Girl on the Line Read online

  “You’ve been busy since the year started,” he says. “Tell me how you pause and care for yourself when you’re this busy.”

  “Does eating corn dogs count? I ate three corn dogs late last night in bed.”

  He smiles. “We all unwind in our own ways.”

  “My mom’s been watching me like a hawk for manic symptoms this whole month.”

  “Do you feel manic?”

  “I never felt manic, even when other people thought I was manic.”

  “This medication seems to be working much better for you,” he says.

  I smile, not answering.

  “Am I wrong?” he asks.

  “Dumbo’s feather,” I say, thinking of the movie I loved as a kid. The one where an elephant believed he could fly so hard he actually flew.

  “Pardon?”

  “Dumbo’s feather,” I say. “It wasn’t real. It gave him confidence to fly, but there was nothing magic about it.”

  “You’re likening your medication to Dumbo’s feather?”

  “Wolf, you’re not going to tell my parents, right?”

  “No. This is between us, here, always. But tell them what?”

  “I haven’t been taking my meds,” I tell him proudly.

  I sit back and smile, expecting him to be amazed. Expecting him to say, wow! This is all you? Congratulations, Journey! Not only are you cured, there was nothing really wrong with you to begin with!

  But instead he gets that look on his face where his eyebrows furrow and his mouth draws into a little zero.

  “Journey, that’s very irresponsible,” he says.

  “I mean, regularly,” I say, backtracking a little. “I take a couple a week.”

  “This is not good,” he tells me.

  “You don’t even prescribe meds!” I say, taken aback. I can’t even look at his face. I look instead at a statue with a bunch of arms serving as a makeshift tie rack that sits on a crate in a corner.

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in their power,” he says.

  “God, make up your mind,” I say, irritated. “First you tell me exercise and then you say meditation and talking will fix everything, now you’re acting just like every other pill-pushing doctor I’ve ever met. What if I don’t even need them?”

  “The world isn’t black and white,” he says. “And I believe you’re smart enough to know that. It’s all important, every remedy.”

  “If pills are so great, maybe you should prescribe them,” I mutter.

  “Patients with bipolar disorder often need medication, but very often think they don’t.”

  “So you’re saying I can’t trust myself.”

  “That is not what I’m saying, but I would like you to consider that it’s a common theme among bipolar patients.”

  “Fine. Considered.”

  “Let’s discuss the risks here, at the very least,” Wolf says, pushing his glasses up his nose. “First, there are serious withdrawal symptoms that can occur if you stop your lithium dosage without medical supervision. You should consult with a doctor before tapering off any medication. Lithium’s not a joke.”

  “I’m not treating it like one.”

  “You’ve made impulsive decisions before—how is this any different?”

  I feel berated right now. Lectured. Spoken down to. Which is something that’s never happened with Wolf before. I cross my arms in front of my chest and wish I could go back about five minutes and eat my confession up. Whether I take pills or not is none of his or anyone else’s business.

  “Have you told your parents?” he asks.

  “No, and you said you wouldn’t—”

  “Journey, I’m not going to tell them.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Have you told anyone else?” he asks.

  “Just you. And gee, look how this is going.”

  “You should discuss with your doctor at the very least,” he goes on. “It’s reckless to do this yourself. You’re doing so well—why throw a potential bomb into this new life you’re building?”

  “Because it’s not a bomb, it’s me,” I tell him.

  “I’m sorry if that sounded insensitive,” he answers. “But I’m worried about you. Your parents, your friends, and I all care about you and want to see you healthy. So I just want us to discuss this fully. Let’s say, hypothetically, you stay off medication. What happens if your symptoms return?”

  “Then I’ll tell you.”

  He sits for a long moment, watching me, probably trying to figure out a way to change my mind. Maybe he’s realizing he can’t. “My professional opinion is you should not go off your medication. But I know I can’t force you to do anything. So I would like to ask you to please contact your doctor. And I want us to work on something together.”

