by Lauren Marks
The morning of my departure, Jonah and I arrived on the train platform a few minutes early. It was windy, so Jonah pulled up the oversize collar of my heavy coat.
See what I did there? he asked. Your little genius engineered a makeshift kissing booth. Jonah brought his face close to mine, inside our new woolen enclosure. Our chapped, wintery lips ground like mortar and pestle. Rough becoming smooth.
I don’t want to let you go, Jonah said. And I am only going to do so on the condition that the next time I see you, we can be together for a lot longer.
Jonah’s statement surprised me. I hadn’t regretted coming up to Seattle in the slightest, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stay any longer. I felt that both of us were looking forward to spending some time alone. Apparently, Jonah didn’t share the sentiment.
I didn’t want to overstay my welcome, I told him.
You are killing me here, Lauren. You know I love you, I do. But you almost spent as many days on the train as you spent in Seattle.
The rails beside us buzzed, and a distant train became visible. Glad you came up for New Year’s, though, Jonah said, and kissed my forehead. 2008 is starting out pretty good, I’d say.
Grace had called the people around me a web of support, and I could see now what she had meant. I had been beyond lucky that most of my loved ones had not distanced themselves from me after the stroke. But this came with a strange set of corollaries because people were seeing so many aspects of me that I didn’t see in myself. They were assuming and expecting and applying my wants before I could even establish them myself. And they weren’t seeing the parts of me that I felt were the most pronounced, the things I was actually able to identify. This was never as obvious as it was with Jonah. In Seattle, it had been impossible to keep up with these multiple versions of myself in real time, so I tried to keep up with Jonah’s version of me instead. And I felt like I did a good job of it, eventually. He was putting so much effort into our romance, and although I found the attention a bit overwhelming, it honestly made me happy to see him happy.
I snuggled against Jonah’s neck before I boarded the train. On the steps, I quickly turned around and attempted to say a final word, but had to speak over the din around us. I pointed at my necklace—and promised him: We part to meet again.
16
In my neurologist’s exam room, Seattle felt like a lifetime away, more like a dream compared to this all-too-real doctor’s visit. Whenever I was there, my eyes always wandered to a strange, framed drawing Dr. Russin had hung on the wall. It depicted another doctor’s office, with a waiting room not unlike hers, but all of the patients in the picture were animals. The lion had a thermometer in his mouth. The crocodile’s tail was in a cast. The doctor was nowhere in sight, but I always wondered if she was an animal, too.
It had been almost six months since the aneurysm’s rupture, and Dr. Russin informed me it was time to schedule the routine post-operative angiogram. Consider this a progress report, she said.
I wasn’t concerned much about my treated aneurysm. My language was improving, and every neurological and therapeutic expert I consulted seemed satisfied with my progress. My own personal gauge was probably centered around my journal. I felt the entries had become more detailed, more precise. Furthermore, I no longer needed it as a tool to communicate with others; instead, it had become a source of deep personal satisfaction, a forum where I could explore my thoughts, impressions, and daily inquiries. It provided an outlet for expression that conversation with other people never seemed to accommodate.
However, I was a little confused about what an angiogram was, and asked Dr. Russin if she could break it down for me.
It’s just a scan, she said. A somewhat invasive scan. She explained that a small incision would be made near the groin, and a camera would be snaked up through the body through a surgical catheter, much like my procedure in Scotland. Once the team could observe the aneurysm up close, they would inspect the coils and make sure they were still blocking off the blood flow from the rest of the brain. There would be an operating team in the room, ready to go if more support was needed.
It was as simple as that: a scan could become a surgery. The information felt like a stiff smack that left its stinging imprint on me long after the momentary action. I had assumed surgery was out of the question at that moment, but the possibility didn’t faze Dr. Russin in the slightest. I was a little embarrassed to be so misinformed. It was my lack of knowledge, the limits of my own foresight, that had left me exposed in this way. This stung most of all.
And what about the second aneurysm? I asked her, a bit tentatively.
Dr. Russin said the procedure was only focused on the primary aneurysm, since it was the larger one, and because it needed to be checked up on more often. The secondary aneurysm was just something we had to be aware of.
Primary and secondary aneurysms—I had a mined mind. Whether I was having a scan or a surgery next month, this was the sort of thing I’d like to avoid in the future.
How long have I had these aneurysms? And what exactly caused them? I asked.
It is hard to say that with certainty, she said. Family history can be a factor. Hypertension, too. Cigarette use. Do you fall into any of those risk categories?
No, I said. I don’t think so.
Well, this is where things get a little less clear. Babies usually don’t get brain scans so there is no widespread way of checking, but it’s possible that lots of people with aneurysms are just born with them.
