It began with blood clots, I say.
Then my joints swelled. My red blood cells disappeared. My organs became inflamed. I couldn’t breathe. My heart almost stopped. My GI system almost failed. Sepsis, blood transfusion, IV antibiotics, steroids. I was in the ICU for five days.
Except, really, it began with my father’s death. The body blaming itself as much as I blame myself. But I don’t tell doctors this part.
In the same exam room, my new doctor listens and asks questions occasionally. She nods, makes notes, and, as every doctor I’ve had since I was diagnosed has done, she asks, “Any family plans?”
I hesitate. Isn’t she here to disabuse me of any such notions?
“Is it possible?” I ask.
She looks at my chart. “It’s not impossible,” she says. “There are some things that would be issues. You’re already at risk for blood clots and pregnancy increases that risk. You’d have to stop most of the medications you’re on, and it’s hard to say if you’re in remission on your own or if the medications are keeping you in remission.”
“But I could? In theory.”
“Possibly. You’d have to talk to a high-risk ob-gyn. The risks might end up being too great.”
“Okay,” I say.
“So you do have family plans?” She looks up, trying to get on with things.
“No,” I say.
But throughout the rest of the exam—as she feels my joints and glands and checks my eyes and mouth—I think of a baby in my arms. I still don’t know if I want it, but I imagine it there anyway. I imagine the possibility of it being there.
The thought of that particular happiness carries me home, as the sadness had when I was here last. In the hallway, I run into Thora, who’s taking garbage out to the curb. I take the bag from her. She accepts my help with relief because she left the babies in the apartment, Per’s at work, and as she rushes back through her door she tells me to come inside on my way back in.
I put the garbage on the curb and rub hand sanitizer between my palms. Inside, Thora sits on the couch, a baby lying on either side of her, and I tell her to put me to work.
“I’ll just close my eyes a minute,” she says. “If a babe cries, will you wake me?”
I sit on the floor while Thora naps. The babies fall in and out of sleep.
“You’re perfect,” I tell them.
Their blue eyes search the ceiling. Their mouths gum the air. If my father were alive, and if I had a baby, well, that baby would be someone we would both love. Tears fill my eyes. One of the babies—I can’t tell them apart, according to Thora one is a little bigger, but they look the same to me—catches hold of one of my fingers and doesn’t let go.
Thora wakes up. We have a glass of wine. She roasts vegetables and tofu for her and Per’s dinner, and then I go upstairs.
Patrick sits at the table with wine and a textbook. I didn’t hear him come in when I was with Thora, and he looks up and says he was wondering where I was.
“Downstairs,” I say. “With Thora and the babies.”
I hang my bag on the back of the chair next to Patrick’s. Bottles chime as I open the fridge door. “Oh,” I sigh. “What’s for dinner?”
It seems like I only have carrots and yogurt. I sent the leftovers home with Aamina last night.
“Takeout?” I ask.
Patrick shrugs. Something is annoying him, but I’m too tired to ask, and in any case, I don’t really want to know. I search for my phone in my bag, pulling out my wallet, keys, the visit summary from the doctor, my hand sanitizer, my book. “I know I had it when I got home,” I say. “Aha.” I find it buried beneath a bill for my health insurance. “What do you think? Thai food?”
Patrick doesn’t reply, and when I look at him, he’s holding the visit summary, reading.
“Systemic lupus?” he asks.
“Oh,” I say. “That. It’s nothing. I had an appointment today.”
I hold out my hand for the papers. Patrick doesn’t give them back. He scans the notes, my vitals, the long list of medications.
“When do you take these pills? I’ve never seen you take pills.”
“At lunch,” I say. “At work. I have to take them with food.”
Patrick’s scowl deepens. He keeps reading, and the longer he holds the summary the more uncomfortable I feel. He’s prying. I didn’t tell him about my health for a reason, because it ruined everything with Ralph, because I have to think about it all the time as it is, and because I’m just so tired of it all.
“Give it back,” I say. “Ask me questions if you want, but give it back.”
Patrick ignores my outstretched hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His eyes darken; his voice turns bitter. “You have this huge thing, and you didn’t tell me.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It looks like a big deal to me!” Patrick brandishes the health summary. “Four medications. Blood clots. Hospitalization. A blood transfusion? I mean, what the fuck, Marie? Why would you hide this?”
“I didn’t hide anything,” I say. “It just didn’t come up. I’ve had it a long time.”
“Nice spin,” Patrick says, tossing the papers on the table.
“Why? I mean, that’s not really what we’re doing here, is it?”
Patrick twists the stem of his wineglass. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just—look, it’s not that I didn’t tell you for a reason. It just didn’t come up.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “I guess, what, it didn’t fit into your project?”
“My project?”
“I overheard what you said to Aamina.”
“Jesus Christ.” I push the skin on my forehead away from my eyes.
Patrick stands up. I can sense his energy rising.
“You’re just taking from this what you want, is that it?” He pulls open the fridge door, searches. “Just phoning it in.”
