Paranoia
by Ruth Douillette
I was reading in bed, a nightly ritual I'd continued from childhood. My kids knew if they plopped down beside me for a chat, I'd poke a bookmark between the pages, drop the book to the floor and listen well past their bedtimes — and mine.
When the phone rang at ten-thirty p.m. I knew it would be Jesse, my oldest. No one else ever called that late.
"I don't know if I should go in the hospital or not." No hello, no small talk.
I felt Jesse's weight settle on the bed beside me. The cat stretched along my legs looked up, ears back, as if she sensed his presence. I dropped my book to the floor.
"For what?" I asked.
"It's what I told you yesterday." He had told me his paranoia was back.
"What's happening?"
"I'm scared. I feel like the whole place is after me."
"Whole place" meant the veterans shelter where he lived. Two months into sobriety, he had been working the Narcotics Anonymous program there.
"I think it's going to work this time," he'd told me only two weeks ago, his voice so full of hope that my heart hurt.
"I think so, too," I'd answered. Why remind him how often he'd said that? Why think about it? Good things do happen. We both believe this. But it's becoming harder to hold on to optimism; it's like grabbing a bar of soap in the shower. The tighter you hold it, the more likely it is to slip out of your hands and land with a thud on the bottom of the tub. He's been full of hope before, only to deflate and fly aimlessly like a punctured balloon. He falls to the earth, a crumpled shell. Then with a breath of determination he fills again, reaches for help, gets his leaks patched, and floats once more.
Who am I to deny him hope? But in bleak moments I think that if Jesse's mental illness doesn't get him, his cocaine addiction will.
"They're bumping me, elbowing me, telling me to get out. They don't want me here," he continues. "I don't feel safe here."
"Whose phone are you using?" I'm trying to show him he trusted someone enough to borrow his phone, someone cared enough to lend it.
"Some guy's. He can probably hear everything I'm saying. I don't want this to get out."
His voice is calm, as if he's telling me he's tired of the rain. But there is a subtle dissonance between his tone and his words.
"Jesse, what you're thinking is just in your mind. You know it's not real, don't
you?"
Sometimes, for relapses of paranoia — the fleeting kind that breaks through chinks in his medication — my logic works.
"It feels real, but I know it isn't," he'll say. "I can ignore it."
But this time, it doesn't. "The same thing that happened in the Navy is happening now," he says.
"But you know that wasn't real. It was your schizophrenia," I insist.
"I think it was real," he says now. His weight is heavy on the bed.
Jesse begins to say, "I can't hear you. You're breaking up." I fling the sheet off my legs, startling the cat. I pace to new locations, calling his name.
He hangs up.
I sit for a minute. I try to feel something. I'm empty — no anger, hurt, worry or wrenching anxiety —nothing. I hated those feelings for so many years, but now I hate not feeling them. Does it mean I don't care? That I've given up?
I haven't given up. I won't. I do care. My feelings are numb from overuse, but this is my son. I care.
I dial the operator who helps me find the number to Jesse's veterans home. He's stayed in so many, their names all permutations of "veteran," "home" and "shelter." I've forgotten the name of this one, and she reads names that include the word "veteran". I recognize his, "That's it," I say. I call the number.
A man answers.
"I can neither confirm nor deny he's here," he says.
I'm used to talking around the privacy laws. This man tells me there is no counselor available. When I hint that Jesse is not doing well emotionally, he contacts the floor supervisor.
The floor supervisor has an accent. When I ask his name, he gives only his first. I ask him to repeat it before I understand. I suspect he has risen through the ranks to handle the supervision. I hesitate to reveal much to him.
He looks up Jesse on a computer — I need to spell his name twice — then says, "He's not here. There's no record of him."
My mind bounces like the ball in a pinball machine. I flip the handle hard, not willing to let it drop into the slot that says, "Jesse's lying again."
I fade into sleep wondering if Jesse is now one of the city's homeless, keeping dry with others like him under a bridge. This makes me sad, but it's better than feeling nothing. I try not to picture him, cold and afraid.
I dream that I'm at school trying to stop eighth graders from running down the corridor. They plow through the younger students like they don't see them, pushing them out of the way. I stand still in front of a boy taller than I, and block his passage. He's annoyed when I tell him to go back and walk. I know he's thinking of testing my authority as a teacher, but he does what I ask. I go into my own classroom to find that another teacher has turned on my TV and is fast-forwarding a video at top volume. None of my students seem to care.
"Can't anyone fix that?" I yell. "Turn it down."
No one does. I think it's broken.
Ruth Douillette is a middle-school teacher in Massachusetts where she has encouraged young writers for over thirty-three years. She writes profiles and features for a local paper and appears as a regular guest on "Around the Table," a local cable talk show. Her work has been published in the Christian Science Monitor and Under Our Skin, an anthology about breast cancer. Through her writing, Ruth would like to generate greater understanding and support for the mentally ill.