Love You Hard

by Abby Maslin

  We don’t touch nearly as often as we did before, but on the occasions I stroke the back of his right hand from across the dinner table, I am met with cold, empty sensation. Even the temperature of his skin varies from one hand to another.

  My denial tries to convince me I have the power to restore TC’s sensation. I’m unwilling to concede that my touch, no matter how familiar or affecting it once was to my husband, is no more powerful than the sensation he now receives from a wooden spoon. Given our disastrous first attempt at intimacy, I’m hoping to rebuild some semblance of it through touch. So I keep on stroking, intertwining my fingers with his, hoping to bring his deadened limb back to life.

  It’s all a mind-fuck—a roller coaster barreling from peaks of gratitude to valleys of seething anger and resentment. With one glance at my husband, I feel a tsunami of emotion: Awe at his ability to keep trying. Fierce devotion to our family. Waves of rage that this injury has cost us all so much. I’m grateful he’s here, but my reactionary mind resents him for letting me feel so alone, especially now that I’m dealing with my mother’s illness as well.

  TC’s not the person I’m allowed to hate, nor is he the one responsible for what happened. But anger is a messy business. There’s no one else here to direct it toward, so for now, I do my best to restrain it. Eventually, though, I must learn to quiet the anger that wears my patience and leaves me screaming inside. If I don’t learn to control it, I know I will harden—losing my balance and everything else I’m trying to protect.

  CHAPTER 17

  February 2013

  Family and friends are gathered in the waiting room of St. Mary’s Hospital as my mom gowns up in another room, bidding a final farewell to her breasts. By now the Sullivan clan has mastered how to keep the tone of the waiting room light with plenty of jokes. Bethany and I howl at every small thing that strikes us as hilarious. Or, rather, every small thing now strikes us as hilarious.

  “If something happens to Mom, I just want you to know, I won’t be splitting the inheritance,” I say deadpan over tuna salad sandwiches.

  “Oh, that’s OK,” Bethany replies. “Lest you forget Dad wrote you out of the will after the time you took the Ford Focus off-roading. Right, Dad?” She turns to face my father.

  He looks up from his lunch, a rogue potato chip crumb still attached to his lip. “What?” he asks, confused.

  We both cackle with laughter.

  I can’t imagine how tasteless strangers must find our humor.

  I can only justify our inappropriateness by my realization that depression seems to have cut through the muck in my head, providing a direct shortcut to my reserves of humor and creativity. What once seemed morbid is now so commonplace that I’ve learned to approach it with a light touch, unwilling to let every conversation drown in seriousness. As my own situation with TC becomes more and more difficult to endure in the long term, I also find myself getting funnier and funnier in response. My jokes have never been wittier or more sardonic, and I crank them out like popcorn at the state fair, one genius kernel after another.

  Bethany gets it. She has also entered the dark age of comedy, and together we agree to collaborate on a sitcom writing project—something we know nothing about but is a certain distraction from reality. All kinds of ideas jolt through my mind these days: books I’d like to write, things I want to invent, therapy ideas for TC. My mind is a motherboard of creative circuitry, a sensation I haven’t experienced since I was a free-spirited ten-year-old with a home camcorder and a thousand possible movie ideas. My ideas may very well be terrible, but my brain is a traffic jam of untapped creativity.

  There are gifts buried within this black hole of hardship. I have never been so bound by responsibility and liberated at the very same time. While TC’s words lie scattered within the cavities of his brain, language flows abundantly through mine, landing on the page before me with newfound precision and clarity.

  You are a writer, followers of my blog have begun to remark. And I’m starting to embody that identity. It’s ridiculous, this notion I’ve long subscribed to, that we can only fill the roles for which we’ve gone to school or completed the necessary training. I can be whatever I choose, I think now. For when the world cracks and our fears become reality, there is nothing left to keep us quiet and hidden. The fear is always in exposing ourselves, in losing what we love. I have been seen by the world; I have lost what I love. And, as a result, I’m now free to live however I choose.

