Abi nibbled at his jelly donut. "Some days is worse," he confided.
Brain fog. You couldn't think straight or remember the simplest detail. It was like being diagnosed with presenile dementia forty years too soon. How did you explain such nuttiness to 'normal' people? Brain fog - what a stupid expression!
"Some days," he noted, "I can hardly think straight, I'm so screwed up." He cleared his throat. “Cold… always cold. Even in summer, sleep with two, wool covers.”
"What about the heebie-jeebies?" Abi’s face went blank. Sage raised a hand, palm down over the table and the fingers fluttered listlessly. "The jitters, shakes, the creeps…”
“Yeah.” The middle-aged man smiled sheepishly. “I go work Goodyear Tire, but brain go somewhere else.”
Sage nodded sympathetically. “Some days are definitely worse than others."
The endocrinologist initially started Sage on a regimen of seventy-five micrograms levothyroxine. The first week she was bushwhacked by panic attacks in the lobby of the Brandenberg Public Library; a few days later while climbing a short flight of stairs, she felt an erratic flurry of palpitations mimicking angina, then broke out in a cold sweat.
Dr. Balcewicz response was to increase dosage.
"Why are you giving me more medicine, if I don’t feel good?"
Dr. Balcewicz, a pear-shaped man with a florid complexion and bristly, salt-and-pepper moustache, grinned affably. "Your TSH levels are still much too high. The temporary unpleasantness will subside over time. Trust me."
What good was trust when a patient found herself in worse shape than before she sought medical intervention? At their next meeting Sage complained, "If you don't take me off this dog shit, I’m gonna go nuts."
“You aren’t giving the pills enough time to work properly.”
“What about desiccated animal hormone?” Sage learned about the old-school therapy on the internet.
"Wrong percentage of T3 versus T4," the older man in the clinical white jacket replied authoritatively. "What works for pigs and bovines is ineffective for humans… chemistry is all wrong."
"But I read where tons of people swear by the stuff."
"Mostly crackpots and older people," the doctor said, "who took the stuff a century ago, before there was any sensible alternative." Leaning forward, he patted her lightly on the shoulder. "Look, you're a reasonable kid. You want the best that modern medicine has to offer, not some outmoded, nineteenth century snake oil." Actually, Sage did want outmoded, nineteenth century quackery. Outdated, outmoded, poppycock, twaddle, quackery - what the hell did Sage care as long as it made her feel half-human again?
Dr. Balcewicz stared at the morose young woman seated on the opposite side of the desk. His pokerfaced expression never wavered. The impasse was broken only when the doctor reluctantly reached for his prescription pad and began scratching out a new order. "Levoxyl is a safe alternative to the generics." He pushed the script across the desk. "Let's see how you make out on this new medication." Before Sage could collect her addled thoughts, the endocrinologist was already racing out the door toward an adjacent examining room.
Levoxyl stabilized Sages illness but created a whole new set of disturbing side effects that Dr. Balcewicz blithely dismissed of with nonchalant humor.
Abi finished his donut and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. "What you take now?"
"A desiccated supplement made from pig thyroids.
“Doctor gipt you?”
She shook her head. “Most traditional MD's won't prescribe organics. They claim it’s voodoo medicine, so I gave doctor Balcewicz the bum’s rush and switched to a naturopath." Reaching into her purse Sage located a pen, scribbled some numbers on a clean napkin and handed it to him. "There's my telephone. Like I said, it’s an exclusive club and us thyroid freaks got to stick together.”
* * * * *
Prickly ash bark, sarsaparilla, oat seed, shizandra berry, ashwaganda and maca root.... Before leaving the community college parking lot, Sage fished about in the glove compartment of her Toyota. “Here try this.” She handed Abi a smallish, opaque bottle.
“What is?”
“An adrenal support herbal formula. I got a spare bottle at home. Just follow the directions.”
From a backpack Abi withdrew an inch-thick paperback with a lemony yellow cover. “Is goot, no?”
