May We Be Forgiven Part 28

"She's my dog," George says.

"I've been taking care of her," I say. "We're bonded."

"I could be the punishing parent and say Tessie sleeps with neither of you, but I won't. George gets the dog tonight, because you have the dog all the other nights."

"I win," George says, yanking the leash from Rosenblatt's hand.

I am escorted through a back door, out into the cold night, and taken on a shortcut back to my room. I am buzzed through doors, led through double-bolted locked areas, wondering what happens if, G.o.d forbid, I need to get out in the night. "I know what you're thinking," Rosenblatt says. "Don't worry, they're only locked in one direction, you can exit from your side."

At the door to my room Rosenblatt says, "We're very glad you're here. It's a good thing." And I have the feeling he's going to hug me.

"All right, then, see you tomorrow," I say, and quickly dart into the room and close the door. I prop the chair under the doork.n.o.b; not only can I not get out, but no one can come in.

The sight of Tessie's bag on the luggage rack next to mine makes me aware of how alone I am. Can I fall asleep without the dog, without TV, with nothing to distract me from this nightmare? I unlock the safe, take out my medication, read the directions, realizing that I forgot to take the dinner pills with dinner and hoping it's all right if I take them now, along with the night pills. I swallow eight various capsules and tablets, put on my pajamas, get into bed, and wait.

The room makes the h.e.l.lo Kitty room at the B&B look like a f.u.c.king Four Seasons. I find myself actually missing the hamster, craving the black beady eyes, the unrelenting squeak of his wheel. All I've got is cinderblock silence.

To quiet my thoughts, I think of Nixon, his love of bowling, his favorite candy, Skittles, his approach to life: "A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits." And, "I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction." "I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get."

I think of my book and what I want to do with it next. I think of my mother crawling like a roach, of George, imagining him coming to the nurses' station at night-in enormous one-piece footed pajamas, saying, "Want milk."

"The kitchen is closed, go back to bed."

"I want milk!"

And the nonplussed nurse pushes the b.u.t.ton under the counter, and there are large men coming from every side, with batons and a Taser gun, and they zap him. George crashes to the floor and is taken back to bed riding on what looks like a luggage cart.

I hear what sounds like a thousand feet running and crashing into a wall and realize that my room is next to an ice machine and it's just dumped a load into the bin.

I begin to panic, to feel there is no air in this place. I obsess about what's behind the blue velvet curtains. I peel them back with one urgent yank. Worse than nothing, there is an ugly cinderblock wall. I search for a window and find only a tiny vent in the bathroom. Pressing close to it, I suck up air, convinced that there is something poisonous about this place and that I am about to die. I hurry back to the lockbox and break out my supply of Ambien as though it's the antidote. I almost never take a sleeping pill, but tonight I take two, suck up a few more breaths from the vent, and then force myself to lie back down in the bed.

An enormous banging wakes me up. The chair tucked up and under the doork.n.o.b is moving, jumping, and I hear a m.u.f.fled voice: "Are you awake? Are you all right?"

It takes more than a moment to get my mouth working. "Arhggymmby," I call out and the chair stops moving.

"You missed breakfast," the voice says-it's Rosenblatt.

"Onana.s.shchclllp," which I think is me saying I overslept.

"Can you be ready in twenty minutes?"

"Yemmmina." I take myself into the bathroom, feeling like now I know what it would be like to live two hundred and fifty years, and take a cold shower, talking aloud to myself, carefully enunciating my words. Twenty minutes later, I am dressed, sitting on the chair that I had jammed in front of the door, eating the protein bar from the basket, and wondering what the day will bring.

"You scared the c.r.a.p out of me," Rosenblatt says when he comes knocking for the second time. "I thought maybe you killed yourself."

"That would be too easy," I say. "I couldn't sleep, I missed the dog, I took a giant sleeping pill."

"Guess it worked. How about some coffee?"

"Please," I say.

I am given a large cup of coffee, and then Rosenblatt says, "We'd better get on with it. George is working with the coach right now, and I've got something to show you."

We go to a conference room where a machine, a pair of wired goggles, and a screen have been set up. "We ask you to put the goggles on-they simply track eye movement," Rosenblatt says. "And on this screen a series of words will come up." He hands me a little clicker that is wired to the same machine as the goggles. "We'd like you to click this when a word resonates for you in the context of your relationship to your brother. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

The first word comes up. "Flower." I click.

"Did you mean to click?" Rosenblatt asks.

"I did, George loves flowers."

The second word, "Benign." No click.

"Sympathetic." My finger is at rest.

"Wrath." Click.

"Antagonism." Click. Click.

"Did you mean to click twice?"

"I don't know."

"Hostility." "Spite." "Rancor." Click, click, click.

"Benevolent." Trigger-happy, I almost click.

"Gentle." I rest, take a breath.

"Openhearted." My fingers are numb from inaction.

"Wound." "Annihilate." "Bully." This seems too obvious: click, click, click.

"Attached." Click.

The screen goes off.

"Are you familiar with intermittent explosive disorder-IED?" Rosenblatt asks.

"Sounds like bowel trouble," I say.

"It's often described as 'partial insanity.' It's more common than you think, the inability to resist the aggressive impulse, extreme expression of anger, uncontrollable rage. That's what I'm thinking is at play here."

Why am I waiting for him to say "devil's work"?

