“Oh my gosh.” My sister covers her face.
“No, Sarah, don’t do that, watch,” Mom says. She turns around. “Thank you very much, Jimmy.”
“I tell you: it the truth!”
“I like this place,” Mom turns back. “I think it’s full of good people.”
“I really like it.” Dad leans in. “When can I join?” But when no one laughs, he leans back, clasps his hands, sighs.
“Is that a transvestite?” Sarah asks. J/C is down the hall, like forty feet away, and I don’t know for the life of me how Sarah suspects something out there that I couldn’t see at point-blank range.
“No, now listen—”
“Is it?” Dad squints.
“Guys!”
“Trans-vestite!” Jimmy shrieks. He does it at top range—I haven’t heard him that loud before. The entire hall, which admittedly is just me, my family, J/C, and the older professor-type woman with the glasses, stops and stares.
“I tell you once, it’ll come: it come to ya!”
J/C starts walking toward us. “Are we talking about me?” he asks in his guy voice. He waves at Jimmy. “Hey, Jimmy.” He comes right up between me and my sister. “Craig, your name is, right?”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“Wow, is this your family?”
“Yeah.” I tip my palm at each of them—it’s at the level of the frills on his pants. “My dad”—he juts his lip out—“my mom”—she nods, all smiles—“and my sister, Sarah”—she reaches out a hand.
“Oh my God, so lovely!” J/C says. “I’m Charles.” He shakes with everyone. “They’re going to take really good care of your son here. He’s a good guy.”
“How about you; what are you in for?” Dad asks. I kick him. Doesn’t he know what not to ask?
“It’s okay, Craig!” J/C touches my shoulder. “My gosh, did you just kick your dad? I never even did that.” He addresses Dad: “I have bipolar, sir, and I had an episode, and they brought me here. I’m going back upstate today. But the doctors are very attentive here, and the turnaround time is great.”
“Wonderful,” Mom says.
“Of course”—J/C gestures to us—“it’s a lot better when you have family support. They want to make sure they discharge you into a safe environment. I don’t have that.” He shakes his head. “Craig, you’re very lucky.”
I look at them: my safe environment. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised to find any of them in Six North.
“Well, I’ll leave you guys to your afternoon,” J/C says. He walks away slowly.
Jimmy makes an indecipherable high-pitched whining noise.
“That’s applause, isn’t it?” Dad asks, throwing a thumb behind him. “I like that.”
“Those are awesome pants,” Sarah says.
“Okay, so let’s get down to business, Craig,” Mom is like. “What do you need?”
“I need a phone card. I need you guys to take my phone and leave it plugged in so the calls register. I need some clothes, like what you were bringing before, Mom. I don’t need towels; they have those. Magazines would be good. And a pencil and paper, that would rock.”
“Simple enough. What kind of magazines?”
“Science magazines! He loves those,” Dad says.
“He might not be up for science magazines right now,” Mom answers. “Do you want anything lighter?”
“Do you want Star?” Sarah asks.
“Sarah, why would I want Star?”
“Because it’s awesome.” She reaches into her purse—her first one, black, a recent Mom purchase—and unrolls a glossy pink monstrosity, complete with pictures of the most recent spectacular outing of a celebrity breast in public.
I hold it up for Jimmy.
“Mmmmmm-hmmmmmm!” he says. “I tell you! I tell you! It come to ya!”
“That’s very nice,” says the professor woman with bugged-out eyes, who I somehow didn’t realize had migrated right behind me. “Oh, excuse me,” she looks up. “I wasn’t listening to your conversation at all.” She walks to her room.
“Um . . .” Sarah says.
“I’ll take it,” I say. I put it under my seat. “I think the floor will enjoy it.”
“Is it just me, or are you starting to develop a sort of allegiance to the tribe?” Dad asks.
“Shhh.” I smile.
“Craig, the next order of business: have you called Dr. Barney?”
“No.”
“Have you called Dr. Minerva?”
“No.”
“Well, they both need to know where you are, for health insurance reasons and because they’re your doctors and they care about you and this is going to be very important to them.”
“Their numbers are in my phone.”
“Well, let’s call them; we picked up your phone from the front,” Mom reaches into her bag—
“No!” Dad grabs her hands. “Don’t take out the phone!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, honey. Craig’s the one who’s not allowed to have it, not us.”
“Well, uh, I don’t think we want to be getting our son in trouble. This isn’t the kind of place you want to be getting sent to a time-out.”
I look at him. “That’s really not that funny.”
“What? Oh, sorry,” he says.
“No, Dad, seriously. It’s not . . . I mean, this is serious business.”
“I’m just trying to lighten the mood, Craig—”
“Well, that’s what you’re always trying to do. Let’s just, not do it here.”
Dad nods, looks me dead in the eyes; slowly and regretfully, he banishes all the smiling and joking from his face, and for once he’s just my dad, watching his son who has fallen so low. “All right, then.”
We stay quiet.
“Is that the truth, Jimmy?” I ask without looking at him.
“It’s the truth, and it come to ya!”
I smile.
“We’ll handle the phone later,” Dad sums up.
“Next order of business?” Mom asks.
“How long I’m going to be in here, I think.”
“How long do you think?”
“A couple of days. But I haven’t seen the doctor yet. Dr. Mahmoud.”
“Right, how is he? Is he good?”
“I don’t know, Mom. You met him for as long as I did. He makes rounds soon, and I’ll get to talk with him.”
“I think you need to stay here until you’re better, Craig. You don’t want to come out early and have to come back; that’s how you get ‘in the system.’”
“Right. I won’t. I think that’s actually a big part of places like this: they make them so you don’t want to come back.
“How’s the food?” Sarah asks.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I look at my family. “I’m . . . I know I shouldn’t be proud about this; it’s like really sad that this is my big accomplishment of the day . . . but I ate everything at lunch.”
“You did?” Mom stands up, pulls me up and hugs me.
“Yeah.” I pull away. “It was chicken. I actually ate two helpings of it.”
“Son, that is a big one,” Dad gets up and shakes my hand.
“No, it’s not, it’s really simple, everybody does it, but for me it’s like a stupid triumph—”
“No,” Mom says, looking me in the eyes. “What’s a triumph is that you woke up this morning and decided to live. That’s a triumph. That’s what you did today.”
I nod at her. Like I say, I’m not a crier.
“Yeah, cause if you had died . . .” Sarah is like, “that would have sucked.” She rolls her eyes and hugs my leg.