Total Constant Order Read online

  I longed to send my own message.

  I took out my black Sharpie.

  I wrote a single word: WHY?

  I stood back and thought, “Not bad.”

  Now all I had to do was wait.

  When I returned to class, Thayer was sitting alone. Everyone else had already left.

  “Hey,” he said. “I found your contact.”

  Perfect Rhythm

  In orchestra, I counted quarter notes, tapping along without looking at my sheet music. I could always tell when something was off-rhythm. The clashing shapes hit me like paper airplanes. After years of teaching tone-deaf freshmen, Mr. Clemmons didn’t need a metronome to keep count. He tapped along with his pencil on the music stand. He had a hearing aid shaped like a lima bean in his left ear. When he got fed up, he turned it off.

  Sharon Lubbitz sat next to me, sawing on her violin. She made it her personal duty to remind me of my freakishness. When I didn’t turn the page, she lost her place and got flak from Mr. Clemmons, who made the whole class stop in mid-squeak.

  “It’s her fault,” Sharon said. “She can’t read music.” She glared at me and I quickly looked down at our songbook.

  “What?” Mr. Clemmons tilted his good ear toward us. “Is that true, Fin?” he asked.

  I shrugged. Of course I could read music.

  “Well?” Mr. Clemmons waited.

  “I don’t need the songbook,” I told him. “I can see the notes in my head.”

  Mr. Clemmons drummed the piano. “Tell me, Fin. What time signature is this?”

  I sat there, counting. In my mind, a crowd of numbers raced through the finish line. I told him, “It’s in 8/8 time,” and he beamed.

  “And this?” he said. His chalky hands flew across the keys. You couldn’t pay me to touch that dirty piano.

  “It’s 4/4. Like the highway,” I said, my voice sounding trembly.

  “The highway?”

  The other kids gawked as if I had spoken in Martian.

  “The sound of the cars on the highway,” I said, feeling silly. “It’s the same beat. One passes every couple seconds.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Because I counted.”

  Papers fluttered as the class laughed. Then I heard someone cough and say, “She’s got perfect rhythm.”

  I didn’t have to turn around. I saw him looking at me from two rows over. Thayer Pinsky. He was always hanging around the music room, although I’d never seen him play an instrument. Last time I checked, there was no sheet music for beatboxing.

  Mr. Clemmons nodded. “Fin, you’re one in a million.”

  A million? In my head, the zeros rolled on and on.

  “Does that make her an idiot savant?” Sharon said. “Or just an idiot?”

  “Some people are rhythmically impaired,” Thayer shot back.

  After school ended, Mama was standing in the parking lot. I got in the car and said nothing. Heading north on US-1, I could see that the landscape looked thirsty. Miles of fast-food joints—mostly Pollo Tropicals and Miami Subs—decorated with cardboard pumpkins littered the highway. We zoomed past a gas station selling “homemade” Key lime pie.

  “They’re not real Key limes,” said Mama, “unless they come from Key West.”

  I cranked down the window so all I heard was the slippery rush of traffic, snatching her sentences and flinging them south. Half dozing, I counted the ka-thump, ka-thump of tires on pavement, the Spanish newscasters on the radio.

  Mama swerved down a side street. GAS, FOOD, LODGING, said a sign. It sounded like the lyrics to a song. We parked under a palm tree choked with red ribbons. SAY NO TO DRUGS! said a banner on the chain-link fence. Inside the O’s were smiley faces.

  That’s what bugs me about the Sunshine State. Everybody expects you to be happy all the time, like you’re living on vacation. But it’s not a vacation if you never get to leave.

  The shrink’s office reminded me of a train, all one story, with narrow windows. Stringy loops of graffiti ballooned across the back wall. A few words extended to the bushes.

  The waiting room smelled like cough syrup. Across from me, a girl with poodle bangs kept staring at the television. I leaned to the farthest corner of my chair.

  Mama offered me some water. I stared at the paper cup, pictured the germs wiggling around it, and shook my head no.

  “Why did you drag me here? I’m not sick,” I told Mama. Even as I spoke, I arranged my thoughts in this order: sickness, doctors, medicine. Mama pretended not to hear me.

