Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys Read online

  “‘Down in the street, a young boy hears an old magic man’s cries and, fearing that the odd fellow might be in some sort of trouble, rushes into the building and up to an old magic man’s cluttered room. He flings open the door with such force that all the escaped magic—except for the wooden soldier mask, which manages to hide beneath the sofa—is squashed into one enormous blob and bursts.

  “‘Hours later they are still trying to scrub it off the young boy, but to no avail; it has soaked into the boy’s skin. “Well,” says an old magic man, looking down at the young boy who is very short, “it appears we have a problem.” “I’ve never felt magic before,” says the young boy, looking up at an old magic man, who is a giant. “Is it supposed to itch like this?” “You’ll get used to it,” says an old magic man, scratching under one of his arms, then: “Say, you’re not by chance looking for a job, are you?”

  “‘And that is how an old magic man found his apprentice.’”

  The actor in the bed tried to sit up but found his body was too weak, and in a moment that knocked the breath from his lungs and the strength from his arms, Martin realized that it wasn’t any well-known familiar actor, it was him. “Why are you reading this to me?” his on-screen self asked the large black man.

  The large black man winked. “Patience never was one of your strong points, was it?”

  Once again Martin-on-the-screen tried to move, but his limbs were useless. “I can’t seem to . . . Jesus! Help me, will you?”

  “That’s the idea,” said the large black man, wetting his thumb and turning the page. “By the way, Martin . . .”

  . . . Martin . . .

  “. . . Martin . . .”

  “Martin!”

  He blinked his eyes and saw Dr. Hayes standing over him, her hand still on his shoulder from having shaken him.

  “I see you took your morning medications,” she said, smiling at him as she turned off the television, then sat down in the easy chair opposite his. “They pack a bit of a punch, don’t they?”

  “Uh . . . yeah . . . yeah, they do.” He pulled himself up, stretched his back, and leaned forward. “Sorry about that. Was I asleep?”

  “I couldn’t tell, but after you didn’t respond to me saying your name, I just assumed . . . .”

  “I don’t remember falling asleep . . . I mean, it feels like I was maybe asleep, but

  . . .” he sighed. “I’m babbling. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. The first day or two we have to go through a sort of trail-and-error with the medications, see which ones you best respond to. Most clients are fairly numb the first thirty-six hours or so. Some of the combinations do a real number on people. Are you okay now? You up for this?”

  Martin shrugged. “I’d kill for a cup of real coffee right about now. That was a figure of speech, by the way, the ‘kill for’ part.”

  “I figured.”

  Martin stared at a large carry-out cup of coffee that Dr. Hayes had brought in with her.

  “I see that you covet my café mocha.”

  He looked up at her. “If I got an empty cup, could I have just a little bit?”

  “Caffeine is against the rules, Martin.”

  “Please? I promise you I’m not going to flip out or start bouncing off the walls or take hostages.”

  “Actually, Martin, I’m a fairly selfish person—comes from growing up as the youngest child with three older brothers who never left my stuff alone. I don’t like sharing. However—” She reached behind her and picked up another cup of carry-out coffee. “—I’m also not inconsiderate.” She handed the cup to Martin. “Anyone asks, that’s decaffeinated, got it?”

  “You’re the boss. By the way, I love you and want to have your babies.” He pulled back the tab on the plastic lid and took a slow, deep swallow. Nothing had ever tasted so wonderful. “Oh, yes . . . you know, I always suspected that the ‘manna from Heaven’ in the Bible was actually slow-brewed coffee. With whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.”

  Dr. Hayes smiled. “I figured that you’d be a little wonky from the medications, and I’d prefer that you not conk out on me in the middle of this.”

  “Thank you.” Already the dream—if that’s what it had been—was fading away

  . . . just not completely.

  Don’t dwell on it, pal; dwelling on things is what put you here, remember?

  “How are you getting along so far?” asked Dr. Hayes.

  “Okay, I guess. I’ve already caused another client to blow a gasket and I didn’t have to say a word.”

  “Yes . . . Ethel mentioned something about Wendy. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I guess we’ll find out as we go along, huh?”

  Dr. Hayes stared at him for a moment, then opened the file lying on her lap. “All right. I’ve spoken to your doctor, and he was good enough to fax me your records—you signed a form granting him permission to share them with any other doctor treating you—”

  “I remember. I sign that same form every year.”

  “I am required to tell you that.” She flipped through a couple of pages, then back again. “You’ve had trouble with depression for a very long time, haven’t you? Even before your parents’ deaths, you were being treated for it.”

  “One hundred milligrams of Zoloft twice a day—mornings and afternoons; thirty milligrams of Remeron at night.”

  “That’s pretty hefty, putting Remeron on top of the Zoloft. I take it you have trouble falling asleep?”

  “Staying asleep, actually.”

  “You wake up after a few hours, then toss and turn, go in and out for brief periods, maybe fall back asleep about an hour before the alarm goes off?”