  Bethany and I sit in the waiting room, our aunt Marsha, my mom’s closest sister and a breast cancer survivor herself, beside us. She’s made the rare trip from Decatur, Illinois, to offer moral support to my mom, but she’s also keeping tabs on our father. He waits as well, sitting mostly in silence, smiling politely at our signature Gilmore Girls–like banter. Once upon a time, he’d have at least been reading his way through the multihour wait. Now he prefers to just sit and stare.

  The double mastectomy is not a particularly unusual or dangerous surgery, so I’m not swept away in concerns that my mom won’t make it through. I am concerned, however, about the after-surgery phase, the part when she begins chemotherapy. This is when things are likely to get ugly, just when the support leaves the waiting room.

  A few hours later, we are escorted up to her recovery room, where my mom is now awake but groggy. At the door we disinfect our hands with sanitizer and walk over to her bed, where we find her adorably disheveled—her short, dark hair sticking up in places, eyes half-lit like she’s just smoked a joint. Her voice, which normally has a pitch that causes children and grown men alike to jump to their feet, is soft and babyish from the residual anesthesia. The last time I remember seeing her this vulnerable was the day I picked her up from her first colonoscopy and found her sweetly sipping a box of grape juice.

  The first croaky words out of my mom’s mouth are “I’m glad you washed your hands. Who do you think I am, Lady Macbeth?,” which sends Bethany and me into another fit of crying laughter, even though neither of us can recall the play well enough to determine whether the joke makes sense.

  * * *

  A few days later, my aunt Marsha has departed, and my mom recovers at home on bed rest. I pack overnight bags for TC, Jack, and myself and reclaim my old bedroom in my parents’ house. Without help, I can’t imagine my mom and dad being able to feed and take care of themselves. To his vast credit, TC is trying to be helpful. He’s aware of my mom’s delicate state and offers me his polite sentiments (“I’m so sorry, honey”). Still, they hang in the air, meaningless without the ability to actually make me feel better.

  Jack, for his part, is blissfully clueless about our deteriorating circumstances.

  “Be careful around Grammy,” I warn him, lifting him onto her bed for the occasional kiss and quick snuggle.

  He’s too young to appreciate how unusual it is to have so many incapacitated family members at one time. All Jack seems to know is that I am the sole supplier of Goldfish, Elmo DVDs, and dinosaur figurines. And as long as I’m around, he’s covered.

  My parents’ house is a three-story, suburban monstrosity fifteen minutes down the road from our beach cottage. With Bethany and me grown and moved away, the house is far too big for our two aging parents, but we have only ourselves to blame for the situation. When we moved to Maryland from Arizona fifteen years ago, my sister and I were immediately enamored of this home. Growing up in the land of one-level adobe ranchers, it seemed like a palace and was perhaps the only thing to look forward to in our new rural surroundings. My mother, on the other hand, hated the house from the get-go and everything it represented: an exhaustive commitment to vacuuming and dusting.

  Trudging up and down the long flights of stairs as I check on each of my family members, I’m finally starting to see this house through her eyes. It’s one expansive pain in the ass.

  Since we’ve arrived, everybody has claimed their own room on a different floor, confinin
g themselves to unnecessary privacy. On the second night we’re here, I find my dad occupying his favorite wingback chair in the living room, clutching a book he’s not actually reading.

  “Dad.” I position myself in front of him. “I’m about to start dinner. Do you think you could help me?”

  He looks up from his trancelike state. “Sure, sure, honey,” he agrees, his gray eyes fixed to me kindly.

  I cross the room into the kitchen and begin boiling water for pasta. I’ve intentionally chosen to make linguine and shrimp, one of his old specialties, as I figure it will give him little excuse not to help.

  A minute later, I glance over. He has not moved from the chair. I wait another five minutes before trying again, this time reaching for a tone that conveys both patience and urgency.

  “Dad?”

  Startled, he fumbles with the book on his lap. “Oh, coming, coming,” he responds hurriedly.

