The Opposite of Music (16 page)

It's almost the end of lunch when I sit down with my tray. Gordy is out sick, and I plan to eat alone to avoid unwanted peer contact. I took my time leaving class and visiting my locker and stopped twice, without really needing to, in the bathroom so the food line would be almost closing when I got my plate of mac and cheese. I found a table on the outskirts of the room where I could sit by myself. Actually, there is one other person at my table—a stooping guy with a stubbly jaw, in a white uniform and a cloth cap that resembles a dinner napkin. He's the worker who sets up and removes the food in the steam tables, and he's taking a short break.

“How's the macaroni?” he asks. Despite the hat, his professional interest gives him a kind of dignity.

“Pretty creamy. You should find better tomatoes, though.”

“You know how it is,” he says. “They go with the cheapest stuff they can find. Every place is like that.”

I heard a rumor that this guy, Ray, has an alcohol problem. I wonder if he deliberately went looking for a job in an institution in which most of the people have never had their first drink. Maybe it makes him feel safe. Innocent, even. Like he's one of us, just starting out in life.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're two peas in a pod, but our sitting together seems right. Ray and I, Ray and me. Not really innocent, but two guys who've been batted around by life. The drunk tank, the shock treatments, the carnival jobs and the cafeterias, maybe one or two eviction notices, desertion, disappointment, we know it all cold, and what I don't know I can imagine. Bits of a song enter my mind, a blues song, Ray's blues, and I wish I knew him well enough to try it out loud.

No, not they.
She.

I'm not sure that captures Ray, though. I don't think he would turn mean like that at the end. If his wife or girlfriend were dissatisfied with him, he'd be more the type to just live with it, grateful for what he had.

The first bell rings and the shuffling starts—just a few sneakers at first, then hundreds and hundreds of them, an orchestra of feet. Mitchell and Andy walk by in the crowd. Andy spots me and stops, but I shake my head, look down at my plate, and wave him along. For once he does the right thing: He keeps moving.

Mom, Dad, and I sit in the waiting room of a highly recommended psychiatrist. Everything in the room is perfect, telling us we are lucky to be here even though we don't want to be. Mom begins to chatter, pointing out that the walls are an intriguing gray or silver color, neither bright nor dull, but rich with layers. Each chair is like its own museum exhibit, with skyscraper lines and aggressively rough cloth, rough brown cloth for a poor monk to rest on, or maybe a rich person who thinks that too much comfort looks cheap.

A metal cube in the middle of the room, like a coffee table for astronauts, holds magazines in neat stacks just out of reach. Mom takes the half step needed to pick up a copy of
Architectural Digest
. I don't know what kind of impression she'll make. She hasn't washed her hair today. But we are only background. All our effort was put into the presentation of Dad.

Dad is shaved and trimmed. Dad has lost seven more pounds and is wearing a pair of my pants because none of his fit. Dad is pacing the space-age room with his hands in his pockets because the doctor is five minutes late for our appointment.

There's no reception desk to welcome us. One door in the waiting room is the one we just came through—it leads to the elevator lobby. The other door is made of dark wood with a stainless-steel handle—thoughtfully, the long, handicapped-accessible type—and it has no markings. No sounds come from behind the door, but we sense that behind this door is where the doctor is hidden. Having paced for seven minutes, Dad tries the door.

“No, not yet!” a voice calls sternly. We glimpse a bald head and a dark suit. Dad closes the door quickly, as if he'd walked in on someone in the toilet. He resumes pacing.

We three glance at each other. I crush my arms over my chest and slide way down on the rough seat, pretending to sleep. Mom tosses her magazine back to the table. It lands on the floor, so she gets up and places it neatly on the top of the stack. Not a sound comes from behind the door.

Another several minutes, and the door opens again. There's the doctor—bald, black suit, one and a half heads shorter than Dad and me. His office is painted a shade of gray that Mom would call pewter, with shiny black furniture. The wall behind his desk displays some precisely spaced three-inch photographs in yard-high black frames. We're inside now, so we quickly forget about the wait.

Dr. Mieux has an electronic notepad in the center of his desk. He holds the stylus over a screen as thin as a sheet of waxed paper.

“I'm seeing
all
of you?” he says, staring at me.

“Billy's helping me gather information,” Mom says. “He has a very good memory for doctor visits.”

I hold a pen over my own notebook. I too can document.

