Amy Silverstein - Sick Girl

Sick Girl

Authors Note

Out of respect for the privacy of people who appear in this book, I have changed their names and some physical descriptions.

Amy Silverstein

Copyright 2007 by Amy Silverstein

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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4876-7

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For Scott and Casey
my air

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the why for his existence and will be able to bear almost any how.

Viktor Frankl

How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a womans laugh.

H. L. Mencken

Sick Girl

AS I STAND HERE COUNTING OUT THREE PAIRS OF UNDERWEAR AND four pairs of socks, I think of the little boy who will reach into his suitcase and find them waiting there for himas if by magicalong with everything else he might need this weekend. I thank the slow passage of time for keeping this son of mine young enough still to see the world as a seamless sleight of hand: a quarter behind the ear, the tooth fairys dollar, a perfectly packed bag that appears out of nowhere. He doesnt yet need to know the trickery behind the wonders that come his way. He doesnt need to know how hard it is for his mother to stand here packing this bag: how tired she feels. How sick.

Today I create an illusion with a suitcase. On another day, perhaps, I might draw upon my famous French toast. I am the mother behind the curtain, after all. My son is my constant audience.

And thank goodness my hand is still quicker than his eye. Ill be sure to pack a book and a deck of cards, grape-scented kids shampoo and a rain ponchojust in case. I will think of everything so this ten-year-old boy will be free to think of nothing: not my life expectancy, which ran out eight years ago, nor the handful of biggun medicines I took this morning that forced me to the floor, a mommy-ball of nausea curled up on a damp bathroom rug. No, there will not be any trace of my heart transplant in the suitcase I pack for my son today.

Im one hell of a great magician.

Hey, I think Ill toss in this mini-checkers set for the long plane ride.

Almost ready to zip the bag closed now, I fold his favorite football jersey with care, running my hands over the mesh material he calls my holy shirt, and place it neatly on top of the pile. My son is leaving for the Super Bowl with his dad tomorrow morning. Lucky kid.

I imagine them at the game sitting side by side, one pair of high knees next to one pair of low. Father and son in caps with matching football team logos, gazing ahead, rapt. The boy looks up at the man and smiles, sunlight glinting across soft bangs. The father smiles back. A memory is created.

And while this is happening there will be a woman hundreds of miles away who cant catch her breath; she will not have taken her medicine while they were away and now her body has turned against itself, just as she knew it would. Her limbs feel impossibly heavy and there is no use trying to hold them up any longer; she must give in. This mother, this wifethis reluctant survivorhas made sure to leave herself no other choice this time; there will be no saving her. She can lie down on her bedroom floor in contented resignation.

Now I dont have to try anymore, she will whisper into the carpeting beneath her cheek. I dont have to be a goddamn miracle.

She will close her eyes for the last timein peace.

There will be no loving greeting for the returning football fans. There will be a death.

Can I really do this?

Maybe.

I put my sons toothbrush in a plastic bag and place it in the small suitcase with the rest of his things. My feet carry me through the house now, but I feel I am floating, lost in thought. I pass by the family room, turn back, and peek inside the door; Scott still has not gotten up from the couch. He dropped himself there about an hour ago after driving home from our appointment at the hospital. The TV is off. There is no newspaper on his lap. He hasnt even called the office to find out if anything important went on in his absence this afternoon. Seeing him like this, I feel my stomach tighten with guilt and remorse: The man I love most in the world has chosen to sit alone in tormented silence, and here I stand ten feet away from him with no idea how to break it.

I am the cause of it.

Lingering at the doorway, I watch him for a moment and then continue down the hall, furious with my heart-transplant body for coming between us again. Seventeen years of circles around my health problems have not given us any sense of resolution. The illnesses continue to come in waves, and we find ourselves caught up in an undertow that pulls us both into a fight for my life that feels more and more compulsory as time goes by. And while Scott continues to fight on, unhesitant, for me there is no longer anything natural or automatic about it. Staying alive in this body has become an obligation for me that continually raises the question of why. Why continue in a perpetual lifesaving marathon when there is no possibility of a happy, healthy end?

The answer to this question appears to me only in blurry glimpses from time to timemostly in the calm short breaks between illnesses. Standing in my kitchen today, with my fingers curled around the handle of my sons Super Bowl suitcase, I am keenly aware that some people might say I hold the clear answer right here, right now, in the grip of my hand: the why for my continued fight for life could beshould bemy son.

Or my husbandthe man who is, Im certain, the real cause behind the apparent miracle of my continued survival. The constancy of his love and the effects it has had on my longevity should be enough to keep me fighting forever. Thats what people expect from me, I know. Which is why what happened at the doctors today is such a sorry surprise: that I would hesitate before reaching out for another buoyant, gleaming white lifesaver tossed into the perilous riptide of my heart-transplant life.

That I might not reach for it at all.

Oh, Id have to be a crazy person to do that. Or awfully selfish. Id be called an ungrateful organ recipient. A bad patient. A bad mother.

A hurtful, unloving wife.

I place the suitcase by the kitchen door and take a seat on the wooden bench beside it. With my hands cradling the top of my head, I pull my neck forward and let my face come down until I am looking at the floor between my feet. I notice Scotts worn-out pair of running sneakers peeking out from under the bench. Lined up just next to them is my own pair, even more battered. Seeing the evidence of our morning jogs aligned so closely this way, it strikes me for the first time how odd it is that Scott and I never go running together. From time to time he has asked me to join him, but I always say no, thanks, I like to do my own thing, which is only partly a lie. I certainly do my own thing, but there is nothing about it that I like. Running miles with this transplanted heart is hell for me.