Why Are You So Sad? (10 page)

S
he handed me her card: Doreese Cummings, Associate Facilitator, Human Resources. Her cubicle had multiple Kleenex boxes at the ready and a calendar with photos of athletes in wheelchairs. There were other framed photos on her desk of people I assumed were important to her. A boy with carefully combed hair and her same porcine nose. Another man in vacation clothing with his arm around her.

“I'll be your point person while you are away,” she said. She smelled like the world's cleanest closet, with brand-new carpet and potpourri bundles hanging down.

I said, “Doreese, it is very nice to meet you, but I am not sure I need your help.”

I had no intention of hurting her feelings, but I also didn't feel like humoring her. She couldn't help me. She was no less sick than any of us. If she couldn't address her own illness, how could she help me with mine? And with every passing moment since Jerry and I shared the giraffe, it was becoming more impossible to imagine a return to this place. I was a Senior Pictographer no more. In my mind I saw a computer monitor, with its evil glow, opened to the frustrating illustration software I was forced to use. The inked quill icon was drawing Mr. CustomMirth®, and he was miming an elaborate farewell speech; his fat, fingerless mitten hands were wishing me well, telling me it was time to move on, that he'd be fine, that he'd miss me, and that nobody else could give him a soul while still keeping him customer-appropriate, but who the fuck cares? For this last part, he stuck out his tongue and made an elaborate gesture with his forearm to imply an empowering, nonconsensual sexual act involving the corporation's anus. His point was: The world was crumbling. If you're a crew member on a sinking ship, do you continue to swab the decks once you confirm that the ship is, in fact, sinking? Why would you? Of course, I had no idea what was next for me, which was thrilling but also mildly horrifying. Just imagining Brenda's pending tirade made my stomach feel like sour milk and broken glass. Still, at least I was being honest. The one human being trying to be honest. The ship was sinking. I would not go down quietly. I either had to solve the problem or prepare for a life underwater.

Doreese gave me a nod that seemed to suggest only people who need help say they don't think they need help.

“Let's start here,” she said, and handed me a brochure for a service called TheraRestore by Phone. “For many people TheraRestore is the first step toward a rejuvenating sabbatical.”

I looked at the brochure. It had a photo of a woman smiling, talking into a phone like the phone was a little baby she wanted to kiss and tickle. She was pretty, with dynamic eyelashes, and her red mouth was so close to the phone it looked like she was going to smudge the receiver with lipstick. The brochure made being crazy and talking to somebody about being crazy seem sexy. I tried to imagine having a conversation with a real teletherapist. Not the woman in the photo; I knew better than to believe in her. But a pool of part-time mothers, working in cubicles just like my cubicle, but in India, breast-feeding their children or doing their nails while looking through magazines.

“Many employees have found a lot of peace through TheraRestore, and LokiLoki is prepared to pay up to three quarters of the cost, not including prescriptions,” Doreese told me.

Perhaps sensing I wasn't sold on phone therapy, she said, “Nobody's perfect,” as if the information was new to me, and would then help me feel less alone in my imperfections. She thought I was crazy. But I wasn't crazy. Being aware of a deep hurting inside all of us isn't crazy. Not being able to not hear things is not crazy.

“That's why we make our gods perfect,” I said, because I understood, especially in moments like this, the severe longing for a flawless father or mother hovering up in the clouds, with some authoritative, parentlike explanation for what otherwise felt like an intentionless heap of stinking chaos below.

I said it and then I looked at the lapel of her power suit and noticed she was wearing a button that said “God made me.”

I felt bad that I might have offended her. Then I felt mad for having to feel bad. And then I felt bad for feeling mad. It wasn't her fault that they had her peddling these services. It wasn't her fault that God made her. And yet I wanted to unsettle her. Because I was feeling indignant, being thought of as crazy. I was the lucid one. I was. I could see inside of her—right past her cardigan, through her rayon blouse, into her core. She had a blind and innocent heart that was protected in layers of fat. She adored her filing systems. She loved her family. She pitied me. I greatly resented the pity.

I said, “Doreese, in the interest of reciprocity, why don't you fill out one of these emotional well-being self-appraisal forms for me?” I still had some. I had lied and said I would give Lorraine all the surveys in my possession before leaving the premises. Instead I gave her a stack of instructions on how to assemble a bumper pool table.

“We have a lot of paperwork to go through,” she said. “Maybe afterward we can look at your questionnaire.” Now she was being condescending. I could tell she looked down on questionnaires by the way she said it, as if she had some other preferred methodology. It made me want to antagonize her and her small, concerned mouth, and the photos on her desk of people who were probably good and kind. But then I also wanted to hold her, because it seemed that we all had big holes in our sides and really good things were slipping out, and that later the holes would heal into scars and the really good things would no longer be able to get back in.