  He gets out a piece of paper and turns this whole thing into something like a homework assignment for my broken brain. We write down a list of warning signs to look out for, in case I get a bipolar disorder relapse. Things like needing less sleep, extreme irritability, racing thoughts, making big plans—and then other symptoms on the other side of the scale. Needing too much sleep, feeling unmotivated, sadness. We write down a list of what I’ll do if those symptoms return: text Marisol, talk to my parents, reach out to Wolf, or go to the ER if it’s really bad.

  I spend the last five minutes of our session staring at this paper in my hands and giving Wolf something like the silent treatment. I burn on the bus ride home, thinking of his disapproving face. There’s something about authority that just makes me want to do the opposite of anything they force on me. It’s primal. Maybe this is why, when I get home, I throw my last half-empty (half-full?) bottle of pills in the garbage. I look at them there and think, I know I’m being immature. I hear Wolf saying the word reckless in my mind. But I leave the pills there and don’t look at them again. I guess I still have some growing up to do.

  At Saturday sushi lunch with Dad, right before he’s about to hand us back over to Mom for the weekly switcheroo, I tell Dad about my first paper I have to start researching this weekend about utilitarianism.

  “John Stuart Mill!” he says. “I wrote my graduate thesis on Mill.”

  This first month of school, Dad is so into talking about everything I’m learning. It’s the college counselor in him, I guess. He’s also very interested in discussing my prerequisites and whether or not I should pursue an associate’s degree, and UC requirements versus state schools, and I kind of wish I had never started this conversation now. And I can tell, by my sisters’ glassy stares, that they feel the same.

  Thankfully, a woman walks up and stops my impromptu college advisory session. A pretty woman, eerily ageless with her so-blond-it-could-be-white hair, her relentless smile that hides wrinkles or the lack thereof. I notice exactly three things right away, in this order:

  She is wearing a purple sweatshirt.

  She is not wearing any ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.

  She is clearly flirting with my dad.

  They talk about boring things like meetings, caseloads, students, trainings. They must work together. Ruby gives me a look, raising her eyebrows, which she recently decided to try to dye black as her hair (she’s stepped up to semipermanent, twenty-four washes). Her brows are now kinda Groucho Marxy. Makes the raising of them even more intense. Stevie, of course, has no idea, dunking a tempura shrimp daintily into her sauce.

  “Bye, Gary,” Dad calls after the woman when she leaves.

  Gary.

  He looks happier and pinker than I can remember ever seeing him.

  The whole ride home after that, my soul is sour. Don’t know why. Is it the night creeping in so early, the snowless Southern Californian winter air? Life is good. I rest my forehead against the passenger window, watching the plotted poplars and garish glows of grocery stores sail by. The heat blasting hurts my eyes. I close them as we head toward home, the home we all used to live in together, where now my dad lives alone, with us sometimes. I
know I shouldn’t be bothered. Mom found someone else. Dad deserves to find someone else. It was hard when Levi came along, but I got over it. Sometimes I just wish life would pause for a period of time, not throw any new changes my way, give me some time to breathe.

  Gary.

  I ride the bus everywhere because, while I’ve made strides in wearing my big girl pants lately, I’m still terrified of the prospect of being on the freeway or driving a car. At night, I’m still occasionally jolted awake with the fiery orange flames heating my lids from the recurring car crash nightmare. The bus isn’t the worst. On the long rides, I catch up with Marisol, texting back and forth about school, or I do my homework. Near the bus stop that lands a few blocks from my house, a pizza place with lit gold windows emanating the smell of sweet crust and tomato sauce has a sandwich board outside that has, for two weeks, said “HIRING: INQUIRE WITHIN.” One brave early evening two weeks into school, on the walk home, I tell myself I should, indeed, inquire within.

  The place is typical old-school family pizza parlor, with dizzying carpets, the cacophony of arcade games and Top-40 radio, wooden booths and fluorescent lights. A dude in a backward cap greets me with the enthusiasm of an evangelist. A pizzavangelist. I tell him I’m looking for a job and he introduces himself.

