by Mary Adkins
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 4:15 PM
subject:
re: Apology
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I’m sorry.
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 4:20 PM
subject:
re: Apology
* * *
i just miss her dude
u have no idea
Monday, November 2
Monday, November 2
TherapistAwayNetwork™
Patient Name: Jade Renee Massey
AUTO PROMPT: What do you have to gain?
Well, TAN, now that Dr. Z. has announced his retirement, it’s just you and me.
My mother has kicked me out. She doesn’t want me to come back down for at least six weeks. I have a feeling she only said six weeks because of Christmas, or it would have been longer. She’s sick of me apparently, and has been for a while. The reason she looked catatonic? Was me. I was wearing her out.
I suppose I should feel grateful that she’s back to her old “self” again, but what I’m really thinking about is how it is that everyone but me is moving on. My mom. Smith.
I don’t get it. What magic reliever of pain has touched them but not me?
The last time Iris went to the hospital, my mom and I went, too. It was so clear it was the end. I hadn’t realized how clear it becomes at some point.
My mom kept herself busy, alternately weeping in the corner while typing on her phone and scolding the nurses for various things she objected to in the room.
Then Iris said, “Leave.” She mumbled, but we both heard it.
The nurse heard it, too. She had been changing Iris’s pillow, which had become soaked with sweat and saliva and whatever other mysterious, viscous fluids the body releases as it goes.
The nurse gestured for my mom and me to follow her into the hall.
“It’s hurtful, I know, when they do that,” she said to my mom in a hushed tone. “They often lash out at someone near the end. It isn’t personal.” Then she told us stories of patients cursing at husbands, fathers, and mothers, of the most cruel accusations and name-calling flying from the mouths of people with one foot in and one foot out of this world. This seemed to make my mother feel worse, and not long after, she returned to her hotel for the night.
A little after 5:00 a.m., Iris died. I had dozed in stints and was caffeinated into that fuzzy, limbo state, teetering on the brink between sleep and wakefulness, unable to relax into either. She had been making these sounds—these sort of monstrous gasps for air, almost like coughs, but not.
I googled them. The first hit contained the words “death rattle.”
Google was right. When it finally stopped, only a couple of minutes passed before she was gone.
“Bye, Jade,” she said, like she was just falling asleep, and I was leaving for work, and we’d meet back up in the evening.
“Bye, Iris,” I said.
I miss her as much today as I did the day after she died. No ounce of it has subsided. Time has done nothing to make it better. These months might as well have never even happened.
What do I have to gain? Anything to make it better than this. But unlike everyone else, I have no idea how.
* * *
Dear JADE,
Thank you for your submission to TAN™. We will make sure your provider receives this message.
“Gain” is a noun as well as a verb. As English speakers, we tend to rely excessively on nouns to convey meaning, and in doing so, restrict ourselves to ideas that already exist, rather than opening our imaginations to ideas that have yet to be named.
What if today you focused on “gain” as a verb, and allowed the noun that follows to remain inchoate, finding comfort in the mindset of gaining without knowing exactly what it is that lies before you? Perhaps—just perhaps—it is so large, you can’t possibly begin to know what it’s called yet.
TAN™ is not to be used in case of emergency. If you are in crisis, call 9-1-1.
Sincerely,
Your friends at TAN
http://dyingtoblog.com/irismassey
UNPUBLISHED DRAFT
Last opened October 30, at 9:20 AM
The first morning of the incubator, I was late and slid into a row near the back next to a blond man in dark-rimmed glasses. Like me, he appeared a little older than most of the early-twenties crowd. At the front of the auditorium, someone was giving a speech about how we, as entrepreneurs, were the pioneers thrusting society forward in a bunch of ways that ended in -ly: technically, economically, socially.
I was thinking I just want to start a bakery when my neighbor leaned over and whispered, “I’m in PR.” Then he paused before adding, “Thrusting us forward.”
We spent the next five days quietly mocking the program and skipping sessions to drink at a local bar while getting to know each other. It wasn’t romantic—I was with Daniel, and Smith had only just gotten divorced—but it was intimate. We were the bad kids at incubator camp. I’m sure for me, the rebel behavior was at least in part a defense mechanism. It was clear from day one that I wasn’t ready to open a bakery. Market research, business plans—the terms thrown around made me want to take a nap. Our incubator taught me that I needed a lot more incubating.
