The Law of Loving Others (13 page)

PHIL and I walked upstairs where the hallway outside the dining room was busy with patients shuffling to get inside. The hospital staff was dressed entirely in black with cone-shaped, metallic gold-and-silver hats on their heads. They were handing out noise makers, glittery paper horns, and those festive gold-and-silver party hats to the patients, most of whom stared at them, bored and uninterested. Phil's brother, Ted, was sitting at a table with his roommate eating cheddar popcorn, their fingers covered in orange dust. I watched as Ted and Phil embraced—they slapped five—and did something between a hug and handshake.

There was an easiness between them that I admired. Each moment spent with my mother felt so intensely difficult, so hard to navigate. I barely knew how to talk to her; I analyzed each word both of us said, wondering if I'd uttered the wrong thing or if whatever came out of her mouth was some symptom of her illness. But that day it all seemed to matter a little less. I was there with my mother (we sat together and ate a bowl of seedless red grapes, talked about the activities that she'd participated in earlier that day) but I was focused on Phil, on whether or not he was aware of me from across the room, whether he liked the way my breasts pressed against the cotton of my T-shirt, or if he noticed when I took my hair down, let it hang just beneath my shoulders. I was lost in the subtle intricacies of our dynamic—was he looking over at me? When his hand had touched my back, fleetingly, on the way into the building, what had that meant?

And then there was a crash.

My mother had knocked over a pitcher of iced tea and it spilled everywhere, the ceramic shattering into a dozen pieces. She shrieked and a woman next to her let out a cry as liquid poured into her lap. Everyone looked over at us and I felt the heat of shame spreading across my face. Did they know that I had come to visit my mother but was not paying enough attention to her? Was focused instead on a guy—who was not my boyfriend—and the way he gracefully touched a kernel of orange popcorn to his lips?

“Oh Mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, are you okay?” I ran and got paper towels, helped the staff wipe up the table.

“I made a mess,” she said softly. “Such a mess.”

IT snowed while we were in the hospital and by the time we got outside, a fine layer of white was coating the pavement.

“Ever play the cold game?” Phil asked when we got inside the car. We didn't speak of the visit, didn't talk about how my mother seemed or how his brother was doing; we could've been pulling out of any parking lot anywhere. We granted each other that small gift.

“I haven't,” I said. “Never heard of it.”

All four windows opened simultaneously and a blast of cold air shot through; snow was drifting inside the car, bits of ice landed on my hair.

“Up! Up! Up!” I said. “Close up the windows!”

He grinned. “This is it,” he shouted, “this is the game!”

“It's freezing!” I yelled. “Please!'”

We must've been driving fifty or sixty miles an hour. I pleaded with him to stop, but I was laughing too, swept up by all the noise and the cold, the snow rushing inside. I was gleeful and breathless. My mind brushed free of the last hour. I felt like a tiny figurine on the inside of a snow globe, shaken into a flurry of white.

WE found a small dive bar off Route 28 with no bouncer, so we just walked right in. Inside it was dark and warm, and silver tinsel was sprinkled around the booths. There was a jukebox filled with pages and pages of CDs and a game console with two long plastic shotguns dangling on the sides. I put a dollar bill in the machine and picked two Linda Ronstadt songs, my mother's favorite.

Phil went to the bar and ordered me a whiskey soda. He had a fake ID that apparently always worked—a Connecticut driver's license that had belonged to a cousin who was just a few years older. I sat down in one of the booths and checked my phone. No texts from Daniel. One from Annie. One from my father wishing me a good night and saying he'd check in later.

“Phil,” I said. “Can I call you Phillip? Does anyone call you that?”

“You'd be the first; it's actually Philo. Spanish. My mother's from Cuba.”

“Ah! Explains your handsome, ethnically ambiguous look.”

“Exactly,” Phil said, smiling.

“How come I never see your family at the hospital with you?”

“Don't ‘never' me. You've only seen me there once!”

I blushed, apologized.

“I'm kidding,” he said. “And I don't know. My family visits, too. But my parents work a lot and since I'm on vacation, I figured I might as well go a lot now, while I can.”

“Maybe this is a stupid question,” I said, “but are you angry at your brother?” Just then, ”Hungry Heart” came on over the speakers. Hearing Springsteen right at that moment made me feel inexplicably happy. Something about the way he was both rugged and honest, earnest but without sentimentality. I drained my drink in one long sip, felt the whiskey tingle in the back of my throat.

