Just say he’s not dead just say he’s not dead, she chanted in her head as she dialed the emergency room. Samson was Superman. Girl couldn’t imagine any instance that would keep him from calling himself. This was the man who rode a wheelie into a brick wall and gave himself a concussion, all without dropping the donuts he carried on his handlebars. This was the man who ripped his hamstring in half and was still walking around, asking if his bike was okay.
“Your husband’s been in an accident,” the nurse said. “He’s awaiting surgery. That’s all we can tell you.”
Girl was wearing his red-and-black, muscle-man workout pants, one of his Harley-Davidson T-shirts, and white gym socks. She didn’t stop to find a bra. Girl threw on a coat and the first pair of shoes she could find—fancy suede flats that she had kicked off by the front door when she came home from work the night before.
Girl tried to drive quickly, but she couldn’t concentrate, and accidentally went the wrong way and had to loop around the city, getting directions from Mother on her cell phone as she drove—of course she had called Mother the minute she left the house, even though it was the middle of the night, and Mother calmed her down, gave her directions, helped her focus. The ten-minute drive took nearly thirty in the blowing snow. Finally, Girl reached the hospital. She had to wait until Samson was stabilized to see him. Girl spent thirty minutes in the waiting room watching a runny-nosed child climb on and off the chairs, off and on, while she waited to learn her husband’s fate.
Eventually, the nurse directed her to the proper gurney. Feathers floated in the air—they had cut off his down snowmobile suit. The nurses were laughing about the feathers. He could make anyone smile, even while lying in a hospital bed.
Samson wore a hospital gown with blue ship’s wheels on it, his leg wrapped in gauze bandages that were starting to seep yellow and red. Girl leaned close to his face and kissed his cheek, whispering in his ear that no matter what, they would get him a new motorcycle. A motorcycle had gotten him into this hospital bed, but she needed him to know that she hadn’t turned on him—that she understood that he feared the loss of his bikes more than the loss of his leg.
Samson told her the details of riding his dirt bike home on dark, snow-covered streets. He had left work after 11:00 p.m., and a car didn’t brake for a stop sign before it pulled into oncoming traffic. Samson’s right leg was the point of impact. A woman from a nearby gas station had cushioned his head with her flannel shirt as they waited for an ambulance.
The doctor came in.
“Near-total amputation of the right leg just below the knee,” he reported, and then asked, “Where doesn’t it hurt?”
Samson raised his pinky, and everyone laughed, but once the doctor started pushing and prodding his flesh, Samson cried out in pain. The room suddenly seemed hot and Girl couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears. Don’t pass out, you can’t pass out, you wuss, she told herself over and over. Girl ran to the bathroom, barely making it before her bowels emptied. She wished her body responded by throwing up—it would have been less mortifying.
Girl returned to the room just before the doctor took Samson into surgery.
“It’ll take three or four surgeries over the next few weeks,” the orthopedist said. “We’ll know more once we open him up, but I think we can reattach it. Then we’ll send him to a plastic surgeon for the final skin grafts.”
Girl was directed to the main waiting room. The chairs smelled old, though the colors were new. Everyone ignored the silent TV that was hung too high on the wall to be worth watching. They stayed as far apart from each other as they could, each of them holding their private vigils in public, keeping to the corners of the mostly empty room like rubbery macaroni stuck to the sides of a pot.
Brother came to sit with Girl, and she breathed easier when he walked in. No matter what, she would be okay now. Next to arrive was Liz—the only friend Girl could trust to explain the difference between the piles of clean, dirty, and semi-dirty-but-can-be-worn-again laundry in her bedroom. Girl needed a bra badly, but she wouldn’t drive the half-hour round trip home to get one, just in case. She wouldn’t read a book, just in case. She had to mark every minute, feel every tick of the second hand, just in case it was his last. Five hours later they called her name, and a doctor in clean scrubs told Girl that it would be several weeks before Samson could be discharged. They wouldn’t give odds on whether or not he would ever regain the use of the leg. No one warned her that Samson would spend days in the intensive care unit, receive four blood transfusions, and never walk without pain again. She didn’t know that three years later he would still be out of work, addicted to morphine, and filled with even more rage.
