Нед Виззини - It's Kind of a Funny Story

“No. What? What are you talking about?” He holds up his hands, sits down. “You mean me?”

Joanie scoffs and announces: “This is free-period arts recreational therapy, for all you latecomers!” Humble points at me and Noelle, making a little shame on you gesture. “That means you can draw whatever you feel like. It’s a great chance to explore your creativity and find out what you like to do for leisure! Leisure is very important!”

Joanie comes up behind me when she’s done announcing: “You’re new. Hi, my name is Joanie. I’m the recreation director.”

“Craig,” I shake her hand.

“You want pencil and paper, Craig?”

“No. I don’t have anything to do. I can’t draw.”

“Sure you can. It doesn’t have to be representative. You can do abstract. Do you want crayons?”

“No.” God, it’s so embarrassing. Being asked if you want crayons.

“How about paints?”

“I told you, I can’t draw.”

“Paints are for painting, not drawing.”

“Well, I can’t do that either.”

“What about markers?”

“No.”

“Everyone?” Joanie turns to the room. “Our new guest, Craig, has what we call an artistic block. He doesn’t have anything to draw!”

“That’s too bad, buddy!” Armelio yells from his table. “You want to play cards?”

“Armelio, no cards in here. Now, can anyone give Craig something he can draw?”

“Fish!” Bobby yells out. “Fish are easy.”

“Pills,” Johnny says.

“Johnny,” Joanie admonishes. “We do not draw pills.”

“Salad,” says Ebony.

“She wants you to draw it, but she sure as hell can’t eat it,” Humble guffaws.

“Mister Koper! That’s it. Please leave the room.”

“Ohh-hhhhhh,” everybody says.

“That’s right!” Ebony calls. She makes the umpire gesture. “You’re outta here!”

“Fine,” Humble stands up. “Whatever. Blame me. Blame the guy who has total respect for everybody else.” He gathers his things, which is nothing, and steps out of the activity lounge. “You’re all a bunch of yuppies!”

I watch him go.

“You can draw a cat!” the guy who’s afraid of gravity says. “I used to have one. It died.”

“Rolling pin,” the bearded man says. It’s the first words I’ve heard him say since I saw him in the dining room on my way in. He still rocks and he still paces the halls whenever he isn’t shuttled into a room.

“What was that, Robert?” Joanie asks. “That’s very good. What did you say?”

But he clams up. He won’t say it again. Rolling pin. I wonder what that means to him. If I had one thing to say, I don’t think it would be rolling pin. It would probably be sex. Or Shift.

“He can draw something from his childhood,” Noelle says next to me.

“Oh, there’s a good one. Noelle, you want to speak up?”

She sighs, then announces to the room: “Craig can draw something from his childhood.”

“That’s right,” Joanie nods. “Craig, do you like any of these suggestions?”

But I’m already gone. I’ve got the river started at the top of the page, looping down to meet with a second river. No, wait, you have to put in the roads first, because the bridges go over the water, remember? Highways first, then rivers, then streets. It’s all coming back to me. How long has it been since I did this? Since I was nine? How could I forget? I slash a highway across the center of the page and make it meet with another in a beautiful spaghetti interchange. One ramp goes off the junction through a park and ends in a circle, a nice hubbub of residential activity. The blocks start out from there. The map is forming. My own city.

“Oh, somebody got Craig’s mind unblocked!” Joanie announces from the other end of the room. I glance back. Ebony, who’s been sitting over there, goes through the arduous process of getting up with her cane and walks toward me. “I want to see.”

“Huh, thanks Ebony,” I say, turning back to the map.

She looks over my shoulder. “Oooh that’s pretty,” she says.

“What is it?” Armelio yells.

“Let’s not yell across the room,” Joanie says.

“That is extraordinary,” the Professor says next to me.

“I deserve half-credit,” says Noelle, sketching out a flower to my right. She glances at me through the sides of her eyes. “You know I do.”

“You do,” I tell her, taking a break to look at her. I go back to the map. It’s flowing out of me.

“Is that somebody’s brain?” Ebony asks.

I look up at her, rolling her mouth and smiling down. I look at the map. It’s not a brain, clearly; it’s a map; can’t she see the rivers and highways and interchanges? But I see how it could look like a brain, like if all roads were twisted neurons, pulling your emotions from one place to another, bringing the city to life. A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It’s the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding up at her. “Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s a brain.” And I stop my map in the middle—this was always a problem for me, finishing the damn things; I always ran out of energy before I got to the edge of the page—and draw a head around it. I put a nose and two paired indentations for lips and a neck running down. I draw the head so that right where the brain would be is this blob of city street map. I make a traffic circle the eye and bring down boulevards to lead to the mouth, and Ebony giggles above me, taps her cane.

“It’s so pretty!”

“It’s all right,” I say, looking down. I decide it’s done. I can do better. I put my initials in the bottom—CG, like “computer-generated”—and put the picture aside. I ask for more paper and start the next one.

It’s easy. It’s easy and pretty and I can do it. I can make these things forever. For the rest of arts and crafts, I make five.

I get so concentrated that I don’t even notice when Noelle leaves. I only find her note, sitting next to me, decorated with a flower, as I gather up my things from the room.

I’M TAKING A BREAK FROM YOU. CAN’T GET TOO ATTACHED. THE NEXT MEETING WILL BE TUESDAY, SAME TIME AND PLACE. DON’T BE WORRIED THAT IT’S SUCH A LONG WAIT. I THINK YOU’RE LOVELY.

I fold the note and put it in my pocket next to the other one. After arts and crafts is dinner, where Humble tells me he forgives me for getting him in trouble, and I thank him, and after dinner is cards with Armelio, who tells me that now that I’ve gotten a little experience under my belt, I might be ready for the big card tournament they’re having tomorrow night.

“Do you play with real money?” I ask.

“Nope, buddy! We play with buttons!”

I hang outside the lounge during cigarette break—I basically just follow the group; wherever they go, I go—and talk with Bobby about my day. Then I go into my room with my map/brain art. My bed hasn’t been made during the day—they don’t pamper you in Six North—but the pillow has returned to its normal shape, no longer dented in by my sweaty head, and when I lie down it lets out air in the most slow, soothing hiss I’ve ever heard.

“You are feeling better?” Muqtada asks.

“Quite a bit,” I say. “You’ve really got to get out of the room more, Muqtada. There’s a whole world out there.”

“I pray every day that someday I will get better like you.”

“I’m not that much better, man.”