Нед Виззини: It's Kind of a Funny Story

I couldn’t do it.

I mean, it was ridiculous. My line didn’t have anything to do with the real one. I didn’t understand—I was holding the tracing paper steady. I looked at my small hand. “Stay still,” I told it. I crumpled up the paper and tried again.

The line wasn’t right again. It didn’t have the swoop.

I crumpled up the paper and tried again.

This line was even worse than before. Manhattan looked square.

I tried again.

Oh boy, now it looked like a duck.

Crumple.

Now it looked like a turd, another word I picked up from Dad.

Crumple.

Now it looked like a piece of fruit.

It looked like everything but what it was supposed to look like: Manhattan. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t realize then that when you trace stuff you’re supposed to have a tracing table, lighted from below, and clamps to hold the paper straight, not a trembling four-year-old hand, so I just thought I was a failure. They always said on TV you could do anything you wanted, but here I was trying to do something and it wasn’t working. I would never be able to do it. I crumpled up the last piece of tracing paper and started sobbing, my head in my hands in my fort.

Mom heard me.

“Craig?”

“What? Go away.”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Don’t open the curtain! Don’t open it! I have things in here.”

“Why are you crying? What’s the matter?”

“I can’t do it.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing!”

“Tell Mommy, c’mon. I’m going to open the blanket—”

“No!”

I jumped at her face as she pulled the blanket aside, bringing it taut under the encyclopedias. Mom threw her hands up and held the books in place, saving both of us from getting clobbered. (A week later, she’d have Dad move the encyclopedias.) With her occupied, I ran across the room, streaking tears, wanting to get to the bathroom, to sit down on the toilet with the light off and splash hot water on my face. But Mom was too quick. She shoved the encyclopedias back and loped across the room, swooping me up in her thin arms with the elbow skin that you could pull down. I beat my palms against her.

“Craig! We do not hit Mommy!”

“I can’t do it I can’t do it I can’t do it!” I hit her.

“What?” She hugged me tight so I had no room to hit. “What can’t you do?”

“I can’t draw Manhattan! ”

“Huh?” Mom drew her face up and away from me, looked me in the eyes. “Is that what you were trying to do down there?”

I nodded, sniffled.

“You were trying to trace Manhattan with the tracing paper I bought you?”

“I can’t do it.”

“Craig, no one can.” She laughed. “You can’t just trace freehand. It’s impossible!”

“Then how do they make the maps?”

Mom paused.

“See? See? Someone can do it!”

“They have equipment, Craig. They’re grown-ups and they have special tools that they use.”

“Well I need those tools.”

“Craig.”

“Let’s buy them.”

“Honey.”

“Do they cost a lot of money?”

“Honey.”

Mom put me down on the sofa, which turned into a bed for her and Dad at night, and sat next to me. I wasn’t crying anymore. I wasn’t hitting anymore. My brain was all right back then; it didn’t get stuck in ruts.

“Craig,” she sighed, looked at me. “I have an idea. Instead of spending your time trying to trace maps of Manhattan, why don’t you make your own maps of imaginary places?”

And that was the closest I’ve ever come to an epiphany.

I could make up my own city. I could use my own streets. I could put a river where I wanted. I could put the ocean where I wanted. I could put the bridges where I wanted and I could put a big highway right across the middle of town, like Manhattan should have but didn’t. I could make my own subway system. I could make my own street names. I could have my own grid stretching off to the edges of the map. I smiled and hugged Mom.

She got me some thick paper—white construction paper. Later on I grew to prefer straight com-puter paper. I went back under my fort and turned the light on and started on my first map. And I did that for the next five years—whenever I was in class, I didn’t doodle, I drew maps. Hundreds of them. When I finished, I crumpled them; it was making them that was important. I did cities on the ocean, cities with two rivers meeting in the middle, cities with one big river that bent, cities with bridges, crazy interchanges, circles and boulevards. I made cities. That made me happy. That was my Anchor. And until I turned nine and turned to video games, that was what I wanted to be when I grew up: a mapmaker.

“I wanted to make maps,” I tell Dr. Minerva.

“Maps of what?”

“Cities.”

“On the computer?”

“No, by hand.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think there’s much of a market for that.” I smile.

“Maybe not, maybe so.”

What a shrink answer.

“I can’t take maybes. I have to make money.”

“We’re going to talk more about money next time. We have to stop now.”

I look at the clock. 7:03. She always gives an extra three minutes.

“What are you going to do when you leave, Craig?”

She always asks that. What am I always going to do? I’m going to go home and freak out. I’m going to sit with my family and try not to talk about myself and what’s wrong. I’m going to try and eat. Then I’m going to try and sleep. I dread it. I can’t eat and I can’t sleep. I’m not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?

Hey, soldier, what’s the matter?

I can’t sleep and I can’t eat, sir!

How about I pump you full of lead, soldier, would that get you motivated?

Can’t say, sir! I’d probably still be unable to sleep or eat, just a little bit heavier from the lead.

Get up there and fight, soldier! The enemy is there!

The enemy is too strong. I can’t fight them. They’re too smart.

You’re smart too, soldier.

Not smart enough.

So you’re just going to give up?

That’s the plan.

“I’m going to just keep at it,” I tell Dr. Minerva. “That’s all I can do. I’ll keep at it and hope it gets better.”

“Are you taking your medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Are you seeing Dr. Barney?”

Dr. Barney is the psychopharmacologist. He’s the one who prescribes me meds and sends me to people like Dr. Minerva. He’s a trip in his own way, a little fat Santa with rings embedded in his fingers.

“Yes, later in the week.”

“You know to do what he says.”

Yes, Doctor. I’ll do what you say. I’ll do what you all say.

“Here,” I hand Dr. Minerva the check from my mom.

My family shouldn’t have to put up with me. They’re good people, solid, happy. Sometimes when I’m with them I think I’m on television.

We live in an apartment—a much better one than the Manhattan one, but still not good enough, not something to be proud of—in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a big fat blob with its own ugly shape across from Manhattan; it looks like Jabba the Hutt counting his money. Its bridges connect to Manhattan and it’s split up by canals and creeks—filthy green streaks of water that remind you that it used to be a swamp. There are brownstones—limestone and maroon houses that stand like fence posts and always have Indian men refurbishing them—and everybody goes crazy for those, pays millions of dollars to live in them. But other than that, it’s a pretty statusless place. It’s a shame we moved out of Manhattan, where all the real people with power live.