Rosenblatt goes on. "In a situation like this, it's clearly not one thing, but many-chemistry, stress, drugs, mood, and other mental instability. We're going for a multifaceted diagnosis and a prolonged treatment approach."

"Are you going to give him electroshock?"

"No, but I personally think he may be a candidate for some of our newer psychosurgical techniques, such as gamma knife irradiation or, more likely, deep brain stimulation. We implant something like a pacemaker in the brain-drill a hole, place three leads, implant a battery-powered neurostimulator, calibrate the stimulation. It's not without side effects-some decline in executive function-and of course we're aware of what the court might say if we present your brother as having agreed to undergo experimental brain surgery."

I'm shocked by what he's saying. I thought they might have something weird up their sleeves, but the old ice pick in the melon ball had never occurred to me. "So what you're saying is something akin to a lobotomy?"

"I wouldn't call it that, but it does fall within the same rubric."

"And with the courts, do you think having brain surgery is a plus or a minus?"

"It certainly says we took an aggressive approach. I'd say it's a plus."

"And what does George say?"

"He doesn't know it yet; no one does. I haven't even told Gerwin. I'm doing some research, and then I'll make my case."

"Would you have psychosurgery?" I ask, knowing I never would.

"In a heartbeat," he says, "no pun intended. I wouldn't even mind performing it on myself."

"Interesting," I say, and that's an understatement. f.u.c.king crazy, is what I'm thinking. "Okay, so what else is on the docket, and how's Tessie?"

"Good. She had breakfast in the kitchen and has gone out for a walk. Our plan is to have you and George do some structured play, geared towards bonding and team building."

"Like what?"

"Fun stuff."

I'm suspicious. George comes in from his morning session, stinking of sweat, his clothes plastered onto his body.

"How are you?" I ask.

"Fantastic," he says.

"Glad to hear it," Gerwin says, following him into the room, carrying what looks like a cardboard treasure box. "So today I thought we'd play some games."

George's eyes brighten, "Risk? Monopoly? Trivial Pursuit? Mafia? As kids we played murderball: you throw the big red rubber ball as hard as you can right at someone's face and you murder them."

I can still remember the sting of the ball. "You weren't supposed to aim for the face."

"Let's start with a balloon," Gerwin says, pulling a limp yellow balloon from his pocket, stretching it a couple of times, and blowing it up.

"I'm not exactly the playful type," I say, dreading whatever is coming next.

"I can a.s.sure you we know that and have taken it into consideration," Gerwin says, tying a knot in the end of the balloon. "I would now like the two of you to stand face to face."

We dutifully do.

"I am going to place this balloon between you," Gerwin says, fitting the balloon into the s.p.a.ce between our bodies. The balloon slowly falls to the floor. "Let's try again. Can the two of you move closer, more nose to nose?"

George steps closer; reflexively, I step back-he's out of focus. George steps closer again, and again I step back-like a dance.

"Ahh," Gerwin says.

"The fact is, I can't see him so close up, he becomes a big blur."

"Perhaps focus on a point beyond George," Gerwin suggests.

I do. And we stand with the balloon lodged between us, and I feel George's hot breath on my face, I smell his sweat.

"Are you bathing regularly?"

"I think so," he says, as though he doesn't know.

"Enough," Gerwin says, and we are quiet.

"The goal of this game is for the two of you, working together, to move the balloon from here to there"-he points to the far side of the room-"without letting the balloon touch the floor. Capisce?"

"Capisce," George says, and he starts to walk south, towards the far wall. I take a couple of sideways steps to catch up with him. The balloon slides from our sternums to our diaphragms.

"Should we make a plan?" I ask George. "Do you want to call out each step before you go?"

"Step. Step. Step."

We make good progress, and then George seems distracted and heading not straight across the room but towards me. "We're going more north-we need to head south," he says. The balloon slips lower, we're about to lose it, George knees me in the groin-to push the balloon up. I double over and the balloon falls farther still.

"Can't you do one thing right?" George asks.

I don't answer. I wriggle one thigh and then the other, pressing the balloon against George's body, working the balloon up higher, I get it from his knees up to his crotch.

"Your turn," I say.

"Step. Step. Step."

We do it, we get the balloon across the room. "Yes!" I say, giving George a high-five. "Yes!" It is only when we are safe on the other side that it occurs to me that perhaps there are people who don't make it to the other side-not making it wasn't something I thought of as an option.

"You may pick a prize," Gerwin says, holding the treasure chest. "One per customer."

I stick my hand in and pull out a paper glider, similar to the ones I used to get as a child for being good at the dentist's office. George gets a sheriff's badge-with a sharp pin, so they make him switch it for something else, and he picks a rubber snake.

"Our next game is..." Gerwin starts, and as he's saying it, George jumps on the yellow balloon, popping it. Rosenblatt swoops down and picks up the shards of balloon, and Gerwin repeats, "Our next game is..." And so it goes: we play game after game, collecting prize after prize. And then Gerwin brings out the hand puppets.

I put one on and turn to George. "I am not a crook," I say.

George puts one on and aims it at himself: "Good night and good luck." He slips a puppet onto his other hand. "Thank you, Edward R. Murrow."

"No, thank you, Mr. Cronkite. How about we go over to Toots Shor's and get ourselves a steak."

"Let's start this somewhere else," Gerwin says.