June flicks me with water. “I’m taking two months, whether or not I need it. I’ll get a bell.”
I strip June’s bed, remake it, give her a fat white prescription pill of ibuprofen, and tuck her in. I clean the bathroom, scrub the grout, throw the towels and bath mat in the machine. I spend an unknowable amount of time on my knees, crouched low, blotting at the blood in the hallway rug with a Tide stain stick and paper towels, crying so hard I feel wrung out.
She’s going to die.
I grind the paper towel into the carpet.
Get it out get it out get it out.
I can’t fight the roaring in my ears.
The familiar galloping in my chest.
chapter 45
I call Gina Lombardi’s office. They fit me in for an emergency session. I walk in meandering circles, to kill time. She’ll fix this, I tell myself as my fingernails bite small red smiles into my palms. The familiar whir of the noise machines in her waiting alcove is so soothing that I run my fingertips over the textured eggshell wallpaper, lulling myself into a trance.
I don’t know what I was thinking, canceling my last appointment. I force myself not to hug her when she opens the door.
“How have you been?” she asks, taking her place in the cream velvet club chair closest to the window. In a starched white blouse, open at the neck, and pleated woolen slacks, this is a woman who will tell me what to do. Her honeyed hair has been trimmed, no longer brushing her clasped hands when she leans toward me.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. It’s true enough. Enclosed as I am in her dome of good feeling, her force field of hardy mental health and cognitive clarity. “Did you know…，” I begin, trawling my memory for anything interesting, “that Germans have a word for when you’re longing for a place you’ve never even been?” I’d written it down in my notes from June’s encyclopedia when I snooped in her apartment that first time. It’s inconceivable how long ago that was. We were different people then.
“Fernweh,” she says. “The Germans have words for a lot of things. Are you experiencing that right now?”
I shake my head. “I had it when I lived in Texas. For here, for New York. I would picture the buildings and try to hear the sounds and focus until I felt like I could teleport myself here.”
“Do you feel more grounded now that you are here?”
I consider lying to her, but the vision of June’s swollen body in the scarlet bathtub stops me. I know how to be good. How not to test a God I don’t trust.
I shake my head. “It’s not at all what I thought it would be. Nothing is. No matter how much I love it, it doesn’t love me back. If I weren’t so broken, it would fit. I feel like I don’t have a home.” My voice breaks. Hearing myself say it strikes me as so sad, so pathetic, so lonesome that I burst into tears.
“I’m just wrong,” I tell her raggedly. “I have, like, fernweh for myself. Or something.”
I feel the weight of Gina’s gaze even as I avert her eyes.
“Fernweh is rooted in pain, or sickness and sadness,” says Gina. “It’s directly translated as ‘far pain’ or ‘far sickness’ as opposed to ‘heimweh’ or ‘homesickness.’ But it’s also longing for the unknown, since the familiar is stifling or challenging. The foreign can seem fantastic, exalted, since its possibilities are infinite. We have no data or experience around it. But once we arrive and the faraway is known and becomes familiar, then what? You’ve got all that energy and longing and possibility that no longer has anywhere to go. It’s got nowhere to be invested, nowhere to live. Have you ever considered that it isn’t a place that will improve your life? That there is no such thing as a geographic cure?”
“Jesus.” I cry harder, thinking about my sorry, extortionately expensive apartment and my perverse relationship with Jeremy. “Then what is it all for?”
She stands, her slacks are wrinkled, and her belt is Hermes, and I hate that I notice it even before registering the box of Kleenex held out in front of me. I take it in both hands, fighting the urge to crush it. “So, this is it? Nothing will help me?”
“Is that what you’re hearing?”
I roll my eyes. Why can’t anyone ever give me a straight answer? A flicker of irritation juts my chin and I find myself staring combatively. I despise her suddenly. Her imperious, ice-queen exterior goading me with its impenetrability.
I pluck two Kleenex and blow my nose noisily at her.
“I feel like I’m out of control.” I state it plainly as possible. Make the cry for help explicit.
“On a scale of one to ten—with ten being extremely hopeless and out of control—where are you?”
I continue to stare. I can’t locate any of myself to make the assessment.
“Jayne,” she says evenly, writing something in her yellow notepad, which I always take as an indication that I’ve done something wrong. “Can you name five things that you can see around you, four things you can touch, three that you can hear, two you can smell…”
I didn’t remember there being more parts to this, the smelling portion and the rest of it, but of course I’m remembering now.
“I’m sick,” I tell the blond woman in front of me whose life I know nothing about.
I stare at my palms and flip them over. They’re strangely mottled and hideous.
Gina waits.
For some reason I’m reminded of June holding the cancer book and tapping it against her leg. The one with the doctor, Where Breath Becomes Air.
I wonder if I’ll ever escape the cinematic irony of that exact moment once she’s dead.
“What if I told you I had cancer?”
She stills.
“Do you have cancer?” It’s uttered in such a placid tone that I half expect her to yawn.
“It would explain the depression.”
“It would.” She holds my gaze.
I know it’s spoiled and reckless, but for a moment I’m jealous of June’s cancer. There’s such powerful recognition in the diagnosis. Everybody respects cancer. Being sick with cancer would explain my sadness, my sickness, my anxiety, and the horrible suspicion that everyone in the world was born with a user’s manual or a guide to personal happiness but me.
If I had cancer, Gina Lombardi would help me.
I have fernweh for cancer. I’m disgusting.
“Jayne,” she says patiently. “We’re just about out of time.”
Of course we are. I rise out of my chair as if guided by strings. “Fine.”
“Would you like to meet this time next week, or go back to our usual day?”
“Whatever.”
Gina retreats to the chair behind her desk and clicks on her mouse. She picks up her silver wire-framed glasses and puts them on, her mouth easing open slightly in concentration. She glances at me and clears her throat.
“I’m sorry, Jayne.”
Something in her tone makes me sit back down.
She comes around from her desk and joins me. “I should have informed you before, but this marks our eighth session. If you want to keep meeting, you’d be responsible for a seventy-five-dollar copay.”
“Are you serious?” There’s no way I can afford seventy-five dollars. The worn leather back of Gina Lombardi’s very nice flat lifts off the heel of her crossed leg. I feel nothing but disgust at her four-hundred-dollar highlights.