Smokers
by Ann Bronston
We smoke. We all smoke. Thursday evening and we sit on folding chairs in a room on the first floor of Building C of Bellemoor Psychiatric Center and smoke. The room has a church basement feel to it, as if it could accommodate a bake sale, or toddlercare, or after-service refreshments or a bible –study class, or whatever the religious equivalent of a support group for present and former mental patients might be.
We come in, unfold our chairs and light up. We wait for Dr. Steiner to arrive, and talk about how we really must quit smoking, as if we’re as sane as the bank teller we see smoking on his break. "God, I’ve really got to cut down", we love to say, curling our yellow-tipped index finger around a Marlboro or Newport, pretending we are like all the other smokers in the world.
There are six of us in Dr. Steiner’s Thursday night group right now. We are all Belle Morons, being either alumni or current residents of Bellemoor Psychiatric Hospital. I am an alumni. I have been coming Thursday evenings for almost a year. I have the best attendance record of anyone, including the inpatients, even though I have to drive over twenty miles to get here. I have arrived on nights the group has been canceled due to snowstorms or hail or rain. I come because if I don’t show up someone might suspect I have begun the always anticipated downward spiral- and they might be right.
I have southern cousins who to this day, refer to the Civil War as the recent unpleasantness between the States. That is how I refer to my breakdown. Although I am also fond of the word "breakdown"; it is accurately and somehow elegantly self- explanatory.
Pre-breakdown, you are an intolerable person with irrational fears and moods, and everything you do is dangerously inappropriate. After you’ve been institutionalized, everything you do is pathetic, but honorable. You’ve joined a subset of people of whom no one expects much of. I look around the room and think how Suzanne in her purple polyester pants with thin white stripes and orange floral blouse epitomizes who we are. Suzanne is meek and orderly, she has a little round belly, slouching shoulders and short gray hair. On my good days I see her as a cautionary tale, on my bad days I see her as a success story.
Dr. Steiner is in his fifties. I can’t imagine him ever being younger, or older. He is not tall, he is not slim. He has dark hair and a salt and pepper beard, in which cigarette ash is often camouflaged. Dr. Steiner smokes. I smell it on his breath when he comes up to me during break, and asks me how I am doing. I am his favorite, because I am white and Jewish and college educated; because I answered his questions in the beginning, thinking the others were clueless, and I could help them with my insights and honesty. And because I bathe at least once a day, usually three or four times a day.
Dr. Steiner’s shirts are wrinkled, and often there are little coffee colored spots near his midriff. His fingers are pudgy. I picture him at a desk crowded with papers and files, an ashtray hidden beneath some open medical journal, his cigarette ash remarkably balanced in air, holding its form, until he turns his head and it sprinkles onto his beard. He is too important, too busy, too concerned with his patients, to even notice. But we notice, we his patients notice the ashes in his beard, or the stains on his shirts. We notice things like that.
Dr. Steiner responds to every comment with, " How do you feel about that?" and answers every question with, "Why is that important to you?" Dr. Steiner turns our pleas for justice, into evidence of our inability to perceive our own mental inadequacies. He is a balloon of self-importance, in a State Mental Hospital in the far suburbs of a run down city in the otherwise wealthy state of Connecticut. But he is my lifeline. I live to impress him. I judge myself by his approval. If, for example, I say I am planning a trip with my two sons, (their father has custody) and his silence before he asks "How do you feel about that?" is longer than usual, I will cancel the trip; knowing that the only reason I even decided to travel with the boys was because I thought it might impress Dr. Steiner. My sons are ten and eight. I see them two Saturdays a month, and an occasional longer week-end.
My investment in Dr. Steiner’s perception of me makes me feel at once, the most cognitive and competent of the group and the most hopelessly needy. Suzanne, doesn’t seem to need anyone. She sits quietly, often with a dim, tight-lipped smile on her face, hiding her very lovely set of false teeth. Talking to her is like standing before a placid lake, the smoke from her cigarette rising like mist off still waters.