“I understand you've been feeling agitated, Bill,” the doctor begins. He looks down at the tip of the stylus, then up again. “Bill? Aren't you going to answer my question?”

“I don't think you asked a—,” Mom points out.

“Please! Mrs. Morrison! Allow the patient to speak for himself!”

“My father doesn't talk much,” I say.

“He has to talk,” Dr. Mieux says, watching the screen, “or we won't get anywhere.”

Dad peers at Mom and begins rubbing his hands. “What do you need to know?”

“How long have you been feeling this way?”

Dad swallows hard. “About three to four months.”

“And you've tried antidepressants? Which ones?”

Sliding and thudding noises have started in the waiting room, and there's a knock at the door.

“Yes?” the doctor calls. He lays down his stylus. He glances at his watch and smiles for the first time.

A man in a brown workman's coverall and cap leans his hand, shoulder, and arm into the doorway. “We've got everything up,” he says, gesturing backward with a gloved thumb.

“Superb!” the doctor says. He gestures at the three of us. “You'll have to go back out to the waiting room for a bit. I'm taking delivery on a new set of furniture.”

“Go back out?” Mom asks. “Now?”

“It won't take long,” the doctor says.

We file back into the waiting room, where two immense packing crates now occupy most of the space. The magazine cube has been pushed into a small corner of the room, and the skyscraper chairs are squeezed around it at odd angles. We sit down in the available chairs, Dad facing the wall and Mom and I with our backs to him. Mom rests one foot on the cube, pushing a stack of magazines onto the floor.

“Oops,” she says.

A second workman helps the first slide the largest box into Dr. Mieux's office.

“This isn't going to make it,” the first man says.

“Why don't you take the door off the hinges?” suggests Dr. Mieux.

I exhale loudly, letting my head weave from side to side like a balloon running out of air. The second man kneels on the floor with a screwdriver. Dr. Mieux stands between us and the workmen, creating a visual barrier. He blinks at me to let me know I shouldn't be watching. Mom's foot starts bouncing on the table, while Dad continues to face the wall.

The workmen are highly efficient. The first packing crate goes into the office. Ripping, thudding, and sliding sounds follow. The men pass through the waiting room with the crate again, but this time they're walking backward. One of them presses the elevator button. The elevator dings. For a while the waiting room is quiet, except for the sound of drawers opening and closing in Mieux's office.

Soon the elevator dings again, and the two workmen enter, discussing a hockey game. One of them is carrying a bottle of soda. He takes a huge gulp that makes his Adam's apple seem like it's becoming dislodged. They squeeze through the office doorway with the second crate. This one appears much heavier. Then ripping, thudding, and sliding.

“Is this some kind of joke?” I ask Mom. “It's so unprofessional.”

“Be patient, honey,” she responds, waggling one foot.

I get up to check Dad. He's completely still, with his eyes closed.

“That's not right,” the doctor says. “Let me look at the bill of sale…. No, I see, it's all right.”

More sliding. Then the sound of padded blankets being heaped together.
Thwop, thwop, thwop.
The workmen walk past us with the second crate. Then they reappear carrying the office door. They attach it to its hinges. One workman tests the motion. Smooth. Mieux closes the door, and we don't hear any more sounds from his office. The workmen leave, the one carrying his soda bottle. Out in the hall, they wrestle the second crate into the elevator.

The situation is now exactly the way it was when we first came in, except that the waiting-room furniture is in disarray and crowded into one section of the room. Dad gets up and opens the door to Mieux's office.

“No! No!” Mieux cries. He has been arranging objects in the desk drawers. He rushes to the door and presses his body weight against it while Dad still has his hand on the handle. “I'll call you when I'm ready for you.”

I cross over to Mom's seat and whisper, “Why don't we get out of here?”

“Shhh.”

Dad paces around the room while rubbing his hands. He's trying to get interested in some of the art that hangs on the walls, stark black-and-white photos of shadowy mountaintops and of ice floes settling into abstract shapes. Dad walks up to them one by one. He used to do some photography and painting. He went to art school, on a full scholarship.

The door opens.

“I will see you now,” the doctor says, nodding as if he's meeting us for the first time.

We take our places opposite Dr. Mieux at his desk. The stylus and screen are ready, but he doesn't use them. Instead, he folds his hands on the desk.

