“Has it really been that long?” I ask John. I make a face like time is hard to follow. What with the pain.
I can’t possibly tell him that I’ve allowed another physical therapist to strap me to a table with belts and then pull my leg out of its socket with quick, successive jerks. Instead I pretend to be confused like John. I really don’t understand what’s going on either. My body is a mystery.
“Really no idea.” I shake my head, leaning back farther on the table. Almost sitting. Almost there. But John refolds his arms. Frowns more deeply at my body. Widens his diagnostic stance.
“Maybe it’s your quadratus lumborum,” he offers. Normally I would enjoy the fact that John likes to refer to muscles by their proper names. It would comfort me. Rekindle my faith in his diagnostic capabilities.
“Maybe.” I watch him write this down on his clipboard.
“Should we take some measurements?” he asks.
Measuring tape is John’s primary tool. He doesn’t do modalities like Mark. No ultrasound machine. No electric stimulator. No dry needles. He does have a set of Chinese suction cups that remind me of the suckers on octopus tentacles, which leave red welts all over my body. He brought them in from the house once like they were a plate of cookies—Should we try them?
I stare at John, who looks so confused, so well-meaning, the measuring tape hooked to his shorts like a gun. Genuinely wanting to solve the puzzle of me even though it’s one hell of a puzzle, Miranda, he’s not going to lie. Not just the picture but the pieces too. A million of them, and always changing shape, never fitting like they did before, the image keeps shifting. He wants to get to the bottom of it.
I feel for you, Miranda, he once said to me, I do.
And I cried. John handed me a Kleenex from a box patterned with smiling puffballs. He bowed his head respectfully as I blew.
But all I want tonight is the temporary fix of his magic hands. I want him to tell me to lie down. I want him to prod gently at my back, my thigh, my pelvis, until his wife calls his name from the top of the stairs.
John?
Yeah.
I’ve never seen her except as an ominously permed shadow on the wall.
“Maybe the best thing is to just dive right in,” I say at last. “Feel around and see?” I lean all the way back onto the table. I turn onto my stomach, gasping at the pain, my legs like lead. I put my face into the doughnut hole. I lie there waiting. I feel John standing beside me at a loss. I’ve never taken control like this before. If I did this with Mark, he’d tell me to get up. Luke would just walk out of the door. Through the hole, I stare down at the garage floor, at John’s shoes, still patient, still pointed toward me. A tear falls from my eye and splashes onto the floor between his feet. I hold my breath.
“All right, Miranda,” John says. And I hear him at last lower the clipboard. “Sure.”
“Thank you,” I say. I close my eyes. I feel him lift up the back of my dress, gently, gently. Like I’m a human person. John treats me like a human person, I tell the other PTs in my mind.
Mark merely shrugs, looks indifferent. You’ll be back, says his face. So sure of himself and his capabilities, his knowledge of modalities, his nerve expertise. You want to be treated like a human person, go ahead. He’ll let me go walking into the dark with John; he’ll let me go so easily.
I wait for John’s touch. A touch I know won’t save me, can’t save me, but it will ease things for a while.
“Feel that?” John says now, pressing into my back with the pads of his fingers. But tonight I feel nothing. Nothing? Can’t be. Surely something.
“Um, I think so,” I lie. “Maybe go more deeply.”
“How about that?” John asks now, pressing. “Feel that?”
Nothing. Nothing, nothing.
“Definitely that,” I lie encouragingly. And I tell myself I do, surely I do. I must. I will. Any minute now, I’ll feel it.
CHAPTER 9
WORSE. MUCH, MUCH worse now. More fucked-up than before—how is that possible? But it is. Broken. Truly this time. Even as John waves goodbye to me from his window, just before his wife draws the blinds, I know this. As I limp back to my car, parked behind John’s and his wife’s SUVs, I know this. As I pick uselessly at the ice on the windshield, my legs giving way beneath me, I know this. As I drive home in the dark cold, barely able to sit in the driver’s seat, I know this. My bones tell me so. John John John, what have you done to me? Not John’s fault. Mine. My own broken body that will not heal. That refuses to right itself. The drive home is excruciating, can I tell you this? New England never seemed so black, so friendless. Spindly trees shining with ice. Road slick and black, everything black and frozen. I think of the meeting with the dean. I think of Briana, triumphant. The three plastic witches smiling around their toy cauldron with the paper flames. Home. Why go back to that dark place? Why lie on the cold, hard living room floor with my legs on the chair, listening to the couple fuck next door? Every other night, this happens. All night it goes on. And they don’t just fuck, they talk between fucks. And not just talk, they fucking laugh. It’s awful, awful. I never hear what they’re saying or what they’re laughing at, just the laughter itself, the fucking itself. I hiss at them through the wall, I hate you. I hiss, Shut the fuck up. I beg them, Please. Both of you. Please die. They don’t hear me, of course. They keep laughing and fucking, talking and laughing, and she orgasms again and again and again, ocean waves crashing and crashing on the sharp rocks of me, refusing to stop, not caring if I scream, because this is nature, this is a force. The sounds coming out of her mouth make me feel like I’m dying. My body in this car right now, sitting in this seat right now, gripping this cold wheel right now, make me feel like I’m dying. Am I dying? Maybe I am. Finally. About time, really. Enough of this. God’s way of telling me. Black sky. Starless. Can’t face my apartment. Can’t face my future. What is it even? Loveless. Cold. Black. Three toy witches. A low paper moon. Bare dark stage. One white light. And in it is Trevor mumbling at a toy dagger. Briana in a white dress with fake blood on her hands. Not fake blood, no. My blood. My blood on her hands. And she’ll be happy. Ecstatic. No one will see the smile on her face but me. Grace will direct. No, Fauve. Fauve in my windshield now, triumphant, her chime earrings clinking softly as she stands in the wings, her palms pressed together before her curved lips, eyes on the stage as though she’s watching God perform her will. Applauding herself, her patience. And I’ll be forced to watch too if I’m not dead yet. I’ll still have to teach for the health insurance. They’ll wheel me into the theater like the ailing King. My body burning like a star, like a planet of mercury. Pull over. Just pull over now to this dark, cold shoulder of the earth, hit the brakes on the gravelly ice. Take the pills rattling in your pockets. Won’t matter which pills from which pockets. Just swallow. Swallow them down. Swallow them all down, why not? Be done with it. Close my eyes. Stare at the dark behind my lids so heavy, just as starless. My breathing will slow. Everything will slow. The silence will sound like music. Forget my broken body once and for all. Cold won’t feel cold anymore. Nothing. I’ll feel nothing. Let the dark be the Dark. Enter the real Night. Not here though. Not here on this loveless New England road. Ice still on the windshield. Trucks roaring past like laughing devils. I think of that golden drink. What did they call it again? The golden remedy. How it made me glow from the inside, how it made a blue sky of my body. The three men at the bar. The middling man seeing my pain, seeing all. One more drink. One more drink for the road, why not?