So Lucky: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  Michaels was pleased I wasn’t at home and suggested I stay at Rose’s, “for the duration.”

  “No,” I said. “Every time there’s a serial rapist out there, police say: ‘Ladies, stay indoors for your own good!’ Why don’t they ever say: ‘Men, don’t rape. Men, there’s a curfew; inside by ten or we’ll cut off your balls.’ Why should I stay away from my home? Why should I let these people terrorize me into lying down and turning my face to the wall?”

  And that’s exactly what I had been doing. Giving up, giving in, turning away. It’s aiming to kill you. And I doubt you’ll stop it.

  * * *

  BACK AT ROSE’S HOUSE the autumn afternoon was round and rich with sunlight. Autumn, the season of change.

  When I said I was going back to my house, she didn’t protest. We held each other for a long time. She smelled of the leaves she had been burning in the garden, of the dirt preparing to take in acorns and pine cones and cradle them in the dark over winter while they waited for spring, their time of rebirth.

  “Here,” she said. “This is for you. I hope it helps.” Big Roman numeral. The king of dying and rising, staring up at me from his cocoon.

  * * *

  THE FIRST THING I DID when I got home—before I even took off my coat—was open a packet of cat food for Miz Rip. She was gobbling from the plate before I had even finished squeezing it out. I shrugged. Let her eat from the table this once; there might not be a tomorrow. I leaned on my stick and rubbed behind her ears. She spared me a quick purr.

  On the wall in front of me a healthy young woman stood next to Elton John and beamed exultantly at the world, at her future. I had no idea what lay in my future now. I lifted the picture down, unclipped the frame, and slid the photo out from the mat. The death card was in my pocket. I slid that between the mat and the backing instead, and hung the picture back on the wall. It would do for now.

  A knock on the door. But when I opened it I found only a basket of winter squash.

  * * *

  THE AMSS RAN YOGA CLASSES at a storefront studio on McLendon called Whole Life Yoga. It was a few blocks south of the Flying Biscuit, just east of the entrance to Candler Park, where I had met Aiyana and played softball. I’d never noticed it before, but I’d never been a yoga kind of person. Then again, I’d never been a victim, never been a cripple, never looked ahead and seen empty space. Things change.

  There were nine people. The instructor at the head of the room was not a young, lithe Athleta-wearing blonde but about forty; plump, pleasant, and welcoming. Seven women and one man faced each other along each side on mats. That is, six women sat on mats and one in a power chair. Another chair was parked by the door; a manual chair with power-assist hubs blinking in standby mode, and WHEELED FREEDOM stenciled around the tires. I kept looking at it.

  I did not realize I’d been expecting Junie and her pug to be there until I saw she wasn’t. The instructor, Helen, pointed me to the shelf of yoga mats and then nodded at the pale fifty-year-old blinking behind her glasses and said, “Sit next to Mary.” A clipboard went round for names and contact info. I gave email address, phone, and Twitter. Helen promised to send the list out to everyone by the end of the day. Then she asked us to introduce ourselves, for my benefit I assumed, as they all seemed to know each other.

  “Drew,” said the tall man. “Diagnosed last year. Relapsing-remitting. Just moved with my wife, Rosami, from Philly. I was getting my JD. I got my JD. Not that I’ll use it now.” He had that jerky, random look I was beginning to associate with brain lesions. For a moment I imagined I saw a sheet of flame flickering over his head.

  “Rosami,” said the woman next to him. “Not MS but Lyme disease.”

  We went down the line: RRMS, SPMS, PPMS, RRMS. The woman in the power chair had very precise diction, a number 4 brush cut, and spinal degeneration. For the first time I introduced myself as “Mara, RRMS, diagnosed last year.” Mara, RRMS. I wondered if I’d live long enough to say that again.

  After the intros, Helen looked at us one by one and said, “What do you need?”

  “Balance,” Drew said. Helen nodded.

  “I’ve been dizzy,” Mary said. “And I keep forgetting things. Like yesterday—was it yesterday? Maybe it was the day before. I was saying to John, well I was trying to say to John, you know how he is. He’s my husband,” she said to me.