Born with them. That was an entirely new concept for me to consider. Before the stroke, I had been active, ate a disproportionate amount of kale and very little meat. I practiced yoga nearly daily, before and after the rupture. Still, I knew that the aneurysm could not have been completely random, so there were probable causes. There were the small doses of steroids in the prescriptions I had been taking since I was a child to combat my asthma. I had been taking birth control since I was a teenager, and liberally sampled an assortment of illegal drugs as an undergraduate. I had made peace with the idea that any of those decisions had led to an aneurysm’s formation. But this was the very first time it occurred to me that they might have simply been inevitable. Their threat could be as old as I was. If these aneurysms had grown up inside and alongside me, was the rest of my mind aware of these parts of my brain? Had my brain communicated that knowledge to my body? Had a subconscious knowledge of this been shaping my identity my whole life? A quiet preparation of things that would come to pass. And had the date and time of the rupture been predetermined? Was it always scheduled to happen the night of August 23, 2007—wherever I was, whatever I was doing? If a large aneurysm was bound to form—and bound to rupture—the most formative event of my life had nothing to do with the decisions I had personally made.
When I was at NYU, I had pursued a minor in religious studies. This meant my backpack was often weighed down with the writings of Sufi mystics, or rabbinical examinations pulled from the midrash. On my daily subway commute to school, I would pass a mosaic at the Lorimer Street stop, a rendering of a boulder balancing precariously, like a golf ball resting on a tee. There were two words on opposing sides of this giant rock: “Faith” and “Fate.” I was an American, white, and born into an upwardly mobile, middle-class family. I had never felt especially oppressed by the idea of destiny, but the artwork reminded me of a spiritual question posed throughout human history: How much of a person’s life depends on what they did, and how much of it is what is done to them? Now, this was something I couldn’t get out of my mind.
Dr. Russin was ready to conclude our exam and clutched her clipboard to her chest. Well, Lauren? Are there any other questions I can answer for you?
Of course there weren’t; that was the problem. We were completely in the realm of the unanswerable at that point. I was just being reminded of the terrifying knowledge we all innately understand, but do our best to ignore: there are forces inside of us that we can neither prevent nor control. And once I looked down
into this well in myself, the drop seemed to go on forever.
17
My dad was driving me to speech therapy and quizzing me on today’s subject: words with multiple meanings. I loved homophones and homonyms. It was comical that some steaks could be made of beef, and people gambled with stakes. Toast was a plain breakfast food as a noun, but as a verb, you could arrange a huge celebration and toast an appointed person.
Yeah, he said. Toast can be pretty tricky. And if you’re not careful, you’ll just find yourself in a jam.
I groaned.
Wow, he said. Tough crowd.
We were thoroughly enjoying this time together, and he told me that it reminded him of our interactions when I was very young, learning these words for the first time. He used to tease me, he said, when he would buckle me into my car seat. I’d start to smash my grubby toddler digits against the car window, and he’d make this defeated expression and say, Poor window. Sad window. And because I didn’t know better, I would always ask him how he knew the window was sad.
It was meant to be a kind of call and response, my dad said. I would tell you that the window was suffering and you should be able to know that by feeling it.
Feeling what? I asked him. The window’s pane?
Exactly! My dad slapped his thigh. It’s pain! Oof. That never gets old.
And then the point of the joke dawned on me all over again.
Language sometimes needs a slow release, my dad said. You just have to grow into it.
He instructed me to make sure that Justine and Alicia talked to me about autoantonyms as well, words or phrases you can only know by their context, because one meaning could directly contradict the other. Like trimming the tree can mean cutting down its boughs or decking them in tinsel. You can cleave meat apart, but people cleave together.
Or fight with? I asked my dad. Because you can fight with someone on opposing sides, but you can also fight with someone as a combined force. On the same team.
That’s my clever girl, my dad said, tousling my hair. Laura is going to be so impressed when she sees you next week.
Laura was traveling from New York to visit her parents in Northern California, and they were planning to swing through LA to see my parents and me. I was excited for the visit, but I had just gotten back from seeing Jonah in Seattle, and I had seen Grace in December. It felt like more than enough socializing for a while. I wanted to spend some time on my own. When I explained this to my dad, his lips formed a straight line, and he paused before responding.
You know, your friends have been missing you, kiddo. You’ve got to appreciate that. And actually, it seems to me that things were a little . . . tense . . . after you and Grace saw each other.
It turned out fine, I said. Not a big deal.
Maybe not a big deal for you, my dad said. But what about her? Have you asked her? I’m not going to push this point too hard, but I want you to remember that Grace has done a lot for you. All of your friends have. When you had to leave your PhD program, Grace spoke to all the administrators and your teachers on your behalf. She set everything in place for when you go back.
If I go back, I corrected him.
If. When. Whatever. You’ll decide that when the time comes, he said. But friendship is a give and take. And you’ve been taking a little more than giving these days. People understand that that’s the natural order of things. But try to appreciate all this from your friends’ perspectives.
I knew it was something I had to work on.
Okay, Pop, I said. I’ll try.
