“I promise, one day you’ll come home, and all these chairs will be gone because you don’t know how to keep them empty.”
This is my husband. He’s chronically, although legitimately, enraged with my work clothes, with that stuff that keeps accumulating and then hangs from all living-room surfaces in the colorful, fruitlike abundance.
One day, I will get my stuff in order. Over the weekend. Better yet, I’ll take a day off and organize it pretty, put it all on shelves and hangers.
I am sloppy, anything but a good housewife. I don’t create order; worse yet, I don’t maintain it once it somehow sets in. I am a good therapist, or so I hope. I know how to listen and make connections, and how to link past to present or match stories to feelings.
***
The sadness of sitting across the room from a stranger with a degree who knows everything about you -- or thinks that he is about to learn everything there is to learn -- feels maddening. S/he immediately knows you -- by merely reading your histological report… Then, there’s the report itself. Its plain account of the source of your sadness, its solemn, clear language are unconscionable. The report describes, step by step, your descent into the gender-less, love-less, fear-full future. Is there some twisted mercifulness in the way life’s cruelty is summarized?
The flashback to last week’s Monday: A blob of yellow fat on the bottom of the wash basin in the operating room was my past. It was a fine, 26 by 7 by 16, specimen. Size “C”. Merely the fat tissue that surrounded nodes and glands, in the veil of blood. No nipple included, though. The right breast’s nipple had to go three years ago, and no reconstructive surgery or a nipple tattoo would help to come to terms with its betrayal. The spying, hateful part of you that nurtures your own death.
As I was telling you this, I caught myself not referring to the bloody blob as “my breast” or “my nipple” anymore. At this moment of departure from the bliss of anesthesia, I suddenly knew that staying alive for a while was enough to feel accomplished, and isn’t happiness synonymous with accomplishment?
* * *
I know how to help others keep all such stuff at bay. But where do I hang mine?
***
She is slouching in the chair that the EMT worker unloaded her into. What has she got to lose? Spending 75% of her life shopping, 25% cooking and the rest eating what she’s cooked (forget the percentage but remember to clean up after the meal)? Scheduling medical appointments (please hold: all our agents are busy assisting others) and masturbating while on hold? Masturbating and waiting for a bookish, nerdy romance to be delivered to her mailbox?
What else is there for her? Blaming mysterious bacteria for feeling tired and bloated half her life. Pouring over glossy magazines explain every little bodily discomfort, while blowing it out of proportion and making cramping housewives feel dramatic. Buying expensive magazines to clip coupons that would save her pennies on items she never knew existed. Why is this that the salesgirl in the supermarket always packs bagels and cream cheese in one bag, and milk and cereal in another, even though it’s cream cheese and milk that belong together? Why is it that those who try to lose weight spend more time, money and effort on food, and end up eating larger quantities, more frequently?
Hi, Dr. Oh yes, she still wants to hurt herself, why wouldn’t she?
Thank you.
Thank you, nurse, I’m fine on this stretcher, in fetal position. Not having to worry about my looks, finally.
Nurses watch her with polite horror, as if her abysmal, ginormous darkness is contagious; as if they, too, can cross over from normalcy to madness just like that, with a flick of some neuroswitch. Why should she care what happens after death? There’s always a possibility that hell feels just like heaven, yet with the A/C broken down.
- Doctor, what’s wrong with me?
- You’re fat. - I want second opinion.
- You’re stupid, too.
She quietly laughs at the old joke. Breaking right and wrong apart is a pseudo-organized way of thinking about life. No, thank you very mucho, she’s passing the buck. Let someone else try it.
Dead couple wakes up in heaven.
Wife: - Look how beautiful.
Husband: - If not for your overrated healthy lifestyle, we could make it here 10 years earlier!
Life is an exercise in heuristics that most try to solve by analogy. No one’s experience is my experience, but this is such an unacceptable thought in the culture of flash cards. Learn your sight words, they’ll come handy. Win a spelling bee, and you’ll get the formula of living.
Teaching children crap. She refuses to teach others, for she refuses to admit knowing anything herself.
No, doctor. I’m not ready to go home. Yes, I do have a plan. I’ll take all the pills that I have in the house and wash them down with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I won’t need it for my hair color anymore. One less lie. And, yes, as I encounter my death, one last thing that I’ll remember will be a nutritional panel off the “Special K” box that I re-read every morning and have memorized by now. Nothing else seems to stick out.
…She is slouching in the chair that the EMT workers unloaded her into. After the third admission, she’s becoming a common sight in this community hospital with downsized staff. Her revolt, a built-in feature, it seems, is predetermined, hence, toothless. Brooding becomes her exercise class; life becomes everything she loathes so much; death, the most conventional item on the menu. She’s condemned to the boredom of every other night-ish, unscrupulous, recurrent, unresolved death.
* * *
I hang items like this in my professional “Lost and Found” bin, that one inside my memory. They come in droves, women who experienced midlife losses not unlike my own. I must be careful not to mix the contents of the bin with my own story of aging, not to mistake my pain for the patient’s. There’s no right therapist for me, only writing. Writing helps to organize and hang and fold and shelve.
One day, my husband will come home to those empty chairs. I wonder what this will do to him.
