And Again

by Jessica Chiarella

  I think of Lucy. Of watching Lucy cry into his shirt, of the depth of their secrecy, which I am only beginning to understand. I have loved Sam so long for his goodness, and he has loved me just as long despite my lack of it. He should know my answer already.

  “No,” I say, leaning back into my seat, the only light in the car emanating from the dashboard clock. The windshield and windows are thickening with snow. It creates an eerie quiet inside the car, as if we’ve driven into a giant snowbank or been buried under an avalanche, irreparably cut off from the rest of the world. There’s a certain hum in the air, the kind of low static a record makes when its last song ends, and I almost regret it when Sam starts the car, turns the heat up. He flicks on the windshield wipers and the world reappears beyond the glass, and I’m almost surprised it’s still there.

  Even amid the hum of the car’s engine and the rhythmic motion of the wipers scratching across the windshield, the silence has reawakened between us. I can’t say anything to him. I don’t know what I would say if I could. Some form of apology, maybe. If not for getting cancer, then for not cutting him enough slack in its aftermath. For putting him through this again, after he watched his father die of Parkinson’s when he was too young to protect himself from it. For being the one who was saved, instead of his father. For not being able to forgive.

  But I can’t find a way into those words. I don’t know how to have empathy for someone else when I barely know who I am. I can hardly navigate the smallest moments in my world, the simplest things, the eating, breathing, sleeping moments that everyone else seems to be able to ignore. Still I get the impulse to wake from a heavy dream, as if I’ve suddenly remembered that none of this is possible, that it’s all wrong, that it can’t be happening to me. Still I expect to jerk awake and find the life I remember waiting, unaltered, like the world beyond the windshield.

  Linda

  The grocery store is so huge and bright and full of people that I think I might pass out. Aisle upon endless aisle is stocked with thousands of products, all with their own brightly colored packaging, leaving barely enough room for people to snake their shopping carts through. Music clamors over everything. I feel sick. For so long, I’ve been used to processing only one thing at a time that I’m unable to face this onslaught of stimuli. Things flash in and out of my peripheral vision. Somewhere in the store, there’s a child screaming and the sound shreds my nerves. I didn’t remember how terrifying the world was, at its full size. I follow Tom and Jack and Katie in our little convoy as Tom pushes the shopping cart and the kids load it with groceries. There’s a practiced nature to this mayhem, and I imagine that they’ve done exactly this, every weekend, for years. I follow behind, watching them, getting in the way of everyone around me. I seem to always be in someone’s path, blocking the item he or she is trying to reach. I bump into more than one person and forget that I should apologize when that sort of thing happens. I’m so used to being in one place, and having the pieces of my world orbit me like tiny moons, that sometimes I forget that the people around me can even see me.

  Being home, being around people, my children, is an entirely different type of difficulty from being in the hospital. I’m the routine-breaker, the woman who staggers out of bed at odd hours, who is preoccupied by the textures of things, losing the threads of conversations as I run my hands over the objects and surfaces around me. Tom makes them change the channel so I can watch Stratford Pines on the flat-screen. I am the intruder, stopping hushed conversations between Katie and Tom when I enter a room. I thought Katie would be the easy one when I returned home, the one who would remember me from the years before the accident. But instead it’s Jack, my baby, who brightens when he sees me, who wants to show me his collection of Ninja Turtles figures, who needs me with an insistence that borders on the absurd, stranger that I am. While Katie has stopped bursting into tears in front of me, she remains remote, considering me like some foreign cousin who has come to visit, someone she understands little and likes even less.

  We’re stopped in the cereal aisle. There’s a log jam of carts right in the middle, and Tom is waiting patiently for his turn to weave through while the kids are scooting around him, trying to decide if they want the cereal with the pirate on the box, or the one with the leprechaun. They get to pick one box of cereal a week, Tom told me, as if he were relaying vital, top-secret parenting information. Once it’s gone, they’re back to corn flakes for breakfast. I nodded, thinking about the books I used to read on nutrition and child development, the way I had homemade granola and almond milk for them in the mornings, instead of sugary bits of puffed rice, dyed bright colors. My former self could have been such a good mother, I think, if she were only given the chance. Now I am lost in a sea of fluorescent lighting and flashing machines that distribute coupons hanging from shelves. I shut my eyes, willing it all away.

