Left Neglected (18 page)

But the real reason I’m hesitant to reveal my reading recovery to the world doesn’t feel like it stems from responsible caution or a fear that I’ll never pick up the pace. And it’s certainly not because I’m modest or have a need for privacy. In fact, I usually brag quite shamelessly about my successes, to a level bordering intolerable, especially to Bob, who is always proud to hear them. But I don’t want to tell anyone, and until I do, I’m respecting my instincts and keeping my incredibly fantastic news to myself.

I finish the Business section and turn the last page of the newspaper. Done!
Well, except for the Sports and Style and the Book Review
. Shush.
Hardly something to celebrate.
Shush.
It took you seven days! You should be able to read it in a single morning.
shush, shush, Shush! I banish pre-accident me from my mind and insist instead on basking in the glory of this moment. I’m in Vermont, the sun is shining, the house is quiet, and I finished the Sunday
New York Times.
I smile at my skis, looking to share my accomplishment with someone. I swear they smile back. The only thing missing from this moment is a hot coffee. Where is my mother? She should be back by now.

Feeling unable to wait one more minute for some form of caffeine and boosted with confidence from my reading prowess, I decide to walk over to the refrigerator for a Diet Coke. If Bob thinks I’m ready to ski down two thousand vertical feet of trails, then I should be able to walk a few horizontal feet into the kitchen, right? I take hold of granny, and the two of us hobble the few steps over from the dining table to the fridge. I find the door handle, which is on the left and not even bandaged with brightly colored tape. So far, so good. I let go of granny and lunge for the handle. Got it. I pull the door open, but I’m standing square in front of the refrigerator, so I only succeed at banging the door into myself. I push the door shut. I’ve got to step out of the way first. To the left. Using the door handle as a grab bar, I shuffle myself sideways enough to give the door clearance, and I pull again.

But here’s the important difference between hospital grab bars and refrigerator handles. Grab bars don’t move. I can lean, teeter, push, and pull with all my weight, and that grab bar (like Bob in most arguments) won’t budge an inch. Not so for a refrigerator door handle once the door is open. I realize this is an obvious fact, but it’s one I never physically relied upon before, and so I didn’t consider the significance of this before I pulled.

As the door swings open, my arm and body go with it, and I’m unexpectedly flung over at the waist, feet still planted, every muscle in my outstretched arm quivering from the burden of posing in this awkward position. Staring down at the floor and clinging on to the handle for dear life, I gather my strength and wits and try to rock myself upright, but I overestimate the reverse force needed, and I end up leaning too far backward, and I slam the door shut. I try again and do the exact same thing. I try again and again. I weeble out and wobble back. And each time I weeble out, I catch a teasing glimpse of the silver Diet Coke cans sitting on the top shelf. Then I wobble back, the door suctions shut, and they’re gone.

Sweating and panting, I decide to give myself a minute to catch my breath. Despite the seriousness with which I’m taking this quest, a tickled laugh bubbles out. For God’s sake, I’ve become Laverne De Fazio. Okay, Sarah, come on. There’s got to be a way in.

This time as I pull, I sneak a quick step and drag forward. This keeps me from weebling out, but now I’m pinned between the door I’m still holding on to and the shelves inside the refrigerator. Not ideal, but it’s progress. I’m face-to-face with five cans of Diet Coke.

Because of the way I’m standing, I’m not sure that I can let go of the door handle with my right hand and not go crashing to the ground. With no one else home, I don’t want to risk it. So it’s my left hand or bust. The refrigerator shelf edges are chilly and pressing into my left shoulder, elbow, and wrist, which is uncomfortable but also fortunate, because the sensory stimulation makes me aware of the existence of my left arm and hand. But when I send my cold left hand the message,
Dear Left Hand, please reach up and grab a Diet Coke,
it won’t budge. It’s wedged against the shelf. I try to free it by easing up a touch on the tension of my pull on the door handle, but as I do, I start to weeble out. I tense up and snap back. I think and come up with nothing. I’m stuck in the fridge.
Good going, Laverne. You’re really in a pickle now.

I stare at the Diet Coke cans, inches from my nose. So close and yet so far away. As I try to come up with a plan to either get a Coke or get out of the fridge (or both really), I happen to notice a bag behind the cans. It’s the bag of coffee beans! We did remember to bring it! How on earth did Bob not see it in here?

