A Stranger in the Mirror (24 page)

230

and understand everything you say, but his speech and motor functions are affected. He can't respond." "Is -- is he always going to be like this?" Dr. Kaplan hesitated. "It's impossible to be absolutely certain, of course, but in our opinion, his nervous system has been too badly damaged for therapy to have any appreciable effect." "But you don't know for sure." "No..." But Jill knew.

In addition to the three nurses who tended Toby round the clock, Jill arranged for a physiotherapist to come to the house every morning to work with Toby. The therapist carried Toby into the pool and held him in his arms, gently stretching the muscles and tendons, while Toby feebly tried to kick his legs and move his arms about in the warm water. There was no progress. On the fourth week, a speech therapist was brought in. She spent one hour every afternoon trying to help Toby learn to speak again, to form the sounds of words. After two months, Jill could see no change. None at all. She sent for Dr. Kaplan. "You've got to do something to help him," she demanded. "You can't leave him like this." He looked at her helplessly. "I'm sorry, Jill. I tried to tell you...."

Jill sat in the library, alone, long after Dr. Kaplan had gone. She could feel one of the bad headaches beginning, but there was no time to think of herself now. She went upstairs. Toby was propped up in bed, staring at nothingness. As Jill walked up to him, Toby's deep blue eyes lit up. They followed Jill, bright and alive, as she approached his bed and looked down at him. His lips moved and some unintelligible sound came out. Tears of frustration began to fill his eyes. Jill remembered Dr. Kaplan's words. It's important to understand going to walk and you're going to talk." The tears were running down the sides of his cheeks now. "You're going to do it," Jill said. "You're going to do it for me."

The following morning, Jill fired the nurses, the physiotherapist and the speech therapist. As soon as he heard the news. Dr. Eli Kaplan hurried over to see Jill. "I agree with you about the physiotherapist, Jill--but the nurses I Toby has to have someone'with him twenty-four hours a --" "I'll be with him." He shook his head. "You have no. idea what you're letng yourself in for. One person can't --" "I'll call you if I need you." She.sent him away.

The ordeal began. Jill was going to attempt to do what the doctors had assured her could not be done. The first time she picked Toby up and put him into his wheelchair, it frightened her to feel how weightless he was. She took him downstairs in the elevator that had been installed and began to work with him in the swimming pool, as she had seen the physiotherapist do. But what happened now was different. Where the therapist had been gentle and coaxing, Jill was stem and unrelenting. When Toby tried to speak, signifying that he was tired and could not bear any more, Jill said, "You're not through. One more time. For me, Toby." And she would force him to do it one more time. And yet again, until he sat mutely crying with exhaustion. In the afternoon, Jill set to work to teach Toby to speak again. "Ooh... ooooooooh." "Ahaaahh... aaaaaaaaaagh ..." "No! Oooooooooh. Round your lips, Toby. Make them obey you. Ooooooooh." "Aaaaaaaaaagh..." "No, goddamn you! You're going to speak! Now, say it --Oooooooooooh!"

232 And he would try again. Jill would feed him each night, and then lie in his bed, holding him in her aims. She drew his useless hands slowly up and down her body, across her breasts and down the soft cleft between her legs. "Feel that, Toby," she whispered. "That's all yours, darling. It belongs to you. I want you. I want you to get well so we can make love again. I want you to fuck me, Toby." He looked at her with those alive, bright eyes and made incoherent, whimpering sounds. "Soon, Toby, soon."

Jill was tireless. She discharged the servants because she did not want anyone around. After that, she did all the cooking herself. She ordered her groceries by phone and never left the house. In the beginning, Jill had been kept busy answering the telephones, but the calls had soon dwindled to a trickle, then ceased. Newscasters had stopped giving bulletins on Toby Temple's condition. The world knew that he was dying. It was just a question of time. But Jill was not going to let Toby die. If he died, she would die with him.

The days blended into one long, endless round of drudgery. Jill was up at six o'clock in the morning. First, she would clean Toby. He was totally incontinent. Even though he wore a catheter and a diaper, he would befoul himself during the night and the bedclothes would sometimes have to be changed, as well as Toby's pajamas. The stench in the bedroom was almost unbearable. Jill filled a basin with warm water, took a sponge and soft cloth and cleaned the feces and urine from Toby's body. When he was clean, she dried him off and powdered him, then shaved him and combed his hair. "There. You look beautiful, Toby. Your fans should see you now. But they'll see you soon. They'll fight to get in to see you. The President will be there -- everybody will be there to see Toby Temple." Then Jill prepared Toby's breakfast. She made oatmeal or cream of wheat or scrambled eggs, food she could spoon into his mouth. She fed him as though he were a baby, talking to him all the time, promising that he was going to get well. "You're Toby Temple," she intoned. "Everybody loves you, everybody wants you back. Your fans out there are waiting for you, Toby. You've got to get well for them." And another long, punishing day would begin.

