​​​​​​​     ZOOM

excerpt

 

CHAPTER 1 - THE END

Wednesday, Day 3

 

“u go”

    “no u go,” came the short text reply an instant later. Marli pecked furiously at the illuminated display of her cell phone. Her long slender fingers cradled the device delicately while her thumbs extended over its surface from both sides, moving rapidly up and down—her perfectly manicured nails tapping their tiny targets in a synchronized, almost robotic motion.

     “u haven't even seen him since this happened 2 days ago,” she blasted right back. There was a longer than normal pause in her brother’s response. Perhaps Matt was actually considering visiting their father at the psychiatric center—all it usually took was a hint of guilt to get him to do the right thing. Instead, the pause was simply needed for finding a believable excuse why he couldn’t go.

     “girlfriend coming over tonight,” flashed back.

    “so what bring her and go c him,” Marli demanded quickly in her typical abbreviated text. She knew the right choice of words and a stern directive were necessary to convey her frustration via texting.

     “F that all he does is sit there. I dont want Liz to see that place.”

    Knowing this was Matt’s final response, Marli slipped the phone into her pocket and turned back to her computer screen. She could no longer focus on completing the coloration of the graphic flyer she was creating. Realizing the ironic contrast between her inability to focus and her father’s remarkable ‘zooming’ ability, Marli suddenly felt as if she had been adopted. The dreaded visit with her father at the psychiatric center and nothing to look forward to later that evening, made the remaining twelve minutes at work seem endless.

   The leaves were still falling as Marli drove her dark blue Audi through the parking lot of the Ashcroft Psychiatric Center in Falls Church. The change of seasons came swiftly but gracefully in northern Virginia. The evening air was crisp and carried a faint tannic scent from the damp brown leaves that patched the ground. It was the subtle but unmistakable smell of autumn.

   As she pulled into a parking space next to the expansive lawn, still green in its last breath of the season, she pictured her father raking the thick layer of leaves with her when they lived in Reston about twelve years earlier. He had mentioned the distinct smell in the air and said it reminded him of when he was a young boy growing up in the suburbs of Connecticut.

 

  Todd and his friends would rake and pile the leaves as high and dense as physically possible. Most of the leaves had fallen from the mature sycamore trees that lined both sides of the street. They were large and robust leaves with a rich golden brown color—perfect for holding their shape as they tunneled and carved out a hollow in the base of the pile. Then they crawled inside—two, three, sometimes four of them, laying on their sides in awkward positions, their skinny legs crisscrossing like a pile of kindling. The unique scent of crisp brown leaves infused their tiny realm. There inside, with all sounds from the world outside completely muffled, they would tell boy secrets. Secrets that would never leave their cozy den.

 

    At least that’s what he told Marli. What actually happened was an experience that had long ago sunk deep into Todd’s unconscious—the true version that he was now incapable of recalling.

 

  Todd kneeled on the carpet below the row of large jalousie windows that surrounded three sides of the back porch. He peered over the wooden sill and watched as several neighborhood boys had raked a large pile of leaves in the backyard next door. They did all the fun things young boys can do with a pile of leaves—throwing handfuls at each other that dispersed in midair like buckshot; diving into them and getting totally immersed; stuffing them under their sweatshirts and becoming large creatures that apparently killed their prey by charging at them belly first. They pushed each other, tumbled together, and even dragged each other through the scattered mounds of leaves, forcing the scratchy, leafy particles up into their pant legs and down their baggy necklines. The boys periodically raked the heap back together but it devolved quickly to a random scatter and in a short while they were off to some other adventure.

    Todd paid little attention to the rambunctious boys, but instead had stared at the pile of leaves each time it was raked high. It attracted him. The mass stirred some inner desire that Todd couldn’t quite understand.

    Within a few minutes he headed to his front yard with rake in hand, hoping the boys would not see him there. He raked tirelessly for a good hour before he had managed to stack the large sycamore leaves in a pile that was chest high to Todd’s skinny body. He stood perplexed for only a minute until he knelt beside the pile and began to pull away at its edge. Slowly the cavern developed as he reached farther and farther into the base of the mound.

    Suddenly the pile collapsed. Todd pulled his head out from the dry leaves and looked around expecting to see the boys racing away from their destructive act. But there was no one there. Todd tried again to create a pocket in the flaky stack, but it was hopeless. The sycamore leaves were not the right building blocks. They were too large and robust to form any kind of bond with each other.

    Todd sat on the damp ground thinking, as he pulled off the leaves that were stuck on the end of the rake. He looked over at the side yard where several crab apple trees had dumped their skimpy load on the grassless ground beneath them. Their leaves were small and pear-shaped and he knew intuitively, they were not what he was looking for.

    Then he sprang up and bolted to the back yard, dragging the rake behind him. He stopped short at the corner of the garage and looked cautiously toward the neighbor’s back yard where the boys had been. The coast was clear, so Todd began to rake the blanket of leaves that had fallen from two mature maple trees in the southwest corner of the lot. It wasn’t long before he had created a towering pile the size of a small igloo. He threw the rake aside and dug furiously into its base. Each stroke yielded thick wads of leaves and the deeper he dug, the denser the leaves he encountered were. Their medium size, flexible surfaces, and irregular edges were just right for interlocking into a compact structural arch. Little did he know, it was his first lesson in architecture.

