Whisper to Me(29)

I tried it, that first day home, but I didn’t have the energy.

That day and the next, I just lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I also tried reading—there was no voice to tell me not to, or at least the voice was quiet now; muffled—but I couldn’t get past page one of any book I tried.

I heard Shane come home at sunset. Dad was still at Donato’s. I looked out the front window of my room. Shane set himself up in the yard—he unfolded a lawn chair, sat down, and cracked open a beer. There was a six-pack by his feet. He didn’t do anything; he didn’t read or listen to music or call anyone. He just sat there and slowly drank the beers. Shane has the kind of mind that people who have had a mental illness envy.

A couple of hours later, a white Ford F-150 with the Piers branding on it pulled up to the sidewalk. I saw you get out of it and walk over to Shane. He stood up, walked over to the pickup, and spoke to you for a bit. Then he gave you a high five. You joined him—he pulled up another lawn chair—and he handed you a beer. You were wearing a Piers uniform—khaki chinos, a pale denim shirt with the logo showing the two piers on the pocket. A CB radio was clipped to your collar.

He’s not gutting shrimp, I thought. Because you wouldn’t have been driving that branded pickup truck if you were. I wondered what job you had gotten at the piers. I was interested. I watched you and Shane, drinking your beers, chatting. It was calming, somehow. But then you saw me at the window, and I ducked down, ashamed.

You must have thought I was such a weirdo.

The next morning I had my first outpatient appointment at the hospital. Dad was coming back from the restaurant to drive me at eleven. I went downstairs and out onto the porch. Five minutes later, I got a call from Dad on my cell. He’d insisted on getting me a new one to make sure he could contact me when he needed to. I didn’t mind so much—I wasn’t hearing the voice as often since taking the drugs, so the idea of invisible people speaking in my ear wasn’t as scary as it had been. It was a cheap cell; it didn’t even have the Internet. But I didn’t care.

I pressed the Answer button.

“Honey,” said Dad. “Chef has cut himself bad. There’s no one else here; I’ve got to take him to get it sutured.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, sorry. Can you ride the bus?”

I closed my eyes. “Um, yes. I guess.”

“There’s five dollars on the hall table. Sorry again, honey.”

“He hates you,” said the voice, matter-of-factly. It was quiet now, the voice, and I hardly ever heard it, but occasionally I would get these bursts, like a radio catching fragments of speech from the ether. “He wishes you were dead, like your mother.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Huh?” said Dad.

“Nothing, Dad. Nothing.”

I hung up. Then I started walking to the street. I’d have to take two buses, I thought. The 9 and the 3. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make my appointment at eleven thirty.

I turned left on the sidewalk and walked to the bus shelter. I leaned against it to wait. No one else was there. I could see joggers and Roller Bladers passing, one block closer to the ocean, but here in the residential layer, layer three, nothing moved. There was a time I would have listened to music or something, but I didn’t. It was weird: there were moments, like then, when I almost missed the voice talking to me. I mean, it had made me do terrible things, mostly to myself. But it had been company, you know?

Now I had no one, and I was living in permanent mist, obscuring everything, making it woolly and still.

I was just thinking that when I saw a gleam of white, and then you were there, sitting in the driver’s seat of your Ford pickup truck.

“Hey,” you said.

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. I noticed, close up, that your eyes were a shade of green I had never seen before: river green. But flecked with gold. A slow river, dotted with ocher leaves.

Sorry. But it’s true. You have amazing eyes.

“You need a ride?” You made a face. “Sorry, that sounds creepy. I mean, it’s not a pickup line. It’s just, you looked kind of down. I thought you might need a lift.” You swallowed. “I’m on break. I have till—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t need a lift.”

A pause.

“Uh, but, thank you,” I added.

“S’cool,” you said.

You didn’t drive away, and admittedly I had just been thinking about how I was lonely, so even through the fog I was living in, some glimmer of desire for human contact obviously shone. At the same time I was kind of surprised that the voice, even though it was mostly gone, didn’t say anything about you. Usually the voice hated if I spoke to someone.

So …

I figured I would speak to you.

When I say it like that it sounds ridiculous, makes it sound like such a radical decision, but it was. But also, I’m telling you this for a reason, because I think you thought I was being standoffish, and I wasn’t, not deliberately.

“What’s with the truck?” I asked in a lame attempt to make human contact.

You smiled. Then you opened the door and got out. You stood by the Ford and did a little bow, kind of showing off but mocking yourself at the same time. When you straightened up, I watched the muscles in your neck move. “You’re looking at the Assistant Plush Manager for Two Piers,” you said.