The Weight of Air

by David Poses

  “Did you ask Mom for—”

  “I’m not asking her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Because?”

  “David, she knows how fucked I am, and she’s not offering to—I’m so sick of this. The other night, I drank all this beer and ate a big bag of Oxys, Xanax, Vicodin and passed out. Next thing I knew, I was in a hospital getting my stomach pumped.”

  “Ugh.”

  “The worst part is when I got out and asked my friends who called 911 or took me to the ER, nobody had a clue and . . . I don’t want to keep doing this.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t. You just woke up one day—seven fucking years ago—and decided to stop like it was nothing. I just want someone to tell me what to do.”

  “I’m at my computer. There’s a 6 a.m. flight from West Palm to White Plains.”

  “So?”

  “It’s past midnight. The plane probably boards at five. Go to the airport and—”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. Just go to the airport and I’ll meet you at Mom’s.”

  “I feel so weak.”

  “All you have to do is—”

  “I know. Get to the fucking airport.”

  I hang up with Daniel and call Mom to tell her to pick him up. “I’ll come down for a few days. He needs treatment.”

  “He’s been to rehab. He needs somebody to sit him down and say, ‘Daniel, you have to decide how you want to live your life. When you choose to do drugs—”

  “He’s not choosing to. He can’t control it.”

  “David—you said so yourself. Addiction isn’t a disease.”

  In the morning while I pack, Andrea comes behind me and slides her arms up my chest, pulling me close. “It must be so hard for Daniel,” she says, “knowing how easy it was for you to quit and stay quit all this time.”

  I drive to the restaurant and find Nell kneading focaccia dough in the back of the kitchen. I ask if we can talk. She drops the dense wad on the chrome table and looks up as it lands with a dense, sticky thud.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re quitting.”

  “I’m not quitting.”

  She exhales slowly and reaches for a canister of dried rosemary. “I need to get these in the oven. Can you give me two minutes?”

  I hear “Psst” and turn to see Ken nodding at the walk-in refrigerator. I follow him inside. He wedges his foot in the door and pulls a prescription bottle from his pocket. I wait for him to leave and then swallow two pills and call my mom from the office.

  As the phone rings, I look at the label on the bottle. Vicodin 10/300—four times stronger than the last script. Twenty-five pills. Mom picks up.

  “I’m so sorry—the chef broke his arm last night. If I leave, the restaurant will have to close.”

  Mom says not to worry. “Daniel needs to learn that not everybody can drop what they’re doing when he’s having a hard time. And he’s goddamn lucky you were there for him last night, and so am I. You are one extraordinarily remarkable man. When anyone asks how my kids are, I say I never have to worry about David.”

  When the Vicodin is gone, I try to distract myself by putting in more hours at the restaurant and asking my freelance clients for more projects. The guilt and shame are inescapable.

  I go shopping for an engagement ring. The selection in and around Camden is brand-new, gaudy crap, so I investigate estate jewelry stores in Portland and take a day off to check them out. At the first one, my eye is immediately drawn to a princess cut diamond set in a thin hundred-year-old platinum band.

  The woman in the shop removes it from the glass cabinet and places it in my hand. She says it’s so petite that it can’t be resized and warns me not to buy anything until I’ve measured Andrea’s finger. “Can you imagine the heartbreak if it doesn’t fit and there’s nothing you can do?”

  I buy the ring. I know it’ll fit like I know the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

  Driving back to Camden, I hatch a scheme to make a picnic and propose at the top of Mount Megunticook—Andrea’s favorite place. I stop for supplies at French and Brawn and tell the cashier about my plan.

  “Today?” she says, jabbing her thumb at the window. “It’s cold and rainy.”

  At home, I shine the ring on my shirt a hundred times and arrange and rearrange everything in the picnic basket until Andrea’s car pulls in the driveway. When she comes through the door, I’m on my knee, holding the ring, holding my breath.

  “Will you marry me?”

  Andrea says yes and wells up with tears. I slide the ring on her finger. It fits perfectly. I breathe.