  “Dizziness and memory,” Helen said before Mary’s word cataract flowed again. Mary seemed more relieved than upset at being shut down. “What else?”

  “Shoulder. As usual,” the woman in the power chair said.

  A neck, a tingling foot, more balance, fatigue. When no one had anything more to offer, Helen said, “We’ll start on our backs,” and everyone except the woman in the power chair lay flat.

  Helen tinged a bell.

  “Think of your breath as the tide,” she said. “It flows in and out, washes up and then back down, at different speeds and different strengths. Every beach is different and every body is different. Just breathe naturally, feel your lungs fill and empty, let your muscles soften and connect to the earth…”

  The earth was a bamboo floor over poured concrete, but martial arts instructors talked about grounding while we stood suspended over the ground on mats on top of sprung wood floors. I was used to the metaphors. And the rhythm of breath was an old and easy habit. In, in through the nose, out, out through the mouth. In and out.

  Then we started with simple arm movements, reaching up and up, one side then the other, stretching. From there we went to easy poses: child’s pose, cat-cow, and then what I’m pretty sure weren’t yoga poses but simple hamstring stretches. We worked on necks, shoulders, legs, feet. Each stretch or pose flowed into the next and felt good.

  We ended flat on our backs again. The fancy chair had switched to sleep mode.

  “Now think of your breath as a square,” Helen said. “Equal on four sides. When I begin, breathe in for the count of three. Hold for the count of three. Out for the count of three. Hold for the count of three. And with me. In two three, hold two three. Out two three, hold two three.”

  Once the room was breathing steadily she went to four, then five, then six. Our breath lengthened, the square stretched until that’s all there was in the world. Up one side, across the top, down the other side, along the bottom. A cycle. A fine cycle, with others in the same rhythm. I felt good in a way I hadn’t experienced since that night when I reached for the milk and fell down. A whole room full of people breathing together, peaceful and relaxed. Perfectly blank but for the square and the breath. And then Mary, the doily brain next to me, started to snore. No one laughed. She was one of us. We just breathed on.

  If they didn’t get me first, I’d be back.

  * * *

  I WALKED HOME SLOWLY up McLendon, enjoying the not-quite warm afternoon. The sun was very bright, shining unimpeded through bare branches. Far away someone was burning leaves.

  My phone rang. GAP. After a moment I answered it.

  “Mara,” Anton said. “How are you?”

  “I’m well.” I could be dead tomorrow, but today I’m well.

  “That’s good to hear. Very good.” I did not ask him how he was. “Listen. I’m glad your break has done you good. I was hoping you might be willing to help us out with a couple of things.”

  My break. I kept walking, watching a squirrel running along a phone wire.

  “Mara? Hello?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Are you willing to come in and talk to us?”

  I nodded at a woman with a stroller. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, as I say, we could use your help with a couple of things.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “Consulting.”

  The squirrel was gone. “New ED not working out?”

  “Let’s just say we might have been hasty.”

  “So.” I lifted my face to the sun; it might be the last time. “You’re willing to pay an outrageous consulting
fee to someone with, as you put it, emotional lability.”

  “Outrageous is not what—”

  “My hourly rate is one seventy-five, including travel time. Plus expenses.”

  “We’re a nonprofit! We can’t—”

  “I’m the one with lesions on the brain, but you seem to be the one forgetting. I wrote the budget, Anton. I know exactly what you can and can’t afford. That’s my rate. Three-hour minimum. Let me know.” I thumbed out of the call and set the phone on airplane mode.

  * * *

  LATER THAT EVENING I sat at my laptop. I had loose ends.

  I don’t know why you won’t talk to me. Maybe it was a mistake to change our friendship. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. Maybe you just don’t know what to say about me having MS, maybe it freaks you out. I’m adjusting—No, I’m figuring out I have adjustments to make. There’s a lot. A lot of shit to figure out. And maybe we’re going down different paths now. Maybe it’s for the best.

  The reply came back, bang, before I could close the email window.

