by Annie Jocoby
Or maybe I didn’t want her to hate me. After all, the call to take her leg was mine and mine alone. She assumed that both Nick and I were in on this decision, but that wasn’t the case.
For Nick’s part, he was doing all he could to try to make up for that fateful decision. He was on his absolute best behavior. Roses, making dinner, slowing down his work schedule to make sure that he made some quality time for me – he did everything.
Yet I couldn’t quite forgive him. My mind went back to the time, so many years ago, when I felt abandoned my him when I was in the hospital for a suicide attempt and he wasn’t there. Of course, I found out why, and it was a good reason. I forgave him then, as I should have.
But this time…I couldn’t quite come to terms with it. With him doing that to me. Making me make that awful decision on my own.
I went to every rehab session with Addison, of course, as did Nick. Both of us made sure that we took time to do that. It pained me greatly to see Addy struggle as much as she was. She would collapse while she tried to walk on the parallel bars and would burst into tears. I felt like bursting into tears along with her, but I always held it in.
At night, she would cry out in pain, and I would hear her. Nick and I had installed an intercom in her room, like a baby monitor, so that we would always knew when she needed us. Every night she would cry out, and every night I would go to her bedroom and hold her while she cried. I knew that she was in pain, physically and mentally, and I felt so helpless. There was just nothing that I could do. As much as I wanted to do something, anything, I couldn’t. How could I take away her pain? I would have taken her pain as my own if only I could. But I couldn’t.
And I was holding in my resentment for my husband. We weren’t fighting, necessarily, but we weren’t close anymore either. Something had shifted, and, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t do anything about it. We weren’t “Nick and Scotty” anymore so much as we were just…strangers.
Addison noticed the tension, of course. She was a very perceptive and smart girl, and she would ask me why Nick and I seemed to be at odds. I always just told her that nothing was wrong. She was imagining that there was tension when there really wasn’t.
I knew better, though.
“Scotty,” he said one day. “I love you. I love you more than anything in this world. I don’t think that I would be the same without you. Yet I’m losing you. I know that you’re grieving over our daughter. I am too. I don’t know how to reach you though. I feel like I’m losing.”
I sighed. I hadn’t noticed that things had gotten that bad. Was I sleepwalking through life?
“Things are just weird right now. Our daughter’s entire life has been turned upside down.” I was putting dishes away while I spoke with him. That was another thing that I noticed – I was always doing something instead of concentrating strictly on him and what he was saying to me. Nick noticed it, of course, but never said a thing about it.
“Scotty, look at me.”
I reluctantly turned my head.
“It’s been weeks since Addison’s surgery. We haven’t made love. You’re barely there. You said that you would be strong for Addison, and you have been. You’ve been remarkable. Whatever she’s needed, you’ve given her. But…”
“I have to be strong for you too.” I knew he was right. Addison had my time, attention and energy. I told myself that was the only reason why I was shutting out Nick – I could only focus on Addy right now.
Yet I knew that wasn’t the only reason. That was only the excuse I made for shutting Nick out.
I had been talking to Adele again. Nick encouraged me to go and see her, and I had been. Yet, even she didn’t have much effect on me or my emotions. She couldn’t seem to reach me, either. I was sleepwalking through life, except when I was with my daughter. I went to work, but couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t there for Nick when he needed me.
I just wasn’t there. Period.
Adele was trying, though, to get me to open up. Our sessions were productive, for the most part. I told her how I felt about Addison. How I felt like I was helpless, yet I also felt incredibly guilty for telling that doctor to take her leg.
“Okay,” Adele said. “Now, Scotty, you came a long way with our therapy before. We got you through your feelings of helplessness and abandonment from your mother and your situation with Mr. Lucas. You felt helpless both times - you felt helpless to do anything to get your mother to stop drinking, and you felt helpless to do anything to stop Mr. Lucas from raping you. Now it seems like this same sense of helplessness is bubbling up again with this situation with your daughter.”
“Yes, I guess that’s it. But I don’t know how to get past how I’m feeling about being the only one to make that call for her. Losing her limb changed her life. She’s never going to be the same. I don’t know how to get past that. And I wish that Nick was in on that decision, too. I can’t stop punishing him for not being there.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Not really. I don’t know what to say. He knows that he screwed up, and he knows that I’m angry with him about it. What good would talking about this situation do?”
“Communication is always the most valuable thing that you have with your husband. I know that you think that he knows how you feel, but does he really know? Have you really expressed yourself?”
I knew that I really hadn’t, but I didn’t necessarily know how I could. I was going to put into words how much I felt that he had abandoned me, but that was silly, wasn’t it? Nick had been there for me, every minute of every day, since we have gotten together. Then he had one lapse of judgment, and my feelings for him had shifted.
Was that a permanent shift, or would I get over it? I didn’t know, and that scared the living crap out of me. If I couldn’t get past it, then what? Would we divorce? How would that help Addison, seeing her parents split up because of what happened to her?