“Wine is on the table,” I say. “If that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Fuck you,” he says.
“Hey. Don’t do that.”
“Do you think this is a transaction, what we’re doing?”
“That’s not fair. You were the one who said it, remember? You believe me, I believe you.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Well, Patrick, what do you mean? What do you want?”
“Nothing,” he mutters, sitting back down, deflated. “I don’t want anything from you.”
I laugh. “That’s not true.”
“Fuck you,” he says again, and I laugh again because I can’t help but find it funny when he says it, and he smiles a little.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t think you’re a transaction.”
“It’s just, like, take me seriously,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, trying to look at him seriously, but a laugh bursts through my closed lips.
“What?” he exclaims, but he laughs a little, too.
The silence that comes whenever we talk ourselves into a corner wraps itself around our necks like scarves, and I refill our glasses.
“Okay, I’ll tell you about the doctor today,” I say. “It was a new one. She seems good. The last one said to me, ‘Someone like you should never be pregnant,’ and I was like, Wow, good bedside manner. This one isn’t so sure. I mean, I don’t even know if I want a baby, but whenever I see a baby or think of babies I think of my father in a good way—like he would be a part of that baby and I would have a new chance to get it right, to be a good parent because I wasn’t a good daughter. It feels like it could be right somehow.”
I keep going with my thoughts—the wine has given them buoyancy and they float right out of my mouth. I tell Patrick about the empty parts of me, parts that are empty because I haven’t loved people the way I should. My father and then Ralph. I’ve been self-interested and my illness has made me obsessed with myself.
“That enough info for you?” I say, smiling.
I was looking into my wine as I spoke, not at Patrick, and now I see he’s looking away, eyes cast down at a diagonal. He finishes his wine and reaches for the bottle, but we’ve emptied it.
“It sounds like you only want a baby because you were told you shouldn’t have one,” he says.
Harsh and fast like a slap. “That’s an awful thing to say.”
“Well, you’re making me feel really uncomfortable, talking about children.”
“This isn’t about you.”
“How?” he says miserably. “How is it not also about me? We’re sleeping together.”
I stand up, exasperated, swing open the fridge door in case we missed a bottle of wine. “This is ridiculous,” I say. “A second ago you were saying I don’t take you seriously, and now you’re angry that I’m talking about the future?”
“We’d be fucked-up parents,” he says bitterly.
“Me! This is about me!” I yell, loudly, and then hold my breath and listen for a baby crying downstairs—but everything is quiet. Softer, I add, “This is not about you.”
“Why didn’t you go with Ralph to California if you wanted a baby? Seems like you two were at that point.”
“Seriously,” I say. “What do you want me to say?”
“I’m not mad that you’re talking about the future,” he says. “I’m mad that you’ve already decided I’m not in it.”
“Come on. Don’t tell me you weren’t planning on ending this if I didn’t do it first.”
“From the beginning for you this was over.” Patrick looks into his empty wineglass. “You’re just cold. Frigid. No wonder you can’t write. You have zero imagination.”
I burst into laughter—what he said is truly funny, and my fuse is short: scream, laugh, cry. One of them has to happen.
“That’s great,” I say. “I love that.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“Yes, it is. It’s ridiculous. Why are we even fighting? We have nothing to fight about.” I reach over to put my hand over his. “Maybe we’re not helping each other anymore. Maybe being sad is all we have in common.”
“I’m leaving.” He pulls his hand away, knocks back his chair and grabs his coat roughly from the hook by the door. “You’re right. I’ll end it if you don’t. I won’t be back.”
When he’s gone, I rest my elbows on the counter, my head over the sink, and push back my hair. A wave of nausea rolls over me, and I try not to throw up. It’s hard to believe that when I walked in the door not long ago I thought we were going to have a normal evening.
* * *
Later, very late, my phone rings. It’s Patrick, but when I answer the voice isn’t his—it’s someone telling me he needs to be picked up from the bar. I’ve come down, but I’m a little drunk still, so I walk there and find Patrick sitting outside the bar with his head between his knees. I sit down next to him, push his chin up with my finger. He has a bloody nose.
“I’m not even going to ask,” I say.
“Thank you,” he mutters.
“Come on,” I say. “Time to walk.”
I hoist him up, pull his arm over my shoulder. It’s only a few blocks, but the air is moist, Patrick’s weight is heavy, and I start to sweat.
“You’re okay,” I say when he dry heaves.
We’re almost to my stoop when the gunshot rings out in the night. It sounds close, but maybe it’s just the echo that’s close. It pings against my heart, I hope it missed whoever it was for, and then I get Patrick inside.
* * *
In the morning we read that a student was shot during a botched burglary. He lived in a frat house just down the street. We both knew him in our own small ways. He’d helped me dig my car out during a blizzard last year. And Patrick had been a TA for the boy’s economics class the semester before.
I walk to the train the next morning and the air feels thick, as though it’s heavier with one less person breathing it.