  When I open them again, they catch on a display of chocolate bars wrapped in colored foil. Labels promise all manner of deliciousness—caramel and crispy rice and peanut butter. It’s the sort of thing I never would have allowed myself in my previous life, back when I counted calories and ran five miles a day and bought organic produce. But I imagine it now, the rich sweetness of chocolate and caramel, and saliva collects under my tongue. I want it, insistently. I want to cram the whole bar of candy into my mouth and chew it until my jaw aches. I want it with a vigor that’s almost sexual, a riotous feeling, something I don’t want to ignore for fear it will disappear. I take a quick glance, left and right. Shoppers compare prices and peer at the nutrition labels on boxes of cereal. Tom has disappeared toward the other end of the aisle with the kids in tow. No one is looking at me. My fingertips spark with blood and excitement as I reach toward the display, plucking one of the bars from its place and jamming it into the pocket of my jacket. Someone turns toward me, so I pick up another bar and pretend to read the nutrition label on the back. I scowl, and put it back in its place, as if it has profoundly disappointed me. Connie would be so proud if she saw my performance.

  It’s only when I move down the aisle, fingering the prize in my pocket, being careful not to crinkle the foil wrapping for fear of giving myself away, that I realize I’m grinning. Excitement pours through me, a rush that makes me want to skip out of the store, run as fast as my new legs will carry me, like a dog running for the horizon and never stopping. I’m nearly effervescent with the thrill of my crime. But I remember the importance of the act, and I shake the smile from my face before Tom catches sight of me again.

  “I thought we’d lost you there,” he says.

  “Nearly did,” I reply, trying my best to look mystified and adrift in the cacophony of my surroundings. Jack runs up, jumping on the end of the cart and tossing a box of cereal in, holding on as Tom wheels him forward toward the end of the aisle.

  “I decided on Lucky Charms this week,” Jack says to me, and it’s clearly a decision that has taken some real effort.

  “Oh, I see,” I say, nodding, wondering at how to respond to something as simple and inconsequential as a box of cereal. I wonder if this is why other parents constantly reprimand their children for the smallest of infractions, for running or speaking too loudly or demanding too much attention, because they don’t know any other way of speaking to them. Katie comes up and drops her box of cereal into the cart, Wheaties, of course. Katie is on the basketball team at school and everything in her world seems to revolve around the sport. I try and recall how I was at that age and can’t quite remember back that far, now that everything has been clouded by the accident.

  “She doesn’t care about your cereal,” Katie says to Jack, turning her accusatory eyes in my direction.

  “Katie, give it a rest,” Tom says, handing her the list. “Go see if you can pick out some eggs, okay?” Katie snatches the list from him and walks off, Jack following close behind her. Tom sighs, but says nothing. After all, this is well-worn territory for us at this point, in these months since I’ve been home.

  I eat t
he candy later, in Tom’s upstairs office, while he’s helping the kids with their homework. I smuggle it out of my coat pocket and tuck it into the back of my jeans before I scurry upstairs. It’s half-melted when I pull it out, but I don’t care. I watch the setting sun from my window, the window in Tom’s office, and peel back the foil wrapper with the carefulness of an archaeologist uncovering an ancient treasure. I don’t eat it all in one bite, no, now the craving has transformed into a need to savor, to draw out the deliciousness of my crime for as long as possible. I take small bites, rabbit bites, letting the chocolate melt in my mouth and the caramel stick to my teeth. My body sings with it, the taste of it, I can almost feel the shiver of chemical pleasure run up and down my spine. This is mine, I think. A secret. I’ve made this mine.

