Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

  My father is still looking at the clock as I slip into my seat. “Have you given more thought about where you want to eat tonight?” he finally asks.

  “Anything is fine. Are you hungry, Dad? Because I could go get you something.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not hungry. If you want something, you can go to the cafeteria and get something.”

  “I don’t want anything either.”

  The skin on the backs of his hands has become soft, dry with tiny intersecting lines running over the surface like roads. His veins are small mountain ranges. He clearly loves my mother a lot—no one who wasn’t in love would wait like this, so anxious for news, immobilized with their hands on their knees. Is this marriage? Someone to worry over you? To know there will always be someone in the waiting room?

  Years ago, my parents crossed a line where they had been married longer than they hadn’t been married. It’s a strange idea, to live without the question of who will love you for longer than you ever asked it. It makes the question—do I love Ethan enough—seem quite small when the answer is so long and detailed, filled with children and vacations and daily pots of coffee.

  THE DOCTOR WHO comes out to speak to us is not the same doctor who we saw before surgery. This one is younger and speaks slowly and earnestly, adjusting the collar of his scrubs after each sentence.

  “She’s in recovery right now, and we’re just making sure her blood pressure and other vitals are stable before we move her to a private room.”

  “A private room?” my father asks, and then looks at me as if to confirm that I’ve heard the same thing that he’s heard. “But I thought this was an outpatient procedure and we’d be going home today.”

  “Well, that was one possibility based on what we saw when we got in there.” He talks about my mother as if she’s a particularly tricky vintage car. “But we needed to perform an axillary node dissection and remove all the nodal tissue.”

  “Nodal tissue,” I repeat. “Does that mean the cancer has spread beyond her breast?”

  “Yes, as we told your mother, that was what the doctor suspected during the biopsy.”

  “My mother didn’t tell me.”

  I glance at my father, but based on the expression on his face, my mother didn’t tell him either or he didn’t understand it until now. It feels as if I have bricks in my stomach. As if a bricklayer has started constructing a fort in the pit of my stomach, a dwelling to hold all the thoughts that rush into my brain as I think about the cancer spreading, diving into the deep recesses of my mother’s body and hiding.

  “We’re going to have the pathology report back soon. There may be some pain in the surgical area, maybe some numbness, but we’re going to be monitoring that. And of course, we’ll fill you in on next steps since the cancer has metastasized.”

  It’s obvious that the doctor doesn’t have practice in wrapping up and extricating himself from the conversation, or maybe he’s just waiting for the inevitable questions about life expectancy or medical protocols that usually come after he delivers unexpected news. But I don’t want to hear the answers. The fact that those answers exist somewhere, even if I don’t know them yet, fill me with a dread that wraps around my neck, choking me.

  This is Torschlusspanik, I think to myself.

  I finally understand what Noah meant when he used that word in the diner. Torschlusspanik equals this, this awful, choking feeling of thousands of thoughts racing toward me at the same time, creating a cacophony of questions until, like a drum buildup in an orchestral movement, it threatens to explode on my peasant brain.

  “I want to see her,” my father says firmly. “I want to see my wife.”

  “Of course you do. I’m going to go check and see if they’ve moved her to a room yet, and then I’ll have a nurse bring you to her. Why don’t you two wait here?”

  My father sits down again, returns his hands to his knees as if this is his preferred waiting position. As if he’s given thought to this, tested out other waiting positions and found that this is the one that works best for him.

  While I know Noah would understand this, that maybe he would even have some advice to impart since he has lived this, a small token I can grasp when the world feels as if it’s shaking around me like an earthquake, he isn’t the person I want right now. It’s Ethan’s voice I want to hear. He is, as he said last week, the first and only person I want to be with when things go to crap.

  I sit back down beside my father, feeling the universe quaking, the figurative boxes and books falling from the shelves, the buildings falling outside and the glass shattering inside. And there is nothing to do, no doorjamb to stand in where I can wait it out.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER I tuck in Beckett, I force myself to eat cereal with my father for dinner even though I’m not hungry. I have to remind him that it’s time to eat, talk him into the kitchen, and then pour the Cheerios and milk into the bowl. He is clearly lost without my mother to guide the evening.

  “What do we do now?” I ask him, meaning, what does he usually do with my mother in the evening, but he stares at me so blankly that I wonder if he thinks I’m talking about the bigger picture. What do we do now? It feels like my life is split into two time periods—BC, before cancer, and AD, after the diagnosis.

  “Maybe we should retire to the living room,” my father tells me, as if it’s a place to aspire to reach after a long day. We move out of the kitchen, my mother’s domain, into the more neutral territory of the den. My father takes his usual space on the sofa, but I can’t bring myself to slip into the space usually reserved for my mother. I take the armchair, even though the angle to the television is terrible and it positions me so that my shoulder is facing my father. Not that it really matters. There’s no conversation to turn my body toward.

  “We could watch the news,” my father suggests. “See what is happening in the world.”

  “The news would be great.”