Two weeks after the accident Girl drove Samson home from the hospital. He had rods, pins, screws, and guide wires holding his foot and leg together. Part of his rectus abdominis muscle had been removed from his abdomen and grafted onto his calf. Four skin grafts covered the wounds that gaped too much for the doctors to stitch shut. His leg looked like gray, uncooked sausage. He vomited from pain four times on the ten-minute drive home. Girl learned to always keep a bucket in the car.
Girl quit her job for a few months and became his full-time caregiver, sleeping on the living room floor next to the daybed, just like she had slept in a chair by his side in the hospital. She drove him to doctor and physical therapy appointments and watched the pain etch permanent lines into his face. She tried not to cry when he screamed during dressing changes. Girl bathed his leg in Dawn dish detergent and debrided the skin grafts as gently as she could. Father sent one thousand dollars to help out. Mother and Stepmother paid their mortgage for a year. When Samson was able to take care of himself, Girl returned to work.
Two years later, Girl stood at the sink in the summer heat, a fly buzzing listlessly around her face, neither of them able to summon the energy necessary to do much of anything. Crusted, filthy dishes littered the counter that ran the full length of the kitchen: fourteen feet of filth interrupted only by two-and-one-half feet of stainless steel sink. Her gaze traveled over the curtains she had made from Walmart fabric, the stenciling on the walls that she had spent hours creating. None of her crafts were very sophisticated or skillfully done, but they were all she could do with the abilities she had and the spare change she scrimped from the grocery budget. Pretty was way down the list of priorities in this house—far below bike parts and dogs and other grimy things. But that day her pretty things failed to lift her spirits.
A droplet of sweat ran down her temple, and she wiped it away with her shoulder. Life hadn’t exactly turned out the way she had wanted it to. Girl was poor, depressed, and her muscles always ached. The city house they owned at the edge of the ghetto was falling apart, no matter how much she painted, sewed, and glued things together. Girl waged a constant battle to maintain a semblance of cleanliness: she cleaned up the mud, fur, and animal shit from their three dogs and four cats, and once that was done she retrieved the crusted dishes from the living room, emptied the urine-filled Gatorade bottles from the bedroom, picked the fast food wrappers up off the floor where her husband had tossed them, collected the drinking glasses scattered throughout the house, and then did the dishes. Girl looked at the filth and her heart sank further, her energy leaching out of her. That day, she just couldn’t do it.
Girl wandered off to see what Samson was doing, leaving the dishes to the flies for a while. She found him in the garage, trying to fix the used Weedwacker he had just bought. He knew Girl was depressed, knew the house was getting to her, but he just wanted to be left alone with his projects. He was happiest turning a wrench, taking apart motors, and making broken things function again. Samson didn’t turn to look at her as he worked, talking out the side of his mouth, his bald head covered in droplets of sweat and smudges of black grease. “Go to the mall,” he said. Girl left quickly, not bothering to look in the mirror or smooth her hair.
While she was at the mall, Girl fell in love with a jewelry box. It
was a small, simple, wooden box, carved with flowers and curving lines. She didn’t buy it—it was eighty dollars. She thought about all the things that Samson had: four Harley-Davidsons in the garage, the ridiculously overpriced “collectible” plastic motorcycle models that came in the mail every month in two different sizes, any rare coin or stamp that caught his eye at the shops he frequented while Girl was at work. He denied himself nothing, and would deny Girl nothing as well, but she knew that they were always half a step away from having the utilities shut off, and at least one month behind on the mortgage. So she sighed, looked longingly at the box one more time, and then left.
As Girl drove down the street, she saw a fire truck parked at the other end. As she drew nearer the house, she could see that she would never get through with all the commotion, so Girl parked halfway down the block.
She smelled it before she saw it, and she half-walked, half-ran, her heart pounding. Girl had known that something would happen sooner or later, and in some way she was relieved that it finally had. The need for crisis had been building, tensions simmering beneath the surface like an angry pimple that needed to be brought to a head. Girl was just beginning to see that this was their pattern—a mix of bad judgment, high emotions, and an unsettled energy that seemed to draw crises to them like the unwashed dishes attracted flies.