This drives me absolutely crazy. Bob’s never been good at finding what he’s looking for in the fridge. A typical example (and I’m always in another room of the house when he does this):

Sarah, do we have any ketchup?

On the top shelf !

I don’t see it!

Next to the mayonnaise!

I don’t see any mayonnaise!

Check the door!

It’s not in the door!

Touch everything!

I’ll eventually hear the refrigerator alarm beeping, announcing that the door has been left open for too long, and decide it’s time to rescue him. I’ll walk over to the fridge where he’s still searching, look at the top shelf for one second, reach in, grab the ketchup (which was next to the mayonnaise), and hand it to him. It’s like he has Refrigerator Neglect. With what he’s put me through this morning, he should have to go to some kind of rehabilitation program.

After I’m done imagining the lecture and taunting I’ll subject Bob to when he gets home, I grin, thrilled and proud of myself. I found the bag of coffee beans! I get to use the Impressa!
Yeah, but you’re a thirty-seven-year-old woman stuck in a refrigerator.
Shush.

I have a renewed sense of determination. This mission now isn’t for some crummy, cold can of Diet Coke. It’s for the Holy grail of caffeine—a hot, fresh-brewed latte. Time to step it up, Sarah. Come on. You went to Harvard Business School. Solve the problem.

I lean my head forward and aim to knock over the cans I no longer care about, like my head is a bowling ball and the cans are pins. I knock them all down in two tries, a respectable spare. Then I stick my neck out as far as it will stretch, and I bite the rolled top of the coffee bag with my teeth. Gotcha!

Now to get out. I decide that I’ve got to walk backward. This sounds simple, but I have no confidence that it will be. I haven’t walked backward since before my accident. I guess backward walking isn’t something the occupational and physical therapists at Baldwin foresee as a necessary skill. Clearly, they didn’t foresee one of their patients stuck in a refrigerator biting onto a bag of coffee beans. I’ll have to tell Heidi that they should add it to their regimen.

Here I go. I take a step backward with my right foot, but before I can even think about what to do next, my backward momentum sends me into an outward weeble. The door swings open too fast, and the force rips my hand off the handle. I fall backward and bang the back of my head on the tile floor.

I’ve wiped out so many times now, falling doesn’t even really faze me. The pain, the bumps, the bruises, the indignity—I’ve learned to take them all on the chin (literally and figuratively). It’s all part of the delightful everyday experience that is having Left Neglect. So it’s not the fall itself that makes me cry.

I’m crying because I opened my mouth on the way down and dropped the bag, and it opened when it hit the ground, spilling my precious coffee beans all over the floor. I’m crying because I can’t walk a few horizontal feet to the refrigerator and get a Diet Coke. I’m crying because I can’t drive to B&C’s myself. I’m crying because I wish I were skiing with Bob. I’m crying because I’m now sprawled out on the floor until someone rescues me.

While I indulge in my pity party on the floor, I’ve forgotten that Linus is napping, and my pathetic wailing wakes him up. He wails along with me.

“I’m sorry, baby!” I yell up to the second floor. “Don’t cry! Everything’s okay! Grandma will be home soon!”

But the sound of his mother’s voice faking reassurance from another floor isn’t what Linus wants. He wants his mother. He wants his mother to walk upstairs and pick him up. And I can’t. I cry.

“Oh my God, what happened?” says my mother’s voice.

“I’m okay,” I sob.

“Are you hurt?”

She’s standing over me now, a Styrofoam cup in her hand.

“No. Go get Linus, I’m fine.”

“He can wait a minute. What happened?”

“I tried to get coffee.”

“I got your coffee. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“You took too long.”

“Oh, Sarah, you’re always so impatient,” she says. “Let’s get you up.”

She pulls me by my arms to a sitting position, wipes a spot on the floor next to me clear of beans, and sits down. She hands me the cup of coffee.

“This isn’t from B&C’s,” I say, noticing no label on the cup.

“B&c’s is closed.”

“On a Saturday?”

“For good. The place is empty, and there’s a ‘for lease’ sign in the window.”

“Where is this from?” I ask.

“The gas station.”

I take a sip. It’s terrible. I resume crying.

“I want to be able to get my own cup of coffee,” I whimper.

“I know. I know you do.”

“I don’t want to be helpless,” I say, my crying intensifying as soon as I hear myself say the word
helpless.