  A little while later, my mom ventures out of her bedroom to join us downstairs for dinner. The conversation is passive and empty as we sit around the long, wooden table, so I sip frequently from my glass of red wine to pass the minutes. After several bites, my mom’s face takes on a greenish hue and she apologetically excuses herself back to the bedroom. The rest of us finish dinner in quiet, exchanging pleasant wordless grins as we watch Jack tear messily through the linguini, his cheeks caked in olive oil and pine nuts.

  By 9:00 P.M., the house has again resumed silence. Jack lies sleeping in my old bedroom as TC prepares for bed in the guest room next door. I make my way back down to the kitchen to take care of the dishes. With no one to keep me company, I continue to fill my wineglass as I rinse dirty plates.

  Tonight is no different from any of the evenings that have come to characterize my new existence, but it feels lonelier somehow. Each of us tucked away into our quiet corners of this big house. Me, drunk, cooking, cleaning. No one to talk to besides myself. It’s as if I have an aerial view, watching myself day in and day out as I tiptoe the fine tightrope that overhangs a deep well of depression. At times, especially behind the wheel of the car, I catch myself drifting in and out of a zombielike state, my body numb to emotion and sensation. Maybe I no longer care whether we survive all this. Maybe it’s just too damn impossible to imagine a way in which we could survive. Or maybe it all just hurts too much to feel it anymore. I can’t go on loving these people in my life so fiercely when the only thing that love guarantees is that it will inevitably break me.

  I may be the one who’s depressed, but TC’s the one being medicated for it. Concerned about his susceptibility to depression, his discharging neurologist was quick to prescribe an antidepressant before TC left NRH. “This will help him deal with the transition and all the major changes in his life,” I was assured.

  But, as far as I can tell, the stupid pill hasn’t allowed him to deal with any of it. It keeps him placid and obedient, never questioning the circumstances of our new existence. Just once, I’d like to see him rage out in anger over the situation. At least then I’d know he gets it, that he understands things have fallen to shit. Maybe then I’d feel less alone.

  If I had the time or energy to focus on my own mental health, perhaps I might also jump on the pharmaceutical bandwagon. Seeking help, however, would require me to initiate a mental health battle on my own behalf—something I don’t have the time or energy for at the moment.

  Days spent driving these long country roads from appointment to appointment, house to house, I often imagine myself slowly letting go of the steering wheel, allowing the car to veer in whatever direction it will. Releasing my grasp would be so simple, a small motion within my power, and I’m frightened by the comfort it gives me to know I have control over this one daily temptation.

  When the dishes are rinsed and put away in the dishwasher, I dry my hands with a towel and sit back down at the kitchen table to polish off the rest of the bottle of wine. I’m well beyond a pleasant buzz now, veering into sad-drunk territory.

  Beyond my fixation with the steering wheel, I’m intrigued by oxycodone, the painkiller prescribed to my mom and TC. There is so much of it lying around both of our houses, an addict would think he stumbled into a gold mine. A week or so ago I was battling a terrible headache and took one of TC’s, just to try it out. The effect was nothing as extraordinary as the hype I’d heard, but it alerted me to a possibility I hadn’t before considered: taking lots at one time.

  The despair that has overcome me is not about today, which I’m sure I could survive if I just walked myself up the stairs right now and put myself to bed. This is about all the days that haven’t happened yet. The decades, so many of them, that still lie ahead. I can live this life for six months, maybe a year. But can I survive a lifetime of feeling this alone?

  The pills are the quickest, most convenient out I can envision. One bottle of pills, no fuss. No more loneliness, no more pain. I know I’ll never leave TC. Whether that’s because I love him too much or I’m too scared to leave, it doesn’t really matter. I’m trapped in this suffocating amalgam of love, guilt, and fear.

  Even as I sneak upstairs to grab the bottle of oxy on my mom’s nightstand, my brain implores me to consider other options. Stay on the path and deal with being unhappy. End things now and avoid years of misery. I keep searching, but there is no third path illuminated in my line of vision. Just two very undesirable options.

