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CHAPTER 1

Being of sound mind and disposing memory, and not acting under duress, menace, fraud or undue influence of any person whatsoever, I do hereby make, publish and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, revoking all other former wills.

This document is not about California feelings, nor even the sure and certain hope of anything, and certainly not a better world; its subject is the honest nuclear-grade fuel of our country's East Coast, the loot, the booty, the very pelf of a Last Will and Testament! Money, and lots of it — that's what this Will is all about, and what you will soon receive!

For this reason, I am pleased to examine the odd spectral evidence that has already manifested itself to me. Who would have imagined I might suddenly receive these visitations of the literal essence of the immigrant ancestor's son — in a residential treatment program such as this one, in Lower Manhattan of New York City?

Could it be because of its physical proximity to Staten Island, where Thys Barentsen first served as magistrate under Pieter Stuyvesant?

I know the lies you've been told — that the much-discussed Old Money of the family is so old that it's already been spent! But the money exists, and it exists in amounts that would stagger the imagination!

Did I mention that it would stagger the imagination?

2.

I currently live in reduced circumstances, in a residential treatment program in Lower Manhattan, in New York City. There was once a farm where this residence is situated, I am reliably informed; after that there was a church, most likely Episcopal or Dutch Reformed. Then, for reasons unknown, the two houses here today were built — perhaps to house an extended family of some kind, huddled together in an increasingly nonresidential neighborhood. Today, the two abodes are surrounded by lofts, small- and medium-size businesses, a day-labor agency, a heavily padlocked space where professional dancers practice, a Chinese restaurant and a laundry — the latter two owned by the same family — and a three-story parking garage. At some point a catwalk was built between the two houses, bedrooms were renovated, a staff office was created in both residences, and voila! ... an aging but thoroughly respectable residential treatment program was created, just shabby enough to suggest the distress of its clients, but without such seediness as might add to it. At some point its funding nonprofit ennobled the two houses into a single mental health program, called Voyager House.

The house where I now live is set aside for transitional housing, whereas the house next door is an acute care program. Our neighbors were told a variety of things about the two abodes, including a vague story that the residents received advanced vocational training of some unspecified nature; but in reality, both houses constitute nothing more than a residential mental health program. (By the time I arrived, the appellation "group home" had fallen out of use.) I am not crazy enough for acute care, and my referral to transitional housing served my purposes in many ways — it is a long-term program, lasting from twelve to eighteen months, which means I might be able to remain a client for the full eighteen months, as long as I follow the rules.

My intake into Voyager House was done at night by a competent young counselor named Neil, who identified himself as a psychology student at City College of New York. He was the single overnight staff person in the transitional housing program on the night I arrived. Throughout my intake he shared small bits of information about himself, even as he extracted somewhat more substantial nuggets of information about me. The objective was to create the illusion of a conversation; but the difference between our situations, I quickly saw, was that his life story was in the present tense, whereas mine either resided comfortably in the past, or was experienced partially or wholly in my own imagination.

At some point, Neil mentioned that I had been accepted into Voyager House because of a municipal program for homeless seniors with chronic mental illness. There were currently five other clients in transitional housing, three men and two women. I was apparently the only person in the transitional housing program who didn't take psychotropic medications.

"Do the psych meds really help the clients?" I asked.

"Sure, when they're appropriately prescribed," he said, "but when a lot of these clients start to feel better, they stop taking the meds. Then they decompensate, and end up in acute care. Once we get them stabilized and back on their meds, they either go back to their lives in the community, or — if they've burned enough bridges — they come to transitional housing, where you are now."

"How does your program get away with dispensing medications? I thought only doctors and nurses were allowed to do that."

"We hand over their med boxes, and let them self-dispense their own meds. Then we check off the meds in the med book. That's how we get around the state regulations."

"And when they're discharged into the community, they go off their meds?"

"Well ... not always, but it's fair to say that most of the clients living here went off their meds at some point. But going off your medications isn't what got you into this program."

I wondered how much he knew about what I'd told the staff at Bellevue. To get a good referral to a community-based program, you had to talk about self-harm — or "suicidal ideation," as the Bellevue shrinks like to put it.