She wheeled his useless, crippled body down to the pool for his exerdses. After that, she massaged him and worked on his speech therapy. Then it was time for her to prepare his lunch, and after lunch it would begin all over again. Through it all, Jill kept telling Toby how wonderful he was, how much he was loved. He was Toby Temple, and the world was waiting, for him to come back to it. At night she would take out one of his scrapbooks and hold it up so he could see it. "There we are with the Queen. Do you remember, how they all cheered you that night? That's the way it's going to be again. You're going to be bigger than ever, Toby, bigger than ever." She tucked him-in at night and crawled into the cot she had put next to his bed, drained. In the middle of the night, she would be awakened by the noisome stench of Toby's bowel movement in bed. She would drag herself from her cot and change Toby's diaper and clean him. By then it would be time to start fixing his breakfast and begin another day. And another. In an endless march of days. Each day Jill pushed Toby a little harder, a little further. Her nerves were so frayed that, if she felt Toby was not trying, she would slap him across the face. "We're going to beat them," she said fiercely. "You're going to get well."

Jill's body was exhausted from the punishing routine she was putting herself through, but when she lay down at night, sleep eluded her. There were too many visions dancing through her head, like scenes from old movies. She and Toby mobbed by reporters at the Cannes Festival... The President at their Palm Springs home, telling Jill how beautiful she was... Fans crowding around Toby and her at a premiere ... The Golden Couple... Toby stepping up to receive

234

his medal and falling... falling ... Finally, she would drift off to sleep. Sometimes, Jill would awaken with a sudden, fierce headache that would not go away. She would lie there in the loneliness of the dark,, fighting the pain, until the sun would come up, and it was time to drag herself to her feet. And it would begin all over again. It was as though she and Toby were the lone survivors of some long-forgotten holocaust. Her world had shrunk to the dimensions of this house, these rooms, this man. She drove herself relentlessly from dawn until past midnight. And she drove Toby, her Toby imprisoned in hell, in a world where there was only Jill, whom he must blindly obey. The weeks, dreary and painful, dragged by and turned into months. Now, Toby would begin to cry when he saw Jill coming toward him, for he knew he was going to be punished. ' Each day Jill became more merciless. She forced Toby's, flopping, useless limbs to move, until he was in unbearable agony. He made horrible gurgling pleas for her to stop, but Jill would say, "Not yet. Not until you're a man again, not until we show them all." She would go on kneading his exhausted muscles. He was a helpless, full-grown baby, a vegetable, a nothing. But when Jill looked at him, she saw him as he was going to be, and she declared, "You're going to walk!" She would lift him to his feet and hold him up while she forced one leg after the other, so that he was moving in a grotesque parody of motion, like a drunken, disjointed marionette. Her headaches had become more frequent. Bright lights or a loud noise or sudden movement would set them off. / must see a doctor, she thought. Later, when Toby is well again. Now there was no time or room for herself. Only Toby. It was as though Jill were possessed. Her clothes hung loosely on her, but she had no idea of how much weight she had lost or how she looked. Her face was thin and drawn, her eyes hollow. Her once beautiful shiny black hair was lusterless and stringy. She did not know, nor would she have cared.

235

One day Jffl found a telegram under the door asking her to phone Dr. Kaplan. No time. The routine must be kept. The days and nights became a Kafkaesque blur of bathing Toby and exercising him and changing him and shaving him and feeding him. And then starting all over again. She got a walker for Toby and fastened his fingers around it and moved his legs, holding him up, trying to show him the motions, walking him back and forth across the room until she was asleep on her feet, not knowing any longer where or who she was, or what she was doing. Then, one day, Jill knew that it had all come to an end.

She had been up with Toby half the night and had finally gone into her own bedroom, where she had fallen into a dazed slumber just before dawn. When Jffl awakened, the sun was high in the sky. She had slept long past noon. Toby had not been fed or bathed or changed. He was lying in his bed, helpless, waiting for her, probably panicky. Jffl started to rise and found that she could not move. She was filled with such a bottomless, bone-deep weariness that her exhausted body would no longer obey her. She lay there, helpless, knowing that she had lost, that it had all been wasted, all the days and nights of hell, the months of agony, none of it had meant anything. Her body had betrayed her, as Toby's had betrayed him. Jffl had no strength left to give him anymore, and it made her want to weep. It was finished. She heard a sound at her bedroom door and she raised her eyes. Toby was standing in the doorway, by himself, his trembling arms clutching his walker, his mouth making unintelligible slobbering noises, working to say something. "Jiiuiugb... Jiiiiiigh..." He was trying to say "Jffl". She began to sob uncontrollably, and she could not stop.

