Dovetail: A Novel(2)
Defeating words meant to be encouraging. Joe wasn’t in prison, technically, but it felt like it. The doors were locked; his mail, both incoming and outgoing, was read by the staff, and they listened in on his phone calls. So many times he regretted having confided in his father in the first place. That had been a mistake. His dad had told his stepmom, who’d become insane with worrying. If he were being perfectly honest about it, she had good reason. On more than one occasion, he’d woken the entire family with his screaming. After a while, bedtime began to make him anxious, so he’d started staying up late, throwing back a few beers in the hope it would mute the dreams. Even the guys at work noticed the mornings he’d staggered onto the jobsite exhausted, bags under his eyes. The worst of it came the night he’d sleepwalked into his sister’s room, waking her up and mumbling in a way that scared her. Knowing that he’d done that terrified him as much as it did the rest of the family.
He’d lived with his family for only a month at that point, having moved home after his landlord sold the building to a developer who was converting the place into condominiums. Joe wasn’t planning on staying with his folks for more than a month or two, just long enough to get another apartment. And that’s how it would have gone down, if not for the dreams and his stepmother’s fears.
The next thing he knew, they’d driven him north to Wisconsin and had him checked into the treatment center, something he’d reluctantly agreed to just to placate them. The white coats at the center promised him help, but in three months, all he’d gotten was a lot of talk and an array of pills. At least the pills helped dull the nightmares, but they weren’t really a solution. He was ready to call himself as cured as he would ever be, then head home to deal with it on his own, but each time he brought up the subject, Dr. Jensen said he wasn’t ready. “You’re holding back, Joe. If you want us to help, you need to open up.”
Learning he could walk out of Trendale that very day was like hearing that the governor had unexpectedly pardoned him.
When it happened, he was one of eight people sitting on hard plastic chairs arranged in a circle. The TV across the room was still on, a leftover from the previous group, “Current Events,” which consisted of watching the five o’clock news and discussing it afterward. Joe’s group was called “Open Discussion,” leaving the topic open to the staff member who would be moderating.
Joe found the images on the TV screen distracting. Even without the sound, he knew the words to the Sony Walkman commercial and mentally inserted them: “Sony introduces the only cassette player as small as a cassette case. The incredible-sounding Super Walkman!” The banner at the bottom of the screen said, “Coming this September!” The new one looked cool, but he wasn’t about to replace the one he had back in his room. He’d packed only a few cassettes, not realizing he’d be gone for so long. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Fleetwood Mac. Hall and Oates. Before coming to Trendale, he’d used his Walkman every day, but they’d discouraged it here, saying he was using it as a buffer to keep from dealing with real life. He missed having his music with him all the time.
The Trendale Psychiatric Treatment Center was a big believer in schedules, something that kept him occupied from the time he woke up until lights out. Sleep schedule. Meal schedule. Exercise schedule and, of course, therapy schedule. He attended a lot of therapy discussion sessions as well as a regular one-on-one appointment with Dr. Jensen. And tucked between the regularly scheduled activities were music therapy and art therapy.
The staff seemed to believe that their therapy, combined with the right medication, could cure anyone. Joe was proving to be a challenge, but they assured him they wouldn’t be giving up on him anytime soon.
He tried, really he did. Joe had discussed every event in his life in detail, with a special focus on his mother’s death and his father’s remarriage, since Dr. Jensen thought the disturbing images that came to him in the night stemmed from childhood trauma. While it was true his mother had died in a car accident when he was a toddler and his father had remarried when he was in first grade, neither event struck him as being overly traumatic. He’d been home with his father at the time of the accident and didn’t remember his mother at all. Shortly after her death, he and his father had moved in with his aunt Betsy, who had been kind and nurturing. Nothing traumatic there. They’d lived with her for two years until his dad had met and married his stepmother. Joe had adjusted well to the new family dynamic. It helped that his stepmom was a sweet woman who loved his dad, cared about Joe, and was a good cook. And after she’d given birth to his little sister, Linda, they’d come together as a real family. From then on, she was his mom. There was no trauma that he could recall, no matter how hard he tried.
On the day he was sprung free, Nurse Fletcher was leading the group, starting them off with the topic of “Progress,” which was really just a sneaky way of getting them to talk about their problems and how they were faring. One by one, they went around the circle, explaining the events that had brought them here and talking about how Trendale had helped improve things. It could have been a commercial for the place.
When Joe had first arrived at the facility, his philosophy had been to downplay his symptoms, hoping to sound sane and reasonable, all the quicker to go home. No problem here! Just a few bad dreams! He’d glossed over the lack of sleep, made light of how he sometimes woke up in a cold sweat, screaming, his heart pounding, the memory of the dream as vivid as anything he’d experienced in real life. Making light of his situation had backfired in a big way. When Dr. Jensen told Joe one of the therapists had labeled him uncooperative, Joe adjusted accordingly, using more descriptive words and making sure to be expressive, using gestures and talking about his feelings, but they still viewed him suspiciously. He suspected his status had been changed from uncooperative to holding back.