The Animators(31)

I hurt constantly. My back hurts. My ass hurts. My head feels like it’s stuffed with gauze, and in the middle of the gauze a seeping, leaking sting that never stops.

Visiting hours are up at eight-thirty P.M. Mel lingers as long as she’s able, tucking in blankets, drawing blinds, fiddling over turning off the TV. The nurse kicks her out, administers my last morphine dosage of the day. Kills the overhead.

I pray for the first time in years. I pray to pass the division between this time and whatever comes after. I pray for the ability to put all of this in the past tense, to put down the darkness that has clung to me for years and has finally swallowed me whole, inhabiting my body, robbing me of the things that have given my life joy, meaning. I pray to cross the gulf.

—

Broom-Hilda comes in at nine-thirty the next morning with a stack of flash cards. “Ready to go to work?” she says.

I take a deep breath, and then another. I try to say no and it comes out as a moan. I feel my face—the working side—start to crumple.

She sets her bag down with a thud. Looks at me with lips pinched. A tough-love look, hard and dry. “This will get easier, Sharon,” she says. “But we have to start from wherever we are. Okay?”

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to freak out, I think, watching Broom-Hilda’s shoulders work as she parts the curtains and unpacks her bag. Maybe it’s a good sign to freak out. A glimmer of recognition. A sane, sensible what the fuck coming through all the unreality. It’s the kind of thing I would say to Mel. If Mel were here. If I could talk.

I used to have such confidence in my mind. I had faith in the life I had created for myself—the serviceable, productive outer persona, and my inner life, the one I could only inhabit in my head. I prided myself on my ability to control the two. Now both have collapsed.

I would give anything to be able to speak. To write, to draw. My old self grows faint, moving in and out of darkness.

—

One day, when I’m not concentrating too hard, I feel my eyes suddenly click into focus. The letters pop out at me: C-A-T. I know what they are. I wonder where they’ve been. I reach out to finger the cards, grateful to the point of tears.

I try to tell Broom-Hilda, I can see the letters now, but I’m still grunting and drooling. “Good” is all she’ll say. But this marks the day when the lessons begin to move a little faster, with a little less pain. Consonants snap off between my teeth. I push the dead side of my lips up with my fingers.

My first official word is said during therapy, working with one of those muscle-building handsprings. I drop it on the floor and, without thinking, go, “Shit.”

—

There’s a big interview with Brecky Tolliver in Paste. “The longer I’m in this business,” Mel reads aloud, “the more I internalize my own process. It’s a protective mechanism. By discussing my process, I find I’m killing it.” Mel rolls her eyes grandly. “I will say that it’s important to ask yourself throughout your process: Is this important? Is it relatable? Have you fine-tuned your bullshit detector?” She flaps the magazine down on the table. “If I were Brecky’s bullshit detector I’d be going off constantly. I’d run the fuck out of batteries.”

I study the arm where they keep taking blood, a map of blue and green bruises. I draw a deep breath. Manage “Yep.”

Mel’s face lights. She forgets about Brecky for a moment. “That’s good,” she says. “You sound awesome.”

I roll my eyes. Try to smile.

“I just hate how sanctimonious she can be,” she continues. “She has this holier-than-thou way of trying to mystify what she does, make it this exclusive practice the rest of us are too dumb to get. Which is sad. I mean, what good is it to do this for a living if you can’t share it with people? If it doesn’t bring people together?”

I shrug. Raise one palm skyward.

She folds her knee up and rests her chin on it. Looks at me knowingly. “You don’t want to work with her,” she says. It’s not a question.

I don’t move. There’s no signal or hand motion I could make to tell her what I’m thinking. That I might be lucky to work again, period.

—

When I’m able, I ask Mel what she does with her days. She has moved our stuff from the motel to a swampland house, posted for rent with a yard sign. She tells me about a makeshift drafting table she has constructed in its living room from a broken table and some plywood. “For when we start working again,” she says.

I ask for a mirror by holding my hand flat in front of me.

I know right away from the look on Mel’s face that it’s bad. That there’s a reason I haven’t been allowed a mirror to see my reflection.

“Sorry,” she says. “I don’t have one on me.”

I point to the bathroom.

She looks uneasy. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I slump my shoulder, put my head to the side: How bad is it?

“You’re fine,” she says. “I just know how you are. If you’re not looking like you just had a blowout and a facial, you’ll stress about it. One thing at a time, okay?”

I jab at her arm.

“How about you can see yourself in the mirror when you can get your ass up and get it yourself? How about that.”