  “Full name? Timothy,” he says, pointing to his badge to verify this info. “But you can call me Tim-Tim. And eff yeah, we’re hiring. I got an application right back here and check it—I like your ‘look.’” Finger quotes and all. “I like the shock thing, you know, bright hair, look at me, I’m young, I’m hip. I dig. So fill out that application and guess what? Chicken butt. Kidding! You’re hired. Come back here tomorrow three to eight and you got yourself a job.”

  “Three to eight,” I repeat as he hands me a pen, one with a big black feather on it.

  “That work for you?” Tim-Tim asks.

  At first I think he’s asking about the feather pen, which does seem a bit much. But no, he’s asking about a job. A job he’s offering me.

  I am getting offered a job right now. I was just walking down the street, walked into a pizza parlor, and now I have a job.

  Change doesn’t need time to do its business.

  I fill out the application and I come back in the next day. Tim-Tim’s behind the counter, singing along with the music with enthusiasm while he wipes the counter down. No one else working shares his enthusiasm. After showing me how to clock in, and having me fill out a couple pieces of paperwork, Tim-Tim goes to the back to show me my uniform.

  Here’s what I’m expecting: a black apron, perhaps a polo shirt like the one he’s wearing with the pizza stitched on the breast. Here’s what I’m not expecting: a giant costume that is a person-sized slice of pepperoni pizza.

  The laughter that rolls out of my throat and into the air between us in this fusty back room with a wall of lockers and another wall of cleaning supplies is not something I can stop. Tim-Tim just stares at me. He has very nice eyebrows. People pay to have his eyebrows. They get theirs waxed or whatever. One of them is twitching.

  “You’re not serious,” I say.

  “Serious as gingivitis,” he almost shouts.

  I stop laughing because Tim-Tim is really fucking serious right now, holding the pizza costume, and I’m seeing my immediate future ahead of me, which involves donning a pizza costume and also humiliation.

  “I thought I was getting a waitressing job,” I say.

  He scoffs at me as if I just told him I expected to be a brain surgeon.

  “You don’t have waitressing experience,” he says.

  “I don’t have . . . pizza costume experience, either.”

  “Look,” he says. “With no job experience, you’ve got to start somewhere.”

  “Yeah, but . . . here?” I ask, pointing at the costume, which, up close, is not even that clean.

  “Here,” he says, handing me the costume, backing out to give me my horrible privacy.

  The costume smells like a wrestling mat mixed with pizza mixed with traces of various body odors. I stare at the long, spotted mirror, a human slice of pizza, a round hole cut up at the top where my head sticks out. My eyes well up. I wish I were dead. No, I just wish I weren’t dressed in a super-gross pizza costume. There is a difference. Then the absurdity hits me. I take a selfie and send it to Marisol.

  WHAT?! I get in immediate response.

  No time to respond.

  Tim-Tim gives me the Crusty’s Pizza sign and walks me out to the corner. He does a bunch of dances as “inspiration” for what I might do. Let’s just say Tim-Tim’s as comfortable doing the Charleston as he is twerking. He can helicopter his ponytail and he can almost do the splits.

  “I started as a slice of pizza,” he tells me, shouting over the traffic. “Years ago. And now I’m manager. It could be you next. Show me your moves.”

  This is the stupidest moment of my life.

  “Okay,” I say. “I call this one ‘The Statue.’”

  “You’re not . . . doing anything.”

  “And I do it so well.”

  “Can you at least, I don’t know . . . march?”

  So I do a march back and forth for him.

  “Sick marching,” he says, giving me a high five.

  I despise his enthusiasm.

  “This is a new rock bottom,” I tell him. “And I tried to kill myself a few months ago.”

  “Wow, now that is . . . a dark sense of humor you got right there,” he tells me, laughing uneasily, he he he. “See? Probably for the best you don’t work with customers.”

