staying still, or allowing themselves to feel uncomfortable emotions—so when I shook my head no, the man seemed disappointed in me, and after a moment he left, the door jingling as it closed behind him.
Jeremy
Fierro was waiting for me outside his apartment building, in jeans and a T-shirt, his USMC baseball cap pulled so low I couldn’t see his eyes. In the car, he turned up the volume on the radio when Metallica came on, but I didn’t complain, even though all that crying and hollering about being a rebel gave me a headache, and later when he went on a rant about the Dodgers’ losing streak, I just nodded along. Whatever it took to get the guy the support he needed. I’d sent an email to Hec, an old buddy of ours from Charlie company, because I’d remembered he was in a group like this, up in Oregon, and he’d said it had helped him some. I was hoping it would help Fierro, too.
A folding sign outside the community center told us that the anger-management support group met inside the gym. Flyers advertising summer swim classes for kids, ballroom dancing for seniors, and a family-movie night hung on the wall next to the double doors. Most of the chairs were already taken by the time Fierro and I walked in and joined the circle around the facilitator. His name was Rossi. He wore a bright yellow shirt that stretched tightly over his pectorals, and he spoke with a thunderous voice that I had not expected from a member of the therapeutic professions. “Who would like to share tonight?” he asked.
Immediately a hand shot in the air. It belonged to a middle-aged man whose knee bounced up and down like the needle of a sewing machine. “Hi, I’m Doug. I had a really bad week. My daughter invited a bunch of her friends over for a board game and they were loud. I came downstairs to get a drink. I wanted to tell them to be quiet, but I didn’t want to interfere because my wife had warned me to stay out of their way. Plus, she was already mad at me because she says I never help around the house. Which isn’t true. I mean, I run the vacuum and I empty the dishwasher sometimes. Anyway, I couldn’t say anything to my daughter and her friends, but it’s like, I couldn’t take the noise, either. So I just stood there, in the kitchen, feeling like I might explode.”
A woman in a nurse’s uniform who was slouching in her chair, arms crossed, sat up suddenly. “It happens to me, too. I’m Adriana, by the way. Sometimes I just want to scream when my kids ask me to take them to the park or the movies. I can’t go out looking like this.” She uncrossed her arms then, and I saw that her left hand was missing its ring and pinky fingers. “But I know I can’t say anything, because it’ll only make them think that my ex-boyfriend was right about me. About my temper, I mean. I’m in so much pain all the time. That’s what they don’t understand.”
I could practically feel the heat of Fierro’s disdain radiating from him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought. Maybe I should’ve insisted that he go through the VA, even though they wouldn’t offer him the private counseling he wanted and would just send him home with another prescription for Paxil or Zoloft or Wellbutrin. But then Fierro did something I didn’t expect: he raised his hand.
“Ah,” Rossi said. “We have a new member tonight. Please, introduce yourself.”
“My name is Bryan Fierro. It’s hard to find someone to talk to sometimes, so I ’preciate you all having me here. My problem is, I can’t sleep. I don’t mean, like, occasional insomnia, everyone gets that sometimes. What I mean is, I never get more than three or four hours of sleep, ever, no matter what I do. Been going on for years. I’ve tried everything. You name it, I’ve tried it. Even chamomile tea. You know how fucked up a guy is when he starts drinking a tea he can’t even spell. Nothing works. I stay up all night and think. Like, I think myself into circles.”
I looked at Fierro only once—when the word insomnia came