I said, “Lorraine, you don't think I am coming back, do you?”

“My name's Doreese.”

“I'm sorry.”

“That's okay.”

Her eyes were like marbles. I had collected marbles as a child. Some of my best memories are with marbles. I had marbles made of blown glass. I had ceramic marbles with beautiful cracked blue glazes.

Resisting the urge to touch her eyes, I said, “I think I am ready to go home now.”

“Let me just put together the rest of your Leave Packet.” She turned around to consult several pink and green binders.

I helped myself to some complimentary mints on her desk. A part of me wanted to stay and give her a chance to do her job so that she could feel good about herself, but that part of me didn't win out.

 

I
had to cross that frightful expressway again to get to my car. I was carrying the artifacts of my career in a cardboard box: the surveys, a favorite mug, photos, some decent pens, HR forms. The traffic was no less aggressive than earlier that morning. If anything, it was more hostile. But my senses were heightened. I could not only see the approaching cars; I could hear inside of them. The sound of clenched hands tightly gripping steering wheels. The crushed breath mints. The banal chatter of minds searching for distraction. This elevated lucidity made me want to experiment. See if I could slip in between the seams without really looking. Return to my instincts. Sniff out the gaps in the flood of machinery. Which I did. I put one foot into the road, eyes closed, and began to move forward.

There was a thought, and there were the screams of cars. I experienced both concurrently. The thought that dangled up above my body was,
Maybe this is a bad idea.
A wall of air decorated in shrill horns pushed me back to the curb without killing me. My clarity was, I'll admit, a bit shaken. I felt the rage of the drivers. Blaming me for putting them in a position to kill me. Or maybe for almost making them late for dinner. I felt the honks. The middle fingers. The inevitable accusations.
A crazy man in the road.
They might have thought that. A man without a job. A man holding a box filled with personal research. Who knows what they saw? I couldn't hear inside of their cars anymore. The clarity comes, the clarity goes.

I tried crossing again, this time with my eyes open. The pavement was hot from a long day of rolling tires and exhaust. The sun was lowering at a glaring angle to my right, getting ready to make the evening pollution look like a gorgeous mistake. And the roadway was no less abominable. It was a dangerous dash, awkward from carrying the box; my ankles felt wobbly, but we did it. Reaching the median brought a familiar and welcome pause, though it was still loud as hell. I figured since I was there again, I might as well take a moment and see if I couldn't find the photo of the frog and finally introduce it to the other photos that were now in a folder in my cardboard box of personal items. And I did want to find that frog; I was sad that it had hopped away. But truthfully, more than the frog, I wanted to look at that flower again. Reconfirm its beauty. Take comfort. It was like an anchor. Here we are, all of us, afloat, facing something too large to understand, but the flower remains a flower. It doesn't matter what large thing it is you are facing. I was facing the burden of awareness. But it could be something else. You may be dying slowly in a nursing home. A man you've never seen before, who the nurse informs you is your son, regularly sends you flowers. You know life will end and absolutely none of the nagging riddles will be answered. Were you meant to marry? Were you meant to divorce? Were you a good person? Does this man, this son, send the flowers out of love, or guilt? Or is it perhaps an excuse to flirt regularly with a florist? Is the afterlife a metaphor for adulthood or senility? Why are some people so poor? Why are others born without limbs? Every question you ask has no answer, but the flower remains beautiful. It is not an answer. You know this. That it is beautiful proves nothing. It is a purely random coincidence. But that doesn't keep you from smiling when it arrives and the nurse puts it on the impersonal nightstand next to your folding bed. It's like when the grandchild says something funny without knowing why it's funny. The flower is just a beautiful series of combinations within a longer, less beautiful series. The longer series ripples on in endless variations. Some variations add up to the Holocaust. And some variations add up to wetting our bed until we are twelve. And some variations add up to the Crab Nebula. A flower is a nebula. Its color and shape are the most spectacularly beautiful nonanswer.

I set down my box for a moment and looked in the same weeds where I thought I had seen the flower before. I looked by other weeds that I thought were not the original weeds. I looked under a flyer for two free extra-large Cokes with any purchase of two extra-large pizzas. I looked under a torn and discarded baby bib. I looked uncomfortably close to a mound of animal excrement. I looked next to a perfectly good running shoe. I looked up to the sky. I raised my fist in contempt. But then I looked down again, and there by my feet were three of them. Not one—three. Like before: fat little petals, yellow yoke edged in blood. All three essentially the same: brilliant, sad, leaning, struggling, unknowing. Each one the same story, but not at all the same.