  Later that fall, the private equity firm in New York offers me a full-time job, building and running a marketing department. Andrea and I don’t want to leave Camden, but this opportunity will never exist here.

  We move from our harbor-view house to a small apartment in Greenwich, Connecticut, facing a vacuum cleaner repair shop. The moment my shiny new Prada loafers hit the office’s soft carpet, I feel out of place.

  I’m an animal in designer clothes, pretending to be a person, surrounded by guys in pleated gabardine slacks and blue blazers with gold buttons. They call me Dave and practice their golf swing with invisible clubs while talking football and all-inclusive Caribbean resorts.

  I’m the only one who’s ever used heroin. I can tell. There’s something really sad and lonely about that. I worry it’s obvious. I worry they know who I really am. They’re going to fire me.

  Every morning, I’m in the office before everyone else. At night, I’m the last one out. One by one, I rebrand every company under the corporate umbrella, negotiate better prices with media partners, and consolidate hundreds of print and promotional vendors into one resource. At the holiday party, I receive a generous raise and an unexpected bonus. It feels empty and unearned.

  Andrea gets a job as a visual manager at Anthropologie. The hours are long, and she misses Maine.

  A year passes. Slowly.

  thirty-six

  At least once a month, I drive to a local print production facility to sign off on a press check with Greg, my sales rep. Afterward, he always invites me to a large conference room, where he fills up on free snacks and pitches all manner of satin aqueous coatings, die cuts, and promotional materials.

  One morning in early 2005, he closes the door to the conference room and settles into his usual seat. “You party?”

  “Uh, not really. No.”

  “But you might know where to get some blow?”

  He reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulls out a small Ziploc bag of pastel Skittles-like pills. “OxyContin,” he says. “Took ’em from my grandmother’s place after she passed. My buddy is having a bachelor party this weekend. I figure you’re artsy, you’ll know someone who’ll trade an eight ball of blow for this. If you can do something by Friday, great. If not, I’ll flush them.”

  I don’t know where to get coke or how much an eight ball costs, but no price is too high if it means the Oxy comes home with me.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  In the parking lot, I smoke a cigarette and scroll through the contacts on my cell phone. The only possibility is Susan, a freelance graphic designer, who once alluded to being a pothead. She picks up on the first ring and agrees to meet at a nearby coffee shop when I plead for help with an emergency project.

  For forty-five minutes, I listen to every idea in Susan’s thick spiral notebook. When she’s finished, I sputter about my cousin’s upcoming bachelor party.

  “I know you know I don’t do drugs but . . . he’s pretty desperate for an eight ball of coke . . . the party’s this weekend so . . . if you happen to know anyone who might—”

  “Say no more,” Susan says, whipping out her cell phone. She places a call, asks for “a thing,” and hangs up and blows on her phone like a cowboy with a six-shooter.

  “Twenty minutes,” she says.

  Fifteen minutes
later, a black Lexus SUV with chrome rims and dark-tinted windows screeches into the parking lot, blasting “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” by Dr. Dre and Snoop. A short, skinny girl in an LA Raiders hat hops out and flings a brown plastic shopping bag at Susan, who hands it to me. After paying her, I wrap it in my blazer, bury it in my trunk, and drive back to Greg’s office.

  “My man,” he says, leaning back in his chair, ogling the powder. He licks the tip of his index finger, dips it in the powder, and runs it along his gums. “You sample the goods?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s okay if you did.”

  “I really don’t—”

  “Bull. Shit.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Not even weed?”

  I shake my head.

  He smiles and hurls the bag of OxyContin at me. “I hope your guy is happy with the trade.”

  “I’m sure he will be.” I put the pills in the inside pocket of my blazer and drive back to work. In my office, I grab a pen and folder and hurry to the bathroom.

  The farthest stall from the door is empty. I pull down my pleated gabardine slacks and sit on the toilet to examine the haul. Most of the pills are mint green stamped with the number “80.” Must be milligrams. The other colors are stamped “20,” “40,” and “10.”

