Then again, I’m getting stoned next to my client.
“It was right. At the time,” I reply. Trying to steer the conversation onto neutral ground, I add, “Did you know that modern Egyptian women pinch the bride for good luck?”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“There are all kinds of superstitions around weddings. Veils protected the bride from evil spirits. Bridesmaids confused the Devil, if he came to snatch the bride. And a long train made it harder for her to run away.”
“Wow. Those are some grooms with seriously low self-esteem.”
I laugh. “The reason we ‘give the bride away’ was because she used to be a property transfer.”
Win twists her wedding band around her finger. “When Felix and I went shopping for this, Felix asked the difference between platinum and white gold. The saleslady said that as it got older, platinum would go a little gray at the edges. Felix pointed to me and said,Oh. Like her?” Win looks down at her hands, as if she does not recognize them as being part of her own body. “I’m not going to get gray at the edges, am I,” she muses. “I’m not going to last that long.”
I sit up, aware that there are people for whom pot does nothing; there are others who feel paranoid instead of relaxed. I don’t want this backfiring for her. “Win,” I begin, but she interrupts.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what this disease is teaching me,” she says slowly.
“About death?”
“No. About life.” Win runs her hand over the couch, making the nap of the suede stand on end. “I mean, life is supposed to make us grow, right? To become better? If that’s the case, what is death going to do to me?”
“Death doesn’t justhappento us. In fact, there’s no passive voice in the English language for it. It’s an action verb. You haveto die.” I shrug. “Three hundred sixty thousand babies are born every day while a hundred and fifty thousand people die. On a micro level, the body’s sloughing off skin and brain cells while we’re still alive. Even after the heart stops pumping, the cells still have enough oxygen to be considered alive for a little while, even after the doctor pronounces us dead. Life and death are heads and tails. You can’t have one without the other.”
“Maybe in order to grow and become better, part of us has to die to make room for that new thing,” Win says slowly. “Like a broken heart.”
I turn to her. She has tears in her eyes.
She dashes them away with her hand, giving a little embarrassed laugh. “Here’s some breaking news: it’s harder to face the death of someone you love than your own. Go figure.”
I thread my fingers through hers and squeeze. “Win. I will make sure that Felix has all the grief counseling he needs. I will be with him through the funeral, and I’ll check in with him afterward. I swear to you, he will not be on his own until I know he’s doing all right.”
She glances up, surprised. “That’s good to know. But I was talking about Arlo.”
Her son.The one who died.
“I’d like to hear about him, if you feel up to it,” I say.
She sinks deeper into the cushions of the couch. “What can I tell you? He came a month early. His lungs weren’t strong enough, and he had to be in the NICU for weeks. But he came into this world laughing. I know they say babies can’t do that, not for weeks, but he did. He laughed all the time. When he pulled himself up in his crib; when I gave him his bath; when I sang to him. And, honestly, my singing makes most people cringe.” A smile ghosts over her lips. “He laughed all the time, until he started to cry. We didn’t know what was wrong. Neither did Arlo. It was too hot, or too cold. The tag on his shirt hurt. The teacher didn’t understand him. The other kids didn’t like him.” She hesitates. “It was always someone else’s fault. There were some days when he would crawl into the closet and sob until he fell asleep. And then there were other days when he broke every window in the house with a baseball bat.”
She draws in a breath. “We took him to a psychologist. Family therapy, the whole nine yards. Arlo was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder. You know what that is?”
I had heard the term before, applied to a little girl in Meret’s elementary school class who had been adopted from an orphanage in the Ukraine, and who just never seemed to settle into her new family. She bit and scratched and sobbed. “Doesn’t it have something to do with not being able to form an attachment?”
Win swallows. “Yeah. Imagine howthatmade me feel. It was three weeks in the NICU, and I was there every day.Everyday. No one loved Arlo like I loved him.” She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “Nothing worked. Not reward systems, not time-outs, not even—I’m sorry to admit—spanking. I used to pretend that my real boy had been taken by faeries; that this…this creature I didn’t understand…was just a temporary replacement. I know, ridiculous. But it was easier than admitting that there were times I wished Arlo had never been born. What mother can admit that, and still call herself a mother?
“Then one day my pediatrician told me about holding therapy. It’s pretty controversial. There were conferences where you could take your kid and be taught how to do it, but we couldn’t afford that. So I read books, and I tried to do it myself. Whenever Arlo had a meltdown, Felix or I held him. I held himsotight, for hours. The rules were that he could scream and shout, he could curse me, he could say terrible things, but at the end of the two hours he had to look me in the eye. That’s it. And I’d release him,” Win says. “It worked. Until he was too big to hold.” Her face becomes a lantern. “Arlo still had bad days, but hecameto me when he did, you know? I wasn’t the enemy. I was fightingbesidehim.Iwas his safe place. And then, one day, I wasn’t.” She knots her hands together. “I don’t know the first time he used. I don’t know who gave it to him. It was easy, and cheap, and when he was high, he was happy.” Win glances at me. “He laughed again. Like, all the time.”
I know how terrible addiction can be. I had a patient in hospice who had come home from the hospital with a fentanyl patch on his body, which his grandson peeled off and boiled in alcohol, so that he could use the drug. Even now, if a client dies and there are opioids in the house, I destroy them by mixing them with cat litter or bleach.
“I begged Arlo to go to rehab. He went and relapsed. He died of an overdose six days before he turned sixteen.” Win buries her face in her hands. “And it’s all my fault because my body couldn’t hold on to him—not before he was born, and not long enough, after.”
“No, Win. You can’t blame yourself because he was in the NICU, and you can’t prove that was the source of his anger. And you certainly can’t blame yourself for not being able to save him.”
“I prayed that Arlo would be put out of his misery,” she says flatly. “And he was.”
Suddenly she gets up, weaving a little. “I want to show you something.”
I jump to my feet, steadying her. Win walks up the stairs, stopping at an antique desk to pull from a drawer an old-fashioned key on a yellow ribbon. She leads me to a locked door at the end of the hallway.
