This Kind of Man, page 14
He could have talked about group therapy, the 12 Steps, the hollow eyes of the hopeless and the barren eyes of the hopeful; the frightening eyes of the converted. The deadened eyes of a father who has searched abandoned buildings, smelling smoke and shit and walking through literal broken glass while looking for his son. Thinking things like: I changed his diapers and saw his baby private parts and thought suitable fatherly thoughts. Such as: one day he too will be a father, and the cycle will go on.
A whole different cycle has set in, and he long ago discarded dreams about being a grandfather. That salmon set sail, got snatched midair, and digested by an indifferent grizzly. And there it is, right now, his fantasy of the future a fetid pile of bear shit, all over his shoes and almost slippery enough for him to fall inside of, forever...
Hey, I’m you, he thinks. He’d gotten lost inside himself, again. He’s become an expert at this routine, equal parts necessity and self-fulfilling prophecy.
Okay. I’m here. What am I doing?
This is what he’ll look like, he thinks.
No, that’s a different thought. A new one. Did he actually just envision what his son would look like, dead? Yes, but he’s done that before; how could he not, after what they’ve endured? No, he just envisioned that he was dead, with the accompanying thought: what’s taking so long? For him to be at peace? For us to stop ruining ourselves with worry and fear and anger? For us to move on, whatever that entailed?
Guilt unlike any he’s ever felt, or even imagined, soaks him like an impossibly dry sweat as he looks down at his son, eyes shut and off in never-never land (or perhaps maybe-maybe land, where there’s still some possibility of getting to wherever he’s always trying—and failing—to arrive). He’s breathing, slow and calm, the equipment and high-power meds doing most of the work, all this apparatus going above and beyond, enabling these fallible specimens to survive, all these frail patients with unique personalities and life stories that couldn’t be more dissimilar except for the fact that they were identical.
Our son’s in good hands, he’s thought about ten million times before, standing in the same spot, looking at the same sight, thinking the same thoughts.
Hate the sin, not the sinner.
Like the church says.
I don’t hate you, I hate your addiction.
Like they teach you to say, in therapy.
I don’t hate myself.
Like he’s been saying, more often and with less conviction.
This is the part of the story where the hero catches his breath, no longer able to recognize these thoughts and the person thinking them. But he can’t, and won’t, because he has no problem whatsoever reconciling these thoughts, the person having them, or what, exactly, took so long for him to admit these things to himself.
Water, he needs water.
To take an endless swig and keep drinking until he pisses out all these thoughts and questions and mostly the regret in his gut.
Having a hangover never helps. Having a hangover in a hospital is even worse. Having a hangover in a hospital, because your son is laid out after another overdose, is getting to unduly complicated levels of self-loathing.
But last night he’d given up, for a few hours. For a few hours, he focused entirely on himself and what he wanted. What he needed.
He got drunk. His wife got angry.
It’s been the consistent and predictable pattern, at least lately and with increasing frequency: One thing follows the other: he drinks; he gets drunk; his wife gets angry.
His wife, never a big drinker, had, somewhere along the way, cut out alcohol entirely. That made things occasionally uncomfortable for him, but she was an adult, and he was an adult, and so on. But after the fourth or fifth crisis she suggested he stop drinking. After the sixth or seventh it was more like a demand. And whether it was stupid male pride, or the fact that he needed to determine for himself the things he could control and take responsibility for, or that, at the end of the day, he didn’t especially want to stop drinking, and at the end of the night, he really needed that drink, it became a growing wedge between them.
It had escalated to the point where he’d wait for his wife to use the can or take a shower so he could grab a quick belt—always pulling out the ice cubes like a lab technician handling fissionable materials, trying to avoid the telltale clink. She’d always know, whether from seeing that same highball he’d forget to put in the dishwasher five minutes or five hours later, or because his mood noticeably changed after the first few sips, or just the ways wives know everything every husband does, particularly the things he tries to hide. Another door opened when he just stopped pretending, and now she simply frowns every time he opens the freezer.
His wife is back.
Eventually, a husband realizes, the only thing worse than never being able to read your wife, is always being able to read her. Always knowing when she’s disappointed, which becomes easier when she seems to be disappointed all the time.
(More guilt: His son’s crisis had been the best thing for his sex life. At first, anyway. Nothing quite like an ordeal to pull a family together—or the opposite, so when you acknowledge it’s the former, and not the latter, it’s emboldening, contagious, a turn on. There was the stress-relieving sex, the we’re-in-this-together sex, the you’re-the-only-thing-I-can-rely-on sex, and the good old-fashioned fucking, the kind most couples forget about and either can’t recall or don’t need after marriage and certainly not after kids. But the resolve, or peace, or whatever it was, that resulted from this unexpected and welcome closeness was like the sex itself: necessarily short-lived and increasingly difficult to recreate.
