The Unspeakable (28 page)

November 1, 2010

9:30 a.m.

Clinically dramatically better, DIC is resolving.

Remove D/C foley catheter, transfer out of ICU to medical surgical floor.

My husband is holding my hand. His face is down in my face.

“You were so sick,” he says. “But you're going to be okay.”

I am relieved by this, though I have no idea just how relieved I should be. I try to speak but it's like my facial muscles are buried under wet cement. I open my eyes and close them. Time passes. I tell myself that if I'm lucky enough to wake all the way up I will become a better person. Even in this state of unprecedented grogginess, even though I am not really awake yet but gliding toward consciousness on a slowly melting, invisible ice floe, I have the idea that this is the kind of thing I'm supposed to be saying to myself. I feel some mandate to take an inventory of all the meaningless crap I was caught up in before I got sick—the real estate market, the vagaries of my career, the merciless judgments I'm capable of casting upon everyone and everything in my wake—and realize how silly and shortsighted I was.

Except even on the ice floe, I know this is a fantasy. As I inch toward the shore, I am collecting the pieces of myself that were swept away with the tide but are floating back to me now. I am reclaiming my words. I am locating the letters of the alphabet and arranging them so that they correspond with the ideas in my head. I am coming back to myself. And I am no wiser or more evolved than I was before. There is no epiphany or revelation or aha moment or big click. There is no redemption. There is no great lesson learned. There is only the unknowable and the unspeakable. There is only the unlikely if ever-present possibility that life is just a string of stories inside a coma. And in this story, I am not a better person. I am the same person. This is a story with a happy ending. Or at least something close enough.

 

NOTES

The Best Possible Experience

Honorary Dyke

The Joni Mitchell Problem

On Not Being a Foodie

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am awed by and indebted to Alex Star, who edited this book with a level of rigor and acumen that is increasingly rare in publishing. He is an old-school editor, a true intellectual whose patience, kindness, and good humor make his writers forget how much smarter he is than they are (or at least than this one is). Thanks also to Laird Gallagher, Delia Casa, Elisa Rivlin, Sarah Scire, and Matt Wolfson for sweating the many,
many
details and to Kimberly Burns for being so amazing at what she does.

This book began with “Matricide,” and I have Lisa Glatt and David Hernandez to thank for talking me out of my original plan of keeping it in a drawer for the rest of my life. They also made helpful editorial suggestions about that essay and encouraged me to come up with more like it. Heather Havrilesky was another early reader and had many wise things to say, as she does in many areas of life.

Tina Bennett has been my ally and advocate for more than ten years and I feel lucky every day knowing that she and the irreplaceable Svetlana Katz are on my side.

My editors at the
Los Angeles Times
, Susan Brenneman, Sue Horton, and Nick Goldberg, were kind enough to give me time off and not hire a permanent replacement while I finished this project. I appreciate that space immensely as well as the space they've made for my opinions all these years.

I was privileged to write parts of this book at the MacDowell Colony and at Yaddo, both of which granted me the luxury of time, meals, and rooms of my own.

Thanks, finally, to Alan Zarembo, whose patience, love, and partnership are an extraordinary gift.

 

ALSO BY MEGHAN DAUM

FICTION

The Quality of Life Report

NONFICTION

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

My Misspent Youth

 

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meghan Daum is a columnist for the
Los Angeles Times
and the author of three previous books, including the essay collection
My Misspent Youth
. Her essays and reviews have appeared in
The New Yorker
,
Harper's Magazine,
Vogue
, and other publications, and she has contributed to NPR's
Morning Edition
,
Marketplace
, and
This American Life
. Visit her website at
MeghanDaum.com
.

 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

 

Copyright © 2014 by Meghan Daum

All rights reserved

First edition, 2014

 

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daum, Meghan, 1970– author.

    [Essays. Selections]

    The unspeakable: and other subjects of discussion / Meghan Daum. — First edition.

        pages    cm

    ISBN 978-0-374-28044-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71006-4 (e-book)

    I.  Title.

PS3604.A93 A6 2014

814'.6—dc23

2014014643

 

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