Sage glanced at the title. English Grammar for Dummies. “Yes, I’m sure it will help.”
“There, their, they’re… is difficult language, but I learn.”
“It’s hard enough,” Sage confirmed, “for people who were born in America.”
Abi retrieved the book and buried it back in the canvass bag. “Yesterday I went to library…read Chekhov, second best writer whole world.”
“What did you learn from the Russian?”
“Only write ordinary life.”
“What else?”
“Don’t waste words.”
Later that night, Abi dribbled ten drops of the rust-colored herbal solution into a tumbler of water and tossed down the bitter solution. Sage was seeing a naturopath. Maybe he would make an appointment with the holistic practitioner to discuss a non-pharmaceutical alternative. An hour after taking the herbal remedy, the Armenian already felt better, although he realized, full well, that the euphoric sense of well being was probably more wishful thinking. Still later that night as he lay under the covers, Abi felt warm. He removed a blanket - just one as a precautionary gesture. The heebie-jeebies weren't completely gone, but manageable. And his spirits lifted ever-so-slightly.
Maybe when the hormonal brain fog finality dissipated and an implacable universe of silent ‘k’s had been laid to rest, Abi Petrosyan, whose plane almost ended up at the bottom of the Caspian Sea and name meant father-king in an ancient tongue, would write the next contemporary American masterpiece.
back to Table of Contents
I & Thou
An Orthodox Jewish student moved into the freshman dormitory on the Sunday following Labor Day. Celeste and I watched as the odd looking creature accompanied by an equally exotic, extended family lugged his belongings up to the second floor landing, three doors down from our room. Even with the oppressive, Indian summer heat, all the women wore drab skirts that hung down well below their knees, their hair tied up in kerchiefs. The men folk favored black hats or yarmulkes, white shirts buttoned at the wrist and dark pants.
The new student – his name was Joel Shapiro - had a scraggily black beard and piles of kinky hair obliterating his ears. As if that wasn’t weird enough, he sported a pair of old-fashioned, wire-framed glasses with absurdly thick, coke-bottle lenses. Like some incongruous caricature displaced from the previous century, he lugged a Mackintosh computer into the room depositing it on a study desk before lumbering disjointedly back down stairs for more personal effects.
“The Yarmulke’s the only freshman with a room to himself,” Celeste grumbled. She dubbed him ‘the Yarmulke’ almost from the minute Joel arrived at school. Celeste and I roomed together. With a sarcastic, edgy personality, she drank too much but was tons of fun. Problem was, her humor could get out of hand, downright vitriolic at times, and she never knew when to back off.
A lot of girls gained weight when they went away to college. The ‘freshman fifteen’ – that’s what they called it. I had seen pictures of Celeste from her high school years when she was svelte and a real looker. But she had gained weight immoderately since then and, being petite, the surplus flesh had taken up permanent residence on her hips, thighs and mannish shoulders. The girl was still passably pretty but for how long that would last with all the boozing was questionable.
“The guy… he probably has religious or dietary restrictions,” I offered. The Jewish boy was wearing a black, felt hat now, which looked rather silly given the high humidity and endless parade of undergrads wearing sweatshirts with the college logo, Bermuda shorts or chic designer outfits.
“What I wouldn’t give for a private room!” C
eleste groaned.
*****
Friday evening the third week in October, Celeste staggered back to the dorm polluted out of her gourd. “Yarmulke at ten o’clock,” she sniggered, garbling her words. It was another of her acerbic jokes. If my roommate whispered, “Yarmulke at ten o’clock,” we gazed slightly to the left to see the hairy Jewish boy loping towards us with his awkward gait. Everybody laughed hilariously but, I always felt guilty afterwards, both for joining in the buffoonery and making Joel the butt of our infantile humor.
In the hallway three doors down, the Jewish boy was easing a key into the lock. He held a navy blue, felt pouch with a Star of David embroidered on the front in gold thread. A thick black book was tucked under his arm. Cracking the door, he disappeared into the room. “These religious Jews… what’s their take on birds and the bees?”