From that day on, Toby's progress was spectacular. For the first time, he knew he was going to get well. He no longer objected when Jffl pushed him beyond the limits of his endurance. He welcomed it He wanted to get well for her. Jffl

236 bad become his goddess; if he had loved her before, he worshiped her now. And something had happened to Jill. Before, it had been her own life she was fighting for; Toby was merely the instrument she was forced to use. But somehow, that had changed. It was as though Toby had become a part of her. They were one body and one mind and one soul, obsessed with the same purpose. They had gone through a purging crudble. His life bad been in her hands, and she had nurtured it and strengthned it, and saved it, and out of that had grown a kind of love. Toby belonged to her, just as she belonged to him.

Jill changed Toby's diet, so that he began to regain the weight he had lost. He spent time in the sun every day and took long walks around the grounds, using the walker, then a cane, building up his strength. When the day came that Toby could walk by himself, the two of them celebrated by having a candlelight dinner in the dining room. Finally, Jill felt that Toby was ready to be seen. She telephoned Dr. Kaplan, and his nurse put him on the phone immediately. "Jill! I've been terribly worried. I've tried to telephone you and there was never any answer. I sent a telegram, and when I didn't hear, I assumed you had taken Toby away somewhere. Is he--has he-- ?" "Come and see for yourself, Eli."

Dr. Kaplan could not conceal his astonishment. "It's unbelievable," he told Jill. "It's -- it's like a miracle." "It is a miracle," Jill said. Only in this life you made your own miracles, because God was busy elsewhere. "People still call me to ask about Toby," Dr. Kaplan was saying. "Apparently they've been unable to get through to you. Sam Winters calls at least once a week. Clifton ; Lawrence has been calling." | Jill dismissed Clifton Lawrence. But Sam Winters! That I was good. Jill had to find a way to let the world know that I Toby Temple was still a superstar, that they were still the ; Golden Couple. Jill telephoned Sam Winters the next morning and asked him if he would like to come and visit Toby. Sam arrived at the house an hour later. Jill opened the front door to let him in, and Sam tried to conceal his shock at her appearance. Jill looked ten years older than when he had last seen her. Her eyes were hollow brown pools and her face was etched with deep lines. She had lost so much weight that she looked almost skeletal. "Thank you for coming, Sam. Toby will be pleased to see you." Sam had been prepared to see Toby in bed, a shadow of the man he had once been, but he was in for a stunning surprise. Toby was lying on a pad alongside the pool and, as Sam approached, Toby rose to his feet, a little slowly, but steadily, and held out a firm hand. He appeared tanned and healthy, better than he had looked before his stroke. It was as though through some arcane alchemy, Jill's health and vitality had Sowed into Toby's body, and the sick tides that had ravaged Toby had ebbed into Jill. "Hey! It's great to see you, Sam." Toby's speech was a little slower and more precise than before, but it was clear and strong. There was no sign of the paralysis Sam had heard about. There was still the same boyish face with the bright blue eyes. Sam gave Toby a hug and said, "Jesus, you really had us scared." Toby grinned and said, "You don't have to call me 'Jesus' when we're alone." Sam looked at Toby more closely and marveled. "I honestly can't get over it. Damn it, you look younger. The whole town was making funeral arrangements." "Over my dead body," Toby smiled. Sam said, "It's fantastic what the doctors today can �" "No doctors." Toby turned to look at Jill and naked adoration shone from his eyes. "You want to know who did it? Jill. just Jill. With her two bare hands. She threw everybody out and made me get on my feet again." Sam glanced at Jill, puzzled. She had not seemed to him the kind of girl capable of such a selfless act. Perhaps he had misjudged her. "What are your plans?" he asked Toby. "I suppose you'll want to rest and --" "He's going back to work," Jill said. "Toby's too talented to be sitting around doing nothing." "I'm raring to go," Toby agreed. "Perhaps Sam has a project for you," Jill suggested. They were both watching him. Sam did not want to discourage Toby, but neither did he want to hold out any false hopes. It was not possible to make a picture with a star unless you got insurance on him, and no company was going to insure Toby Temple. "There's nothing in the shop at the moment," Sam said carefully. "But I'll certainly keep an eye open." "You're afraid to use him, aren't you?" It was as though she was reading his mind. "Certainly not." But they both knew he was lying. No one in Hollywood would take a chance on using Toby Temple again.