An Uncommon Education (29 page)

I felt like an intruder, standing in the wake of seeing my mother hurt by her own. I went over to her and took her hand, didn’t lean down to support her whole body as I’d intended to, and told her, “It’s no trouble at all. It’ll be my job, something I can do for you.” By just offering my hand I wanted to show her how easy it was to help her. And I realized as I said and did this why my grandmother had not. I thought about how nice it would be to have my mother’s body leaning into mine. I thought of how each time my grandmother had come close to her, she had stopped just short of the reach. And suddenly I understood that my grandmother was afraid to touch her daughter, that it frightened her. And I knew just as suddenly that it wasn’t a new fear. I searched my memory for the last time I’d seen Grandmother Carol touch my mother, but no memories came forward.

I saw it in my mother’s face, too, that she knew this about her mother, saw the sadness, though she buried it quickly by dropping her head and taking my hand, saying, “She’s probably afraid we’d both fall if I leaned on her.” But I knew she was also saying that it was fine if I held her, that she wouldn’t mind it, either, and for the first time in my life I allowed her the quiet that followed gladly.

S
he went into the hospital a few days before the surgery for pre-op. The Carol drove the Cadillac down the driveway to stay at her own home until my mother returned. I had a feeling that hospitals were repulsive to her, that their threat of intimacies would be intolerable. And I think I understood, I think we all did; maybe we were all a little grateful. Consistency held her together, and that was a kind of blessing at the time.

My father and I spent the day of the surgery in a waiting room just outside. He became quieter as the day wore on, so I spent the time scurrying back and forth to the cafeteria and vending machines to feed us and supply the coffee. I say scurrying, but I only made a pretense of going quickly. Once out of his sight, I took my time in the hallways, listening to my shoes on the hard, shiny floors, watching other patients being wheeled from place to place, looking at the visitors, admiring the universally white walls. Anything could hold my attention because I let it; I couldn’t bear to see my father, of all people, at a loss for words.

She came through in stable condition. We were allowed to see her later that night, the left side of her head shaved, the tubes coming out her nose. Only her eyes were familiar. And her hands: the long fingers, the short nails.

Of course she couldn’t speak, but my father henpecked the doctors and nurses, fussed near her. At one point, he picked up a red pen from her bedside table and held it up with a look of disgust, “What the hell is this?” he muttered to himself, though loudly enough so that I’d hear. The nurse in the corner looked up. He was already waiting to catch her eye, the offensive pen held out before him. “What the hell is she going to do with a red pen? What if she needs to write a letter?” The nurse stopped paying attention to him and finished her business of clearing trash from the corner table.

She did say, though, when her hand was on the door, “Would it be black or blue that you’d prefer?”

“Either one,” my father nearly shouted, trying to bring her into his outrage by raising his voice, as if she’d shake her head and widen her eyes in shocked agreement. Instead she grimaced very slightly, a concession to a sympathetic smile, and left in one swift movement, the door not even clicking as it closed.

“Dad,” I said, “are you sleeping here tonight?”

He gave me a look that seemed to say he hoped he didn’t need to explain things to me, as well. I stood up and walked by him, pulling the cot closer to my mother and blocking his way, so he was in a sort of corner made by the two beds, the pen still in his hand, his hand now at his hip. I snapped the sheets out, making the bed with some show. “You’ll need to get some sleep, Dad.”

“It’s only eight o’clock, Naomi,” he said as he looked at the clock. And this quieted us both for a few moments, because it felt like it was nowhere near such an early hour.

He put the pen on the bedside table and looked down at my mother, watching her face in a private, exhausted way. I thought of the last time we’d been in the hospital as a family, the heart attack that had been the catalyst to so much that now defined me which now seemed so very far away. My father had only grown stronger as he aged, like a gnarled tree, while my mother seemed to be disappearing, just as those old photos he still repaired had faded from not being watched.

I went over to him and looked down on my mother, too. She’d had her eyes open only briefly, and was sleeping again.