That wouldn’t help her, of course. That would just make things worse for her, and that was the very last thing that I wanted.
“I guess I really haven’t. But I need to. I need to at least try to open up to him.”
“Yes, you do.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “Does Addison know the story of what happened with the doctor amputating her leg? Does she know that her father wasn’t around for that decision?”
I sighed. “No. And I’ll never tell her, either. I don’t want her to resent her dad.”
“Are you so sure that she will?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “No. But I would resent Nick if I were her and I knew that. So, I don’t want to tell her.”
“Maybe it’s best that she knows. She might surprise you.”
“She might, but I doubt it.” I was well aware that I was already putting thoughts and deeds into Addison’s mouth and head, thoughts and deeds that she probably wouldn’t be thinking or speaking herself. I didn’t know how to stop that, either.
“So, what do you want to get out of these sessions?” Adele asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how you can help Nick and me. I guess I just need to have you as a sounding board. I’m going through a lot, trying to help my beautiful daughter have a normal life. I guess I need you to help me with that, in general. Help me figure out how to give her a normal life. Maybe then I’ll find a way to forgive Nick and we can be a family again.”
“I can certainly do that,” Adele said. “Now, let’s go through the mental exercises that we used to, when you first started seeing me.”
For the rest of the session, we went through the exercises. She asked me to tell her a negative thought, and then asked me to give her a positive thought to replace that negative thought. We did that for several hours, and, by the end of it, I was feeling a bit better.
I might have been feeling better, but I still wasn’t entirely feeling that everything was going to be okay. I was going to continue to appear to be strong for Addison, of course. That was the least that I could do for her. But I was a
cting, of course. Internally, I was a total mess.
I might have been a total mess inside, but my goal was for Addison not to see that. If I could do that, and at least make her think that I was okay, then maybe I really would be.
That was the goal, anyhow.
Twenty-Two
Addison
The weeks went by. I was fitted with a prosthesis, and learning to walk again was a huge pain. Literally. My friends came to visit me, one by one, even though some of them seemed like they were afraid of me. As if having cancer and losing a leg would somehow be contagious or something.
I also returned to school, even before I had the prosthesis. I wasn’t going to show up in a wheelchair, though, so I used crutches, which were extremely difficult to learn. I didn’t have a ton of upper-body strength, so it was challenging, to say the very least.
I didn’t know how to react to anything. I told the teachers not to give me special treatment, and they did the best they could, but I could tell that they had their sympathy eyes on me. I hated sympathy eyes. They were worse than my mom, really.
Mom thought that I didn’t know that she was acting for me. I knew, though. Every single day, after school, I would go in for my rehab session and mom and dad would be there. Mom would be happy and smiling and cheerful. She was always my biggest cheerleader.
Yet she was off. And, try as she might, she couldn’t hide the fact that she had a real problem with my dad. I didn’t ask either of them about that, though. I had enough on my plate without having to worry about whether or not mom and dad were going to stay together through all of this.
One day, though, when mom and dad did their usual routine with me – taking me to rehab while being silent in the car - I knew that I had to say something to one or both of them. They were so weird these days. They used to sing along to the radio together, with mom’s off-key voice and dad’s smooth one. They used to joke around all the time. They used to always touch each other wherever they were, and hold hands out in public all the time. I always caught them kissing in the kitchen and mom would always lay her head on dad’s shoulder while they watched movies at home. Whenever we ate, dad used to put a tiny piece of his food on mom’s plate if he was eating something different, like at a restaurant.
And they used to talk to each other. There was always non-stop conversation. Sometimes it was annoying to me because I couldn’t care less about what they were talking about. But the point is, they used to talk to one another. About work, about politics, about us kids, about movies, about….life.
But, ever since my surgery, there wasn’t much of any of that going on anymore. We would eat in silence, because mom would exclusively try to talk to me and ignore dad. Dad would still try to put a piece of food on her plate, but mom would shoot him the stink-eye, so he stopped doing that altogether. Mom refused to hold dad’s hand, even though he tried. Dad still tried to tease mom and joke with her, but she didn’t banter back, so it seemed that he just gave up. Dad still sang along with songs on the radio in the car, but mom didn't join in.
Come to think of it, only mom was weird. Dad was still dad. But mom was having none of it. So she was going to be the person that I was going to have talk to.
Which I did one evening after dinner. Dinner was as it usually was these days – mom and I took turns making a meal. I insisted on making dinner at least three evenings a week, because I was always wanting to try something new in the kitchen. Mom tended to keep to the same few dinners that she knew and had mastered – baked chicken, Chicken Parmesan, chicken tortilla casserole and a few other chicken dishes. Dad used to tease mom about her reliance on chicken, and mom used to tease back. Dad never minded, though, because mom was a halfway decent cook.
I, on the other hand, insisted on trying something new every time I cooked. When I was little, I used the recipe book. When I got a little older, though, I had more and more confidence in the kitchen, so I knew what ingredients to use with what, and I came up with different things. My parents usually loved whatever I fixed, and I had friends over from time to time, and they usually did, too.
