The First Twenty-Four Things

The First Twenty-Four Things

Matilda Weld Peck

           Our story was one of luck. 
           I got lucky; he got unlucky. This wasn’t the predictable fate for our respective characters, however. He was clearly the protagonist, the champion, the one to root for. And yet, the good fortune fell on me. 

1.   How he used my name in a sentence
2.   How he remembered everything I told him
 
           I met him in the Museum of Fine Arts, where I was a frequent visitor after finishing college. I appreciated the clean surfaces more than the art itself (a fact I never admitted, but I’m sure he eventually suspected). I admired the neat little labels and how the pieces were hung on the walls. A display of straight lines and sharp angles.
           But he loved the art. He loved how life could continue on a canvas for centuries after the painter had put down the brush. He wished he had been an art history major, I learned that afternoon. I was a business major, I told him, and I hoped to get an MBA someday. Most people are satisfied with a plan for “someday;” it sounds possible enough. But he wasn’t satisfied. I blushed when he asked about specifics, like he was already committed to the idea.
           But before all this––before I found the courage to cross the polished museum floor, stand beside him with my hands clasped together, and say “hi” in the softest voice that I knew he wouldn’t hear (What? he said, turning)––before our eyes fell into one another’s, I watched him. He was studying an oil painting: A pond filled with lily pads and koi fish. I wondered what could be so compelling about fish swimming between weeds. Time dragged its feet as we stood there, like chess pieces before the game. I noticed the shape of his back and the way he leaned slightly on one hip.
           I wanted him to turn around and see me. I never wanted him to turn around.

3.   How laughter bubbled out of him, high and clear
4.   How easily he became a child in those moments (or how quickly the adult layers fell away)
 
           On our sixth date, we walked through the Boston Common. It was an August evening, and I wore a sundress patterned with red and yellow flowers. He looked beautiful, and I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t want the world to hear. I wanted his beauty all to myself. Selfish, I know.
           The night breeze was soft and warm––like an invitation––and a giddiness had taken hold of me. I felt like a child on her birthday. When a child turns a new age, everyone asks: Do you feel different? and the answer is always no. But that night, the answer was yes, yes! My skin wanted his skin, my eyes couldn’t get their fill. As we walked through the park, fireflies blinked on and off, like silent paparazzi.
           We passed an old woman playing the violin, and he stopped and extended a hand. I shook my head shyly but took it anyway. I’ve never been graceful, but in his arms, it didn’t matter. He had enough grace for both of us. He spun me around and around, and I felt the air between my legs when my dress lifted. Later, I felt his mouth where the air had been.

5.   How he liked to read Shakespeare before bed, especially aloud (afterwards, we’d analyze the characters together)
6.   How he wasn’t scared of my nightmares
 
           One night, he asked about my childhood.
           I told him that, as a little girl, I imagined myself as a ball of string. Winding and unwinding. And I was never sure which was worse.
           Winding meant being good. It meant keeping my pieces tight and accounted for. I held them close to my skin––like tattoos that only I could see. And when the adults called me “quiet,” or “calm,” or even “sweet,” I knew I was doing OK.
           Unwinding meant the panic attacks, or so they came to be called. The invisible tattoos suddenly became an invisible net, forcing me to writhe and scream. My pieces went flying everywhere, staining floors and walls and making everything messy, messy, messy.
           I told him this. It was the first time I’d told anyone.
           He asked if I still felt this way, like a ball of string.
           I said: Sometimes, but not recently.