    When the hollow was finished, Todd crawled inside. The small enclosure was somehow comforting. The thick dome around him turned the outside world into a non-distracting void. He spoke quietly to other boys he imagined were there. He was at peace, but not for long.

    Suddenly someone grabbed Todd’s foot and slid him out of the structure. The boys pushed him aside and crawled in one by one. Todd crouched next to the small entrance hoping there was room for him to slither in, but instead the legs kicked at him as the boys shouted, “Get out of here weirdo! Odd Todd, odd Todd.”

 

    Although the story Todd told to Marli was inaccurate, she had absorbed every detail of his description. The intensity of his words was captivating. He rarely spoke of his childhood and almost never in such a personal manner. At the time, this experience would dissipate in the aural clouds of her memory, where good memories go, waiting to coalesce at just the right time, when we re-experience a hint of their essence. Here it was now, evoked by a simple scent, as clear as the day he spoke it. The vividness of some memories sometimes surprised her and made her wonder for the first time if this was a trait received from her father. He had never mentioned anything special about his memory but she thought to ask him. Unfortunately, she realized she would not be getting an answer that day.

    Marli pulled open the large glass front door and walked through the vestibule with shallow steps, wiping the damp soles of her shoes on the dark gray entry mat. Through the modest lobby on her left, sat an attentive young woman behind a long stone counter.

    “Hi, can I help you?” she asked as Marli approached.

    “I’m here to see my father, Todd Kinsler.”

   “Yes, can you sign in please? I’ll have someone here in a minute to escort you. He’s in room . . . one fifty-two. Please have a seat.”

    Although this was her second visit in two days, she didn’t recognize anything. The memory of her first visit had faded quickly, like a bad dream you awake from and acknowledge ever so briefly before it drifts away. By now she had gotten over the initial shock of what had happened to her father and she began to register her surroundings.

    The two small groupings of chairs beside her were separated by a contemporary glass end table with a neatly fanned array of magazines on its surface. Before committing to a seat, she glanced at the magazines and noticed that they were all psychology related. One had an image of a brain on its cover with electrodes linking it to a computer monitor. Another showed a massive, white medical scanning machine of some sort—its portal open like a giant mouth with its retractable bed extended, ready to accept its next human lozenge.

    There were no People Magazines or even a House and Garden magazine that she would be willing to bear under the circumstances, so she sat with her hands folded and instead pretended to be interested in the landscape art that hung on the opposite wall. It was a digital abstract with bright, unnatural colors for a landscape, but Marli instantly recognized the effort and creativity that went into composing it.

    Within a minute or two, a young man dressed in a white Polo and crisp navy blue slacks rounded the corner and extended his hand. His smile was wider than his sun-tanned face. Marli thought he was about to take her on a cruise.

    “I’m Nick Stanton, Dr. Nick to most everyone around here,” he said as he held out his palm face up for her to put her hand in. As she did, he placed his other hand gently on top of hers and smiled even wider. It was more of a warm reassuring gesture than it was a handshake.

    “Your dad’s been expecting you.”

    “You mean he’s—”

   “No, I’m sorry, he’s still not speaking, but we talk to all our patients here at Ashcroft. I told him you were coming.”

    “So are you his doctor, like are you taking care of him?” she asked. To Marli, using the word ‘like’ in a sentence was the equivalent of just taking a breath. It added nothing to the meaning of what she said, but she simply couldn’t speak without it. 

     “No, that would be Dr. Williams, but he’s already gone for the day. I’m his assistant intern and I can spend some time with you. In fact, I’d like to ask you a few questions. You were a bit distraught when he was admitted early yesterday so we didn’t get a chance to talk”.

    Marli’s heeled shoes echoed in the long quiet hallway as Dr. Nick strode silently beside her in his pristine white sneakers. After several turns in the corridor, they stopped at a door on the left and he swung it open slowly, gesturing her in.

   Expecting her father to be in bed in his condition, she was happy to see him sitting in a chair in the corner of his room, his forearms resting properly on the wooden armrests. But Marli was disturbed by what she saw. His head was unnaturally erect and he looked as though he was staring out the window, but the late October sun had set early and what had been a view to the slightly overgrown garden outside, was now simply blackness.

    “What a great room with a view,” she said trying to bring some normalcy to the situation. As she approached and put a hand on the back of his chair, Todd was unresponsive and didn’t acknowledge her presence in any way. Marli quickly withdrew her attempt at an obligatory hug and turned back toward Dr. Nick. “This is horrible! How can he just sit there and not know we’re here? I can’t do this.”

   “Marli, please sit down,” Dr. Nick advised, realizing he suddenly had two patients in the room.

    Marli had not slept well all night. What little time she had slept was punctuated with terrible dreams. She pulled out the small desk chair and sat down hard. The physical exhaustion and mental expenditure was beginning to take its toll this late in the day. All she could think of was the worst case in this situation. She was not necessarily a pessimist, but today she tried on that dark hat and it fit really well. What if he never comes out of this? she worried. What would happen to him? Where would he stay? Who would take care of him? Who would pay for it? These were undoubtedly the most serious questions she had ever faced.

    This would be more than just an end to his career she feared, it would be the end to his fatherhood and an end to his life, as he knew it. Marli knew she would become an innocent casualty. Her stomach churned with the uncertainty of what lay ahead.