All's Well

by Mona Awad

She is asking me to believe her about her pain. I don’t, of course.

I still have a sample pack of the drug somewhere in my underwear drawer amid the thongs and lacy tights I don’t wear anymore because I am dead on the inside.

The one pill I didn’t try, because the side effects scared me more than the pain.

But I don’t believe it. It’s a lie. And I say it to the screen, I say, Liar. And yet I cry a little. Even though I do not believe her joy any more than I believed her pain. A thin, ridiculous tear spills from my eyelid corner down to my ear, where it pools hotly. The wanly smiling woman, the bad actress, has moved me in spite of myself.

She closes it easily—I feel how easy, as I lie here, staring at the ceiling—and for a brief, brief moment, I hate her. I hate Grace. I long to slide into Grace’s pockmarked skin and live there instead of here. How easy. How lovely. How lightly I would live.

“Do you need help up?” Grace asks. It’s like she doesn’t even ask for help. It’s like she’s always asking for help. Well, nothing helps Miranda. “No. Thank you though.”

Briana of the B-minus mind who yet believes she deserves an A for breathing. Reading an essay of Briana’s will make you fear for the future of America, will make you hiss What the fuck are you talking about? aloud at the bar where you have to go and get loaded on pinot grigio in order to grade Briana’s paper, so that the bartender will say to you, Miss, are you all right?

You will recall when such a face and torso stirred something deep inside you, in a place where there are now only dead leaves skittering.

You will mentally fast-forward to the moment when you hand Briana her essay back, branded with this B−. She will receive it and immediately look as though she has been stung by a thousand wasps, and you will wish that she had brought this to her performance of Juliet. You will watch her face redden first with embarrassment, then with outrage, her chin tilt up, up, up in defiance. She will assume you have given her this grade because you are an idiot and/or jealous of her beauty and youth. You are not the former, but you are most certainly the latter, and so it is not without some fear, some guilt, that you will watch Briana march toward your desk after class, watch her flip her shining hair around in an attempt to blind you as she complains. Watch her eyes grow big and wet and desperate. Watch her outrage bloom like an out-of-control flower. For this is not the way of the universe, the universe of Briana in which you are merely a cog in the great machinery of her ultimate success.

I could do something for you? Paul would offer, always. But the endless prodding of PTs and surgeons had made me far too disconnected from my body, which felt medicalized and alien, forever under clinical lights and eyes.

Worse. So much worse. You are breaking me, do you hear me? You are fucking breaking me.

But nothing feels good, does it? “What was that?” “Nothing.” Mark claps me on the shoulder twice. “Hang in there,” he says. And I can’t help it. I picture my dead hanging body for a second. Swinging from a hook on the ceiling. Mark getting the news by phone. Nodding soberly. Perhaps even burying his face in his hands. It puts things in perspective for him. It makes him understand that pain is not just a guide, not just simply information, not just a friendly teacher of lessons I need to learn. And then it’s Mark’s body hanging from the ceiling I picture.

Maybe she is one of the Nerve Women. Women of the invisible pain. Women alight with blinking red webs. No spider in sight. But the web is there.

He pushed her out with his coldness. He was sick of her sickness.

Get happy, Ms. Fitch. All’s well.

But she’s a hack. What did she do, community theater?

I hear him sigh with relief. Strange. Was he afraid of me? Impossible. No one is afraid of me. How long since anyone has been afraid of me, really?

Where is the girl who is never absent? Who is always annoyingly here?

I’m touched. Creeped out, but touched.

smiled. I’d love to show you a trick. I reach out a hand to Mark. I grasp him firmly on the wrist. I look him in the eye and grip, grip, grip as I slowly pull myself up.

Of course the idea that Helen might actually get some joy, some tongue after all she’s been through, is revolting to Grace. In her view, Helen should get nothing. Should never have come back from the dead to begin with. Let her perish alone. Let her fade to black.

I stand on both legs, and I do not lean, I do not crumble, I do not die a thousand deaths. I do not curse the line, the cashier, my body.

It’s a dialogue that never fails to remind me of the many I’ve had with Mark, with John, with Luke, with my surgeon. All of the times they told me to trust, have faith. All the times I submitted myself to their hands. All of the times they failed. None of them was ever put to death for this. They still asked me to pay them. I was no king.

Pain can move, Ms. Fitch. It can switch. From house to house, from body to body.

All the world’s a stage, Bunny, she’d say, painting her lips with a shaking hand. Remember that.

“What if you want a terrible thing?” “Sometimes we wish for terrible things, things we deserve. How could we not wish for them when we deserve them? And sometimes the heavens hear us. Something hears us. And our wishes come true. Should we feel guilty? Of course we shouldn’t feel guilty, why guilty? Why guilty when we deserve it, when maybe, just maybe, it’s a question of justice?”

“What, am I supposed to feel guilty?” I say. He looks confused. “Guilty?” “That I feel fine for once? That I’m not limping and moaning around? Dragging my leg like Briana? Lying on the floor, crying into my ears while everyone else around me rolls their eyes? I’m supposed to feel bad that I’m better now? I’m supposed to cry over a little cut. To what? To make you feel like I’m not a monster. I need to perform my little bit of pain for you so you’ll know I’m human?” “Miranda, I didn’t mean—” “But not too much pain, am I right? Not too much, never too much. If it was too much, you wouldn’t know what to do with me, would you? Too much would make you uncomfortable. Bored. My crying would leave a bad taste. That would just be bad theater, wouldn’t it? A bad show. You want a good show. They all do. A few pretty tears on my cheeks that you can brush away. Just a delicate little bit of ouch so you know there’s someone in there. So you don’t get too scared of me, am I right? So you know I’m still a vulnerable thing. That I can be brought down if need be.”

“Probably just as well,” I call after him. “You couldn’t handle my pain. Couldn’t handle my tears when they were actually falling, could you? That was just a bad scene, wasn’t it, Goldfish? A bad show. And you want to see a good show, don’t you?”