Placebo was the drug that made everything normal.

That’s what people had been saying for decades, and scientists and journalists and housewives had spent all that time trying to figure out what it did to make everyone so OK. They could only agree on what normal was—a general willingness and ability to work and love in an unobtrusive way. But they couldn’t come up with a workable hypothesis or even a decent guess about what could be causing such unreasonably normal behavior.

Some posited that it formed the perfect extra amount of those happy chemicals in the brain. Some thought it lowered the mental blood pressure, making mental pain messages travel slowly or not at all. Others, like me, thought it was just the so-called “placebo effect,” especially since Glaxco emphasized that most of the pill was air. Plus, after millions and millions of doses, only one side effect, a slight disinterest in sex followed by a prolonged sexual arousal, had ever been reported and only by females.

Michelle just knew if made her feel normal. Like a little girl.

Trace amounts of sugar could account for that, but it could have been any of the eighty-four chemicals listed on the packaging of the new over-the-counter version that improved her outlook so normally.

She didn’t care. It fixed her, and Abraham was happy. Happy was better than normal. But he was happy and she was normal.

And that was good enough for her.
* * *

Before Placebo, Michelle was a nightmare.

Abraham would slip—let out one insult, miss one phone call, come home a few hours late and she would cry and cry and cry. Like a baby—but a manipulative baby who knew the power of her baby tears. Her thoughts were supposed to matter. That’s what her tears said. And they said it too clearly.

It made Abraham crazy. He shook things: himself, furniture, her.

She tried to stop crying. But she couldn’t.

He would beg, “Please, please, p-p-p-please. Please fucking quit, quit, quit this shit before I leave and never come back.”

And she’d then try to be inanimate because him leaving was the last thing she wanted. She knew she wouldn’t survive a day. Definitely not a whole night. But the one thing she couldn’t stop was the tears. Once they started, they were impossible to turn off. (Before Placebo, that is.)

Eventually, he’d have to slam the door and get out for a bit. When he came back, she couldn’t blame him for any of the things he said.

She was just glad she was there. She showed that by quietly sobbing.
* * *

Abraham and Michelle had been together three years, and just like her mother before her, she knew exactly how to press the perfect button to drive a grown man insane. Abraham thought she would learn him eventually and peace would follow or he would leave. But nothing changed.

Never. Not until her thirtieth birthday when she cried for twenty-four hours straight. Abraham moved his things out and they both decided, with my help, that she had to get on Placebo.
That was my birthday present. That or he was leaving and never coming back. Never.
* * *

Imagine this: The day Michelle turns thirty. Dusk. Partly cloudy. Abraham leaves work early. Traffic stalls him on every road, intersection, off-ramp.

He wants to bring home their favorite pizza and spend a few hours watching TV before his programming practice—the team cup was a week away.

The pizza place was mobbed. Kids all hopped up on their parents’ indulgence, celebrating the end of some season and the beginning of another.

As Abraham waited in line, every scream, every uncalculated burst of speed, every gaze from a mother that could be considered a scold, tightened his wrist, reminding him over and over that typing was going to be a problem. He would have to program by voice. He hated voice entry, the way it replicated every pause, every stutter. Lingering on his vowels the way he never meant to. Half the time, he had to retype the entire command anyway. Fuck this fucking shit, he thought as the woman in front of him ordered nine pizzas. Nine pizzas with everything, extra crispy.

It’s dark when he walks out with one flat box. Gray clouds beneath all the black. He drives home. His breath sounds like growls, even to him.

The place is a mess. The only thing she’d managed to clean up was his programming kit. She’d put that up on the top shelf of the closet, almost as a reminder that she was four inches taller than him.

She comes out of the bath eventually and finds him in the closet, stepping on a bottom shelf, trying to get his kit down. She tries to help. There is no way they can negotiate it together. It lands with a thud behind them. He falls on it. Opens it up. Everything seems fine—the way electronics always do from the outside. But he won’t know anything until he plugs in.

“Hi,” she says. Hi like he didn’t notice her. He rifles through his kit. “Hi,” again.

He looks up. He sees her. Her hair is different. Short. Shorter than it has ever been. She looks like a boy. A cute, little boy.

