Eleanor Henderson - Everything I Have Is Yours

I am trying to get Aaron to sleep.

Its close to midnight on a Sunday, the bedroom dark but for one low lamp, the air purifier purring. He is struggling, crying out, his eyes squeezed shut in pain. I rub his back. I kiss his forehead. Its okay, I whisper. Youre okay. Across the bridge of his nose are the freshly flecked scars on his swollen sinuses, like the scratches sleeping babies inflict on themselves with their tiny fingernails. How many nights have I spent rocking babies to sleep, how many hours waiting for the weight of their limbs to fall with the gravity of the dead, then laying them in the crib, sliding my hands out from under their diapered bottoms one knuckle at a time, praying please please please?

But Aaron is not a baby. He is my husband.

Two hours ago, he was in our older sons room, putting him to bed for the second time. Id taken the boys to the apple harvest festivalAaron hadnt been in shape to gowhere they had encountered a clown in the funhouse. Later, the memory of the clown kept Nico awake, and Aaron got him to calm down by telling him about the painting of a clown that had hung in his house growing up, how much it had scared him, and how messed up it was that his parents had refused to take it down. Before long Nico was laughing, and then sleeping, and then the two of us stood as we do most nights in his doorway and said to each other, What a beautiful boy, and then stood in Henrys doorway and said it again.

Now we are in our room. Its the first night of October in Ithaca, New York. Last week it was in the nineties, and the portable fans are still gathered around the room, blank faced, needy, bearded in dust. Its a narrow room, once a sleeping porch, still poorly insulated, and any day now we will need to turn on the heat. Im in my flannel pajamas, wrapped in the bare, slightly sour-smelling duvet, but Aaron is in his underwear, no blanket, no sheet, because even though hes cold, the contact hurts his skin.

Did you take your medicine?

He plunges his hand into the little basket of orange pill bottles arranged on his nightstand. He knows by size and shape which are the right ones. He rattles out two Seroquel, then two Aleve PMsfour years ago, he developed D-grade esophageal ulcers after a steady diet of Ibuprofenand I help him find the baby-blue pills that have spilled onto the bed. His hands are shaking. He chases them with a swig of Smirnoff Ice. I try not to worry what the sugar will do to his teeth.

Four months ago, hed been sober for four years. Then he decided that the pain of being inside his own skin was worse than the pain of addictionand was he really an alcoholic anyway? My sister-in-law was making mojitos that night. She offered Aaron one and he said yes, and we all laughed about her bad influence, the powers of her mixology, but only Aaron and I understood what we were toasting, what we were risking.

Lets take off your glasses, honey. I slide them off his blistered nose and find a place for them beside the bed. There is not a spare inch of space on the nightstanda tissue box, nasal spray, a drawing pad, three alarm clocks, books upon books, a pencil cup Henry made for him from a frozen orange juice carton in kindergarten last year.

His body is seizing up, each wince piling on the last. I dont know whats happening, he cries.

I rest my head against his armpit, where I dont think Ill hurt him. Shhhhh. I dont know, either. He is having a fit. It is kind of familiar, though I cant be sure. Is it his skin? Or something deeper? The last two days, his body has issued a red, angry rash, one that evades language as fiercely as it evades diagnosis. (Although what is diagnosis but language?) On his left arm, above the bird tattoo and below the eyeball-sun tattoo, across the tattoo that says ELEANOR, its more like a third-degree sunburn. The one on his chest and ribsa new place, in recent monthsmight be called a rash. (Doesnt it look like a penis and balls? he asked me earlier today.) The one on his right shinthe one I am very careful not to rub up against in our bedmight best be called a boil. It is faintly blue, the color of the blood inside, though the skin around it is the electric pink of infected skin. Both ankles are slightly swollen. It is bad, though not emergency-room bad. Not even urgent-care bad. At least I dont think so.

Should I have taken him to urgent care? Despite the old fights about it, our tired cycle of neglect and blame? We wouldnt need to go to urgent care if youd called your doctor for a refill! He needed antibiotics three days ago, but he refused them. TomorrowMondayhe has promised, he will call his dermatologist for antibiotics, andwhile hes at it!his psychiatrist, for a refill on the Maxalt. Will she prescribe migraine medicine? Its related to the mind, right? He will even call his gastroenterologist, he says, for that long-overdue checkup on those ulcers.

I will not call any of these doctors. It was part of our pact four years ago, after I got into Al-Anon, after I learned the word codependency, pronounced it like a woman with a new language in her mouth.

Now we have new language, every year a little more. The latest is schizophrenia, at least according to the latest psychiatrist. Its a diagnosis hes trying on, a jacket that still needs tailoring. Earlier tonight, from the schizophrenia handbook that hides in the toothpaste drawer, he read me two new words: executive function. I tapped the letters into my phone and read him the definition: a set of mental skills that help you get things done. Like? Managing time. Paying attention. We looked at each other, eyes wide. It has been a half joke among us for years, that Aaron is allergic to finishing things. The dishes. A song. A career. Starting things also! The middle part? Hes good at that.

I think of these words as Im rubbing his back in our bed. Codependency. Executive function. Does my husband have schizophrenia, and if so, is it a spousal crime to fail to call the doctor on behalf of your executively dysfunctional husband? Is it like expecting your baby to pick up the phone and dial?

Hes on his stomach now. Every few seconds, his legs swing back and then he brings them down hard, one at a time, thumping the mattress.

Youre kicking the bed again, I say helpfully.

Sorry. I know that sucks. He is almost laughing, as anyone might when their body is out of their controla shaking hand, a foot asleep. I cant help it.

He has a long, broad surfboard of a back. A beautiful back. When he was a teenager and surfing all day under the Florida sun, his body tanned and lean, you could countIve seen picturesthe marbles of his spine. Now it is the back of a forty-five-year-old man who still lifts weights every day, despite the pain. Fuck it. When I am lying beside him in bed, it is a dune, a whole beach between us. It is the only plane of his body that is not covered in tattoos, or sores.