A Stitch of Time

by Lauren Marks

  Jonah’s birthday is coming up soon, isn’t it? she asked me. Uh-huh. October first, it seems. Are you planning on sending him anything? A gift of some kind?

  Sure, I said. It sounded like a good idea. I must have been the person who had added the date on the calendar in the first place, but there also was no way I could have remembered the event without my mother’s reminder. So, what does Jonah like? I asked her.

  How would I know what Jonah likes? My mother scoffed. I’m not the one who’s been dating him for the last five years.

  Something in my expression must have looked pitiful or confused because it stopped my mother dead in her tracks. She slowed down and sat next to me.

  Oh honey, I didn’t mean to be harsh, she said. It’s just that you and Jonah always kept your relationship pretty private. Which was fine, and I respected your independence, but that bond didn’t really include your family and friends. I was glad I could spend some time with him in Scotland, but it just wasn’t enough time to know the things he really likes.

  Since I wasn’t allowed to drive anywhere at this stage of my recovery, my mother suggested we make Jonah some birthday cookies together when she returned that evening. In the meantime, I could try to put together some kind of care package for him. Lately, I had some experience receiving these presents in the mail, so I set about trying to prepare one myself.

  My mom kept a stash of knickknacks in the house, small generic gifts in case of an unexpected occasion or unannounced visitor. For Jonah, I selected a carton of Chinese fortune sticks, still wrapped in cellophane. But I wanted to put something more precious in there too. If I packed up something that I wanted back at some point, it was like making a promise for a future meeting. I chose a music box that had been my favorite as a child. It was a wooden figurine, carved in the shape of a girl, with painted-on hair, standing on a plastic pedestal. She would be my emissary.

  There was a small amount of space left in the care package. I thought of something that would fit perfectly there. On a recent walk through my neighborhood, I had seen an exquisite desert bush in full flower. Its beauty was stupefying. The plant was covered in vibrant red-orange bulbs, each the size of an avocado, the color and shape of a human heart. I left the house and walked back to where I’d seen it. It didn’t bother me much that it was in a neighbor’s yard. With so much surplus on this plant, a single bloom couldn’t possibly be missed.

  But when I grabbed for the fruit, the gesture came with a naked thump of pain. White needles spread across my palm like fur. I hadn’t remembered the word cactus until one pricked me. As I plucked every stinging whisker, the word throbbed its way back into my vocabulary, scorching as a sunburn. By the time I drafted Jonah’s birthday card, I had a greater sense of practicality. I shouldn’t send this cactus bulb anywhere. It was too beautiful to dispose of, though, so I kept it for myself, handling it with gloves. I would still share it with Jonah, but a picture of it would have to suffice.

  w/ Jonah

  - “August 24, call my new birthday”

  “You can just change your birthday. Your birthday is your birthday”

  “Hey, new life new brain, new life, I might think on it.”

  Daydreaming by new birthday

  Was my labor difficult? How long? How many doctors

  nearby, Who were the ones who ne waked waked wak up in t the (artful?) nightmare to delivery to the helpless merringone

  al whole year minute little (small) Lauren me (insensible)

  A few days later, Jonah called me while he was opening his birthday present. He ate a macaroon into the receiver.

  They are still soft, he said, licking his fingers. It’s adorable the way you packaged each cookie in its own Saran Wrap pocket.

  I didn’t need to do that? I asked.

  Lauren, no one needs to do that, he said. But it’s sweet as hell. How am I going to top this for your birthday?

  I don’t know, I said, giggling. Now that I have two of them.

  I heard his lighter flip open.

  Come again? he asked, after his first drag.

  Well, waking up from a brain surgery is like a birth, I said. New brain, new life.

  Sort of . . . Jonah sounded unconvinced.

