His last night here, when we said goodbye at his apartment, I asked if I could sleep over. Not to do anything, just to hold him, because I was going to miss him. He blushed. He couldn’t look at me while he explained what a bad idea he thought this was. “Afraid you won’t be able to control yourself?” I teased him. “Hah, I’m afraid
you
won’t be able to control
your
self.” I crawled over his stomach, kissed him and said, “I can take care of me.” He whispered in my ear, “No. You can’t. But I can’t take care of you either.” I pretended not to hear this. Then he flicked his tongue around the crevices of my ear and we messed around on the floor for a while, slowly, both of us timid and overprotective of each other. It was like we were swimming; we’d press toward each other with great bursts of energy, and then, when we knew we were both in the same state of excitement, we’d tread water and calm down, catch our breaths and make sure we could still see the shore. I can’t believe I actually did this, but I could tell that there was no way he’d break the rule he had for himself, so I grabbed his wrist and placed his hand on my breast. He actually gasped when he touched it. Out loud. I think he was expecting a bra. He got lost there for a few minutes and then he just stopped. “No, I can’t do this,” he said. “Don’t you want to?” “Does it seem like I want to?” “Uh-huh.” I arched my eyebrows, trying awkwardly to be flirtatious. “Of course I do.” “So?” “It’s just . . . I don’t want to hurt you.” “You won’t. I want to, too.” “I’m leaving tomorrow.” “I know.” “And you’re only sixteen.” “So.” He laid his head on the hardwood floor and stared at the ceiling. His whole body was tense. “It’s just, I actually like you,” he said. “I know,” I said, and kissed him and kissed him until he began to respond. For the rest of the night, we pressed further and further across his lines. I tried to make it absolutely clear to him that I understood that we both had big, confusing lives ahead of us and that neither of us was in any position to sacrifice those lives for someone else right now, but I don’t think I made this sufficiently clear to myself. I believed it while I was saying it, but I think I mostly just wanted to get him to let me give myself to him. He was careful and tender and kind as he crossed the last line. I told him I loved him and he said, “Don’t say that. I want you to love yourself.” That’s what made me cry.
How far is the furthest you’ve ever gotten? After long hours of staring at the box, have you ever opened it up and tapped out a blade? Were you worried that you might actually cut yourself? I bet you were. They’re not easy to pick up. The impulse is to pinch the two long sharp sides, but you can’t, you have to brace your thumb against the lower blades and flick your forefinger across the top of the stack until you’ve dragged the top blade far enough out to get a grip on the short side—unless you’re like me and don’t care if you slice your fingertips, physical pain being part of the whole thing. Once you have the blade in your hand, do you admire the compact utilitarian genius of its design? Do you pivot it over a candle so you can study the movement of the gleaming squiggle of light on the steel, wondering at the laws of physics that allow this light to bounce? When I hold a blade like that, I always imagine it’s a small but trustworthy shield, that the light’s trying to burst past it, trying to sear me, and the blade’s my only defense. The blade is cold. It protects me from getting sappy and willing myself to believe things will get better when obviously they won’t.
Is your once-acclaimed, ultra-realist eye that clear? It should be, it might toughen you up. Maybe then you could lower the blade to your wrist without trembling and hold it so close to the skin that it feels like it’s touching even though it’s not, so close that when you breathe deep and your arm slightly lifts, the blade pricks you. That’s when you realize what it is you’re doing, but you don’t draw blood—not yet. What I do is, I apply a fraction of pressure, pressing just a corner into my flesh until a minuscule bead of blood creeps out. I peer at it closely. Sometimes I taste it. Then I imagine what it will look like after I pull the blade down the length of my forearm. The vein will open like a zip-lock bag, the blood tumbling out to the beat of my pulse. To be effective, you can’t imitate what you see in the movies. You need to cut lengthwise, not crosswise, and carefully follow the line of the largest vein, five or six inches down each arm. It’s called double blue veining. If you cut crosswise, the hole will be small and the blood will clot too quickly, stopping the flow. I imagine watching my blood stream and eddy, my self swim away from myself.
Could you take the next step, Dad, and actually slice? Or would you do what I do: hover with the blade, swiping slowly, scratching deep enough only to tap the extreme surface capillaries and draw dotted lines across the surface of your ambition. What are you afraid of—dying? Not me. I’m afraid of pain. There’s a degree of inadvertent pain that I’ve mastered—cutting my fingertips while my mind’s occupied with some mechanical task—maybe removing a razor blade from a box or biting my knuckle until it bleeds while I’m trying to figure out what to do next on a painting—but the sting and throb of opening a vein, the meticulously prolonged act of creating the wound requires more nerve and courage than I’ve so far been able to muster. I can’t imagine it’s any worse than how I feel generally, every day. Each time I take a razor blade into my hand, I’m more confident than I was the last time that this will be the day I find out, but I still haven’t psyched myself up to the adrenaline peak from which, holding my breath, I can leap and soar away. Not yet. I’m still at the stage where I psyche myself out instead.