Girl pushed through the crowd of neighbors gathered in front of their house to find her husband sitting on the front step, the firefighters packing up their gear. Whatever had happened, it was over. She hugged Samson even though he was covered in black soot and sweat, and confirmed the safety of the dogs and cats, and then ventured with him into the house as he told her his story.
The smell was overwhelming. The stench made Girl’s head hurt and the bile rise in her throat, and it worsened the deeper they went into the house. The house was black, blacker than black, and although it was a bright summer day, they needed a flashlight to see inside. Everything was black: the walls, the windows, the ceiling—every inch of every item that littered the beyond-cluttered, filthy home. In some ways the fire made the house seem neater, as if the fire created the mess and gave reason for its existence. They walked through the living room and down the hall toward the kitchen in the back of the house. They passed the office and Girl saw that her computer was covered in soot. She was one week away from the end of her semester and she knew her final papers were irretrievably lost.
They paused by the bathroom and Samson opened the door. Girl hated the pink, tiled bathroom—ironically, it remained untouched by the fire and smoke. They entered the kitchen and he shone the flashlight over the dishes covering the counter. The ceiling fan had melted into a dangling flower blossom. They walked through the kitchen to the attached garage, and Samson began to talk.
That July day was hot and muggy, and Samson kept the garage door closed to keep the sun out. He was paranoid about someone stealing his Harleys, so he always secured the door with four differently keyed padlocks. While working on the Weedwacker, Samson had accidentally kicked over the gas can and gasoline soaked the old piece of carpet he was standing on. He pulled the cord to start the motor and flames shot out. After that, he decided to remove the fuel filter to see if that helped. The manual said to place the Weedwacker on the ground and pull the cord, so he placed it on the gasoline-soaked carpet and pulled the string. Flames shot out again, larger now, because without the filter the gas flowed faster, and the carpet ignited instantly. Thick, black smoke quickly filled the house and Samson couldn’t see, so he propped open the side door so the cats could escape, and made his way by feel to the front door to find the dogs. As he walked, he closed every door he passed so that he would stay oriented, thus saving the ugly bathroom. He found the dogs and brought them out with him, carrying the lab who was too scared to follow. As soon as the firemen cleared the house, he went into the garage, found the fuel filter he had removed, and threw it in the bushes so that no one could blame him for the fire. Girl was struck by the notion that he did it on purpose. It somehow made sense that her husband of four years could have been acting intentionally. If he had been depressed enough, if he had craved the adrenaline of a disaster so badly, needed it so badly, then he could have been purposefully careless, acting on a suicidal impulse, consequences be damned.
She ran into the backyard, unable to process what she had been told. She called Mother first and screamed at her incoherently over the long-distance line, demanding to know why she had moved away, demanding that she answer for not being here when Girl needed her most. They were homeless with four cats and three dogs, no credit card, and only a few hundred dollars to make it until the end of the month. Samson still spent much of each day bedridden. Girl didn’t get paid time off of work, and she knew that there was no way Samson would be able to handle all the necessary details so that they could resume their quasi-normal life.
Girl sobbed into the phone, “Why aren’t you here? Damn you for moving away!” Mother just calmly let her rant, not arguing, and after they hung up, she called a family friend to come help Girl.
Girl called the insurance company next, surprised that she reached an adjuster on a Saturday evening.
Too angry to parse her words nicely, she asked him, “Is stupidity covered?” The adjuster just laughed and assured her that they would pay, and quickly. A Red Cross truck came and gave Girl hotel and restaurant vouchers as well as phone numbers of boarding kennels for their pets. Samson vomited from the smoke he inhaled and they gave him oxygen, trying to persuade him to go to the hospital. He refused, preferring Girl to nurse him as he coughed up black chunks of phlegm and threw up for three days straight.
