But he did not.
“Mim,” said my father, waving me over.
Clearly, Dad had no respect for murdered/stuffed bears. Reluctantly, I pulled myself away from the terrifying taxidermy and sat in the chair between Mom and Dad.
“You’re okay with being here, right?” said Dad.
I nodded. There was, after all, a bear.
Mom put her arm around me. “If you’re uncomfortable with any of Dr. Makundi’s questions, just say the word, okay? We can leave whenever you want.”
Dad, thinking I couldn’t see him, rolled his eyes. (This eye roll, combined with a textbook nostril flare, would become his trademark, a look that would haunt me well into my teen years.) “It might be tough sometimes,” he said. “But you’re tough, right? My tough girl. You’ll answer whatever the doctor asks, won’t you tough girl?”
I nodded, because whatever, there was a fucking bear right there.
Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase here, Iz, as a slew of doctor visits doesn’t exactly make for stimulating reading. Dr. Makundi, as it turned out, was more than a decent doctor. He was a decent man. He was short and round and always wore a bow tie. He was the only East Indian I’ve ever encountered who had red hair. Like, Weasley red. In fact, he used to joke that he was Irish-in-hiding. (“My name is even camouflaged . . . MAC-oondi,” he’d say. And then laugh, effing heartily.) He let me talk when I needed to talk, and he talked when I needed to listen. He even played Elvis in the background without my having to ask. Over the next four years, Makundi and I took our time “getting to the root,” as he called it. His methods went like this: wait, talk, think, watch, listen. Sitting with him required patience and a certain bold individuality. I had plenty of both, so it worked. Makundi had his own practice, which I know doesn’t really say much these days, but he really did it up old-school. He wasn’t tied down to any one notion of popular treatment, or pulled hither and thither by powerful drug companies. He played games and told stories because as he put it, “Life is more fictional than fiction.” He did things his way. And that was good enough for me. And that was good enough for Mom.
Dad was unconvinced.
It started with a smart man named Schneider who wrote a smart book, which helped a lot of people. Dad read this book and joined the ranks. Now, joining the ranks can be a good thing. (Take NATO, for example. Or cage-free eggs.) But joining the ranks can also be a not-so-good thing. (Take the Nazi Party for example. Or the rise of the McNugget.) Dad bought into the notion that there was One Right Way to solve a problem. Or rather, to solve my problem. And guess who wasn’t solving my problem correctly? (Hint: he owned a bear.)
At the beginning of what turned out to be our final session—before Dr. Makundi even had a chance to get to the branch, much less the root—Dad stepped in. “We need to talk,” he said. And just like some angsty, one-sided breakup, my father explained to affable Dr. Makundi all the ways the good doctor had let us down.
. . . Schneider this and Schneider that . . .
. . . Makundi’s methods, while commendable, simply weren’t relevant in this day and age . . .
“What day and age is that, Mr. Malone?” asked Makundi.
“The day and age of new discoveries in the world of medicine,” answered my father.
Dr. Makundi sat on the other side of his rickety wooden desk, peering over the top of his glasses, listening to my father expound secondhand thoughts. I remember watching his face as Dad talked, thinking, in a way, the man was a product of his own theories, more fictional than fiction. Countless hours of sessions we’d spent focusing on the facts, trying to reconcile reality with whatever unreality was in my own head. But if Dr. Makundi, the Irish-Indian-bow-tie-wearing-grizzly-loving doctor himself had taught me anything, it was that our world could be astoundingly unrealistic.
The good doctor removed his glasses and spoke quietly. “Symptoms of psychosis, Mr. Malone, are not themselves psychoses. As I’m sure Schneider himself would agree, were he here today. Alas, he is not. Most of his work, as I’m sure you know, was published in the twenties.” He winked at me, looked back at my dad. “The day and age of new discoveries in the world of medicine, was it not?”
Two weeks later, I walked into a new doctor’s office, one whose methods better fell in line with those of my father. One whose life had no fiction, no bow ties, no Elvis.
He didn’t even have a bear.
(If I were writing a book, Iz, this would be my chapter break. I mean, right? He didn’t even have a bear. Boom, muthafuckas.)
So . . . I’m sick. Supposedly. And Dad is worried. Obviously. I think he’s afraid of history repeating itself in the worst way.
The reason I’m bringing all this up now is because I just spent the better part of the morning staring down the business end of a foot-long hunting knife, which in and of itself is terrifying. Only here’s the thing—if I’m honest with myself, the knife wasn’t what I was afraid of. I was afraid of the person holding the knife. Shadow Kid.
I don’t know if you read comics, but if you do, you’ll notice there usually isn’t much that separates the villain from the hero. Lonely outcasts, masked identities, troubled childhoods, misunderstood by all—very often, there’s a pivotal scene toward the end (usually during a massive thunderstorm) wherein the villain tries to convince the hero that they’re the same.
This morning, Shadow Kid had me cornered, and all I could see were the great glassy eyes of a grizzly bear. Before long, the bear’s eyes were my own, and I was convinced we were the same. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but it sure felt like those thunderstorms from the comics.