  What the fuck? No!!! It’s not the MS that freaks me out, it’s your bitterness. It’s hard to talk to an angry person.

  And it’s like what happened between us doesn’t exist. You never talk about us. How am I meant to process that?

  Every email: just you and your shit. I get that it’s big. I really do. But did you never think I might have stuff? A new job in another country—another country where they all sound weird and the racism is different and the light switches are upside down and they drive on the wrong side of the road. I *want* to talk to you. I want to talk about *us.* I want you to *listen.* Can you do that?

  I touched the screen with my fingertip. Breathed in a square until I felt calm again.

  I don’t know.

  I breathed around the clench in my belly, the visceral memory of her toes curling, her soft skin under my mine.

  I’m different now. If I’m still here tomorrow—

  Different, yes. I thought I had faced my fear, but instead I had pushed it below the surface. It’s hard to think when nine-tenths of your mind hangs frozen and inaccessible, hard for friends to approach when what remains glints in the sun leaving those who come close blinded.

  I deleted what I’d just written.

  I’d like to try. Tomorrow? Let’s Skype.

  I sent, waited one minute, two, ten, then closed the lid.

  I prepared for bed slowly, almost ritually, folding clothes into perfect lines, canceling airplane mode, and placing my phone in the exact center of the bedside table.

  Doug had not had a neighborhood watch. Lory had not had an alarm system. Jim had no gun, or neighbors. They had not been ready. I was. More than ready. I slid the revolver out of its holster. The rubber grip was warm and snug in my hand. I rested the barrel along my forearm, squinted down the sights at the door. The trigger fit my finger nicely.

  If they walked through the door now I would smile at them: This is a Ruger, I would say. It will change your life. And I would squeeze, and the jacketed bullets would punch neat round holes in forehead, throat, stomach. Not change for them. Just pain, and death, real death, and rotting in their winding-sheets. And I’d be safe. I swung out the cylinder—five full chambers—and snapped it back into the frame. I might have MS but I was not a helpless victim. I put the Ruger away, thumped my pillow, and reached to turn off the light.

  The phone rang. Atlanta PD. I picked it up cautiously. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Tagarelli? Michaels. We’ve got them.”

  For a moment I had no idea what he was talking about. Got them. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “They were in a bar. In Dunwoody. Drunk. Trying to sell off the stuff they got from Parnetta’s place—”

  Got them.

  “—list on one of them.”

  “Wait. They did have a list?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Hold on. Something called Monster. They had…”

  He kept talking but I was not listening. Monster. MonSter! Beating heart of the MS community. Their subscription list. Their list, not mine.

  “… of them circled.”

  “My name was on it?” Of course it was. I was a subscriber. “Was it circled?”

  “Lots of names were circled, yes. Including yours. But you’re safe now. Free to go about your life.”

  Silence. “You’re sure?”

  “They’ll be in jail for the rest of their lives. Which won’t be very long if they’re tried in this state.”

  “Thank you,” I said, dazed. “Thank you very much.” And put the phone back in the precise center of the table.

  Safe now. I turned off the light. Lay on my back. Stared at the dark. Safe. Free to begin again on my own terms. To do better. Free to find out who Mara RRMS was.

  That’s when I heard the whisper:

  You’ll never be free.

  “What?” I sat up. But there was no one there and the house was silent.

  You’ll never be free of me.

  It came from the living room. Rip wasn’t on the bed. The Ruger had disappeared.

  Just you and me and you’ll never be free.

  Outside the door. A low laugh.

  You and me.

  The whisper hissed like dead leaves against the door. There was no other sound. I couldn’t hear my own heartbeat, my breathing. The door began to open outward, the wrong way, and from the shadow crept a hand, a wrist, a forearm. A shoulder. Glimmer of pale ribs. And I doubt you’ll stop it.

  I closed my eyes. “No…”

  Yes. And the whisper was in my room. It was in my room.

  I opened my eyes and looked.

  Hello, it said.

  It was naked and lean and strong, and it was me. It smiled, wide, wider, like a pat of butter melting in a skillet, and it had too many teeth.

