Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

‘This might keep you warmer,’ I said.

He looked at me, bemused.

‘You’re giving me this?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘But why?’

‘Because you need it.’

He took the jacket, and immediately tried it on.

‘Hey, it fits,’ he said, even though it actually swam a bit on his lanky frame.

‘Good luck,’ I said.

‘Any chance I could hit you for a couple of bucks as well?’

I reached into my bag and handed him a $10 bill.

‘You’re my angel of mercy,’ he said.

‘That’s quite the compliment.’

‘And you deserve it. Hope you get happier, ma’am.’

That comment gave me pause for thought all the way back home. Was I that transparent? Did I look that crushed? Though the man’s observation got me anxious, it made me force myself to present a cheerful face to my hospital colleagues when I returned to work the next morning. By the end of the week Dr Harrild also discreetly asked if there was ‘something wrong’.

‘Have I done anything wrong?’ I asked.

‘Hardly, hardly,’ he said, slightly taken aback by my tone. ‘But you’ve seemed a bit preoccupied recently. And I’m just a little concerned.’

So was I, as I hadn’t slept more than three hours a night since returning from Boston, and was beginning to feel the instability that accompanies several nights of insomnia. But I also understood the message behind Dr Harrild’s voice of concern: Whatever is going on in your life that is so clearly vexing you, you can’t start letting it affect your work.

I called my primary physician that evening — a local woman named Dr Jane Bancroft who is very much an old-school local doctor: straight talking, no nonsense. When I phoned her office and told her receptionist it was a matter of some urgency — and could she ring my cellphone, and not the land line — I got a message back five minutes later, saying the doctor could see me the next morning if that would work.

I changed plans and decided to drive over to Farmington and spend the day with Ben there. Texting my son and saying I would now arrive around one p.m., I made it to Dr Bancroft’s office, as arranged, at nine a.m. — after another night where sleep only overtook me around five. Dr Bancroft — a woman of about sixty, petite, wiry, formidable — took one look at me and asked:

‘So how long have you been depressed?’

I explained how the sleeplessness had arrived in my life only a few days ago.

‘Smart of you to get in here fast then. But the insomnia is usually a sign of larger long-term difficulties. So I’ll ask you again — how long have you been depressed?’

‘Around five years,’ I heard myself saying, then added: ‘But it hasn’t affected my work or anything else until now.’

‘And why do you think the sleeplessness has arisen this week?’

‘Because. something happened. Something which seems to have crystallized a sense that. ’

I broke off, the words swimming before me but unable to find their way into my mouth. God, how I needed to sleep.

‘Depression can be there for years,’ Dr Bancroft said, ‘and we can function with it for quite a long time. It becomes a bit like a dark shadow over us that we choose to simply live with, to see as part of us. Until the gloom begins to submerge us and it becomes unbearable.’

I left Dr Bancroft’s office with a prescription for a sleeping pill that was also a ‘mild’ anti-depressant called Mirtazapine. One per day before bedtime, and she assured me it wouldn’t leave me feeling groggy. She also gave me the name of a therapist in Brunswick named Lisa Schneider whom Dr Bancroft considered ‘sound’ (and that was high praise from her), and whose services would be covered by my health plan. I got the prescription filled at my local pharmacy. I drove the two hours to Farmington. I was relieved to see Ben looking far better than I had seen him in months. I viewed the work in progress. It was astonishing in its scale — a huge nine-foot-by-six-foot canvas — and in its ambition. Seen from afar it was boldly abstract: wave-like shapes, contrasting blue and white tonalities, with an energy and a ferocity to the brush strokes that called to mind the anger of the coastal waters which so defined Ben’s childhood and also (I sensed) a reflection of so much of the turmoil that had characterized the last year of his life. Maybe it was my lack of sleep, my own personal turmoil, and seeing how Ben had articulated his own recent anguish into this clearly remarkable work (all right, I am his mother — but even given my natural maternal bias, this was such an impressive and daring painting), but I found myself fogging up again.

‘You OK, Mom?’ Ben asked.

‘I’m just so impressed, overwhelmed.’

The tears now began to flow — despite my ferocious efforts to curb them and the sobs that suddenly accompanied them. To his immense credit, my son did not blanch in the face of such raw emotion. On the contrary, he put his arms around me and said nothing. I subsided quickly, apologizing profusely, telling him I hadn’t slept well the past night or so, and I was just so incredibly proud of what he had achieved, how he had bounced back from such a difficult moment in his life.

Ben just nodded and said that I was the best mother imaginable. This set me off crying again, and I excused myself and found the bathroom off his studio. Gripping the sink I told myself that all would be better after a night’s sleep.

Once I pulled myself together Ben and I went out to eat at a diner.

‘We could have done something a little more fancy,’ I told him as we slipped into a booth.

‘Why drop money on restaurant food? Anyway, this is my hangout — and even though it’s cheap I’ve yet to get food poisoning.’

A waitress came by. We ordered. As soon as she was out of sight Ben looked up at me and said:

‘Sally called me the other day.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘You sound surprised.’

‘Well, I just didn’t think you guys were in much contact.’

‘We speak at least twice a week.’

And why hadn’t I figured this out? Or noticed their closeness?

‘That’s wonderful,’ I said.

‘And you sound a little amazed because you thought my cheerleader sister and her arty-farty brother could never be close.’

‘I stand corrected.’

‘She’s a little worried about you, Mom. As am I. And she told me about the other night when you got back from Boston and she found you asleep on the porch. It’s a little late in the year for that, isn’t it?’

‘I was having a bad night, that’s all.’

‘But you told me earlier that it was the only last night or so when you hadn’t been able to sleep. Sunday was six nights ago — and judging from the rings under your eyes. ’

‘All right, I’ve been having a bad week.’

‘Why?’

‘Stuff.’

‘Stuff with Dad?’

I nodded.

‘Sally told me that too. Do you want to talk about it?’

Instinctively I shook my head. Then:

‘I do. but I also don’t think that’s fair to you. Because it means you’re hearing my side, not his side.’

‘Not that Dad would ever dream of telling me his side of anything.’

‘I know you have your problems with him.’

‘Problems? That’s polite. No communication whatsoever is more like it. The guy and I just don’t connect. Haven’t for years. I get the feeling he doesn’t really like me.’

‘He loves you very much. It’s just that he’s become so lost over the past few years. That’s not making any excuses for him. I think he’s genuinely, clinically depressed. Not that he would ever acknowledge that, or seek help.’

‘And what are you?’

‘Functionally depressed.’