Distraction

by Adam Shaw

My therapist Chris told me to acknowledge my feelings more. You’ve been through a lot, he said. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable. I told him I appreciated the advice, that I'd consider it, but I took to excessive reading, sometimes drinking instead, which is how I ended up in a parking lot a mile away from the one in which I’d parked. I'd started reading to kill the time between finishing my work and the earliest I could acceptably leave. I left early, wandered head-down out of my office instead. 

I tucked the open paperback under my arm, pinned it against my ribs to keep the pages from crinkling while I patted my pockets for a bookmark. On the cover was a painting of a tin of BEEF HAM. A young couple split the sidewalk to dodge me, turned their heads as they passed as if they were cameras hired to film my debacle. I felt a crinkle in my jacket pocket, pulled out a parking garage receipt from November. My chest swelled, tightened. Sour trickled up my throat.  

I read a study not too long ago about the difference between discomfort and pain. Discomfort, it said, is an undesirable feeling that leaves us wanting to avoid its source. Pain, on the other hand, is a cause for discomfort, but not the cause for discomfort. It’s sharp, shooting—distracting. I thought about this, as I thought about most things at this juncture in my life, through the lens of my parents. I saw Mom on the couch at Nana’s house at Thanksgiving, her hand trembling while she held off a drink, her head sinking when Nana went out of her way to thank my aunts for such a special day, looked at Mom as if to underscore that she hadn’t done enough. I heard the crack of the wine cooler in the car on my way home, and as I played it back I wondered—was this discomfort, or pain? 

Another one: I saw Dad standing in front of a portrait of my half-brother Michael, who died from leukemia at the age of six. The world around us had become a swirl of illness and rage and fear while COVID-19 took hold, but my brother and I had decided to move Dad into an assisted living facility three hours away from where he’d spent the last seven decades so he could be closer to us, even if it put him farther from his home and daughter and friends. He didn’t cry as he stared at the portrait, but he twitched in a way that I thought he might. I knew nothing about Michael other than his name and that he died of leukemia at the age of six, so I asked Dad for his favorite memory of him. He twitched again, shook his head, whispered no.

The receipt stated that I parked in the J.B. Speed Memorial Art Museum garage for seven hours and fifty-three minutes on November 2, 2021. I ran my thumb back and forth across the creases that had formed on it, the dusting of Cheerios I'd picked up, pocketed, trashed after my daughter had spilled them down her car seat. In one corner was a splotch that had caused the ink to smear in what looked like a sunburst. I caught my breath quickening, sweat pooling in the pits of my sweater, and I swallowed back the desire to replay everything that had happened since November 2, 2021, everything that had outlasted Dad and shouldn’t have because he fought in a war, sweat in a factory, went on strike, married, stripped a house to the studs and rebuilt it, raised three or four or maybe five kids. Everything that outlasted Mom and shouldn’t have because she saved lives, endured rheumatoid arthritis, rescued more cats than I ever kept track of.

I looked up. The young couple had left, replaced by another one that walked side by side and hung their heads toward phones, tapped their thumbs against screens. A Jeep Wrangler pulled out of a parking spot near the front of the lot, and a Ford Escape two rows back braked, reversed, made its way toward the front to take it. It took a turn too fast, caught a cement post that screeched against its passenger side, drew white lines across it that looked like nails clawing at a second chance. The driver didn’t care, just let it happen until they cleared it. They pulled into the spot, got out and ran toward campus. The driver of the Jeep turned back and I looked at him, wondered as I so often did at that juncture what had happened, why, and the driver shrugged, pulled out of the lot. I ran my thumb back across the bookmark, felt a sting at the corners of my eyes, maybe a twitch, a tightness in my chest like folding into myself, and my breath quickened even though I didn’t want it to while a woman stopped, asked are you lost? and I crumpled the bookmark in a fist, told her I’m just distracted.

Adam Shaw's work has previously appeared in Pithead Chapel, Autofocus Literary, HAD, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughter in Louisville, Kentucky, and can be found online at theshawspot.com.