  I stole a pair of panties from the sale bin at the Gap once when I was a teenager. It was the only other time I’ve ever stolen anything. They were black and lacy, with a little fake gemstone in the front, and I yanked the tags off and stuffed them into my coat pocket while I was pretending to try on a pair of jeans. My friends were with me, and we walked out of the store in a little giggling pack. Out in the parking lot we compared our haul—a camisole, a pair of earrings, a tube of lip balm, my thong—and congratulated ourselves on being subversive and rebellious and young. I never told them how painful it was for me, walking out of that store with my sweaty hand balled around that knot of black lace in my pocket. There was no thrill for me; instead my fear was colossal, even after we were out of the store and into the fresh air. I was certain the very moment I thought I was safe would be the moment in which a security guard would clap me on the shoulder and demand that I turn out my pockets. It wasn’t until I was home, stuffing the contraband into the top drawer of my dresser and shutting it hard, that I began to feel normal again. I never wore those panties. They seemed to forever be a symbol of my own frailty, up until the point when Tom threw them away with the rest of my underwear.

  I knew shoplifting was supposed to be exciting. My friends did it a lot, pilfering makeup and jewelry and even the occasional T-shirt from a thrift shop or a department store. Any time I received a birthday gift from one of them, I was pretty confident it had been brought to me by way of someone’s pocket or the inside of someone’s bra. I even knew a girl in college who, during the course of our freshman year, stole twelve cookbooks from the Barnes & Noble near campus. When I asked her why she only stole cookbooks, she shrugged.

  “Why does anyone do anything?” she asked in return.

  But now I understand it. Now, in the office at the top of the stairs, licking melted chocolate off the tips of my fingers, I finally know what it is to steal something and like it. It’s not about what you steal. It’s not even about escaping the prospect of getting caught. It’s about cracking open a little sliver of freedom for yourself. It’s slipping into that other world, the one in my head, where nothing bad ever really happens and there are no rules at all. I sit in that room and feel like I’ve finally traveled somewhere no one can follow, not my doctors or my family or the people I knew in my former life. And I’m the only one who knows it.

  Like all good secrets, the story of my adventure begs to be told. I whisper it to Connie as we sit waiting for our meeting to begin. She grins a little, her eyebrows furrowing, and she looks so radiant I want to kiss her if only to see what it would feel like.

  “You stole a candy bar? What is this, Mayberry?”

  “It was delicious. Maybe the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten,” I say, shutting my eyes to remember the sheer sensation of it.

  “Careful, John Dillinger, this week it’s candy bars. Next week you’ll be boosting cars.”

  I giggle, unfazed by Connie’s usual surliness. The meeting begins the way it always does, with Dr. Bernard asking if anyone has anything new to share. Connie shakes her head a little to warn me off sharing my story with the group. But of course that’s not my intention. I know the thing about secrets, they’re like pie—the more slices you share with other people, the less you have for yourself.

  It’s David who clears his throat. “I uh . . .” he falters as everyone turns toward him. It seems uncharacteristic, for him to be uncomfortable with the attention. “I’m beginning to think my son isn’t as okay as I thought he was,” David says, elbows on his knees, his hands folded in front of him.

  “What makes you say that?” Dr. Bernard asks.

  “A lot of things, I guess,” he replies, and then he pauses, dragging the fingers of one hand through his short-cropped hair. “When we told him about my cancer, about the transfer, he took it fine. Better than fine, in fact. The boy didn’t shed a tear. I was so proud of him, for taking it standing up like that. My son, tough as nails.”

  I watch as David’s face twitches from an expression of pride to something quite the opposite.

  “But then he threw up at school the next day. Out of nowhere, in the middle of English class, I guess. I don’t know, it was my wife who went to get him. And he’s been getting into fights. I thought it was just kid’s stuff, but now he’s been picking fights with older boys, bigger boys. I think that maybe he’s trying to convince me he’s tough.”

  “Does he know that’s important to you?” Hannah asks. David looks at her a long time before he answers. It’s curious, to watch David and Hannah interact. They seem to have a language all to themselves, one that I can’t understand.