I told the psychiatrists at Bellevue Hospital Center that I had suicidal feelings, but that I would never act on them — or at least, I didn't want to act on them. That last twist was improvised, but effective, I'm happy to report, and I had good reason for using it, beside the fact that it was mainly true. It was November, and the chilly winds were blowing, so a referral to a decent residential program was my ticket to ride; it would enable me to survive the winter, and that fact alone would contribute greatly to my mental health. It was a simple, time-tested formula: you had to cop to suicidal feelings to gain admittance to a decent residential mental health program, but you had to be careful not to talk too much about it — or get too dramatic in the telling of it — or you might be put in a jacket and sent off to one of the forgotten backwards of Bedlam-by-the-Hudson.

It was a nervy play, but damned if I didn't pull it off. I was now in a reasonably nice residential program with actual beds and toilets and all the other accoutrement of civilized life.

"What are you thinking?" Neil asked.

"That I'm grateful that I still have enough balls to punch my own ticket."

He laughed. "Man, you don't need psych meds."

3.

The clinical director was a funny, somewhat manic woman named Clarissa Rowland. She came bustling in on the morning after I was admitted to the program. Neil, the young man who had done my intake, had apparently snoozed a bit during the wee hours, but had thoughtfully deployed three alarm clocks — not to mention his so-called "smart watch" — and was up and writing in the charts long before the boss lady arrived. She, in turn, was sporting what looked like an expensive but extremely well-worn brown pants suit, once the universal uniform of management women in human services, and still capable of sending the message that advancement came, in her world, from expertise rather than somebody's impression of her. Her weapons were words, the brown pants suit said, and for her the good fight had nothing to do with appearance. That's what the handsome brown pants suit of yesteryear said.

I came up from the kitchen, where I had been trying unsuccessfully to operate the steaming dishwasher, and made my way to the staff office. "I'm afraid the dishwasher is hopeless," I announced.

"Never mind," Neil said. "We have a client who specializes in repairing it." My eyebrows must have gone up a good inch, because he added, "We can't afford the repairman."

Rowland introduced herself, then took up my chart, which was lying on the table, and expertly flipped the pages open to survey Neil's intake note. "Yes, you were expected here," she said, reading. "EMS told us you were coming."

This magical acronym EMS referred to the Emergency Management Services at the world's most notorious insane asylum, Bellevue Hospital Center.

"I'm glad you have a bed for me," I said.

"Yes, well, the census has been down lately." That was exactly the kind of proprietary information she shouldn't be sharing with a new client, I thought, but the fact that she had done so made me trust her.

"I'll try to be an asset to ... to your —" "Whatever."

"Transitional housing program," I said.

She immediately went back to my chart. "There's no age here," she observed. "How old are you? You do have an age, don't you?"

"That's — well, I'm not legally required to give my age, am I?"

"If you don't want to give it, you don't have to."

"Nobody knows for sure when I was born, you see, except that it was in the state of New Jersey. After a certain time, I got tired of trying to ferret out the chronology."

"Well, I'm not sure I really buy that, but who knows, maybe you're better off not having an age." She exchanged a quick smile with Neil, as though they shared a fascination with the exigencies of aging. "The first group is at ten o'clock in the morning," she said to me. "It's the regular Tuesday check-in group, where we talk informally about ... you know ..."

"Feelings," I suggested.

"Ha, yes," she said brightly. She looked at her watch before hurrying off.

"There's coffee downstairs in the pantry," Neil said, by way of explaining the clinical director's sudden departure. "I make the coffee early, about an hour before anybody gets here. But watch out, if you decide to drink a cup. It's strong."

"Do you make it that way on purpose?"

"The coffee has to be strong, after you've been here all night."

I nodded in the direction of the vanished clinical director. "I wouldn't say that that she needed any coffee."

"Clarissa?" He shrugged. "High energy. It's builtin with some people."

A moment or two later Rowland came hurrying back to the staff office, clutching a large cup of steaming coffee. She smiled brightly at me. "Whatever it is, I'll answer all questions when I'm awake!"

I interpreted that as a polite request for me to leave, so I went to my room. Later, when I went to shave and clean up in the second-floor bathroom, I saw Clarissa and Neil counting meds in small plastic med-counters, pushing them around in groups of five with wooden coffee stirrers. A short time later, as I returned from the restroom, I saw that Neil was gone and that Clarissa was alone in the office, burrowing through the charts. She glanced up, smiled brightly, and returned instantly to the charts. It occurred to me that perhaps she'd had a long weekend and was trying to get caught up.