Patrick and I slept eventually last night and parted ways in silence this morning, and I’m clumsy with everything at work because I can’t stop thinking I should end things with him before they get any worse. For a few minutes the night before they were over, but then I’d helped him home.
I hand deliver a contract without the appendixes and am scolded for it.
“It makes me look bad,” my boss says.
The frat boy creeps into my thoughts as I finish the day, and I hide my tears in the bathroom. The paramedics tried to save him, but he was dead by the time they got to the hospital. I have no business being broken up about him, but I am, and I keep checking the internet to see the comments on the articles about him, the condolences and stories of how nice the boy had been, what a good student and good neighbor he was. The articles note the fact he was in a fraternity almost as an apology. The fraternities aren’t well liked by townies, but this boy was an exception.
My father’s body rested for days in his apartment before anyone knew he was dead, before a friend called the police to do a well-being check. I think of the paramedics arriving and having nothing to do except confirm he was dead.
I stay late finishing work I was too sad to do earlier in the day, and then I take my time getting home. I don’t run through Penn Station to catch the 7:18. I lean against a pillar and wait for the 7:56. When I get off at Newark Broad Street I walk slowly down the steps, past the light-rail station, and down Essex, past the Audible building and onto my cobblestone street. Tree roots have disturbed the bricks and made the sidewalks jagged. The peonies my landlord planted are dollops of color in the window boxes. I stand outside in the dark, breathing the air, watching a plane glide overhead, and finally go inside. I know Patrick is there. The light is on.
* * *
We say kind things to each other. I tell him we’ll only make things worse if we keep doing this, and he agrees. We hug. The hug becomes a kiss, which turns into sex. Patrick leaves when we’re finished. He hangs the key I gave him on the hook. It was Ralph’s key once.
* * *
When the police tape has been removed from outside the fraternity house and the reporters have trickled out of the neighborhood, my landlord emails me to see if I’d like to have lunch. He takes his tenants out for long lunches sometimes. Ralph used to join when he still lived here. Yuejin is always worrying about whether his tenants are happy, and the shooting probably brought about a resurgence of his worries. He imagines we could leave our brownstone and move to Brooklyn, but I always reassure him that I love Newark.
Life here is the subject of my landlord’s email.
I wait for Yuejin outside my building. In our mailboxes, the neighborhood association has left flyers advertising a meeting that will address the recent shootings. The frat boy was the second student to be killed in Newark this year; the first was involved in a drug robbery. I scan the flyer as Yuejin crosses the street. He drives us to a Portuguese restaurant in the Ironbound. Behind the wheel, he presses his palms together in apology when he turns in front of a woman in a blue pickup truck.
We eat garlic shrimp and talk about the upcoming neighborhood association meeting. By now people have begun to feel bold enough to ask questions about the murder. What was the boy doing outside so late? The story was the burglars had followed him home from the twenty-four-hour minimart down the street. Why did he fight back instead of putting his hands up and letting them have what they wanted? What really went on inside that frat house?
I grimace at these questions. Prodding at a death, picking apart someone’s final hour, never brings answers.
“I’m not going to the meeting,” my landlord says. “In my experience almost nothing can be learned from isolated incidents like this. And I don’t want to hear what the police have to say, whose livelihood depends on crime.”
I’ve decided not to go, either. These things happen everywhere in America. They’re not what I think of when I think of Newark. Instead I think of the first few weeks of April when spring bursts in and the cherry trees bloss
om and they make the air fragrant until the blossoms fall and a verdant canopy overtakes the parks and the backyards. I think of the very blue sky of Newark in the summer, and the night that’s only dark enough for the brightest stars, and summer weddings in the yard of the Newark Museum. I think of free yoga in Riverfront Park, planes coming in so low for landing at Newark Liberty that I can see into their windows. They’re big international flights, British Airways and Lufthansa jets, their shadows rippling over our bodies as I struggle through even the basic yoga poses, pausing to massage my aching joints. The river smells bad on hot days. There’s also yoga at the southern tip of Military Park, the class Aamina teaches, beneath the bust of JFK, planes taking off on this side of the city and American flags snapping on the tops of buildings above us as we lie on the mats. Once a man riding by on his bike yelled, “What’s this, the fat bitch roly-poly club?” I wasn’t offended, though maybe I should’ve been. Mostly I couldn’t help but admire how quickly he’d come up with the insult, how the words roly poly had been so readily retrievable for him, and I liked that he saw us as a club.
But these aren’t the things one talks about at neighborhood meetings.
Yuejin takes a sip of his water and clears his throat.
“Have you heard from Ralph?” he asks.
Yuejin rented the apartment to both of us, and he was concerned when Ralph left. He also knows everything that goes on in the neighborhood, so I’m sure he’s seen Patrick come and go, unlocking the front door on his own, then moments later the light coming on in my apartment.
“He posts on social media. His new job is good, I think. I don’t really see us talking again anytime soon.”
Yuejin shrugs. He’s a fatalist.
If the Body Allows It Page 16