Marcelo in the Real World: Chapters 1–5

(I prefer the word “internal” to the word “mental” when referring to the music. The fact that the IM, as I call it for short, is inside my mind does not necessarily mean that it is produced by my mind.)

“Excuse me?” One of the reasons I like working with Dr. Malone is that his facial expressions are so clear and easy to understand. That one he just made, for example, is a textbook example of “baffled.”

I have half an hour left with Dr. Malone, I remind myself. This time, I must make sure that the session does not go over the allotted time, as it sometimes does.

Third, as of last year, I get paid three hundred dollars per visit in accordance with regulations from a grant that Dr. Malone received.

Prospective students and their parents are always coming in to see the ponies, and Harry wants to make sure the stables and the ponies are perfect.

The truth is that all the ponies are trained to be comfortable around kids with all kinds of disabilities. Visually or hearing impaired, kids with autism, kids with cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, Down syndrome, attention deficit disorder—it doesn’t matter, the ponies are always peaceful and even-tempered.

The trick, as Harry pointed out to me, is not in picking out which pony will be the most comfortable with a kid but in picking out the pony that the kid will like the most. Harry thinks I have a knack for this.

In my chest, I feel a twang—a discordant note, like when the string on a guitar breaks in the middle of a song.

On the drive home, I sense that something unhappy is about to happen and my mind is trying to find the source of this foreboding.

When I was a child and prone to tantrums, Aurora would ask me to go someplace quiet and remember.

“He was not in favor of you attending Paterson, but you have been there since first grade. He objected to your visits with Rabbi Heschel, but you have been seeing her every other week for five years now. He didn’t approve of the sessions with Dr. Malone. He didn’t want you living in the tree house either. Yet he allowed you to do all those things despite his misgivings.”

“Trust” is one of those abstract words that is hard for me to understand.

I get more of Arturo the lawyer: his eyes unblinking and fixed on my face, the volume of his voice modulated with complete control.

He becomes a person who will lose his composure only if he wishes to.

“Yes, that’s right. The real world.”
As vague and broad as this term is, I have a sense of what it means and of the difficulties that it entails.

Following the rules of the real world means, for example, engaging in small talk with other people. It means refraining from talking about my special interest. It means looking people in the eye and shaking hands.

I know this is very vague and you would like more clarity.

I get flustered when I am asked to do more than one thing at once.

What you do at Paterson with the ponies and the children does not take you beyond your ‘comfort zone,’ as your father says. It doesn’t challenge you or help you grow in the areas you need to develop in order to be self-sufficient.

Mr. Quintana was an old gentleman with pancreatic cancer. He was recuperating from a bout of chemotherapy and was waiting to see whether the treatment had done any good.

So off we went on this crazy, scary, exciting, painful, joyful adventure. A dying old man, two kids in temporary remission from cancer only a year younger than me, and a seventeen-year-old girl who had never been outside of Texas.

But I realized that in order to work with children I needed to be gentle and strong. Gentle and caring with the children, but strong and tough with all that threatens to increase their suffering or diminish their chances to be healed.

At St. Elizabeth’s sometimes I have to protect the children from arrogant or even negligent doctors.

I protect them from hospital bureaucrats, from insurance companies.

She stands up and holds her hand over my head and then she tousles my hair.

“You can register Marcelo but it is a futile act. He will not be going there in September.”

Without a schedule to guide me through the day, I feel disoriented.

I wonder if it’s the change to all my tiny routes that is making me nervous, or is it just that I am still resentful at being forced to do something I don’t like?

Dad made me work at the law firm one summer too. There’s nothing wrong with you feeling apprehensive right now. The place sucks big-time.

My white shirt is hanging out of my pants and I try to tuck it in and walk down the aisle at the same time, but the train lurches and I grab on to a woman’s shoulder to keep from falling.

I take out the multicolored rosary beads that Abba gave me before she died and I begin to mouth the words of the Hail Mary wordlessly with my lips.

I want you to be religious but, at the same time, I want you to participate in the day-to-day workaday world, my world, and your world too now. And to do so, you have to abide by some established customs.

People in the workaday world are discreet about their religion. They pray in private.

As it is, the reasons as to why something is right and something is not seem arbitrary.

I instinctively put my hands over my ears. Harsh noises are painful to me.