Dark Rooms

Maddie was a pale girl, angular and beaky-faced, but she had a body that was blade thin and a gaze that was cool and contemptuous, which was better than pretty somehow, and in her presence I usually felt self-conscious to the degree that eye contact was difficult. Usually but not that day. That day, I guess, I couldn’t be bothered. I looked down. Saw ants marching out of a crack in the pavement in an orderly black line. I poked at them with the wooden spoon from my Italian ice. They began to swarm.

Maddie, I suddenly realized, was no longer speaking, was looking at me in an expectant way, and I understood that she must have asked me something. I looked back at her, hoping her face would offer a clue as to what the question was. She was wearing pearls and a T-shirt that said LOVE SLAVE. Her long blond hair was heavily gelled. “Sorry,” I said, giving up, “what did you say?”

“I said, do you want to go with me?”

A beat, then, “To Glastonbury?”

“Jamie told me I could borrow his car. Or we could take your shit heap.”

I threw down the spoon, wiped my sticky hands on the patch of grass in front of me. “Yeah, all right.”

“How about after school since there’s no practice today? We could get dinner while we’re there. Check-in at Archibald isn’t till nine.”

Another beat passed. Maddie lowered her sunglasses. I could tell she was waiting for me to do the same, but I didn’t want to look at her without the dulling amber tint.

“What do you say?” she said.

“I’d like to go. I would. It’s just, today’s a little tough.”

“What about tomorrow then?”

“Yeah, tomorrow’s no good either.”

“Oh really? And why’s that?”

“Well, see, because—”

We talked in this way for a while, and then suddenly we weren’t talking anymore. I don’t know who turned away from who, but I do know I didn’t care.

That moment marked my official break from Jamie, Maddie, and Ruben, after which I was pretty much on my own. But then, apart from Nica, I’d always been on my own as far as that crowd went. I had friends who weren’t Nica’s, of course. A group of girls I talked to after class, met up with on weekends, took my yearbook picture with. Margret, Lydie, and Francine. But the sad truth was, the connection between them and me wasn’t real. I hung out with them because I had to hang out with someone and, on the surface, we had things in common—quiet natures, serious about school, neither popular nor unpopular. (“Wow,” Maddie once said when she walked in on us sprawled out on the family room floor, doing our homework, “it, like, boggles the mind how nondescript you all are.” She was wasted at the time. Stoned, too, I think. Still, though.) Basically it was a relationship of convenience. We offered each other warmth and comfort, the protection of safety in numbers. Law of the jungle: stay part of a pack and you’re more likely to live to see another day.

Sometimes there’d be a house party that was in the vicinity of local, a party Nica, Jamie, Maddie, and Ruben would regard as hopeless if they bothered regarding it at all, and Margret, Lydie, Francine, and I would go together. But as often as not I’d leave early, bored after a couple hours of wandering in and out of other people’s rooms, looking at the photos on mantels, the books on shelves, pretending not to notice the uncool debauchery going on around me. I’d either call my dad, ask him to pick me up, or, when I was old enough to have my license, simply drive off. Occasionally my cell would ring later with questions about where I’d disappeared to. Mostly not, though. Even at a second-rate gathering, my presence—or lack of—didn’t really register. I was included. I just wasn’t necessary.

After I came back to school, Margret, Lydie, and Francine made an effort to be supportive too. Let me know they were there for me. The thing is, I didn’t want them there for me. I wanted them away from me. They got the message pretty quick. There’d be the odd hurt or wondering look cast in my direction. But mostly they respected my wish for space and kept their distance.

And there were other people, too, people I didn’t know except to nod hello to in the hall, and they’d come up to me out of goodwill or kindness or curiosity, and that was fine. Usually they’d try to start a conversation, but their words would quickly turn into blah blah blah, and I’d lose the thread, stare into space until they’d get uncomfortable and leave. Soon no one came up to me and that was also fine.

One new person, however, did enter my life during this period: Dr. Karnani, the psychiatrist I’d asked my parents to find. Asked because I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, and if I wasn’t, I could be, should be. An anxiety disorder of some sort was, I figured, my best bet for getting shipped off to a mental institution. Not a One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoo’s-Nest nuthouse-type deal, state-run for hardcore crazies—I didn’t want that, no straitjackets or horse tranquilizers for me—but something low-key, gentle. A sanatorium maybe, the kind of place that catered to people with quote sensitive natures unquote who needed quote rest unquote. I’d sleep in a room with white walls, look out the window for hours at a time, be guided to meals by nurses with soft hands and voices, nothing expected of me, every decision made by somebody else.