Or perhaps she simply relished work. There was something about her manic style that I found oddly comforting. I am in awe of those who are mad to work; it is a Protestant value, and a full-fledged emotional orientation, one that I unashamedly embrace — in the lives of others. As for myself, I have on occasion sought the easy way. You might well ask, have I sought — as one might say — to "beat the system," even to malinger a bit now and then? Is the Pope a Catholic?

Yes, it is true that I admire others who are mad to work, but as for myself, I am agnostic on the issue. There's a lot more to it, I say, than meets the eye, and besides, each case is different. Work won't kill you, as a favorite great-uncle of mine used to say, but why take a chance? And the reality is, as you may already have guessed, I am currently on a mission that involves a more formidable kind of work than even the most hardened reader might imagine. It is dangerous, and it is demanding, but if I am successful it could change the world as we know it.

4.

We ate a simple, healthy breakfast downstairs in the dining room. My fellow clients referred to Director Rowland by her first name, and appeared to like her. The clientele were appropriately shabby — actually rather slovenly, I thought — but it was early in the day, and in a treatment program such as Voyager House there would be no dress code. Therefore, the threadbare appearance of the clients did not surprise me. (And it was a break for me, as well, since I lacked anything in the way of an adequate wardrobe.)

At breakfast I sat next to an older client who intermittently described the residential repairs to our building he was obliged to make, which included the daily rehabilitation of the dishwasher. I found out later he was a former building contractor who fancied himself still employed, and regarded himself as specifically required to make appropriate home improvements at Voyager House. Two of the older women at breakfast carried large bags with knitting supplies — interestingly, however, they did not actually knit until well into the afternoon or evening. Maybe, I thought, they were unable to fire up the knitting needles until the second cup of coffee, or were perhaps waiting for the proper signal to begin, a signal known only to them.

I had decided to wear some old slippers I'd found deep in a drawer in my room — they were too large for me, but flopped delightfully as I walked down the hallway. I had no robe, but by way of an unfettered and comfortable eccentricity that I imagined as natural to this place, I wore all of the three shirts I owned, leaving them all to hang out of my trousers for added verisimilitude.

After breakfast, I — like several of the others — took my cup of coffee into the group session. The group was held in a room that was once a parlor, but was now extremely rundown, as though it had been used for storage.

After the group settled down, Clarissa Rowland set her coffee down long enough to introduce me. "Would you like to tell us about yourself?" "I was referred here by — well, the Emergency Management Services at Bellevue Center."

"Why?" a middle-age black man asked.

I was delighted to see that both he and the former building contractor had not once taken their hats off throughout breakfast, and continued to wear them in group. The hats were of the workaday cloth kind worn by longshoremen, and were virtually identical. Wearing their hats in the house gave both clients the appearance of serious persons who were pondering the wisdom of leaving, but hadn't yet made up their minds about it.

"They said that this program at Voyager House would be appropriate for me," I said, by way of answering the black man's query.

He chuckled. "Did they say why it would be appropriate for you? Might could be they have a reason they haven't told you about yet."

"No, I have a pretty good idea of what opened the door for me," I said.

"Self-harm," said a young male client knowingly. His notebooks, which he carried with him, were full of violent drawings of weapons and fully armed space vehicles. "They keep asking you to tell them how you really feel. Then when you tell them, they punish you."

"No, no," I said, "I don't feel punished. I'm lucky to be here, I think."

"Maybe you can start out with some general background about yourself," Clarissa Rowland interjected firmly. "I mean, where you come from, what your interests are, what your family was like, things like that."

"Actually, I don't mind talking about why Bellevue sent me to Voyager House. In fact, I need to talk about it, if the group has no objection." I glanced at Rowland, and she nodded, so I continued. "From the moment I awaken in the morning, I have this terrible feeling that I'm cursed," I began, avoiding eye contact with the others, "but I don't mean cursed by being referred to Voyager House — I'm happy to be here. Maybe I should say that I am struggling with the feelings that my life is cursed, that no matter which way I turn I will encounter insurmountable problems that I don't fully understand. I believe I am being followed — shadowed, you might say — by a man who has some detailed knowledge of my situation, a man who may actually be an ancestor of mine, and who can therefore explain to me why I feel this way ... that is, why I feel that my entire life is cursed, compromised, booby-trapped by dangers I cannot control."

"An ancestor?" somebody asked.

"It's a feeling I have. I can't explain it."

"Ask him to come over in the afternoon," said the eldest of the non-knitters. "The afternoon would be good."

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "In the Land of Dreams"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Lawrence Swaim.
Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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