Love You Hard

by Abby Maslin

  And then there is Elliot.

  Elliot is new to our school, and his behavior suggests his old school was either a disco party or a barnyard. He makes his daily entrance into my classroom ten minutes late and with a literal roll through the classroom door. On a good day, my students are quietly gathered on the floor for our morning meeting, but with Elliot noisily unzipping his backpack—tripping, falling, and knocking over twelve other bags in the process—they can hardly sustain their attention.

  To understand Elliot is to recognize his hunger for attention, his willingness to hijack each and every attempt I make to deliver well-prepared instruction. Within days of our introduction, he quickly becomes the source of eight out of every ten headaches I bring home (two are reserved for the other demanding kiddos in my group), and he drives me absolutely bananas most days. One afternoon he stays behind to help clean up a mess he’s made in the classroom, and I tell him as much.

  “Elliot, you drove me bananas today. Are you aware of that?”

  He is. My statement changes little, except for the fact that he may now view me as a human person rather than a brick wall of patience. In a strange and inexplicable way, I actually love the hell out of Elliot and his mind-boggling antics. I suspect his behavior stems from insecurity, his growing awareness of how far behind his peers he is academically. But most days I am too tired to distinguish fondness from irritation.

  The pressure I put on myself to give everyone in this group exactly what they need and still try to save a little left over for my husband and son at home is too much to bear some days. And because I am fatigued in a way that far surpasses the need for a nap—fatigued in my bones, fatigued down to my hair follicles—dare I say it, Mariah Carey fatigued—it doesn’t matter how late I stay up or how many lessons I carefully plan. I simply cannot be the kind of teacher I want to be. I just have to settle for being good enough instead.

  * * *

  TC and I have become the equivalent of two ships passing in the night. Or rather, two ships passing through the narrow hallway on our way to brush our teeth at night. There is so much that needs to be said, but there is too much room for misinterpretation. We can’t yet figure out how to approach the distance that has grown between us, and we are certainly failing to do it verbally. The easiest solution is to keep Jack in the middle, where he can happily absorb our generous attention and where we can avoid direct interaction with each other.

  It isn’t just the aphasia standing in our way; now it’s the anger. The swelling, lively current of inconvenient anger we’ve kept at bay, tasked with managing. I imagine it like the river of slime in the second Ghostbusters film, bubbling wretchedly under the surface, growing more powerful with each day. And, my God, if this anger isn’t justifiable. After all, we didn’t do this terrible thing to ourselves. We weren’t bored in our marriage or looking for love elsewhere. We didn’t succumb to baseless anxiety or plain old dissatisfaction in our lives. We’ve been transformed: head to toe, inside and out, violated and broken by the actions of others.

  And for me, at least, the consequences bring little comfort. More than twenty-four years for the young man with the bat. A plea bargain of three to four years for the second. An acquittal for the third.

  “Appropriate amounts of time?” everyone asks me with one brow raised.

  “Sure?” I respond doubtfully. No? I don’t know? How do you even quantify something as magnificently unquantifiable as this? I should be asking in retort.

  My job in court is over. I honestly recounted the devastation that resulted from these young men’s actions, so that when it came time for sentencing, the judge had the information he needed. But unless these three gentlemen are willing to come sit in our living room every night and conduct marriage therapy and aphasia translation for us, they aren’t really giving me much satisfaction sitting in prison. In fact, the thought of anyone being in prison tied to our names doesn’t sit well with me at all.

  Prison means their own families weep at night. Prison means more lives destroyed. Prison means more ugliness, more wasted time, more missed opportunities. And yes, I understand the necessity of it, the need for verifiable and legal justice in this case, for accountability and personal responsibility and the assurance they can harm no others. These are all things I believe in strongly. But does it make me feel good? No.

  The number one question people want to know about TC is How does he feel about the assault that disabled him? I’m not sure they believe me when I answer truthfully. He’s mostly fine with it, actually, because he really doesn’t have time to think about it, what with the relearning English and trying to maintain his relationships and walking upright and caring for his son full-time.

  Occasionally, TC leaves his iPad screen lit up, and one of his recent open tabs was a newspaper article about his assault. Perhaps he’s more curious than he lets on. Certainly, like me, he’s internalized much of his anger about it.

  Anger presents itself like a geyser, in mini spurts, making us nasty and unlikable to each other. If ever I demand anything extra, the opportunity to let off some steam about school, for example, or a tiny piece of criticism (“You told me you collected Jack’s nap mat, but it’s still at school”), TC swells up in defense.

  “Why don’t you just leave?” he asks from time to time. “It’s obvious you want to!”

  And in those moments, when he’s touched upon some truth, some feeling I’m working very hard to fight against, the floodgates open and a stream of rage-filled insults begins to hurl between us, leading inevitably to a night of tears.

  It requires far too many hurtful and regretful statements to arrive at the truth hours later. “I don’t hate you,” he’ll say tearfully. “I’m just so fucking sad this happened to us. Look at me. I’m nothing now. I’m not even a . . . a . . . fuck, I can’t think of the word.” He tightens with frustration. “See? Why do you even stay?”