“When you were a kid,” he said, still looking at her, “you never slept.” He dropped his voice. “Even before Teddy left. You were the worst sleeper. I used to stand and watch you when you finally did. Your lips were so relaxed.” He reached out, but only touched the edge of my mother’s shoulder. I sighed; the breath hurt. “You’d also forget to breathe,” he said, now smiling at me. “When you ran, you’d forget to breathe. We used to marvel at how you’d get so far.” Something that had been straining between us finally released itself, sagging like a quiet sail.

“I’m getting you dinner,” I said. I think I was imitating her, to help, somehow, though it was poor acting. I actually don’t remember much more of that night except the trip to the cafeteria, staring down at some anemic salad before choosing a grilled cheese sandwich, an apple, and juice: a child’s meal, brought up to him on a tray.

Though somehow, by the time I got back home and into the empty house, I convinced myself I wasn’t worried. I didn’t want to be, and was still young enough for such purposeful disillusionments to hold their own promise. My father found no such peace. He experienced every moment of her pain and early recuperation. He tried to forbid me from going back to the hospital room, but I refused to listen and set up camp in a folding chair in the corner of her room each afternoon after class. I was out of the way and could see everything. Dr. Stern nearly beamed over her. He expected she’d be home right on time. She was. And the tumor, he thanked God, had not been cancerous.

But back at home, my mother was no longer able to climb the stairs to her bedroom, had to be seated properly to hear a conversation, and looked frequently overwhelmed in a vague, impenetrable way. She was with us more often, willing to be cared for, but it seemed she had also retreated more, somehow. Even though she had become less contained in our company, she was also more distracted and visibly nervous, as if perpetually waiting or listening for something just out of sight.

I
managed to peg Phyllis in the crowd at graduation later that spring. She was wide-mouthed and happy, about to leave for several weeks in Italy. I told her how I’d wanted to see Rome as she kept her hands on my shoulders and stood back, looking at me, her grin spreading slowly across her face. “I’d like to escort you around Venice one day, Naomi. That’s the Italy I can’t get out of my mind.”

“Truth is”—and she admitted something that would have made someone else lean in close, in confession, but she just opened her arms wide and raised her voice a bit, both of us smiling, the crowd wouldn’t notice—“it’s the whole reason I took this miserable job I’ve got in September. I can travel. Teachers travel. Remember that, Ms. Feinstein.” She squeezed my hand.

I took in her smooth, sexy beauty. “Who was he?” I finally asked, finally acknowledging what had happened to someone other than Jun, whom I’d told only briefly. Phyllis’s grin remained fixed. It took an instant for her to remember, then register my question.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said.

Before I could get angry, she pulled my hand into hers. “Trust me, Naomi. Some encounters are best left anonymous. You did each other no harm. You had a little fun. I told him you were a sure thing, he gave me the appropriate gentlemanly response. My advice,” she paused, a wry expression the only hint that she knew I didn’t want her advice, “is that you leave well enough alone. Sometimes that’s best for everybody, isn’t it?”

“You told him I was . . .” I stumbled on her words.

She cocked her head at me, affecting a deep amusement. “You weren’t?”

My throat tightened. “It was a setup?” I didn’t recognize my own voice.

Phyllis laughed. “Oh, Naomi,” she said, sobering when she saw my expression. “What did you think when you saw the masks?”

“You told me . . .”

“That the audience doesn’t like to let go of the play.”

“So they wear masks.”

“They wear masks and they do what they want under them. They always do. You think you’re the first? There’s a reason why people crave stages and props. Most of us who join Shakes understand that. Don’t judge us or yourself quite so harshly.”

She stepped away, lifting her arms up and out, dismissing the conversation as better left forgotten in the wake of the day. “Venice,” she said loudly. “Someday. I think you could understand it, my poor, idealistic Laertes, its leaky beauty, the way it wants to pretend it’s not noticing but cares desperately about everything its casual tourists think of it.” She looked up, suddenly, all the way to the sun. When she did, I looked up, too, so that when I looked back down my sight burned white and I had trouble tracking her as she made her way back through the crowd.