“Leave him alone, Celeste,” I hissed.
“Do you think he wears that foolish felt hat to bed when he makes love?” Celeste snickered idiotically. She was really blotto – sloppy, fall-down drunk. Staggering out the dorm room, she made her way to Joel’s room and pounded on the door. When it opened, the girl brushed passed him into the room, the door slamming shut with a resounding thud.
Half an hour passed.
I peeked out in the passageway. All was quiet. Not a sound in the hallway or any of the adjoining dorm rooms. Then the third door down creaked opened slowly and Joel stepped out in the corridor. He was still dressed formally with a dark jacket and his signature yarmulke. Long strands of curly hair hung down in back of his ears like tendrils. I remembered seeing such locks in artwork depicting Medieval Hassidic Jews. As he passed in the hallway Joel looked up and smiled – the gentlest expression of human affection. “Good evening,” he said softly and sauntered off down the hallway.
For a good five minutes after he disappeared, I couldn’t stop shaking.
Gathering my nerves, I shuffled down the hallway and cracked open the door to his room. The air reeked of vomit and sloe gin. Celeste was lying on the bed, fully clothed. A damp towel and washcloth were stretched over the back of a chair in the corner of the room. In a drunken stupor, Celeste moaned and rolled over on her stomach but never opened her eyes. A minute later she was snoring like a lumberjack. On the desk, a book lay open with the pages facing down – Martin Buber, I and Thou. Letting myself quietly out, I hurried back to my own room.
*****
Sunday, Celeste was too hung over to make more of a nuisance of herself than she already had the previous night and I kept my distance. “You smell like a goddamn garbage truck in late August,” I muttered around noontime. She hadn’t bothered to brush her teeth or bathe and the stench from dried vomit and rancid body odor was overpowering in the claustrophobically small dorm room.
Joel Shapiro never returned, his room locked up tight through the entire weekend. On Tuesday morning I anticipated seeing him in the French literature class that we shared, but he never showed up for class. Finally, in the late afternoon, I noticed the door three rooms down slightly ajar.
“Where’s Joel?” I sputtered in total disbelief when a tall undergrad sporting short-cropped hair stood leaning against the door jamb.
“Who are you looking for?” The Waspish youth was obscenely handsome with a strong jaw, wide cheekbones and ashen skin tones.
“The Jewish boy, Joel Shapiro... this is his room.”
The interloper’s face dropped and attitude turned rancorous. “Do I look Jewish?” There was no mistaking his tone or intent. Decked out in an IZOD sports shirt, baggy cargo shorts and boat shoes, the student smirking at me resembled a fashion plate straight out of GQ Magazine. “This is my room now.” Without any further elaboration, he slammed the door shut.
So what happened to Joel Shapiro?
Was he even still enrolled at the college? He never returned to the French Literature class. When I asked the professor regarding his whereabouts, he shrugged noncommittally. “I’m not at liberty to share confidential information … not even with family members, unless students grant permission.”
Perhaps the adjustment to college life proved too extreme.
Coeds ran about half naked in the late afternoon after classes, and in coed dorms girls scampered down the hallways en route to shower stalls with nothing more than a flimsy bath towel wrapped around their bodies.
I couldn’t imagine any of the straitlaced, priggish Jewish women who accompanied Joel on moving day coping with such libidinous chaos. Or maybe the boy from upstate New York simply got homesick, missed his religious family and friends. The free-spirited debauchery of girls like Celeste was too much for his straitlaced brain. He couldn’t fit in and Joel Shapiro went home where he belonged – belonged in both the allegorical and literal sense.
Regarding the interloper who slammed the door in my face, I had seen him earlier in the week on the quadrangle near the athletic center. A bunch of rowdy football jocks were tossing a Frisbee. The boy with the fancy shirt and cargo pants was racing after the spinning disc. So how did that arrogant twit rate a single room? Just as Celeste had groused about Joel’s privileged status, I felt a surge of jealousy tinged with contempt for the new arrival.
