We had previously settled on Philadelphia. Our families were in the Northeast, and we were Northeasterners at heart. New York City was too expensive, anything north of New York was too cold, and anything south of DC was no longer the North. Most of New Jersey was far too suburban, and the parts that offered big-city comforts were just as expensive as New York City. This had left only Philadelphia, which had easy access to New York, DC, New Jersey, and Maryland, and had a reasonable cost of living compared to its competition. Neither one of us had ever lived there, but it seemed to make the most sense on paper. I didn’t know anyone in Philadelphia, but Dan’s parents had just moved to one of its bedroom communities, and he had a couple of friends who lived nearby.
We had deferred every other decision until after my residency—when one member of a couple is in residency, the couple is in residency—but now all that would change. In our new city, I had imagined we would walk over cobblestone streets hand in hand. Ginkgo leaves would waft gently onto the sidewalks as we passed. We’d try all the new restaurants because we’d finally be able to afford them. I couldn’t wait to advertise all our starter IKEA furniture on Craigslist and purchase the type of furniture an adult woman actually wanted to pack up and take with her when she relocated. Our home’s style would be a mix of elegant and eco-industrial. We’d burn candles all the time, vanilla and spiced amber to start. We’d finally have placemats, napkins, and sleek new flatware. We’d wander the city museums on Wednesdays and host dinner parties on Fridays. We’d enjoy our discretionary income and then, after a couple of years, we could discuss having kids.
So our split could have been a scene from a terrible indie film, the one where the perfect, young, progressive New York City couple—the white independent filmmaker husband and the black physician wife who had met at Harvard’s freshman ice-cream social—endure a shocking, painful breakup. The couple has already overcome so much when, only months before she graduates from her residency, with a planned move to Philadelphia to be near his friends and family, he lowers the boom.
“You’re doing well in your career, and I’m not,” he told me that night. “If I’m with you, I’ll focus on your success. I have to find myself. The only way I can do that is if I’m not with you. You’ll be fine in Philadelphia. I can’t go.”
It felt like a cliché, a plot point that everybody else but the main characters themselves sees coming.
I knew what would happen next in the movie. It would start raining outside—first a drizzle and then a torrential downpour, as Whitney Houston crooned “I Will Always Love You.” As the music grew louder, I would rest my head on his shoulder. Then, as the song reached its crescendo, my heart would break.
In real life, forty-eight hours after his declaration, I found an attorney and filed for divorce.
We had talked until three o’clock in the morning, our words alternating between clench-fisted blame and gut-wrenching pleas. We had paced miles in that bedroom, until our bodies broke from fatigue. Finally, we had collapsed into bed. I tossed and turned the rest of the night away, unable to dispel the slideshow of snapshots that was our story—well, my version of our story. I knew that time would fade each image to a hazy déjà vu.
I begged the universe to make me remember our cheesy romantic dancing in the rain on a temperate April afternoon nine years before; our special Queens hummus recipe we had concocted from a handful of Food Network recipes and whatever happened to be our flavor preference of the week; our road trips to the Jersey Shore; his touch, which was smooth and soft in the way of a person whose work is more cognitive than physical; the brown pools of his eyes that told me that beneath his athletic build, he was fragile; and every second of the thirteen years we had shared. I begged the universe to make our breakup feel fair or right, and to let me survive.
I had attempted to soothe myself by crawling up close and snuggling into him. I lay there in the nook made by his arms, timing my breath to the heavy breath of his sleep, the rhythmic calm of his presence. (Dan had always had this gift: He could sleep anytime, anywhere.) His sculpted body felt supple as the muscle softened in slumber, providing the perfect cushion for bite-size me. I’m still amazed at how the body yields when it relaxes. I don’t know if it was because, in true Iron Chef fashion, he frequently whipped up fresh Italian dishes with whatever ingredients were on hand, or because of his long days running around the New York City streets for his film shoots, but that night, Dan smelled like a mixture of warm bread and grass. I inhaled deeply, as if it were the most precious breath I would ever take. I felt as if I were levitating there, as if in a hot-air balloon going up, up, up. I wanted so badly to come down, to snuggle closer, but there was a rampart of air, of breath, between us.
I looked over the edge of the balloon’s wicker basket and waved good-bye to this place. I thought of our earlier plan, before we knew we were breaking up, to rent out the co-op as an investment property when we moved to Philadelphia, until the real estate market swelled to secure us a hefty sale price. It was our surefire way to get rich, we had mused.
As the balloon kept rising, I panned the landscape to catch a glimpse of my in-laws and silently bade them good-bye, too. It had taken them nearly a decade to become comfortable with their baby boy dating a black woman, with their having a black daughter-in-law. In the end, it was worth it: Our bond had weathered strong. The thought of my relocating to their area without their son made the pang of my move that much more acute.