“Look at you,” Phil teased. “You love Bruce, huh?”

“I do!” I said. I was kneeling on the booth now, both elbows on the table.

“You asked if I was angry at Ted? No. So many people ask me that. But I'm not. I just don't see what there is to be angry about. He has an illness and is suffering. It's like, would you be mad at someone who had breast cancer? Of course not. And I
do
think that's a legitimate analogy.”

“So I'm not supposed to be mad at my mother?” I asked.

“You're not ‘supposed to be' anything. But are you?”

“I don't know. I guess I'm just mad at everyone,” I said. I laughed, but realized it was mostly true. I twirled a flimsy red straw around the ice cubes in my glass. “I know that isn't fair but I guess I really do feel that way.”

“I get that,” Phil said, and took a sip of his beer.

“Can you get me another drink?” I asked.

“Whatever you say. Another whiskey?”

WHEN Phil returned with my drink, I explained that everything with my mother had happened so fast. I hadn't even known she'd had any sort of history of mental illness, and suddenly it was all there: the voices, the paranoia, the hospitals. Everything so fresh and raw in front of me.

“It just makes me feel like such an idiot,” I said. “And I feel so confused about who my mother is. Right now she seems like a totally different person than she was my entire life. I know it sounds dramatic but it's how I feel.” I put my head on the table for a moment, and it was cool and sticky beneath my cheek.

“It's not dramatic,” Phil said. “And I get that this is overwhelming for you right now, but it will change with time. This sounds like a cliché, but it's a cliché because it's true. Your mother has an illness, but that's it, she
has
it, it's not her whole identity. It's a part of her. Right now I'm sure it seems like all of her. But it's not, I promise.”

I wanted him to know everything about my mother—what she had been like before all of this happened. I told him that even though she was a pianist, she also took two semesters of German in college and was somehow fluent, how she was so well read and always said she would've gotten a PhD in English literature if she hadn't been a musician. I told him that she was so thoughtful and caring, even if, yes, at times so overbearing that I would beg her, scream at her, to leave me alone. But when I was younger she was the mother everyone wanted to be around, the mother who always spoiled us with scoops of ice cream before dinner, who would make us vanilla milkshakes for breakfast if I had friends sleep over.

“She was that mom at sleepaway camp, wait . . . did you go to sleepaway camp?” I asked.

Phil shook his head no.

“Whatever, it's not important, just that like, at camp, getting mail was the most exciting thing ever, and packages! They were the best. And she would send these big boxes and all the kids in my bunk would rush over to my bed because they knew she sent the best candy—all that sour stuff, sour peaches and sour gummy worms, and then Pixy Stix and those balls of cookie dough covered in chocolate. Everyone would be like, you have the best mom, but of course, being my mother, it was obviously a little more complicated.”

“How so?”

“Well, with the package, she would send floss and one of those little travel-size containers of mouthwash with a note reminding me to rinse and wash my mouth out after I ate. But then, there'd always be an envelope with my last few letters home, held together with a rubberband or something, with a Post-it attached, being like:
Hi sweetie. Daddy and I are so happy to hear that you're having a good time at camp! I circled some spelling mistakes and sent the letters back to you so you can see the correct spelling. Please remember, it's counse-lor. No
A
!
And all my letters would be like, edited with red marks and stuff.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm not!”

THE rest of the night passed quickly, but each of the moments felt so slow and drawn out. The bar never got too crowded. We took a couple of shots of whiskey and then Phil and I chose song after song on the jukebox, and we didn't quite dance but moved toward each other and apart, in a strange, awkward rhythm. I was drunk and sloppy. All of my longing—for Daniel or Phil, for my mother—felt like it was pouring out of me.

Later, Phil drove me home and I didn't even know if it was before or after midnight. My whole life my mother had always kept a single light on in the living room, which faced the street. That soft orange glow was meant to deter burglars and I had always been comforted by the thought of it, but then I wondered if this, too, was a symptom of her paranoia.

The house was dark, the driveway empty, and the street light cast a cold white light over the roof of the garage.

Phil turned off the car and I moved to face him.

“Please touch me,” I said.

He put his hand on my leg, and I moved closer, touched the side of his face, felt the rough stubble of the beard that was growing in.

“I can't kiss you,” I told him. And then he moved his hand gently across my face, my collar bone, then down to my breasts. I felt a shock of cold against my skin as he cupped my flesh in his hand. He kissed the skin above and below my nipple, so delicately. And he continued to move his hands around my body, into my pants, and then his fingers were inside of me and it did not quite feel good but I wanted it anyway.