Though most days I felt numb and in a fog, I would, every so often, experience these attacks that would just completely undo me. Something would happen, some small thing—a T-shirt of Nica’s would turn up under my bed, or a movie she liked would play on TV—and, before I knew it, the door to the cell I kept my memories locked behind would burst open, and the vicious little thugs would swarm me, push me to the ground, hit me, kick me, violate me in any way they could think of. And for hours afterward, I’d be weak and shaky and without defenses, jumping at every noise, ready to cry at the drop of a hat. What I wanted was to be protected from these attacks. What I wanted was to feel numb and in a fog not most of the time, but all of it.

And I got what I was asking for from my sessions with Dr. Karnani. Or at least from the prescriptions she wrote me at the end of them. Benzodiazepine derivatives, the most miraculous of the miracles of modern medicine, as far as I was concerned: Xanax, Valium, Klonopin. On these drugs, I didn’t just feel numb and in a fog, I felt sealed off, like I was behind a pane of glass and no one and nothing could touch me.

But the day came when I could no longer stomach Dr. Karnani’s wrinkly neck and breath that stank of garlic and constant questions about my feelings and my feelings about my feelings, and I stopped showing up for our appointments.

So what, then, did I do for drugs?

Well, I wasn’t being totally honest before when I said I broke with Jamie, Maddie, and Ruben because I did still see quite a bit of Ruben. Our relationship now, though, was less personal than professional. Ruben dealt—mainly prescription drugs, but a little ecstasy and ketamine, too, the occasional popper—out of his room on Friday evenings between five and seven thirty, dining hall hours. I started swinging by.

Each exchange followed essentially the same script.

As I walked up to his door, I’d pull out my cash, a portion of the over-thousand dollars I’d saved from my summers teaching tennis at the rec center, have it ready in my hand. I’d knock twice. He’d make me wait a little, but then he’d open the door. More often than not he’d be dressed in a filthy kimono, the one his dad bought him on a business trip to Tokyo, and a pair of high-top sneakers with no laces. He’d be stuffing his face with potato chips or cookies or SpaghettiOs or one those microwavable pizza things shaped like a fat stick with the crust on the outside. When he’d see me, he’d smile wide, say, “Gracie,” drawing out both syllables of my name. “Nice of you to stop by.”

“Hi, Ruben,” I’d say.

He’d hold up an uno momento finger, making me wait again as he swallowed, ran his tongue along the line of his teeth, top and bottom. Then he’d say, “You look a little under the weather today. How’re you feeling?”

“Okay. Having trouble sleeping, though.”

“Huh. Bummer.”

“Bummer,” I’d agree.

“Not sleeping’s becoming a regular thing with you. I’ve got to say, that surprises me. You don’t seem like the kind of girl who would develop that sort of problem.”

“Yeah, well, just goes to show you.”

“Is it better this week or worse?”

“Worse.”

“Oh my my. Worse again? You’re turning into quite the little raging insomniac. You know, I have trouble sleeping, too, but I keep it under control. Don’t have trouble sleeping every single night.” When I wouldn’t say anything back, “Not sleeping, you pay a high price for that.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Can you afford it?”

My voice tight, “I’ve managed so far, haven’t I?”

He’d shrug, say, “Just trying to look out for you.” Then he’d reach inside the pocket of the school blazer hanging next to the door. As he’d start to hand over the pocket’s contents, though, he’d slap a palm to his forehead and squeeze his eyes shut, like an idea lightbulb had switched on in his skull and he was blinded by the brilliance of it. “Hey,” he’d say, “have you ever given yoga a shot?”

At this point in the exchange, I’d be getting impatient but would be doing my best to hide it. If he saw it, he’d drag things out even longer. “I haven’t,” I’d say.

“It’s supposed to work wonders on you high-strung types. Keeps you from sweating the small stuff.”

“Then I’ll have to look into it.”

“It’s good for your body, too. Gets you nice and skinny. Not so skinny, though, that you lose your breasts. Man, there’s something about a thin girl with big tits.”

“Yeah,” I’d say.

“There is one thing that definitely won’t work for you, Grace. Know what that is?”

I’d shake my head, but inside I’d be perking up because I knew he was about to say the magic word, the word that meant I was getting what I came for.

“Drugs.” He’d wag a stern finger at me. “I want it on record that I’m anti-narcotics, pro-family values.”

“Noted,” I’d say.