Eventually, they recognized theirs was a scenario that neither love nor money, or experts and out-patient institutions could adequately address. It was going to be a combination of tenacity, luck, and faith if there was any chance whatsoever. And worse, no matter what they did, and no matter how tenacious, lucky, and filled with faith they were, it was, ultimately and entirely, up to their son to determine whether things would ever improve.)
“What did I miss?” she asks, and he is genuinely unsure if she’s being serious.
“Are you serious?” he asks.
“Okay, so I’m assuming the doctor didn’t drop by?”
No, he says, to himself. Not in the five minutes you were away.
He shakes his head.
“My turn for the bathroom,” he says.
This is the part of the story where he ducks out to find the chapel, to gather his thoughts. To prostrate himself and ask, again, for mercy. For help. For anything other than what’s presently on offer. But he knows he won’t do that; he can’t do it.
It’s another door he’s already passed through. In order for any intervention that’s not of this earth to occur, you must have faith. You have to keep the faith (what else can you do? Just accept that there’s nothing?). The problem is that’s a revolving door that only goes in one direction. The good news: you are free, not reliant on the absurdity of cults and fantasies—you are, in short, no longer a child. The bad news: you’re completely on your own.
Father, please hear my confession...
Bullshit.
He’d actually gotten up and walked out. What the fuck did he have to confess about? For being a straight-A student and getting a scholarship? For being a good husband who never strayed, or felt particularly tempted to do so? For ascending the corporate ladder, but not stabbing any colleagues in the back, or screwing over any subordinates to get where he was always headed? For paying all his taxes, and coaching little league, and mostly staying off the sauce on weeknights, and never blacking out on weekends except on special (e.g., awful) occasions? For doing homework with his son and watching every god-awful Disney movie ever made? For being That Dad during slumber parties, making popcorn and cleaning up the spilled soda and not getting angry when the boys made too much noise after bedtime? For wishing with every fiber of his being that his son would turn out okay? For actively praying that he could take the proverbial bullet if it meant sparing his son the fate he seemed to be irretrievably securing? For not once blaming God, for never one time even bringing Him into it, and not because of fear but because of a genuine sort of humility that’s the essence of fealty—the acceptance that we’re flawed vessels, etc., and that we had all the tools at our disposal, etc., and our free will is our biggest blessing unless we blow it, etc., and God can’t be expected to create everything, manage everything, and look after each life because what are parents for, etc.
Eventually, inevitably, he’d quit the church.
Only because it quit me first, he’d think anytime that Catholic guilt raised its self-righteous head.
He used to envy the hard cases, the stories of martyrs, especially Holocaust victims who, even as they suffered the worst at the hand of their brothers (had anything really changed from Cain and Abel?), still declared their mercy and forgiveness? Now he hated them. What weaklings, what cowards. What kind of character do you have if you’re being starved to death for no reason and you still die with love in your heart?
A drink.
What he needs now is a strong drink. Of course, they don’t serve booze in hospitals, and for entirely good reasons. Except for, where else on earth are people in more desperate and justifiable need of a stiff cocktail?
When a situation like his becomes unmanageable, you either give up or you get professional. He didn’t have a flask because he’d put away childish things, and even though that was the groomsman’s gift at every wedding he attended in his ‘20s, he had no use for them. Only men not old enough to use flasks buy them, and anyone old enough to use one is too embarrassed to do so. So, he’d actually bought one; the one he carries now, the one out in his car.
He steps out into the hallway, past the white coats scurrying here and there, somehow frowning and smiling at the same time, as only doctors can do, and finds the elevator. On the way down to the lobby it stops, and an older man gets in (a grandfather, he decides). They exchange a quick, cordial nod. It’s a gesture that stops short of being formal, or friendly, but it’s considerably different than the look strangers customarily give one another in a public place. The difference, to anyone else, would be all but imperceptible: this exchange of empathy, this implicit solidarity. It’s a communication given and received exclusively in hospitals, where no one entering or exiting is free from the peculiar burden compelling their visit.
Good luck with whatever you’re headed toward, they say to each other, silently.
Outside, at last. He can feel the sun, that unblinking life force. He looks up, cautiously: You learn not to stare into the sun—it’s dangerous and even worse, it’s a cliché. What is the sun going to tell you, even if cared to acknowledge us, even if it could? It’s enough that it’s there. He’s grateful, at least, for the clarity of its glow, the fact that it does its dirty work during the day, making it possible (impossibly) to light up the other stars, operating under cover of darkness. These stars don’t say anything, and they don’t need to; at least we can see them, he thinks. They are there, no matter where they came from, just like we’re here, no matter where we’re going. They were there before we got here, and they’ll be there long after we’re gone. Humbling, maybe even horrifying, but there is nothing we—or they—can do about it. It might not be enough, but somehow it has to be.
If all else fails, enough people come to understand—and possibly take comfort in the fact that—you can always talk to yourself. You know who you are and you will always hear your voice, even when you don’t want to. Even (or especially) when you’re not sure what you can tell yourself; when you’re not at all certain what you can, or should, or may say.