7.   How he listened with his whole body
8.   How his eyes combed through mine, as if searching for anything left unsaid
 
           After six months, we moved in together. My friends wondered if twenty-four was a little young? And if I was moving a little fast? And they were right. For the first time in my life, I was young, and I was moving fast. We picked an apartment with lots of windows.
           I adored the place when it was empty––washed clean with sunlight and the absence of habitation. The apartment felt like a new canvas, ready for the paint of our daily lives. But, as we began to settle in, my uneasiness grew. Like a ghost trailing behind me, whispering stories from a childhood long ago. And one evening, when he proudly declared: It’s finally looking like home! I nearly cringed. I didn’t trust that word, home. It had undertones of danger. 
           Home was where parents screamed at each other about money and the sound of smashing bottles vertebrates through the walls. Where a father passed out on the couch and slept until 11am, stinking up the room like a dying animal, and growling like a bear if awoken. Where a mother hosted friends when the father was out drinking––three different men, never at the same time. Where dinners were made in a microwave or purchased at the McDonald’s down the street. (Every kid wants to go to McDonald’s! the mother would say, as she pushed her daughter out the door. Get me a Diet Coke.) Home was where two sisters huddled together in a bedroom closet: making friendship bracelets after school or listening to music when the screaming got loud. And when the older sister left for college, home held no sanctuary. 
           That home doesn’t exist anymore. My parents are divorced, and they live in different cities. My sister is better at keeping in touch with them, but she doesn’t blame me for my silence. Yet still, I told him about this home, and how it haunts me. How returning to the same door, the same hallway, the same bed every night––it feels ominous. Like hatred could be brewing inside.
           That’s a terrible version of home, he said after a while. Can I share a different version?
           And so, he told me about a home where movie nights transpired, and cakes were baked on birthdays, and homework was done at the dining room table. Where three brothers had soccer tournaments in the backyard (and one brother, he claimed, always won), where a mom prepped sandwiches for school lunches, and where a dad made the best Saturday morning pancakes.  
           I said I liked his version better. 
           He said it would be mine, too. And even now, I still believe him. 

9.   How his hair looked right after a shower
10. How he always picked up flowers from the supermarket, even when the selection was bad, or the petals were dyed tacky colors 
 
           We had a big argument that March, when I told him I no longer wanted to enroll at Northeastern. Business school was too expensive, I said, I’d be paying off loans forever. And even if I could afford it, I wasn’t cut out for it. Anyway, my job as a marketing associate was good enough, and I’d get a promotion soon.
           He disagreed, saying I shouldn’t settle for a job I didn’t like. I found marketing boring, remember? I hated assessing customer satisfaction and making stupid spreadsheets that were never seen, remember?
           Yes, yes. I remembered. But it was just a temporary position and––
            Temporary until grad school! 
           But what if I changed my mind?
           You haven’t, he said. You’re just scared. And it’s silly to be scared, he added, because he would be there the whole time and he would–– 
           You’re not my good luck charm!
           We argued for a while, our voices getting louder and louder. He demanded why I was giving up so easily, why I was letting money and uncertainty get in the way of my ambition. He said it was time I fought for the life I wanted.
           He had no idea what he was talking about, I yelled. For me, existing was not some beautiful journey filled with beautiful opportunities and adventures. My path had not been paved by loving parents and good grades and a soccer scholarship to college––and I did not tread this path filled with natural charisma and a pocket full of good stories. I was not like him. I didn’t get to choose my battles, the way he did. 
           And then I ran to the bathroom and locked the door behind me.
           Forty minutes later, I heard his soft knock. He held me as I cried on the bathroom floor, and we whispered apologies to each other. He said he loved me no matter what I did with my life. I asked him if he thought I was fragile. 
           No, he said, you’re far tougher than me.
           The next day, I submitted my deposit.

11. How he knew where to find the knots in my shoulders (sometimes, before I
even felt them forming)
12. How he’d hum quietly while he worked them with his fingers
 
           He made us coffee every morning. Black for me. A splash of skim milk for him. I never learned how to use the coffee machine, but I bought him a fancy one as an engagement present. He set it up on the spot, and we made love afterwards.
           The wedding was small, held in an idyllic chapel on the North Shore. I had spent weeks writing my vows, tripping over the wrong words in a futile search for the right ones. He had written his in a single night. And when he read them to me, I realized where all the right words had run off to.
           Afterwards, as we walked outside into the autumn air, I literally tripped, sprawling out on my hands and knees. Damn those heels. He quickly pulled me up, but the moist soil left brown shadows on my dress. I moaned, grieving my momentary stint in perfection. Unable to console me, he suddenly reached down, dug his hand into the earth, and smeared dirt across his white tie. I gaped at him. He smiled. Now, we’re even, he said. Let’s go dance.

13. How he’d sometimes follow my name with “my wife, my love, my everything,” and it would make me giggle
14. How he’d say he was the luckiest man in the world (even when he became very unlucky)
 