  On the TV, a blond woman jumped out of a sports car. The channel on the cable box was blinking “nineteen.” I got up and clicked it to ten.

  “Excuse me. I was watching that,” said the poodle-haired girl.

  I didn’t move.

  The girl waited for me to change it back. When I didn’t, she got out of her seat and clicked it herself. By that time, my brain had latched on to the number nineteen. I kept adding the nine and the one together to make ten. My fingers started tapping, pinkie to thumb, left to right.

  “Sit still,” Mama hissed.

  Nineteen surged in me, looking for a suitable target. I tried to keep from thinking about it. I rose from my chair.

  “Fin? What’s going on?” she asked.

  I bolted out of the waiting room. The receptionist gave me a funny look when I ran past, but I didn’t stop until I reached the door. I had to get out of there, away from all those people, breathing my air.

  I walked to the car, though I couldn’t unlock it.

  Mama was there a moment later. We stood in the parking lot, watching the river of cars. I counted three blue sedans in 4/4 time before she spoke to me.

  “Dr. Calaban is waiting,” she said. “Are you going back inside?”

  I didn’t have the energy to say no.

  Happiness of the Garden Variety

  All sunsets are frauds. Don’t tell me otherwise. When I stared at the posters blitzed throughout the shrink’s waiting room, I got a shorthand glimpse of happy endings. Their horizons dissolved like tissue paper, though I knew the sun doesn’t actually “rise” or “set.” It’s just a figure of speech. Ms. Armstrong says that sunsets contain lithium. That’s why it feels good to watch the colors caramelize.

  STD? Who, me? read a cartoon-infested pamphlet flopped on the table. Abstinence or AIDS, read another, making it sound like a choice between the two. I sat next to Mama, counting to three as I read the letters forward and backward. STDAIDS AIDSSTD I counted letters until they no longer made sense. When I reached thirty, a nice round number, I slid my eyes to the boy in the next seat. He thumbed through a woman’s magazine and opened a spread called: Your lifetime horoscope. Where you will be in ten, twenty, thirty years. I was more concerned about the next five minutes. A soft, blond girl in the hallway kept sneezing into the same tissue. The office was probably crawling with germs. I needed to wash my hands.

  “Fin,” said Mama. “The lady is speaking to you.”

  I looked up.

  “Frances?” said the receptionist. I cringed at the old-fashioned, little-girl sound of my name. “You’ve never been counseled before?” Her sentences had an upward-tilting quality that made me grit my teeth.

  She gave me a smile and a test, the sort where you scribble in the bubbles. My answers looked wrong, no matter what I wrote. Sometimes, never, or often were my only choices. Sometimes do you feel guilty without explanation? Do you never think things will go right? How often do you feel sad, blue, or down in the dumps? It didn’t seem fair, asking those kinds of questions. Anyone could jot sometimes and sound as if their brain had gone haywire.

  “Have you lost interest in things you once enjoyed?” the test prodded, almost daring me to say no. My interests changed on a constant basis. I couldn’t even listen to a new CD without getting sick of it within a week.

  “Do you wonder HOW you could commit suicide?” asked the next question. Maybe I was wrong, but I couldn’t help believing that everyo
ne had thought about killing themselves, if only out of curiosity. Of course I had wondered about it. At least, if I planned my death, I could have some control over things, like what dress I’d be wearing and how my hair would be arranged. I didn’t really consider how I’d attempt it (the movies always made it look so messy, especially when it involved slicing your wrists), but I liked to imagine my parents reading my good-bye letter.

  “We were too hard on her,” Mama would say, adjusting my barrettes.

  “I should’ve spent more time with her,” Dad would chime in.

  “Have you done this before?” I heard a voice call out.

  I lifted my gaze from the test. The voice belonged to a malnourished-looking boy who was slurping a can of Iron Beer, a Cuban soda that could’ve been mistaken for booze. He flopped down on the sofa next to me. His skin was pale, almost see-through. Then he coughed once, twice, and I recognized him.

  “Are you a regular?” Thayer asked, rubbing his nose.