I said my farewells, too, to the two beautiful, olive-skinned, kinky-haired children Dan and I might have had. I could still feel the curls that framed their cherubic cheeks, which had my dimples. Their Italian American and African American heritages would have blessed them with lean, muscular bodies and round, ample butts. She would have been Nella Vita, and he would have been August. I could hear their giggles and their bye-byes dissolving into shrieks and cries. I tried to hold on to their images, but the balloon was drifting too high, and I was receding from them and my in-laws and the apartment and everything else I had known for the past thirteen years.
Now the balloon was up too far for me to jump down. The air felt thin at this altitude, and the only bubble of oxygen was right there on my ex-husband’s chest and neck. My eyes traced his every contour—the mandible, the clavicle, the iliac crest—because I knew it would be the last time. I knew that at some point, he would wake up, and I would have to move. Trembling, I fumbled for my phone to snap one last picture of him asleep in bed. It was a terrible photo: The image was blurry and, in the low light, sepia-toned. I couldn’t help but laugh, anticipating his response when I showed it to him after he woke—unless, of course, I simply deleted it.
Soon, a sticky New York City spring morning dawned. Sunrise oozed through the blinds and sketched a pattern on Dan’s left cheek. I peeled the sheet back to feel the shallow breeze of the fan as it fought a pathetic battle against the humidity, and I thought about my next step.
I would fall apart.
Part of it would be due to loneliness, and a greater part would be the loss of what had been, up to that point, the only relatively stable relationship I had ever had with a man.
I wasn’t angry the marriage was over. I wasn’t bitter. I knew that we had run our course. Our breakup had never really been about the moving; it had been about two people at a crossroads. Dan wanted to live abroad to study his craft, knowing full well that I couldn’t move after my residency. I needed to start working and to pass my board certification examination. He knew that I was not the type of woman to kamikaze my career for a man. I was also not the type of woman to stand in the way of another person’s path. For Dan’s part, he would leave because he had to. And I would let him go because there was no question that I had to.
No, the sadness on its way was over something greater than loneliness or “losing a man.” The breakup of my marriage was stoking in me the deep sense of abandonment that had lain dormant during my marriage, the loss of
the home life I had craved but never had. I knew on some level that this was the real source of my grief.
I didn’t know the details yet—how or when—but that New York City spring, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I slipped into a well of despondence, one where there was neither color nor light, but where, goddess willing, there was a bottom. I knew, too, that there would be no fighting any of it.
* * *
—
Now, here at my final residency ceremony, I shifted in my seat and glanced at my mother as she proudly anticipated my name being called. I concentrated on the rhythmic tapping of my heel. Just a few minutes more in this auditorium and I could start the business of moving on. I was careful not to kick the stranger beside me, to make the tapping fine and swift so it wouldn’t bother anyone but could still distract me. I looked down at my ring finger—I could still see the light tan mark where my wedding band had been, the skin around it darkened by the sun. I quickly rubbed my index finger over the area. I rubbed it to take away the pain, and I kept rubbing, hard, as a single errant tear seared my right cheek. The strategy wasn’t working.
Every graduation had sucked in its own way. High school graduation had sucked the least. The ceremony itself was revelrous. My whole family attended—no great feat, given that my family is small. Grandma showed up in one of her lacy church hats, which was nicely complemented by her deep berry lipstick. Grandpa, taciturn and smiling, was there in a smart suit, his camera, as always, by his side. He was the family photographer and the consummate observer. Grandma was the matriarch and the voice for them both. My mother’s favorite sister, Eileen, was there, and my parents, my brother, and my sister, cheering with the rest of those gathered at the commencement for the National Cathedral School. The feeling of being surrounded by my fellow classmates, sixty-six other young women, many of whom would undoubtedly alter the course of history in critical ways, gave me unparalleled pride.
So, high school graduation itself wasn’t bad. Leaving my family home for college was the bittersweet bit: The place was all I had known as a little girl, and yet nearly everything about it had been wrong. As I packed, listening to Deee-lite on my CD player, I took with me my inner child. The girl I was, who had never been permitted to come out to explore and be fanciful and weightless. Tucked into a small box, I carried her on the long drive to Cambridge, Massachusetts, because outside of the Orchid Street walls she might finally find a playground.
I won’t go into detail about my college experience. Much has been written about centers of elitism and privilege like Harvard University. Some of it is true. It is true that at one of the first social events at Harvard I attended, a white male classmate told me that I couldn’t possibly be black because I didn’t speak like the two black people he knew from his neighborhood—and since he was, clearly, the arbiter of “blackness” he felt he had the right to say that to me. What I didn’t know at the time was that this would be a fitting introduction to the four years of micro- (well, really, macro-) aggressions to follow. It is true that when a student sexual violence prevention group I was a part of approached one of the deans with a multipoint plan, her response to our inquiry to centralize resources for rape victims was “Harvard doesn’t hold your hand.” She meant it. In less than the time it took for her to close her door, the discussion was over. It is true that when I heard of the scandal of wealthy people literally purchasing their children’s admissions into these universities, I wasn’t surprised—this rampant inequity was well-known to all of us who were there; the only thing bizarre about the story was that the public behaved as if they weren’t aware. While these ivory towers have traditionally served to elevate those who already have unearned privilege, they may hinder those who do not, by virtue of immutable attributes such as color, family class, sexual orientation, gender, and physical ability. The increased scrutiny on these institutions to live up to the standards of conduct that they profess to exemplify is warranted.