  Martin nodded. “Give that lady a cigar.” He took another glorious swallow of the large café mocha.

  Still flipping back and forth between the faxed pages and various forms, Dr. Hayes asked: “I see that the Zoloft dosage was increased right around the time your father completed his last round of radiation treatments.”

  “Things were . . . kind of tense. He had trouble controlling his bowels, and anytime he didn’t make it to the bathroom in time, he’d lose his temper or start crying like a baby; Mom and I would switch around—one of us would take care of Dad, wipe him off, clean him up, calm him down; the other would mop up whatever kind of . . . trail he left along the way. It was bad, and I was getting more and more shaky, and I was the only person they had to depend on, so my doctor increased the dosage and that helped a little.”

  “Look, Martin,” said Dr. Hayes, closing the folder on whose cover she would continuously write notes for the rest of the session. “I realize that a large part of your recent depression was centered around your parents’ illnesses and deaths, that’s only natural. But their dying wasn’t what pushed you into planning your own death, was it?”

  “It might have nudged things a little.” He exhaled, shook his head, and wasn’t surprised to feel a few stray tears dribble from his eyes and slide down his face. “One morning after Mom’s funeral I woke up, showered, got dressed, had breakfast, and was starting out the door when it suddenly hit me that . . . I had nowhere to go. I wouldn’t be taking Dad to and from his treatments or his doctor, I wouldn’t be taking Mom to her cardiologist or running errands for her, I didn’t need to separate their medications for the week and put everything in the dispensers, I didn’t need to do anything around the house because nobody . . . nobody was home anymore . . . all I had to do was go into work at five p.m. and do my job until midnight. That was it. And it scared the shit out of me.”

  Dr. Hayes nodded. “So much of your day-to-day life had been centered on helping to take care of them that maybe you forgot to take care of yourself.”

  Martin shook his head. “Don’t make it sound so noble. I did what any kid should do for their parents.”

  “Did you resent it sometimes?”

  “Hell, yes—why wouldn’t I?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s
a natural reaction.”

  “Thank you, but I’m not looking for . . . what’s the word?—validation. I know there was nothing wrong with feeling that way, it didn’t make me evil, it didn’t make me a bad son or a rotten human being who should go straight to Hell and spend eternity bowling with Eichmann—I know this, okay? Most of the time, I was grateful for having so much to do. It kept the days pretty full.”

  “What did you do before all of that? How did you fill your days?”

  “I read a lot. Watched movies. Listened to music. Went to work.”

  “You told me last night that you’d wanted to be a writer. Did you spend any time writing?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Martin took another swallow of coffee. “Because it’s too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He set the coffee down and cracked his knuckles. “I mean that it’s been over twenty years since I last set foot in a classroom, and I don’t relish the idea of going back now and having to sit in a room with a bunch of kids who are less than half my age. I mean it takes years—sometimes decades—to build a decent writing career. Yeah, I’ve got a file cabinet filled with short stories and half-finished novels, but I’m guessing a quarter of the people in the world have the same thing—and odds are they’re doing something with their stuff.”

  “So what’s stopping you?—and please don’t waste our time by going back to that ‘It’s too late’ argument, all right?”

  “Look at me, will you? I’m a forty-four year old glorified janitor! I have touched no one; I have moved no one; I have helped no one, not really, not judging from the results—and I’ve got a pair of matching headstones I can show you to back up that last point. More of my life is behind me than ahead, and I’d rather not spend whatever years I have left working my ass off to fail at something else.” Even to himself, it sounded like whining, and he was sorry now he’d ever started talking.

  “What have you failed at before?”

  “I should have . . .” He stopped himself.

  “You should have what, Martin?”

  He shook his head. “I hear it in my head and it sounds so stupid that I’m too embarrassed to actually say it.”

  “I’m not going to laugh at or make fun of you.”

  “I should think not. People don’t bring piping hot café mochas that can easily be thrown in the face to someone they’re planning to mock. That wasn’t a threat or anything.”

  “I know. But I’d still like an answer to my question. You should have . . . what?”

  “I was going to say, ‘I should have been able to save them,’ but even back then whenever I thought that, I knew it was stupid. Nothing could save them after a certain point; cancer comes back, its spreads and metastasizes and all you can do is pump someone full of pain killers to keep them comfortable; bad hearts give out, regardless of the catheterizations and stents and bypasses and nitro tablets. I don’t think I actually believed I could save them, but . . .”

  “But maybe what you were feeling was something close to that?”

  Martin ran a hand over his face, exhaling loudly, becoming irritated with the tears. “I should have been able to do more to help them.”

  “But from the sound of it, you did more than anyone had the right to expect.”

  “I could’ve found the money to buy her a goddamn dishwasher.”

  Dr. Hayes tilted her head slightly. “Beg pardon?”

