Нед Виззини: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“How do we look?” Dad asks, banging his silverware on the table. “Do we look hungry?”

My parents are always looking into new ways to fix me. They’ve tried acupuncture, yoga, cognitive therapy, relaxation tapes, various kinds of forced exercise (until I found my bike), self-help books, Tae Bo, and feng shui in my room. They’ve spent a lot of money on me. I’m ashamed.

“Eat! Eat! Eat!” Sarah says. “We were waiting for you.”

“Is this necessary?” I ask.

“We’re just making things more homey for you.” Mom brings a baking pan over to the table. It smells hot and juicy. Inside the pan are big orange things cut in half.

“We have squash”—she turns back to the stove—“rice, and chicken.” She brings over a pot of white rice with vegetable bits sprinkled over it and a plate of chicken patties. I go for them—a star-shaped one, a dinosaur-shaped one. Sarah grabs at the dinosaur-shaped one at the same time.

“The dinosaurs are mine!”

“Okay.” I let her. She kicks me under the table. “How’re you feeling?” she whispers.

“Not good.”

She nods. Sarah knows what this means. It means she’ll see me on the couch tonight, tossing and turning and sweating as Mom brings me warm milk. It means she’ll see me watching TV, but not really watching, just staring and not laughing, as I don’t do my homework. It means she’ll see me sinking and failing. She reacts well to this. She does more schoolwork and has more fun. She doesn’t want to end up like me. At least I’m giving someone an example not to follow.

“I’m sorry. They’re trying to do a big thing for you.”

“I can tell.”

“So, Craig, how was school today?” Dad asks. He forks into the squash and looks at me through his glasses. He’s short and wears glasses, but like he says, at least he has hair—thick, dark stuff that he passed on to me. He tells me I’m blessed; the genes are good on both sides, and if I think I’m depressed now, imagine if I knew I was going to lose my hair like everyone else! Ha.

“All right,” I say.

“What’d you do?”

“Sat in class and followed instructions.”

We clink at our food. I take my first bite—a carefully constructed forkful of chicken, rice, and squash—and mash it into my mouth. I will eat this, I chew it and feel that it tastes good and rear my tongue back and send it down. I hold it. All right. It’s in there.

“What did you do in . . . let’s see . . . American History?”

“That one wasn’t so good. The teacher called on me and I couldn’t talk.”

“Oh, Craig. . .” Mom is like.

I start constructing another bite.

“What do you mean you couldn’t talk?” Dad asks.

“I knew the answer, but. . . I just. . .”

“You trailed off,” Mom says.

I nod as I take in the next bite.

“Craig, you can’t keep doing that.”

“Honey—” Mom tells him.

“When you know the answer to something, you have to speak up for yourself; how can that not be clear?”

Dad takes in a heaping forkful of squash and chews it like a furnace.

“Don’t jump on him,” Mom says.

“I’m not, I’m being friendly.” Dad smiles. “Craig, you are blessed with a good mind. You just have to have confidence in it and talk when people call on you. Like you used to do. Back when they had to tell you to stop talking.”

“It’s different now . . .” Third bite.

“We know. Your mother and I know and we’re doing everything we can to help you. Right?” He looks across the table at Mom.

“Yes.”

“Me too,” Sarah says. “I’m doing everything I can, too.”

“That’s right.” Mom reaches across to ruffle her hair. “You’re doing great.”

“Yesterday, I could’ve smoked pot, but didn’t,” I say, looking up, curled over my plate.

“Craig!” Dad snaps.

“Let’s not talk about this,” Mom says.

“But you should know; it’s important. I’m doing experiments with my mind, to see how it got the way it is.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Not around your sister,” Mom says. “I want to tell you some news about Jordan.” Hearing his name, the dog walks into the kitchen, takes up his position by Mom. “I took him to the vet today.”

“So you didn’t go to work?”

“Right.”

“And that’s why you cooked.”

“Exactly.”

I’m jealous of her. Can you be jealous of your mom for being able to handle things? I couldn’t take a day off, take a dog to the vet, and cook dinner. That’s like three times too much stuff for me to get done in one day. How am I ever going to have my own house?

“So you want to know what happened at the vet?”

“It’s crazy,” Sarah says.

“We took him in for the seizures he’s been having,” Mom says. “And you’ll never believe what the vet said.”

“What?”

“They took some blood tests last time, and the results came back—I was sitting in the little room with Jordan; he was being very good. The vet comes in and looks at the papers and says, ‘These numbers are not compatible with life.’”

I laugh. There’s a bite on my fork in front of me. It shakes. “What do you mean?”

“That’s what I asked him. And it turns out that a dog’s blood-sugar level is supposed to be between forty and one hundred. You know what Jordan’s is?”

“What?”

“Nine.”

“Ruff!” Jordan barks.

“Then”—Mom is laughing now—“there’s some sort of other number, some enzyme ratio level, that’s supposed to be between ten and thirty, and Jordan’s is one eighty!”

“Good dog,” Dad says.

“The vet didn’t know what to make of it. He told me to keep giving him the supplements and the vitamins, but that basically he’s a medical miracle.”

I look over at Jordan, the Tibetan spaniel. Pushed-in shaggy face, black nose, big dark eyes like mine. Panting and drooling. Resting on his furry front legs.

“He shouldn’t be alive, but he is,” Mom says.

I look at Jordan more. Why are you bothering? You’ve got an excuse. You’ve got bad blood. You must like living; I guess I would if I were you. Going from meal to meal and guarding Mom. It’s a life. It doesn’t involve tests or homework. You don’t have to buy things.

“Craig?”

You shouldn’t be able to be alive and you are. You want to trade?

“I. . . I guess it’s cool.”

“It’s very cool,” Mom says. “It’s by God’s grace that this dog lives.”

Oh, right, God. Forgot about him. He’s definitely, according to Mom, going to have a role in me getting better. But I find God to be an ineffectual shrink. He adopts the “do nothing” method of therapy. You tell him your problems and he, ah, does nothing.

“I’m done,” Sarah says. She picks up her plate and trots out of the room, calling to Jordan. He follows.

“I can’t eat any more either,” I say. I’ve managed five bites. My stomach is churning and closing fast. It’s all such inoffensive food; I shouldn’t have any problems with it. I should be able to eat three plates of it. I’m a growing boy; I shouldn’t have trouble sleeping; I should be playing sports! I should be making out with girls. I should be finding what I love about this world. I should be frickin’ eating and sleeping and drinking and studying and watching TV and being normal.

“Try a little more, Craig,” Mom says. “No pressure, but you should eat.”

That’s right. I’m going to eat. I slice off the top of the squash, in streets and avenues, a big chunk, and put it on my fork and get it in my mouth. I’m going to eat you. I chew it, soft and yielding, easily molded into a shape that fits down my throat. It tastes sweet. Now hold it. It’s in my stomach. I’m sweating. The sweating gets worse around my parents. My stomach has it. My stomach is full of six bites of this meal. I can take six bites. I won’t lose it. I won’t lose this meal that my mom has made. If the dog can live, I can eat. I hold it. I make a fist. I tense my muscles.