“That’s a relief. Now tell me how you feel. Your affect is very flat today,” Dr. Tuttle said. She was right. I could barely arouse the enthusiasm to stand up straight. “Have you been taking your Risperdal?”
“I skipped yesterday. I was so busy at work, I just forgot. The insomnia is really bad these days,” I lied.
“You’re exhausted. Plain and simple.” She scribbled on her prescription pad. “According to that book you’re holding, the death gene is passed from mother to child in the birth canal. Something about microdermabrasions and infectious vaginal rash. Does your mother exhibit any signs of hormonal abnormalities?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You might want to ask her. If you are a carrier, I can suggest something for you. An herbal lotion. Only if you want it. I’d have to order it special from Peru.”
“I was born caesarian, in case that’s a factor.”
“The noble method,” she said. “Ask her anyway. Her answer might shed some light on your mental and biorhythmic incapacities.”
“Well, she’s dead,” I reminded her.
Dr. Tuttle put her pen down and folded her hands into prayer. I thought she was going to sing a song, or do some incantation. I didn’t expect her to offer me any pity or sympathy. But instead, she squinched up her face, sneezed violently, turned to wipe her face with a huge bath towel lying on the floor by her desk chair, and scribbled on her pad some more.
“And how did she die?” she asked. “Not pineal failure, I suppose.”
“She mixed alcohol with sedatives,” I said. I was too lethargic to lie. And if Dr. Tuttle had forgotten that I’d told her my mother had slit her wrists, telling her the truth wouldn’t matter in the long run.
“People like your mother,” Dr. Tuttle replied, shaking her head, “give psychotropic medication a bad reputation.”
* * *
? ? ?
SEPTEMBER CAME AND WENT. The sunlight tilted through the blinds once in a while, and I’d peek out to see if the leaves on the trees were dying yet. Life was repetitive, resonated at a low hum. I shuffled down to the Egyptians. I filled my prescriptions. Reva continued to appear from time to time, usually drunk and always on the brink of hysteria or outrage or complete meltdown one way or another.
In October, she barged in while I was watching Working Girl.
“This again?” she huffed and threw herself down in the armchair. “I’m fasting for Yom Kippur,” she sighed boastfully. This was not unusual. She’d been on some truly insane diets in the past. A gallon of salt water a day. Only prune juice and baking soda. “I can have as much sugar-free Jell-O as I want before eleven A.M.” Or “I’m fasting,” she’d say. “I’m fasting on weekends.” “I’m fasting every other weekday.”
“Melanie Griffith looks bulimic in this movie,” Reva said now, pointing lazily at the screen. “See her swollen jowls? Her face looks fat, but her legs are super skinny. Or maybe she’s just fat with skinny legs. Her arms look soft, don’t they? I could be wrong. I don’t know. I’m kind of out of it. I’m fasting,” she said again.
“That’s not puking, it’s boozing, Reva,” I told her, slurping drool from the corner of my mouth. “Not every skinny person has an eating disorder.” It was the most I’d said in weeks to anyone.
“Sorry,” Reva said. “You’re right. I’m just in a mood. I’m fasting, you know?” She dug around in her purse and pulled out her dwindling fifth of tequila. “Want some?” she asked.
“No.”
She cracked open a Diet Mountain Dew. We watched the movie in silence. In the middle, I fell back asleep.
* * *
? ? ?
OCTOBER WAS PLACID. The radiator hissed and sputtered, releasing a sharp vinegary smell that reminded me of my dead parents’ basement, so I rarely turned on the heat. I didn’t mind the cold. My visit to Dr. Tuttle that month was relatively unremarkable.
“How is everything at home?” she asked. “Good? Bad? Other?”
“Other,” I said.
“Do you have a family history of nonbinary paradigms?”
When I explained for the third time that both my parents had died, that my mother had killed herself, Dr. Tuttle unscrewed the cap of her value-size bottle of Afrin, twirled around in her chair, tilted her head back so that she was looking at me upside down, and started sniffing. “I’m listening,” she said. “It’s allergies, and now I’m hooked on this nasal spray. Please continue. Your parents are dead, and . . . ?”