Who Owes Who for What Now?

By Danny Kelleher

I have an iron immune system, Isabel texted me.

She wasnt lying: she was smaller than me, drank less water, exercised less, probably

even got less sleep (the most remarkable fact of the list)and yet she never got sick. In the four

months wed been dating shed slept with me, stubbornly, through a variety of my many small

ailments: runny noses; headaches; a filmy, metallic taste on the roof of my mouth. Each time

shed used the iron line, called herself a tank, or equated herself in some way or another, pretty

much, to an armored vehicle of war. And each time the defenses had apparently held.

Though today was clearly different. Id never felt anything like what was happening in

my stomach. All afternoon Id left the fetal position only to run to the bathroom, alternatively

sitting upon and ducking my head into the toilet, depending on what the moment demanded I

prioritize. Even the slightest thought of the raw unsalted almonds Id consumed with manic

ravenousness the previous night made me feel as if I would vomit.

In our texting over the course of the day, I had told her of all thisof the bathroom

escapades, the feeling of my bowels like a broken washing machineand reminded her

repeatedly that I was more than likely contagious. The whole time shed been insistent on how I

need not worry about her healththough it was totally chill, she said, if I just wanted to be

alone.

I wasnt sure how chill it would really be. Screens have made it easier for me to deny my

own agency in disappointing the people I care about. I dont think Im alone in this. Free from

the nerves of performing our own white lies and granted response delays which allow more

meticulous planning, the risks of stating the truth become harder to justify. Why say I want to
finish reading something when I could just say Im swamped with work? Why say I dont want

to see a movie right now when I could just say I still need to eat something, and so I therefore

wont be able to make it on time? Often we simply cannot explain why we dont want something

we normally enjoyand so why risk misinterpretation, hurt feelings, not getting invited next

time, when the outcome stays the same regardless?

One potential reason is that in embracing this we have falsely cast ourselves as a

generation of extroverts, burying our very human needs for solitude, silence and reflection

beneath the guise of an overcrowded schedule. Another is that we may be gradually forgetting

how honesty, amid shame or discomfort or other negative feelings, has the power to bolster its

inverse: to provide potency and power to our compliments, and to our genuine moments of

appreciating the company of another. And a last is that, as most crutches tend to go, if we lean

too much on this method of dodging and subverting, we may get very bad at saying how we feel.

Though make no mistake, it is only in retrospect that I purport to have a view from

outside the cave. In the moment, sitting in bed, I was totally confounded. Even in a relationship

that was otherwise quite honest, neither of us, really, had ever expressed blatantly that we just

did not want to hang out. Instead we had followed an I want to but formatI want to but I still

have to finish this paper and I dont want to keep you waiting; I want to but I have to be up super

early; I want to but I dont want to get you sickthat, despite not subsisting on lies so much as

alternative facts, had led to the same issue: I didnt know how to say that I simply wanted

solitude. And so after I stated my various reasons why I wanted to but we shouldntthere was

little she could do to help (I couldnt even drink water); the smells and sounds I was creating

were vile; even if she would be proceeding very explicitly at her own risk, I didnt want her to

get sickand she persisted, gently but firmly, in telling me I need not worry about her, I caved.
 She was kind and easygoing the whole time she was there. She didnt get offended when

I thrust her comforting hand off my chest and was too fatigued to say why. (Touch was making

me nauseous.) If she smelled anything strange, she never let me notice. And she laid by me,

holding her laptop on her stomach so both of us could see The West Wing (her choice) and The

Wire (mine) until we both fell asleepan act which, she emphasized again, she was not worried

about immunity-wise. If its going to happen, she said, Im already screwed. She woke up

before me the next day, smiling, and was out the door early.

Though even the USS Isabel, we learned, could not stave off the bug. Two days later, she

texted me at six in the morning: Im hoping I maybe psyched myself into throwing up just now

because I was paranoid about having it.

Yeah no, she said, a half hour later.

But she didnt want any food or drink, she said; her roommates were tending to her; she

felt very gross. Plus, didnt I have work later? Stuff to get done? She would feel so terrible, she

said, if she got me sick again.

I asked her if she was sure, and then after a while if she was sure that she was sure. Did

she not want Pedialyte? It was good for hydration. Better than water. Not anything? Her reasons

kept changing, but her evasion of the central questionDo you want me there?stayed the

same, even when I made it explicit at several points. I do, but she went, the way wed

established, the same way I had at first. Though unlike me she would not cave.

This drove me crazy. Staring at my screen, deleting and pasting, I brewed in frustration,

revolving again and again around a sense of betrayal that before the conversation I had not even

recognized on the possibility horizon.

 Over long, confusing texts I spewed: I very much wanted to care for her today, to assume

now as she had before the selfless, useful position of the caregiver; her not letting me, I felt,

implied a troubling imbalance of vulnerability. I had relinquished my solitude, I said in more

words, to take on the burden of being unnecessarily cared for, and now she was refusing to adopt

that burden herself. If she didnt want me there, I said, she needed to tell me directly, because all

these concerns she was raising on my behalf were being imposed without any say on my end.

I continued to mull, steam, type; as I did I saw that almost without knowing it, Id been

regarding her caring for me as a favor for which she owed me. I thought to and then referenced a

conversation in White Noise: It seems that a burden is being shifted back and forth, Jack

Gladney concludes to his wife Babette. The burden of being the one who is pleased.

How could she not see it? In refusing my company and care, she was not just denying

herself a favor, I said. She was also denying me one.

Isabel was reasonably startled. She told me she wanted sleep, and that she would let me

know later if she needed anything.

In solitude and silencenow both digital and literalI calmed. Slowly I saw the insanity

in what Id just done. Two days before, if Isabel had messaged me anything like what Id just

unleashed, I would have been overwhelmed and probably very annoyedthat is, if Id had the

strength to hold up my phone long enough to read it all. And for what was I blaming her? Like

me, shed refused to hit on the nose what she actually wanted, but at least, unlike me, she hadnt

been so misguided to request the opposite.

Instead of Don Delillowhat use is the burden of being pleased if you dont express it as

suchI thought of something my Shakespeare professor, Whitney, had told my class that
quarter. Relationships, shed said, teaching on The Merchant of Venice, are built on exchange;

gift-giving strengthens and redefines our bonds.

In a new relationshipparticularly, maybe, one whose existence and subsistence lies in

part between two screensit can be hard to tell a gift from a debt; a favor from a burden. And

when we fail to speak our minds, we compound these dangers in a web of incongruent truths

leaving kindness unappreciated, vulnerability unrequited, favors misunderstood. In love, we are

owed only what we ask forthough as it always tends to be, its best when we can drop all

thoughts of a balance sheet.

Later that night, after shed woken from her nap and Id finished apologizing, Isabel

texted me that she would, in fact, like some Pedialyte. Thrilled, I biked through the cold and got

the drink, as well as some Saltines and straws. I wasnt sure she would want them, but then

again, I wasnt even sure who I was buying them for.