  I had been only slightly serious when I made the comment, but after Jonah disputed it, I realized that I really believed it. The birth and neurointervention took place in the same location (a hospital), had the same cast of characters (doctors and patients), and pretty much the same conflict (expectant parents and their mewling, helpless delivery). The Girl I Used to Be was born on a summer day, twenty-seven years ago, and I felt no attachment whatsoever to that occasion, that other life. So I tried to explain to Jonah that August 24 was much more my birthday than June 19.

  I get the symbolic value. Jonah exhaled his smoke slowly into the receiver. Because the surgery was a big deal, but your birthday is your birthday, Lauren. You don’t get to change that.

  His dismissal was so off-putting that I stopped trying to discuss the subject. I had forgotten this aspect of Jonah’s personality. He always spoke his mind, and though he could eventually change his opinion on an issue at some point, he refused to do so in the course of a conversation. The Girl I Used to Be might have been a lot like that, too. In the years before the rupture, Jonah and I had established a dynamic that was often fast-paced and competitive. When we would see an exhibit at the MoMA or watch a play at New York Theatre Workshop, we would often disagree with each other afterward. Seeing the work was the first act, discussing it was the second. We would state our claims and our interaction for hours would be all about who made the most salient point of the night. Though this pattern may not have been conducive to a supportive relationship, there were many moments of love and tenderness between us. But in a peculiar way, we tended to be at our most generous when we were not right in front of each other.

  Alone in his apartment in Brooklyn Heights, or in his dad’s place in Seattle, Jonah took it upon himself to narrate and record full books-on-tape for me. Knowing I liked a good story, he recorded The Catcher in the Rye, Free Fall, and Lying Awake in their entirety. These projects took dozens of hours to complete, and he had no editing materials or digital software. It was an old-fashioned tape recorder and this do-it-yourself quality added to the projects’ charm. Sometimes a car alarm would go off, or a cat would wander into the room and meow. And I liked how all of those interruptions became a part of the permanent record, too. As much as I enjoyed the stories themselves, it was in these unrehearsed moments that I was reminded why Jonah and I had come together and stayed together. He was at his most unguarded when he recorded them, and when I listened to them, my defenses were lowered as well. He was just a man in a room making a gift for the woman he loved. I found nothing quite so beautiful as the sound of him turning the page. I tried to make him a few recordings myself, reading short excerpts from Calvino’s Invisible Cities or Kipling’s Just So Stories, but I didn’t have the stamina for his marathon sessions. There was a lot of mutual admiration infused into these affectionate exchanges. Still, our passion never ran hotter than when we were deep in debate.

  But now, only a little more than a month after the aneurysm’s rupture, I wasn’t able to engage with Jonah in the way I used to. I couldn’t be as combative or eloquent. I didn’t feel I could defend my positions in real time. When I mentioned having a second birthday, I needed eye contact, gestures, and touch to feel I was being understood. With none of that at my disposal, I simply abandoned the point.

  3

  My language skills were fractured and I had a radically short attention span for most topics, so there were many things I was simply unable to think about, let alone manage. Chief among those was my own medical care.

  Two different ambulances had sped me to two different hospitals in Edinburgh the night of my aneurysm. There was the CT scan, the brain operation, the Doppler ultrasounds to my head. There had been medications: the morphine in the intensive unit, the nimodipine to prevent vas
ospasms, Albutamol and Seretide for my preexisting asthma, the tramadol, paracetamol, and dihydrocodeine to combat any breakthrough pain. There was round-the-clock monitoring, with meals doled out several times a day. If I had been a Scottish citizen, all of this care would have been free of charge. But I wasn’t. Though my parents made their gratitude clear and maintained that no price tag could be too high to save their daughter’s life, they still had quietly worried about how they would pay for all of it. If this treatment had been in the United States, they calculated it could easily cross over the million-dollar mark. Would they have to sell the house?

  When the bill finally arrived from Scotland, they were stunned. We were expected to pay four thousand US dollars, and could do so with a payment plan as long as we needed it to be. My mother’s relief commingled with her incredulity.

  Four thousand dollars is no chump change, she said to my dad. But if this had been in the US? Not a chance. Four thousand dollars would’ve just been payment one.

