by Richard Downing
“Too creepy for me, Shipley . . . I’m gone.”
Once again, Shipley’s face had become a silent movie, a spliced choreography of twists, twitches, and tics, eyes, nose, and mouth unstuck actors blinking, pinching, and pursing from frame to frame. And his face would stay that way until he could summon that one exhaustive snort from an unpinched nose that offered release. His eyelids would then slow, modulate, his nose cease flaring and pinching, flaring and pinching, his grimace-lined lips smooth then part just enough for a soft inhale—hold it—and a soft exhale. Slowly does it. There. He knew better than to reply before the exhale. Just a slow release of air not yet drifting into words, words that would tumble and fall into a foreign syntax that would only make things worse and his face resume filming itself. But by the exhale, of course, it would be too late . . . “I’m gone.”
It was the face.
Shipley knew that.
Ever since Benny in middle school.
Ben and Julio in high school.
His second stepdad, Robert, throughout.
It had always been the face.
A relationship would be humming right along—OK, maybe a few minor speedbumps—which movie to see, pizza toppings to order, driving prowess or lack thereof—but the first signs of stress, real stress, and out came the hand-cranked camera from yesteryear to crank up a face that took on a spasmodic life of its own, each feature determined to take a lead role in oddity and unfettered movement.
“Your son doesn’t need to go to every restaurant with us, does he?”
“What’s wrong with Christian?”
“I didn’t say anything was exactly wrong with Christian.”
“Exactly?”
“Well, not exactly exactly. But, Sheila, he does have a tendency to—I know ‘blurt’ is not the right word here—but blurt things out—”
“Excuse me, but I happened to have taught my son the importance of expressing himself as himself.”
“That’s for sure.” At points like this, Shipley would realize that he . . . Christian, in this case . . . was not the only one with a tendency to “blurt things out.” And Shipley would be straightaway ushered into a stress level that far exceeded pineapple or pepperoni on the thin crust.
It would start with the nose: pinch flare, pinch flare, pinch-pinch flare.
Next the eyes. Squint and release, squint and release, squeeze shut, open, squint as if the jerk-squinting action itself were the motor driving the increasingly rapid blinking.
Lastly the mouth would join this fitful dance of no discernable rhythm. Tightening lips, tighter, squeezed together, tighter, no, now curled out, open as if to—no, tight again, and who knew what they’d do next?—Shipley certainly didn’t. He—his face—was just a screen upon which his facial features enacted their autonomous and wildly disparate roles.
And all the while the hand-cranked camera—surely being operated by some Tourette syndrome-afflicted technician from the 1920s—would speed and slow and speed and slow until his facial features had become not some smooth-flowing brook gently traversing the edge of a verdant woods but a series of monstrous waves crashing haphazardly—alarmingly—against the rocks of a jagged Northwest coastline. And his therapist would say that that was an interesting way to describe it, but why did you have to bring Tourette syndrome into it, and how did you feel about having brought Tourette syndrome into it, and Shipley would wonder why Carol had even recommended this therapist before she left, and he would feel his nostrils widen and his eyelids begin to bat up and down and up and down to the beat of Ben telling him what he was going to do to him the next day after gym class or the swing of Robert’s strap.
When it seemed nose, eyes, and mouth had emoted to their fullest extents and the pressure just behind Shipley’s face had built to a code red, at that precise point all facial movements would expel as a single, sharp snort through his nose. He could breathe again and watch Sheila or Carol or whomever as she walked, jogged, ran, bicycled, drove away.
His therapist had said it was all in his head.
“Well, no shit,” Shipley had blurted out.
“There’s no need for that kind of language. We’re all friends here.”
Shipley couldn’t help but notice that there were only two of them “here,” not counting the lost soul in the foyer which served as a waiting room, and Shipley was pretty certain that if she were overhearing his sessions, she would be offering a few “No shits” of her own, albeit with a more quizzical tone.
She had smiled at him once as he’d walked past her toward the front door. It was a pleasant-enough smile, though brief. Perhaps he would ask her out. She would smile at him over dinner at the restaurant of her choice. They would laugh, touch hands across the table, try to recapture that night the next weekend and the next one after that. She would have a child or children. He should try to get to know him/her or them. He would blurt something out. She would respond, then he, then she, hands no longer touching, as his facial features would reprise familiar roles until the best Shipley could hope for would be a comfortable chair and a couple’s discount with their therapist.