She poses, slouches. Slouches, like that makes her more feminine. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

Then she has to ask about her hair. Even she knows that she shouldn’t. But she has to. Like she had really thought about what he’d think when she did it. “So, is it ok?” She points to her head, suggesting he was too stupid to know what she meant otherwise.

“It’s, it’s, it’s,” he says. “It’s not beautiful.”

“It’s not?”

“Well, it’s not supposed to be, right? It’s supposed to be manly, right?”

“No,” she says and shakes her head. “But, I guess it’s boyish.”

She is already crying.

“Fuck,” Abraham says. His kit is fucked. She is fucked. His life is fucked. “Fuck.” He slams the box shut. “I’ve gotta, gotta, gotta go.” As he’s walking out the front door: “There’s a p-p-pizza. Happy Birthday. Leave me a couple slices.”

* * *

This part I like to think about:

She barely ate. She drank instead.

She must have been drinking for two hours straight.

Then she put on a nightgown and drove.

Not too far. A mile to my house.

She stands on my stoop for five, ten minutes, waiting for the courage to knock. She knew Abraham was there, in the basement. His anger on simmer.

* * *

This part I know: My wife answers the door.

Michelle immediately falls into her arms, explains between tears that she was going to kill herself and she just wanted Abraham to “know” it wasn’t his fault. Michelle passes out. Vomits. Her vomit is about the size of one piece of pizza. When she wakes up, she’s alone in her room.

Everything Abraham owns is gone.

That’s when the crying started.

Twenty-three hours later, Abraham calls me up and asks me to check in on her. I am a postman by day, a programmer for fun and a Marriage and Family Therapist according to a certificate I earned online. I’d never used my skills. I always love a chance to use my skills.

* * *

Michelle’s mother answered the door. She stared at me, projecting cold suspicion. She looks at all men with suspicion. I can tell this. My diagnosis was made.

She eventually let me in and led me to the bedroom where Michelle was still crying.

I had to ask in four different ways, but her mother finally left us alone.

I explained my credentials.

She seemed relieved as I reach into my pocket. “99% of all problems are chemical problems,” I explained. “If we can just balance the chemicals in your brain you’ll be fine.” I handed her the slightly bruised package of Placebo that I picked up for my wife a few months before. She’d refused them because she said she liked her thoughts very much. That was the problem I told her. And my wife agreed.

“How many do I take?” Michelle asked.

“One in the morning. One at night.”

“So, I can take one now?”

“Yep. As soon as you do, your brain will feel better. By tomorrow, you’ll be able to control your emotions 40-50% more than you do now. That will increase every day by one to two percent.”

She downed one without water. “I feel better already.”

“You should.”

I explained the side effects and told her that I needed to see her once a week to check her progress, alone. She could tell Abraham about the Placebo but not about our meetings. He wouldn’t understand and men hate being talked about. She understood completely.

After my physical examination, I left.

A few hours later I called Abraham to let him know I thought he should see her. She took some Placebo and she seemed rational, almost like an adult.

Three days later, I saw him at the programming competition. He seemed calm and loose. He could type without pain. He was taking Placebo too. “Ev-ev-ev-everything is better than OK,” he said.

It wasn’t the Placebo, but I didn’t want to explain.

* * *

Placebo made cleaning so fun that Michelle wondered how she had ever hated it before. She told me that it was in Abraham’s nature not to call her beautiful on her birthday, and she loved him for that.

She let her hair grow long.

She enjoyed cooking dinner, washing clothes, shaving off body hair. During sex she’d just turn over and put her rear in the air. Abraham was so happy about that that he’d written a poem about mountains.

* * *

I read quotes on the Internet when I’m bored. Inspirational ones. Voltaire said that the secret of being a bore was to tell everything. It’s like reading an instructional manual. The person is too close to it. They don’t know how to find the words. So, I won’t explain anymore.

I’ll just finish with what I tell Michelle every week as she leaves my basement: Secrets make life worth living.

This story was inspired by Jeff Hurlow’s Myspace Portrait Project.

As always, I steal from John Prindle.

Browse Timeline

• « I’m Only Capable of Sharing All of Me With You
• » This Jew’s First (and Only) Christmas

Comments ( 4 )