“You’re not helpless. You need some help. They’re not the same. Here, let me help you all the way up.”

“Why? Why are you helping me?”

“Because you need it.”

“Why you? Why now? Why would you want to help me now?”

She takes the coffee cup from my hand and replaces it with her hand. She squeezes and looks me in the eye with a steady resolve I’ve never seen in her before.

“Because I want to be in your life again. I want to be your mother. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were growing up. I know I wasn’t a mother to you then. I want you to forgive me and let me help you now.”

Absolutely no way! She had her chance, and she abandoned you. What about all those years you needed her? Where was she then? She’s too selfish, too self-absorbed. She’s too late. You can’t trust her. She had her chance.

Shush.

Come on,” I say through a mouthful of toothpaste. “Stay.”

Bob and I are in our master bathroom. I’m leaning against the sink, getting ready for bed. Bob is standing behind me, getting ready to drive back to Welmont. He’s also watching over my brushing, just like he did a few minutes ago with Charlie and Lucy.

The kids can’t be trusted to brush their teeth without parental supervision. Charlie will go into the bathroom and forget why he’s in there. He’ll draw on the walls with the bath crayons or spin the entire toilet paper roll into an irreversible heap on the floor or start World War III with his sister. Lucy never forgets why she’s been sent in there, but she’s sneaky. She’ll wet her toothbrush with water, place it back in the holder, and then spend the next twenty minutes practicing different facial expressions and talking to herself in the mirror. So we can’t send them into the bathroom alone and expect any kind of dental hygiene to happen.

We keep them on task with verbal reminders.
Brush the top.
Get all the way back. That was too fast, you’re not done.
We sometimes sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and they brush for the duration of the song. And Bob flosses for them.

Now it’s my turn. I can’t be trusted to brush my teeth properly without supervision either. It’s early in the evening for me to be getting ready for bed, but Bob wants to get me settled before he leaves.

“I can’t,” he says. “You’re not brushing the left side.”

Staring at my face in the mirror, I poke my toothbrush wildly around in my mouth, hoping to make incidental contact with the left side. God knows I can’t get there on purpose. Unless I concentrate really hard, I’m not at all aware that the left side of my face exists. And at the end of the day, it’s really hard to concentrate really hard on anything.

No matter what time of day it is, the nonexistence of the left side of my face creates less than desirable consequences. I sometimes drool out of the left side of my mouth and don’t know it until someone (my mother) dabs me with a napkin or one of Linus’s bibs. While a little slobber sliding down the chin is arguably cute on Linus, I’m quite sure it does nothing good for me.

I now also have a reputation for unknowingly hoarding partially chewed wads of food in the pocket between my left teeth and gums, like I’m a chipmunk collecting nuts for the winter. This is not only gross, it’s a choking hazard, so my mother does a “chipmunk check” several times a day. When I’ve been found guilty of hoarding, she either clears the food out with her finger or hands me a glass of water and asks me to swish and spit. Either way, the solution is just as gross as the problem.

And I have an expensive collection of cosmetics that no longer sees the light of day. Mascara, liner, and shadow on one eye, blush on one cheek, and lips colored in ruby red only on the right side made everyone noticeably scared of me. I asked Bob to apply my makeup for me only once—I looked like I should be walking the red-light district. Since my options seemed to be limited to deranged lunatic or prostitute, I decided that we’d all be better off if I kept my makeup in the drawer.

So, needless to say, brushing my teeth on the left side isn’t my gold medal event. Bob always makes me give it a Girl Scout try, and then he does it for me. I poke around, accidentally jab the back of my throat, and gag. I retch over the sink, spit, and hand the brush over to Bob.

“Is anyone else going in?” I ask.

“I doubt it. Maybe Steve and Barry.”

Senior management at Bob’s company told everyone on Christmas Eve that they’d be shutting down for the week between Christmas and New Year’s—a forced, unpaid vacation for the entire staff, an effort to save costs during an annually slow week for many businesses, even in the absence of a recession. From what Bob has told me, Steve and Barry are insane workaholics, even by our standards. Steve loathes his wife and has no kids, and Barry is divorced. Of course they’re going in. They have nothing better to do.

“That’s crazy. Stay. Take the week off. Ski with the kids, watch movies by the fire with me. Sleep. Relax.”

“I can’t. I have a ton to do, and this is the perfect chance to catch up. Now stop talking so I can brush your teeth.”

