Semicolon People

Semicolon People Louise Marburg (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Kate Elizabeth End Page 10 If I spent four years in medical school, I'd want people to address me as "Doctor, " so I call my new psychiatrist "Dr. Reagan" even though my friend Sheila calls him "Ned. " Sheila recommended Dr. Reagan because my old psychiatrist fired me two weeks ago and I need my prescriptions refilled. I liked her, my old psychiatrist—or I should say "former" because she wasn't old—but she didn't have a clue about medications. She wasn't particularly good at talk therapy, either, though no amount of talking would have transformed me into a fully functional person. I assume she fired me because I saw an advertisement on TV for a medication, an antipsychotic approved for treatment-resistant depression. I asked her to prescribe the medication, which she'd never heard of, and within a few days of taking it, I was a new woman. My crime was knowing End Page 11 something she didn't and should have; it was on television, for crying out loud. Anyway, I'm fine now, no thanks to her. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. My father liked to say that, though it's not always true. I can't, for instance, braid my own hair. I sit on the doctor's tasteful modernist sofa and immediately start talking to avoid the weird silence that psychiatrists are able to sustain forever when you can't think of anything to say. "I quit my job. It was a waste of my time. I don't care about teaching Spanish. " "How would your time be better spent? " he says. "What do you care about? " He's wearing a white N95 and perfectly round tortoiseshell eyeglasses. His only feature that isn't obscured is his shock of reddish-blond hair. Someday, I think, his whole face will be revealed, but that day may be so far in the future that I will have moved on to another psychiatrist, or left town, or died from the next terrible virus. I'm not wearing a mask, which I suppose is why he is. Or maybe he wears one all the time. To mask or not to mask is a conundrum these days, when the left is vaccinated and the right is not, and you can't immediately tell who is who. "I don't know what I care about. I've been watching The Crown; I care about that. It's fascinating. Have you seen it? " He makes a gesture with his hand, a flip-flop that suggests impatience. "What do you want to do instead of teaching? " What I want to do is wake up every morning to a day as empty as air. I want to stroll around the house and watch TV, eat sandwiches, and take a bath. I want to stick my head out of the car window on the way to the beach. I want to go out to dinner and drink too much wine. I want to feel my happiness until I go to bed, then wake up the next day and feel it again. "I'll think of something, " I say. Dr. Reagan adjusts his mask and repositions his eyeglasses so they'll stop fogging up like little portholes. "'Work is the cornerstone of our humanness. ' Sigmund Freud said that. " I gaze out the window behind his head. The weeping cherry next door is frothy with magenta blossoms; the weather is balmy and bright. A small airplane flies by trailing a sign that says free beer at jimbos 3-5. "'Girls just want to have fun, '" I say. "Cyndi Lauper said that. " ________ Sheila and I are sitting at a table at Jimbo's, drinking free beer. There is a bowl of peanuts before us that Sheila refuses to touch. She says men go End Page 12 to the bathroom and don't wash their hands, then stick them in the bowl of peanuts, spreading all manner of germs. "Bring 'em on, " I say, popping one in my mouth. The place is surprisingly. . .