  Cue me, a minute later, shaky with tears and drowning in the guilt that my actions ever made him feel less than worthy. “I’m sad too, honey. It’s not your fault. It’s not mine. We’re just angry. This isn’t us.”

  And I’m half-right. We don’t sound anything like the old us—the couple who prided ourselves on our calm and rational disagreements. However, we can’t pretend these people throwing fire aren’t also, in fact, us. We are easing our way into these new identities, figuring out how to turn the pages of a painful chapter that is quickly beginning to feel like a love story with no happy ending.

  * * *

  The first step in cooling our rage, it seems, is to first let it rise. TC and I spend the months of fall engaged in domestic warfare—fighting long winnerless battles that serve no purpose other than to release some of the burning toxicity that fuels us. But, over time, it becomes harder to hide the battle wounds.

  I hate crying in front of other people, and to me, the apex of this horror is crying at the workplace. Of course, there are ten thousand things in the world worse than this act of involuntary vulnerability, but for me, work tears rank among the horrors. Work tears are a clear indication one definitively does not have her shit together.

  They’re inevitable these days, however, as I have become the person sobbing quietly behind her desk in those quiet hours before my students arrive.

  To illuminate the pointlessness of these arguments, which are absurd enough to be funny but real enough to be genuinely gutting, I offer the following example. The fight I pinpoint as being most likely to lead to the demise of TC and me, the one that has me hunched over my computer the next day pretending to lesson plan while I research cheap studio apartments to move into, began with the stupidest, most unlikely trigger. Fish tacos.

  Cooking has always been one of TC’s passions, and now that he has more time at home with Jack during the week, he’s returned to it with renewed enthusiasm. While I’m at work, the two of them walk over to Eastern Market, where they stroll up and down th
e long concrete aisle that separates the various vendors, ogling just about every ingredient you can possibly imagine. With delight, they revel in wandering aimlessly, buying fish, sampling different cheeses, and carefully selecting cookies from the bakery at the south end of the market.

  To be sure, TC’s cooking has lifted a major burden from my shoulders. Even though I also like to cook, it’s the last thing I’m typically interested in doing at the end of a long workday. When I returned home last night, however, TC was standing in front of the stove making fish tacos, a staple dish in our house.

  The three of us were in a fairly good mood. I felt relieved to have survived another day at the hands of Elliot and my band of munchkins, and there was no discernible tension or other indication that the evening might end in an agonizing battle.

  I set the table. TC put the finishing touches on the fish, and as I went to inspect his progress, things quickly devolved after I posed one regrettable question: “Do you want me to make some sauce to go with it?”

  Here’s the thing I’ve learned about brain injury: it takes the predictable and makes it wildly unpredictable. At one time I could have predicted with certainty TC’s emotional responses and reactions to any given situation. Nowadays, I just buckle my seat belt and wait for the train to roll off the tracks. Never in a million years did I think he’d take such offense to my innocuous offer. But his brain found my question anything but innocuous.

  “Aren’t you ever just satisfied with things the way they are?” he bluntly retorted.

  Hmm. His phrasing was a pretty clear indicator we weren’t just talking about fish tacos. Fish tacos, or rather, fish taco sauce, I learned as the conversation unfolded, is the euphemism for the perceived dissatisfaction he senses from me about everything in my life—particularly my dissatisfaction with my disabled husband.

  I just worked hard to make dinner, he argued. Why is it that you are demanding more from me?

  I’m not, I insisted. Fish taco sauce is just a way of enhancing the already beautiful tacos you’ve made! Simply a way to add moisture to the dish!

  Rarely does one find herself in an argument so blatantly ridiculous from the onset. But there I was, defending my position on fish taco sauce with the assertion, “There is always a way to make good things better.”

  And that is precisely the problem: nothing is good enough for me, apparently. TC’s words stung, in part, because they scratched something deeper, something I feel terribly guilty to admit.

  It’s not that nothing is good enough for me; it’s that this life isn’t good enough. Yet. And the reason it’s not good enough is obvious: I’m playing the role of someone’s wife without everything I once loved about marriage. Friendship. Connection. Comfort. Intimacy.

  After a few hopeful spurts of physical affection, TC and I can barely stand to hold hands these days. Any effort beyond that continues to feel forced and unnatural. I think of a short video a friend filmed a month before TC’s assault. Me sitting in his lap, using the suction of my mouth to pass a playing card to his lips. It was only ten seconds of my life. Ten seconds of having my arm curled around TC’s neck. Ten seconds of laughing as I turned my head to place the card on his lips. Ten seconds before it fell between our two faces and he pulled me in for a kiss instead. What I wouldn’t do to live those ten seconds once more.

  I’ve known the truth for months now: that if I want that life back, I have to be willing to start fresh. To introduce and expose the new person I’ve become to the new person TC has become. Baring my body is only one part—it’s so much more than that. I have to be willing to let him close to me again; I have to let him all the way in. The idea sends a quiver down my spine. If I allow him to get that close, he may break my heart again.

