We get out onto the rolling hills behind the main building, and I have a moment of supreme understanding of how the Founding Fathers could have fought for this land. It is spectacular, majestic. Gerwin throws me a football; I catch it. We are all tossing the ball around. It’s idyllic, the blue sky, and the smell of fresh-cut grass, stains on our knees. The ball goes around and around, there is talk of teams, of us against them, but Gerwin keeps saying, Keep it going, keep it going. And at some point he pulls a camera out of his pocket and starts shooting pictures. George camps it up for the camera, acting heroic, fierce. I’m not sure why Gerwin is taking pictures, but it seems impossible to break the reverie and ask.
Rosenblatt throws the ball to me; I catch it, look up, and see George bearing down on me, hurtling forward like a human bowling ball, a torpedo. He slams me to the ground and is pummeling me. We are rolling down the hill, spinning on a spit of brotherly rage. I see Gerwin and Rosenblatt in the distance, and then Rosenblatt runs off. I am struggling to get out from under. At the bottom of the hill, we stop rolling. George is pounding me, whaling away, fists pumping. Gerwin comes closer, but does nothing to stop him. “You fucker, you stinking little fucker, this is only half of what you deserve, you useless piece of shit, you motherfucking …”
I am trying as best I can to guard my face, my ribs, and my balls. From wherever she’s been kept, Tessie is let loose; she runs down to where we are, barking heavily, trying to stop the mayhem, she’s barking at George’s face and therefore in my ear, and, “accidentally or not,” George smacks her in the muzzle; she yelps and slinks away. The heavies pull George off me.
I lie on the grass, bloodied, bruised, struggling to catch my breath. No one moves to help me. No one does anything. I am lying there, and my first thought is not of myself but of the children. I have to protect Nate and Ashley; whatever happens or doesn’t, I cannot let this monster anywhere near his children. I glance at George, huffing and puffing, clearly wanting more, held back by a team of four enormous men. I roll over and slowly, limb by limb, pull myself together. Tessie comes and licks my face.
Our prizes have escaped our pockets and are sprinkled across the lawn — a yo-yo, the glider (now bent), a rubber snake, a Chinese finger-catcher.
Hobbling back to the main building, I am looking at Gerwin, expecting something. “I am at a loss for words,” he finally says.
“Minimally, if you can’t protect me from physical harm, I cannot be part of your process. You’ll be damned lucky if I don’t sue you for not having your patient under control. And some ice, I need ice packs.”
Someone brings me several ice packs — black trash bags filled with ice, knotted at the top.
“Would you like a doctor to take a look at you?” Gerwin asks.
“No,” I say, “I want the dog and I want to go home.”
“I don’t suppose you want to say goodbye to George?” Gerwin asks.
“Very funny,” I say. “So he can deliver the knockout punch?” And while I’m waiting for them to get the car, I overhear one of them say, “We’re actually very pleased. It was a good visit, we saw a side of George that we’ve not seen before. It’ll give us something to work with.”
Tessie is already in the car when they bring it around, as is my bag, and Tessie’s, all packed. I am in incredible pain, and it’s only getting worse — every part of me, the parts that bend and the parts that don’t. I lower myself into the driver’s seat, wincing. As I adjust the seat, I notice a brown paper bag with my name on it — two bottles of water, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and a Ziploc filled with carrot sticks. Who the hell serves an adult peanut butter and jelly? I eat the sandwiches, wondering if it’s meant to be patronizing.
At a rest stop along the way, I go into the men’s room, lift my shirt, and in the chipped mirror look at my side — it’s the color of raw meat. Annoyed with myself for not pushing back, not putting up a better fight, I go into the convenience store and grab some Advil. When some woman tries to cut in front of me I say, “Hey, I was first,” and she says, “Clearly you weren’t or I wouldn’t be here now.” Tired of being the wimp, I throw her an elbow, I literally push her out of the way. The man behind the counter whips out some kind of enormous long black umbrella, pops it open in my face, and tells me to leave the store, using the metal end to poke at me.
“I’m injured,” I shout, “I’m trying to pay you for this Advil.”
“You are a bully,” the man shouts from behind the umbrella with a strong Indian accent. “I sell nothing to bullies. You go away now and don’t come back.”
“I am taking the Advil,” I say. “And I am leaving ten bucks here on top of the Fig Newtons.”
I back out of the store, tripping over a step and falling into a pool of grease and gasoline. Stinking, I get back to the car, take my shirt off in the parking lot, put my shirt from yesterday back on, swallow four Advil, and start the car. As I’m barreling towards home, thinking that it’s all too weird and that I’m never going back to that place, my cell phone rings. It’s George’s lawyer.
“The hospital asked me to inform you that you are not to visit again; they said you were threatening to the patient and the staff.”
“I was physically attacked by George.”
“They saw things differently. In their eyes you provoked him, you wouldn’t throw the ball to him, you spoke only to the doctors and not to him, you belittled him and made him feel left out and like there is something wrong with him.”
“Oh my God, that is so crazy. They’re nuts. It’s a freak show up there; I’ve never seen a crazier group of mental-health professionals. Do you know that one of them is planning on doing brain surgery on George, but hasn’t told him yet? It’s like a horror movie. How did you find that place anyway?”
“My brother-in-law,” the lawyer says.
“He was a patient?”
“The medical director,” the lawyer says. As he’s speaking, the reception gets crackly, and then the connection crumbles out from under before becoming a void.
“Hello?” I say. There is nothing. “Hello.”
It’s Monday, and I’m back at the house, the literal scene of the crime. I have this horrible sinking sensation; the house has some kind of force or electromagnetic charge, it’s an incredible weight taking me down.
Returning from the visit to George, as I approach the door, I lose power. I come in and cease to function. Like in Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, my bone marrow has turned to dust. I imagine being found days from now dead on the floor, my blood reduced to a fine green powder that pours on the floor like Lik-M-Aid when they inexplicably slit my wrist. Inexplicable because why would someone slit a person’s wrist? The cat will be sitting next to me, unfazed, cleaning herself, rubbing her eyes, licking. I imagine the men in the white suits trying to pick her up as a specimen of what survived.
I am sitting on the floor weeping. What happened? What is happening now? I sit on the floor hating everything, hating myself most of all — that’s the truth of it, more than anything else I am so fucking disappointed in me. How’s that for the Me Generation coming to a crashing halt?
It’s as though I’ve been waiting for my life to rev up and get going for years. Sometimes I thought I was making progress, getting closer; other times it was like I was simply waiting to be discovered — by who? Looking at myself, my half-spent life, I find it unbearable that this is where I have ended up. Is my life over? Did it ever begin?