The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod

idiot.
Dear, you’re totally healthy. There’s nothing wrong; it’s completely normal down there.
I closed my legs and hopped off the table.
Great, thanks.
    But this seemed so different. You either had herpes or you didn’t, right? I googled the average onset age of schizophrenia for women and it was twenty-five, which left me feeling both relieved and more anxious; I had eight years left.

chapter
5
    DANIEL was sorry, he said, really, really sorry. This was over the phone, and he wanted to come out to Westchester and talk. He said he hadn’t realized the extent of this crisis with my mother. He took the train out early the next day, but for some reason I just didn’t want him to come over, to be in my parents’ home, which still felt like something of a crime scene.
    I picked him up at the train station in White Plains, and when I saw him, I felt a brief flicker of tenderness. I’d been so cold and unloving toward him the past couple of days, but the warmth of his body, the faint smell of his breath as we kissed hello that morning, and I felt myself softening toward him. The tips of his hair were still slightly damp from his morning shower, and I squeezed a handful of it.
    We went to a diner close to the station; it was one of those twenty-four-hour restaurants, but in the morning light the neon sign was faint and pale against the gray sky.
    â€œWanna do the sweet and savory combo?” Daniel asked, holding the tall, laminated menu in his hands. Sometimes when we went out for breakfast, I’d get eggs and turkey bacon and he’d order French toast or pancakes, and we’d split the food half and half.
    But I shook my head.
    â€œI’m just gonna have coffee,” I said. I
was
pretty hungry, and wouldn’t have minded sharing breakfast the way we usually did, with some fluffy eggs and crispy bacon. But it just didn’t feel right, and I didn’t want Daniel to think that this was going to be an ordinary breakfast, a normal meal.
    â€œSo tell me,” he said. He pushed the menus to the side and held on to my hands. “Tell me what happened.”
    And mostly I did. I told him the basics: that my mother had had a psychotic break, that she was suffering from paranoia and would be in the hospital for who knows how long. I didn’t say that this had happened before, didn’t reveal that sense of embarrassment and betrayal I felt at never having known this fact about my mother (a fact that seemed so crucial to her identity, so relevant to the very essence of her being). It was not precisely a lie, but a muddled, more comfortable version of the truth.
    Daniel moved over and sat down next to me on my side of the booth. The vinyl was ripped and smoothed over with tape beneath us. He took one of my hands. “I’m so sorry, Emma.”
    I knew he was; he must’ve been, but what else was he thinking? There were so many thoughts and anxieties circulating through my head, and I shut my eyes and started to fake a cough but really I began to sob. I let it all out, but tried to muffle my cries into Daniel’s shoulder. He kissed the top of my head.
    â€œIt’s okay,” he said. “Look. Emma, you know I love you, right?”
    I nodded my head yes, said, “I think I do?” We both laughed a little at that.
    â€œI do too,” I said. “I mean, I love you too.”

    IN October, just a month after we’d started dating, we’d gone to his parents’ house in the Berkshires for a long weekend. It was sixteen hours of driving, just to be there for a couple days, but we’d had Monday off for Columbus Day and decided to make the trip. It was the sort of thing both of us liked to do—to travel long distances to be somewhere for just a short period of time. It was also the sort of thing that my parents would’ve said was ridiculous, a waste of time and especially gas, but I didn’t really care and had just told them