On this particular evening, when I resolved to talk to mom, I had cooked up a shrimp Pad Thai fusion dish that featured a dash of curry and broccolini. Dad ate it with gusto, so did Chloe, while mom ate it more slowly. But she seemed to like it.
“How is it?” I asked her.
“Great,” dad said, “as usual.” He helped himself to another serving, digging his chop sticks into the bowl of Pad Thai at the center of the table. “You definitely will get to culinary school with these chops.”
“Mom?”
She looked up at me. She was on her first helping, and had only made it halfway through that. Her chop sticks picked up the Pad Thai, strand by strand, and then she would pause and then pick up the next strand. It looked like she didn’t want to eat the food, but I wasn’t insulted. These days, she looked like she barely wanted to eat any food, hers or mine.
“It’s delicious, honey.” Then she picked up another strand of food and seemed to force it into her mouth. “Just delicious.”
I looked over at dad. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, but that didn’t mean anything. Dad was an expert at covering up. He always had been. I had never seen dad truly upset about anything. Not when Olivia broke her leg when she was about my age, nor when Chloe had the flu so bad that she had to go to the hospital. Dad was always cool, and always seemed to be under control. Mom wasn’t as cool, but she certainly didn’t seem to be as weird then as she was now.
“Dad, after dinner, could you do the dishes by yourself? I really need to talk to mom.”
Usually mom and dad did the dishes together when I cooked. But I really needed to get to the bottom of why mom was acting the way that she was. I was tired of watching her be weird. She was overly nice to me and ignoring dad, and I didn’t like seeing that.
Dad’s expression changed for a brief moment. His eyes seemed to cloud over for a split second, and then he nodded his head. “I guess I’ll manage,” he said with a smile, “without my dish dog helper.” Then he turned to Chloe. “Chloe, you get to help with the dishes tonight. Won’t that be awesome?”
“Sure.” Chloe looked unenthusiastic at the prospect, as she usually did. She never was one for chores.
“Thanks dad.”
We ate the rest of the meal, and then dad cleared the table and got up to do the dishes. “Mom, I need to talk to you.”
It seemed that she didn’t really hear me when I said earlier that I needed to speak with her after dinner, because she seemed startled. “Okay, honey, after I do these dishes with your father.”
“Chloe’s helping him. Besides, I said earlier that I was going to talk to you after dinner. I thought that you heard me.”
“I guess I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Let’s go up to my room and talk.”
We went up to my room and mom sat in one of the easy chairs and I sat on the bed. I put my one knee up to my chest and I rubbed the other one. It was still hurting pretty bad, and they were trying to wean me off of painkillers, which I wasn’t looking forward to at all. I had finally broken down about taking the painkillers, even though I didn’t want to, earlier. They really helped, but I hoped that I wouldn’t get addicted.
I took off my prosthesis, and my mom cringed. She tried to hide her cringing, but it was plain as day to me.
“What did you want to talk to me about, baby?”
“What’s going on between you and dad?” No point beating around the bush.
She blinked her eyes. “What are you talking about?” Her voice was halting and weak. She also looked like she wanted to be anywhere but in this room at that very moment.
“You know.” She was going to try to play innocent, but I wasn’t having it at all.
She sighed. “There’s no hiding things from you, I guess.”
“Of course there’s no hiding things from me, mom. Seriously. You don’t think that I don’t notice the fa
ct that you seem to hate him these days?”
She got to fidgeting and wringing her hands. “Hate is such a strong word.”
“Well you sure don’t seem to like him anymore.” I extended my hand. “So what’s going on?”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing going on.” Her tight smile told me that she was lying. “Why do you…”
“You’re just different. I mean, I know that this situation with my leg isn’t the greatest thing in the whole world. And I admit, when it first happened, I was pissed beyond belief. Just pissed. But I’ve accepted it, and it is what it is.” I patted my right stump and rubbed it a little. It was incredibly painful, and I always felt like the leg was still there and throbbing. It wasn’t, of course. My doctor said that I had “phantom limb syndrome,” and that it was hopefully going to go away with time. God forbid I still had that pain in six months, because the doctor said that if it doesn’t go away in six months, it may never. “At least I’m alive. And I might get on Chopped Junior because of it, so yay.”
She sighed. “I’ve had a hard time with all of this, baby, and I’m so sorry. I really wanted to be strong for you. And I feel that I have. I’ve tried to resume a normal life, and I’ve gone to every appointment with you.”
“Yeah, but you’re weird, mom. You’re different. I know that you’ve had counseling with Dr. Holloway, but I think that you and dad should have counseling together. There’s something off between the two of you, and there’s something off just with you. You guys need to figure it out, because the last thing that I want is for you guys to split up. I always told my friends that you two were the most in-love people I knew. All their parents barely tolerate each other, but you guys always seemed so in-sync. And now you don’t.”
