In the cafeteria she was met with frantic congeniality. Rather than embarrass themselves trying to figure out her choice of an entree, they just went ahead and piled everything on her plate.
A person in a wheelchair often feels invisible. Push a wheelchair and you’re invisible as well. Outside of the dorm, the only people to address us would speak as if we were deaf, kneeling beside the chair to shout, “FATHER TONY IS HAVING A GUITAR MASS THIS SUNDAY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN US?”
Peg would beckon the speaker close and whisper, “I collect the teeth from live kittens and use them to make necklaces for Satan.”
“WELL SURE YOU DO,” they’d say. “THAT’S WHAT OUR FELLOWSHIP IS ALL ABOUT.”
For Peg, being invisible was an old and tiresome story. To me, it definitely had some hidden potential. So began our life of crime.
We started off in grocery stores. Peg had a sack on the back of her wheelchair, which I would fill with thick steaks and frozen lobster tails. There was no need to slink behind pyramids of canned goods, hiding from the manager; we did our stealing right out in the open. Peg carried a canvas bag on her lap and stuffed it with everything she could get her hands on. Canned olives, teriyaki sauce, plastic tubs of pudding—our need had nothing to do with it. The point was to take from an unfair world. We quit going to the cafeteria, preferring to cook our meals in the dormitory kitchen, the butter dripping off our chins. We moved on to bookstores and record shops, guaranteed that no one would say, “I think I see that crippled girl stealing the new Joni Mitchell album.” Circumstances prevented us from stealing anything larger than our heads, but anything else was ours for the taking.
For spring break we decided to visit my family in Raleigh. Being invisible has its merits when you’re shoplifting but tends to hold a person back while hitchhiking. We parked ourselves beside the interstate, Peg’s thumb twitching at odd intervals. The five-hundred-mile trip took us close to three days. It was our story that we were newly married, and were heading south to start a new life for ourselves. Churchy couples would pull over, apologizing that their car was too small to accommodate a wheelchair. They couldn’t give us a ride, but would we accept twenty dollars and a bucket of fried chicken?
You bet we would. “There’s a hospital in Durham we’re hoping might do some good,” I’d say, patting Peg on the shoulder. “Here we are, a couple of newlyweds, and then this had to happen.”
CB radios were activated and station wagons appeared. Waitresses in roadside restaurants would approach our table whispering, “YOUR BILL HAS BEEN TAKEN CARE OF,” and pointing to some teary-eyed couple standing beside the cash register. We found it amusing and pictured these Samaritans notifying their pastor to boast, “We saw this crippled girl and her husband and, well, we didn’t have much but we did what we could.”
Someone would check us into a motel and give us cash for bus fare, making us promise to never hitchhike again. I’d take Peg out of her chair, lay her on the bed, and sprinkle the money down upon her. It was a pale imitation of a movie scene in which crafty con artists shower themselves with hundred-dollar bills. Our version involved smaller denominations and handfuls of change, but still, it made us feel alive.
We were in West Virginia when one of the wheels fell off Peg’s chair. It was dusk on a rural state highway without a building in sight when an elderly man in a pickup truck swooped in and carried us all the way to my parents’ front door, a trip that was surely out of his way. “Five-four-oh-six North Hills Drive? I’m headed right that way, no trouble at all. Which state did you say that was in?”
We arrived unannounced, surprising the startled members of my family. I’d hoped my parents might feel relaxed in Peg’s company, but when they reacted with nervous discomfort, I realized that this was even better. I wanted them to see that I had changed. Far from average, I had become responsible in ways they could never dream of. Peg was my charge, my toy, and I was the only one who knew how to turn her off and on. “Well,” I said, wiping her mouth with a dinner napkin, “I think it’s time for somebody’s bath.”
My brother and sisters reacted as though I had brought home a sea lion. They invited their friends to stare from the deck as I laid Peg on a picnic blanket in the backyard. My father repaired the wheelchair, and when Peg thanked him, he left the dinner table and returned handing her a second fork.
“She didn’t ask for a fork,” I said. “She asked for your watch.”
“My watch?” he said. “The one I’m wearing?” He tapped his fingers against the face for a moment or two. “Well, golly, I guess if it means that much to her, sure, she can have my watch.” He handed it over. “And your belt,” I said. “She’ll need that, too. Hurry up, man, the girl is crippled.”
My mother visited her hiding place and returned with a wad of cash for our bus fare back to Ohio. She called me into the kitchen and shoved the money into my hand, whispering, “I don’t know what kind of a game you’re playing, mister, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” It was an actual whisper, designed to be heard only by me.
The bus ride back to Ohio was long and cheerless. The second time Peg asked to use the bathroom, I snapped. “You just went three hours ago,” I shouted. “Jesus, what’s your problem, do I have to take care of everything?” It got on my nerves, the way she depended on me. We’d gone on this trip, she’d had a good time, what more did she want? How was it that by the time we left my parents’ house, I was considered the cripple, not her but me, me who had to do everything while she just sat there spilling ashes down the front of her shirt?