  “Regular what?”

  “Some of the freaks here are, like, regulars. They become addicted, you know. I’m just in for a checkup. My doctor makes me come here every month.”

  I took a sudden interest in the television.

  “Frances, dear,” said the receptionist, “did you finish already?” She squinted at the test, then at me, as though connecting the two. Maybe she was trying to guess if I cheated. Could you cheat on these kinds of tests?

  While stuck in the magazine-infested waiting room, making shorthand assumptions about my fellow mental patients, it crossed my mind that psychiatrists get paid for the same service.

  “Thayer Pinsky,” said the receptionist, beaming at the boy beside me. “Good afternoon.”

  He gave her a military-style salute. A regular, I suspected.

  “So you’re depressed, huh?” Thayer whispered to me. “Aren’t we all.”

  I stroked my chair like a guitar. If the boy saw me do it, he didn’t say anything. I was trapped, with the receptionist in front and the pale boy beside me.

  “Young lady?” the receptionist called out.

  I chewed a hangnail on my pinkie. I was thinking about the phrase “young lady” and how much I hated it.

  Mama said the receptionist had called my name again. Dr. Calaban didn’t have all day.

  I felt people staring—crazy kids and their parents—but I couldn’t budge until the third time she called me. Thayer smirked. He probably thought I was being rebellious. As I stood up, he saluted me. How pathetic. My one moment of coolness came in a loony bin.

  Mama squeezed my hand.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  I squeezed back twice.

  Dr. Calaban was waiting in her office. Contrary to my imagination, it lacked a couch. A box of “ultra-comfort” Kleenex and a coffee mug that read, What? Me Worry? crowded her cluttered desk. Behind it sat Dr. Calaban—a spidery woman in a long hippy-dippy skirt. Her skin glowed dark as hardwood floors. I couldn’t take my eyes off her Afro-puffed curls, almost tamed under a sparkly scarf.

  “Frances,” she said. Her accent was musical, pouring out in a silky ribbon. “I’m Dr. Calaban. What brings you here?”

  “Oh, the usual,” I said. The air conditioner hummed so loud, I turned it off without asking.

  “Perhaps you could be more specific?”

  “I can’t…I mean, no. Not really.”

  I studied her bracelet. A chain of tiny yellow skulls clattered like teeth around her wrist. She caught my stare.

  “My guru gave this to me,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  I lowered my gaze to a metal bowl with sea-weedy plants springing out of it. On the wall behind Dr. Calaban was a blue and red banner with a coat of arms—swords and cannons pointed toward a palm tree. I wanted to snatch it off the wall and hang it in my room.

  “That’s the Haitian national flag,” she said. “One of many we’ve had over the years.”

  “Huh,” I said. That explained the musical accent.

  “I took a look at your test,” she said.

  I tried to make a joke. “Did I pass or fail?”

  “It’s not that kind of test,” she said. “Have you been feeling like this for a while?”

  “Feeling like what?”

  “Tired or sad.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I said.

  Dr. Calaban let out a long sigh. “Have you been experiencing any thoughts of suicide?”

  I shrugged. “Once in a while. Doesn’t everybody?”

  Dr. Calaban wasn’t even paying attention. She was flipping through papers. I couldn’t get over it. Nobody was listening, not even the stupid lady doctor. That was the end of my patience. I was so tired, I started shaking.

  Dr. Calaban handed me a Kleenex.

  The room shimmered. I wiped my eyes.

  “Frances, can you explain why you’re crying?”

  No, I couldn’t.

  God, I hated crying in public. Especially in this Lysol atmosphere. The more I tried to stop, the worse it got. I started counting backward inside my head, Ten, nine, eight. But it didn’t chill me out. I’d need to switch the order around. The pattern had an expiration date, like gum that had lost its flavor.

  “It’s okay. I always cry for no reason.”

  Dr. Calaban nodded like a fortune-teller. She didn’t say anything.

  “I thought we were supposed to be talking about stuff,” I said.

  “What would you like to talk about?”

  I drew stars with one finger into my fist, around and around.