  “Mom. I could have . . . look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I could sit here and come up with shoulda-woulda-coulda’s until we’re both old enough to retire.”

  “Since I’ve got all the letters after my name and several degrees hanging in expensive frames on my office walls, could you let me be the judge of that?”

  “Do you talk to all of your patients this way?”

  “Only those I watch vomit and buy café mochas for.”

  “You’re quick.”

  “And you’re good at evasion.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “So is compassion, so is intelligence, and so is the desire and ability to create. Let me ask you something, Martin: why is it that someone of your intelligence—and I had a friend check into your records at OSU, I saw your grades, saw that you’d won three separate scholarships, one of them for creative writing, so I know you’re smart, and I know you’re talented—why is it that you never went back to school? Why is it you chose to stay in a profession that—while a good and honorable job—doesn’t challenge you or require any use of your talents?”

  He stared at her for a few moments, sat back, and rubbed his eyes. “Because I’m scared.”

  “Of what? About what?”

  “Of being rejected—and I’m not talking about just the writing, okay? I’m scared of being be rejected by people, possible friends, lovers, all of it.”

  “Why?”

  “How the fuck should I know? Sorry, sorry . . . I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “It all sounds so . . . so whiny when I say it out loud.”

  “No one’s judging you. And, no, it doesn’t.”

  “Look . . . I’ve had friends, and I’ve had girlfriends, and for a while it’s all good, but eventually they all start to drift away. I used to think it was something I did—maybe I wasn’t open enough, or honest enough, or affectionate enough—but that didn’t hold up. Maybe in individual instances it might apply, but when the pattern kept repeating over and over . . . it took me a while, but I finally figured it out: I am just not an exciting person. I’m not the life of the party—and, no, I never wanted to be the life of the party. I am not one of the happy people, okay? I realized a long time ago that whatever mechanism it is that enables people to embrace and trust happiness is just not part of my make-up. I don’t get upset about it, I don’t sit around and cry and do the ‘Poor-poor-pitiful-me’ routine, I just accept it and try to get on with things.”

  “But you’re not getting on with things, Martin; otherwise, you wouldn’t have planned your suicide so thoroughly.”

  “Oh, and it would’ve worked, too.”

  Dr. Hayes nodded. “Yes. Based on the recipe you had written down and the dosages of the various medications and how you planned on ingesting them, there was no room for error. You’d be dead right now if you hadn’t walked through that door last night. Why does that make you smile?”

  “Because it’s nice to know I got it right.”

  “And you’re proud of that?”

  “Not particularly. Not now, anyway.”

  “Does it scare you, that you almost succeeded?”

  Martin thought it over for a few moments. “No . . . and I know it should. What’s that say about my frame of mind?”

  “You tell me.”

  Martin sighed and rose to his feet. “I’m really grateful for all the trouble you’ve gone through to help me, Dr. Hayes, but I don’t feel like talking to you any more.”

  She pointed at Martin’s chair. “You don’t get to make that call, not in here. If this were my private practice and you made that declaration, I wouldn’t push it, I’d just smile and say, ‘See you next week’ and then charge you my three-figure fee for the full hour, anyway. In here, you’re done when I say you’re done. I have tentatively recommended you for a 4-day stay; that can be either increased or decreased, depending on how much you cooperate in our trying to help you. Just because this place is considered the fast-food franchise of mental health doesn’t mean we don’t try our best. Now please sit down and let’s finish this.”

  Martin complied. “I’m only doing this because you bought an extra coffee for me.”

  “And providing you don’t piss me off, I’ll buy an extra one for you tomorrow, as well.” Her tone was light but her eyes were serious. “Listen to me, Martin; it has been my experience that most people who seriously attempt suicide don’t do it because their spirit has been crushed in some single, massive, cataclysmic blow, but rather be
cause it has bled to death from thousands of small scratches they weren’t even aware of. You’re right to insist that dealing with the death of your parents and the incredible hole it left in your life isn’t what drove you toward your decision; it was however, I think—and excuse my resorting to a tired cliché—the straw that broke the camel’s back. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else—a really bad night at work, a flat tire, burning your dinner, an obnoxious telemarketer, who knows? It’s not necessarily the thing itself—it’s everything that has led up its suddenly taking on this profound, symbolic significance that you’d never attribute to it under everyday circumstances. Do you understand?”

  “You’re pretty good at this. Ever think of doing it professionally?”

  Dr. Hayes sat back. “Does that mean you agree?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, it does.”

  “Good. Now I’ll make a deal with you. I’ve got a really busy day waiting for me when I walk out that door, and I could use an extra half-hour, so I’ll meet you halfway about your not feeling like talking to me anymore: if you will tell me, to the best of your recollection, where you were and what you were doing when you first made the decision to start planning your own death, we’ll call it a day and take up at that point tomorrow, all right?”

  “What’re you going to do with that extra half-hour, just out of curiosity?”