My mood deteriorated. We returned to school, where Peg related our adventures to a crowd of friends. I listened in, silently substituting every we for an I “We” didn’t talk a truck driver out of thirty dollars and a brand-new curling wand, I did that, ME, how dare she take half the credit? “She is some kind of brave,” our classmates would say. “I wouldn’t have the courage to do half the things that she does—and I can walk!”
The spring quarter began but by the second week, I’d stopped attending class, deciding instead to bone up on my drugs and become my own private adventurer. I signed up for sky-diving lessons at the local airfield. The training sessions were deceptively simple, but when the time came for the actual jump, they had to pry my white knuckles off the wing of the plane. I begged and pleaded and all the way down I pictured myself in a wheelchair, hoping that the person assigned to care for me would have none of my qualities.
At the end of the school year I hitchhiked to San Francisco, enchanted with the idea of leading an adult life surrounded by people who could wash their own hair. My friend Veronica got me a room at a residence hotel, and I found work as a bicycle messenger. The streets of my neighborhood were fragrant with eucalyptus trees, and every passing stranger offered the hope that tomorrow just might be the day I was offered a comfortable job or a twelve-room apartment. I was far from my family and often pictured them suffering their vacations without me. They had treated me poorly, but I had come out on top because that was the kind of person I was, headstrong and independent. Me, the winner.
I was cooking spaghetti and ketchup in my electric skillet one night when I heard the pay phone ring outside my room. It was Peg, calling to say she had rolled away from home.
“Good for you,” I said. “This is going to be the best thing you’ve ever done.” When I learned she was calling from the San Francisco airport, I modified my statement, saying, “I don’t know about this, Peg. Won’t your parents be worried about you? What about your education?”
What followed was a lesson that college bears no resemblance to civilian life. Leaving the building involved carrying Peg up and down five flights of stairs before returning for her wheelchair. The landlord charged me a double rate for having a guest in my room, and I lost my job when Peg fell against the bathtub, taking five stitches in her head. This was a big city where people held on to their fried chicken. Nobody cared that we were a young married couple searching for a better life and not eve
n the buses would stop to pick us up. Fed up, Veronica and I decided to head north to pick apples. I told Peg, hoping she might accept the news and return home, but she held fast. Armed with a telephone directory, she placed collect calls to government agencies whose workers held the line when she dropped the phone or took twenty minutes to locate a pen. Volunteers wheeled her to meetings in cluttered ground-floor offices where paraplegics raised their fists in salute to her determination and tenacity. She wound up living alone in a brick apartment building somewhere in Berkeley. An attendant visited every twelve hours to prepare her meals and help her onto the toilet. If a spasm sent her onto the floor, she lay there patiently until help arrived to dress her wounds. When her parents called, she either hung up or cursed them, depending upon her mood. Peg’s greatest dream was to live far from her parents and enjoy a satisfying sexual encounter. She sent a postcard detailing the event. There had been three wheelchairs parked around her waterbed, the third belonging to a bisexual paraplegic whose job it was to shift the lovers into position. Within a year her health deteriorated to the point where she could no longer be left alone for twelve-hour stretches. We both wound up crawling back to our parents but continued to keep in touch, her letters progressively harder to read. The last I heard from her was in 1979, shortly before she died. Peg had undergone a religious transformation and was in the process of writing her memoirs, hoping to have them published by the same Christian press that had scored a recent hit with Joni!, a book detailing the life of a young quadriplegic who painted woodland creatures by holding the brush between her teeth. She sent me a three-page chapter regarding our hitchhiking trip to North Carolina. “God bless all those wonderful people who helped us along the way!” she wrote. “Each and every day I thank the Lord for their love and kindness.”
I wrote back saying that if she remembered correctly, we’d made fun of those people. “We lied to them and mocked them behind their backs, and now you want them blessed? What’s happened to you?”
Looking back, I think I can guess what might have happened to her. Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren’t foolish as much as they are kind. Peg understood that at a relatively early age. Me, it took years.
Girl Crazy
Producers of the ABC sitcom Ellen are discussing plans to have the main character disclose that she is a lesbian.
—New York Times, September 16, 1996
Dear ABC:
Why is it that Ellen can be a lesbian but a six-year-old boy from North Carolina can’t kiss a little girl without being suspended for sexual harassment? According to you and Ellen, things would have been just fine had he kissed a boy! Just when I think I know what’s going on in the world, you switch a show from one time slot to another and then change the characters into homosexuals, so nobody can recognize them anymore. You’re playing games with our minds, and I, for one, don’t like it. Mess with Regis and Kathie Lee, and you’ll be picking your front teeth out from between my bloody knuckles!
Barb Diesel
High Point, N.C.
