{"id":150347,"date":"2021-01-14T11:29:39","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T16:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=150347"},"modified":"2021-01-14T16:23:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T21:23:00","slug":"we-didnt-have-a-chance-to-say-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/01\/14\/we-didnt-have-a-chance-to-say-goodbye\/","title":{"rendered":"We Didn\u2019t Have a Chance to Say Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sabrina Orah Mark\u2019s column, Happily<\/a>, focuses on fairy tales and motherhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Plague Doctor (Photo: Sabrina Orah Mark)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t find my plague doctor.\u201d \u201cYour what?\u201d says my mother. \u201cMy plague doctor.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know what that is,\u201d says my mother. I text her a photo of my plague doctor in his ruffled blouse and beak mask sitting on my bookcase a few months before he disappeared. \u201cI still don\u2019t know what that is,\u201d says my mother. \u201cForget it,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to find it then look for it.\u201d \u201cI am looking for it.\u201d \u201cThen look harder.\u201d \u201cI am looking harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the strangest thing,\u201d I keep saying. But I know it isn\u2019t the strangest thing.<\/p>\n

I tell everyone who will listen that I\u2019ve lost my plague doctor. Nine months ago I wrote about<\/a> seeing the small porcelain doll in a shop in Barcelona, and wanting him immediately. If he had been real his beak mask would\u2019ve been filled with juniper berries, and rose petals, and mint, and myrrh to keep away a plague I thought belonged only to the past. This was ten years ago. My husband and I were on our honeymoon, and I thought I only wanted the plague doctor. I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d eventually need him, too. \u201cYou can\u2019t be serious,\u201d says my brother. \u201cWho loses a plague doctor during a plague?\u201d \u201cI guess I do,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll find him,\u201d says my husband. But we never do.<\/p>\n

The only explanation is that he fell into a donation bag when I was cleaning out closets, and I accidentally dropped him off at Project Safe. \u201cThat is not the real name of the thrift store,\u201d says my brother. But it really is the real name: Project Safe. I imagine my plague doctor at the bottom of a bag of old shoes calling for me. The news keeps breaking. The number of dead keeps rising. I go on Project Safe\u2019s Facebook page. I offer a reward. I will pay whoever bought him five times what they paid. I will donate to the charity of their choice. I will sail across the sea in a paper boat with my pockets full of dried rose petals and fresh air and ancient coins to lure him home.<\/p>\n

The manager of Project Safe puts a photo of my plague doctor up by the register. She understands, she tells me, what it feels like to lose something. I feel grateful and ridiculous. The news keeps breaking. The number of dead keeps rising.<\/p>\n

I even looked behind the curtains. I even looked in the piano.<\/p>\n

The plague doctor is not the only thing I\u2019ve lost since the pandemic began. The longer I am in my house, it seems, the more things I lose. As if there\u2019s a correlation between the hours I inhabit my house and its contents disappearing. \u201cI could\u2019ve sworn I put my copy of Virginia Woolf\u2019s The Waves<\/em> right here.\u201d \u201cHaven\u2019t seen it,\u201d says my husband. \u201cI\u2019ll help you look,\u201d he says. I look over at our sons. Their rosy cheeks seem to have been replaced by the color of the living room. Is this the year they were supposed to learn all the major rivers? Or is it the year they were supposed to learn how to find the hypotenuse of a triangle? I could spend months going around this entire house picking up everything that\u2019s now lost. I tell my neighbor, the scientist, I\u2019ve lost my plague doctor. But I don\u2019t think he hears me. We\u2019re standing too far apart.<\/p>\n

My husband leaves the book he is reading, Journeys out of the Body<\/em>, open on our bed. \u201cThat\u2019s all we need,\u201d I mutter to nobody. I imagine the plague doctor and my husband holding hands on the back of a milk carton. I imagine a toll-free number underneath them in numbers printed so small it could easily be mistaken for pinpricks in the carton, the milk leaking out so slowly it\u2019s barely noticeable until it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

I tell our mail carrier I\u2019ve lost my plague doctor. \u201cOf course you have, dear,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone loses their plague doctor.\u201d Her hands are small and covered in plastic gloves or fog. She gives me my mail. Nothing is addressed to me.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I hear my husband\u2019s footsteps coming up the stairs and I think he\u2019s about to knock on my office door with the plague doctor safe in his arms.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m trying to say is that I\u2019m mourning something nameless that has vanished into thin air, and I\u2019m calling it my plague doctor. What I\u2019m trying to say is that we didn\u2019t even have a chance to say goodbye. We should\u2019ve at least had the chance<\/em> to say goodbye. Goodbye, plague doctor! Goodbye, old world! The plague doctor is what I\u2019m holding so I can hold what I\u2019m grieving. Or rather, what I\u2019ll never hold again.<\/p>\n