You’re back in your darkroom. Why is that, Dad? You’re thriving. You’re working. I saw you today in the park with a girl. You had your old Nikon out. She was laughing. She wasn’t much older than me. And you were flashing that sharp, playful look you get when you’re lost in your work, when you’re captivated and outside yourself. Are you doing heart-work? Have you told her about Mom? Or me? Your red light is on, but I’m stuck out here.
Dad, I wish you’d come out. My sense of purpose is fragmenting now. I’m starting to wallow in the nowhere feeling that always comes over me after I’ve lost my nerve.
FAILURE TO THRIVE
I like babies. That’s why I do what I do. I’m a nurse. I work in the maternity ward. Protect the kids from the goblins and ghouls of the night. I do my job well. I take it seriously. I worry over the little lives in my charge as if they were my own children. I fret for their futures. Some nights while Kim or Cheryl—whichever I’m paired with—is on break, I lean over the babies and listen to their shallow breaths.
Before I get to my job, though, I need to tell you a different story.
While I was in nursing school, I knew a couple who had a baby girl. Her name was Sabrina and I adored her.
Her father had once been a heroin addict. Sick and scared and full of self-loathing, he’d tried to hide this from Sabrina’s mother. She knew the signs, though, from the aimless crowd she ran with, ambitionless dreamers, singer-songwriters, poets, bookstore clerks, coffee jerks. He never ate. The dirty, long-sleeved t-shirts he liked to wear were speckled with cigarette holes. When she looked in his eyes, sometimes she couldn’t find him inside. His mouth was dry when they kissed and he wasn’t interested in having sex. He was often edgy, hands drumming jeans, and late at night he’d suddenly bolt with no explanation. One night when she was feeling especially lonely and weak, she asked him,
Please, stay the night, stay an hour, just fifteen more minutes.
When he said no, she cried and he leapt up from the futon and paced the room, saying
I have to go, don’t you get it, I just have to go.
He was sweating.
Fine, go, go shoot up,
she said, and she cringed. In a rush of fury and profanity, he told her that though it was none of her business, yeah, if she cared so much, he did shit sometimes.
So sue me; so kill me; you’re the one who’s crying.
She didn’t spin off into outrage or berate him for hiding and lying, for his sloppy cruelty. She didn’t smother his pain in her own. Nor did she threaten to leave him, force a reaction, grab the upper hand. Instead, she waited for him to exhaust himself, then rose from the futon, walked slowly to him and held him. He cried at her touch. They cried together and it was more intimate than anything they could have said right then, even more intimate than sex. They cried for a long time, and once the tears slowed and started to dry, they clung to each other, listening to themselves breathe, deeply, in counterpoint, almost as if they were harmonizing, and that’s when she knew he was the man with whom she’d have a child.
From then on, he stayed most nights. She let him fix in the bathroom at first, then right in front of her on the futon, on her bed, behind the locked door of the guest room at her mother’s house. Watching him thrilled her. She would’ve tried it herself, if not for the sad look that fell over his face when she pressed him to describe the feeling—
Tell me in detail, is it as incredible as people say, is it heavenly?
She learned from this look that he wanted her to disapprove, to give him a reason to transcend himself.
Eventually, trailing the phantom of their shared future, he kicked. She didn’t pressure him. He went cold turkey and she fed him wonton soup from the corner Chinese while he shivered. Her only demand was that, when the frenzy inside him became too unbearable, he pound bruises onto her chest, hitting her as hard as he could, so she could experience some of his pain.
She reminded him of all this one night years later at a claustrophobic, poorly lit bar. He’d joined NA and done the twelve steps and then stopped going. He didn’t need to. He’d lost his passion for everything but her. And in the three years that had passed, though they’d never married, Sabrina was born. Despite this fact—if a child can be called a fact—or maybe because of it, she’d grown bored and resentful toward him.