“More,” I said.
More, more.

I woke up and started to move but then felt a wave of nausea sweep over my body. I thought to myself,
There is no way to undo what happened last night
. No matter how nuanced and complicated my relationship with Daniel might eventually become months, years from now, the simple fact that I cheated on him would always be there.

I threw up and then I got back into bed.

When I called Annie, she was careful not to judge me, and said something diplomatic like, “Well, it sounds like you felt like it was the right thing to do.”

No, actually, I would not say it was the right thing to do, only that I wanted it.

Daniel hadn't texted or called, and I felt relieved. Maybe, just maybe, he hooked up with someone the night before and was feeling too guilty to contact me.

I spent the day alternating between self-loathing and apathy. I was the worst person in the world. I didn't care about anything at all. I took a lighter out of my underwear drawer and I burned a patch of skin on my calf until I could see the flesh bubbling up. And then I thought,
enough, enough
.

I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and saw a note on the counter from my father that said,
At the soup kitchen
.
Tried to wake you but failed. Call me if you change your mind and would like to come. Dad

I thought,
I hope that Phil never ever calls me again. I hope I'll never run into him at the hospital and that all of this will somehow disappear from my memory, from my history.

I got back into bed, and I pressed my palms against my forehead, tried to alleviate the feeling that a stack of cinderblocks were resting there.

My grandmother called to wish me a happy New Year and to check in. She suggested I come out to Fort Lauderdale to visit, get out of New York for just a few days, maybe a long weekend. Her boyfriend, Saul, had a son-in-law who was a pilot and could get me free stand-by tickets. She said she would be here in a flash except that her hip was still a little bit too fragile from her fall, and she just couldn't travel at the moment. I told her I needed to think about it, but that the idea of a little trip sounded promising.

I watched an old episode of
Grey's Anatomy
. A teenage girl swallowed batteries, glue sticks, and a tiny stapler. Someone held an X-ray up to the light and the girl's insides were all exposed, the dark imprints in the space between her ribs and muscles.

The doorbell rang and I made my way to the front door slowly. My head throbbed with the slightest step. Ellen Friedman was at the door—the woman whose house my father had been to the night before. She said she was driving through the neighborhood and my father had left this nice glass dish at their house and so she thought she'd drop it off. She also brought over some leftover dessert from the dinner party. They were miniature pecan pies, each in their own foil container. “Oh thank you,” I said, “that's sweet.” She lingered for what felt like a moment too long, and then I had this sense that my father probably told her and her husband about what had happened with my mother. And here she was, just dropping by. I imagined that my father was infinitely more interesting to her now that something was dramatically wrong in our family—he was suddenly some kind of saint who was plagued by my mother's illness. I knew how it felt to fill with warmth, to love someone who was wounded (my ninth grade boyfriend's father was an alcoholic and at times abusive, and upon seeing the purple welts emerge on Ben's back, I would flood with sympathy and longing). I knew that strange place where the wish to care for someone and plain, romantic desire conflate. But then, at that moment, a primal urge to defend my mother kicked in, and it was as if I had guard dogs at my feet and they began barking at the first sign of an intruder. I would not let this neighbor think she needed to care for my father.

“My dad's not home,” I told her, “but thanks, happy New Year,” and then I closed the door.

I was in bed again and considered calling Daniel. I would tell him what happened and I would cry and plead and tell him how sorry I was and how messy and fucked up my brain felt. Would I tell him that Phil and I never even kissed? Would that make anything better? But I stopped myself; there was no chance he'd forgive me, especially after our arguments about New Year's, my refusal to go out and celebrate. He would think I was so pathetic, a sad, sad hypocrite.

When it got dark out, I started to check my phone compulsively and wondered if Phil would ever contact me.

The nausea returned, and I threw up again. I rinsed my mouth with horrible, minty, store-brand mouthwash and tried not to look at my ashen face in the bathroom mirror.

I held Grandpa in my hands. We were in my bed together and he was wrestling out of my arms but I wanted him to stay. “Please, stay. Please, please, please.”
I thought about what I must have sounded like, that desperation in my voice, and so I let go and he settled beside me on my pillow.

THEN there was a text from Phil. He said happy New Year and asked how my day had been.

