It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Good! To the kitchen!”

I go in, and the place is all set for me. Dad and my sister, Sarah, are sitting at the circular table, knives and forks in hand, posing for me.

“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?”