Jessica Chiarella - And Again

It was what made my disease doubly cruel, that the death of beauty in me would precede my actual death. I did everything I could at first, to salvage and prolong what little of it was left, scraping fungus from underneath my fingernails and having my withered face injected with fillers until it bruised black and dyeing my hair to keep its bright blonde hue until it was all too much. Until I was just a silly, saggy, ugly woman with a bad at-home dye job. After that I stopped going out so much, began spending my evenings with a blind man. I got rid of all my mirrors.

A nurse appears in the doorway to bring me to the meeting. It’s the sort of thing I always avoided when I was sick, crowded little rooms full of skeletal AIDS patients trading stories about toxoplasmosis and Pneumocystis pneumonia. I never understood people who derived comfort out of shared experiences, particularly bad ones. I preferred to be alone, to ride out the spells of grief and depression and hopelessness under my own steam, instead of unloading them to a room full of strangers. The last thing I wanted was to be around other people who were sick too; it felt too much like looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing a hundred reflections of myself, all my problems multiplied and manifested again and again. Though it’s probably much easier to go to a support group where no one is actually dying — quite the opposite, in fact.

Linda is already there, sitting in the small conference room with a younger woman when I arrive. We’re all dressed the same, in cotton hospital robes over our gowns and cheap cloth slippers. They glance up when I enter, and I can feel that familiar current of electricity in the air as I move through it. It’s like a held breath, something palpable in its absence. I want to grin. It’s been years since I’ve lit up a room just by entering it. I give Linda a little wave, and her jubilation shows in the quick breath she takes, her shoulders pinned to the back of her chair.

I take a seat across from them. There’s already an awkwardness in the room, as they avoid my eyes, and each other’s. I wonder how long they’ve already been sitting there without talking. The one is so small she looks like little more than a girl, but pretty. She has huge dark eyes and a tiny nose and thick, curly hair, what people in the business would call ethnic-chic. She could easily be French or Irish or Jewish or maybe even Hispanic, in the right lighting. Natalie Wood, singing on a fire escape. By comparison Linda, with her wandering eyes, looks a bit unhinged. I can’t tell if she’s tamping down some manic, wall-climbing energy or if she’s terrified of sitting in this room, but she looks like she might make for the door at any moment. There are two other empty chairs in the circle. When I glance back to the girl, she meets my eyes for a moment before looking away. I take it as an invitation.

“I have a pair of tweezers if you want to borrow them,” I say, motioning to the space over her nose, where her eyebrows nearly meet. She looks at me like she’s not sure if I’ve insulted her, but then lets out a little laugh. Rising to the occasion. A girl with a backbone. Before she can answer a man enters, one who is clearly not a SUB from the creases in his face, all his edges soft and withered. Good bone structure, though, and it leaves him with a somewhat dashing edge. That’s the thing about good bones, they hold up even after everything else has lost its steam.

“We’re not all here yet, I see,” he says, taking a seat between Linda and me. He checks his watch, obviously annoyed to make his entrance before an incomplete group. The fifth member arrives a few minutes later. At first I think he’s another young doctor; he’s wearing blue scrubs and he’s clean-shaven, with a certain air of importance around him. But when he comes to sit in the remaining chair I realize, with more than a little surprise, that he’s a SUB as well.

“My apologies,” he says, with a feigned sort of antebellum bashfulness. “I didn’t mean to hold everyone up.”

His face is too perfect, like a corn-fed high school quarterback, though he carries himself with the calm assurance of a much older man. He has dark hair and perfect cheekbones, and a mouth stuffed with bright white teeth. You can tell, just by looking at him, that he is blessed in just about every way a person can be. And already, I don’t trust him.

He says his name is David. We all go around the circle and introduce ourselves. There’s Linda, who sits next to me, close enough so I can feel the ripples of anxiety washing off of her like the rhythmic gust of an oscillating fan. And then there’s Connie, the bombshell, sitting with her arms crossed as if she’s posing for a camera. And Dr. Bernard, the psychiatrist in charge. But David is the one who holds my attention, because even though he looks ten years younger than he is, even out of context, out of his usual expensive suits, isolated from his gaggle of aids and lackeys, away from the TV cameras and microphones, I know who he is. He’s David Jenkins, and he’s a U.S. Congressman.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this man on TV, when Sam turns on MSNBC after work and we flop down on the couch, letting long minutes slip away before we’re hungry enough to cook dinner. People have said that, one day, this man could be president. And Sam swore up and down that he’d leave the country forever if that happened.

He’s handsome, up close, and I have no control over this body yet. I cannot curtail its impulses, instruct it not to want the wrong people. So attraction hits me like a sledgehammer, pulsing in my stomach with the insistence of starvation. David must notice that I’m staring at him because he looks me right in the eye, a testing glance, a challenge too well controlled to become a threat. I look away on reflex alone and realize that Dr. Bernard is already in the middle of his introduction.

“This is the forum,” Dr. Bernard says. “Not only for your questions, your experiences in recovery, but for your fears and your frustrations as well. This is uncharted territory for all of us, medical personnel included, and no one has any illusions that this is going to be an easy process for any of you.”

David is still looking at me. He cocks an eyebrow as my eyes meet his, and again, I’m forced to look away. I can feel my perfect skin grow ruddy with the mix of embarrassment and attraction and anger that this man’s presence has created within me, out of nothing. Whatever game it is that we’re playing, I’m certain that I’m losing.

“I have a question,” Connie the bombshell says, half-raising her hand, though she doesn’t wait for his acknowledgment before she keeps talking. “What exactly is the point of this whole exercise? I mean, as far as I can tell, everything worked the way it was supposed to. I don’t get why we have to come here and talk about it every week for the next year. It seems like a waste of time, if you ask me.”

“You signed an agreement to participate in this support group when you were admitted into the program,” Dr. Bernard replies, and Connie gives a little laugh.

“What are they going to do, sue me? They can take me for all I’ve got doc, believe me, it won’t exactly be worth their time.” Dr. Bernard’s mouth seems to constrict a bit, though he doesn’t look angry, not exactly.

“It does seem sort of strange,” I say, thinking of the single cancer support group I attended after my diagnosis, a group for terminal patients that met once a week in the school room of a local church. I remember how traitorous I felt, knowing that the slick SUBlife brochure was sitting on my dresser at home as I listened to the others describe the agony of chemo, the indignities of colostomy bags, or the triumph of climbing a flight of stairs. “I mean, isn’t this sort of thing usually reserved for people who aren’t going to get a miracle cure?”