What We Lose(27)

“Peanut butter?” he offers.

“No,” I say.

Frank has filled out since high school; I notice white hairs where there was only jet black, pushed perfectly back on his head. I can see in his eyes how his long days have begun to wear on him. I also see what Aminah has always seen in him. He has that same thing that my father has—that only some men do—that extra bit of wiring that makes them stay.

“Aminah’s being tough on you ’cause she cares,” he says. “That’s her way.”

“I know,” I say. He gives me the best reply that he can give, which is to not require anything of me at all. For a while, we sit there at the table in silence, slightly older and fatter than our high school selves, only slightly closer to each other. Then he takes my plate, carries it to the sink and cleans it, and lets me wander back to my room, to carry on with my day as I please.



My mother’s pain was her second disease. It was constant, bracing. At first, she kept it contained with a twenty-milligram OxyContin, taken three times daily. She had a travel alarm clock that she carried with her in her handbag, which she set every morning, then reset for four hours later when it went off. Her purse was a mess of prescription bottles and paraphernalia, including crackers for the medicines she had to take with food, smelling salts for the ones that knocked her out, Pepto-Bismol for the ones that made her nauseated. She managed the routine well, with the duty and spirit befitting someone of her profession.

The pain she experienced from disease is unimaginable. This is not an empty statement, a flaccid grasp at empathy. Chronic pain is one of the most difficult states for humans not suffering from it to imagine. That is because most of us experience pain only for moments, or, maximum, for a few days during an extended stay at the hospital, and even then it is not constant. Few of us will experience the level of pain that does not respond to powerful painkillers. That is a hell reserved for the very unlucky.

When you have chronic pain, the feeling that most people experience only in peaks becomes your baseline. Its effects are similar to those of the drugs that are often used to treat it. It is mood altering, causing changes in personality and even hallucinations. Pain can be a disease in itself.

We stopped fighting as much. She stopped screaming. Her touch became lighter. She had more patience, and physically, she actually felt lighter.

In time, her pain outgrew the medication. It became too much for the one or two pills and polite rituals she was so adept at managing. Her dose grew to forty milligrams, to sixty, eventually to two hundred milligrams of OxyContin three times per day. This was just for maintenance, so that my mother wouldn’t go into withdrawal coming off the medicine. Several times a day the pain came on fast and quick, and she’d be immobilized, crying and begging for me or my father to do something. When this happened, we gave her more oxycodone on top of her regular dose. Sometimes it helped. But help never meant that the pain was gone, only that it was lessened.

When the pills weren’t enough anymore, her doctor put my mother on a morphine drip. She started sleeping more hours than she was awake, and she couldn’t tell us that she was hurting anymore. All we could do was guess if she was suffering by the depth and frequency of her breaths, by the restlessness of her limbs. And then, all we could do was push a button on a little machine, releasing a tiny burst of medicine, and hope that it helped her.

She lost weight. She went from a size 14 to a 12, to a 10, and then to my size, a healthy 6, before she was bedridden and we stopped counting. She was weaker, her skin more prone to bruising, her bones more fragile. She needed support whenever she walked, and I would often offer it in the form of an elbow or a shoulder. Toward the end of her life, I could lift her entire weight into her wheelchair.



Peter calls me to explain his absence. He was terrified, he says, once he actually started to think about what raising a child would entail. He could only see it failing.

“That sounds like a lie, I know,” he says, and chuckles a little nervously when I don’t answer right away. I make a mental note never to tell Aminah this.

We talk for an hour. That night, I sleep better than I have in years. He is the one with whom I share this burden, and when he is back, I feel less alone with it. But when I wake up, I remember my situation. I caress my stomach. Somehow, in these past few weeks, I have become more tender toward it. Barely awake in bed, I look down at it and begin to cry. But then I get out of bed. I wash, I dress, and I leave for work, the weight of my body feeling so hot, so unstable, like it is about to explode.



Love is also like this. I make one of those infernal lists that every best friend and romantic comedy suggests making during periods of amorous decision-making, where I enter the pros and cons of a relationship with Peter. These are the results:




Intelligent

Curious

He makes me feel deeply at ease He takes care of me Will make a good father Stable

Cute

We have good sex (regular, consistent) He will never leave me

I think I’m smarter than he is He doesn’t challenge me Hasn’t figured out his life yet Was hesitant about becoming a father (dad issues??) Lacks a certain joie de vivre Not conventionally handsome We don’t have great sex anymore I know he will never leave me





This always occurs, no matter how reckless the people involved. I fall in love carefully.