’t, and I can’t wait to get out of there.
I bet that’s how my parents and Amanda feel. I know I would if one of them was in here. I’d just want to get it over with and leave the fruitcake.