           We were diagnosed in the same week. Me, with a pregnancy. Him, with a brain tumor. We cried both times.
           The morning after he told me the tumor was malignant, he asked me to take a walk with him. He wore his favorite hat––the orange one with a pom-pom that I said looked ridiculous when we saw it in the store last year. I think that’s why he bought it. But on that grey morning, it didn’t look so ridiculous.
           As we walked the familiar streets of Mission Hill, I looked up at the dark windows of apartment buildings, imagining their inhabitants waking up to a mundane, dreary day.       Hot envy rippled through me. 
           My mouth was nearly foaming with words. I wanted to discuss the grade 3 malignant tumor growing beneath that orange hat. The tumor was actively reproducing abnormal cells, the cancer specialist had said, which could grow into nearby normal brain tissue. I wanted to talk about the tumor’s location––in his frontal lobe––and how it could affect the function controlled by that part of the brain. Personality changes, increased aggression, and vision/speech problems were the symptoms that scared me most. I wanted to tell him about all the research I had already done––all those terrifying Google searches––and what I had learned. I wanted to talk about next steps: Surgery was the first time of treatment. Following surgical resection of the tumor would be radiation therapy. Or chemotherapy. Or both. I’d take a semester off from grad school, of course (he wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t care). I wanted to demand why he hadn’t mentioned the recent onset of headaches or the blurred vision earlier (both warning signs of astrocytomas, I learned on the internet. I also learned the word “astrocytomas” ). I wanted to know why he had waited so long to see a doctor. 
           I wanted to tell him that I was angry. I wanted to tell him that I had already forgiven him.
           But on that walk, we hardly spoke at all. As we approached our apartment, however, he took my hand. He told me he couldn’t wait to meet our kid. 
           I felt the pressure of his fingers. And I felt my strings tightening inside me, swaddling the tiny embryo like a nest. For the first time, my strings would be useful. They would protect our kid. 

15. How his voice brimmed with joy when he talked about you
16. How he wanted to paint your room turquoise (the color of my eyes, which he was convinced would also be yours)
 
           The surgery went well enough. Although complete resection of the tumor was impossible due to its diffuse infiltration into the normal brain, I was told, the doctors were pleased with what they could remove. He recovered slowly and requested that I bring Shakespeare into the hospital to read aloud. I couldn’t read the way he did, so eloquently and impassioned. Instead, I tripped over the awkward language, reciting haltingly what had been seamless through his lips. He never complained. 
           Due to concerns about long-term cognitive effects of radiotherapy, we decided chemotherapy was the best treatment option. Temozolomide (known as TMZ in the cancer world) was to be taken orally for 5 days, followed by a rest period of 3 weeks, before starting another cycle. The drug worked by slightly modifying the DNA of each tumor cell, triggering its breakage and consequent death. And TMZ did work, they told us. It worked unless DNA repair mechanisms were to override the damage. I didn’t want to think about “unless.” 
           I wanted to take my husband home. 

17. How he smiled politely at everyone, but reserved a special smile for me (one slightly crooked)
18. How he wanted to create secret code words to use in front of the doctors and confuse everyone but each other

           For me, there had always been good days and bad days. That’s the nature of anxiety. But in the months that followed, what made a day “good” or “bad” was determined by chemo.
           On bad days, he was exhausted. Too tired for Romeo and Juliet, even. The TMZ capsules wracked him with nausea, and he’d heave into the bucket kept by his bedside. I brought him soda and saltine crackers––a snack his mom told me she provided when he was just a boy sick with the flu. She and other family members came to visit every few weeks, flying in from different states, never complaining about the travel. Their kindness startled me. But then again, it was just like his. 
           On good days, the nausea and fatigue dimmed, and his light returned. We listened to the dance playlist from our wedding (I danced, he smiled). We built furniture for the nursery (I built, he oversaw). We brainstormed baby names (I liked short, practical names; he liked long, literary ones). We tried his dad’s famous pancake recipe (with a few burnt casualties). We watched his favorite childhood movies (Good Will Hunting became my favorite, too). And I wondered why I had feared our home would be anything but safe. It was our sanctuary. It was our own tiny world where anything was possible, and the only thing growing inside of us was a baby.
           But that wasn’t the only thing growing inside of us. 
           And four months after surgery, he had a seizure in his sleep. 

19. How firm his "I Love You" became, like it was the most certain thing he knew
20. How he was never afraid (except of spiders; I always had to take them outside)

           One of the first books I ever learned to read was The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. As a girl, I clung to the hope it inspired. When the Lorax departs into the polluted clouds, leaving only the word "UNLESS" engraved on a pile of stones, it signifies a chance to make things better. The word “unless” is a powerful one. Except when it came to brain cancer. The TMZ worked unless DNA repair mechanisms were to override the damage, we had been told. 
           The “unless” happened. And the cancer was suddenly everywhere. 
           The odds were nearly impossible for such a quick and dramatic recurrence, and yet, the impossible things are sometimes the most believable. Very unlucky, everyone said. 

