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The Police Between Them, 2010
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Unique Digital C Print

Illness as Ace of Spades

When Jill is sick, nothing else matters. Nothing else comes close. Career, vacation, hobbies, how Jack’s team is doing in the play offs. All of it is trumped by the reality of Jill’s debilitating condition. They can’t go on until it is resolved. When Jill is sick, nothing else matters. Nothing else comes close.

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Illness as Warning.

There is more coming for Jack. This current illness is just a taste of the future. Jack can’t grow complacent when a remedy brings him relief. He knows it is only for the moment. He has seen the broken ones, the people with no choice but to hobble, grimace, faint, and feel the bite of the black dog. He knows the possibility of his destiny.

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Illness as Reprieve.

Jill didn’t want to face another endless day at her place of employment, dealing with surly co-workers, impatient customers, and slithery suppliers? A simple illness, nothing too harsh, but enough to take her out of commission for a few days, will refresh her as nothing else. It will give her the jolt of being slightly wicked, as well, like she’s a school kid again, playing hooky, and that’s always good.

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Illness as Premonition

Jack stands in line at the supermarket and thinks how lucky he is that you hasn’t contracted the crud that’s going around. Then that evening he manifests the first symptoms of the communal virus that has waylaid most of his acquaintances. It’s not the evil eye. Jack just knew what was coming and his mind gave him a warning. He tries to see this ability as a gift.

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Illness as Sedative

Sure, thinks Jill, spending every day in bed is no way to live, but an over frenzied life, filled with cell phones, appointments, and responsibilities, can benefit greatly from a couple of days, now and again, spent with the covers up to her chin, and the walls and ceiling indistinct with dimness. More calming, thinks Jill, than the hot brew Jack so thoughtfully brings her.

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Illness as Religion

Jack knows of cancer victims who are convinced their condition is the best thing that has ever happened to them. Jack struggles to accept his rogue cells in the same spirit. He tries to hear the voice of God in the pain. Here is your life and the fuse is getting smaller, says God to Jack. Believe in yourself. Believe in me. Find what love you can.

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Illness as Curse

Too easy, thinks Jill, to call it a curse, especially with hereditary diseases. Getting something her family gets feels like the universe is smirking at her. You putz, Jill. You think you have control over anything? I’ve got the whole thing laid out here in my book and you are just a minor character following the script. Jill, just get used to it now and save yourself the bother later.

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Illness as Deal Breaker

Until death do them part. Sure. In sickness and in health. Yeah, yeah. That’s the visible part of Jack and Jill’s agreement. The unwritten contract says something roughly like this: I am only a human being, and a weak one at that. You better not get sick for a long time, and if you do, Jill, if you, say, stroke out while I, Jack, am still in my forties, it’s really too much to ask me to nurse you for three or four decades. You’re going to be on your own, Jill. Count on it.

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Illness as Chimera

Sometimes, during a long bout of some passing affliction, Jill has obtained a measure of relief by imagining her ailment in terms of another being occupying a space congruent with her. Illness as the other. Jill like’s that. Then she can imagine taking the little pissant and choking the life out of it. Bury its expired body in the ground. Jill will dance, then. She’ll dance dance dance on the fresh wet grave.

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Illness as Memory

In a previous life maybe Jack was the tormentor. And now he has come back as a disease. He won’t remember who he was then. Jack won’t forget what he has brought with him now to live in this pain.

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Illness as Community

Jill sees that older folks, especially, seem to like hearing about diseases. It brings them closer. They lean in, eyes twinkling, minds sharpened to take in the tales of woe. Jill knows she is one of them when she tells about that nasty rash she had, or the scary infection. She has joined the club.

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Illness as Light

Like a flash bulb popping in Jack’s face. Blinding him until nothing is left but the impossible white filling his field of view. And the pain filling Jack’s head. The numbing rays slicing into his flesh, leaving singed trails, a path that won’t heal, bright scars, lightning traces on his skin.

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Illness as Spectacle

Hollywood has always known (and Jill has long accepted) that an ailing (but gorgeous) star suffering in a hospital bed for a reel or two is as sure to please the crowds as celebrity sex or fiery explosions or car chases. Jill embraces this paradigm. Life imitates art. Jill’s discomfort deserves a wide angle lens for maximum effect.

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Illness as Seduction.

Jack fights it, at first. Tells his friends and himself and Jill that it’s nothing. But soon the power of it takes him over. He cannot resist, and cannot turn away. Desire is a muddled urge sometimes, and Jack knows the relationship cannot last, but for now he is entwined with it, in love, surely. They need each other’s pained and comforting embrace.