  I don’t want to need TC the way I once did. I don’t want to feel that soul-crushing love for something, someone, I cannot control. If I learn to love him in the way I’ve been preaching—in total acceptance of who he is now—he may leave me one day. By choice. By death. By some means I can’t imagine. And I will be devastated, left gasping for air, once more.

  TC’s own hurt is understandable. Every time I witness him struggle with something as small as loading the dishwasher, or chopping vegetables with one hand, or reading a picture book to Jack, I realize that each effort in his daily life requires colossal effort. And yet, as he observes (and I am forced to agree), it still isn’t enough to restore us to normal.

  There are too many complicated and contradictory truths at play. One, that I live in sincere and breathtaking awe of his perseverance. I’ve never witnessed anyone work so hard at anything and so rarely tap into self-pity. He is, to me, both a warrior and a machine, an unbelievable combination of force. I love him for it.

  And two, that I want to keep going, to keep pushing the envelope, to see how much further he can come in his recovery. He wants this too; I know he does. But for the same reason it’s OK for you to insult your mother but a stranger can’t, it’s OK for him to want more out of his recovery. Just cruel and ungrateful if I want it too.

  At the root of it, TC wants what any of us in this world wants—simply to be accepted as he is. But I still haven’t figured out how to stop wanting more.

  * * *

  We tried to spare Jack from our bickering by tabling the fish taco argument for the remainder of dinnertime, but tension brewed from each end of the table. After Jack was safely tucked in and passed out, we went at it again, no holds barred, shouting the same cyclical defenses we always resort to. Until we reached a breaking point.

  The fish taco fight, just like the dozens of arguments that have come before it, ended in a standoff. We fought for hours, until our mouths were sore from movement, until my eyes were so swollen and tender from crying, it hurt to touch my eyelids, and until TC was so exhausted he could no longer form a coherent sentence. It ended with us masquerading as the ugliest, most pathetic versions of ourselves and yelling nothing that is true anymore.

  In the final moments, TC stared at me icily. “I’d really like to ask you what took you so long to call the police that day.” At that point, he’d been exercising the logic of a twelve-year-old boy for the last twenty minutes, searching for ammunition in every corner he could find it, no matter how unrelated to the topic at hand.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I scoffed between tears. “You don’t really think I’m responsible for this, do you?”

  And then I pulled out the grenade around which I keep one hand at all times—the only real power I think I might have over my own life.

  “I don’t have to stay for all this, TC. We can raise Jack together, but I’m getting the hell out.”

  Did I mean this? Probably not. All I know is that in my rage, I had to cut him down. I had to make him feel as bad as I did.

  But my words hardly registered. No one was begging me to stay.

  * * *

  This morning I woke up tired but calm again, not the rage-filled fire monster I behaved as last night. TC slept on the couch, and I expected that once awake, he’d be calm as well. But I was wrong.

  I slunk around the apartment getting dressed for work and trying not to wake Jack. Eventually, TC stirred from the couch and made his way into the kitchen to brew coffee. As I stood beside him, packing up my lunch, he refused to address me. There was no warmth in his movements or expression. Just reserved and steady anger.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I hissed in his direction.

  He turned to glare at me, daggers piercing through his eyeballs. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he hissed back.

  I sensed the energy of another battle ensuing and backtracked in a semi-apology that was really more of a deflection of my involvement in the mess.

  “Well, I’m feeling a little better about everything, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “No,” he responded bluntly. “Go to work and get the fuck out.”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 23

  November 2013

  One of the alluring mysteries of marriage may very well be two partners’ ability to surprise each other. The problem with brain injury is not that there aren’t any surprises anymore. It’s that the surprises are usually a surprise to both parties and that the mysteries, those hidden stories still left to learn about each other, no longer exist. It becomes the responsibility of the caregiver to reteach the survivor who he was, to provide a crash course in identity.

  And that is what I intend to do. In the hope of avoiding one more knockdown fight, I am willing to try things a new way—to stop forcing ourselves into the roles of husband and wife and to simply be TC’s friend.

  His brain will forevermore be a mystery to us both, but the memories of his past are well-worn stitches in a quilt I know every square inch of. I am surprised to find that even after a year of recovery, his memory is still incomplete, specific memories returning at random like an unexpected deluge.

  It’s only the random things he seems to have forgotten, something I observed the night I picked up Thai food, making sure to include a Thai iced tea for him. TC stared at the frothy orange drink in my hand as I tried to hand it over. “What’s that?” he asked dubiously.

  “It’s a Thai iced tea. They’re your favorite.”

  “Huh.” He eyed it suspiciously.

  When a specific memory does return, I become aware of it at nearly the same moment TC does. His facial expressions reveal so much of what’s happening in his brain. When his mind surges with the arrival of a new memory, his face lights up in response.

  “I’m not sure I ever told you about the road trip we took after college,” he tells me while walking around Lincoln Park one day. “The three of us, Ilya, John, and I drove straight through from Vancouver to Chicago at the end.”