21. How he always asked the nurses “where did they go?” because he never	forgot that you were with me––that you and I were a team
           
           In hospice care, there were not good days and bad days; there were bad days and worse nights. 
           On worse nights, surrounded by white walls and the smell of disinfectant, he was not himself. He would yell at the nurses, or at me, or at nothing. He wouldn’t eat, or he’d call for drugs, and they’d stick his arms with needles and tubes. He became part of the room around him, hooked up to all those machines. Sometimes, he would cry. I had to run out of the room in those moments, hot tears streaming down my cheeks.
           Once, he started raging about how badly his head hurt. He demanded why I wasn’t doing anything to help, why I was just standing there? Anger bubbled inside of me. Gritting my teeth, I told him the nurse would be back very soon. We just needed to be patient, I explained. He echoed me with a high-pitched whining sound, mocking every word.
           Stop! I regretted the shout as soon as it left my lips.
           He wailed again, eyes wide with confusion and panic. 
           Stop, I said more calmly. It’s going to be OK. The nurse will be back soon. 
           I took a step towards his bed. 
           He stared at me. I took another step. A pleading look appeared on his face, as if he wanted to say: Please leave, I don’t want to hurt you. I didn’t move. Then he closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and screamed. He screamed and screamed, like a banshee in the night. The sound was otherworldly, haunting. I will never forget it. 
           As his cry filled the white room, I covered my ears and sank to the floor. 
           It didn’t matter, though, the sound was already inside of me. Flooding my organs with icy dread, dissolving my bones into sand. Even when the nurses came rushing in––quieting him with morphine and calling my name from very far away––I didn’t move. I could feel my strings unwinding. My pieces were flying everywhere, staining floors and walls and making everything messy, messy, messy.
           
22. How I could feel the strength in his voice when he apologized, renewed in his mission to protect me from harm 
 
           The coffee in the hospice center was terrible. I should have learned how to use our fancy coffee machine at home, so I could bring him some. But soon, sleeping became far less painful for him than being awake. The easiest moments were right before he drifted off, when I had finished reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream aloud and we were analyzing the characters. 
           Though she be but little, she is fierce, he mumbled sleepily one night. 
           I looked up from my chair, surprised he was still awake. What?
           Little but fierce, he said again. He opened one eye. Just like you. And just like Hermia.
           I still don’t know if he had been referring to Shakespeare’s character, or to our daughter. But when I held her for the first time––in a different hospital room, after terrorizing the nurses with screams and curses that only his tumor could have matched––all I could think of were those words, little but fierce. 
           But before all that––before the world became hollow, and my sister took care of me, and I went into labor even though I had forgotten how to live (but the baby doesn’t know that, my sister said, and she needs you to remember)––before Hermia arrived, he had his last day. I didn’t know it was his last, of course.
           He was awake, but not talking. He hadn’t talked for hours. I watched him for a while, laying in the hospital bed.
           I whispered: It feels like my strings are breaking.
           They are not, he whispered back. His hand found its way to my belly.
           He died surrounded by tacky supermarket flowers. The nurses had to pry me off of him.

23. How, in the end, he wrote lists of all the things he loved about me (so that you could know all of them, too)
24. How the first twenty-four things were the simplest ones
 
           I got lucky twice: I met him, and then, I met our daughter. Two different kinds of love, two different colors. My love with him was golden. The kind of golden that is so delicate and soft, like the color of the moon. Everyone thinks the moon is white or silver. But it’s not. The moon is golden. Sometimes, when Hermia is sleeping and his absence echoes through our home, I look up at the moon and imagine I’m sitting on it. He is beside me. Our feet dangle off the edge, stirring up the night sky.
           He left me luckier than I ever could have imagined.
           I took Hermia to the Museum of Fine Arts five months after she was born. She is a quiet creature, like me, and I think we both found peace in the hushed atmosphere. I hope that when she is older, though, she will learn to love the art like her dad did. 
After wandering through the museum for a while, I took her to the gallery. We found the painting of the koi pond, and I picked her up to look at it. Flecks of color flew out from the fish’s arced bodies, as if the koi were swimming through confetti. Pond water rippled above them, adding intrigue to vibrant chaos below. Lily pads sat unassuming on the surface, like planets floating in a galaxy. Life unfolded before my eyes, full of mystery and scandal and beauty and adventure. The more I looked, the more there was to see. Standing there, I felt the weight of Hermia on my hip, growing heavy.
           I wanted to turn and put her back in the stroller. I never wanted to turn around.