Mark claps me on the shoulder twice. “Hang in there,” he says.
And I can’t help it. I picture my dead hanging body for a second. Swinging from a hook on the ceiling. Mark getting the news by phone. Nodding soberly. Perhaps even burying his face in his hands. It puts things in perspective for him. It makes him understand that pain is not just a guide, not just simply information, not just a friendly teacher of lessons I need to learn. And then it’s Mark’s body hanging from the ceiling I picture.
As I walk out, I pass the new girl, who is happily stretching on a gym mat. Rolling the backs of her legs and butt with a foam roller, the way Mark showed me, the way Mark shows us all. He’s walked over to her, and she and Mark are bantering about their running schedules. Probably she has something easy and treatable, like plantar fasciitis. All she needs is for Mark to rub her feet, to demonstrate some targeted stretching. Or maybe she does have something more grave, more elusive. Maybe she is one of the Nerve Women. Women of the invisible pain. Women alight with blinking red webs. No spider in sight. But the web is there.
CHAPTER 5
HIDEOUSLY LONG AFTERNOON between classes. White winter light on my face. Snow falling into my open mouth again because someone （probably Fauve） opened the window in my absence. I lie on the floor in my office in my usual configuration, my calves on the chair seat, feet dangling over the edge. Today, this position does nothing. Less than nothing. I gaze up at the underside of my desk, at the punctured plywood, at the spider in its corner. Normally I would scream at the sight of such a spider. This afternoon, I just stare into what I imagine to be its eight eyes, which seem to regard me with a surprising degree of compassion.
Miranda, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Miranda, what can I do?
I taught my script-analysis class this morning leaning against my desk. I have no idea what I said for seventy-five minutes. Something about witches. Something about Shakespeare’s time. The chain of being perhaps? The students took notes, anyway. Some of them did. Many of them just stared at me or at each other.
Where was I? I kept saying to the dust motes in the air.
Where was I? I asked the clock above their heads.
I recall drawing a spiral on the board at one point. Spiraling and spiraling outward. Out of control. Help. Visuals help, I told them.
My leg and spine are still screaming from whatever Mark did yesterday. I could feel it when I hobbled out of SpineWorks, drove myself home in my clown car. Not the usual pain that I always feel when I leave Mark, when I leave any of them, telling myself, Oh, it will be better in time. Just give it a night of ice and drugs and a glass or two of wine. This was something new. Something real, definitely. Like my lower back was actually bleeding. Like my leg bones had shifted around in my pelvis. Like my pelvis itself had been twisted. Like my spinal cord was suddenly pressing itself into the skin of my back as if it wanted to burst from my body. Like the bones in my left hip had swelled obscenely under my dress. I swallowed pills all the way home, all the way home. I got out of the car, and both legs protested violently at my attempt to stand up. The right leg remained rigidly bent at the knee, crouched and low to the ground. I could hear it growling beneath me like an angry dog.
As I hobbled toward the door, my super, Sheila, observed me from the apartment steps, where she was sitting and vaping in her pajamas and parka. Sheila lives alone with a feral cat in the unit next to mine. Every time I see her, she’s either drunk or stoned, but then so am I. I was stoned right then, in fact. I watched little sparks of light fall from the sky, fizzle around her head.
Miranda, are you okay?
No, I wanted to say. I’m scared. Panicked. Broken. Sad. Terribly alone. I need to go to an emergency room. Please come with me.
Doing well, I told her. How are you?
You seem to be limping quite a lot there. You sure you’re all right?
Fine, fine.
But I’m sure she could hear me crying through the apartment wall later that evening.
I’m broken, Goldfish, I whisper-blubbered to Paul over the phone. Goldfish was my nickname for Paul because of his gold-red hair. I called him after my second glass of chardonnay. Even though I swore to myself I would stop calling. Paul has no desire to talk to me anymore. I’ve moved on, Miranda. How many times has he said that to me? You were the one who left me, Miranda, remember? You were the one who walked out the door. I resent so much when Paul tells me this. Because though it’s the truth, it isn’t the Truth. If our relationship were on a stage, the audience would surely see, surely know. They would say to themselves, He pushed her out with his coldness. He was sick of her sickness. They would weep for me, absolutely.