  I ran. It ran too, silently, smoothly; that was the worst part. We ran and ran until the walls whirled about us, as though we were on a carousel, and then the carousel stopped, just stopped, and we were in the kitchen, and everything was still except for it walking toward me, laughing silently.

  Closer, closer, and all I could see was the flat muscle sliding under the skin of its arms and the picture on the wall behind its right shoulder.

  It’s aiming to kill you. And I doubt you’ll stop it.

  My monster grinned at me. And flexed.

  I jumped like a rabbit.

  Then, “No,” I said. “No. You want me to run.” It wanted me to hide, to be afraid. “No, you want me to be ashamed.”

  It’s not me. It’s MS.

  “I see you,” I said. “I know what you are.”

  And I did. This was not MS. This was helplessness and self-loathing and second-class citizenship. It was the story of what it was to be a cripple in the world: relying on the kindness of strangers. Smiling hard at the stairs and hoping for a miracle—having to hope, because there was no ramp. Feeling seen only as a target. Seeing yourself as a target because that’s how others saw you.

  Break the narrative.

  I leapt at it.

  There was a soft whole shock, as though I had thrown myself full into a taut sheet of plastic film. I wrapped my arms around it and stood toe-to-toe, belly-to-belly. Skin-to-skin.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “I. Am. Not. Less.” And I squeezed, squeezed until its skin pushed through mine, until its face was against mine. “I exist. And I will fight.” I squeezed until cartilage passed through cartilage and bone fused with bone. “If you’re close enough to hurt me I’m close enough to hurt you. So fuck you.” I squeezed until I had both hands on its backbone, and the backbone pressed up against my stomach. I felt like a boa constrictor swallowing, swallowing, and I squeezed more, until it had no breath in its body, until it had no body, squeezed until I woke up, hugging myself in my kitchen, arms around ribs, laughing, crying, myself.

  I am not invincible. But I am not Less. I refuse that story. I’ll fight it; I’ll teach others to fight it. Teach self-defense, too. I’ll teach f
rom a wheelchair if I have to. I’ll even teach the oldest woman in the world with MS, and she’ll teach me—she already has. So fuck the story of Less, and fuck MS. Ha, no. They should be so lucky.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No one—not even me—knew I was going to write this book. You are reading it now only because everyone involved in its publication was able to get over their initial surprise at its existence and swing into action with the kind of speed and precision only possible with a real team. I am delighted and amazed that they cared enough to make it happen so fast.

  So thank you, Stephanie Cabot, my agent; Sean McDonald, my editor; Steven Pfau, my publicist; Jeff Seroy and his whole team; Maya Binyam and Sara Birmingham, Abby Kagan and Logan Hill, Rodrigo Corral and Boyang Xia, and everyone else at FSG.

  Most of all, though, I want to thank all those people over the years who have helped me overcome my occasional emotional gracelessness in the face of growing physical impairment. I’ve had a lot of help from the disability community. I particularly wish to thank Riva Lehrer and Alice Wong, whose intelligence, compassion, and generosity have been guiding lights. Special thanks also to Kenny Fries, Susan Nussbaum, and Joanne Woiak. There are scores, perhaps hundreds, of others whose simple presence has been invaluable. Many know who they are but some might be surprised to find out how much what they said or did mattered.

  Thanks, too, to Chris and “Helen,” who donated good money to excellent causes and trusted me with their names.

  Finally, thank you to friends and family—and they definitely know who they are!—especially, always, to Kelley, who I will marry as many times as necessary.

  ALSO BY NICOLA GRIFFITH

  FICTION

  Hild

  Ammonite

  Slow River

  The Blue Place

  Stay

  Always

  NONFICTION

  And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life

  PRAISE FOR SO LUCKY

  “In So Lucky, Nicola Griffith replicates the actual experience of becoming disabled. This genre-violating story begins straightforwardly, then slides into a hallucinatory exploration of the body, reality, and identity. It is disorienting, destabilizing, and game-changing. I have never read anything like it.”