Tips for Living(23)
“You’re fine now. Just lie down here.”
He eased me back onto the table and then walked over to the door. Cracking it open, he beckoned. “Come in, Mrs. Glasser.”
“What happened?” my mother asked, alarmed to find me lying there limp.
“Nora just had another fainting incident. A ‘neurocardiogenic syncope.’ Her vagus nerve went into spasm and cut off the blood flow to her brain. The situation rights itself after the person falls and blood pressure equalizes. How do you feel now, Nora?”
“I feel good,” I said. And I actually did.
“That’s likely what happened in the movie theater and at home afterward. The biggest danger lies in getting hurt from the fall itself. This is the typical age for the start of the problem. Sometimes it’s paired with other symptoms like sleep disturbances, which may indicate a more serious psychological disorder.”
Sybil?
“But Nora seems to have only the one,” he said, patting my arm.
“Tell me this is curable,” my mother implored.
“It is, in the sense that children usually grow out of this by the end of puberty.”
Was he saying this could continue for years? I felt myself growing dizzy again. I closed my eyes and lay unmoving on the table. That seemed to help.
My mother twisted her pearls. “What causes it?”
“In Nora’s case, stress. You’ve got a highly sensitive child here.”
So I wasn’t crazy; I was sensitive. Wasn’t sensitivity a good thing? I’d had a stress reaction to those scary men. My dad promised he’d pay them so they wouldn’t bother us. After he paid, I could go back to being sensitive and normal again.
“Are there any drugs she can take?”
“I’m afraid not. The best thing is to try and reduce her tension. Nora needs to become aware of her emotions before they get the better of her. Help her identify anxiety, fear, anger, et cetera. Some kids don’t know what they’re feeling until they’re completely overwhelmed.”
My fainting stopped as I learned to pay better attention to my feelings. But I had more sleepwalking episodes after my father came clean about his real job to my mother and their terrible fights began. I didn’t confess then, either. I was afraid it would make everything worse. The sleepwalking ramped up again when we sold our house to pay his mob debts, and as my parents went through their divorce. Then it disappeared for six years. Until I was a college sophomore.
Axel Bartlett, my boyfriend since freshman year, had just broken up with me. He said he thought we’d reached a point where we should stop dating and “just be friends.” I was stunned and hurt. “You’ve met someone else,” I wept. He vigorously denied it. But I saw him that evening in the student lounge with his arm around a girl I recognized from our Crime Reporting class.
Grace and I were roommates by then. She woke up at three a.m. the following morning and discovered me sitting on the floor of our dorm room in my nightgown with scissors in my hand. Between the blades was the hoodie Axel had taken off and insisted I wear one night when we were both freezing in Washington Square Park. “Keep it. It looks sexy on you,” he’d said.
“Nora? What the hell are you doing?” Grace told me she asked, having no idea I was asleep. I woke up then, confused and disoriented. I stared at the giant heart cut out of the front left side of the sweatshirt I held, bewildered.
“Holy shit,” Grace said. “You must be really, really angry at him.”
Finally realizing what I had done, I was appalled. I told Grace about my sleepwalking history then, distraught that the problem had returned after so long a hiatus, and that I’d acted with such aggression. Grace was incredulous. “Seriously? You were sleeping? You looked wide-awake! That’s scary. That’s supremely scary, Nora.”
“Nora Scissorhands,” was how she referred to the episode.
It was the last one. Nothing remotely like that has happened since. The doctor was right. End of puberty, end of problem. It’s been twenty-one years. If I ever wake up in the middle of the night, I’m at home in my bed like any normal person.
From the Pequod Courier
Letters to the Editor
They’re back! Nora Glasser was right. The Summer People are turning into Fall People. Did anyone else notice how many of them were treating us to their usual rudeness on Halloween weekend? A BMW cut me off for a parking space on Halloween morning. I saw a Mercedes run the red light on Pequod Avenue. (Why aren’t the police ever around when that happens?) They bought out all the candy corn at Corwin’s Market. Next thing you know, we’ll be overrun on Thanksgiving and they’ll raid the pumpkin pie. Will they steal Christmas like the Grinch? Why don’t the Summer People stay where they belong until after Memorial Day? How will we deal with them all year round?
Dawn Murphy
Pequod, NY
Chapter Six
Mad. Sad. Bad. Glad. Those were the “check-in” words Dr. Nerves recommended to help me identify if I was feeling anger, grief, shame, or happiness. I had nothing to lose by trying the technique again. As I headed toward home, I determined that I was Glad. Glad that a sunny, crisp fall morning had arrived unexpectedly after the storm. A heroic day. Blue water sparkled in the harbor. Light played on the sailboat hulls. Some of Pequod’s citizens walked their dogs on the wharf. The world turns. It really does. But I was also Sad. Hugh had died too young and in such an awful way. Who took his life? Who slaughtered both of them?