Because of all the layoffs, Bob is short-staffed and has been doing the work of three other employees plus his own job. I’m amazed that he’s able to do this but also concerned about the toll it’s taking on him. Aside from the time he spends helping me and the kids in the mornings before school and in the evenings before bed and the handful of hours he sleeps each night, he does nothing but work, easily logging eighteen-hour days. He’s burning the candle at both ends, and I’m worried that at some point there’ll be nothing left of him but a puddle of wax.

I raise my right hand, signaling that I need to spit.

“So you’re going to work for no pay instead of spending the week with us,” I say.

“I’d love to stay, Sarah, but I’ve got to do everything I can to keep this company and my job alive. You know I have to do this.”

Each time my mother brings in the mail at home, and I see the white envelopes stacked on the kitchen counter, the scary dark pit in my stomach deepens, becoming darker and scarier. Even if Bob keeps his job and his salary, if I don’t go back to work, we’re living beyond our means. The bills keep coming in like a relentless winter storm, and we’re starting to get snowed in. And if Bob loses his job without another position lined up before I’m able to return to Berkley, then we’re going to have to start making some dark and scary choices. My heart races, acknowledging what my mind is too chicken to imagine.

“I know. I understand. I just wish you could stay. When’s the last time we both had a week off at the same time?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

We haven’t been on a weeklong family vacation or a vacation away together without the kids since Lucy was a baby. Whenever I could take a week, Bob couldn’t. And vice versa. We most often ended up taking vacation days in dribs and drabs and for reasons that can hardly be considered a holiday, usually when Abby was away or called in sick. With the exception of this year, when I used up all of my days sitting bedside at the lovely Baldwin Resort Hotel, I’ve never taken all of my allotted vacation time in a given year. Bob never uses all of his either. And this time doesn’t roll over to the following year; if we don’t use it, it’s gone forever.

For the first time, this behavior strikes me as absurdly sinful. Our employers offer to pay us to spend five weeks a year together, away from our desks and meetings and deadlines, and every year we basically say,
Thanks, but we’d rather work.
What’s wrong with us?

“You sure? The company can’t sink or be saved this week, or they wouldn’t have shut the doors. You’re exhausted. Stay. Ski. Rest. A week off would be so good for you.”

“Open,” he says, floss wound around his fingers and seeming a little too pleased with having the power to shut me up.

I cooperate, and he begins flossing my teeth. There’s no way I could do this myself. I’d probably have better luck training my right big toe to hold one end of the string while flossing with my right hand than trying to get my left hand to participate in this task. But I’m not willing to look like a chimpanzee for the sake of my dental health. So thank God that Bob flosses for me, or I’d probably be toothless by the time I’m forty.

I watch his eyes concentrating on the inside of my mouth. Before I left Baldwin, I cried every time I pictured Bob taking care of me like this. I grieved the imagined loss of our equal partnership, for the lamentable burden forced upon him as my caregiver, embarrassed for our pitiful fate. But now, when I actually see him taking care of me, I feel none of what I imagined. I watch his calm and tender concentration, and my heart swells with warm and grateful love.

“I can’t, babe. I’m sorry. I’ll be back end of the week.”

Pre-accident me nods, understanding the life-and-death stakes completely. He’s doing exactly what I would’ve done. But I’m worried more about him than his job right now and can see what pre-accident me is blind to—that he and his job are, in fact, two separate things. Finished with my teeth, we walk together over to the bed. Bob retrieves my pajamas from the dresser.

“Arms up,” he says in the same playful tone we both use with the kids.

“How’d I do?” I ask, not knowing if my left arm obeyed the command.

“You tell me.”

He taps my charm bracelet, and I hear the jingle coming from somewhere near my thighs, not up above my head. I’m not surprised. Whenever I ask both arms, both hands, or both feet to do something at the same time, it’s as if the sides compete to see who gets to do it, and the right side always wins. When my brain hears
arms up,
the gun goes off, and my right arm sprints to the finish while my left arm, knowing it’s way out of its league, doesn’t even bother inching one fingernail over the start line, paralyzed in place, awed by the magnificent abilities of my right arm.

Come on, left arm, lift UP!

I imagine my left arm answering in a voice similar to Eeyore’s.
Why bother, the right arm’s already there.
I wish my left side would realize that this isn’t a competition.