As for the graduation ceremony itself, suffice it to say that various people gave speeches and I skipped the majority of the events.
It was my graduation from medical school that was a complete derealization. It wasn’t just that my grandparents were no longer able to travel—my grandmother had developed advanced Alzheimer’s, and my grandfather had stayed at home to care for the woman who had always anchored his world—but that Morris, my biological father, attended. He had been at all the graduations that came before, and it had been awkward each and every time. Up to that point, he had helped pay for my education, so I had felt obligated to extend the invitation. (I didn’t yet know that I had the power to choose.) By the time I entered medical school, my parents had been divorced several years, which had made my conversations with my father sporadic and forced. I watched Morris shake hands with my instructors and tuned out his recounting of the nurturing fathering that he didn’t do. As we posed for family photos, a tension in me snapped: Each camera flash documented that the charade my family had always been was now publicly foisted onto this next stage of my life, where it was neither welcome nor tolerable.
Soon after I finished medical school, Dan and I got married. I had promised my mother I wouldn’t get married until after I’d earned my medical degree. As she had told me many times, she wanted me to own my degree all by myself. I had decided not to invite Morris to the marriage celebration; in fact, he didn’t even know about it. Not long after, he let me know that he no longer wanted to be a part of my life. This was during one of the many phone conversations he coerced from me, asserting some type of genetic imperative to maintain a connection to one’s family. When that failed, he’d try to control me with threats to withdraw financial support. When that failed—I decided that accepting his money came at far too high a cost—the coercion stopped. As far as I was concerned, the title of “father” had to be earned, and I began to define “family” for myself, concluding that inclusion in this group could be forfeited.
I cut these cords to support myself. I knew by then that it was only from that space that I could make my own assessments. It was only then that I could finally confront him about his abusive behavior. I told him that he had been a terrorist in our family, that he had so profoundly ruined some of its members’ lives that they struggled with substance abuse, that my mother still flinched at loud noises. I told him that if he ever wanted to communicate with me again, he would first have to acknowledge the truth of who he was.
Instead of admitting that any of what I’d said had even occurred, he vanished. He made his choice.
It is better to be left with a ghost than a ghoul, so his disappearance from my life was an acceptable outcome.
* * *
—
There was no graduation from my internship, just an escape. My four-year emergency medicine program required that I complete my intern year (postgraduate year one of residency) in another field before returning to complete years two through four in the ER. The thinking in the profession at the time was that it was too tough to start off in the ER fresh out of medical school, that it was better to get a year of training under your belt in another medical discipline first. Figuring it would give me a well-rounded foundation for my practice in emergency medicine, I elected to spend my intern year in internal medicine. I almost didn’t care where I completed that first year—for me, it was simply a 365-day means to an end. Still, I decided to diminish the pain by choosing a program with the relatively higher pay and other creature comforts a wealthy hospital affords. I therefore dutifully completed that year in a prosperous area of Long Island, at a hospital where, upon entering each day, I was greeted with a classical selection from the pianist seated at the grand piano in the lobby or from a serenading harpist.
(I had not anticipated that even this would not quell my longing every single day for my next medical home, in the Bronx.)
Internship is the year of residency that nearly everyone in medicine programs hates. Whether it was other prelims li
ke me, who counted down the minutes until we arrived at our primary program; or the sad souls who hadn’t yet been matched with a residency program but who had accepted the position in the hope that it would buy them some time as they scrambled to reapply to a residency; or the folks who actually wanted to practice internal medicine and so swallowed the bitter pill of the first year and accepted its drudgery as conventional hazing—we were, after all, the scut slaves of the hospital. The first to be paged for everything, we ran around chasing electrolyte levels, refilling Tylenol orders, and preparing morning presentations—just a fraction of the duties we performed on minimal sleep.
The internal medicine program director I worked under, Dr. Jaiswal, was a forceful character. She was intelligent and skilled clinically, but not particularly nice. As we interns gathered for rounds, the morning ritual where we visited patients to check on their progress, we always knew when she was approaching by the click-clack of her shoes on the linoleum. She matched her sensible yet stylish kitten heels with jewel-toned suits that always seemed to be at least one size too large for her petite frame.
One summer morning, after I had been on call the night before, we would be starting with my presentation of patient signs and symptoms followed by the prescribed evaluation and treatment plans for anyone I had admitted overnight—at which point, I could go home to rest while the others on the team continued with rounds. The day before, Dr. Jaiswal had reamed out Helen, another one of the prelims, for her presentation on pneumonia, and Craig for his feeble attempt to present a patient with thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) in view of everyone in the vicinity of the doctors’ stations where we were rounding. Everyone feared Dr. Jaiswal, harboring a resentment toward her that bordered on hate. In the resident lounge, the comments made about her were brutal, and we complained incessantly to one another about how overly critical she was and how stingy with positive feedback.
The Beauty in Breaking Page 3