It only made sense that I’d go to work for him. I needed a job for the time being, and Smith needed an assistant. We toasted glasses of Guinness and Stella. And that night I lay in my bed at the Hyatt and felt a sense of fate at work, as if this is what was meant to be, silly as I knew it sounded: another job for which I was overqualified, in a random field. But it wasn’t the field that pulled me in. It was Smith.
He made it so easy to feel seen and heard. He listened. He laughed at my jokes. He seemed hungry for what I might say next.
Was I attracted to him? I asked myself this question hundreds of times over the years. Only a handful of them was the answer yes. The rest of the time, it felt past that . . . less urgent than romance.
Of course I was a little bit in love with him. He calls wine openers “chickens” with a straight face and can recite the US presidents in order if he sings them. He has never once treated me like I’m anything less than the smartest person in the room.
But only once did it really blossom into something like a crush, an actual infatuation. A little over a year after I began working for him, a couple of months after my thirtieth birthday, Daniel and I were engaged. I faced that spring that I had feelings for Smith, strong enough that I had to do something about them. What I wound up doing was making a mess by leaving Daniel the day of our wedding.
There were good reasons we shouldn’t marry, but what had triggered my willingness to face them finally? From where did that strength surge? From wanting someone else. Feelings for Smith nudged me into action, and yet I wasn’t ready to pursue those, either (part of me still thought Daniel and I might make it in the end). And thus, I would also need to quit my job.
The Monday after my failed wedding, I knew Smith wouldn’t be at the office because he was in Nashville. I drafted my resignation letter several times before I realized that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay for the same reason I had needed to quit, and the same reason I’d taken the job in the first place. I liked being around him.
Soon it passed back into what we had originally, what Smith and I were destined to amount to: friends. The fire wasn’t there—not enough of one. It was more like a pilot light, a perpetual option neither of us was ever willing to ignite. Our hesitation wasn’t out of fear, I don’t think. It was an understanding that we didn’t need more between us.
What we had—people didn’t understand it. Maybe we didn’t even understand it. But apart from the critical flash when I needed it to be more, it was platoni
c, and real, and it fed me.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Mon, Nov 2 at 5:01 PM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
Carl, she was not in love with me.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Mon, Nov 2 at 5:09 PM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
You caved!
Aren’t you glad you read it? Don’t you feel warm inside? Might as well read the other drafts while you’re in there! ;) (Warning: some of them are really loopy. Was she often high at work?)
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Mon, Nov 2 at 5:11 PM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
No, I’m not glad. I feel like a creep for reading it behind her back.
http://dyingtoblog.com/irismassey
March 30, 5:39 PM
Chemo makes your hair fall out slower and faster than you want. It took mine a month to start, but once it did, it released itself in clods, each fistful a reminder that I wasn’t just poisoning the cancer. I was poisoning myself.
I took the plunge and shaved my head one afternoon in early February. A blizzard had just come through New York. Gray slush piles clogged the street corners, and the wind felt like it had mass. As I dove into it, my hair blew into my mouth and eyes, and I was annoyed until I realized it would be the last time that ever happened.
I had bought several scarves—a Cubist one from the MOMA store, another with daffodils, and one with Sylvia Plath’s poem “Cinderella” printed on it in dark loopy cursive: Amid the hectic music and cocktail talk, she hears the caustic ticking of the clock.
I took them all to my hair guy Tim and laid them out like precious vintage garments, or wares for sale.
He grabbed the Plath scarf.
“You will be stunning,” he said, which was a sweet lie. Then we washed my hair one last time and he wrapped a towel around it and brought out a bottle of Veuve. We toasted in silence, and I could tell he wished he’d thought of what to say.
I’ve been going to his little studio on St. Mark’s for eight years. It only has four chairs, and as I took a seat in one, he locked the door and drew the curtains, which only closed partway. Every now and then a passerby would peek through the glass storefront, but otherwise, it was just the two of us and the music from the coffee shop next door. The coffee shop and the salon shared a wall.
We’re going hoppin’. We’re going hoppin’ today.
Where things are poppin’ the Philadelphia way.
He turned the chair to face away from the mirror so I couldn’t watch. But in one of those big metallic holiday balls still hanging from his ceiling, my warped reflection nonetheless made clear what was happening, and I consciously chose not to look at it. He pulled the razor over my skull in measured strips, and I kept my eyes on the gray wall that was also a coffee shop wall, as we played Remember When.
Remember when you failed your driver’s test twice at the age of twenty-five?