Bob pulls my buttonless wool sweater up over my head, down my left arm, and off. Next he reaches behind my back to unclasp my bra. He never had a second’s hesitation undoing my bras while we were dating, but now they befuddle him. I guess motivation matters. The side of his face is next to mine as he pinches at the hooks. I kiss his cheek. He stops working at my bra and looks straight at me. I kiss him on the lips. It’s not a sweet kiss or a thank-you-for-brushing-and-flossing-my-teeth kiss. And it’s not one of our hurried, courteous good-bye kisses. All my wanting—wanting to recover, wanting my job back, wanting to ski, wanting Bob to stay, wanting him to know how much I love him—is in that kiss. He goes there with me, and I swear I can feel his kiss in my left toes.

“You’re not going to seduce me into staying,” he says.

“You’re not staying,” I say and kiss him again.

He pulls my bra off without any further struggle, helps me onto the bed, and slides my pants and underwear off. He takes off his clothes and lies on top of me.

“We haven’t done this in a long time,” he says.

“I know.”

“I’m worried I could hurt you,” he says, stroking my hair with his hand.

“Just don’t pound my head against the headboard, and I’ll be fine,” I say and smile.

He laughs, revealing how nervous he is. I reach behind his neck and pull him toward me for another kiss. His bare chest, broad and strong and smooth, feels so good against mine. And the weight of him on top of me. I’d forgotten how much I love the feel of his weight on top of me.

I didn’t think this through before I kissed him, but even in this most passive of positions, I need to actively use my left side. My right leg is wrapped around him, but my left leg just lies there on the bed, a lifeless lump of flesh, not aroused one bit, and my asymmetry is making it difficult for Bob to get into the groove of things, so to speak. And although I’m game for trying all kinds of wacky rehabilitative tools and techniques for reading and walking and eating, I refuse to allow any kind of red ruler, orange tape, granny cane, therapeutic sex prop into our bedroom. I want to have normal sex with my husband, please.

“I’m sorry, I can’t find my left leg,” I say, feeling suddenly overcome with the wish that it were a prosthetic, and I could simply detach the useless thing and chuck it to the floor.

“That’s okay,” he says.

We manage to get going, and I notice that Bob is holding my left leg, pushing up on it from under my knee, balancing me out, reminding me of how he held my leg when it came time to push during the births of our babies. My mind wanders into memories of labor—contractions, epidurals, stirrups, episiotomies. I catch myself and snap out of it, realizing that this kind of imagery is completely inappropriate and counterproductive for what I’m doing.

“Sorry my leg is so hairy,” I say.

“Shhh.”

“Sorry.”

He kisses me, probably to shut me up, and it works. All intrusive and self-conscious thoughts dissolve away, and I melt into his kiss, under the weight of him, from how good he feels. This might not be perfectly normal sex, but it’s normal enough. And kind of perfect, actually.

Afterward, Bob dresses, helps me into my pajamas, and we lie back down next to each other.

“I miss doing that with you,” he says.

“Me, too.”

“How about a date in front of a roaring fire when I get back?”

I smile and nod. He checks his watch.

“I’d better get going. Have a great week. I’ll see you on Saturday,” he says and kisses me.

“Come Friday.”

“I’ll be here first thing Saturday morning.”

“Take Friday off. Come Friday morning.”

“I can’t. I really have to work.”

But he paused ever so slightly before he spoke, so I know there’s a chink in the armor.

“Let’s shoot for it,” I say.

We stare at each other for a suspended second, both realizing what happened after the last shoot.

“Okay,” he says and pulls me into a seated position facing him.

We both cock our fists back.

“One, two, threeeee, shoot!” I say.

Bob’s paper covers my rock. I lose. But Bob doesn’t celebrate his win.

“I’ll take half a day on Friday. I’ll come up early Friday evening,” he says.

I reach for his hand, pull him toward me, and give him a huge one-armed hug.

“Thank you.”

He tucks me in under a thick fleece blanket and down comforter.

“You good?” he asks.

It’s not my bedtime, but I don’t mind going to bed early. I’ve been getting tons of sleep since coming home from Baldwin, at least nine hours each night and another hour or two in a nap each afternoon, and I’m loving it. For the first time since I can remember, I don’t feel exhausted when I wake up in the morning.

“Yes. Please drive safe.”

“I will.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Sweet dreams.”