by Annie Jocoby
“Nick,” I had said. “Do you mind if I prune a couple of roses from the garden?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “What do you need them for, though?”
“I’m going to bring Ryan breakfast in bed this morning. I know how much he loves roses, so I thought it would be nice to have some on the tray in a little vase.”
Nick said nothing at first. Then he said “ok, but please don’t get your hopes up. It might not go the way that you would hope.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning nothing, maybe. But if he doesn’t react with hugs and kisses, don’t take it personally. Just sayin’.”
I thought about Ryan’s sudden bout of temper yesterday when I tried to get him to eat the chicken, and felt a little bit apprehensive.
But I had to try.
So, I prepared a little tray with the goodies. I even baked chocolate chunk cookies, which were his favorite treat. I found a little crystal vase and put the flowers in that, and made a plate with the strata, the sausage, and a couple of cookies. The Mimosa and Bloody Mary rounded out the breakfast. Then I made a tray for myself as well.
“Knock, knock,” I said, as I opened up the door to Ryan’s new room.
Ryan was sitting there on the bed, watching television. It was some kind of History Channel show, I surmised.
Ryan looked at me, said nothing, then turned his attention back to his show.
I took a deep breath, feeling daunted. Then I set the tray up on his lap. “I made you all your favorites. I even pruned some roses for you.”
Ryan still said nothing. He just continued to stare at the television set.
“Can I scoot in next to you? We can eat together.”
Ryan said nothing, and made no move for me to get into the bed with him.
“Ok, then, I won’t eat in bed with you,” I said. “I’ll just eat at this little table here,” I said, gesturing to the small table and chairs that were next to the bed.
I started eating, and I was talking nervously, trying hard to fill the silence. Ryan wasn’t eating any of the food, nor was he reacting to anything I was saying. Still, I kept talking.
“I see that you have on a World War II show on. What is the exact subject?”
Ryan said nothing.
“Dalilah made you another picture. I hope that I get a chance to give it to you. Looks like she’s really going to be a prodigy. Might even have a musical ear, too. She sure is mesmerized by Nick when he’s playing the piano.”
Still nothing.
“This strata is really good, if I do say so myself. I found some really nice imported cheeses at Dean and Deluca. There’s Cantal and St. Nectaire in there, both imported from France. I also added some Camembert, and a little Gruyere. The bread’s very nice, too – I got that at the Whole Foods. Take a bite. I think you’ll be in heaven.”
Ryan still said nothing, his eyes glued to the television set.
I started to feel depressed, but the food was so good, it cheered me up some. Then I immediately started to worry – food used to be the way that I drowned my sorrows, before I met Ryan. I could polish off an entire log of cookie dough – not the actual cookies, mind you, just the dough – in one sitting, and top it off with an entire bag of Kettle Chips. I was overweight when Ryan and I had met, then lost a ton through being in a three-month long coma after Rochelle’s attack. Then lost even more in the aftermath. I had since maintained my smaller weight, through great diligence on my part.
Now I was, once again, using food as a way to cope with rejection. Because I felt happy, even though Ryan was completely shutting me out. The happiness was coming through eating this really delicious and rich meal. I would have the stifle the urge to eat the rest of it after I left the room. I had made an entire baking dish full of it, and I figured that I could feed Nick, Dalilah, Sheila and the workers with it. But there was a voice in my head that was telling me to eat all of it before anybody even knew that it existed.
I soldiered on, determined to engage Ryan some. “Here,” I said, putting some strata on a fork and putting it close to his mouth. “Here’s some. Taste it. It’s pretty divine, really. I could get on a cooking competition with this one.”
He said nothing, but turned his face away, his mouth closed, his face in a grimace. It was obvious that he didn’t want to try my delicious strata.
Should I just give up? Nick’s warning was ringing in my ears – don’t get my hopes up. Ryan doesn’t like to be pushed. I tried not to take it personally – I hated him for several weeks after my rape. It wasn’t rational for me to feel that way – he was just a convenient target for my rage. I would imagine that Ryan was going through something similar. So maybe it was a good idea just to leave it alone right now.
So, I finished my breakfast and got up. “I’m going to go right now, honey. I want to leave the food there for you, though, so if you get hungry, you can eat it.”
He said nothing, but handed me back his tray of food.
I took the hint, and left his room without another word.
I brought Ryan’s tray of food back to the kitchen, then devoured everything that he didn’t eat. I rationalized doing this because it wouldn’t be sanitary to serve it to the other people in the house, and I certainly didn’t want to waste it. I drank his Mimosa and Bloody Mary as well.
I saw Nick sitting outside on the back patio. “Um, I’m going to get Dalilah, and maybe we could all eat together?” How badly I wanted some companionship. I didn’t like to eat alone, and that was what I just did. I ate two breakfasts alone, and I was about to eat a third with Nick and Dalilah.
I had to stop myself before I binge-ate my way to The Biggest Loser competition.
“That sounds great, Iris. I saw that strata you made, it smells really good. Do you mind if Sheila, Gercon and Tammy joins us?”
“Of course not. I made enough for everybody.”