  I can hear Beckett snuffling through the baby monitor as my father stares at the television. Nothing in the outside world feels very important tonight, not Berlusconi’s resignation or the asteroid flying by the earth. The reporter’s words pass over us like water, obscuring everything below the surface. I go upstairs and check on Beckett, and when I come downstairs, my father is standing in the doorway to the den. “I’m going to go up to sleep.”

  “It’s only eight o’clock,” I tell him.

  He shrugs as if time is now akin to food, unimportant. “We’ll figure everything out tomorrow,” he says, more as a promise to himself. “Don’t stay up worrying tonight.”

  Don’t worry. Put it out of your mind. Plow on ahead. These were all the things I used to be good at. I could put things so deep in those mental drawers that I forgot they were in there at all. Step right up, ladies and gentleman, and see thoughts disappear right before your very eyes. But now my thoughts sit in my mind like leftovers that no one wants to touch. I can’t throw them out, and I can’t consume them. If anything, they’re consuming me, growing over me like mold.

  What do we do now?

  I sit on the sofa, bawling as quietly as I can so my father doesn’t come downstairs. Everything topples out of the overfilled mental drawers that I’ve been tucking away: the cancer and the kiss in Union Square and Ethan’s face when I told him that Noah understood me and Rachel’s last blog post. I cry because Ethan is the only person I want to be with right now, and he’s halfway across the country, and I cry because I miss Rachel and I wasn’t even there for the final fitting of her wedding dress. So much for my promise to the universe that I’ll be the most amazing friend the world has ever seen in exchange for my mother’s health.

  I finally get myself under control, blowing my nose into a wad of several super-absorbent paper towels that scratch my nostrils raw. I sit down at my parents’ ancient desktop computer. It still has the last page v
iewed up on the screen, a Wikipedia entry for breast cancer.

  I open a new tab and log into my email account. There are a bunch of unread emails in my inbox and a few read ones, including Noah’s message about the Nightly Thanksgiving party. I delete all the ones from Noah, and then stare at the screen. I owe him at least a little bit of closure.

  I take a deep breath and open up a blank email and start composing a message, backspacing and rewriting and sometimes just staring at a figurine my parents picked up during a trip to Italy. Finally, it says as close to what I need to say in order to hit send.

  Dear Noah:

  I know you’ve been trying to apologize for that day in Union Square, and I need to say that I’m sorry, too. I made a lot of assumptions based on a few words and a little attention, and I’m sorry that everything blew up that day.

  I really do hope that our paths cross in the future and that Bee loves the ring. I can’t wait to one day go to a bookstore and see your book on the display table.

  Good-byes are hard, and I’m not very good at them, but I don’t want to be all Joe Bell about the end. (Yes, I finally read the book, and you’re right, it’s nothing like the movie, though I don’t know if that’s really better.) Luckily, I’ll be able to turn on the Nightly and visit you through your singing Turducken, and maybe one day you’ll be walking Manhattan and see someone wearing one of my designs. You’ll know it’s mine because of its Hepburningness.

  Arianna

  P.S. Thank you for all the untranslatable words.

  Before I go upstairs to call Ethan, I open up Rachel’s blog. A new post has pushed her musings on the dating site down the page until it disappears off the screen. I hold my breath, reading her words, wondering if she’s going to come right out and mention the kiss. But it’s an apology.

  And maybe it was my disbelief that all could be well that made me wiggle my fingers in everyone else’s life. I tried to repair relationships that I perceived to be broken. I passed judgment and used my own relationship as a measuring stick for relationships that didn’t even involve me beyond the fact that each one was constructed out of two people I love.

  The reality is that every single one of us only knows the surface of what we see around us. What I’ve learned these past few weeks is that we don’t need to sink like the Titanic if we’re mindful that what we’re seeing isn’t the whole story.

  She doesn’t name us, but Ethan and I are clearly one of the relationships she has been meddling in that she apologizes for trying to change.

  I don’t usually leave comments on her blog, mostly because it looks like my words will just get lost in the sea of comments that usually accompany her posts. But tonight I’m thankful that I can send her a message and know that it’s out there buried between well-wishes on her engagement to Adam. Nothing profound, just a note of congratulations, words that have been long overdue these last few months since she told me the news.

  I go upstairs and curl up on my bed, dialing our number while I hug a childhood stuffed animal to my chest as if it’s a baby. Ethan picks up on the second ring, slightly breathless, and the sound of his voice immediately makes me start crying. No matter how hard I try to stop myself, the tears keep coming as if I’ve broken the faucet and it’s going to run indefinitely.

  “My mother is really sick,” I finally get out. “They had to remove lymph nodes. It spread.”

  “Oh, Ari,” he says.

  When he says my name, I feel as if I’ve locked myself out of my own house, and with this one word, he’s opening the door. For better or worse, Ethan is home. He is part of that home I always carry with me, even when I’m far away in Minnesota. That home includes Beckett and Ethan and the physical apartment and Bryant Park, the loft, and the entirety of Manhattan. And like home, up until this point, I have always been able to go back to him. For as long as I’ve known him, even when he was just Rachel’s little brother, he has always had his arms open.