Estelle, who seems permanently drunk, though I assume she’s been sober for at least the past year, keeps herself alive with distain for almost everyone, but especially Dr. Steiner. She interrupts or mutters outloud. She has a drunk’s paranoia, not that anyone likes her, but we are not stealing her stuff, or lying to her, or spreading rumors about her sex life. She smokes like a drinker, her cigarette hand is animated while the other arm hangs low and limp. Surprisingly (if she is to be believed), she seems to do very well in the real world. She is a tax librarian at a large law firm.
Suzanne and Estelle and myself are the graduates. The others are currently inpatients at Bellemoor. Rachel is very young, in her twenties, very pretty, and seems perfectly normal until you try to talk with her one on one. Then she smiles broadly, and repeats everything you say or she says, two or three times; me: "How are you Rachel?" Rachel: "Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, I’m good. I’m good. I’m good." She wants to be a smoker to fit in, but she isn’t very convincing, she barely inhales. I haven’t a clue how she feels about Dr. Steiner, though I find myself watching when he talks to her, and gauging his responses to her. I feel a small stab of fear when she sounds lucid and vulnerable.
We all (except for Jim-also an inpatient) feel that William doesn’t belong in our group. He can barely focus, he is always agitated with issues of what goes on in his ward. He reminds us that we are at a State Mental Hospital. He even smells like a State Mental Hospital, damp and moldy and reeking of tobacco smoke. He treats Dr. Steiner like the civil servant he essentially is, sometimes handing him a list of what he wants Dr. Steiner to accomplish for him, everything from better bedding, better food, portable televisions that can be brought to one’s room, to the use of electrical cattle prods, which he believes would speed up everyone’s recovery, including his own. When our hour and a half is up, there is always a thick pile of cigarette butts surrounding his chair.
Jim has no respect for Dr. Steiner, or consequently for me, I imagine. It’s hard to know what Jim thinks because he rarely speaks. In fact, even though he’s an inpatient, his attendance Thursday nights is sporadic. He comes only often enough to keep from being officially dropped, thereby maintaining his day pass status at Bellemoor.
He sits by the window. His face is weathered, he wears an eye patch over his left eye and a cowboy hat covers his indented forehead, the result of two self-inflicted wounds. Gun cleaning accidents, he insists. He must be close to fifty as he served in Vietnam. His body is still spare and hard. After the war he was a ranch hand in Wyoming until his mother became too old to manage without him, and he returned to Connecticut. That is about all I know of Jim. He has never spoken to me, not even to bum a smoke, or ask for, or offer a light.
I watch him sometimes; he listens carefully as each person tries to explain their desperately inexplicable lives. If our stories are too sad, I see him close his eye to the pain.
When I drive away, I often notice him walking with someone from our group, usually
Rachel or William, but sometimes Estelle, or Suzanne. Occasionally he will stand facing them, his hands on their shoulders.
I know Dr. Steiner dislikes Jim. Periodically, when Jim is not present, Dr. Steiner tries to warn us about him. He tells us that Jim has been in Bellemoor longer than any of us. That he is oppositional and manipulative, that his intelligence makes it easy for him to rationalize delusional thinking, and to be persuasive with others, especially people whose own difficulties perceiving reality make them vulnerable to destructive behaviors.
The evening ends on a sad note. Suzanne tells us that her mother died about a month ago, but she only found out last week when a notice of unclaimed funds from a bank in Cincinnati arrived in her mail. Dr. Steiner asks her how she feels about it. She says in her usual soft and even voice, that it’s okay, she hadn’t had contact with her family for almost fifteen years, she’s just a little sorry her brothers hadn’t tried to reach her. But it wasn’t as if they’d ever been close. Then she adds, her voice rising with a surprising anger, "But still…" Dr. Steiner suggests that perhaps in her unresolved hostility towards her mother, she had orchestrated her own alienation from her family. That is one of the ironies of institutionalization. When you are just a person in therapy, you are told over and over that you are the innocent victim of other people’s abuses. Once you’ve been committed, you are suspiciously guilty of provoking abuse.
