Unwifeable(88)

“I owe you an apology,” I tell Pat afterward. “I can see now that a lot of the things I said to you were hurtful and cruel. I don’t want to do that. I want to support you.”

“Thank you for really trying with me,” Pat says. “It means a lot to me.”

This, apparently, is how people have a conversation. One person says one thing that isn’t a platitude; the other person engages.

“Have I ever told you about my whole black-box theory of relationships?” I ask him.

“Is it anything like the old George Carlin joke?” he asks. “?‘Why don’t they just make the plane out of the black box?’?”

I laugh. I am familiar with it, of course. I explain to him the concept: how we have all these internal recordings and programming from throughout our lives that influence future relationships.

“It’s so hard to examine all of it,” I tell him. “Did you know that I wrote a letter to my future self back in 2012 when I did that really intensive group therapy thing? I can’t even bring myself to read it, that’s how scared I get about looking at what’s inside of me.”

I point him to where I keep it hidden away, tucked inside a silver envelope, in a childish blue Frozen treasure box above my bed. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything bad that I could have even written in there—after all, I was sober and approaching some semblance of mental healthiness in 2012. But I still don’t want to disappoint Future Me.

“You have nothing to be scared of,” Pat says. “Did you know that when I first saw you in New York, you were walking through some comedy club, and I asked someone, ‘Who is that?’ Because I had to know. It was 2007. You were amazing to me even then. You made such an impression on me. You were like this tall beautiful wash of blond hair. I thought you were totally out of my league. You were so striking and confident. At the time, I figured there was no chance.”

I’m floored in more ways than one.

“Wow,” I say. “I would have been dating Blaine back then. How funny that I didn’t feel that way about myself at all. I just thought of myself as this unwifeable disaster who couldn’t do anything right.”

“Wait,” Pat says, looking at me. “Unwifeable? No. That’s not you at all. Unapproachable. That’s what you are.”



* * *




PAT IS FROM Tennessee. I am from California. Our backgrounds are as different as can be, but we are both children of dysfunction, which has made us hyper-attuned to everything around us. As we grow closer, Pat reveals to me the pain he feels watching his eighty-five-year-old mother’s deteriorating condition as she lives out her final days in the grips of Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t agree with the decision to send her to a nursing home, but ultimately it is his father’s call, not his own.

We make the long trip together down South first by plane and then by car. As we walk up to the modest care facility, the two of us are carrying bags filled with some of his mom’s favorites—fried chicken, Pop-Tarts, and corn along with a hanging plant of lavender flowers—but I can see the spreading sadness on his face. His smile has altogether faded. Pat stops and touches my arm.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he says. “It’s so hard.”

“I’m here with you,” I say quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

As we enter the bright little room, I see his mother, who is frail and delicate, lying like a china doll in her bed. Pat reaches down to hold her in a warm embrace, then sits beside her, stroking her arm. His father is sitting in the corner, updating us on how she’s doing lately. She appears so weak. I speak softly and gently, standing above her as Pat holds her. Trying to think of something she might like, I pull up a bunch of pictures of her son to show her on my phone.

“Oooh,” she says, touching a picture of Pat holding a mic on TV, smiling broadly. “Will you send me that one?”

She touches her delicate porcelain finger to the screen.

“You promise?” she asks.

“I will,” I say. When I look at Pat and her together, I get an idea. As part of getting sober, I studied Reiki, a form of energy healing that is all about channeling prayer and love to someone through touch and intention. I want more than anything else at that moment to love on Pat’s mom. I’m nervous about looking like a fool, but I go ahead and ask anyway.

“Hey,” I say quietly to her, “would it be okay if I rub your feet?”

She looks at me with a fragile smile.

“Okay,” she says in her sweet Southern voice.

I move to sit at the edge of her bed, lift the purple wool blanket off her legs, and begin rubbing her feet gently as I listen to Pat and his mom talk.

Old friends and memories are mentioned, but his mom is confused a lot. People who suffer from Alzheimer’s frequently ask about “going home.” They regress into younger states. They want to see their parents, who are, of course, long dead.

“Can we see my mother in the other room?” she asks.

“Let’s do that later,” Pat says. “Why don’t we catch up right now?”

“When can I leave?” she asks. “I keep trying to figure out how to go home.”

“I’m here, Mom,” Pat says.

A yellow star hangs above her bed. I glance at a nurse’s chart and see that it stands for “falling star,” a sign to the nurse on staff that she might not be able to walk on her own.