Like a multiple orgasm — a subject of intense debate once between himself and George — whether guys could ever have one. Sting claimed it was possible. Back at school Jacob had wanted to sign up for a course in “orgasmic mastery” taught by a Dr. Koolhaus downtown. Sara had said it was God’s way of making it up to women for childbirth. Then Irene told stories about nights she’d spent with a woman in Detroit who could wrap her tongue around a Coke can. He could remember how George squirmed, trying not to lose his mind thinking about that — hopeless. Even Jacob had taken a cold shower.
He noticed that he’d gone past the exit that cut over to Stamford. Way past it. He was seeing signs for Meriden, still heading north toward Hartford.
From there, he vaguely knew, he must be able to take something else east toward Boston.
It all seemed so simple, he didn’t know why he hadn’t seriously considered it before. He’d crash on the couch at George’s for a week or two. It would be good to see them again. It had been petty of him, not uncharacteristically so, but now it had gone on long enough. Of course George should go to Boston and work at fucking Harvard if he got the chance — and just because he looked happy in Facebook photos didn’t mean he actually was. George was just unflappable — that was what everyone liked so much about him.
Jacob wondered how he would get Oliver his truck back. Probably stealing it wasn’t the nicest thing to do to someone who’d just lost his father. Now the classic rock station had on some Joni Mitchell bullshit. He wanted something angry. Less Bob Dylan, more Dylan Thomas. To Dr. Sr.! — Jacob raised an imaginary glass to the windshield. Driving around a Westchester Country Club golf course in a stolen Porsche. He had to hand it to Dr. B. — at least he’d gone out on his own terms. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Maybe that was why it had been so brutal, at the end, to see Irene lying there in the bed all morphined and breathing on a machine and, well, going gentle. If old age ought to burn and rave, then youth ought to be downright atomic. There shouldn’t have been anything spared for miles after Irene went out. She should have decimated the entire city, with no one left standing.
Soon Jacob grew tired of driving, tired of the trees, and tired of the second Joni Mitchell song on the radio. “Two for Tuesday” could cut both ways. He was tired of never knowing how he’d be feeling next: panicked, annoyed, orgasmic, weepy, worn out. Traffic had slowed to a crawl in the right lane and was barely faster in the left. He inched along, following a red snake of brakelights around the winding curves, until at last he saw the cause of the holdup. About ten cars with their flashers on, moving slowly as one through the right lane, and the left clogged with people trying to get around. One by one Jacob passed the cars in the right lane line until at last he pulled up ahead of the chain, to the black hearse with purple zinnias ornamenting the hood. PAULSON & PETERSON FUNERAL HOMES was written discreetly along the side. Just as he was about to pass it, the traffic ahead of them slowed down, then stopped.
Jacob tried not to look over at the hearse through the passenger-side window. He pictured Oliver down in some hospital basement, like where they must have kept Irene, afterward. Some creep balding doctor opening a metal drawer in a refrigerated wall. Inside, at first, just a pile of white sheets, as if someone had forgotten to make the bed. Just have a look, and we’ll be all done here. Underneath, a life-size-doll version of the man who raised him. Made of something cold and white that isn’t skin. How hard it would be to believe it — to say, Yes, this is my father—when you didn’t see it happen.
Jacob took the first exit and looped around on an overpass, getting back on the parkway heading south again, the way he’d come. He turned the radio off and rolled up the windows. Again, he blew right by Stamford. By the time he got back to Anchorage House and parked in the director’s spot, he’d been gone just over one hour, and there were only two left in his shift. Dr. Givens and Dr. Berg were down by the little trash-filled pond, smoking cigarettes. They definitely noticed Jacob climbing out of Oliver’s truck, but he was finished caring. Life was too fucking short. He wasn’t going to give two fucks about what everyone else thought.
Inside, he walked back into the bathroom stall and sat down on the closed toilet seat. He lifted the truck keys to the cold metal wall and scratched lightly, a little surprised how easy it was to leave a mark. Back in high school he’d done it all the time, leaving cryptic poetry, but he didn’t quite feel up to that yet. He would go to Boston in a few weeks, once Oliver was feeling better. His feet were steady on the tiled ground. His legs didn’t shake on the edge of the seat. His hand scraped at the paint. A little less-than sign and the number three beside it: <3. It made a little heart, just like the ones people had written on Irene’s Facebook wall.
Then he got up and went straight to his assignment in the common area. The patients were playing board games and doing puzzles and watching Judge Judy on the TV.
Paul patted his palm against the wall, as if to coolly invite him over. “Hey la, hey la, your girlfriend’s back. I just saw Jorge from Ward One sneaking a cigarette in the back stairway. Said they readmitted Ella Yorke this morning.”
Jacob wanted to just throttle him. “Fuck. Is she all right?”
“Said she looked kind of sunburned.”
“No, I mean what the hell happened?”
“Guess you’ll have to ask her. Even money she’ll be up here again in thirty days.”
“Shit.”
“Well, you know what they say,” Paul grinned. “Fourth time’s the charm.”
JUNE
The Ward III library was set into an old linen closet off the common area, which had been fitted with shelves and the sort of partly shredded paperbacks found on the racks outside bookshops for a dollar, or for free in a laundry room. A collection of castaways, curated only to the extent that anything vaguely interesting had been chucked. There were a handful of feminine empowerment books for teens and a few pop-psychology favorites: The Road Less Traveled and In Search of Self. The sprawling oeuvre of Dr. Phil. Jacob had noticed that Ella, during her previous stay, had been working through the odd classics, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, but the library mainly carried the B-side stuff. Pickwick Papers. Northanger Abbey. She had plowed through these in the span of a few days. It had taken Jacob a year in college to trudge through Middlemarch, but Ella had it back on the shelf in under a week. There was really nothing much written after 1890, and when he asked Oliver why they’d omitted anything written after Freud bought his first couch, Oliver had answered that the selection hadn’t been updated since before his arrival, ten years earlier, but that he had once spoken to Dr. Dorothy about it. She was on the committee that oversaw purchasing of books, games, DVDs, etc. Basically everything had to be assuredly harmless. Nothing too scary or too bleak. This explained a lot. After the Industrial Age things got a bit dicey, didn’t they? But most kids wouldn’t slit their wrists after reading Mansfield Park. Jacob argued they might, when faced with the prospect of reading it over and over again all summer.
There was no poetry of any era, which Jacob took as a compliment. Nonstandard line breaks were mighty suspicious. Enjambment, slant rhyme, lack of punctuation? They could easily send anyone over the edge. Keats died young, Shelley drowned. Sylvia Plath, obviously, was strictly verboten. How many girls came in there saying The Bell Jar (practically a suicide manual!) was their favorite book? Jacob had always wanted to give them a copy of “The Colossus” and say “there, there.” And good old Frost had never killed anyone, had he? Why not at least give them the sort of stuff that made the days worth passing? Finally he volunteered his services to Oliver, saying he’d be happy to sift through the anthologies for life-affirming poetry, but he got the answer he’d expected. Safer not to. Anchorage House couldn’t afford to be sued just because some patient had a bad reaction to Les Fleurs du mal.