Estelle interrupts, accusing Dr. Steiner of using us to feed his narcissistic not to mention financial need. Dr. Steiner asks Estelle why she is trying to divert attention from Suzanne? He says perhaps she has narcissistic needs that she is projecting onto him, and she should think about that during the week because it is time to end.
After we fold our chairs, I go to the bathroom at the end of the hallway to wash my hands. Jim has followed me out, and asks if he can catch a ride to Bridgeport with me. Earlier, in response to Dr. Steiner’s query about job related issues, I said that I had put together my resume and planned to drive to Bridgeport, to explore job possibilities at the community college. I have a Master’s in American History, and community colleges are often looking for part-time academics to teach some assortment of freshman classes, or in their adult outreach programs.
I hadn’t really done any work on my resume, other than buying special paper to print it on. I had no specific plan to go to Bridgeport and Dr. Steiner’s slow response to my announcement, disturbed me. I wasn’t sure if Dr. Steiner thought that it wasn’t a good idea, or if it was just that he didn’t believe I would actually make the trip.
"I’ll probably go Tuesday", I tell Jim, thinking I am putting it off long enough to not have to make any real decision about whether or not I should go.
"Okay, I’ll meet you in front of Building C at ten," he says, and walks away.
My apartment is small and neat, very neat. I don’t even allow myself to smoke inside it. I like cleaning. I like to sweep. I like putting things in order. I iron my bed sheets everyday because they wrinkle in the night. Keeping things in order is time consuming. Things get old and worn, broken or scratched with use and need to be replaced. My days feel full. I don’t know that I have the time for a job.
I understand the pathos of my need for order. That it underlies a fear of what I can’t control. That my need for order is itself what I can’t control.
In the months before my breakdown, I started dreading the weekends my boys would come. All I could think about were the left open markers, the glops of toothpaste on the sink, the crumbs and candy wrappers from their pockets, the whining, the fighting, drinks leaving permanent rings on tables or spilling onto the carpet.
One night I gathered everything of theirs that was not put away neatly. I opened drawers and pulled out clothes that were not folded crisply. I threw it all into the hallway of the apartment building. When the boys went out to retrieve their things, I locked the door behind them. A neighbor called their father.
I am better now than I was. Now, when the boys come over, I act as if I don’t feel my veins heating with tension. I smile at them and say nice motherly things: "Would you like a snack? How was school?" I say, "I love you", or kiss their heads. Isaac, my oldest, will have none of it. He says, "Don’t" when I reach to pat his back, or kiss his forehead. I think he knows that these gestures are meant to mask other feelings. It is Daniel I worry about. I think he trusts me, I think he still believes in me.
I finish my resume and it gives me confidence. It speaks of academic excellence, of conferences and of the publication of two articles, one in the Wilson Quarterly. My lack of employment could be easily explained by marriage and children. On paper, I am not an embarrassment at the age of thirty-six.
I woke later than I intended Tuesday morning. I had fallen back to sleep after the alarm went off. I had slept poorly during the night, and was afraid to take a pill, thinking it might cause me to oversleep. It’s very distressing for me to oversleep. I don’t have time to iron my bedding. I have to leave my sheets wrinkled under the bedcovers.
Driving to Bellemoor to pick up Jim, I can’t stop myself from thinking about the sheets. I picture my thinly creased bedding, waiting in dowdy silence for my return, and I feel surges of rage.
I cannot look at Jim when he gets into my car. My lips are tight and my cheeks are drawn in. He says, "Hi", and we drive in silence. In my mind, I accuse Jim of manipulating me into taking this trip.
Heavy gray clouds move across the sky. After fifteen miles of silent recriminations I begin to feel sorry for Jim. I know how difficult it is to be trapped in a car with a woman who is inconsolably angry about the creases in her bed sheets. Though possibly Jim is unaware of my thoughts and is enjoying the silence, and the solitary feeling of a sky darkening with clouds.
"I'm gonna take 95 straight through. We should be there in less than an hour. I hope it doesn’t rain." He doesn’t answer. In daylight, standing by the guardhouse, in worn jeans and a fading flannel shirt, wearing a crusty cowboy hat, that would look out of context anywhere in Connecticut, but looked truly insane in front of a psychiatric hospital, Jim seemed forlorn and hapless.