  By the time I return to the kitchen with pills, I realize I have been neglecting one important consideration: Jack. Abandoning my child is the very opposite of resilience or bravery, but I am walking blind, every ounce of my fear outweighing my shame. I can’t think about what will become of Jack or who will take care of him in my absence. If I stop to ask these questions, I’ll lose my nerve. I can’t let Jack into my head.

  But I also don’t want to leave him without explanation.

  I walk over to the desk where my parents sort their mail and begin fumbling through bills and letters, trying to find a blank sheet of paper. There’s nothing but a thick stack of mail, so I settle for the back of an old credit card statement instead.

  In sloppy handwriting, I jot, Jack, please know that Mommy loved you so much. I’m sorry I couldn’t be stronger for you. . . .

  My note is brief. I finish scribbling before I can change my mind, then pop the cap off the bottle of oxy and empty it out—the rubble of my life spread out before me in the form of round, white pills.

  No one is going to stop me if I decide to take my own life right now.

  This is the truth, and it churns my stomach once over, tears beginning to stream down my cheeks. No one is going to stop me. This alone speaks to every reason I want to end my life and every reason why I can’t.

  My head and my heart ache, tightened by a sorrow so profound that every muscle clenches in response. I reach down into the pile and select a single pill to swallow—something to take the edge off this extraordinary pain.

  I long for the old TC with more desperation than I’ve ever felt. I want him to rip me from this moment; I want him to be rattled with my pain. I want to shake him until the brain-injured person inside disappears and the man who once loved me reveals himself again. I’m starving, drowning for any faint indication that he’s still in there, that he might return. Sobbing, I race up the stairs and into the guest bedroom where he sleeps.

  Kneeling beside the bed, I shake TC vigorously until he jerks awake. As soon as his eyes open, I begin crying and yelling into his blinking face. “I hate you! Everything is ruined in our lives. Do you hear me?”

  TC, who now requires a good hour to become alert after waking, is terribly confused by my presence. He opens his mouth to talk, but the tracheostomy causes frequent congestion around his vocal cords, and he must first clear his throat before speaking.

  “Wha . . . ?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. “What are you saying?”

  My eyes narrow in his direction. There is
nothing to be won or accomplished by waking him up. Even in this moment, I’m aware how irrational and evil I’m behaving.

  “Our whole goddamn lives are over!” I seethe between clenched teeth and race back downstairs, baiting him to follow me.

  It takes TC several minutes to make it down the long stairwell, and by the time he arrives, I’m standing over the pills again, partially reconsidering my decision, partially hoping to raise his alarm.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, his voice brimming with concern and obvious confusion.

  I grab a handful of pills in my right hand and turn to face him. “What does it look like?” I ask.

  His shoulders collapse toward each other as his eyebrows furrow. “Wha-at are those?”

  “They’re oxy,” I respond defiantly. “They’re my mom’s.”

  TC’s face clouds over angrily, and in an abrupt but ineffective gesture, he tries to snatch the remaining pills off the table. “You can’t do tha-that, honey!” he shouts.

  My actions have disturbed him, offered him an invitation to save me, which I guess was my intention, but as I watch him become flustered, trying to figure out what to make of the situation, I feel anything but victorious.

  “I’m going to . . . to . . . wake up your mother,” he asserts sternly, turning his back to return to the stairs, leaving me alone to swallow the whole mess of pills.

  It isn’t a well-calculated move on his part, but it is a genuinely emotional response. And what do I expect anyway? That he’ll put his arm around my shoulders and lead me to the couch, inviting me to divulge the source of all my pain? That he’ll listen for hours and nod sympathetically, moved by my tears?

  These things are never going to happen. If it were possible for TC to respond in the way I want, my desperation would not exist in the first place. And now that my expectations for this performance are plummeting down to earth, do I really want TC stomping clumsily into my mother’s bedroom and involving her in my mental collapse?