Samson brought the insurance policy to the hotel, smudged with soot, and he had Girl read aloud everything that was and wasn’t covered. They stayed up late while he dreamed out loud of all the money they would make from this and planned how to get the insurance company to fix his uninsured motorcycles.
The hotel pillows were too soft and the room smelled of mildew. Samson stayed up watching TV in bed with the volume on high—years of riding Harleys had left him with partial hearing loss. Girl lay on her stomach and prayed for the world to go away. Although she generally thrived on crisis, this was too much. Samson’s body smell irritated her, and his loud voice invaded her head. Sleep was her sanctuary, and as much as she craved it, it wouldn’t come.
They moved into an old apartment building—the only place that allowed them to bring all three dogs and four cats. Six months later, the house was repaired enough for them to move back in. Then Samson was arrested for another road rage incident, and this time, he was charged with a felony. Combined with the accident and house fire, Girl knew that she could never trust her husband’s judgment enough to have children with him. She had never had career goals, but only this certainty—that someday she would have children, and that she would love them into beautiful human beings who weren’t broken or scarred like she was. But more than that, he was escalating. Girl started to worry about her own safety.
Girl tried to leave Samson. She drove to Liz’s office—they might drift for years without speaking, but she knew that she could always count on her. When Liz had broken her ankle, she moved in with Girl until she could climb stairs again. Now that Girl left Samson, Liz took a day off of work and helped her move some furniture and boxes into a storage unit. But one phone call from Samson was all it took, and Girl went back, though she left her things in storage. He promised to change. He begged Girl to go back to marriage counseling. He swore he would get off the morphine, help out more around the house, lose twenty pounds if only she would give him another chance. Girl didn’t know how to say no. She yearned to leave him but she didn’t know how, and she did not think she could live with the shame of divorce. Father was on his seventh wife. Girl didn’t want to fulfill her in-laws’ expectations that she was bound to repeat her parents’ mistakes. Girl had promised Samson forever. Samson always told her, “If you think you will ever find another person who loves you as much
as I do, go ahead. But you won’t. No one will ever love you like I do.” What if it were true? Girl told herself that staying was her only option, and went with him to see a therapist.
“You have two choices,” Samson said right before he walked out of the marriage counselor’s office. His face was hard, foreign, like someone who didn’t love Girl at all anymore. “You can do the right thing and give me two weeks’ notice. I want the house clean and decorated, and then you can leave. Or you can be a snake, empty the bank account, and sneak away. It’s up to you. But I’m going home. I need my morphine.” Girl collapsed in her chair like a marionette with its strings cut, her body doubled over, shoulders convulsing with sobs. Samson slammed the door as he left the room.
“I don’t know what to do,” Girl told the counselor. She felt so small. The counselor was softly padded in the way of women around Mother’s age. She dressed conservatively and kept her face always arranged in a soothing expression. From the look of her, she didn’t have any more fight in her than Girl had.
“Be a snake,” the therapist said. Girl looked up in surprise. Marriage counselors were never supposed to tell you to leave, but the therapist had finally witnessed one of the rages Samson normally saved for when they were alone.
“Don’t even go home,” she said firmly. “Just get in your car and drive to your mother’s.” Girl was dumbfounded—this wasn’t even Samson at his worst. This was just the everyday type of screaming, not the really bad kind. The counselor’s permission to leave transformed Girl from a broken marionette back into the level-headed human being she was when she was at work. Girl stopped crying. She didn’t feel small and scared anymore. She gathered her coat and went out into the winter night. She went first to the bank, where she withdrew a third of their money, trying to be fair, and hid it in the trunk for the long drive to her parents’ home in Florida. Girl went back to their small house and parked in the street right in front of the chain-link gate. Their Cape Cod was dark—the only light came from the upstairs bedroom window. Girl opened the front door quietly and was greeted by their three dogs. She let them out into the fenced-in yard and culled the Rottweiler from the pack. He was the only dog that was really hers. The German shepherd and the black lab had always been Samson’s. The huge dog was happy to flop on the back seat of the car and wait for Girl. There was a dusting of snow in the air—ice crystals sparkling in the streetlight. It was dinnertime, but January’s dark came early.
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