The highway moves quickly, the dark sky deepening the colors of the trees and brush that line the road. When I was young, I couldn’t understand what made the world look so different before a rain. It was easy to understand how seasons changed the way the landscape looked: snow, no snow, green leaves, bare branches, flowers, no flowers. But how did the colors of the leaves change within minutes before a storm, and then back again after the rain? It wasn’t just that they changed colors, but something else had shifted as well, something inside yourself. As if you were listening to a story and all of a sudden you think that the house in the story isn’t just an everyday house, but a deserted stone cottage, and the doll in the story isn’t just a Barbie doll, but a porcelain doll. And then a little while later, when the sun comes out, you’re thinking no you were wrong, it was an ordinary house and a plastic Barbie.
The rain holds off. I haven’t thought of the bed sheets for almost twenty minutes. The dust which I know is starting to collect on my shelves and table tops isn’t upsetting me. I feel the weight of self-importance grounding me to a persona I am sure Dr. Steiner would approve of. It really hasn’t been so hard to do this, I think. True, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing, I hadn’t set-up any interviews or spoken to anyone at the college, but this is a significant first step. I will see the place, get a sense of what is there, get names of people to contact, and leave off my resume.
I imagine myself employed and making this trip on a regular basis. I want a cigarette, because it seems like the right accessory. I want to smoke like an employed professional, accentuating the moment the cigarette comes to my lips, my head lifting slightly as I draw in the smoke. But I don’t allow myself to smoke in my car.
Jim appears to be sleeping. I can’t tell because his eye patch covers his left eye. But his head nods forward and his shoulders are soft and rounded. His hands rest on his pants, his fingers occasionally twitch. I notice how the faded blue threads of his pants are separating and nearly white above his knees. His posture is similar to that of all the other men dozing and drifting in and out of wakefulness in the day room of Bellemoor; men I am familiar with from my own three months of inpatient life. It is odd to me that until today I hadn’t thought of Jim in that context.
Then Jim’s shoulders do a quick darting movement, and he sighs. He lifts his hat for a moment and runs his hand across his head. Now that I am no longer angry, the silence between us seems awkward.
"So you’re a cowboy," I finally say. It sounds more patronizing than I intended.
"Yeah, pretty much. Was." He jogs a cigarette out of his pack. I don’t say anything. My stomach tightens. I expect him to ask if it’s all right if he smokes in my car. He strikes a match and bends his head into the light. I imagine myself telling him not to smoke. But when I try to say it out loud, I can’t think what to say. Then I wonder if I might ask him for a cigarette. I think maybe it is okay to smoke in my car. Maybe when I am driving to work, I will let myself smoke, to make the trip go faster.
I watch him place the match in the ashtray. I know it will leave a brown speck on the metal.
Jim smokes like a cowboy- other than lighting his cigarette, he hardly ever uses his hands, letting the cigarette hang comfortably from his mouth. When he does use his hands, he cups the cigarette, holding it between his thumb and the rest of his fingers.
Jim cracks the window open. The air feels sharp and the rising trail of smoke separates and disappears. The sound of each passing car seems to accentuate the silence between us. I am growing uncomfortable in Jim’s presence. I feel as if we are on a see-saw, and I am becoming lighter and lighter. I force myself to speak.
"Is it because you’re a cowboy that you don’t talk much?" I put too much emphasis the word "cowboy".
"Yep," he says, with an exaggerated drawl.
I smile. A surge of wind bends the branches of the trees. I notice the cars coming in the opposite direction have their wipers going. "So how come cowboys are so quiet?"
"It’s an image thing."
"I read that it’s a power thing," I feel weighted again. "That by not talking, people maintain power."
"Be a pretty quiet world if that were the case." He takes a long drag on his cigarette. I glance to check his ash. "No, it’s a gun thing," he adds.
"What do you mean?"
"When everyone’s got a gun, you wanna keep your mouth shut." A few drops of rain fall in intervals on the windshield. His ash dribbles onto his shirt and he brushes it away.