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Illness as Narrative

The first hint of Jill’s unbalance. The explication of Jill’s first alarm. The rising action of Jill’s growing pain or disfigurement or infection. The tension of Jill’s maximum or prolonged discomfort and weariness. The climax of Jill’s release of illness or her resignation to eternal pain. The denouement of Jill’s normalcy returned or redefined.

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Illness as Canary

Jack is keeled over, woozy, lost, gasping. He’s one of them, now, like a lot of folks, stricken by environmental illness. Jack is telling us something. It’s dangerous to be here, now, in this world, the world we have made and are making. See Jack gasp and choke. The air and water here is dangerous. Soon Jack’s cage will be big enough to hold us all.

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Illness as Invasion

Jill imagines places like the Center for Disease Control must have big war rooms where they have maps of the world on high walls towering over cigar chomping generals. Jill thinks the blobs of colors on the map indicate the current dispersal of AIDs or malaria or influenza. They are clever, these war room officials. They know how to deploy their arsenals of chemicals: antibiotics, pesticides, and vaccines. Jill imagines herself as a push pin in one of the maps. The war room generals will keep Jill as safe as they can.

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Illness as Healer

Jack has to have his arm re-broken because it had not been set properly. He sees a previous illness in a new light. It was a corrective to reset his whole being. It served as a warning for him to stay on the straight and narrow. It was a bracing little dose of something Jack did not want.

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Illness as Pacifier

Jill lived downwind from nuclear testing and got radiation sickness. When she complained to her doctor of her alarming and mysterious symptoms, the doctor told her she had “housewife syndrome” and needed to go home and tend to her family, as so many other complaining housewives had been told to do. One can only imagine these docs, shaking their heads at the silly complaints of these silly women.

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Illness as Art

Jack is the gallery. His health problems are framed on his skin, like simultaneously fascinating and repellent paintings. His family and friends visit quietly, fleetingly. Most people can’t spend a lot of time looking at art without getting fatigued. That’s why hospital visitor’s hours are so short. It’s nothing personal; you just touch something in them they’re not used to knowing about. Jill is there for a short time. But she has to get back home. There are chores to do and art is a luxury, you know. You don’t really need it to live.

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Illness as Dear John Letter

Dear Jill: I never wanted to leave you. My only desire is to wrap myself around you and hold you to me for eternity. I would give up everything–life, love, soul, and riches, just for the privilege, no, the joy of being with you every minute of everyday. But this damned ailment. It drags on me. Pulls me away. I’m so sorry. It really is me, not you. Love always, etc.

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Illness as Darwinian Imperative

Jack is conscious of the future of his species. He wants to be kind to subsequent generations. As a courtesy to his descendants he has put off reproduction until he has had time to manifest any fatal ailments he might have, thus keeping from passing on any such defects to his children. Jack calls this unnatural selection, or something like it, and wonders why Jill does not laugh at his joke.

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Illness as Tea

The leaves, swelling in Jill’s cup, give up their color and flavor slowly, seeping into the water like an illness unraveling its power at a slow and steady turtle pace. The staining is stately and epic. Jill appreciates the process. It will take its own sweet time to reach its robust fullness. Then Jill will be steeped in its consuming essence.

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Illness as Candle

Sometimes, Jack likes the discomfort, the way it drags him down. It feels warm and soft, like a flame, with Jack as the supporting wax, holding up the winding spine of the wick in a thickening murk. The flame lulls Jack, hypnotizing him into liquid, then vapor, zapping him into nothing.

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Illness as Diet Aid

Jill overheard some women discussing a daughter of one of their mutual friends. The young woman suffered from anorexia. Jill remembered her own bouts with the ailment and shivered. So many ways for things to go wrong. I wish I had anorexia, said one of the women. Jill’s jaw dropped. The woman went on: I would love to lose a few extra pounds.

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Illness as a Bad Boss

Like the big cheese at Jack’s work, who tries to help, even when he has no idea what he’s doing. He makes arbitrary decisions to try to make Jack see his point of view. He is unafraid to use anything on Jack, even discomfort, intimidation, pain, or a subtle disfigurement to show Jack exactly who’s really in charge.

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Illness as an Overdue Library Book

Jill can do without the nagging, thank you very much. She knows it’s there and she is well aware of the consequences of leaving it as is for much longer. There’s going to be a fine to pay if she doesn’t take care of it. There will be the revocation of privileges, a consequent reduction in quality of her life. A loss of sympathy until she takes the steps to make it all right.

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Illness as Ace of Spades

When Jack is sick, nothing else matters. Nothing else comes close. Career, vacation, hobbies, how Jill’s soap operas are going. All of it is trumped by the reality of Jack’s debilitating condition. They can’t go on until it is resolved. When Jack is sick, nothing else matters. Nothing else comes close.

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