Growing Up Next to the Mental Read online

  “Aloysius? Rodney and his mom are here now.”

  “Okay. I just have to pay for . . .”

  “That’s all right, Aloysius. I mean Wish. It’s on the house.”

  I looked at Mom.

  “That means you don’t have to . . .”

  “I know what it means, Mother,” I said with attitude that I know she didn’t appreciate but, more importantly, induced another giggle from the lovely Julie.

  It was worth Mom’s scowl and likely scolding later.

  “And what do you say?” Mom added, in a less pleasant voice than before.

  “Oh, right. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” answered Julie-of-all-trades.

  Given a choice, there’s no question where I would’ve been hanging out for the rest of our visit.

  Instead, I had to get my head quickly around the weird one-on-one that I’d consented to a couple of days before in a less than lucid state.

  Our greeting was as brief as it was warm.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I responded.

  A short, awkward silence was broken by Rodney’s mother.

  “Why don’t we go to the cafeteria, grab a bite, and catch up a bit? It’s almost lunchtime.”

  Rodney and I looked at each other with simultaneous eye rolls.

  “I told you, Mom, we’re just gonna hang out by ourselves, okay?”

  “All right . . . I guess. If that’s okay with Aloysius and his mom.”

  Sure, I thought. As long as we’re sticking with the very open and public cafeteria. It’s not like he’s gonna beat the crap out of me in front of everyone in there. Right? But if worse did come to worst, at least we were already at the hospital.

  “C’mon,” Rodney ordered in a way I was unfortunately accustomed to.

  I was following him down the hallway when Mom called me back, providing a false glimmer of hope that she was going to save me after all.

  “Let me hold on to the ice cream for later . . . after lunch. Maybe your friend in the gift shop can keep it in the freezer for you.”

  I handed her the unopened Buried Treasure, and off I went with my lifelong nemesis.

  “Bet you’re glad we’re going in here instead of alone somewhere, aren’t ya?”

  “Yeah,” I nervously half-laughed. “Does it make a difference?”

  “Nope.”

  My eyes bulged.

  “I’m just fuckin’ with ya,” he said. “You didn’t really think I was gonna give you a smack in here, did ya?”

  “Nooooo, God,” I lied through my missing teeth.

  All things considered, this was going pretty well now that the threat of physical harm appeared to have been eliminated. We were walking and talking like two normal people. I repeat, like two normal people. And just like anything one tries to imagine before it occurs, this was playing out nothing like I’d expected.

  For starters, he was dressed in everyday street clothes, whereas all of my premonitions had him in his hospital blues from before.

  He also looked a lot different: standing straighter, eyes brighter, hair tidier.

  “My mother said I should clean myself up a bit, kinda like when we used to have company coming over. Not that I can ever remember that happening.”

  We each grabbed a tray from the stack at the end of the lunch line.

  “The food’s crap, by the way. Except for the fries and gravy.”

  “With ketchup,” I added, a mutual favourite from the school cafeteria.

  “That’s all I ever have. My mom brings me stuff for suppers. Or sometimes we go out.”

  The cashier looked up, documented our rations, and waved us both through.

  “I got a tab,” Rodney said with a laugh.

  I followed him to a table in the corner that gave us a panoramic view of the entire busy room.

  “Kinda weird, isn’t it, eating at the same table together? If ya like, I can sit across the room and wave my fist, just like at school!”

  He laughed again. Me, not so much.

  “Are you coming back?”

  “To St. Bon’s? Nope. They’re looking at somewhere else. But no one’s said anything about it, and it’s not like I’m gonna ask. Mom keeps in touch with the Brothers and brings me books and math and stuff, but I can’t even look at it. Why bother?

  “I doubt anyone misses me, anyway.”

  I quickly moved on to something—anything—else. More important stuff.

  “Can you wear whatever you want?”

  “Yeah. Depends on how I’m feeling, which is kind of all over the place. The other day, when you saw me, I was just too tired to care about anything, especially clothes. I mean, why bother? It’s not like I’m goin’ anywhere.

  “But this morning they gave me something else, and I feel better about everything.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You don’t look sick at all. Not like the other day.”

  “You don’t have to look sick to be sick,” he snapped, loud enough to turn heads and cause a momentary pause in the busy lunch rush.

  It was a brief setback that left us both silent until the room noise ratcheted back up again.

  “Shit. He’s not comin’ over, is he? They’re still keeping a close eye on me, after the other night and stuff.”

  I leaned in.

  “Who?”

  “The big fucker by the doors with his arms folded. Looks like Mr. Clean.”

  I shifted my eyes in the direction without moving my head.

  “Nope. Not comin’.”

  Wow. I had to do a double take. The guy did look just like Mr. Clean. And I was pretty sure he was also one of the brutes who held me down while they gassed me upstairs. My discontent was tempered by the fact that I was far better off now than before.

  Pain-free, a few days off school, a new board game, breakfast, lunch, and supper in bed, and to top it all off, it appeared PB and I had finally buried the hatchet, without one ending up in me.

  “Fuck’s wrong with you?” my former PB asked.