  He leaves me out in the dark to march back and forth on the street corner in a pizza costume. I would be lying if I told you I don’t contemplate death. Not that I want to die really. I wish I could just die for the rest of this shift. I wish I could die temporarily.

  I go home that night after marching for hours in a pizza costume in a weird daze. Honestly, the shame kind of stunned itself into disbelief halfway through my shift and now I’m simply confused. My legs hurt like I actually tried hard in PE. I can’t tell you how many random strangers honked at me. I don’t know if I’m ever going to go back there again.

  I stumble upon an article online late one night that I read and then reread and then spend an hour in the dark thinking through. “Kids Can’t Be Put in Boxes or Fixed with Bottles,” it’s titled. It’s an opinion piece about children being prescribed ADHD medication sometimes when it’s not necessary and how it is, effectively, not the kids who have anything wrong with them, but it’s the parents’ impatience, or schools expecting children to all learn with the same methods, at the same paces. How if the country had better public education in place that encouraged different methods of teaching, or if we didn’t desire children to behave in certain ways and taught them better avenues of self-expression, we wouldn’t need to medicate them. The author of the article clearly has an anti-Western-medicine agenda that gives me pause, but I largely agree with her. She brings up true points. I know nothing about ADHD except people take Adderall for it and some kids at school get more time to take tests and stuff because of it.

  But the article makes me think about my bipolar diagnosis and the medication I took. About my big feelings. About what it’s like to live in a world where you’re too much to be normal, but too normal to be ill, a girl in between sanity and insanity. I think about that nether place where I exist. There should be a word for it. But of course there isn’t. Not in this world.

  “Journey,” my dad tells me the next morning as I shuffle into the kitchen in my pajamas and open the fridge door. “Your mom is on her way over here. We’re having a family meeting.”

  The words family meeting snag my breath. I shut the fridge.

  “What fresh hell is this?” I ask him.

  His face is somber, his eyes glassy and concerned.

  I scour my mind for what this could be about. “Look, the last time you called a ‘family meeting,’ you and Mom broke up, so this is freaking me out.”
/>   Dad points to the table, where a half-full orange prescription bottle sits. A bottle with my name on it.

  “Spectacular,” I say flatly.

  “Kiddo, this is serious.”

  I would like to scream. This, here, is exactly why I didn’t want to tell my parents about going off my medication. The look on his face is like I tried to off myself again. I’m so tired of everyone around me thinking they know what’s best for me.

  My mom arrives shortly thereafter. At least my sisters aren’t here to witness the inevitable disaster this conversation will be. Apparently Levi took them to a petting zoo, which is kind of hilarious to think about, but I’m not in the mood to laugh. Mom has a steely expression and won’t take her jacket or purse off as she sits in the chair, like she’s ready to up and leave at any second. Three thoughts occur to me as we sit around the table: this is the first time I have been with both my parents in the same room since I tried to kill myself last year; this is the first time I’ve sat at this old family dinner table with them since they were still together; and I do not want to have this fucking conversation.

  “I was going through the garbage when I found your pills,” Dad says.

  “Why were you . . . going through the garbage?” I ask.

  “To make sure we’re properly recycling.” He points to the pill bottle. “Which clearly you’re not. This is recyclable, you know.”

  “Okay, Seth, stay on script,” Mom says.

  On script. Like they practiced beforehand.

  “Journey, you clearly haven’t been taking your medication,” Dad says.

  “How long has this been going on?” Mom asks.

  I sigh. “Weeks. I don’t know. On and off. Listen, I tapered off, I didn’t stop all at once—”

  “Did you talk to a doctor?” Mom asks.

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to your therapist?” Dad asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did he say?” Mom asks.

  They’re both sitting across from me, interrogation style.

  “He said . . . that it was fine.” The lie sounds so unbelievable once it leaves my mouth, I sigh and put my head in my hands. “He said that it wasn’t a good idea and that I should tell you.”