“Here’s the thing about our ape cousins,” he’d said, the night before, dropping the cherry into his Old-Fashioned. “They don’t have performance reviews. They don’t worry when they go gray. No mid-life crises to be concerned about!”
He took a big sip.
“They don’t covet their neighbor’s wife. Or what the hell do I know? Maybe they do!”
His wife glared.
“But you know what, they also can’t enjoy a single barrel bourbon!”
His wife, having used up her limited supply of bemusement, patience, and anger, allowed him to continue along like this for as long as she could tolerate it, and when he finally stopped talking (so he could focus on pouring another drink), she looked at him meaningfully and asked the same question they’d each had asked each other, themselves, and potential higher powers, so many times before.
“What’s going to happen?”
In his mind, he’d already auditioned several possible replies.
Everything will be better this time.
No.
Everything will be worse.
No.
Everything will be the same.
No.
I have no idea.
No.
I’m beginning not to care.
No.
Is it okay if I don’t care for a few hours?
No.
I need another drink.
Okay.
“I’m going to have another drink,” he said.
His wife glared.
“I mean I’m just focused on things I can control,” he began, but she was already walking away. Which was okay: There was another Old-Fashioned that required his attention.
This is the part of the story where, if he could, he’d erase so many similar conversations, so much of what he’s said, especially lately. Like magic, like in the bad old days when you typed up your reports and had to use white-out to revise certain words, or lines, or omit entire passages—nothing digital and no way to easily improve or change. But life is impossible to erase: you can’t unsay things you’ve said, undo things you’ve done, unthink things you’ve thought.
Big Macs for breakfast, he thinks, remembering another conversation he’d replace with harmless, or at least non-incriminating white noise, if he could.
“If this situation has convinced me of one thing,” he began, and the way his wife tensed up made him wish he wasn’t going where he’d already committed to going. (Too late, if you think it, it’s already a sin!)
“I’m going to eat more red meat. Drink more red wine. I’m never eating kale again, and fuck Brussels sprouts!”
His wife looked at him a way she never had. With sadness.
“Because you want to get cancer,” she said.
“What’s the difference? We spend our whole lives running in fear. That lightning is either going to strike you or it isn’t.”
“Not if you stay inside,” his wife said.
“But who wants to stay inside all the time? That’s my whole point.”
They notice, simultaneously, that his highball is empty.
“All I’m saying is, it’s going to get ugly for all of us, are we really not supposed to enjoy the ride?”
“Only someone who’s never seen cancer can say things like that.”
“Only someone who has never gotten over her mother dying of cancer would think that,” he said, and immediately regretted it. But screw it, he was in knee-deep a minute ago; now he was soaked. Time to start swimming, or drowning.
“Only someone who has spent nights in the hospital, watching a horrible illness take over someone’s entire system, yes,” she said as he refilled his glass, forgetting—or not needing—the fruit this time.
“Only someone who has tried to explain that yes, you need to be intubated again, and yes, once again they couldn’t remove the tumor, and yes, you’re only allowed to have ice chips even though you’re so thirsty you would drink toilet water,” she said.
“All I’m saying is that what’s the difference? You suffer then, sure. But we suffer now. Is it really worse, being doped up and feeling no pain, knowing exactly what you’re up against, instead of worrying and not enjoying the here-and-now because you’re so terrified of what might happen?”
“Only someone who’s never seen cancer can say things like that,” she said, getting up and leaving the room. Which was just as well, as he was ready for round four.
At the car, finally, and he feels like he’s back in high school, sneaking a drink from his dad’s liquor cabinet. The old take out some and refill it with water routine. Here he is, a grown ass man, looking around guiltily as he grabs a quick pull from the flask. The fire water, lighting him up, like a fried battery getting some juice; a stalled car receiving a few drops of gas. But still, the guilt; something else our ape cousins don’t experience—only humans (made in God’s image!) feel this intolerable guilt, even or especially when they shouldn’t, because, after all, we’re only human.
(More guilt: He was through with therapy.
Admission: therapy didn’t hurt. It may not have helped, but it didn’t hurt. He was mature enough, he was man enough, to concede that, mostly without equivocation.
He learned some interesting strategies. He learned, for instance, to breathe. Seriously, it’s so underrated. Especially when you’re having a panic attack. And it’s possibly the only thing that works after you’ve drank yourself to sleep (as usual) and woken up in the middle of the night (as always), agitated, confused, and gasping for breath, certain you’re about to die, or at least have a cardiac event. Unwilling to wake up your wife because you’re embarrassed. Afraid to wake up your wife because you’ve already done that too many times. Unable to wake up your wife because she’s sleeping in another room.
Once you’ve gotten your breathing under control you begin thinking with breath. One thought follows the next, a flow state broken down to its most primordial element. Like animals, unencumbered in the wild, never forgetting to breathe in and breathe out. They also never forget that something is constantly trying to kill and eat them; in that they are most unlike humans. Or most alike, depending on one’s level of cynicism.
