Diphenhydramine

            That icy shimmer hit my stomach seven minutes after the sublingual tab dissolved

            —heavy/nervous/sick—

            but it was a comforting feeling, if only as a precursor to unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness being the greatest comfort of all.

            Way different from the head-trip of Advil PM. That was a much simpler experience. Advil PM was a blanket. Something to lie cozy beneath. But Ambien was unpredictable

            —shaky/shimmering/blinding—

            it didn't block the light but filtered it through a carnival prism. Bounced time off the walls. Ran in all directions simultaneously.

            By morning, the spike had dulled and I sat at my desk and watched Mrs. Corbin mov her mouth in the shape of a lecture. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was the plat du jour, and was I the only one who thought ‘Frankenstein’ sounded decidedly Jewish?

            —Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydenberg—

            —Flowers for Algernussbaum—

            “Some things are Jewish always,” Aunt Lydia told me. “Your father was Jewish before he was born. Probably measuring the square footage of the uterus, wondering what he could get in rent.”

            She went on like this, her gelled nails smacking morse code across the tabletop. Then she’d ask about my music and applauded me with stiff-splayed fingers.

            It was a sudden summer fever that led me to Advil PM, or Advil PM to me

            —molten/itchy/prickling—

            as Jessica Graham was preparing the row boat and Dad was having a beer with Lydia. He had asked me if I missed home, but home was the farthest thing from my mind.

            “Wanna to ride to the island?” Jessica had said, her future cleavage flat and flawless, her legs like a rungless ladder to the moon. “Come on. It isn’t far.” And I sat next to her all rigid and staring forward, fear like a neck brace

            —Jessica Graham/goddamn/goddamn—

            as we pedaled with our feet and the plastic ship skimmed on the lake.

            “There it is. Right up there,” she told me, indicating a pine-covered rock.

            I hadn’t spoken we’d embarked. There was nothing I knew to say.

            At the island I stubbed my toe but still I held my silence. The water was calm and the pines were soundless as we skipped rocks and never kissed.

            “He’s a natural at the piano, you should hear him,” Lydia said between bites of corn. The table nodded loose consent: my father, Jessica Graham, the floppy creature she called her mom.

            In bed as hot wind blew, I spiked a temperature north of a hundred.

            “Two of these,” my father said, handing me the emerald gel caps. “Take these and say Shemah.”

            I intoned all three paragraphs of the meaningless prayer before the pills had sunk their teeth in, and only then did I realize I had never truly slept.

#

Eszopiclone

            “A common condition,” the doctor told me. “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.” He nodded briskly in self-assessment, as though the thing was squared away.

            Aunt Lydia seemed proud of the diagnosis. Proud of everything. “Your father had the same. A very Jewish disease.”

            I took Lunesta at his funeral, riding the waves of silent impulse. Jessica Graham had gone off to college and the lake was calm as ever. Perhaps more so, owing to our absence. Then they lowered his coffin down

            —redhot/tingling/iridescent—

            and those so inclined recited Kaddish. I knew all the words, so had no choice but to take part privately, in my mind. While the Lunesta worked its wonders, leaving my stomach roller coaster happy, the sun glinted off the casket in a thousand prickled sparks. Walnut, rosewood and mahogany. I wondered how much Aunt Lydia had spent.

            She hadn’t asked me to participate, and I had never offered.

            “Now, along with the disorder can sometimes arrive sleeplessness,” the doctor said, his syntax like an encryption device. “This can be part of the condition. An occasionally-learned pattern.” He riffled through a drawer of pamphlets but found nothing he deemed germane. “I’d recommend good sleep hygiene. No electronics before bed. Try a regular time to sleep so as to counteract the trend.” So I’d eat in the kitchen, read in the bathroom, and my cell phone to bed. And maybe a foil of pills. Just in case I’d need em.

            I’d wait the requisite forty-five minutes

            —forty five/forty four/forty three…—

            before diagnosing myself with an Occasionally-Learned Pattern and popping two of the easter eggs so as to counteract the trend.

            The words on the screen began to swim. Darkness and light bled, as was custom. There was a sense of taut vibrations as I opened the dating app. I texted at random, one named Jessica chosen solely for her name. She was inked up to her neckline, nothing like the Grahamcracker of my childhood.

            — Hey.

            — Hey.

            — You up?

            — Well, obviously.

            — Me too. Whacha wearing?

            But then I was thinking about my father, my forehead pressed to the leather

            —desiccated/fleshlike/worthless—

            the steering wheel’s insignia against my cheekbone like a brand. A curbside security bulb flickered on, wrecking the nighttime.

