I
+1+
I took the longest route possible to Kennedy
Sitting on the bus I started thinking what I was going to say, our weeks apart suddenly flooded back to me like a bittersweet memory. I realized I had been far too impulsive for almost three weeks. I discreetly bit down on a bitter pill; I just wanted to calm my nerves.
Tomas had gone on to tell me that he was waiting in a coffee shop nearby, something about tired of being in airports.
It was mid morning and the streets were crowded, I squeezed into the coffee shop walking past the long line of suits waiting for their coffee and towards the back where he was at a table on the outside terrace, smoking. I recognized the tattoo on the back of his neck.
He hadn’t seen me so I decided to get a tea latte to buy myself a little more time. Instead of tapping him on the shoulder or calling his name I just sit down across from him.
“Hello”
“Sofia”
His accent is noticeably thicker, it also looked like he hadn’t shaved this morning and as always I could tell the disease was wearing down on him, the side of his face was sunken in slightly. He leans over the table and kisses my cheek.
“Are you okay?” I think that was my way of telling him he looked like hell.
“Yeah”, he consciously touches his face,” how’s the studio”
“I don’t know”
“Damn it”, he calms his tone,” Sofia I was gone for almost a month, what were you doing.”
“I was busy, I’m sure it’s fine. I’m great by the way”, make it seem like he’s the problem.
“Don’t be like that. . . I want to tell you something”
My phone starts to light up and I answer it before it before it rings. A text from Adam pops up.
Where R U ?
Instead of answering I turn the phone off.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m Jewish”
“What-“
“Ethnically, I mean my grandmother is Jewish”
“That’s not a problem is it?” I hope he didn’t think I cared
“No, it’s just she used to tell me this story about how she spent 2 years in a concentration camp when she was a teenager”
“That’s terrible-“
“I know, but that’s how she met my grandfather. They were the only ones in their family and town to survive. She says that since then she has wanted to raise a family of survivors”
“You told them?” how could I have been so selfish knowing he had to tell his entire family how sick he was.
“No, I couldn’t. I’ve been raised to believe family is important.”
“That’s why stayed longer”
“Yes, um anyway, he reaches into his bag and pulls out an old leather bound bible. He puts it on the table and slides out a perfectly pressed check for 8009.87.
“Is this from your family?”
“Yes-“
“This could help out with bills, your medicine and our loans”
“Actually it can’t”
“What do you mean?”
He removes his fingers from the bottom of the check so I can see the memo line.
“This is for us to start our family”
+2+
I could leave, walk away it’s not like he would be able to find me. I’m sure Adam would let me stay with him. I didn’t want to deal with this. I didn’t want to have this conversation or anything like it. No, I have to be rational.
“We can’t”. I remind him.
“I can’t”, he corrects me.
“What are you implying?” I know damn well what he’s implying.
“Sofia, I think you and I living proof that it doesn’t take a sperm donor to be a father”
“Is this some sort of sick joke ? I’m starting to think being a foster kid runs in my family”
“You don’t even know who your father is”
“I know he was in the same group home as my mom, probably the same one I ended up in and do you know where he is?”
“Where.”
“He died in prison”, or so I heard.
“Haven’t we been over the fucked up childhood game, we can talk about this later.” he stands up to get the rest of his luggage, he is still wearing all black; jeans, t-shirt and vest.
“I don’t want to talk about this later, I don’t want to talk about this all. You just have to tell your family the truth and give them their money back.”
“Later, okay. I just need to drop my stuff off and make sure I still have a business”
I don’t want to tell him that the coffee shop bathroom is probably bigger than the apartment, but I don’t want to start a fight in public either.
“Let’s make it quick, I have a class to get to”, I remind him not mentioning that spring break starts tomorrow.
Since we are in Queens it takes the two of us to figure out exactly how to get the closest to the apartment. He seems distracted and I get the feeling he has become impatient with me when I realize that we technically live in the Flatiron District and not Chelsea. Or maybe I was looking for all his bad faults.
When finally reach Manhattan I’m able to direct him to the building, he is cordial with the doorman but doesn’t say much. I open the door a little at first before letting him in.
“Holy Shit, Sofia”, he sounds upset.
“What.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, this is a closet”, he drops his luggage on the floor and starts opening all the doors
“You said if I saw something I liked.”
Charleston stirs from his place on the couch and joins me in the kitchen.
“Okay, did it ever occur to you that this ‘studio’ might be a little small”
“It’s a great neighborhood and there is a doorman and I feel safe here”
He can’t argue with that logic, yet all I want to do is get out of here as fast as I can
“For Christssake. . . it’s just not what I expected.”
“I really do have to go, I’m glad you’re back”
“Wait”, He kisses my cheek again, “You look beautiful”
I allow myself to smile even though I know he is talking about how old wounds are almost healed over.