  “Ari? Do you want me to fly there tomorrow? I’m not . . . this is not because I don’t take my job seriously or because I’m following some whim. I just want to be with you. My principal knows everything that’s going on.”

  “I think . . . maybe it would be better if you came out here for Christmas with me. Maybe stay out here that whole week between Christmas and New Year’s.”

  There’s an uncomfortable silence on the other end of the line. “We don’t have to talk about the future tonight.”

  There’s a ladybug on the inside of my window, half hidden by the curtain, and I get out of bed, catching it on my finger. I walk down the stairs slowly, carrying the cordless phone, so I can take the ladybug back outside. They always come inside in the late fall when the temperature drops. Sometimes there are dozens of them in the kitchen, tiny dots of good luck.

  Ethan is silent for so long that I worry that we’ve lost the connection by the time I sit back down on my bed. “No, I’m here,” he says. “I was just waiting for you to speak.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I tell him.

  “We used to talk,” he reminds me. “Before I moved in. You used to set aside your evenings for me. We’d sit on your sofa and make out. And talk.”

  “You’re right,” I say.

  “It’s not just the text messages, I mean. A lot of things have changed.”

  I listen to him breathe, the sound coming from over a thousand miles away even though he sounds close by, like I could reach through the phone and touch him. I wish I could. I wish I could slip down into that Arianna-shaped space that he makes with his arms and body.

  “Are you going to stay out in Minnesota?” he asks.

  “I have to come home,” I tell him. “I have a job in New York and . . .”

  “That’s not what I meant, Ari. I’m not telling you to quit. I was just asking because I thought I’d get a Zipcar and pick you up from the airport.”

  “Oh,” I say softly. “We’re coming back on Friday. We have a very early flight.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” Ethan tells me. “I can take off in the morning and come in late. I don’t have anything until after lunch anyway.”

  I want to tell Ethan that maybe it’s a good thing that we’re not exactly alike. I need him to push me to be more adventurous and take the wrong turns, and he needs me to keep him grounded. I’ve been so focused on changing us—fixing us—that I didn’t realize that we could simply be ourselves exactly as we are. We just need to understand our roles. That I can be the workaholic breadwinner building my career, for both of us. And he can be the supportive, fun nurturer, for both of us. And together, we can create this home that’s a little chaotic and a little bit of a tug-of-war, but ultimately, filled with love.

  And that’s enough.

  Because it’s a strange word: enough. How can we ever know what is enough except in retrospect? And yet, every day, we make dozens of choices estimating enough. We pour the coffee only three-quarters of the way in the mug and predict that it will be enough, or we leave a half hour before we need to be somewhere, guessing that it will be enough time. And sometimes it isn’t enough. And those times, you work through it. You apologize. You accept that enough is a bit of a give and take.

  I can feel everything I was about to say leave my mind and the thing that really needs to be said burst out of my mouth like a balloon popping. “I’m sorry.”

  There is another long pause, a long-distance pause. “Really, it’s okay. I could get a substitute if you need me out there.”

  “Oh,” I say, my heart deflating as I realize that I’m going to have to repeat my apology again. I am so tired that it feels as if I’ve run the New York Marathon while carrying Beckett. My shoulders ache as I stretch my back by wrapping my arms around myself in a hug, maybe the only hug I’ll get for a while. “No, we’ll be okay. But it would be great if you’d pick us up on Friday.”
/>   “I’ll get a Zipcar,” Ethan promises.

  MY MOTHER COMES home, bandaged and sore, and plants herself back on the sofa like a cranky plant who has been plucked accidentally from her dirt plot and now the careless gardener has tucked her roots back in and is hoping she’ll grow again. To the point, my father fusses around her, draping the afghan around her body and adjusting the pillows until she snarls, “Please. Stop.”

  The Girls come to see her; in-the-throes-of-divorce Betty and my-son-is-almost-married Maureen and quiet Carol, who always seems to be trailing a little behind the group. She even chooses the chair farthest from my mother, who is the sun in the room they all rotate around. I can tell that she loves it; despite the fussing she loves the attention.

  When my mother’s friends are gone, a quiet space opens up, occupied by only my mother and father, who are sitting together on the sofa, staring at each other without saying anything. I duck into the kitchen to give them privacy while Beckett naps. I’m turning off the stove when my father walks by, shuffling through the mail. “Dues hike again at the club,” he comments to fill the air with sound. It feels like a ghost house filled with ghost sounds, echoes from past mornings of my mother bustling around the kitchen or my father searching for his car keys.

  When I look in the living room again, my mother is thumbing through one of her magazines that came with the post, a glossy tome filled with pictures of other people’s pretty homes. Her eyes flick away from the page as I walk in the room, almost as if she senses that I need advice. A mother’s intuition.

  “Now that my problem is taken care of,” my mother begins, looking down at her magazine again. The page shows a gorgeous beachfront ranch house with doors opening up toward the ocean. “Why don’t you tell me what’s been eating at you since you got off the plane.”

  “Your problem is taken care of?” I say.