May We Be Forgiven

when she pulls back the curtain, needle in hand, with four guys singing backup behind her. “Speaking of lunch, I’m going to the cafeteria.”
    “You may not die today,” he says, “but I will unwind you like a spool of thread.”
    “Can I bring you anything?” I ask, cutting him off.
    “Chocolate-chip cookies,” he says.

    I go through the cafeteria line, circling steaming trays of mixed vegetables, stuffed shells, meat loaf, cold sandwiches made to order, pizza, doughnuts, cereal; I go around and at the end my tray is empty. I circle again and get the tomato-rice soup, a bag of Goldfish crackers, and a carton of milk.
    When I tear the package open, orange crackers take flight, littering the table and the floor around me. I collect what I can. They are different from what I remember; I’m not sure if it’s the Goldfish in general or the flaw of the hundred-calorie pack—they’re smaller and flatter and now with facial expressions. They float on their sides, looking up at me with one eye and a demented half-smile.
    I eat thinking of the “worm” in the Chinese food, of the way the man at the deli near my apartment says “tomato lice.” I eat picturing the pot of soup on my mother’s stove, soup that formed a membranous skin across the top as it cooled, and how she would obliviously serve me that stringy clot, which I always ate imagining that it was really blood.
    I eat the soup, pretending it is blood, pretending that I am transfusing myself while Jane is upstairs having a “craniotomy and evacuation”—those are the words they used. I imagine a surgical stainless dust-buster sucking out the porcelain and bone. I imagine her coming out of it all with steel plates like armor and required to wear a football helmet twenty-four hours a day.
    Did she even know it was happening? Did she wake up thinking, This isn’t real, this is a terrible dream—and then, when it was over, did she have a pounding headache? Did she think my hair was a mess?
    She is in surgery, my spilled seed loose inside her, swimming furiously—as much as we did it with protection, we also did it without. Will anyone discover me swimming there? Do I need a lawyer of my own?
    The soup warms me, reminding me that I’ve not eaten since last night. A man with two black eyes passes, lunch tray in hand, and I think of how my father once knocked my brother out, flattened him, for not much of a reason. “Don’t be confused who’s the boss.”

    I think of George: the dent in the Sheetrock from his foot “slipping,” the coffee cup inexplicably flying out of his hand and smashing against the wall. I think of a story Jane once told me about heading out for Sunday brunch and George hitting a trash can as he backed out of the driveway and then getting so angry that he went back and forth over the can, rocking the gears from forward to reverse and back again, hurling the children this way and that, stopping only when Ashley threw up. Do outbursts against inanimate objects signal that someday you’re going to kill your wife? Is it really so shocking?
    In the hospital men’s room, as I’m washing my hands, I glance in the mirror. The man I see is not so much me as my father. When did he show up? There is no soap; I rub hand sanitizer into my face—it burns. I nearly drown myself in the sink trying to rinse it off.
    My face is dripping, my shirt is wet, and the paper-towel dispenser is empty. Waiting to dry, I carve Jane’s name into the cinder-block wall with the car key.
    A hospital worker almost catches me, but I head him off with a confrontation: “Why no paper towels?”
    “We don’t use them anymore—sustainability.”
    “But my face is wet.”
    “Try toilet paper.”
    I do—and it catches in the stubble of unshaven beard and I look like I’ve been out in a toilet-paper snowstorm.

    M onday, in the late afternoon, Jane comes out of surgery; they bring her down the hall attached to a huge mechanical ventilator, her head wrapped like a mummy, her eyes black and blue. Her face looks like a meatball. There is a hose coming out from under the blanket, a urine bag at the end of the bed.
    I kissed her down there last night. She said no one had ever done that before, and then I kissed her again, deeply. I made out with her down there. I used my tongue—no one will ever know that.
    I am telling myself that I did what I was told. Claire told me to stay. Jane wanted me—she pulled me towards her. Why am I being so weak? Why am