“Thank you, I have to go”, I tell him
“Fine, I’ll see you later”, if he wants me to stay I wish he would say so.
I leave some food out for Charleston and head back towards Hell’s Kitchen. I’d left Adam’s at least an hour ago. I stopped by the bagel place and hurried back to his apartment, he was fighting with his printer.
“What are you doing ?”, I ask
“I was trying to print your paper, but it ate your works cited”
“That’s fine so, um, Tomas came home today. This morning actually”, I use the bagels as a peace offering.
He continues to fight with the printer but I know he is wrestling with something else, hell, we were fighting this together.
“I guess you should go then”, he says.
“I don’t want it to be this way”
“I’ve seen enough of my mates get married including my brother. I know how it
is you made promises we both knew it would end like this.”
The end. I hated the end.
“I was just getting used to being happy, not being afraid”
“Sofia, is your husband a good man?”
“I don’t know”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know . . . what that means. I mean how are you supposed to know if you love someone? Is it the same way for everyone or is there just one general feeling.”
“I can’t answer that for you, believe me I wish I could”
I take the undamaged sheets of paper, I’m not sure whether he is kicking me out or not but I decide to leave but not defeated.
+3+
He told me to meet him at a restaurant in the neighborhood. It was one of those casual-seat-yourself places where the big attraction seemed to be the bar and cheap menu.
When I walk in I can tell by the ashtrays on the table why he choose this
place. Tomas is sitting in a booth with what looks like a bowl of soup, a glass
of water and an empty beer bottle.
“You should really quit smoking”, I’ve wanted to say that for almost 2 years.
“There’s no point now”, he says just as the alarm on his phone goes off.
“Listen, I know your family means well but it’s not a good idea for us to start a family and if you don’t want to be dishonest you should give the money back to them”
“My mother is the family screw up, the people in my family aren’t rich and to give this money to me—being the bastard child and all—is a big deal to me”
“Maybe if you told them you were sick ?”,what did I know about honesty
“Can I be selfish for a minute, Sofia? When I die”. The word die sent a visible shiver through him, “I know you’ll move on.. . It doesn’t seem right that one minute I’m here and then I’m not. I’d like to do more with my life than draw on people”
He signals the waitress for another beer but I decide to cut him off.
“You want to be a father, don’t you?”
“Yes”, he runs his hands through his hair. I can see a new tattoo on his knuckles. He seems embarrassed to some degree, “Shit, where I’m from having kids is like a requirement to graduate high school.”
I couldn’t help but smile a little; his high school days always reminded me that my mother rants about the evil of public school weren’t all delusional.
“I’m sorry I have to say no”
“Don’t be, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I won’t be able to do things”
I take his hands and put them into fist so I can see what his tattoo spells out.
POSITIVE
“It’s nice”, I say trying to change the subject
“‘I love Sofia’ didn’t fit”, I don’t know if he was serious or not then he turns his wrist around.
“Oh my God”
I usually never react that way to any of Tomas’s tattoos but this one was familiar. It was a black and white Claddagh symbol, shaded so it almost looked three dimensional, inscribed on the crown was the year we met but that’s not what got to me.
“My mother used to have a ring just like this, one of her boyfriends gave it to her, she used to let me wear it. I always thought it was pretty”
He takes his arm away, “Does it bother you?”
“No, it’s just I wanted to keep it after. . . but they couldn’t find it.”, I can see that his eyes are red, I wonder when he slept last.
We sit in comfortable silence for a half hour, he orders a vodka tonic and asks me if I want anything, I thoughtfully decline.
+4+
I make myself as scarce as I can once we get back to the apartment; folding laundry, making tea, finishing up class assignments. He spends the whole time on his laptop, he takes a break to help me fold out the bed even though I don’t need it.
While lying in bed instead of thinking about art, movies or Spamalot I’m thinking about what I should make for breakfast in the morning and prove that I could still be a good wife for as long as I can.
I hear some faint scraping and turn around to see Tomas is standing on the table, his laptop just inches from his boots. He reaches up to take down the smoke detector, his shirt rises a little and I can tell that he has lost a lot of weight.
“Please don’t smoke in here”, my voice sounded small.
“Just this once” he says.
He takes a slight step back and the table shakes a little. I hurry out of bed to help him down. He reluctantly takes my hand and steps onto the chair before landing on the floor.
“I really don’t like the smell and it’s not good for you”
“Sofia.”
“You could do something else”
I let the thin sleeves of the night gown I’m wearing slip down my shoulders past my waist and to the floor, revealing a matching floral bra set. I start kissing him mostly to distract him while trying to be a good wife.
He doesn’t respond and after a while pushes me away.