  But paying off old bills wasn’t the only medical issue we were faced with. Dr. Salman had informed my parents that the first three months after the onset of aphasia were the most crucial for language rehabilitation, and that I would need structured therapy during this period to ensure a successful recovery going forward. But we were sliding between two medical systems on two different continents, and finding the right care was hardly streamlined. In mid-October my mother set up an appointment with a neurologist, a woman who had once helped her with her migraines.

  Dr. Reiko Russin was a short woman with a greying black bob and a clipped manner of speaking. After a quick physical check, similar to the ones given to me in Scotland, my mother and I headed into her dim office.

  Lauren’s motor neurological exam is unremarkable, Dr. Russin said, looking severe behind her glossy oak desk.

  And that’s bad? My mother sounded concerned.

  No, Dr. Russin replied, taking out her prescription pad. Unremarkable is good. Unremarkable is what we want. Suzanne, I’m giving you the name of some speech and language programs to consider here in the LA area. But you have to realize that Lauren is at a critical juncture at this moment, and the recovery of her full language is not yet certain. I was in the backseat of this conversation, noticing the way the doctor talked past me as if I were not in the room. Although the information she was giving seemed somewhat dire, her professional tone was reassuring.

  You need to start your search for a speech therapist, Dr. Russin said, ripping the paper off the pad and handing it to my mother. She shot a steely glance in my direction and concluded: pronto.

  •  •  •

  Later that night, Jonah suggested that I might not just need a language therapist, but a regular therapist as well. He reminded me that before my injury, I had told him time and again I’d never be part of the “boomerang generation,” adult children returning to their parents’ home. Now that you have to be there, he said, you are bound to be feeling some psychological strain at the moment.

  I reflected on his statement. Not really, I said. I don’t think so, anyway.

  To be on the safe side, Jonah gave me the details of a psychologist he knew out in LA, who specialized in dreams. I had never been to a therapist before and I didn’t start then, either, but Jonah’s mention of dreams drew my attention because they had started to feel especially important in my language recovery.

  I haven’t encountered extensive research about the role sleep can play in cases of aphasia per se, but there is a wealth of studies indicating that sleep assists in urgent problem solving and memory consolidation. In Scotland, I could easily sleep for eighteen hours a day, but that rest was fitful and dreamless. That changed back in California. There, going to sleep became productive. The moments right after I woke every morning were a broken hydrant of language. The people, the places, the fantastic situations all created a dynamism of recollection for me, and when I opened my eyes, I’d find a torrent of words spilling out of my pen, things I hadn’t been able to remember before going to bed.

  Writing down my dreams was easily the most productive time of every day.

  Dream

  Dreams has been to much. jumble. Interesting. Stout now. After one month.

  Momument. Like Rushmore. Bigger. Older. Treacherous. With less tools on dangerous angles. Made by the Chouktow Indians. I was on the face truly true face. on the massive feet. I look on to the view. Terrifying but breath exhilating.

  I feet I was afraid. a lot of precipes. Political (ally (?)) rally (?) I was talk to new people. One was famous astor. actor. I actors are phonieys. Heard the speaker. Did not see it. A precipes. New Near cliffs, no guard rail And elevators. I walled With dad? (Smtimes) Get closer down, but still . . . he would preten to fall but I moved mhimia. I though he will fall a in the middle after pretending.

  The writing in the early journals, whether detailing dreams or not, gives me valuable insight into the predictable language mistakes I was unwittingly making daily, even though I couldn’t recognize them in real time. In the dream of Mount Rushmore, I had written stout (instead of start), rally (instead of ally), wall (instead of walk)—these are all phonemic errors, a common occurrence with people who have sustained damage to their Broca’s area. These are words that sound similar, usually with the same number of syllables and vowel arrangements, but mean very different things.

  Like before and perform.

