CHAPTER TWO
Every night I go to bed telling myself that I will call her tomorrow. And every morning I wake up knowing that I won’t. It’s been almost two months and I can still hear the gunshot in my ear. The doctor said the ringing would go away, but apparently not yet. I went back to the Trib two weeks after I came home from the hospital. My job is different, though, at least for now; instead of rushing from scene to scene, I’m in the office for the late rewrite shift. It’s supposed to be a step up because it means the editors think that in addition to being able to gather information, I can figure out what information is important enough to include in the article, and actually write the article myself. I come in at 2:00 P.M. and stay until 10:00 P.M. I sit at an old computer in one of several semicircles of old computers that make up the newsroom. Stringers, my former compatriots, call in their notes about dead bicyclists and celebrity nightclub shenanigans and corrupt hospital CEOs and police shootings, and I turn them into column inches. I also “rewrite” stories from other, often dubious, news sources. The British tabloids are the worst. They’re almost never right in the end, but we always print their stuff anyway-with “allegedly” and “reportedly” sprinkled throughout.
When I’m not at work, I sleep. Tony, the guy I was dating for a couple months, is out of the picture. I didn’t exactly mean to stop returning his texts, but I never really want to go out-or have anyone come visit-so it felt pointless to keep things going. He came over one last time at the end of February and said he really liked me but that it was clear I wasn’t ready to be involved in something. He was right.
In early March, my roommate Iris starts bugging me to go to the psychiatrists-in-training at Columbia.
“They charge on a sliding scale,” she tells me, looking all interested. We’re sitting on the couch-which is basically the only place I see her anymore. It’s Saturday evening and we’ve been arguing because she’s meeting some people we know for margaritas and Mexican food, but I’m not going.
“It’ll be like fifty bucks,” she says. “I’ll pay half.”
“You’re not paying for my shrink,” I say.
“I’ll pay for your margaritas if you come tonight.”
“I don’t feel like it, okay?”
Iris closes her laptop and gets up.
“You know you’re not acting right,” she says.
She says that a lot these days.
The next week, Iris makes me an appointment and I agree by not canceling it. She takes a morning off work and we ride the A train to 168th Street together. The magazines in the waiting room are several weeks old, which, for some reason, pisses me off.
“I can’t believe I let you drag me here,” I say.
Iris rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a bitch about this, please? Living with you has gotten hard. It’s obvious you’re depressed. Just face it, please, and let’s move on.”
“I don’t have depression, Iris, I have anxiety.”
“Well, I’ve done the online tests and you are definitely depressed. I checked every box. Lack of energy, lack of interest in things that you once enjoyed, excessive sleeping, irritability. Come on. You weren’t like this last year. You gotta get your shit together.”
A woman calls my name before I can retort. Not that I had a retort. Even sighing seems like a lot of effort. I stand up and approach the woman, who looks just a few years older than me.
“I’m Anna,” she says. I shake her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Follow me?”
We walk down a wide hallway and into a tiny room with two chairs and a small table with a lamp, a clock, and a box of Kleenex on it. There’s a framed poster of a field of flowers on the wall. She sits and I sit across from her.
“What can I help you with?” she asks.
I run my hand over my head. It’s become a tic. Touching the soft, sharp fuzz where my long hair used to be grounds me in what happened, reminds me it was real. “My roommate thinks I’m depressed.”
“What do you think?”
I shrug. “She sort of dragged me here.”
“Why do you think she did that?”
“Because she’s worried about me.”
Anna remains unfazed. She is schooled, I suppose, in humoring people.
“What do you think makes her worried?”
“I’ve been sleeping a lot.”
“What is a lot?”
“Basically, if I’m not at work, I’m asleep.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a reporter,” I say, and somewhere, below all the heavy blackness inside me, a tiny light flicks on when I do. I love saying I’m a reporter. It makes me feel strong. “I work for the Trib.”
“Difficult work, I imagine,” she says.
I almost laugh. “Sometimes, yeah. Mostly I’m in the office right now, though.”
“Is the amount of sleep you’re getting now unusual for you?”
“I guess.”
“Why do you think you’re sleeping so much?”
“I guess because I’m depressed.”
She nods. “Is depression something you’ve dealt with before?”
“Not really. It’s always been anxiety with me.”
“Have you ever been treated for anxiety?”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “I was in therapy most of college. And I still take medication.”
She asks me for names and dosages. I give them.
“And are you seeing anyone for therapy now?”
I shake my head.
“So how are you getting these medications prescribed to you?”
“My regular doctor, at home,” I say.
“Where is home?”
“Orlando.”
“And when was the last time you saw this doctor?”
“Um, last year. Like, May, maybe.”
“And this has worked for you until recently.”
“Pretty much.”
“Has something happened, some life event, a stressor in the past few months that might have triggered something?”
Again, I almost laugh.
“Yeah,” I say. “Definitely some stressors.” I tell her about Rivka Mendelssohn’s naked body, and Saul, and my mother suddenly surfacing after twenty-two years. Moving my mouth is hard. I haven’t spoken this many words in a row in weeks.
“It’s not unusual for a symptom like anxiety to morph into or remanifest as depression. Or vice versa. I’d like to prescribe you a medication that is specifically indicated for people experiencing both depression and anxiety.” She explains the dose and the side effects (sleep disturbance, loss of libido, headaches-basically what I’m already experiencing) and walks me out to the waiting room to make me an appointment to come back in a month.
“Call me if you have any questions,” she says, handing me a card. “It was very nice to meet you, Rebekah.”
I let Iris fill the prescription that night, because, why not? The shrinks and their prescriptions were the net that caught me in college when the lies and contradictions and despairs of my motherless childhood nearly felled me. Two weeks later, Saul calls and I pick up the phone. He asks to take me to lunch and I agree to meet him.
The Kosher Kitchen is a narrow storefront on Atlantic Avenue between a halal meat market and an old botanica selling dusty Blessed Virgin candles. The proximity of this threesome makes me smile, genuinely, for the first time in weeks. The Jewish restaurant next to the Muslim butcher next to the Christian reliquary. I love New York.
Saul is at the counter when I get there. A couple is sitting at one of the tables: he with a beard and the black coat-and-pants uniform, she in a glossy auburn wig. Another young man is working on a laptop. Every male in the restaurant, including the black barista, is wearing a yarmulke. I hop onto the stool next to Saul.
“It’s still so cold,” I say, unzipping my winter coat.
“The people on the television say it’s going to get warm soon,” Saul says.
“Not soon enough,” I say. “It’s almost April, for Christ’s sake.” Twenty-two years in Florida and it never occurred to me until recently how much sunshine was a part of my life. The cold makes me feel smaller and less consequential. My reactions are slower. Even if I weren’t depressed I’d hate going outside.