Remember when you showed up covered in paint? (I’d tripped into a paint can while passing by a construction site.)
Remember the party clown who showed up at your apartment by mistake and then asked you out?
When he was almost done, I stopped him. Above my head the razor buzzed, chopping the air where all my Remember Whens were bobbing, tearing them apart.
Tim placed his big callused hands on my head like he was a priest blessing me. They felt rough and warm on my fresh scalp. He slid a sharp edge over the skin around my left ear, the last final bit of my future, and then he took the poem scarf and wrapped it around and tied it. He turned the chair to the mirror, and I saw myself without hair. It wasn’t how I thought I’d look, but it wasn’t worse, either.
He raised his glass again. I lifted mine for his benefit and then brought it back down. I couldn’t.
“To midnight!” He tapped his glass to the scarf on my head. “When the party gets good.”
COMMENTS (4):
BigJessBarbs: Tell me about it. I lost my hair in two hours. And I mean ALL of it.
BonnieD: Did you see Ardvark died?
IrisMassey: Oh no.
BonnieD: Yes. ☹
Friday, November 6
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Nov 6 at 4:14 PM
subject:
An honest chat
* * *
Boss,
I hope the shoot with ZF is going well!
Here are a couple of important thoughts before I take off for the weekend.
First, the good news. As of last week, Phil is off to an ashram for six weeks, which will allow me more time/emotional energy to dedicate exclusively to our work.
Next, an attempt at radical transparency. While I’m thrilled that we signed Zahara Ferringbottom and very excited about her despite the fact that she is literally insane, I have concerns about the status of BRANDISH (how does that not work?). I meant to tell you this last night, but I lost my nerve. Rosita called yesterday afternoon and said she is going with another firm. She didn’t want to wait for a call back to tell you herself, and she wouldn’t say which one. She says it is one that doesn’t “make [her] the laughingstock of the New York dentistry community and then charge [her] for it.”
(Sidenote: I know you said not to, but I did end up responding to Ronald Glass the cult leader just to get him off our backs. It was a mistake. Now he keeps inviting me to his center for a free mental health–replenishing treatment involving slugs. I think we made the right call in declining to take him on.)
But without Phil, our firm just feels a bit . . . like losers. We are a loser firm.
I am trying to remain optimistic that we can recover. After Belle declined to publish Jade’s essay, it hit me—what if we submit something inspired by the other Massey sister? Thus, I am authoring the listicle I previously suggested, inspired by Iris. The good news is that it poses no copyright issues due to the fact that it’s only inspired by her and not by-by her.
More soon.
CVS
PS—This afternoon I took the liberty of installing my high school friend Gus Martin’s app OOF! (beta) on our computers. It does a bunch of things that don’t matter, but the reason I downloaded it is that it slightly delays emails after you press send, so that you have a couple of minutes to recall them if necessary. (His motto is “Rescind to Resend”—cute, I think!) I figure it would have been useful (read: lifesaver) back in September when I accidently dispatched *the* email that shall not ever be mentioned again. So far I like OOF! Maybe we can give him a blurb for his splash page?
Sent with OOF!™ beta
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
IRIS
date:
Fri, Nov 6 at 7:50 PM
subject:
no subject
* * *
I can’t stop thinking about that spring three years ago. Did I suspect how you felt?
I think I could sense it. I also think I sensed your reluctance about it. You were engaged. You’d chosen someone else. I wasn’t going to put you in a position to question that, if that was what you wanted. I was glad you were happy. I thought you were happy.
With Richie, though, you actually were. You two had the thing.
You and I—could we have had it?
I didn’t let myself fall in love with you . . . I didn’t dare.
He’s right. I don�
�t get it. I never got there. I was a coward.
* * *
from:
Your Steps Tracker
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Nov 6 at 8:15 PM
subject:
You’ve logged 60 Miles in 5 days!
* * *
Congratulations! You set a record this week of 60 miles in 5 days!
Did you know that walking can reduce the risk of heart disease?
Keep steppin’!
Your steps are logged automatically. You are receiving this email as a T-Mobile customer.
Friday, November 6
TherapistAwayNetwork™
Patient Name: Jade Renee Massey
AUTO PROMPT: What gives you hope?
I’ve been walking a lot.
And thinking.
I am wondering if Smith may have been on to something. Maybe the blog freaks me out because of what it says about me. In any case, I’ve started reading it again.
This morning I got to the part about how I made her feel invisible. That was a doozy.
But I didn’t have to read it to know it.