My hands tighten around the steering wheel, I know the ash will settle in the blue fabric of my car. "Is that why you shot yourself, to shut yourself up?"
He doesn’t answer.
The rain comes faster and I speed up my windshield wipers. Jim stubs his butt out in the ashtray.
"It was an accident," Jim finally says, his voice quiet, almost apologetic.
"Oh," I say. His cigarette butt is bent and broken at the filter. "Shrinks don’t believe in accidents."
"I believe every second from the first breath we take is an accident,"
"Well maybe the truth is somewhere in between." I say.
"We’re not talking about the truth, we’re talking about beliefs. They don’t often go together."
I roll my eyes at the pretentiousness of this, knowing his patch prevents him from seeing my reaction. But I am enjoying our conversation; it has been a very long time since I have talked like this with anyone.
The rain suddenly begins to downpour. I have a hard time seeing the highway clearly. Other cars speed past me. I keep slowing down because I can’t find the white lines. My body is hunching over the steering wheel.
"You know, it’s more dangerous to slow up in this kind of weather. Maybe you should get off the freeway." Jim is calm, but I know he is concerned.
I try to speed up, but every time I press on the gas petal, I immediately shift to the brake.
"See that exit up there," Jim says pointing to a barely visible white sign about a hundred yards ahead. "Get off there. It will be okay to drive slower down those roads."
I feel a rise of fear settle in my throat. "Look," I say, "I’ve driven in worse weather, I’m fine." But cars keep whishing past me, occasionally honking me back between lines I can’t see.
I put on my blinker. I intend to exit.
My sister and I, when we were little, used lean against a wall, extend our legs, and sink our weight into them. We each tried to be the slowest to slide down the wall. Sometimes our bodies would move so slowly we couldn’t be sure if we had even begun to slide. Then we would feel movement; but we could still stop ourselves from falling. Finally we yelled in panic, and delight, when we knew we had crossed the line and gravity’s momentum pulled us helplessly to the floor.
There is the moment before, and the moment after, and between the two is only enough time to recognize that the moment before is gone. I cannot do it. I had looked at a map and planned my route to Bridgeport. I cannot deviate. I am afraid of crossing a line.
"Shit," I hear Jim mumble as the exit disappears in the sheets of rain.
The rain continues pelting the car, making me feel as if I were a wrongful intruder in the world, and I deserve to be beaten back and taught a lesson. My pleasure in imagining myself a professor, and my arrogant confidence in my conversation with Jim, begged for cosmic retribution. I was riding for a fall. My parents would always warn me whenever I began to experience that great release of childish excitement, "Watch out," the threat in my father’s voice commanding, "You’re riding for a fall."
I think now what an apt warning, riding for a fall, for that is how I have come to imagine myself- a rider on a horse that takes all my energy to control, a horse I cannot trust. I envy Suzanne for her years of electro-shock, and Estelle because she knows she is right, and William for the energy with which he pursues his agendas. I envy Rachel because she is young, and she smiles broadly. I envy Jim because I think he is perfectly sane and is freeloading on the State and whomever else he can. I envy Dr. Steiner because he will never cross the line. I envy anyone who is not terrified of who they are.
Jim taps another cigarette out of his pack.
"Please don’t smoke in my car," my voice is clipped and sharp.
"Oh lady, you are too much. At the next exit, let me off at a gas station. Despite what Dr. Steiner thinks, I actually want to live."
We inch along. I try to follow the tail lights of the car ahead of me, but I can’t keep up with it. I think how familiar news reports of pile-ups on freeways are, how it isn’t delusional or paranoid to consider that such an accident might happen to me. I think of Daniel and Isacc of course. In my mind they are very far away, unreachable, grown, and I am forgotten, and they will never know the mother I intended to be, or that for a time it was different.
A few miles down the road, the next exit appears.
"Get off here and drop me at the first gas station."
" I can’t." I’m not sure that anyone can hear my voice, because I have been swallowed by the rain, and the noise of rustling trees and hissing cars, and I have been swallowed into some vaporous inner space, far away from my actual body.
