Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [16]
Signs with missing letters can only mean bad things. When I was a kid, the “e” went out in the local Price Chopper grocery store and stayed out for many years. Because the “Pric Chopper” logo happened to be a man wielding an axe, the sign sent out an eerie and powerful castration message, which, at the age of twelve, affected me deeply.
Oh, fuck.
Inside the building is the busy, clinical atmosphere of a suburban doctor’s office. A receptionist answers one call while placing another on hold. Two people sit reading out-of-date magazines, a chair between. A large artificial ficus tree looms in the corner near the window, its leaves layered with dust. “May I help you?” says the receptionist, a twenty-something woman with short mousy hair and no chin. She is all bubble eyes, nose and teeth, flowing into neck. I tell her I’m here to check in. She looks at me pleasantly, as though I am here for a teeth whitening. “Just have a seat and somebody will be right with you.”
I can feel my ears throb with blood, my face go hot. Suddenly, unexpectedly, this whole scene is becoming dangerously close to being real.
I could leave now. I could say, “I forgot something in the cab . . .” and then walk back out to the parking lot, give myself fifteen good feet of distance, and then run like hell. Back in New York, I could tell everyone, “I had an epiphany on the plane . . . it was almost spiritual . . . You won’t see me drinking anymore.”
Then I see her.
“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” she sings as she comes towards me. “You must be Augusten. I’m Peggy. Come with me.” She is a short woman, but extremely wide. And she’s dressed entirely in white polyester. Her hair is blond, frizzy and past her shoulders, but dark at the “roots” which comprise half the length of her hair. She is saying things to me but I am too stunned to comprehend a word. All I know for sure is that I have accidentally fallen through a wormhole in the universe and stumbled into someone else’s grim life.
She leads me down a flight of stairs, we turn right, walk through a doorway and suddenly we’re in a long hallway. Doors on either side, all of them open. As we walk, I peer into the rooms. This is not hard to do since each one is lit brightly with overhead fluorescents. I notice that each room has three beds. The air smells vaguely of disinfectant and baby powder and magic markers. There are people sitting on some of the beds, doing nothing but looking blankly out into the hallway. My first impression is that combs are banished here. A man looks at me fearfully while he chews his fingernail. His hair is an unruly mass of silver and black threads.
An emaciated great-grandfather crosses in front of us wearing a blue hospital gown. The back is wide open, drawstrings hanging. I see his concave butt cheeks and wince.
This is not good. This is very, very bad.
I take deep, Lamaze breaths, but then remember that smells are molecules and take smaller ones. In order to control what is quickly becoming real panic, I focus ahead of me, on Peggy. She wobbles slightly from side to side. The heels of her shoes are worn thin, unevenly—she seems to lean to the left. Does this mean she’s on her feet a lot, making many unexpected moves? Lunges? Quick bolts?
She leads me into an office with four gray steel desks and lots of matching gray steel filing cabinets. One entire wall of the room is a window that overlooks the public inpatient “community area.” The window is the kind with chicken wire inside of it. The kind that can withstand a direct blow from, say, a loveseat.
Peggy hands me over to a woman who’s sitting behind one of the desks. “Sue, this is Augusten from New York City, he’s here for an intake.”
Sue looks up from her paperwork, smiles. Her face immediately strikes me as both friendly and intelligent. She looks like somebody who might understand why I will not be able to check in after