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Greystone Chip Shots
Morristown, New Jersey

Sharon Kennedy-Nolle

Buzzed in, I bump into a ward girl who drawls, “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. And your son, so handsome, really smart too.” You smile knowingly, mouthing, She’s psychotic. You tell me that I look so skeletal, you can’t look at me. Behind glass, Tattoo-boy panther paces, a flash of interest after a smile. Someone is screaming.

Your first patient outing. Grandma and I take you to lunch. Backseat bound, you already complain of the February drizzle, the directions, the driving. What if we get lost? What if you unclick the lock and bolt? Grandma: “Are you keeping busy, making friends?”

It’s a three-hour sign-out, but we’re done eating in five minutes. The Friendly’s staff cheer annoys you. I hand you my new book and you read aloud, critiquing my syntax. Grandma: “You must excuse me if my English is bad; you know I haven’t had as good an education as you.” I tell you about our trip to Cuba, but you say you only want to go to Uncle Adolf’s Berchtesgaden, so what if it’s gone? Any place is better than here.

You flare over questions about your New Jersey girl, now in the Hamptons on holiday, the Daisy Fay who dreams you to spring, the one whom you finger for your downfall. Grandma says she feels sorry.

At the Putt-Putt mini golf, you’re mad when you don’t make par, flail the Roundup air. When the ball rolls into the gravel, I cry, “Chip shot! Chip shot!” Thereafter, you’d mock, “Chip shot, Chip shot!”

Buzzed back in, we meet “your team”: OT, MD, LSW, PsyD, CCCP, all shuffle in, all mumble, eye me coldly: “Don’t you like outdoor gardening, Patrick? Can we increase art therapy and library time?”

You proclaim, “I am a madman among madmen.” To the question of what’s your philosophy, you shrug: “Don’t think; don’t drink.”

Grandma offers, “How about a root beer candy?”

Behind the doctors, great windows show greystones, the late-day, shift-change light moving into the slushed shush of the grounds.

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