            The clock on the dashboard shone in neon. It read 4:16AM.

            Possible side effects: dizziness, anxiety, hallucination, loss of memory…

            Par for the course then. I checked my cell phone. Discovered strings of vulgar texts. I’d have to delete those dating apps. That or use no electronics before bed.

            The insomniac’s high was fading and my senses were strong and angry. Grit against my teeth. I’d stuck the pills against my gums, just for a change.

#

Hydrocodone

            Get high on prayer! Get high on God!

            But the colorful posters seemed to encourage getting high first and foremost.

Prayer, God, pills… whatever you had to do.

            Ruti leaned on the wall below the posters and sang like a committed dope-fiend, though she was straight and narrow as the law. Her eyes would close, her cheeks would slacken, as the notes soared to a range typical of small finches.

            “Coloratura soprano,” she told me. “Though there was a time when I was a sopranino.” The little Israeli with the coiled hair who hit the higher notes when rubbed right. She sat, sandaled foot draped over a leg, strumming the hand-me-down she’d brought from the holy land to the unholy so that she might sing religious songs to non-religious children.

            Spreading the word of God in the highest register possible.

            “It’s good for them, you know? To have a sense of God, to feel Him. They’re Jewish, yes? So they should feel like they are.”

            My father would have loved her.

            That night I took four Advil PMs and sat on the lawn of the cafeteria, my head on Ruti’s stomach. My own quivering the way it did those sleepless nights in grade school, and I welcomed the sick feeling like a reunited friend. Those hefty green gel caps were photo albums containing soft regret and slumber, and when we awoke on that lawn with groggy campers all beside us and the good smell of eggs and pancakes, I decided to fall in love.

            I didn’t take another sleeping pill until just after the wedding, and even then it was a Vicodin for the ankle I’d twisted on our hike. The mountain had stretched in rolling greens, brought down to kiss the burnt Pacific.
            “It’s beautiful,” Ruti said. I agreed with her. It was.

            We were high on honeymoon and wine and prayer, which I supplemented with a Vicodin. Vicodin wasn’t really a sleeping pill, was it? It was Ambien that brought it back. That fountainhead of slippery amnesia

            —erratic/frenzied/tottering—

            which spun me round, full circle. I’d forgotten them, was the truth. The pills and the anxiety. I’d been visiting collages with Jack all month and was shocked at the number of stairs required to get a good education. Everywhere in stone and marble they led to terraces and doorways. Curving right, dog-legging left. A spiral ascension of degenerating cartilage.

#

Zolpidem Tartrate

            After he scoped my knee, the doctor prescribed pain killers, which reminded me of Ruti. And after the pain killers, Ambien, which reminded me of my father.

            When the knee had finally given out halfway up to University Hall, I had no concept of the treatment it would entail.

            “You alright, Dad?”

            Little Jack, ever thoughtful. Just like his mother.

            I nodded and hobbled on—his limping father, the aged autodidact. Failing to hide either  his injury or insecurity.

            At home, the light shone molten through the stained glass Ruti had installed. The house had expanded since she’d left it and I hobbled on my crutches. Through patches of sun and dark swathes of carpet in rooms made foreign by her absence.

            The Ambien were small, white and unassuming, and I phoned Jack before grinding down the pills.

            He was fine. His school was fine. The girlfriend was fine. Everything was fine.

            I closed my eyes and thought of Jessica Graham, Aunt Lydia, of my father.

            In the hospital, a nurse offered me a sublingual to help me sleep. I asked her for the emerald gel caps I had so enjoyed in childhood. I’d become increasingly nostalgic, perhaps owing to all my visitors: Jack and his wife Sarah, both stroking her bulging belly and speaking in the hushed tones reserved for infants and infirm; Ruti, her affection hardened to a proud, divorced defiance, her hair pulled tight against her scalp; and nurse after nurse after faceless nurse.

            The newest didn’t have the gel caps. Just the sublingual. Sorry, she said.

            “Do you remember the words?” Ruti asked me, stoking my wrist with the back o her hand, our purple veins nudging each other, while her new ring scratched my knuckles.

            “Shema yisroel, adonai elohainu…”

            Of course I remembered the words, just as they’d come from my father’s mouth. In cool, satiny monotone. Omniscient and plain.

            I recited all three meaningless paragraphs and let the sublingual tab dissolve. It would be seven minutes before I felt the icy shimmer. I stared up at the shifting ceiling and reflected on the time, the time between these little voyages, the hours, the months, the years.

            I closed my eyes

            —downy/glistening/static—

            and my head collapsed to the starchy pillow.

            Perhaps I would finally get some rest.