“Exactly right! The self itself.”
He beamed at me, his attentive student. Talking about this stuff gets Dr. S going like nothing else, but he’s oblivious to the way I let the neck of my scrubs fall open when I stretch out on the couch. If only I could have tucked the two hemispheres of my brain into a lace bra.
“The Page,” he said, “delivers its message to Her Majesty, telling her what the Parliament has decided. The Queen doesn’t need to know about all the other arguments that went on, all the other possibilities that were thrown out. She simply needs to know what to announce to her subjects. The Queen tells the parts of the body to act on the decision.”
“Wait, I thought the Parliament had already sent out the signal. You said before that you can see the brain warming up before the self even knows about it.”
“That’s the joke. The Queen announces the decision, and she thinks that her subjects are obeying her commands, but in reality, they have already been told what to do. They’re already reaching for their glasses of water.”
I pad down to the kitchen in bare feet, wearing Therese’s sweatpants and a T-shirt. The shirt is a little tight; Therese, champion dieter and Olympic-level purger, was a bit smaller than me.
Alice is at the table, already dressed, a book open in front of her. “Well, you slept in this morning,” she says brightly. Her face is made up, her hair sprayed into place. The coffee cup next to the book is empty. She’s been waiting for hours.
I look around for a clock, and find one over the door. It’s only nine. At the hospital I slept in later than that all the time. “I’m starved,” I say. There’s a refrigerator, a stove, and dozens of cabinets.
I’ve never made my own breakfast. Or any lunch or dinner, for that matter. For my entire life, my meals have been served on cafeteria trays. “Do you have scrambled eggs?”
She blinks. “Eggs? You don’t-” She abruptly stands. “Sure. Sit down, Therese, and I’ll make you some.”
“Just call me ‘Terry,’ okay?”
Alice stops, thinks about saying something-I can almost hear the clank of cogs and ratchets-until she abruptly strides to the cabinet, crouches, and pulls out a non-stick pan.
I take a guess on which cabinet holds the coffee mugs, guess right, and take the last inch of coffee from the pot. “Don’t you have to go to work?” I say. Alice does something at a restaurant supply company; Therese has always been hazy on the details.
“I’ve taken a leave,” she says. She cracks an egg against the edge of the pan, does something subtle with the shells as the yolk squeezes out and plops into the pan, and folds the shell halves into each other. All with one hand.
“Why?”
She smiles tightly. “We couldn’t just abandon you after getting you home. I thought we might need some time together. During this adjustment period.”
“So when do I have to see this therapist? Whatsisname.” My executioner.
“Her. Dr. Mehldau’s in Baltimore, so we’ll drive there tomorrow.” This is their big plan. Dr. Subramaniam couldn’t bring back Therese, so they’re running to anyone who says they can. “You know, she’s had a lot of success with people in your situation. That’s her book.” She nods at the table.
“So? Dr. Subramaniam is writing one too.” I pick up the book. The Road Home: Finding the Lost Children of Zen. “What if I don’t go along with this?”
She says nothing, chopping at the eggs. I’ll be eighteen in four months. Dr. S said that it will become a lot harder for them to hold me then. This ticking clock sounds constantly in my head, and I’m sure it’s loud enough for Alice and Mitch to hear it too.
“Let’s just try Dr. Mehldau first.”
“First? What then?” She doesn’t answer. I flash on an image of me tied down to the bed, a priest making a cross over my twisting body. It’s a fantasy, not a Therese memory-I can tell the difference. Besides, if this had already happened to Therese, it wouldn’t have been a priest.
“Okay then,” I say. “What if I just run away?”
“If you turn into a fish,” she says lightly, “then I will turn into a fisherman and fish for you.”
“What?” I’m laughing. I haven’t heard Alice speak in anything but straightforward, earnest sentences.
Alice’s smile is sad. “You don’t remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” The memory clicks. “Runaway Bunny. Did she like that?”
Dr. S’s book is about me. Well, Zen O.D.-ers in general, but there are only a couple thousand of us. Z’s not a hugely popular drug, in the U.S. or anywhere else. It’s not a hallucinogen. It’s not a euphoric or a depressant. You don’t speed, mellow out, or even get high in the normal sense. It’s hard to see what the attraction is. Frankly, I have trouble seeing it.
Dr. S says that most drugs aren’t about making you feel better, they’re about not feeling anything at all. They’re about numbness, escape. And Zen is a kind of arty, designer escape hatch. Zen disables the Page, locks him in his room, so that he can’t make his deliveries to the Queen. There’s no update to the neural map, and the Queen stops hearing what Parliament is up to. With no orders to bark, she goes silent. It’s that silence that people like Therese craved.
But the real attraction-again, for people like Therese-is the overdose. Swallow way too much Zen and the Page can’t get out for weeks. When he finally gets out, he can’t remember the way back to the Queen’s castle. The whole process of updating the self that’s been going on for years is suddenly derailed. The silent Queen can’t be found.
The Page, poor guy, does the only thing he can. He goes out and delivers the proclamations to the first girl he sees.
The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.
“Hi, Terry. I’m Dr. Mehldau.” She’s a stubby woman with a pleasant round face, and short dark hair shot with gray. She offers me her hand. Her fingers are cool and thin.
“You called me Terry.”
“I was told that you prefer to go by that. Do you want me to call you something else?”
“No . . . I just expected you to make me say my name is ‘Therese’ over and over.”
She laughs and sits down in a red leather chair that looks soft but sturdy. “I don’t think that would be very helpful, do you? I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, Terry.”
“So I’m free to go.”
“Can’t stop you. But I do have to report back to your parents on how we’re doing.”
My parents.
She shrugs. “It’s my job. Why don’t you have a seat and we can talk about why you’re here.”
The chair opposite her is cloth, not leather, but it’s still nicer than anything in Dr. Subramaniam’s office. The entire office is nicer than Dr. S’s office. Daffodil walls in white trim, big windows glowing behind white cloth shades, tropically colored paintings.
I don’t sit down.
“Your job is to turn me into Mitch and Alice’s daughter. I’m not going to do that. So any time we spend talking is just bullshit.”
“Terry, no one can turn you into something you’re not.”
“Well then we’re done here.” I walk across the room-though “stroll” is what I’m shooting for-and pick up an African-looking wooden doll from the bookshelf. The shelves are decorated with enough books to look serious, but there are long open spaces for arty arrangements of candlesticks and Japanese fans and plaques that advertise awards and appreciations. Dr. S’s bookshelves are for holding books, and books stacked on books. Dr. Mehldau’s bookshelves are for selling the idea of Dr. Mehldau.
“So what are you, a psychiatrist or a psychologist or what?” I’ve met all kinds in the hospital. The psychiatrists are MDs like Dr. S and can give you drugs. I haven’t figured out what the psychologists are good for.
“Neither,” she says. “I’m a counselor.”
“So what’s the ‘doctor’ for?”