I
t would be wrong to say that I had felt dismissed by Phyllis, though it wasn’t until a few days later that I realized she had given me what I wanted: the invitation to let that encounter be an isolated one, easily buried within the rapidly developing past. I think that growing up in the shadow of my mother’s containment meant that I felt pinned in by it, as though the slightest strong movement from me would cast us both, shattering, to the floor. It was almost liberating to think that it was possible to love and discard in the same, swift act. To leave nothing disturbed as a result.

In the wake of everything that had happened that spring my mediocre grades had not been improved upon, despite my initial intentions to do so. So between sophomore and junior years I was advised to diversify, to leave the Brigham and volunteer at Abiomed, Inc., of Danvers, Massachusetts, a company in the process of developing a completely independent, battery-powered, artificial heart. It was one of three sites nationwide that was expected to do so, and thanks, once again, to a strong recommendation from Dr. Orchuk at the Brigham, I secured a place in their summer internship program. My days there consisted primarily of watching and fetching.

The lab was littered with far too many things to include in an implantable device, and the researchers shifted through them with dogged patience, like archaeologists separating stones from integral fragments. Until that point, the most modern heart replacement technology was an enormous, clunky device, a descendant of the DeLaval Alpha Milking Machines. It stood to the side of the room as a reminder of what to surpass. I would stare at it when my father’s heart attack became like a distant memory, when the loss of Teddy’s father to the same disease was like something that had happened too long ago to remember.

“It’s amazing,” I said one day to the friendliest researcher there, “that in all the years of hearts failing, that’s as far as we’ve come.”

“Yeah,” he said, “pretty pathetic.” I thought it was actually a little noble, had a little presence, as I put it.

“It’s a behemoth,” he objected. “An artificial heart should be as seamless a replacement as possible. If we do our job right, even the patient won’t be able to tell the difference.”

I
continued to live at home that summer. I was doing what was expected of me, but the days at the lab felt too long and oddly staged. I found myself wanting to laugh out loud sometimes at the detached ways in which the researchers talked about complications, inevitable failures, or, worse, partial successes. At home I helped my mother bathe when she let me and, most nights, cooked dinner for my father. The Carol still checked in from time to time, glad to see me there, as she said each time, occasionally with a tuna casserole in hand. My father and I found them delicious: the potato chips and dense interior a virtual anesthetic after the hardest days.

A few weeks before my junior year was to begin, he came into my room and sat heavily on my bed. I had been reading on my stomach and turned over to face him. He put his hand on my back. “It’s time to go, Naomi,” he said.

“Where?” I asked. “Back to school,” he said, and I was about to catch him on stating the obvious when I suddenly understood what he’d meant, so that when he added, “to living at Wellesley,” he didn’t need to.

“Oh,” I said, looking down at my book, folding it over and studying its cover. It was the old copy of
Relativity
my father had kept on the kitchen shelf. I still didn’t understand much of it, so that the process of reading it was more like a meditation than a learning experience of any kind. “I don’t even have a room assignment, Dad,” I said, and as soon as the words had left my mouth it felt like one of the worst things I could have said.

He wasn’t kicking me out. He was gently pushing me toward the best place for me, the place that, years ago, had given me tuition, room and board. For my father, attending college wasn’t just about completing a course of study. It was about immersing myself in the practice of having and knowing everything. I think he still believed that, even then.

“What time is it in Tokyo?” I asked him the instant I thought of it. His eyes frowned back at me. “I’ll work it out,” I said. He sat for a while more on my bed as I pretended I had other things to do in the room. He muttered something; it sounded a bit like he had said he loved me. For such a normally demonstrative man, the softness in his voice caught me by surprise. I stopped what I was doing but he had left the room before I had a chance to respond.

I had written to Jun once that summer after receiving a letter from her in Tokyo. She had included her phone number in it. I was digging around in my things when my father came back to my door. “Eight-thirty a.m. tomorrow morning,” he said. “They’re sixteen hours ahead.”