THE PILL
He
jangled the coins in his pocket as he stepped along, grinning, weaving between
and around other pedestrians on the sidewalk.
The sun beamed down. He was
happy. He had nowhere in particular to go
in such a hurry. His pace was nothing
more than an expression of his mood. He
was walking in the sunshine just for the sake of walking. He was, in fact, going nowhere, since he had
no idea of going anywhere when he stepped out.
He was just walking.
Why did he feel so good? He had been deeply depressed for so long that
he hadn’t gone out of doors in months.
No sun had shone on him. Then one
day he dialed 911 and told the dispatcher he was going to kill himself and
could she send help. She did. The police came and took him to a hospital
where he met a psychiatrist who prescribed a certain drug. He took that drug like it was the last thing
he might ever do in this life. He did it
for a month. Finally, he woke up this
morning feeling like he needed sunshine, like he needed to go out of doors and
breathe the air. So he put on his
trousers, slipped his feet without socks on into a pair of tan Hushpuppies, threw
some water into his face and over his hair, brushed the tangles out of his hair
by pulling the brush forward straight through it three times, so that his hair
lay down wet on his scalp and hung over his forehead into his eyes, put a light
windbreaker on over his much slept-in tee-shirt, and stepped through his front
door, pausing to take a breath. He was outside. It took altogether seven minutes from the
time he woke up to his stepping onto the stoop of his apartment. Shoving his hand in his pocket, he found that
there were a bunch of coins there, which he hadn’t at all remembered. He took them out, and opening his hand he saw
quarters and pennies and dimes and nickels.
He didn’t bother to count them up but put them back and jangled
them. Then he walked down the steps,
made a right turn onto the sidewalk, and just kept on going until he came to
the avenue, filled already with pedestrians going about their mornings. He made another right and joined the flow,
but as he walked he felt the sunshine in his brain, and it made him happy, and
with no plan other than to be happy, he walked, and walked faster, then faster,
until he had to weave between and around the people going about their mornings so
much more purposively.
He jangled the coins. He even hummed. If he knew the words to a song, he would
actually have begun to sing, but he never learned the words to any popular
songs. So he hummed. And as he walked and jangled and hummed, he
paid no attention to where he was going, so that when he found himself standing
at the bottom of the stairs to the el, he looked up to the platform and tracks
overhead and decided to go up. He had no
ticket, of course, to board a train, and he didn’t have enough with the coins
in his pocket to buy a ticket, even to the next stop, but that didn’t
matter. He was happy, and he wanted to
climb up onto the platform and watch a train come in. He remembered what it felt like when he stood
beside the tracks and a train came into the station. The wind, and the smells, and the sudden
darkening, and the screech of the train’s breaks, and the doors sliding open,
and the people stepping off amid those who were stepping in—he wanted to
experience it all again, to feel it. The
idea of it made him happy. So he climbed
up the stairs.
He stood beside the tracks and looked down
them to see if a train was coming, but there was nothing to be seen but
tracks. He looked around and saw that he
was quite alone. There was no one
sitting on the benches, even, anticipating a long wait. In the little ticket-seller’s booth, there
was a lone woman who was reading a magazine and was totally unaware of
him. He spun around and around and looked
all ways, and there was no one. No train
was going to come anytime soon, and for a moment he felt let down, and a sudden
blackness swam over his brain, like a great thunder cloud. Almost, he cried. But then, his hand still in his pocket, he
almost inadvertently gave the coins there a shake, and he felt and heard them
at the same moment, and instantly the cloud disappeared and the sun once more
filled him, and he smiled.
On the sidewalk again, he was faced with
his first obvious choice—which way should he go? Left?
Back in the direction from which he came? Or Right?
Onward, into he knew not what adventures? Adventures? he asked himself. People don’t have adventures walking from
here to there. But then there was no
“there” for him. He could follow his
nose to where ever it took him. He
stood, thinking these things, already knowing he wouldn’t return to his
apartment, but unsure about wandering with no destination. But why not?
The question arose in him like a force, propelling him, urging him,
almost turning his body for him and throwing his leg out in front of him. At that moment he noticed he had no socks
on. “Huh,” he muttered. “Why did I do that?” And it was then that he became aware of how
uncomfortable his feet felt in those shoes.
But he was already walking in the direction his impulse had pushed him,
so he just let himself go and tried to forget the feel of his bare feet in his
shoes.