So, all of us feasted on my cheese strata, chicken sausage and cookies.
“This was delicious,” Sheila told me. “You have to give me your recipe.”
“Oh, it was a little of this, a little of that, and some spices. But I could write it down if you like.”
“Please do.”
“I’m happy you liked it. I’m just glad that somebody appreciates me.”
Nick gave me a look when I said that. Then, later, he cornered me alone and said “Ryan shut you out during breakfast, didn’t he?”
To my surprise, I started crying. I nodded my head.
To my bigger surprise, Nick wrapped his arms around me and let me cry on his chest. He gently stroked my hair. “Shhhh, it’s going to be ok. He won’t be like this forever, but you have to give him his space. Shhhh, don’t cry. You’re going to be ok.”
Then he lightly kissed my forehead. “Let me get you a Kleenex,” he said. Then he left and gave me a box of tissues. “Here. Now, go and wash your face and meet me on the patio.”
I nodded my head, and blew my nose. Then I went to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. “God, Iris, you look like hell,” I said to my reflection. Blotchy cheeks, swollen eyes, the whole nine. My hair was ratty as well, so I got a pony-tail holder and put it up. Then I went to the patio to meet Nick.
Nick was waiting for me with another Mimosa. “You feeling better, hon?” he asked me, and put his arm around me.
“Yeah, a little. Thanks, though. You’ve uh, been a good friend lately. Thanks for that.”
“Well, I know what it feels like to be on the other side of Ryan’s brick wall. It ain’t fun, I’ll tell you that.”
“I’ll be ok. I’m just kinda overwhelmed. I just need to stay away from the cookie dough and Kettle Chips, though. I might have had a drug problem after my rape, but food has always been my main addiction.”
“Well, I’ll make sure that you don’t binge eat.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’s Dalilah?” he asked me.
“I put her down for a little afternoon nap. She usually doesn�
��t nap very long, though, so I should probably check on her in a few.”
“Yeah, do, and bring her out here if you like. It’s a nice day.”
“I will.” Then I looked at him hesitantly. “You, uh, you’ve been really nice to me lately. I, I, I, well…”
“You didn’t think I had it in me to be sensitive and caring, huh?”
I said nothing, just shrugged.
“I’m not a bad guy,” he said. “I just have a lot of armour, that’s all.”
I nodded. “I know about armour. I think everybody does.”
“Not you,” he said. “You’re very transparent. You wear your heart on your sleeve more than anybody I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, I guess I do tend to be an emotional basket case.”
“No. Alexis is an emotional basket case. You’re just…transparent. Refreshing, really.”
I blinked my eyes. He sure was in a good mood.
“Anyhow, you better check on your daughter. I just wanted to make sure that you were holding up ok.”
“I am, thanks,” I said, getting up. I went to get Dalilah, and I brought her back out on the patio. Nick had stripped down to some swimming trunks, and was sitting in the hot tub.
“Hey,” he called. “Why don’t you girls get into your suits and join me?”
“Are hot tubs good for babies?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But you can take her into the pool here. I know it’s kinda chilly, but the pool is heated.”
So, that’s what we did. It was May, so the weather was in the 70s, way too cold for a cold swimming pool. But Nick was right – the pool was heated, so the water felt very nice. Nick got out of the hot tub, and joined us. The two of us frolicked in the pool for a couple of hours, and I had to say that, by the end of our little play-session, I was feeling much better.
∞
A week went by, then two. I managed to make Ryan eat just enough to sustain him, but he was rapidly losing weight and becoming a shell of himself. He refused to leave his room, and he continued to refuse to see Dalilah or even Nick. He was still shutting me out completely. Every day was like the day of the strata – he would be watching television when I would go in, and he wouldn’t acknowledge that I was there. He would just be staring at the TV, not saying a single word.
I really wanted him to keep up his strength, and I was worried about him losing too much weight and getting weaker because of malnutrition. So, I would leave trays of food for him, in hopes that he would eat when I left the room. Sometimes, I would find that the food was gone. Other times, the food was left untouched. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for this, either. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the food – I brought him his favorites, such as roasted chicken, pan-fried salmon, grass fed steak, and various pastas. Yet, he sometimes would leave everything on the plate, without even a bite. I felt heartened that other times he actually did eat everything. That was a good sign, I decided, that he would be leaving the dark place which had occupied him ever since the shooting.
I worriedly talked to Gercon and Tammy about how he was doing.
“He doesn’t talk much, but he’s certainly not unpleasant. And he seems to be showering regularly, which is a good thing, because I don’t think that he gets out of that bed much,” Tammy told me.
Gercon didn’t have much to add. “I don’t think that Mr. Gallagher has said three words to me the entire time I’ve been here. What was he like before?”
“Well, he certainly has had his bad times,” I said. “But he handled them really well. I’ve never seen him even remotely like this, although Nick has said that he has seen Ryan like this before. So, I hope that this is something that we can eventually overcome with some good therapy and a lot of love and support from me.”
I even tried to send a psychiatrist to see him a few times. Ryan, unfortunately, didn’t take well to this intrusion.
