“Baby, what’s going on?” He’s clasping me, scrubbing a hand up and down my back.
“Sorry! I’m just! You can’t lie on me like that anymore!” And, yes, all the weeping from earlier takes a right turn intostraight-up sobbing. The weeping didn’t help. The sobbing does. Every ugly quake pushes handfuls of this unfairness out of me. My new refrain? “It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”
“I know.” This is Vin’s new refrain. “I know. I know. I know.”
“I can’t believe I can’t handle it when you lie on top of me anymore. I love when you lie on top of me.”
“Deep breaths, baby. You’re triggered right now. I didn’t think—I evenknewthat that was a trigger for you, but I forgot. I’m so sorry.”
“It’sokay.” And it really is. Even though the situation just so isn’t. My sobs have descended into hiccups and Vin goes to the bathroom and comes back with tissues. “Is this how you feel when you see my scar?” I ask him through gasps.
“Yeah.” He’s rubbing feeling back into my hands, brushing my hair back. “But I can prepare myself for it, now that I know it’s a trigger. I literally say to myself,Vin, you’re about to see Roz’s scar. Which makes you feel all sorts of panic and anger and fear and sadness because you and she were in an accident where you thought she might die.”
“Well,” I consider. “When you say it likethat.”
He smiles a sad smile. “I literally say that to myself. I know it’s clunky. But it helps. It makes me feel less like I should be over it already.”
I scramble up onto his lap. “What if…what if we’re never over it?”
“I…I don’t know. Then I guess we’ll just have nights like this.”
“It’s not fair,” I say one last time, but the gasoline’s already been all burned up.
“It’s really not,” he agrees.
The doorbell rings, which makes both of us jump and then laugh at ourselves. “Food,” he says, lifting me off his lap andthen going to give cash to the very sweet kid who climbed four flights of stairs just to feed us tonight.
We’re both tanked. Emotionally and physically. We’re already in our PJs and eating Chinese food in front of the last third ofWhat About Bob?I literally can’t remember the last time Vin and I finished a movie together.
After we’re brushed and in bed together, meeting in the middle, noses almost touching, I whisper to him through the dark, folded shadows of our familiar bedroom. “I guess nights like this are how the porcupines do it, then. Marriage.”
He’s smiling. “They have big fights and cry a lot and hug.”
I run my hand over his stubbly cheek, which he shaved this morning before work. For me. “They have to be careful when they hug, so they don’t prick each other.”
“They do,” he agrees solemnly. “But that’s not so bad.”
“It’s not so bad,” I agree.
Twenty-One
There’s a 106-pieceset of oil pastels in an art supply shop on Eldridge Street that would cure my PTSD, I just know it would.
Why? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m pretty sure a drawing class saved my marriage. Perhaps if I learn to use pastels, everything else in my life will get fixed right up, too.
There are samples out on a pad of paper to test. The reds and greens and blues and purples are the confident, saturated, celebratory hues of a late August window box flower garden.
If only I had a spare two hundred and seventeen dollars lying around, I’m sure I would create passionate and cathartic art. Still lifes that really live, portraits with emerald shadows and spots of white in the irises.
But, of course I don’t have a spare two hundred and seventeen dollars lying around.
“Those ones are not worth your money,” says Lauro, unexpectedly coming to stand at my shoulder. This is the shop just down the street from our drawing class, and it is Friday, half an hour before class starts. “The pigments don’t give. If you want the real deal, go with those. Hi, by the way.” He kisses my cheek and then points at a different set. There are only eighty-five pieces in it and it’s two hundred and ninety-five dollars.
“Who are you, Jeff Bezos? Hi to you too.”
“Yeah, they’re expensive. You can borrow mine if you ever want to use them.”
For some reason, using someone else’s oil pastels doesn’t seem like it would cure my PTSD. I’m beginning to suspect it’s not the oil pastels.