Out from under the shade of the el on one
side, and the buildings beside it on the other, he came again into the
sunshine. It radiated him. More, it radiated in him. He felt himself glowing. He felt for a moment like a person with a
purpose, and it was precisely the feeling of futility and purposelessness that
he had succumbed to for all those months, those months of darkness in his
apartment, those months in which he lay like a dead person for days on
end. He had been taking the pill the
psychiatrist had prescribed for what seemed forever and nothing changed, until
now. He took the pill every day because
the psychiatrist said it would help him, and he wanted to be helped. And now he felt purposive again. He walked like he had somewhere to go, he
walked deliberately, with confidence. He
walked in the sunshine, he strode, almost, in the sunshine. He didn’t care that he had nowhere to
go.
During the time of darkness, he had lost
his job, he had not seen another person, he had not listened to the radio, or
turned on his television, or picked up a newspaper, or booted up his laptop, or
answered his cell phone or his land line, or poured himself a glass of orange
juice even. He did pay his rent. He did shop for groceries when he became
desperately hungry, though he ate only rarely, and what groceries he bought
lasted a long time. When he reached that
point when he was certain he could not endure another day, when killing himself
seemed like the only reasonable thing to do, he dialed 911. Now he was walking in the sunshine and
feeling once again like his life had purpose.
And then he stopped short, inertia pushing his shoulders forward, so
that he bent almost in half. “It’s the
pill,” he said out loud. “It’s because
of the pill!” He had stopped on the
sidewalk and had spoken out loud. If anybody
had been near, he would have seemed utterly mad, looking as he did, scrawny as
he had become, talking to himself in such tones.
He closed his eyes, standing on the
sidewalk in the sun. He said again,
“It’s the pill!” For a long time he
stood. He noticed after a while that
there were no trees on this block he had turned on when leaving the el. That’s why the block was so sunny, and it was
the sunshine that enticed him to come down it.
He thought about the chance occurrences that brought him here. For a moment he reached back to the darkness,
to the hospital, to the pill, and to this morning and how he felt when he woke
up, and then to all the blocks he walked and all the spontaneous,
impulse-driven acts that led to his being precisely here. Here and this moment. “What is it about this moment? About here?”
He looked around. It was an
ordinary block, except it had no trees. The
homes were typical city homes, all with the same stoops, the same fronts, the
same back yards. “What?” he said to
himself. “What?” He turned round and round where he stood and
could see nothing that would answer his question. But the sun still beamed on him, and he still
felt the purposiveness that made him glow.
So, uncertainly, but with no lack of energy, he stepped forward and
continued to walk.
But now he began to pay attention to
everything around him. He noticed the
cars parked at the curb. He noticed the
way people ornamented the fronts of their homes and their stoops to make them
their own. He noticed when he passed a
house that had its sidewalk windows open that he could hear music. In front of that house the car at the curb
was bright red. It occurred to him that
the music and the redness of the car were expressions of happiness, and that
here, in this house, someone was really happy.
He listened to the music, his head cocked to one side. And then he walked, paying now special attention
to signs of happiness. Here on the stoop
of this house a big pot of petunias glowed in the sun. And just then, the door opened and a woman
stepped onto the stoop with a watering pot and emptied it on the flowers. She wore an apron and hummed. She had black hair, fair skin, and was older
than him. She looked at him when she
emptied the water out and said, “Hello!”
“Hello,” he replied, and smiled.
She smiled back, turned and closed the door behind her. He turned and continued down the sidewalk until
he came to the corner.
On the block ahead there were trees, and the sidewalk there
was shady. To his left, the block was sunnier
and crowded with pedestrians, and it led back to the el. To his right, the block was less crowded, but
this way led, he knew, to neighborhoods he shouldn’t walk through. He was glad he had begun to pay attention to
where he was. He made a left, crossed
the street he had come down, and then continued on into the flow of people. He was heading back, now. Soon he would reach the el, and he knew where
he would go from there. Back to his
apartment. Back to the pill. To the stuffiness. He smiled at people as they passed by
him. He was filled with the sense of
inevitability. With the feeling of being
both in the open air and having no control over the smile on his face. As though the coming hours were already
determined and he was just taking the steps.
He smiled at a woman holding her little boy’s hand as he passed them. He sniffed at the aroma of bread and other baked
things as he passed the opened door of the bakery. He closed his eyes for the goodness of it,
then he looked up at the blue sky. He
had no control over anything, no will in the matter. He was going home. He jangled the coins in his pocket and smiled
at the faces of people he crossed. His
feet were rubbed raw in his shoes, but it didn’t matter. Jangle.
Jangle.
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