  “I know him, too.”

  “Who, Mr. Clean?

  “Yeah. He kept me pinned while they knocked me out with the gas. Fucker.”

  I threw in an F-bomb of my own just to keep pace but instinctively turned to make sure Mom was nowhere within earshot.

  “What were you in for, anyway?” he asked.

  I tapped on my teeth.

  “They put you under to take some teeth out? Sure, I coulda taken care of that for ya!”

  We both laughed again.

  “Seven, actually.”

  “Ha. What are ya chewin’, rocks or somethin’?”

  “Nah. Just the usual junk every day. But I don’t . . . I didn’t brush very much. Hardly ever, really. I just always managed to get out of it, or say I did when I didn’t . . .

  “Anyway, it’s my own fault, but I also got a madman for a dentist at the mall.”

  “Kent?”

  “Yeah. Fuck. Just his name . . .”

  “He’s mine, too. Never gives enough whatayacallit for the pain.”

  I immediately banked that little nugget to be shared with Mom later. It wasn’t just me, after all. He was just a bad dentist.

  “You want me to get him for ya?” Rodney asked matter-of-factly, his head tilted upward as he lowered two soggy, gravy-soaked fries down into his mouth with his fingers.

  “Who, Kent? Or Mr. Clean?”

  “Either one.”

  “No. Jesus. No. Muscles over there was just doin’ his job, and I’m better off for it. But yeah, maybe Kent!”

  We laughed again, but he leaned across the table as it faded out.

  “Look—here’s the deal. I di
dn’t call ya up to say I’m sorry for all the shit and ask you to forgive me and all that bullshit, if that’s what you were thinkin’. That’s what Mom said I should do. She thinks that’s what I’m doin’ now—apologizing, cleansing my soul, and blah, blah, blah, blah, fucking blah.

  “But it’s not. Just so we’re clear.”

  Okaaay.

  “The locker stuff . . . it was supposed to be funny. I never thought you’d stay inside or whatever. And the chasing stuff after hockey. Oh my God, that was some funny. And everyone was doing it, not just me.”

  “It wasn’t very funny for me . . .”

  He cut me off and continued.

  “You’re just such an easy target. My dad used to say the world needs bullies to give the weaker ones some backbone. I never really believed in that shit. It just seemed like the normal thing to be doing, ya know? Givin’ ya a hard time all the time. Somebody was going to. Might as well be me. Makes sense, right? But I’m not sayin’ I’m sorry or anything like that.”

  “I know,” I said simply.

  I guess that’s all I was getting in the way of an apology. I mean, it’s not like I was gonna engage in a debate with him over the pros and cons of bullying.

  And if that was the end of all that, then all the better.

  12

  By now I was convinced I was only called to the Janeway to satisfy some requirement of some mandatory program, or just to ease PB’s guilty, bully-ridden conscience.

  And pardon the pun, but it was like pulling teeth trying to find out why he was still there in the first place when he seemed just fine to me.

  “So, if you’re feeling better, why can’t you go home?”

  “’Cause it won’t last. Right now I can think of all the upsides of being in here. Getting better, playing hockey again, going to movies at the mall.”

  I wanted to talk more about hockey, and how good he was and could be, but he kept going.

  “The stuff they gave me this morning will wear off in a bit, and everything will seem shitty again. That’s what always happens. And like none of that good stuff will ever happen again, because my head’s a mess. That’s what Dad said, anyway.”

  “Did he actually say that to you?”

  “No. I heard him while they were goin’ at it. Him and Mom. But she’d always come right up after he stormed out and tell me he didn’t mean any of it, that it was just the Black Horse talkin’, and everything would be fine.”

  “Was it?”

  “God, no. Same thing every night, when he was home, that is. Gettin’ suspended from school really got ’im goin’. All they did was shout and blame each other for all the trouble I was gettin’ in.

  “That’s when I downed all the Valium I had left.”

  “Why’d ya do that?”

  “I dunno. Seemed like they’d forgotten I was even there. I wasn’t trying to kill myself or anything. I just wanted to knock myself out ’cause I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. But it worked. Got their attention pretty good, too.

  “So now that I’m here, everyone thinks I’m nuts. Just like our buddies at the Mental. Ha!”

  He reached into his pocket and produced a small, square newspaper clipping.

  I could tell right away it was from the rival Evening Telegram, the font and type size far inferior to what the Daily News was rolling out. But then I had a ridiculous bias.

  He laid it flat on the table, spun it 180, and slid it in front of me.

  “Read it.”

  A grand total of six paragraphs, topped with this gem: Mental Services Sourly Lacking.

  Ouch.

  The typo—sourly instead of sorely—was bad enough. And for a straight-up news story, the lack of attribution was a major no-no. It only occurred to me then that I might be the only seventh grader around who could spell and define “attribution.” Note to self: spending way too much time at the office.

  And it really should’ve said Mental Health services.

  I blew through the 100-word regurgitation of some Opposition MHA’s statement in the House of Assembly raggin’ on government for “abandoning the outcasts” of society and letting the Waterford “fall into a state of disrepair.”

