The Forgetting Time(20)
Now Janie nestled on the sofa by her son, resisting the urge to pull him into her lap and cover his head with kisses. “Doing okay, bug?”
Noah half nodded, his face mustached by cocoa, eyes on the television screen.
Her phone buzzed—but it wasn’t the psychiatrist, offering Noah a newly discovered miracle dose of Chinese herbs and omega-3s. It was a text from Bob, of all people, her erstwhile Internet flirtation from months ago.
“Hey! Things any easier? Want to try again?”
She laughed briefly at the poor man’s timing, a loud and mirthless sound, like the bark of a depressed seal. Then she shut the phone without responding and sipped her tea. It wasn’t doing her any good, though. She needed stronger stuff.
*
Janie put Noah to bed early that night. He was in a cuddly mood, his arms pulling her head down to kiss him on the lips, his fingers brushing her face in the dark.
“What part of the body is this?” he whispered.
“That’s my nose.”
“This?”
“That’s my ear.”
“And this is your noggin.”
“Yes. Good night, bug.”
“’Night, Mommy-Mom.” He yawned. Then (she’d known it was coming, it was always now, when he was halfway toward sleep already and she thought maybe this time it would be different, maybe this time he wouldn’t say it): “I want to go home.”
“You are home, sweetie.”
“When is my other mother coming?”
“I don’t know, bug.”
“I miss her.” His head was turned into the pillow, away from her. “I really, really miss her.” His body began to shake.
Even though it was a delusion, his grief was real. She knew enough of grief to know that. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” she said quietly.
He turned toward her, his mouth crumpling. He flung his arms around her and she held his head against her body while he wept and rubbed his nose into her shirt.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she whispered. She stroked his head.
“I miss her so much.” He was crying in earnest now, great wheezing sobs that seemed to emerge from his chest fully formed, like tufts of black smoke. Anyone would think this was a brokenhearted child, an abandoned child. Yet she had never once left him overnight. “Make it better, Mommy.”
She had no choice in the matter. “I will.”
*
Janie came out of the room sadder than she remembered being at any time since her mother’s death. She brought her computer into the kitchen and pulled out the prescription for risperidone. Then she took out a mug and the bottle of bourbon a client had given her years ago and took a long swig.
The mug had a picture of a kitten chasing a butterfly; it had been a gift from a colleague who thought she had a cat. Tonight it seemed comforting to her, like an optimistic fortune in a fortune cookie that one disbelieved and yet put in one’s pocket anyway. The bourbon swirled warmly in her belly, did a misty rain dance around her panicked brain.
She reached over to the computer, opened the search screen.
Impact of antiperspirants.
No.
Impact of antipsychotics in children.
Psychiatrists prescribe the drugs to kids in some cases of serious illness when they think the benefits outweigh the risks.… At the same time, reports of deaths and dangerous side effects linked to the drugs are mounting. A USA TODAY study of FDA data collected from 2000 to 2004 shows at least 45 deaths of children in which an atypical antipsychotic was listed in the FDA database as the “primary suspect.” There also were 1,328 reports of bad side effects, some of them life threatening.
My god. No.
She clicked out of that page quickly and opened a new one.
On antipsychotics, one loses his sense of self, his mind is fogged, his emotions ruined, his memory lost as a result of the treatment.
She closed the window quickly, tried another window, then another. Opened window after window, each one looking out on some new horror, until the bourbon drained slowly from the bottle into her mug and her eyes felt as if they were bleeding.
She held the liquor in her mouth, feeling it burn her tongue. The kitten on the mug was demonic, or rather, ordinary. At any moment he would pounce and tear the pretty butterfly’s blue wings to pieces with his teeth.
She looked up risperidone and skimmed the list of side effects: drowsiness, dizziness, nausea.… It went on and on. When she was done reading, she felt dizzy, nauseated, agitated, sweaty, itchy, feverish, and fat. Her head was spinning, though it might have been the drink.
You tried so hard to give your kid food that was healthy, she thought. The soy cheese pizza. The organic peas and broccoli and baby carrots. The smoothies. The hormone-free milk. The leafy greens. You kept processed food to a minimum, threw Halloween candy out after a week. Never let him eat the icies they sold in the park, because they had red and yellow dye in them. And then you gave him this?
She grabbed the prescription and crumpled it up, then smoothed it out on the table and stared at it. After a while she got up and put the bottle of bourbon back in the closet.
She thought of calling a friend to come over, to comfort her or dispense much-needed advice, but she couldn’t bear to share the diagnosis with anyone, to hear her own panic echoing back to her over the phone.
She’d always thought of herself as a successful person. She’d worked hard, building up her own business from scratch, surviving even in a tough economy; she had raised Noah on her own, creating a cozy home for the two of them. Now she was failing at the only thing that mattered.