If You Want To Bend My Arm, Well You Could Do It With A Little More Charm

"But you just couldn't bear to do me any harm
So you just sulk"

-from Sulk by Billy Bragg

I told a dear friend a story last night that I hadn't planned to write down here, but I have to tell the story of this morning's interaction and that requires last night's conversation for context.

I woke up thinking it was morning again in America. Anyway, it felt like a good day, given how Mother's Day had ended with Jenny being so content. Jenny sunned herself most of yesterday afternoon, after running a couple of errands.  I am so glad the sun is out, and the backyard in good enough shape that Jenny can enjoy herself.  I kind of worked during the day, took some calls, had a couple meetings, it is still very slow for me, though.  

If you want to bend my arm, well you could do it
with a little more charm.  .   .

I did my mundane and routine chores, watering the garden, putting out the bins for pickup, blah, blah.  Jenny came in from sunning herself and sat on the sectional, her phone surgically implanted in her left hand,  me across from her, my phone also seemingly surgically implanted.  It seemed calm.  Nothing to see (t)here.   But I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of people cried out in terror, a shiver in my timbers, if you will.

Abby and Leiney weren't home. Leiney was out on the doors, raising funds for Amnesty Int'l, Abby doing work/study at YTN.  I turned on the tele, and was surfing, which drives everyone but me crazy.  I land on a hilarious episode of the Addams Family. Jenny gets a call from her sister, and instead of removing herself, sat and had a Loud Family telephone conversation for about 10 minutes.  I ignored it, but knew her behavior was signaling disapproval of my sloth, and that it portended ill interactions.  She, for reasons unclear, removed herself well into the conversation, telling her sister I was watching television and didn't want to bother me.  Sarcasm was not dripping from her voice, but I have learned that the best passive aggressive behavior truly appears anodyne.

After the call, she returned to the couch with eyes locked on her phone.  I tried to make small talk, but her responses were less than the meager rations I sought.  I waited for the storm.  I felt a slight gale 

when I told Jenny I wasn't really hungry after she asked me what the plan for dinner was.  She was vexed by my lack of appetite.  She said nothing. Sensing the shifting tide,  I offered, "I'm not hungry, but if you make something I will eat." 

The barometric pressure in the room dropped.  I should have taken warning from the pink skies that morning, but I had been gazing at my navel yet again, listening to her siren song.

Albeit, I thought, I will ask her what troubles her waters, and when I did so, the levee broke.  I was told I never cook for her.  Note to self, she has cooked maybe 3x in the last 9 months.  She said food delivered and reheated didn't count.  Food delivered from Home Chef, Blue Apron, Blue Ribbon and that I subsequently cooked didn't count.  I would guess the meals from Costco that I put together and cook don't count either.  But, to be clear, it all was alleging I don't cook at all for her.  This required some mental gymnastics of the highest order, like a windsurfer jumping over shoals in a gale force storm.  Hmmmmm.  

Next, putting on her best Sally Struthers face she asked in her way, "What about the children?"  In other words she said, "Dinner is important for our family.  What will Abby do when she gets home."  I was pissed and incredulous, I'm not going to lie, and was likely escalating, which I wish would happen more often.  I pointed out that Abby is an incredibly picky eater, invariably declines our food, and cooks for herself.  If Abby were an action hero in, say, Waterworld, her catchphrase whenever offered fresh water would be, "I'm good."  All of this bluster from Jenny might be described as a mere dust up, a dust devil or minor water spout if you will, but it did serve to kick up the storm to a category 5 hurricane.

Knowing which way the wind blows, I probably shouldn't have put up the equivalent of a verbal windsock when I earlier asked, "what's wrong?"

Looking for safe harbor, I note that she seemed perfectly fine all day, and that if she wants dinner, she was quite capable of making it.  Jenny then tells me that I am not caring for her.  I am not doing all I can to make sure she gets her 90 grams of protein every day as she is supposed to receive. Thus my failure to make dinner, by implication, means I am causing her beach head against this cancer to erode.  Long story less long, I created this tempest, I am sinking her. Jenny finally says she can't cook because she is in debilitating pain, which was news to me, the first time she had mentioned it today. In fact she had been marveling out loud in the morning that the hip and back pain, pain she has been suffering from for so long, has disappeared the last two days.  I was now beginning to almost get pulled under by the riptide.  I should have remembered that if I swam parallel to the shore, I could get away because.  .   .

Jenny announces she knew I would get mad when she told me what was bothering her--I never promised I wouldn't--and I did get mad, not angry, not exasperated, just upset, like you feel lashed to the mast in a hot sun with little water to slake one's thirst.  This was it, she said.  She was leaving to go deliver Door Dash--that would show me!  And here I had been worried about rum, sodomy*, and the lash.  I was puzzled.  "You just said you were in too much pain to cook."  She left, cast away my rejoinder, and indeed delivered for Door Dash.  Her exit brought the calm before the becalming.

*Let's be honest, who worries about sodomy?  Fun fact, I used to sing All of Me, but replace it the title words with Sodomy. It really works well.

When Jenny came home, she acknowledged my presence, and then retreated to her room, not speaking to me again. I can't say I was tied in knots. When I awoke this morning, I went to greet Jenny in her bedroom, weighing anchor at the foot of the bed.  She was sullen, sulky, but acknowledged my Pollyanna morning persona.  I asked her plans for the day--a walk at Greenlake with her friend Jennifer Murray--one of the two people that facilitated the coverup of the affair.  I offered to make her breakfast.  She told me that she wasn't hungry.    .    .

Still sullen, she told me that her disease is back in full force--I hear this now every couple of weeks.  She is certain, she explained, because the pain is back that she had when she first was sick, prior to diagnosis. I'm not in her body, so I will defer, but she tells me the end is probably upon her and she didn't want to die this way.  I remind her that her last scan showed her tumor shrinking and no new metastases.  She became angry. She knows her body, this is it.  I said, "I'm sorry," and went to face the day, and throw out this message in a bottle. 

I hope this entry didn't leave you adrift, there is a raft more , one might say a cargo load, in the deep from whence this surfaced.

If nothing else, I have created one hell of a playlist.

On a more positive note, Jenny now is two hours shy of 2088 hours, or one year of donated leave.  Amazing.