• • •
Laura couldn’t stay in LA for long. She wouldn’t even be in the state when I was going to have my angiogram in two weeks. But she did want to see me while she was on the West Coast. She and her parents drove down from the Bay Area to visit family in Long Beach. And while they were in town, my mother insisted on taking them out to lunch, choosing a restaurant directly across the street from Pasadena City Hall.
Our families sat together in the courtyard of a café that used to be a chapel. Our table was nestled against a brick wall, and the afternoon sun was coming through the stained glass.
If you don’t mind, my mom said, tapping on her water glass with her spoon. I’d like to toast Laura, who was such a great help and comfort to Tony and me when we first arrived in Scotland. Valerie and Jim, you’ve raised an incredible young woman. I would hate to think about what could have happened if Laura hadn’t been with Lauren that terrifying night back in August.
My dad interrupted the toast with a very loud hiccup. Since I was sitting beside him, I felt the jerk of his chair hitting mine. I expected a second hiccup, but instead, there was a low groan. MMMMNNNN. I asked him if he was okay, but he didn’t immediately respond. The sound behind his closed lips increased and became more strained. My mother started asking him questions that he also seemed unable to answer, and we both leaped up, fearing the worst: choking, heart attack, stroke. In another moment or two, my dad became aware that our physical concern for him was at an all-time high.
His lips finally loosened. You can sit back down, he said to us. I bit my cheek.
Your cheek? I asked incredulously. Are you kidding me? You just bit your cheek?
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Tony, Mom said with mild annoyance, returning to her place at the table. Such theatrics.
What do you mean, Suzanne? It’s not like I was overreacting, he said. It really hurts.
Looking to the other side of the table, it was clear to me Laura’s family had been as concerned as we had been. Her father looked positively stricken. His face was as white as the table linen, his eyes still wide in horror.
Dad, you see Jim’s expression over there? I said, motioning across the table. That is a “disaster” expression if I ever saw one.
My mother and I apologized, both to Laura’s family and to neighboring tables, where concerned customers had taken out their cell phones, ready to call emergency services on our behalf. My father looked a little chagrined, but even in his sheepishness he appeared to be enjoying being the center of attention a little.
After the false alarm, the nervous energy at the table quickly transformed into total amusement. Laura and I found it impossible to restrain our giggles.
• • •
When I spoke to BJ on the phone a day or two later, I recounted that afternoon, complaining about my father’s behavior.
That’s interesting, BJ said. I remember when I first saw you with your folks many years ago. I couldn’t totally understand your family dynamic. Actually, I thought you sort of condescended to your dad, and I was just flabbergasted by the way Californians spoke to their parents.
Oh, come on, I said. How did this become about Californian families all of a sudden?
We are products of our environment, Lauren, BJ said. You know that. All Texans have some cowboy, redneck streak in them, and all Californians can’t help being a little hippie-weirdo sometimes. Your dad and your brother have their extreme personalities, with their high highs and their low lows. But your whole family unit works really well, especially when you or your mom function as the neutralizing forces, keeping them in check. And your whole aneurysm debacle must have upset this balance of power in a lot of ways.
Huh, I said. You might be on to something there. . . .
After all, there had been that violent incident over my brother’s birthday, and soon after that, my mother being hospitalized. I couldn’t remember what “normal” was but was sure this was not it. This might just be what it looked like when my family members were thrown out of their natural orbit.
I’m almost tempted to ascribe some significance to this hiccupping interlude, BJ said. Your dad playing the fool at lunch, and you and your mom putting him in line afterward? Sounds like you guys are being slowly nudged back to your original roles. Restoring the instinctive order of the play.
18
The street noise outside Jonah’s Brooklyn bedroom window crackled through the phone, makin
g it difficult to hear him. He had wanted to read the essay I had sent to Grace. I had taken her notes into serious consideration and made several changes before I sent it to him, hoping to emphasize my gratitude much more, while still highlighting the strange way language was influencing my entire worldview.
But things had taken a vexing turn, almost right away.
I think your sense of causality is all mixed up in here, Jonah said. And like Grace had done before him, he started to reference and cite the essay specifically, reading my text aloud to me:
Words breed dread. I know. As an adult, learning language again, I am sure of it. Images accompanying phrases readily, as if it is the first time. Utter the word ‘nightmares,’ makes the nightmares appear. It was only after I left the hospital with my parents when I began to know fear again, absorbing their own world of words. Misgiving. Rupture. Relapse. These words inscribed fear in a new heart.
Jonah stopped.
Right there, he said. You make it seem as if words were the problem. And that just can’t be true. Words are symbols, not agents. They don’t make things appear, they describe things that are. Language represents problems that exist, with or without words.
It’s more complicated than that, Jo, I said.
I tried to explain how language could have a strange summoning effect, like the idea of the semantic tree and its severed branches. When I pinpointed an exact word or a phrase, a swarm of memories and images could sometimes come with it, and they were not always welcome. It felt that words made something appear that didn’t exist without them. I was irritated that Jonah was calling my own experience a misrepresentation, since he had no basis for comparison.