After the Hurricane(52)

He had never been much of a drinker before, not even in law school. Yale had been competitive, focused, intent, and besides, everyone preferred getting high, himself included. It made the world easier to understand, gentler, in a way, and it calmed his nervous energy, which had bubbled up more and more during college and afterward, long periods of intense feeling, boundless highs of productivity and emotion. Then would come a low, a dip, and that other feeling, that energy, felt like a dream. When he was up, he felt fearless, bulletproof, a man against the world, like he had a superpower. When he was down, he could not remember ever having felt another way. Weed helped. Rosalind liked wine, but Rosalind didn’t like anything in excess, and weed was something he could do and do over and over again and still be, still function, often better than before.

But a few months after joining the firm, after a settlement that had worked out exactly as Santiago, and the firm, had hoped, his colleagues, who had kept their distance up until this point, invited him out for drinks with them. He had been the least senior member of the group working on the case, and he was gratified to be asked, so he said yes. The endorphins from the win, his first big one, even as part of a team, mixed with the energy he was experiencing already, his superpower returned, left him buzzing, and open, so when Mark, a second-year associate, suggested a second round, Santiago said yes, despite his usual distaste for alcohol. Two turned into three, into four, and five. This was how these men unwound, how they enjoyed the end of the day, and they had been doing it for years. The buzz in Santiago’s head dulled, but pleasantly. He felt like he could actually sleep, like he was truly relaxing for the first time in years. He had not realized how exhausting both his states of emotional being were, the draining down, the active up. He finally felt just right, like Goldilocks.

That night, months ago now, he fell into bed beside a sleeping Rosalind, and had the best sleep of his life. He had thought that his world was made up of two feelings, the high and the low, but now there was this third way to be, a way he could control. It was astonishing, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t found it sooner. He felt like all of the pieces of his world were falling into place. When he woke up in the morning, he was sure everything would be perfect from here on out. He had his miracle, his energy, and now he had a way to make it tame, to control it. With these two things, there was nothing he couldn’t do. He had never been happier in his life.

But the problem now, he was finding, was that the effect of drinking became less potent over time, meaning that he needed more and more of it to achieve the same result. Lately, too, it was bringing up the thoughts he had hoped it would repress, meaning he had to consume more to drown those out, too. And he knew Rosalind wouldn’t like it, of course. She didn’t like things that put distance between them, things that clouded him. She wanted him to go to a doctor, a shrink. She was about to suggest it again, he could see it in her face.

“I’ve been talking to my therapist. About us,” she said. Santiago bit back another curse. The idea that someone knew about him, that she was sharing things about him, things he couldn’t modify or control, made his skin crawl. He had tried to get her to promise never to talk about him in her sessions when she first started going a year ago, when they moved to Philadelphia, but she had just looked at him, blankly, and told him he didn’t really understand how therapy worked.

“She wants you to come in for a session. I think it might help.” Santiago stared at her. “We can talk about some of the things we’re both afraid of. What do you think?”

He thought that sounded like walking over broken glass toward the doors of hell. But this was Rosalind. His wife. The woman he loved, the person who saw him and steadied him and led him into this wonderful life they had. He had to give her something.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. Rosalind’s eyes brightened, her face wreathed in happiness. Santiago smiled back, happy his lie could give her joy. He would never talk to a therapist, hers or anyone else’s. He would rather throw himself off a bridge. He would rather enlist in the army, he would rather be back in the apartment he’d lived in with his mother and grandmother and his uncles, some of whom had beat him, relentlessly, until some of them ended up in prison. He would rather be back there, again, than see a therapist, talk to a stranger who wanted to pick his brain apart, disrupt all of the hard-won accomplishments and doors he had closed, someone who would see him for what he was, weak, a liar, a piece of trash, who would show Rosalind the truth of him. She would leave him, and without her he would not survive. He had known since the day he met her that if he didn’t hold on to her with both hands, tight, he would drown. That’s why she was his lifeboat.

That’s why, the next morning, his head pounding with his hangover, his eyes heavy from his night without sleep, his brain thinking fast as Rosalind slept, calm, trusting, beside him, he turned to his wife and smiled.

“I think we should try,” he said, forcing the words from his mouth, swallowing his deep panic. She couldn’t leave him. If this was what it took, this was what it took. He would give her this, and then she would stop trying to open up his brain and let all the corruption and rot within it spill onto her, polluting her and their life together. He would give her a baby, and he would never tell that baby where he came from, what he was. He would keep all of the past, all these things people wanted to pry out of him, hidden from their baby. It was the only way to give his child anything good of the world. Anything good of himself. Their child could know him for what he was now, a success, a man loved by Rosalind, a man respected by his friends and peers. And nothing else. If he could separate his child from his past, then maybe, just maybe, it could work. This could work. He owed it to her to try. He owed her everything.