She told him she hated him. Well, maybe she didn’t hate him, but she hated the grind of her life with him. She didn’t know how things had gotten to this point—no, she did know, but she couldn’t understand why she’d allowed it to happen. This stupid love was more pity than empathy, and cohabitation was merely another addiction, one they now shared without any incentive of satisfaction. He’d been a mystery that, once revealed, turned out to be another sham. It was as if he’d flinched in the midst of drying out and, caught in the shame of self-recognition, seized up. She was annoyed by the care he took in listening to her, the way he slunk off to perform the inane tasks she thought up to get him out of the house and away from her. When they’d met, he’d had strong opinions and passions, zest, verve. He’d been self-centered in all the best ways. But for him the nights of mosh pits and after-hours parties, of body shots with strangers, were gone; that life was gluttonous, dangerous, too likely to be perfumed with temptation. Now he was pinched and terrified, constantly sorry for constantly trying to please her, for handcuffing her to his doting heart. This life was as stupid as the love it had been constructed around. She’d stayed home fretting back when he was running wild and now that he was clean, she still stayed home fretting, over his baby now instead of him. But he’d had his reckless fun, why shouldn’t she?
She told him she’d made some decisions. She said, and I paraphrase only slightly, “Look, I’m bored, okay. You go to classes and study and whatever, and I’m stuck in the house like some fucking housewife. I’m twenty-five and I’ve already got a baby! I shouldn’t have a baby yet! I feel like I have to do what my heart says, and my heart says screw it. Explore. Don’t be afraid. This ex of mine called me the other day and I met him for coffee. We sort of talked and whatever, and it was nice. It was all still there, you know?”
“Did you sleep with him?” he asked.
“Not yet, but I want to.”
“What about me?”
“We’re not married.”
“But we’re committed, aren’t we?”
“I think we should have an open relationship.”
“What about what I think?”
“You know what? I’m done caring what you think.” The muscles along the edge of her mouth flexed and pulsed. “I’m telling you how I
feel.
If you really love me, you’ll try to understand and not stop me. And if you don’t really love me, then . . .” She shrugged, sighed, and he saw a touch of dread flit through her eyes. “You know what? If I can’t explore what’s out there, we’re doomed.
I know. I can feel it. You’re not going to try to stop me anyway. You’re just going to guilt me. That’s how you do things. But you know what? It won’t work this time.”
“So this is a test?”
“Sure.”
“That’s cruel.”
“I’m not trying to test
you.
I’m trying to test
me.
”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah . . . don’t be like that. I’d think you, of all people, would understand. I need to . . . I don’t know, I feel dead.”
He didn’t know what to say. He wondered if she was misspeaking, if her problem was more that she felt too alive—stuck in the wrong life—and wanted to kill her current self off so she could start over as someone different. He didn’t ask her. He waited in silence for her to elaborate.
“You know, I was just getting into the scene when I met you. You’d done all this shit, and you, like, knew what that world was. But I sort of—”
“What world?”
“That . . . drug world, or whatever you want to call it. Where life’s scary enough, real enough, that you have to figure out who you are.”
“What do drugs have to do with any of this?”
“I want to know what I’m missing. I’ve been thinking about heroin, too.”
“Where are you going to get that?”
“This ex I had coffee with knows somebody.”
Again, he held his tongue.
“I just . . . I want things to be exciting again. Things felt exciting when you were all fucked-up. I mean, here was this big sexy junkie who liked me and I thought, hey, that’s cool. But then you tried to protect me from all the dark shit you knew, like you couldn’t imagine that maybe I
wanted
to know it, too. That maybe that’s what attracted me to you. You know? Maybe I had demons of my own. And then you were trying to clean yourself up, and that was exciting. I got to be like an icon or something, which made me feel sexy, and everything was great. But now, you know, it’s boring . . . I’m sick of trying to live up to your expectations. I don’t
want
to be perfect. I want to know what’s out there.”
He wasn’t in a position to try to talk her out of anything. It seemed to him that if she was in some sort of pain, it wasn’t his place to judge her method of treatment. “What are you going to do with Sabrina while all this stuff is going on?”
“Maybe you could look after her sometimes. No. Fine. I’ll leave her with a sitter . . . or if I can’t find one, I guess I’ll bring her along.”
Disturbed, he walked her home.
At that time, I was undergoing a training rotation through the NICU, and while I was there, I helped monitor a premature infant, He’d been born at thirty-one weeks and weighed 1200 grams, so small he could fit into a coffee mug. His skin was translucent and loose on his bones, his fingertips and lips perpetually soft blue. At birth, he’d been outfitted with a monitor to track changes in his heart and respiratory rates. Within his first hour of life, he experienced two episodes of apnea and was diagnosed with respiratory-distress syndrome. A clear plastic hood connected him to a CPAP machine so that oxygen could be pumped into his lungs. He had a one-in-four chance of survival.
It was my job to stroke his small body, to provide the warm contact that’s been proven to bolster neonatal growth. I noted changes in his condition and monitored him for responses to the electrolyte solution he was being fed. I examined his papery skin for the white lines, like hairline cracks, that would imply he was malnourished or dehydrated. In some inchoate way, he seemed neither human nor inhuman, like he was teetering on the edge of being, just a hair more sentient than a fetus.