“I’d appreciate it if my wife didn’t act like a whore”, he grabs the cigarettes and lighter from the table and heads out the door.
I start to apologize but it seems out of place and I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong. An hour later he climbs into bed smelling of smoke and cloves, placing his arms around me to make up for pushing me away.
“I’m sorry”, he whispers into my ear, “You must have been lonely when I was gone”
“I wasn’t”, I was getting closer to telling the truth.
He turns me to face him, I place my hand on the sunken side of his face.
“Lipoatrophy”, he tells me
“I know”, I kiss him to show that it doesn’t bother me.
I feel as if I’m one step closer to making this apartment a home but what I’m really trying step away.
+5+
It is a slow day.
I had been back in
I sat back in my chair and led my eyes back to the check I my hand, this check had been my breaking point
+6+
Kasey and I had had a good maybe even great time at the convention not that I would have noticed. I learned a lot met some important people but it was more like a highly organized and expensive party. After hours there was plenty of sex, drugs and alcohol. I took part in two of the three.
Despite the peace, love and free wiling attitude I couldn’t bring myself to tell people I was infected. More importantly, with my family around, I didn’t feel like the kid from the wrong side of the tracks or a heroin addict or someone dying of AIDs
Whether I was sleeping in my mother’s childhood bedroom or crashing in someone’s hotel room I still had the same nightmares and fantasies. I didn’t want the disease to get the best of me.
I’d made list of things I knew I would never do and until my Grandmother gave me that check I realized the one thing I had left off the list. It was that night when I decided I wanted to make my fantasies and nightmares a reality.
I tried to kill myself.
I dressed myself in the suit I had planned to wear to church the next day and while standing on a chair with tied a scarf securely around my neck and to one of the beams in the room. I kicked the chair from under me and they say that there is a moment when every person who commits suicide regrets it, I didn’t have the moment but I guess God has his own plan.
The beam snapped and I landed face first on the cold hard
ground gasping for breathe. I picked myself up, cleaned my bloody nose and
called Sofia and told her I was staying a few
extra days while buying a plane ticket back to
I told my grandparents that my wife needed me, they gave me a warm good-by not realizing that it would probably be the last time they saw me. Just before I left my grandmother pulled me aside and said she would pray everyday for a child, I didn’t say anything and twelve hours later I was sitting in my doctors office.
“I thought you were out of town, Mr. Alexander”, said Dr. Lane while scribbling on her clipboard. I had stored my luggage in grand central station.
“I was”, I was being smart.
“Why did you need to see me ?”
“I want to be admitted to the psych ward”, I told her simply
She starts writing a little faster. Dr. Lane has been my doctor since the beginning; she didn’t judge me when I told her that a friend (ie drug dealer) told me I should get tested. Even though I hated everything about what I was yet she made it a little easier. She was a little more than a doctor.
“Does your wife know about this ?”
“No"
I don’t think Dr. Lane liked Sofia very much, Sofia was always doing her job for her by telling me which medicines to take and how to take care of myself. I hardly listened to both of them.
“And can you tell me why ?”
I wasn’t sure if she wanted to know why I didn’t tell Sofia or why I wanted to be admitted but I decided to tell her both.
“I don’t want Sofia to worry, but I can’t stop thinking about killing myself. I have this great business that I love, a beautiful wife and a life I’m looking forward to living and I can’t. I don’t make plans anymore. I know I won’t turn thirty, buy a house or die with dignity. This entire disease is about taking little parts of you away day by day and watching you struggle to stay sane, it's sick. I guess what I’m saying is that if you don’t admit me I will kill myself”
“And how long do you want to stay”
“As long as I need too”
6 days of psycho-babble and anti-psychotics and they forced me out based on need, meaning there are thousands of crazy people in this city and I wasn’t one of them.
+7+
I consider closing up when I hear the bell up front go off. I roll down the sleeves of my shirt to cover up the track marks and make my way out front.
A potential walks around the shop looking at some of the pictures on the wall, a guitar strapped around his back. He gives me a quick glance but doesn’t say anything.
“Can I help you ?”
“Just looking”, he says and I assume he is too poor or to afraid to actually go through with getting anything done.
“I’m about to close up so you can look some other day”
“I think I’ve seen you around”, he says
“I doubt it”, unless he’s been hanging around ward 9
“I guess I’ll be back later”
I just open the door for him and flip the sign to ‘Close’.
Rolling up the sleeve of my shirt I know I’m one step closer to release
+8+
When I first moved to the city the last thing I ever expected to do was walk around a nearly empty block in the east village on a Saturday night, but here I was. The club had closed 2 hours ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to go inside. On the fourth time around I saw the door to the club open and the manager walked out in deep conversation with Adam.
