Outside the Lines: A Novel

After just over six months in the locked ward, David left the state hospital with fifty bucks, thirty days’ worth of meds, and the clothes on his back. He meandered down the long driveway toward the road, unsure exactly where he should go. The divorce papers made it clear his marriage was over, and the only other place he knew he might be welcome was Rick’s house. After an hour-long bus ride, David was there.

“Sure, man,” Rick said. “You can stay here awhile.”

David nodded his thanks and offered to cook all of Rick’s meals and promised to keep the house cleaned up. The life-skills class he had been forced to sit through at the hospital for the last month emphasized the importance of cleanliness—for his body and his surroundings. Back in July, after he’d already spent almost two months in the hospital, David wrote Eden the first of five letters, telling her how sorry he was for what he put her through. He told her how much he loved her. When the letters came back marked “Return to Sender,” David shoved them into the one small box he kept with him, full of Salvation Army clothes and a few books. She didn’t want to see him. That much was clear. And at his core, David didn’t blame her.

Rick’s pot customers weren’t always comfortable with David sitting in the house all day, as a possible witness to their drug deals, so after making breakfast each morning for a few months, David headed downtown to Pioneer Square. He found he liked the noise of downtown Seattle, the constant distraction it provided. Especially since he had stopped taking his medication and the fiends had taken up residence in his head again. He found himself muttering as he sat in Pioneer Park, pacing back and forth on the small patch of grass where other men often sat and wasted the day away.

“You got a home, man?” one of them asked David one late fall day. The man was tall and thin like David, but with shaggy blond hair and sunken blue eyes. He wore a black trench coat and ratty cargo-style jeans.

David shook his head briskly and continued to pace. A voice in his head spoke to him. Don’t talk to him. He’ll try to kill you.

“You can crash with me,” the man said. “If you’ll give me your shoes.”

David walked away. He saw a little girl with long, black hair standing on the corner and he took off after her. “Eden!” he cried. “It’s Daddy!” The little girl didn’t turn her head. Eden was ignoring him, just like she had with the letters he’d sent. He needed to talk to her. To tell her the reason he stayed away. That he was only protecting her. She didn’t answer his letters, but now she was here, looking for him.

The man with the little girl whipped around when David’s hand landed on the little girl’s shoulders. There was fury in the man’s dark eyes, and he grabbed David’s hand and pulled it away from where it lay.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man said through gritted teeth. “Get your hands off my daughter!”

David shook his head. This man was obviously confused. “She’s mine. My daughter. You took her from me.” The little girl cowered, curling into the man’s side. “Eden? Bug?” The little girl began to cry, and David backed away. Now he was hurting her again. He couldn’t keep doing this. Oh god. What is wrong with me?

His blood began to race in his veins, pumping hot and furious. He grabbed his long, dark hair, pulling at his scalp until he felt tufts beginning to yank free. The pain didn’t work anymore. It didn’t soothe the screaming in his head; it didn’t snap him back to reality. I can’t do this. I can’t. I need to get well again so Eden will want me back. David took off running again down the street, across three lanes of traffic, all cars blaring their horns at him as they were forced to slam on their brakes to keep from smashing into him. He thought maybe he should let them.

David ran. He ran toward the waterfront, beneath the viaduct. Night began to fall, the air a fluttery purple around him. He ran until his lungs burned like fire in his chest, until his leg muscles were rubbery and loose. He didn’t know what he was running from. Himself, maybe? The wildness starting to ache in his flesh again?

Turning into an alleyway, David slowed down enough to see a cardboard box the size of a washing machine next to a dirty green Dumpster. It was cold and starting to rain. All David wanted was to feel warmth. To sleep, to escape the churning thoughts that blared in his head. He crawled inside the box and curled up fetal, tucking his hands beneath his cheek as a pillow. He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth, back and forth, until sleep came and rescued him from the cold, dark night.

A week later, David went back to Rick’s to grab the letters he’d written to Eden. He tucked them, along with a change of clothes and the five hundred dollars Rick gave him when David told his friend he was leaving, into a green backpack he’d found in a downtown alley. The last letter that had come back to David informed Eden he was thinking of leaving Seattle, and maybe he would. He was finally in charge of what he would do.

It was terrifying at first, not having a house to return to each night. But during the days, on the streets, he talked to people who didn’t seem to care about his rambling speeches or his dark, villainous moods. He found out about the soup kitchens where he could get a hot meal and the shelters where if he got there early enough, he could have a bed for the night. He learned where he could take a shower and where it wasn’t safe to hang out. He watched the way other men and women panhandled on the street corners but couldn’t bring himself to do the same. Instead, he used some of the cash Rick had given him and purchased a used easel and a sketch pad. Going back to his roots, he charged to sketch portraits, and some days he even made enough to pay for a cheap hotel room. He always made enough for a bottle of booze, which, for the most part, kept the fiends in his head at bay.

The lack of rules and boundaries appealed to David. No one to tell him what medicines to take or ways he shouldn’t behave. He danced if he felt like it or climbed beneath a blanket for days. David got the idea in his head he should head to California, where it was always sunny. He didn’t have to ask permission. He didn’t have to do anything other than bag up his things and stand by the side of the road with a sign that said san francisco. Eventually, a car came along that gave him a ride to Portland, then one to Ashland, and finally, he arrived in the City by the Bay.

Day by day, gradually, he kept himself busy enough doing nothing that he didn’t feel the gaping hole in his chest that missed his daughter. He filled it with vodka or cheap wine, with meaningless banter with other men who knew what it was to have their minds betray them. He ran his fingers over the angry red raised scars on his wrists, the left one much worse than the right, and forced himself to blank out the memories of the daughter he left behind.

He stopped resisting the twisted thoughts that rose inside him, allowing them to come and go as they pleased. He felt no pressure to be someone other than exactly who he was in each moment. For the first time in his life, David felt free.