Dirty Secret (18 page)

By this point, Roger had been gone a few years, and my mother was working eighty to one hundred hours a week. I hadn't yet seen her house in its post-Roger hoarded state. Over the phone, my mom still talked about how much she missed Roger, but she also mentioned how much she loved her job and her coworkers. She always asked about my repetitive strain injury, and when she offered advice: “Use heat, then ice,” I wouldn't mention that I already knew that from Gloria. My mother sent me heating pads and gloves with special, heat-able beads inside and I didn't tell her that we didn't have the microwave necessary for the gloves. We'd talk a few times a week, then she'd disappear for months until I asked Sandy or my dad to tape a note to her door—just like before and after.

Also as before and after, I didn't let myself count on her in any way. I knew better.

Instead, I counted on Gloria, Kathy, and Marilyn, the women I saw for my appointments. I could unfurl myself in their offices, allow them to nurture me in ways my mother never had. As awful as it was, I grew used to living in this world of
appointments and pain and even looked forward to seeing my “ladies,” as David and I had begun to call them.

But one night after David and I returned home from a party, I was horrified to realize that I'd just blathered on to an acquaintance for an hour about whether or not I should take Dr. Chatterjee's advice and try an antiseizure medicine that had been found to decrease numbness in extremities. I couldn't believe this is what my life had become. I had nothing to say that wasn't related to RSI. If someone asked me what I did, I'd say, “Well, I've got this injury . . .” as if that was my job, or worse, who I was.

The next time I saw Dr. Chatterjee, I asked him to write the Permanent and Stationary report, which would allow me to leave San Francisco and still be eligible for medical care elsewhere. I didn't tell him, but I had begun to believe I wouldn't get better until I left the city. (How similar this was to my thinking, at sixteen, that moving out of the yellow house would solve my problems.)

I'd never had to change out of my clothes for an exam with Dr. Chatterjee, but this time I was in a gown. He tested my reflexes. He had me close my eyes and tell him when I felt sensation in my fingers (as he pricked them with something resembling an ice pick); using a small metal and wire contraption that looked straight out of the nineteenth century, he tested the strength in my fingers, wrists, forearms, biceps, and triceps. He squeezed and poked and prodded, asking page after page of questions, filling out the report as he went.

Though I'd heard many times that my injury was permanent, I wasn't prepared for Dr. Chatterjee's verdict about my work restrictions.

“Fifteen minutes a day on a keyboard, maximum,” he said, jotting it down on the report.

“Excuse me?” I thought—I hoped—I'd misheard. “A day? Fifteen minutes?”

“That's right. You'll have to find a job where you won't need to use a keyboard. You could be a teacher,” he suggested, his hand on his dimpled chin. “Although writing on a chalkboard might be difficult . . .”

“You don't understand,” I blurted out. “I'm a writer.”

“You are?” He set down the report and picked up my chart, opening it to the first page. “It says here that you were a . . . an online producer.”

“That's what I did for a job. What I
care
about is writing.”

“I see.” He was really looking at me, maybe for the first time in the year-plus that I'd been his patient. “Well, Ms. Sholl, you should probably rethink that.”

I felt like taking the stethoscope from around his neck and choking him with it. I felt like snatching the pen from his fingers and stabbing him in the eyes.

I said, “Someday I plan to write about this whole experience.”

“I hope you do.” But I could tell his words were perfunctory. He didn't believe I ever would. And that conviction was as painful as anything I'd felt during the entire time I'd been injured.

David and I finally left San Francisco. We made the cross-country trek in a rented van to my dad and Sandy's, where we stashed our belongings in the attic of their garage, and then we flew from Minneapolis to London. We lived for a few months in Paris, spent time in Amsterdam, and traveled through the Czech Republic; we stayed in Rome for three months, where as part of my professional retraining package, workers' compensation paid for me to take a course in teaching English as a second language.