They were discussing money but I kept to the side of the building. They were discussing money and the manager was handing him a check and they were making small talk about his show. When they said their good byes I decided to make my presence known.
“Adam”
He jumps a little.
“Sofia? What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you; I don’t want you to be mad at me”
“Why did you wait out here?”
“I don’t know. . . I didn’t want to distract you”, I sounded to full of myself
“I can’t help but to be a little frustrated. I let myself get caught up in this.”
“So did I, and I defiantly should have known better . . . anyway I bought your ticket back”, I hand him the Spamalot ticket but he doesn’t take it.
“You are doing it again”, he tells me
“What?”
“You know I want you to come with me and I would never give up the opportunity to spend time with you”
I had a slight feeling.
“I promise we will figure this out”, I wasn’t sure who ‘we’ was.
+9+
I opened my eye just a little bit wider, pressing my eyelashes down before adding another layer of eyeliner. My eyes water and spill on to my face but I convince myself that it was just the cheap make-up.
I had squeezed a chair into the bathroom, spending an hour trying to fix my hair and mixing dollar store make-up with whatever expensive make-up I had borrowed from Severine.
I had expected Tomas to still be sleeping when I was finished but he was in front of his laptop. Once again it’s like I’m not there. I told him I was going out with people from school which wasn’t all together not true.
“Have you eaten ?”, I ask him
“No”
“Well, you should”
He ignores me and in the days that he has been back I can tell he hasn’t been eating or sleeping enough it’s as if he is trying to push me away.
“You’re hiding something”, he says
I nearly drop the perfume I’m holding, but pull myself together. He knew, he must have known that’s why he was acting this way.
“What do you mean?”
He holds up his bank statement from last month.
“When I was gone”, he starts, “Whenever you went to the ATM, You were buying something you didn’t want me to know about.”
Atlantic City, museums, quaint restaurants, furniture and new shoes.
“That’s not true. You really should eat something”, I turn the conversation back to him.
“Don’t make this about me”, he calls me out
“I just wish you would take care of yourself, I don’t like seeing you this way”, I feel the eyeliner mixing with my tears, it burns a little.
“Stop”, he wipes my eye carefully with the cloth napkins I liked to use of decoration. He moves on to wipe my other eye followed by the rest of my face, lightly pressing the cloth to my lips, “that’s better”
I don’t completely agree.
“You feel warm”, I put my hand on his forehead
“That’s nothing new”
Tomas being sick was never anything new, it was the one constant in both our
lives. Walking out the door for the first time I started whatever this was I
felt guilty.
+10+
Adam and I met for dinner first at some restaurant he had read about in Zagat, before we even ordered I made it very clear that I was paying for my own meal. Our conversation varied from Monty Python, Spring break and people watching.
“Do you ever think about children?” I asked during desert
“What do you mean?”
“I mean do you want children?”
This was the first time I had seen him look so uncomfortable.
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No. . . Forget it”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes, I mean my mom was 16 when she had me so I can see how she might have been frustrated”
I doubted my mother ever went out to a nice restaurant and Broadway play with a complainy four year old.
He lets it go and as if to get back at me he lets a secret spill
“I went to see your husband”
“Adam. How could you?”
“We didn’t say much to each other, I was just curious. He’s not the friendliest, I think he was getting high.”
I didn’t like this. I felt like he was coming into my life and making me see it as it really was. If getting high helped Tomas deal I could at least pretend to ignore it.
“Look Adam, he’s been on drugs most of his life I can’t expect him to just quit in one day. It’s just apart of who he it’s like you and your music”
“That is not the same, Sof”
He let’s the subject drop and we decide to head to the theatre early. When we get to our seats we realize that they are the worse ones in the house and have a good laugh about it.
During intermission I see I have 23 missed calls from Tomas
“Shit”, I whisper to myself and make my way out to the lobby. I try calling him back but his phone goes straight to voicemail each time. I know Adam is waiting for me in the theater but decide to text him from the cab. I promise the cab driver extra if he runs a few red lights.
When I finally reach the apartment I decide to take 16 flights of steps as fast I can. I open the apartment door out of breath stepping first on Tomas’ uncharged cellphone. He’s just sleeping and I feel like I overreacted. I turn him over to wake him.
He doesn’t say anything and I’m so out of breath I can’t. I’m sure I’ve seen him cry before but they way his tears run down his face is unnerving. He starts clinging to me, his fingernails digging into my skin.
“It’s happening isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“I’m wasting. . .”
“Don’t say that.”
“Sofia . . .I love you”
“You’re only saying that. . .”
“I love you”
He repeats that a few more times before passing out. I’ve always said this disease is like Night and Day one day it’s dark and the next it’s light, one shows no sign of the other.
That started the darkest 2 weeks of my life.