In the last meeting of the French lit class before Joel dropped off the edge of the known world, Professor Archambault asked, “What do you consider Guy de Maupassant’s, greatest work?”
Several students cited The Necklace. Another suggested Mademoiselle Fifi.
“Yes, you in the back row,” the professor pressed. “You said something.”
Joel Shapiro, wearing his signature fedora hat, had mumbled a weak offering. When he spoke again his papery thin voice never quite reached to the front of the lecture hall. “Speak up… I can’t hear you,” Professor Archambault barked.
“Boule de Suif,” Joel repeated.
“Really?” No one could be quite sure if the irascible professor was genuinely impressed or being facetious. “And how does ‘boule de suif’ translate.”
“Ball of fat.”
“Ball of fat…” The professor’s sarcastic tone dissipated altogether. He walked to the far end of the podium, turned his back abruptly on the class and stared at an empty chalkboard for the better part of a minute. “Why is Boule de Suif better than either of the two previously mentioned?”
“How the French prostitute behaves with the Prussian officer,” Joel explained, “offers complicated ethical issues the other stories lack.”
“You forgot to mention the other travelers.”
“When they had to show courage, each failed miserably,” Joel shot back.
“Failed where the fleshy prostitute succeeded?”
“Yes and no… as best she could under the circumstances,” Joel qualified.
Professor Archambault stared at the young man wearing the fedora hat and absurdly thick glasses with bewilderment. Then his harsh features dissolved in an appreciative grin.
Following class I waited outside the lecture hall until Joel emerged. “About that story, Boule de Suif… how could you learn so much?”
Joel stared at me momentarily with a blank expression. “De Maupassant was a very efficient writer. Everything a person needs to understand about the human condition… it’s all there in a handful of pages.” Averting his eyes, he directed his words at the top of his wingtip shoes. “You just need to listen with the third ear.”
“The third ear,” I repeated his strange observation.
“It’s a story about common decency and what happens to people when they lose courage and turn against each other.”
The lecture hall had finally emptied out and Professor Archambault, lugging a huge satchel full of notes and term papers, could be seen retreating down the hallway. “Perhaps we could study together sometime.”
“Yes, I don’t see why not,” he replied, shifting his backpack to the opposite shoulder. “By the way, how’s your roommate? She got sick in my room a few weeks back.”
“She was drunk.”
“Yes, I know.” Joel seemed utterly nonplussed.
I really didn’t want to waste the opportunity discussing Celeste’s lascivious proclivities. “Do other orthodox Jews read world literature?”
He fixed me with an earnest, bittersweet smile. “No, not as a rule, but even back to kindergarten school, I tended to color outside the lines.” Having shared that revelation, Joel nodded and walked away.
*****
“Where can I find this book?” The reference librarian glanced at the slip of paper I nudged across the counter and indicated a row of stacks. “Philosophy follows computer sciences in the one hundred grouping.”
I located Buber’s I and Thou with little trouble and settled in at a table toward the back of the room. The tattered volume with a badly frayed spine was all that remained - the meager legacy of one Joel Shapiro. I read from the preface:
A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an "I-Thou" relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general. The stranger gets instantaneously drawn into a mental or spiritual relationship. It is not necessary for the stranger to have any idea that he is being drawn into an "I-Thou" relationship for such relationships to arise.
Strange! I experienced something similar when Joel brushed past me in the hallway after Celeste’s drunken debacle. Yarmulke at ten o’clock! With her sarcastic pronouncements and boorish insolence, Celeste was the queen of I-It. She reduced the orthodox Jew to a farcical nonentity.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. What did Buber mean by such obscure pronouncements? For sure, the soft-spoken Jewish student would have offered an answer.
Solitude is the place of purification.
A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human is what this individual person has been created for.
Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.
I slammed the book shut with such force that several visitors to the library looked up indignantly. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a supple body sliding into the seat beside me. Sitting next to me was the brazen youth, who presently occupied Joel Shapiro’s dorm room. “After your roommate puked her guts out, Joel Shapiro left campus and spent the night at a motel.