By the time we returned from Europe and moved to Brooklyn, I'd had RSI for almost two years and it had been that long since I'd gone an entire day without pain. One of my friends in New York had developed RSI a few months earlier so I asked her for doctor recommendations. Hers was all the way out in Queens and he had a tendency to keep patients waiting, she said, but he was also the best.

When I arrived, the waiting room was so packed that patients spilled out onto the red brick stoop in front of his building. I waited more than an hour and a half past the time of my appointment until finally, Dr. Walker, a lanky man in his early forties, emerged from the back of the office and ushered me into what looked like a 1970s basement rec room, complete with wood paneling. A vinyl examination table sat in the middle of the room. The earth-toned carpeting had flecks of popcorn in it and on his desk were a few more—all escapees from the opened bag of Smartfood in front of his monitor.

Dr. Walker gestured toward the exam table and I climbed up. He sat down at his desk.

“So,” he said, scooping a handful of popcorn from the bag, “tell me your story.”

I did. He took notes as I spoke and then he washed his hands at the little sink in the corner. He squeezed the muscles in my forearms and had me flex my wrists and bend my fingers. He took more notes. I realized I'd been holding my breath for most of the time since I'd finished telling him my story, so I exhaled, then took a deep breath into my diaphragm, the way Kathy had shown me. Dr. Walker set down the clipboard he'd been using and clapped his hands together. “Well, this one should be easy.”

“What should be easy?”

“Fixing you up,” he said, sounding completely confident.

I couldn't believe my friend had sent me to a crazy man. “This is permanent,” I said.

“It's not always permanent.” He smiled. “Lots of my patients have recovered.”

“No offense, but that's not what my doctor in San Francisco said.”

He raised his eyebrows. Then he laughed. “Look at you: You're young. You're healthy. There's no reason you can't get better.”

“But I've tried everything! If there was a way to heal from this, I would have.”

Why was I getting so frustrated? Why was my voice shaking as if I was holding back tears?

“Ms. Sholl, just because you've had a hard time getting better doesn't mean you
can't.
”

“Okay, then how?”

“Here's what we're gonna do . . .” Maybe it was his optimism that made me more open to the idea, but when he suggested I take a low dose of antidepressants to break the pain cycle, as Dr. Chatterjee had, I said yes. Dr. Walker also told me I should start taking lessons in something called the Alexander Technique from a woman he'd been sending patients to with excellent results. He asked me if I'd ever done yoga.

“I used to love yoga,” I said. “But I can't do it anymore because it's bad for my wrists.”

“Bah,” he said, with the motion of throwing something worthless over his shoulder. “Do yoga. Don't be so fearful.” He tossed a few kernels of popcorn into his mouth. “So. Sound like a plan?”

I wanted to ask him more questions—maybe even for the phone numbers of the patients he'd supposedly cured. But there were so many people out in that crowded waiting room, all
wanting a turn with this man, all wanting to be told they could get better.

“Okay.” I hopped off the table and held out my hand to him. I'd stopped shaking hands after too many ruffians (both men and women) crunched mine, and now I was testing Dr. Walker: If he squeezed my hand too hard, he was a quack who didn't know what he was talking about. If he was gentle, then maybe I'd trust him.

He took my hand in both of his, barely touching it but forming a protective shell around it. He tilted his head downward and looked me in the eyes. “You will get better. It's important for you to believe that.”

I turned my face away, embarrassed because I was tearing up.

When I left his office, the day had turned overcast. During my long walk to the subway, I thought about how I'd felt when Dr. Walker said I could recover. Behind the shock, then nervousness (that he was wrong or crazy, that I'd injure myself even more) and behind the excitement (was it really possible? using a keyboard? writing with a pen?), there was something else, tucked way far back. As I continued walking, the feeling crystallized. Sadness. If I were to get better, there was something I'd have to give up.

The Ladies. During my appointments with them I'd felt babied, cared for, mothered. It was my first time, really, and I had to admit that I enjoyed it. Even though I was in New York now, I knew I could find an East Coast equivalent to the Ladies. When I thought about it, that was exactly what I'd been planning to do. I easily could.