  Despite the fact that my parents didn’t act onstage anymore, performance was part of the very fabric of my family. In the Rushmore dream, my father was playing a clown. But he was clumsy. In the dream, I kept trying to remind him that a fake punch could accidentally land as a real punch, and a stage tumble could become a critical injury, especially with the sheer precipices around him. Like it had been for me on the platform at Priscilla’s Bar, it was too easy to have an actual fall in the middle of all that pretending.

  4

  The doorbell rang a little before noon. When I answered, there was a woman with a jet-black bouffant, thick eyeliner, and a dark lip stain standing on the threshold.

  Well hello, little lady. Sorry to intrude like this but I’m an old friend of your momma’s, she said in a thick Southern drawl. Knew you when you were yay-high.

  The woman’s lips smiled mauve as she handed me a purple orchid.

  I’m just so pleased you’re doing so good, honey. We’ve been praying hard. I can’t stay, unfortunately, but you just be sure to tell your daddy how much we all appreciated his e-mails.

  I thanked her for the flower, though I thought her comment was strange. Thinking it might just be post-rupture confusion, I asked my mom about it when she got home.

  Well, your dad started writing these sort of . . . letters . . . as soon as we arrived in Scotland, she said. When you were still in the intensive care unit.

  Oh, I said. He was writing about me, then?

  Think about it, Lauren. How else could your friends have known what was going on? Not like you were able to update them yourself.

  I realized my mother was right. I hardly had an online life at all; I wasn’t using any social media, and would go weeks before opening an e-mail. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything, though. I wasn’t especially interested in what was going on with other people because I was too overwhelmed with what was going on with myself. And, logistically, it took too long to read an e-mail or online post. And if I wanted to answer them, I usually would need some help in doing so. I just didn’t see that appeal.

  But what about my friends? I asked. How did you get ahold of them?

  Oh that, she said. Laura guessed your e-mail password. We’ve been managing all of your communications coming in and out since.

  She explained that since Grace was also a PhD student in New York, they had been forwarding all my grad school business to her. While she had been managing all my official correspondence, my parents had been handling my personal letters.

  I thought your father would have stopped writing these grou
p e-mails by this point, but . . .

  Wait, I said. Dad is still sending out the e-mails? These updates . . . on me?

  Well, yeah, my mom answered, a little cautiously. But not that often anymore. Your dad just tends to overshare in the digital realm, you know?

  And at that point, she admitted to me that my father’s notes were not just going to my closest friends and other students in my PhD program, but also to our neighbors, ex-neighbors, family members, employees, former employees, and some of their business associates.

  I was aghast, and it must have showed.

  I’ll make sure he stops, honey, my mother promised. Privacy has always mattered a little more to you than to your dad.

  An intense reliance on others had begun the second I collapsed in Priscilla’s Bar. Nurses washed me and changed my catheter, and my parents hovered over me every second I was in sight. They had brought me home and provided me with whatever I needed. Still, remarkably, the concept of privacy didn’t occur to me until my mother uttered the word, and speaking for me felt very different than doing things for me. I needed to know what my father had been writing. What had been said on my behalf?

  My father’s laptop was on the dining room table, and I discovered that he had left his e-mail inbox open. When I typed the word Scotland into the search field, dozens of messages popped up. I chose one at random, dated September 6:

  “She can’t wait to get out. Out. Out! OUT! ‘I want to not be here,’ she pouts, spreading her arms wide, eyes rolling. Syntax may be a little shaky, but the meaning is crystal clear. ‘Here’ is exactly where she wants to not be, thank you very much. She’s fed up with hospital life. She’s fed up with what she’s being fed.”

  How long did it take me to read that first letter? I have no idea if it was twenty minutes or two hours, but I do know that my father’s descriptions didn’t align with my memories at all. Fed up with the food? I remember eating whatever was put in front of me. Fed up with hospital life? This had been fewer than two months earlier, and I knew how difficult it had been for me to even imagine any place besides the hospital. My dad said my meanings had been crystal clear to others, but how could that possibly be if he himself misunderstood me?