  Dr. Calaban said, “Do you realize that you’ve been playing with your hands since you first sat down?”

  “Playing with my hands?” I gripped the chair legs, just to stop fidgeting.

  “Do you have a lot of nervous habits, Frances?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t call them habits,” I said.

  “Then what would you call them?” she asked.

  “Just these things that I do. They don’t mean anything,” I said, squeezing the chair legs three times, hoping she didn’t notice.

  Her voice drifted away. She gave me a card with a date and time scrawled on it.

  “I look forward to speaking further with you, Frances,” she said, as if inviting me to a party.

  I grabbed my book bag and banged into one of Dr. Calaban’s potted plants. It crashed at her feet, an African violet encased in a clump of veiny dirt. I tried to scoop it back into the plastic container. The price tag was still attached. Two dollars, ninety-five cents.

  “Sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t.

  “About time I bought a new pot. You’d be surprised how fast they grow.” She smiled.

  Was she trying to make a joke? If so, I wasn’t laughing.

  In the waiting room, Dr. Calaban shook Mama’s hand. I watched them talk, but I couldn’t concentrate. I pictured Dr. Calaban at her desk, scribbling notes on a memo pad. Would I recognize this portrait of myself?

  “I’m setting up regular appointments,” said the receptionist. Her glasses dangled so low on her beaky nose, they seemed in danger of falling off. She gave me a preprinted card, the kind I might’ve used to memorize the multiplication tables. The other side featured a time (9 a.m.) and Dr. Calaban’s bold-faced name. Why would she schedule an appointment during class? Not that I was complaining.

  “So Fridays are good for you?”

  I gave a little shrug.

  The receptionist said, “Take care, Frances,” as if we had known each other for years. I scanned the room for Thayer, but he had already gone. I tried to imagine him in Dr. Calaban’s office, slouched in the same chair, still warm from where I sat.

  Outside the air felt minty. It smelled like a freshly cut football field. I listened to an elementary school, as heard from a distance. I could tell it was dismissal time, judging by the amount of shrieking and whistle-blowing taking place between cheers. I remembered sitting on our P.E. field back in Vermont, plucking warm handfuls of grass—the soft, spongy
variety, not the hypergreen, itchy stuff that felt like Astroturf in our Florida backyard. Both were good for making music. I could play a blade of grass like a flute. If I mentioned something like this to Dr. Calaban, she wouldn’t get it. To her, I was just another crazy patient, a page from one of her books. I had to talk to her in a way that made sense. I had to be careful not to reveal too much.

  The Glowing Pickle

  When I snuck in late to earth science the next morning, Thayer was already there, doodling away. The only seat left was the wobbly one. Ms. Armstrong was wasting time, taking attendance. She refused to mark me present.

  “There’s no excuse for being this late,” she said.

  No fair. I glanced at the periodic table of elements on the wall above Ms. Armstrong’s head, arranged in rows—oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so on. Something about the parade of invisible solids, liquids, and gases depressed me. They were always changing, while I was doomed to sit at my desk.

  We read about exploding stars and black holes, but it all seemed so distant. Even though I knew these books were giving scientific information, it felt like a fantasy to me. I didn’t think I could ever be part of the universe in our books.

  My neck became sore during class. When I rested my chin on the desk, Ms. Armstrong called it “sleeping” and yelled at me.

  Thayer tapped my shoulder.

  “Your shoelace is untied,” he whispered.

  Before I could stop him, he double-knotted my laces.

  “It’s safer that way.”

  His voice seemed extra soft.

  Even the kids from my neighborhood didn’t talk to me in class. I ignored him and chewed my fingers.

  After class, Ms. Armstrong pulled me aside.

  “We need to talk about your performance so far.” Her voice reminded me of a phone operator’s. “You’re a smart girl. But I think you can do better. I suspect you’ve been distracted from your work. It’s okay to talk about it. Nothing you tell me will go beyond this room.”

  I kept thinking about that phrase, “beyond this room.” There was so much hidden inside the room—the tennis ball that had socked the window like a comet, the missing pieces of her son’s photograph (a casualty of the P.E. incident, or so she believed) tucked inside my pencil box.