“First of all, we need to establish some ground rules if we're going to work together. You need to know that what just happened in
my
space was none of your business.” He looks at each of us, but most sharply at me. “The boundaries between doctor and patient are absolutely paramount in this office. Is that clear to everyone?”

I respond by making my eyes go defunct, which he can interpret any way he likes: that I'm bored, that I hate him, or that I think he's a fake.

“Yes, of course,” Mom mutters. Dad nods.

“Now let's get back to your situation, Bill.” The doctor examines a few pages of records sent to him by Dr. Fritz. His black, perhaps ebony, desk and chairs have been replaced by another set. The surface of the wood has parallel waves too beautiful to have been painted by a human hand. If I didn't despise his furniture by association, I would trace one wave with my fingertip. Dad would have loved this.

The doctor sees me looking. “It's bubinga,” he says. Then, to Dad, “You've tried a couple of antidepressants, with poor results. And there is suicidality?”

“What?” Dad asks.

“You sometimes think about killing yourself.”

“Yes.”

Dr. Mieux holds Dad's records between us. “Look, Bill, if you would like me to authorize this treatment you're requesting, I'm going to have to have you in my care round the clock—in order to monitor your progress and forestall any problems.”

“I don't understand,” says Dad.

“This type of treatment is generally available on an inpatient basis only. In cases where there is suicidality, it's best to have the support system in place, trained staff, monitoring…”

“You mean…a hospital?” Dad asks.

“Wait a minute,” Mom says. “Why don't we discuss the options? We haven't even decided if we want shock treatments yet.”

I plant my feet one at a time as loudly as possible, as if I am a giant with giant feet in giant boots.

Okay. Let's go, Mom. Let's just go. Thank you for your time and everything blah blah blah.

“Billy,” Mom says, “would you rather wait outside?”

The doctor narrows his eyes at me and then continues. “Yes, a hospital. Hospitalization. You would be on my floor, getting the best possible care, under my direct attention. People come from all over the world—some very prominent people, members of royal families, although patient confidentiality constrains me from saying exactly who—from all over the world, to be on my floor.”

But I'm not hearing this—
inpatient, hospitalization
. I'm hearing
the mental ward
. Restraints, barred windows, icy baths, screams at two a.m., disturbed people surrounded by other disturbed people who frighten one another with their delusions. How would Dad survive there?

And Mom looks like she's thinking,
If I put him in, will I ever get him out again?

“I'm not sure that would work,” Mom says. Her voice wobbles while she twists her necklace of wooden beads. “We haven't decided if we want shock treatments.”

“This isn't cosmetic dentistry, Mrs. Morrison. This isn't something you choose or don't choose. You can't dillydally among the treatments, comparing caps and crowns and whether you should bond or whiten. Your husband is at risk of harming himself.”

“We can take care of him at home.”

The doctor refers back to Dad's record. He speaks to Mom without seeing her. “You've had him at home for—how long is it?”

“Almost four months,” says Mom.

“And he hasn't gotten better in all that time….”

“We're taking fine care of him at home.” Mom's nervous, and her voice is up and down all over the place.

“You want him to get better, don't you? You don't want to be negligent.” Mieux is staring at Mom now. “If the worst happens…It's ten past five, Mrs. Morrison. We have only a few minutes to make a decision here.”

“I'm not putting him in the hospital,” Mom says. “That's all there is to it. I'll see what our choices are. Maybe we'll leave the country and seek treatment elsewhere. Perhaps we'll try Canada, or Mexico. But he's not going into the hospital.”

Why don't we just go then, Mom? Why don't we just up and leave?

I rise.

Ignoring me, Mieux writes a few comments with the stylus. He touches up the comments. He frowns.

“Well, I'm willing to try it this once, to supervise your husband as an outpatient. Keep in mind that I'll be paying very close attention to this case, to make sure it's handled correctly.”

“I appreciate that, but let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Mom says. “We haven't decided on anything. I need to know more. How do these treatments work, if they do work? We have no idea what to expect!”

Mieux sighs. He gets out of the chair and goes to a cabinet with an empty vase on top. He gives Mom a brochure.
ECT: A Powerful Tool for Change,
by L. F. Mieux.

Mom hands the brochure to me and tells the doctor she'll call back after she's had a chance to review it. I clap my notebook shut with only a few lines filled. Mom and I leave with Dad between us.