  “I used to get the shit kicked out of me as a kid,” David says, looking at Hannah. Unflinching. “You should have seen where I come from. Dirt roads. Twenty-year-old cars. The best place to eat was the Arby’s in the next town over. And I was small. The worst thing you could be in that town was small. They wouldn’t just take your lunch money, they’d take your shoes. There was a time when the toughest part of me were the soles of my feet.” He pulls a hand through his hair. “Of course being tough is important to me. I’m afraid my son’s childhood won’t prepare him for something like that. Or worse,” he gestures around the room, at all of us beleaguered souls, “it won’t prepare him for something like this.”

  Hannah

  I’ve been renting a small studio in Wicker Park since my fourth year as an undergrad at the Art Institute. The rent comes out of an artist’s grant I won for my senior thesis, a series of paintings of women being carried off by birds, to which one of the Art Institute’s many donors took a liking. The studio is small, in that it allows room for an easel and a stool, a few containers of art supplies, a set of wireless speakers, about thirty canvases, a coffee maker, and a mini fridge, while still allowing just enough space for me to turn around, provided the door is shut. The window opens about four inches, too, which is useful in summer because there’s no air conditioning. And sometimes it’s useful in winter as well, because the heat tends to go berserk, which leaves me painting in my underwear more than I’d prefer. And I love it, my studio, perhaps more than I’ve ever imagined loving any place in my whole life.

  I have to push hard on the door to get it open at first. It warps in the summers, when the damp heat swells the soft wood in its frame, and it never seems to return to its correct shape come winter. When I put my weight into it the door pops open, and I’m face to face with myself again. The painting is still there. Of course it is.

  I look scared, my large eyes a mixture of yellow ochre and burnt sienna, overlaid with shimmers of titanium white and warm gray and hooker’s green to show their fullness, wet with tears. My hair is dark—Payne’s gray, Mars black, and burnt umber—falling in silky waves around my shoulders. I think of the hours I used to spend at the salon under the dryers, breathing that harsh ammonia smell as the chemicals soaking my hair did their work, how straight and glossy it was before the transfer, not the halo of tight curls it is now. My skin is pink blush and Naples yellow, flesh tint, a touch of pistachio, with raw umber and a hint of sap green blended in the shadows under my eyes. There’s softness at my jaw, my cheekbones don’t jut as much from the smooth surface of my skin, my face mor
e rounded than it is now. My lips are cadmium scarlet and silk purple, dried and cracked with silver and process magenta. There’s a little ultramarine there, too, in my mouth. To show sickness. To show a lack of oxygen. There I am. That’s the face I remember. That’s the scared little thing still living inside of me.

  It was a kind of therapy, at the time. Sam’s idea, of course. A self-portrait, a way of preserving what I was, in case the transfer eclipsed something or ruined something. Sam never said those things out loud, of course, he would never have vocalized the fears we shared. But when he suggested it, I knew what he was getting at.

  And it helped, a bit, there at the end, in my last days before the pain became too great and I went into the hospital for good, to wait out the weeks until the transfer. It felt like I was capturing something of myself in a bottle, corking it tight, waiting to open it and breathe it in when I was on the other side of the cancer and the transfer and all the fear. Now, looking at the girl in the painting, I want to tell her that the fear isn’t gone. It’s still here but different, more diffuse, maybe. More systemic, not just sitting in the pit of my stomach as it always had. Now it sinks into my skin cells and the enamel of my teeth, my toes and the space between my hip bones.

  I take the painting from the easel and put it with a group of others, facing the wall. I can’t look at her now. I sit on my stool, in front of my easel, the position that used to leave my back stiff and impossibly sore, full of knots that Sam would work on with his thumbs while we watched TV. I remember that feeling, that sweet, necessary pain, though I’ve never felt it, not in this body. I’ve never woken with a stiff neck. Never cracked my knuckles or my back. I can bend over from standing and place my palms flat on the ground. I’m no longer in the habit of crossing my legs, or slouching, or tucking my hair behind my ear. My mannerisms have been scrubbed away, replaced with a profoundly sterling body, capable of things I haven’t yet thought to ask of it.