  I MacGyver the ballpoint pen into a snorting vessel and use a quarter to pulverize a forty-milligram pill on the back of the folder. The rough powder burns with a nasty chemical taste. I wait in the stall until a familiar warmth begins to envelop me. Twenty minutes later, I feel the full effect at my desk—much closer to heroin than Vicodin.

  I crank the thermostat for noise, slip into the bathroom, and crush an eighty-milligram pill on the only usable surface: a save-the-date postcard for our wedding, a stodgy maroon damask pattern with “Free Booze & Cake” in big gold letters. Placing the pen in my nose, I flush the toilet and snort. The burn and taste are no less unpleasant. I check my nose in the mirror. No residue around my nostrils, no chunks in the hairs.

  Andrea is lying on the couch. I get behind her and tilt my head back, so the dope juice drips in the right direction. Without thinking, I take a hard snort.

  “You’ve been very sniffly,” she says.

  “Yeah. I think it’s allergies.”

  The next morning at work, I’m sitting on the toilet in the far stall about to snort an eighty and a twenty when shiny burgundy leather tasseled loafers enter the bathroom. I watch them point at the sink and mirror and hope this guy is like me—if I come in for non-illicit sit-down purposes and anyone is in any of the four stalls, I’ll take a moment to look in the mirror or wash my hands and then leave.

  Tasseled Loafers strides into the stall next to me. Pleated slacks drop to the floor. I can’t snort the pill, I can’t leave the bathroom with a pile of powder on a folder, and I sure as hell am not going to flush it. For ten minutes, I breathe sparingly and try to block out the sounds.

  The toilet finally flushes and Loafers whistles “Zip-a-Dee-Fucking-Doo-Dah” for fucking ever while washing his hands. The automated paper towel dispenser makes a “gaddunguh” sound and then the door opens and stays open.

  Loafers face navy blue Docksiders at the threshold. Two unfamiliar voices. I stick the pen in my nose, hold the folder carefully with one hand, and flush and snort simultaneously. I start to get up and realize I can’t leave without checking my nose. Docksiders shuffles into the second stall, the slacks land on the floor, and I hustle out.

  This becomes a pattern—negotiating bathroom traffic at work. I’m relieved when the last specks of Oxy dust burn up my nose in the men’s room in the far stall next to black wing tips. Hours later, I feel desperate and selfish and hopeless.

  As the wedding approaches, I try to neutralize my guilt by surprising Andrea with dates at fancy restaurants, day trips to new places, mix CDs with elaborately decorated covers. But I can’t do anything without questioning my own motives.

  Walking down Greenwich Avenue, I take her hand and give it a squeeze. She deserves to know the truth before entering into a legally binding agreement to be my wife till death do us part. Halfway down the block, I tell myself she’s better off not knowing, not being burdened with concern. I know it’s bullshit. I don’t want the burden of her concern.

  A couple of weeks before the wedding, I’m at a flower shop, buying a dozen gerbera daisies—Andrea’s favorite. In a bucket behind the register, I see dried poppy pods on stems.

  “Oh, I’ve been looking for poppies for an art project. How many do you have?”

  “Forty-eight,” the florist says.

  “I’ll take them all. And another three dozen gerberas.”

  I get home before Andrea and crush a few pods and brew them into tea with a French press coffee maker. The effect is milder than any other opioid I’ve tried, but it lasts longer.

  The next day, I leave for work earlier than usual with the press and remaining pods. I begin a ritual of brewing a fresh batch of tea every morning. The press stays in my drawer. Nobody asks about the liquid in my mug.

  Five days before the wedding, while sipping the last cup at my desk, I’m struck by the pathetic irony: everyone believes I’ve been clean for ten years, but I can’t honestly say I’ve been clean for ten seconds.

  The day after my twenty-ninth birthday, Andrea and I are married by our friend Amie, who signed up to be ordained for twenty-four hours by some bullshit online ministry. The ceremony is a religious smorgasbord with elements of Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, astrology, and a pinch of Catholicism to appease Andrea’s mother.