“What the fuck is going on here, Iris?” he asked when I walked in with Dr. Ballast, who was a renowned psychiatrist who specialized in PTSD.
“Mrs. Gallagher is very concerned about your mental health,” Dr. Ballast said. “She called me to come and see if there was anything I could do.”
“No, there’s nothing that you can do except get the fuck out. Now!”
Dr. Ballast persisted for about a half hour, before finally leaving. “He’s not ready,” he told me. “The old saying is true – you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. You know where to find me when he is ready, though.”
Other times, I would go into his room and see that his eyes were swollen and red. He would see me and immediately turn away.
I did notice that he was feverishly writing in a journal by the bed. He bookmarked the places where he left off, and I noticed that he was writing about twenty pages every day. I wished that he would share them with me, but I knew that this was just a dream. There was no way that he would possibly do that right now.
Every evening, before I retired to bed, and after I put Dalilah into bed, Nick and I would sit around and chat. I found his presence to be the only comfort for me during this period of time. I was so hungry for information about Ryan, and Nick was definitely the one to go to for this. He knew Ryan better than anybody, bar none. He was truly the only person in Ryan’s life who had been there with him through everything. He knew just what made Ryan tick, and how Ryan thought and felt about everything. He was very reassuring that Ryan would eventually come out of it and return to me.
“Are you sure, Nick?” I asked one night over a glass of wine. Wine was becoming my only friend these days, unless you counted Nick. I was drinking a little too much for my own comfort, but I rationalized this by saying to myself that I needed some kind of escape. And I did. Who wouldn’t after what I went through, and was continuing to go through?
“For the thousandth time, Iris, yes. Yes, Ryan will come out of this. When, I don’t know. What I do know is that he loves you. You are the first woman that he has ever really loved. You’re a part of him, so there is just no way that he won’t return to you when he decides to come out of this. I know that this is frustrating for you, but you have to have patience and persevere. For better or worse, remember.”
And Dalilah, for her part, refused to stop being angry with me. It was if she blamed me for the fact that her daddy refused to see her.
Every day, she would create a new little picture for him. Every day she would rip it up when she couldn’t see her daddy in person. And she was increasingly throwing tantrums in her room. She would scream and cry for hours. I had to keep breakable objects away from her, because she would throw them on the hardwood floor and smash them. She wasn’t quite able to walk, but she would stand in her crib and cry. I would pick her up, and she would just cry some more, grabbing my hair in her little hands and pulling on it until I got a massive headache.
Nick was the only one who could calm her down. When I had enough and was ready to break down in hysterics myself, Nick would appear in our bedroom and sit down on the rocking chair with Dalilah on his lap and read her a story. She would sit with her head on his chest, her thumb in her mouth, and quietly listen to various tales about magic and far away lands.
“Ok, Dalilah,” Nick said. “Let’s continue our story about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Where were we? Oh, yes, I think that we were just getting to know Augustus Gloop, the fat kid.”
Dalilah giggled. “The fat kid,” she said, obviously understanding it. “What next?”
I loved seeing them together, but I was getting depressed. Dalilah didn’t want anything to do with me, and Ryan should be here reading her stories, not Nick.
While he was reading to Dalilah, I would exit the room and break down in tears.
This scenario happened far more than I wanted it to. I couldn’t believe that my nine-month-old daughter hated me already.
Nick would come out of the room after he put Dalilah into bed and say “you have to get it together with your daughter in there. I love that
little girl, but I have a life, too.”
“I don’t know what to do. I’m at my wit’s end here. She hates me, Ryan hates me. Who likes me anymore?”
“Me. I like you.” And he would look at me in the same way that made me uncomfortable all those weeks ago when Ryan was first out of surgery.
I studiously ignored the way that Nick looked at me sometimes. I had to. There was a part of me that actually was very drawn to him, especially now that I was seeing his more sensitive side. And the way that he was with Dalilah was starting to make me melt.
But he wasn’t Ryan. Ryan was the absolute love of my life, even if it seemed during this period that Ryan not only didn’t love me, but that he actively hated me.
But there was no way that I would break down in a moment of weakness and give in to my budding attraction to Nick. Even though my female intuition told me that Nick was having feelings for me that went beyond friendship.
I even noticed that there were no more bimbo eruptions after the Tessa incident. “Hey, I’ve got an extremely intelligent and inquisitive little girl living under my roof. I have to have respect for that. I realized after I had Tessa here that I was being selfish and stupid. Dalilah shouldn’t be exposed to this.”
I accepted this explanation, although I suspected it was something else. I suspected that his feelings for me were stronger than I cared to admit.
And I was scared to death of this.
Nick even admitted to me that he had never been in love. “I thought I loved Rielle. Who knows? Maybe I did at one time. I guess it’s hard to think about that in retrospect. After all she has hurt me, and I’ve hurt her, it’s hard to believe that there was ever love there. But I’ve definitely never experienced the kind of all consuming passion that you and Ryan have.”
“Had.”
“What?”
“You said have. As if Ryan and I still have this all-consuming passion.”