  I looked up at Rodney.

  “So? They say this stuff every couple of months, but it’s still all the same down there. You and me know that.”

  “But there’s nothin’ about the Janeway in it. A lot of people are really pissed off up on the floor. Especially the nurses and stuff. I got that there from their bulletin board. I told ’em your old man could do something, with the paper.”

  You what? One newspaper couldn’t fix mistakes made by another. We might wallow in their misfortune on occasion, but the truth is, mistakes made everyone feel awful, and you really wouldn’t wish one on anyone else because you could easily be next.

  “But that’s a different newspaper,” I said diplomatically. “They gotta call them about that.”

  “Yeah, but your dad could write up the real story.”

  “What real story?”

  “The story of how one doc comes in once a week, tosses around meds like Santa at the end of the parade, then he’s gone again. They pumps ya up with meds until they says you’re ‘manageable,’ then they puts ya on something else to get ya off the first ones. Then all of a sudden a new guy comes along and says you got ‘a dependency’ and cuts you off everything. Cold turkey.

  “And then ya starts jonesin’.”

  “What’s jonesin’?”

  “That’s when ya needs more but ya can’t get it. There’s a couple of older guys up there now—sixteen or seventeen—goin’ right squirrelly. They says my time’s comin’.”

  It was no great challenge adding two and two in this equation, and I finally understood why I was really here. He had to be just the messenger for the older, disenfranchised buckos.

  By all accounts, former PB now had his own PB—times two!

  The revelation that he was getting a taste of his own meds, so to speak, sent a breathtaking euphoria up high in my chest—kinda like the first few minutes after a tobacco-less inhale of good marijuana, which I may or may not have tried down in the field.

  After a lifetime of taking shit from the lout I had very little sympathy, despite his tale of his dysfunctional home and overall dire situation.

  Okay, so I did consider telling someone of my bully suspicions. It crossed my mind. But that’s all it did. I was just worried it could make things worse for him. I kinda knew what bullies were like.

  “Can I keep this?” I asked, holding up the clipping.

  “Yeah, but they . . . you gotta give it to your dad, all right?”

  I gave an ambiguous half-nod, then moved on quickly before he sought something more definitive, like a promise.

  “What about you? Have you ever been . . . jonesin’?”

  “Nah. Not yet. They don’t keep me on one thing long enough.”

  “What about the Valium?”

  “Nah,” he laughed. “They just slowed me down when I got too hyper. I graduated from them. I got this other stuff now that’s supposed to ‘even me out.’ Couple in the morning, couple at night. But if I forgets, I can be up and down like a yo-yo.

  “No wonder they think I’m bipolar.”

  I don’t know if he let it slip by accident or what, but I finally had a word for his ailment.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the term, growing up where I did. But I’d never really understood what it meant beyond the fact that it seemed to be the most common type of brain illness that mental patients—and now a kid from our neighbourhood—had.

  Thus, my first foolish and selfish thought was that it might be contagious in some way. And if he got it from being down in the Mental Field, then maybe I could, too. What if I al
ready had it and didn’t know? I could be pretty moody, up and down.

  I didn’t want to be speechless for too long, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. And he didn’t seem surprised.

  “So now ya knows,” he said angrily, getting up and pushing his chair in hard against the table. “Like I told ya: I’m a mental case just like the rest of ’em.”

  I was content to stay silent now and not even make eye contact, hoping he’d just storm away. That would be that, and I’d be free.

  He stopped only to guzzle the last of his pop when I saw his mother come through the doors right on time, stopping for a quick debrief with Mr. Clean.

  “Sorry to interrupt you two, but Rodney has an appointment in a few minutes upstairs.”

  She squeezed his shoulder.

  “Just gonna grab a tea and we’ll head back up, okay honey?”

  “Yes, Mom,” he replied with the cold awkwardness of any adolescent embarrassed by a parent’s public affection.

  He stood there quietly in an obvious huff with arms folded, while I stayed seated in equally awkward silence.

  “Oh,” I suddenly recalled. “You’ll never guess who I met the other day down in the field.”

  He didn’t flinch.

  “Remember Flag Fag? I don’t call him that anymore, just so ya know. Not after talking to him and stuff. He actually wasn’t that bad.”

  “The guy who followed you home after you found buddy in the river?” Rodney asked, in a remarkably calmer tone than just a minute earlier.

  “Yeah. But he never really followed me then. Me and Mom, I mean. I just remember him showing up in the field when we were walkin’ home. Scared the shit out of us. Did the same thing to me the other day. But once we got talking, it was all good. Kinda like us,” I laughed.

  “Like us how? You warming up to a mental patient?”

  “No,” I replied, instantly regretting my choice of words.

  “I don’t give a shit,” he said. “It’s kinda funny. Everyone thinks he’s in the Mental for waggin’ his thing around, but I heard he killed a guy.”

  “What?”

  “Yup. Someone up on the floor said so. Wild, whah? So I’d watch yourself there, if I were you. As weird as that sounds comin’ from me. I hear he starts fires, too. At least that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!”