  We write our own vows. I’m in a tuxedo with tails. Andrea’s gown is from a gas station that also sells guns and ammo and beer. Daniel is my best man. He hasn’t had a drink in two years. He lives in Manhattan and works in reality TV. Rob, still clean, is a groomsman. Sprigs of rosemary are placed on guests’ chairs—a symbol of love and happiness. Our first dance is to “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” by Django Reinhardt.

  We honeymoon at Le Sireneuse in Positano, Italy, in a room with a balcony overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Not long after we return, we find out Andrea is pregnant. At our first ultrasound, the technician says our baby is healthy and lets us hear the heartbeat and gives us black-and-white screenshots of a jelly bean.

  Andrea loads up on books about parenting and researches the shit out of breast pumps, rocking chairs, and this product called a diaper wizard or a diaper genie, something that supposedly eliminates the smell of baby poop. She’s especially thorough when investigating things that will touch or be ingested by the baby. Organic cotton onesies, organic food, cribs, and foam wedges you put in cribs.

  “These wedges are expensive,” she says, “but with SIDS, you don’t fuck around.”

  “Is that like AIDS? I don’t think our kid’s going to be getting laid so soon.”

  “It’s sudden infant death syndrome.”

  “So spontaneous combustion for babies? Did the wedge company invent that?”

  “David, google it.”

  I google SIDS and read the first paragraph of an article on a parenting website. I tell Andrea to please order multiple packs of the deluxe wedges.

  If we don’t buy a house right fucking now, there won’t be anything available later in our desired location and price range, and when all the good stuff’s gone, we’ll end up in some tiny shit box in the middle of nowhere. This isn’t a bubble. Real estate is finite.

  On a Saturday morning, Andrea and I take a drive to our favorite village on the Hudson River. Drenched in sun in the passenger seat, she talks about quitting her job when the baby is born and starting a line of kids’ T-shirts with whimsical line drawings. An elephant on roller skates. A frog holding an umbrella. A gorilla playing a ukulele.

  “I’ll be your sugar mama,” she says. “You can quit your job and write full-time.”

  The windows are down, and the smells of early spring whip through the car. My brain switches off the thrashing, gn
ashing, racing panic long enough to picture us living the dream. It feels possible—no—definite. We’re an unstoppable force.

  We park on Main Street and skip down the sidewalk to a real estate agency, where a nice woman informs us that no homes are for sale in the village at this time. She advises us to check the national database listings every day.

  “The village is always a seller’s market. Supply and demand. When something comes up, you need to make an offer on the spot—above asking price.”

  Weeks pass. Nothing is for sale. We return to the village on a Sunday just because and happen upon an open house half an hour before it’s scheduled to begin and the listing will go live on MLS. The realtor hasn’t arrived yet. Beth, the owner, offers to give us a tour.

  The 1,350-square-foot house was built in the mid-1800s. It needs a ton of work. Decades-old carpet covers every inch of the original pine floor. Wallpaper galore, floral in the living room, illustrations of butter churns (the word “butter churn” is printed on the butter churns) in the kitchen and dining room.

  The price is steep—more than a reach when you add the cost of stripping the place down to its bones. But it’s in the village, with a major serendipity factor.

  Beth opens the basement door and says the old steep wooden stairs are perfectly safe, but we have to go one at a time as we follow her down. I see antique cobwebs and think the floor looks dirty. Beth says, “It’s a dirt floor.” She pulls strings attached to light bulbs screwed into industrial ceiling fixtures. Maybe she should have kept the lights off. The phrase “money pit” comes to mind. Maybe this isn’t the house for us.

  “Well,” Beth says, deflated. “That’s it.”

  Andrea points to a stack of old horseshoes on a rotted wooden workbench. “One of your good omens,” she says.

  We inch our way to the back of the musty, scary space. “HOPE” is carved into the wall. Andrea takes my hand. I look up and notice an old New York Times front page glued to the ceiling. Standing on my tippy-toes, I squint and read the date. March 12, 1905. Exactly one hundred years before our wedding.