I tell Bruno Bettelheim I\u2019ve lost my plague doctor. \u201cA child,\u201d he says, \u201cneeds to understand what is going on within his conscious self so that he can also cope with that which goes on in his unconscious. He can achieve this understanding, and with it the ability to cope, not through rational comprehension of the nature and content of his unconscious but by becoming familiar with it through spinning out daydreams\u2014ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to unconscious pressure\u2026\u201d \u201cExcuse me, Bettelheim, for interrupting you but what do you think I\u2019m trying to do here?\u201d Bettelheim looks around. \u201cYou lost your plague doctor,\u201d he says. \u201cVanished into thin air,\u201d I say. A sadness, like a mask, falls over his mouth. His mouth is so beautiful. \u201cI miss mouths,\u201d I say. \u201cI miss my plague doctor,\u201d I say. \u201cI miss stupidly believing history was lived mostly in the past. I miss not being afraid \u2026 Bettelheim?\u201d \u201cYes?\u201d \u201cWhen will my sons be able to return to their childhoods?\u201d Bettelheim looks at his wrist where a watch should be. \u201cI could\u2019ve sworn I was wearing a watch,\u201d says Bettelheim. The news is breaking. The number of dead keeps rising.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe child,\u201d says Bettelheim, \u201cfits unconscious content into conscious fantasies, which then enable him to deal with that content.\u201d \u201cLike storing my grief inside a figurine?\u201d I ask. \u201cYes,\u201d says Bettelheim. \u201cIt is here that fairy tales have unequaled value because they offer new dimensions to the child\u2019s imagination \u2026 the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give better direction to his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich direction are you walking Bettelheim? I\u2019ll walk with you.\u201d We walk slowly down empty street after empty street. Bettelheim stops at a trash can and looks inside. \u201cYou never know,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Other than this fairy tale that is not a fairy tale but the true story of my missing plague doctor, I can\u2019t find a fairy tale in which an object vanishes with no explanation. Even the girl with no hands grows back her hands. Cinderella\u2019s glass slipper is never really missing, and when the prince disappears we know the whole time we can find him inside the beast. Even the darning needle, which breaks and falls down the drain and floats away with the dirty gutter water and is found in the street by schoolboys and is stuck in an eggshell and is run over by a wagon, is never out of our sight. Everything in a fairy tale has already been lost. The fairy tale is where we go to find it again.<\/p>\n

I never find my copy of Virginia Woolf\u2019s The Waves<\/em>, but if I had I would\u2019ve copied this down: \u201cI need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.\u201d I want a lost and found in my living room manned daily by Woolf. A small booth with a sliding window. Tap, tap. Woolf slides the window open. \u201cState your missing.\u201d And I state my missing. Obviously she never returns anything. But just hearing her sort through the missing is a comfort.<\/p>\n

My husband buys me a new plague doctor who is twice the size of my missing plague doctor. Big enough for my missing plague doctor to possibly be hiding inside. Around the new plague doctor\u2019s waist is a crescent moon, and from it hangs a lantern, and keys, and an empty birdcage. He is so black and slender and beautiful he could easily be mistaken for my plague doctor\u2019s shadow. He is like the grandmother who comforted me when my grandmother died.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to hold,\u201d writes Heather McHugh, \u201cwhat we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI left you a surprise,\u201d says Eli, my seven-year-old. On my desk is a plague doctor made out of clay with a note: \u201cPlage Dok.\u201d On its chest is a bright pink heart. Now there are two doctors. One made of shadows, and one made of clay. What we lose is also what we gain. \u00a0I turn on the faucet and out gush more plage doks. I fill up my glass and I drink and I drink. In the glass the plage dok\u2019s letters rearrange themselves like cells: gold lake, pale opal, old page, aged god. I pull each word from the glass, and carefully dry them before they fade. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d asks Eli. \u201cAnother story?\u201d \u201cI hope,\u201d I say. \u201cWhat\u2019s it about,\u201d asks Eli. \u201cI think it\u2019s about saying goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read earlier installments of Happily here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections\u00a0<\/em>The Babies\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Tsim Tsum.\u00a0<\/em>Wild Milk, her first book of fiction, is recently out from Dorothy, a publishing project. She lives, writes, and teaches in Athens, Georgia.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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