I felt relief undo some of the tightness in my chest and then immediately I called Daniel and asked him about his night, and I tried to just focus on the glow-in-the-dark stars that my father stuck onto my ceiling when I was a child. It had been years since they had emitted any light, and now all I could see was the faint outline of their shapes.

MY father and I drove to the hospital the next afternoon. The air was windy and frigid and my father dropped me off at the entrance before parking the car. Upstairs, my mother was sitting at the edge of her bed with her knees pressed to her chest, her head bent down solemnly. She looked like a little girl who was waiting for her parents to check the closet for ghosts, or for monsters hiding beneath the bed.

Against the wall was a piece of purple construction paper. It said
CAROL
in large block lettering, and underneath it my mother had written:
caring, colorful, compassionate
. I felt a somewhat perverse desire to take out my cell phone and take a picture, to capture this image of my mother. She looked so wounded and afraid and I didn't want it all to myself. I wanted to show Annie or Daniel, my father, my aunt, anyone. As if sending a photograph out into the world could somehow disseminate my own heartbreak. Instead, I wrapped my arms around my mother, a gesture so affectionate (so unlike us), but I couldn't help myself.

“Mom,” I said. “You okay? What's going on?”

She lifted her head and nodded toward the ceiling.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, but it was barely audible.

I crouched down to meet her eyes.

“What's going on, Mom? What is it?”

“Just look!” She was suddenly screaming. She sounded so exasperated, so fed up, and my eyes immediately filled with tears.

“Please don't yell at me. What is it? What are you talking about? I don't know what you're trying to tell me.” I wondered where my father was and why he was taking so long to get upstairs.

“The smoke detector,” my mother's roommate said in her low, raspy voice. Debbie stood, erect, beside her dresser. Her hair was in a long, single braid, and she wore an oversized T-shirt with Gene Simmons's face emblazoned in the center. His tongue was long and reptilian, vulgar.

“Thanks, Debbie,” I said. “What's going on with the smoke detector, Mom? What's wrong with it? Is it broken? Should I ask for a maintenance worker to come fix it?”

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” And then she was standing on top of the twin bed with her arms raised toward the ceiling.

“Please, please stop screaming! Just tell me what's wrong with it and get down, please.”

“They are watching me from in there, Emma. There is a camera inside the smoke detector and people are monitoring me. They are watching. They can see
everything
that I do, so I need to take it down, okay? I need to take it down now!”

Two women in pink uniforms hurried in and they held on to her ankles, begged her to stop, to sit down.

“Ms. Bloom,” one of them said, gently. “Please, hon, get down, please.”

“I will not!” my mother said. “I. Need. To. Take. This. Off.”

“What's going on?” My father appeared at the door. “What's the matter?”

“There is a
camera
inside of that smoke detector!” my mother yelled. “They think I'm a fool, these people. A camera right above my bed! Who can stand for that? I have some pride, you know!”

“Ms. Bloom, I promise you, there is no camera inside of there. It's just a standard smoke detector, maybe a carbon monoxide detector too. It's imperative that you leave that there, we need you to be safe in here.”

“You call this violation of privacy safe? Safe?” My mother's voice rose each time she said it, and each time she spoke I felt something seizing, tightening inside of my chest. “Safe? This is safe?”

I walked out of the room and down the hallway, searching for the bathroom, for somewhere else to go. I could still hear her screaming,
No, no, no, no, please no
, when I turned the corner and found it—a single room, tiled with black and turquoise squares. I turned on the faucet and I sat right down, cross-legged, onto the floor. I didn't care how filthy it may have been. I collapsed forward into my own lap and I wept. For my mother, for myself, for whatever I had done to make this happen.

PAUL, the social worker assigned to work with my mother, was standing outside the bathroom speaking softly to another staff member. He was fiddling with the ID cards that hung from his neck on a long piece of yellow rope.

I wanted to tell him that my mother was not getting any better. I wanted to say,
What the fuck, what the fuck is happening here? It is your fucking job to help her. Why are you keeping her here, trapping her here, if you're not even doing anything to help her? Do you understand that nothing is getting better? That a month ago she was a normal person, she was my mother, who graduated eleventh in her high school class of nine hundred people, who was a prodigy pianist when she was a child, who played at Lincoln Center when she was seven! Who still strains orange juice for me because I'm the only one in our family who doesn't like pulp. Who, before I have a final, calls and asks me what time the test starts, so that she can worry
for me
, on my behalf, so I can just focus on studying.
I wanted to tell him that she was not just another crazy person in this crazy hospital, that she was
my
mother.