I lean my head against the chilly window just in time to watch the sun finish its descent. “A conversational restraining order.”
ARLENE IS, UNWITTINGLY, one hell of a saboteur. A few minutes after I issued Poncho Man’s restraining order, the old gal stopped by to get her purse. Which would have been fine, except she used my name. About a dozen times. Mim this, Mim that, even a couple How do you spell Mim agains, which I was just like, Really? Needless to say, after she returned to her seat, my case for silence crumbled.
“You a big reader, Mim?” asks Poncho Man, flipping the page of his book. “Food for the brain and the soul.”
The sun set a while ago; most passengers are asleep, but a few, like the idiot next to me, are reading with their overhead spotlights. It’s raining again, even harder than before, which makes for an unnerving ride. The windshield wipers on a Greyhound are hypnotic, completely different from those on a car or a truck—like sandpaper on tile.
“So delusional,” whispers Poncho Man. His voice trails off, hangs in the air like a feather. For the first time since my closing argument, I look in his direction. The book he’s reading is thin, the binding strung with a loose red yarn, frayed at the top and bottom of the spine.
“What did you say?” I whisper, still staring at the book.
He flips the cover closed, and I see the title: Individualism Old and New.
“It’s this philosopher,” he says, “John Dewey. The guy is really chappin’ my ass.”
It’s not the same book. It’s not the same book. It’s not the same book.
He holds the book toward me. “You interested? Happy to loan.”
Ignoring his offer, I turn to the window and search for the blurred landscape—but it’s nighttime now, too dark outside, too light inside. All I can see is my own face, the sharpened lines of my jutting features, my long dark hair. I am more opaque than ever.
I shut my eyes, and in the pure nothingness, Poncho Man’s book scrapes a vague childhood memory from the inner rim of my brain. Traveling through synapses and neurotransmitters, the memory is whisked into a delectable roux, now ready to serve: My mother is sitting in her yellow Victorian reading Dickens. I am a tender age, seven, maybe eight, walking around with a milk crate, pretending to buy groceries from our living room. “And how much for the generic pine nuts?” I ask in a feminine voice. “Those are on sale for eighty-two dollars,” I answer myself gruffly. Dad, sitting at his rolltop, assuming I hear nothing because of my age, peers over his Truman biography and frowns. “You’re not worried, Evie?” he asks. “About what, Barry?” says Mom. “I mean, look at her,” whispers Dad, closing his book. “She’s acting like a . . .” His voice trails off, but Mom gets the gist. “She has no siblings, Barry. What do you expect?” Dad again, his frown more pronounced, his whisper more intense: “This is exactly how it started with Iz. Voices and whatnot. Just like this.” Mom closes her book now. “Mary is nothing like Isabel.” My father opens his book again, buries his head in it. “Your lips to God’s ears.”
“Mim?” Poncho Man’s voice pulls me back to the present.
“What?”
He raises an eyebrow and half smiles, apparently amused. “You sort of went all . . . catatonic on me. You okay?”
I nod.
“You sure? I could . . . I dunno, maybe there’s a doctor on board, or something.” He twists in his seat, as if a man with a stethoscope dangling from his neck might happen to be sitting behind us.
“I said I’m fine.”
Poncho Man licks his thumb, leafs through his book. “Well good, because I was just getting to the good part. You’re not going to believe what Dewey says next.”
“I was just getting to the good part, Eve. Here, listen—‘Thought echo, voices heard arguing, voices heard commenting on one’s actions, delusions of control, thought withdrawal—’” My mother interrupts him. “What are you reading?” I hear the sound of Dad flipping to the front cover. “I got it from the library. It’s called Clinical Psychopathology.” I am fourteen now, pressing my ear against my parents’ bedroom door. “That thing is bloody ancient, Barry. Is that yarn? It’s falling apart at the binding.” Dad breathes heavily through his nostrils. “That doesn’t make it any less relevant, Evie. This guy who wrote it, Kurt Schneider, he’s brilliant. Could probably think circles around Makundi. See, look, he’s provided a way to differentiate between psychotic behavior and psychopathic behavior.” I lower my head to peek under the crack of their door. Mom’s ratty slippers shuffle across the room. “Psychopathic behavior? Jesus, Barry.” Dad sighs. “I’m just telling you what I saw this afternoon.” This afternoon, Erik-with-a-kay broke up with me at lunch. Later, when Dad picked me up, I noticed he was acting weird. “What you saw was our daughter upset over a boy,” says Mom. It’s quiet for a moment. And then—“Evie . . .” Dad’s voice is desperate, sad, soft. “She was asking herself questions, then answering them. Just like Isabel used to.”
“Okay, now I’m worried,” says Poncho Man.
My misplaced epiglottis flutters, then calms, then flutters again. I pull my travel-sized makeup remover from my bag and push past his knees.
I can wait no longer.
Walking down the center aisle, I hear the endless line of massive semis speeding by outside, kicking up giant bursts of rain. In the second to last row, Arlene is passed out on Jabba the Gut’s shoulder. He’s reading a Philip K. Dick novel, unfazed by his seatmate’s baby head.