Oh no, not these, I think. We already know these agitate me. We’ve had infinite discussions about how these agitate me. Luke had me do them. Matt had me do them. Mark has had me do them. And each time I do them, all they ever do is make things worse.
“Um, but remember we already—”
“Let’s try again,” Mark says, cutting me off. “Remember our goal is centralization. We want to get that pain out of your foot. Put it back in your back where it belongs, am I right? Just humor me and try ten, okay?”
I do. And it’s just as I predicted. The stiffness in my right leg increases like crazy. The fires rage on my left.
“How does that feel?”
Terrible. It feels fucking terrible. As I knew it would. As I told Mark it would.
“It’s stiffer down through here now. And more painful on this side.”
I look up at him.
Mark looks at me with a neutral expression that gives no anger away. He nods. Absolutely. What he expected. Of course I think it makes it worse. Because I’ve already decided, haven’t I? Because I insist upon misery. I don’t want to be helped. I don’t believe in little victories.
“Do that ten more times,” Mark says calmly.
“Ten more?”
“I just want to see something,” he says. He has his hands pressed together in front of his face, as though he’s praying.
I repeat the exercise ten times. With each backward bend, the stiffness and pain increase.
Mark watches me from the doorway with his arms folded, looking bored. He says good every now and then, his gaze roving around the gym.
“How was that?” he asks when I’m done.
“I really feel it down my leg now,” I tell him. “Like all the way to my foot.” You know, the place you want the pain to leave?
Mark appears to consider this. “I’m okay with it,” he says at last. “In fact, do another ten.”
“Another ten? Are you—”
“Yup. I’m just going to go to the restroom.”
I do another ten while Mark is gone, my legs screaming.
When I’m finished, I just lie there, my body on fire. Fists blooming in my back. Mark is nowhere to be seen. “Mark?” I call pathetically. “Hello? Are you—”
“Yup,” he says, coming around the corner. “You did great. How does it feel?”
“I’m sorry to say this but it really hurts now.”
Silence.
“All right. Just rest here for a few breaths on your stomach. Scan your body mindfully.”
“But my leg is really—”
“Just keep breathing diaphragmatically,” Mark says. I feel his hand pulling up my T-shirt from behind. He’s applying some kind of cold gel to the small of my back.
“You know how to breathe like that, don’t you? You’re an actress, right?” He says this so softly. No more punishment for today.
I feel the scrape of cold steel on my skin.
“An actor,” I say. I think of my fiefdom of dead eyes, yawning faces. Not an actor anymore, a teacher. But I don’t bother to correct Mark. “Right.”
“So neat,” Mark says. He’s said this before. “Any films I might have seen?” He wants to be conversational now. Easy breezy. Light of tone. When all I want to do is ask more questions. Will I ever be healed? Am I broken? Is it neurological? Structural? Please tell me.
“I do theater,” I tell Mark. I told you I do theater. How many times have I told him this? Doesn’t he remember that I fell off the stage? Theater is what led me here, to this basement, this treatment room, the gloved hand of Mark scraping my back red with a Graston tool, the end of my acting life and the beginning of my waking death as Briana’s servant.
It was Paul who first showed me the teaching job post five years ago. “Assistant Professor in Theater.” Some small liberal arts college we’d never heard of, not too far away from where we lived then. “In addition to teaching three courses per semester, the candidate will also be expected to direct the annual Shakespeare production.”
But I’ve never taught or directed, I said to Paul.
You have a theater degree, don’t you? Plus, you’re an actor. You were onstage for what, ten years?
And I remember I shuddered at his use of the past tense.
I’m just saying teaching might be a good opportunity, that’s all, Paul said. For now, he added quickly.
Get out of the house, you know? Out of your head. I think it’s worth trying, don’t you? I remember he looked desperate. By then we were hanging by a thread. For a while, after the accident, I’d tried and failed at playing housewife. I went full kitsch, bought all the requisite props and costumes online. Muffin tins, French rolling pin, a pearl-lined apron that said Kitchen Witch. I ordered gardening and cocktail books, imagined I’d become a baker of complex breads, grow my own tulips and tender-leafed lettuces, mix all manner of martinis. When Paul came home from work, I’d be there, limping but smiling in the doorway, ready to lead him out to our lush little garden for happy hour. But I grew nothing, mixed nothing, baked nothing. The apron stayed in its drawer along with the pin. The earth in our front yard remained unturned, untended, while I gazed out at it darkly from the living room window, from my reclined position on our pullout couch of stone.