Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

His father and Mr. West had gone down to the pub. Though he’d slept most of the afternoon, he felt tired enough to go to bed after they all watched a video. His mother gave him another hug in the hallway, just outside their bedroom. Trevor came over and joined them.

“Went a bit weird there, hey, Sammy?”

“Yeah,” Samuel said, holding back tears at the feeling of his brother’s arms around him.

IT WAS IN the middle of a light shower the following afternoon that the two of them set off in the car to get vegetables and bread from the village. According to Penelope, who was escorted back to the house only a little while later unharmed, the sun appeared just as the rain ended, a triangle of light glistening on the black pavement, and onto the windshield, causing Trevor to slant into the right lane. The car ripped into the side of the oncoming van before hitting the swerving trailer, the impact smashing the hull of a white sailboat in tow. Samuel sat on the back steps, waiting for his parents to return from the hospital. When they pulled up to the house, hours later, they saw him there. They didn’t get out of the car right away. The eyes of their pale, haggard faces stared at him through the windshield. From the kitchen he could hear a radio playing, the murmur of singing voices.

A broken spirit. That’s what Jevins said God wanted. A broken and contrite heart. Was this the God of the vast landscape, out where Samuel knew now he would spend the rest of his days? The quiet place, beyond the walls of the crowded dwelling.

A broken spirit. Would that be enough?

THE COMMUTER TRAIN is barely out of South Station when it comes slowly to a halt. The lights go out, the hum of the air conditioner ceases. It’s a midmorning in June and the railcar is three-quarters empty. Daniel sits toward the back, by a window, the envelope still sealed on his lap. In the sudden absence of noise, he can hear the sounds of his fellow passengers: a newspaper being folded, a boy two rows up whispering to his father, a cough, and a yawn. Weak morning light, filtered through an overcast sky, hangs in the rail yard, scarcely making it through the train’s tinted windows. He sips the last of his ginger ale and watches a blue Conrail engine creep along the tracks in front of the huge Gillette sign. A work crew in orange vests idles by a switch in the rail, waiting for the engine to pass. Above them, gulls circle the pylons. In this unexpected quiet, Daniel realizes there is part of him that doesn’t want to open the file, doesn’t want to read the interviews or what the doctors have to say about them. Their words won’t change anything. But then he doesn’t want to be afraid of himself either.

It wasn’t easy getting the records. Gollinger, his psychiatrist, didn’t want him to see the correspondence. But it was in the file, Daniel had a right to it. And another part of him is glad that somewhere in the confusion his life has become, he found the energy and organizational wherewithal to obtain them. Perhaps it will help him to remember, help him see things clearly.

Through his feet, he feels a vibration accompanied by a clicking sound, and then the hiss of the brakes releasing.

The train lurches forward, lights flicker on, the air hums again. At the end of the line is the town Daniel grew up in, a place he hasn’t been in years.

He undoes the metal clasp and with his forefinger breaks the seal. Inside is a packet of paper, half an inch thick. He flips through it and, putting aside the test results and Gollinger’s scribbled notes, begins to read.

WINSTON P. GOLLINGER, M.D.

231 PINE STREET

BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS 02346

November 15, 1997

Dr. Anthony Houston

McLean’s Hospital

115 Mill Street

Belmont, MA 02478

Dear Tony,

Thank you for your letter of November 10 concerning Daniel Markham. The tapes he’s mentioned to you are not a fabrication. He recorded several of them over the last six months. On his final visit to my office he asked that I take them for safekeeping. I’ve had my secretary type out a transcript, which is enclosed with this letter.

Daniel Markham came to me eighteen months ago suffering from alternating states of mania and depression. He was twenty-four, his parents were divorced, he was unemployed, single, and occasionally using narcotic painkillers, which he had a prescription for due to a long-standing back condition. Based on family history, notably a father with active bipolar disorder and Daniel’s own reports of labile mood states, a diagnosis of bipolar (I) wasn’t difficult to make. I began aggressive drug treatment and weekly consultations. Multiple drug regimens failed to produce significant changes in Daniel’s disease.

The tapes themselves center on what Daniel described as his “research.” Eight months ago he began talking about what he called “an anecdotal sociology of the philosophical urge in young men.” Coming as it did, as one in a series of manic projects and ideas, I took no particular note of it, other than the obvious connection with Daniel’s father, who, when he was younger, had earned a Ph.D. in philosophy and had been forced to leave his teaching position due to a depressive episode. Over the months, however, Daniel demonstrated what was, for him, an unusual consistency of interest in the project. As you may have discovered for yourself by now, Daniel is often a charming person to be with, and it was hard to watch his situation decline. Hopefully under your care, in an inpatient setting, he will stabilize.

Don’t hesitate to call if you have further questions.

1. Interview with Daniel Markham’s father, Charles Markham

—Date is March 15th, ides of March… first entry on the Dictaphone… got it tied around my neck here… so… Dad’s here, he’s talking about—Dad?—I’m putting this on the research, okay?

—Which, given the rates in the bond market at the moment, is just absurd and I told him that, Danny, six and a quarter, maybe six and a half, and we could float the whole offering, the street would soak the paper up in a minute, and your sister and you could get a house, a boat…

—Is that Dr. Fenn still there at the clinic, Dad?

—Yeah, he’s there, but I—if they’d just take a promissory note and once I get into the currency markets it’s child’s play—cross market arbitrage—the yen and the ruble, the lira and the pound, an eighth of a cent here, a twentieth there, a big enough stake, and I mean they understand this down at the Fed, they know that I’d be a stabilizing force in the market, and with all the bad paper on the street—

—Do you see him much?

—Who?

—Dr. Fenn.

—He has dogs.

—In his office?

—Why are you in bed, Danny?

—I told you, Dad. My back. It’s killing me, it’s been killing me for months.

—He keeps them in a cement yard behind the clinic—three schnauzers and a Great Dane—they beshit themselves and I don’t like doctors who keep animals in that condition. Besides, he’s a behaviorist.

—But you have appointments with him, right? Sometimes?

—I don’t think he’s ever published an article in his life and when I go in there with a new study from Science or New England Journal of Medicine he gets very defensive. I always prefer doctors who publish… but anyway, there’s an underlying crisis at Treasury. Bond issues have been selling poorly and with the advance of the Euro there could be a flight from the dollar, which at the moment is the only benchmark currency we have, but that might change and if I can get in there, get in there with a stake—