Dear ABC:
Kudos for allowing Ellen to reflect the rich cultural diversity of the real America, a place where differences are celebrated and frank discussions of sexuality are as common as evening prayer. Don’t be fooled or intimidated by the right wing’s proposed boycotts. For every rabid fundamentalist, there are ten free-thinking progressives whose viewing habits cannot be altered by fear and hatred. I congratulate you for breaking new ground and feel certain your courageous decision will reward us all. One question, though: How soon after she comes out will Ellen start getting it on with other women? There must be all kinds of college-age girls ready to shed their sweaters and hop into the sack with the stacked and lovely Miss DeGeneres. Stick with the hot stuff, and you’ve got yourself a loyal viewer.
Dimitrius Sappho
New York City
Dear ABC:
Stop the cameras, because I’ve got a little news flash for you: Not all lesbians own bookstores and drink coffee. As a practicing homosexual for the past eighteen years, I am sick to death of your stereotyping. There are hundreds of thousands of us out here who have never read a book, touched a cash register, or had a sip of coffee, either hot or iced. Caffeine makes me jumpy, and I prefer drinking Hawaiian Punch with just a whisper of vodka. Does that make me a freak? In your attempt to “package” Ellen, you hurt those of us who live outside the little cardboard boxes in which you confine your minority characters. Undoubtedly your network is run by Japanese who think they can squeeze out a few extra yen by stirring up a little controversy. Well, squeeze away, Emperor Mitsubishi. You ain’t getting a dime out of me.
Christina Manly
Baltimore, Md.
Dear ABC:
If you are going to turn anyone into a homosexual, I suggest you do it to Hugh Downs on 20/20. I am a heterosexual man, and, as my wife can attest, I have always been a devoted and responsible partner. I have a distinguished war record, three children, and five beautiful grandchildren who are the love of my life. Never have I strayed from my marriage or allowed myself to think sexually of any man other than—You guessed it! Hugh Downs is a fox, and I would love to watch him let loose and cuddle with a few of his guests. I don’t know which would be higher—your ratings or my blood pressure. (Ha ha.) Seriously, though, if you truly do possess the power to turn people into homosexuals, I’ll go to bed praying you have the good sense to choose Hugh Downs rather than some frumpy woman whose show I’ve never watched.
Name Withheld Upon Request
Santa Fe, N.M.
Dear ABC:
I have read that you are thinking of turning the television character Ellen into a homosexual and am wondering if you plan to make her a slutty lesbian or the type who stays at home and gardens. If you move in favor of the slut, allow me to suggest my former wife as a template. Is that the right word? I mean that if Ellen wants to be a slutty lesbian, you can base her character on my former wife—all she does is tell lies and slut around. On our wedding night, I shaved all the hair off my body because she said it made her nervous. Then, when I was bleeding from razor nicks, guess who chose to sleep on the sofa? Now she’s living the slutty high life and I have nothing. If I provide you with my ex-wife’s name and address, will you pay me for it? Please have your lawyers call me as soon as possible. If my mother answers, ask to speak to Timothy. DO NOT LEAVE A MESSAGE WITH MY MOTHER, as I don’t want her knowing my business.
Timothy Dykeman
Cleveland, Ohio
Card Wired
Now even the greeting card industry is getting in on the mass-therapy act [by designing cards] for people who have something delicate to communicate to their partner but somehow cannot find the words—or, more likely, the courage—to say it out loud. Buy enough of these cards and you could virtually hold an entire conversation with your loved one (or not) without opening your mouth.
—The Independent
May-September Romance / Impotence
To a young Valentine from a venerable husband:
Think of me as a fine champagne, my love,
The grapes crushed long before you were born.
Here’s hoping that my impressive label will hold your interest
Until I find the strength
To pop my cork.
Locksmiths / Vans and Drinking
Good morning, Valentine!
When you lost your job as a locksmith, I’m afraid I wasn’t very understanding. I was wrong, asking you to use your talents to break into my stepmother’s van. Call me sentimental, but I’ll arrange for your bail as soon as possible. And I’m looking forward to spending a quiet afternoon, just the two of us, with the six-pack we found in my stepmother’s van.
Public Disgrace / Chinchillas
When I first told you I planned to resign as Lieutenant Governor,
You turned your head,
And I caught the ghost of your perfume.
I’m praying tha
t, come Valentine’s Day,
You might agree to leave the house
And visit me here at the treatment center,
Where we can hold hands and discuss my plans
To open a chinchilla ranch.
Former Spouse / Stress / Standup Comedy
Thank you, Valentine,
For understanding my need to maintain a casual sexual relationship
With my former wife,
And for replacing the battery in my Taurus on that cold, rainy day
When I felt too stressed out.
I appreciate the way you stood by my side during my standup comedy “phase,”
And I give you my word:
I’ll never again publicly read from your dream journal.
(Though it is quite funny!)
I’m not sure why I’m apologizing.
Maybe it’s just my way of saying
I still care.
Divorce / Ticket-Stub Collectors
This will be our last Valentine’s Day together
So let’s make the most of it, shall we?
Oh, I think we can forgo
Chocolate candies and aromatic bouquets,
The Best of Me Page 4