"What?"
My mouth is moving but I don’t think I have spoken.
"Put your blinker on."
I do.
I drive past the exit.
"What the fuck is going on?"
Somewhere I am laughing because I believe I will expose the insane Jim. Dr. Steiner will prove right. My world will be back in order. I will need Dr. Steiner and I will cautiously drive to Thursday night meetings. Dr. Steiner will embrace me like a forgiving father. I will promise not to question his judgment again.
Jim has reached over and turned my emergency lights on. I have gone so far away from my body that I can now look down at myself. I see myself sitting at the wheel of my car, looking like a grown-up stuffed into one of those kiddie cars outside a supermarket. My face mirrors the face of the children after they’ve put their quarter in the slot, and without actually moving forward, the car lets them imagine that they are coasting down some freeway. They have that wonderful expression of sincerity and concentration, and delight in their own grown-upness. I loved watching my boys faces assume what they believed to be the very essence of adultness, as they mimicked driving a car, or talking on a toy phone, or scribbling what they considered to be an important message which they would translate for me, "Mom, this says…"
Seeing myself with that same expression is a very funny sight. I am laughing so hard that I know tears are running down my face. It is a wonderful laugh. I am laughing like a balloon that has just been released from someone’s fingers. As the air is rushing out, I am dancing in crazy loop de loops, I am giddy.
I can faintly hear Jim speaking.
He is telling me that he is going to sit with me, or on me, or in me, and we are going to drive the car together. This fills me with more laughter. I imagine the two of us driving a bumper car together.
Now I can feel Jim’s body, pressing me tight against the door. He tries to release my hands from the steering wheel, I don’t let go. I am no longer laughing. He places his fingers on top of mine, the car moves forward and then off to the right. The car stops and Jim takes the key out of the ignition.
Just rain. That is the only sound for awhile. I am aware of the sensation of Jim’s body against my own. I have not been touched by anyone, expect a few tenuous gestures from Daniel, in a very long time.
Jim finally says, " I’m gonna get out, walk around to the driver’s side and you’re going to move over to the passenger seat." He says it matter-of-factly.
When he opens my door, I move over to the other seat. He is very wet and I notice the seat darken with water. He takes his hat off and wipes his face. I have never looked at him so closely. Above his right eyebrow his skull slopes all the way to the bridge of his nose. The skin is strangely smooth and pink. I want to touch it. I think it will feel like candle wax. Around his mouth is gray stubble. I want to touch it, because it will feel exactly the opposite of his brow. I want to touch them both at the same time and hold the two sensations in my fingers. I want to see what they feel like together.
Jim starts the car. Soon we are driving away from Bridgeport and towards Bellemoor.
When we get back to Bellemoor, the weather has cleared. Jim asks me if I am okay to drive home. I say, yes.
He smiles at me, "It was fun. We’ll do it again." He reaches to touch my shoulder, I move away.
Thursday evening Jim doesn’t show up. Estelle begins the session by saying that Dr. Steiner drove past her house several times during the week. And she saw him waiting at the elevators in the lobby of the building she works in. Dr. Steiner asks why she didn’t go up to him if he was, in fact, in the lobby? She says she was trying to escape from him, why would she go up to him? William is heavily medicated and stares blankly at the door, I think he is hoping to see Jim enter. Suzanne thanks Dr. Steiner for helping her to work through her feelings about her mother’s death. Rachel speaks in short non-repetitive sentences, and Dr. Steiner beams at her. I see how much she revels in his attention now.
At the break, as I am smoking my Marlboro, Dr. Steiner asks me if I went to Bridgeport last week. I smell the tobacco on his breath. I offer him a cigarette.
He says he doesn’t smoke.
For a second I am unbalanced. I feel a rush of air through my body, as if I had no weight.
"Did you go?" he repeats.
I tell him yes.
He asks me how I feel the trip went.
I say, "Fine." And then add, "We’re planning to go again soon."
"We?" he asks.
"Jim and I," I say- exhaling.
Ann Bronston .... bio coming soon.
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