Or, I could choose not to. I'd grown accustomed, even possibly dependent, on that ersatz mothering. But it was time for me
to stop looking for nurturing in physical therapy offices—I had a feeling that I wouldn't get better until I did.

There were ups and downs, but it wasn't too long before I had my first pain-free hour, then morning, then day. I took my first, then second, third, fourth tentative strokes on the keyboard. I did yoga and I began lifting weights at the gym. I did pushups and even tried boxing classes. And one day I realized—out of the blue, as I carried a bag of groceries home from the store—that I was no longer helpless and weak. I was strong again.

AFTER DAVID AND
I are done feasting on the Sahadi's delicacies, I turn on the hot water for the bathtub and dump two cups of Epsom salts under the running faucet. When I climb in and close my eyes one thought cycles through my mind, a little louder than all the others: My mother has cancer. My chest aches with worry, with sadness, with grief. But the ache is dulled, as if rising from the bottom of a deep well. Over the years, I've tried to put layers between myself and my mother—I don't tell her details about my life, I don't expect anything from her, I try not to be surprised or disappointed when she forgets my birthday or teases me. If the layers were foolproof, she wouldn't affect me at all, but they have protected me. Now that she's sick, my worry and sadness and grief are buried beneath those same layers. The feelings are there, just blunted. At the bottom of them is the inescapable fact that she's my mother, and I love her.

When I get out of the bath I wrap myself in a giant towel, open the sliding wooden door to our closet, and flip through the clothes on my side.

“Is there anything of yours I can get rid of?” I ask David, who's sitting on the couch reading a travel magazine.

“I just did that a few weeks ago,” he says. “I'm good.”

I reach for a pair of black pants I haven't worn since last summer. They can go. Ditto for the blue and gray button-down plaid shirt I've hung onto only because it's vintage and in good shape. Both of them go into a paper bag to bring to Housing Works. I do this often.

Because I'm the opposite of my mother: I save nothing. I've given away stereos, televisions, vintage love seats, bookcases. I can't find my diploma from graduate school and I have a feeling it ended up in the garbage during one of my purges. I even love getting to the end of a bottle of shampoo or conditioner, or a tube of toothpaste. It's exciting to throw things into the recycling bin or the garbage. Whenever I buy a new article of clothing I toss something else to make room. I get a thrill each time I discard something. Getting rid of things is liberating.

It's invigorating.

It's easy.

And I'd do anything to get my mother to agree.

I TELL MYSELF: COLON CANCER IS SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF THE most treatable cancers, my mother doesn't seem sick at all, and she needs to stay alive so she can continue to drive me insane. I tell myself these things to keep from worrying about her. Not that they work. My first full day back in New York I'm only half-present as I clean our apartment, take the dog for walks, teach my class, and make dinner. The other half of my mind is on my mother.

Except for the sliver absorbed in what's happening on my ankle. In the last twenty-four hours, the bumps have spread. What started as five or six individual welts is now a solid patch of rash about three inches square. And the rash really itches. I'm afraid I'm going to permanently scar myself from all the scratching, so eventually I coat it with Neosporin and cover it with a Band-Aid to keep from clawing at it.

My mother calls me that night. She's all checked into the hospital and she's got good news: The new polyps were all benign. That means that when she has the resectioning surgery the doctors will have to remove only the area of the colon around the one cancerous polyp.

“That's great news, Mom! So the surgery's tomorrow, then?”

“It's scheduled for the day after tomorrow.”

“Why do you have to wait so long?”

“I really don't know. But I don't mind. I like it here.”

“Really? Why?” But then I think about it: Of course she'd like it—she's getting waited on, she's got people around her. Nurses. “Are you bonding with the other nurses? Is that why you like it?”

She laughs. “Actually I don't think they like me very much.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, they're just uptight.”

“Mom. What did you do?”

“I just put up this sign . . .”