At 7:34 a.m., near the end of the fourteenth hour of his life, his respiratory system began to fail. I was across the room at the time, peering at a different child with the head nurse and two other trainees. His distress was discovered by a sensor connecting his body to a monitor. His chest was at war with the blue machine.
When this third episode of apnea tripped the alarm, the head nurse ran to him, did some quick tests and fiddled with the CPAP’s controls. Over her shoulder, I glimpsed him seizing and startling, curling in on himself, but I was quickly pushed back by the doctors who swarmed toward him. I was a peripheral presence, unnecessary, a thin, feeble cloud on the edge of the storm of hands passing equipment and flipping charts and performing operations I had not yet been taught. At the center of all this stood the head nurse, who, as I was told later, was pumping her thumb lightly against his minuscule rib cage. And then it was over. When the doctors dispersed, I went to the child, scooped him up and held him like an offering in two cupped hands. His skin had gone milky white. His veins glowed like coral lit up beneath glass. His oceanic eyes were wide open. His knees were bent, his arms crossed over his heart. He was dead.
I was told that even if he’d been discovered in time, if I’d been there to slow the oxygen, if I’d hooked him up to an ECMO, he’d still have died. He was frail and ill equipped, even for life on a water mattress or in an isolette under bili lights.
The death of this child had an odd effect on me. I found myself lingering over the memory of having held his dead body in my hands. I’d blink and I’d see his blue head, gigantic, almost as big as his torso. I’d blink again, and there would be his eyes, black and deep as the future. I could only half listen at the weekly sharing seminar that Thursday morning. I only half read the handbook that was our vocational bible. I watched without seeing the head nurse’s step-by-step tutorial on how to perform an electrocardiogram. The child kept squirming in my head. I wondered if his parents had named him or if he had siblings or if his parents had bought him mobiles and plush blankets and blue stretchies with feet, if they had a crib and a playpen and a changing table set up in a dark alcove of their home, if there was a room they were now afraid to enter. I didn’t look for answers to these questions, just let them rattle around in my mind. I lost my appetite. I couldn’t sleep.
Almost a week after he died, I was still disturbed. At lunch in the hospital cafeteria with my fellow trainees, I picked at my gluey lasagna and failed to laugh at the intrigues involving spilled bed-pans and missing pharmaceuticals that baroquely peppered their gossip. The child had no name. He’d died before his parents had fully imagined him. He was anonymous—Baby Boy, Martin— Patient Number u30.1157204. I christened the dead baby Michael, and having named him, I realized I hadn’t been mourning. Not exactly. I’d been brooding, wondering why he’d died and whether he’d chosen this death himself. It seemed quite possible that he’d known where he was, that while in the womb he’d heard the world swarming around him, the footsteps of his father, the heavy sighs of his mother. I wondered if he’d known whose hearth he was crossing, and if it had filled him with dread. I could almost see the place, a blur of green lawn on a treeless plot surrounding a lowly ranch house, the kind that boldly proclaims its allegiance to dreams its inhabitants cannot attain. I could almost see his parents, ineptly striving, I couldn’t tell what for, but I saw them frustrated in their attempts. I could almost see Michael desperately trying to flee.
Sabrina’s eyes were a pale gray, verging on blue-white like faint clouds that bespeak nothing but beauty on a warm day. When they were open, the lids spread so wide that her corneas seemed to be floating in milk; when closed with sleep, they were still partly open, as if she were watching the action around her from behind her bramble of lashes. Her mouth was small and delicate, a mouth made for soft kisses. Her hair was slow to grow, a wisp of down crowning her head like a Mohawk, offering no protection. She already knew five words. She liked to wear hats, floppy fisherman’s caps, gnomic thermalwear with earflaps that could be tied under her chin, anything with loose parts that she could yank down. “Saf, saf,” she would say. She liked to be covered. She had learned to stand early, and though she wobbled, her legs rarely buckled. By lunging from the arm of a chair to the edge of a coffee table to the seat of the couch to the TV set, she was able to maneuver through any room, grabbing pens and coins, paper clips, dust bunnies, remote controls, anything meant for adults, anything but her own toys, to jam in her mouth and gnaw on, to drop, to throw, to pound and scrape surfaces with, or to place nicely, with a coy smile and the word “nut,” the opposite of “yed,” into a parent’s hand. She hated shoes but loved socks. Her father would slip her socks onto her feet and she would erupt in giggles. “Saf, saf, saf.” Her father thought this meant safe. She seemed to say it most while being dressed. It wasn’t until she pulled the neighbors’ cat’s tail that he understood it meant “soft.” Sabrina was smart for her age and cute for her age and big for her age. A precious child. I thought so, anyway.