Stir

by Jessica Fechtor

  I was starting to think again about becoming a mother, allowing myself to want it all the way now that the surgery was over. But was that right of me? Moms were supposed to be strong. Fearless. Moms are the Protectors, and here I was, unsure of whether I could even protect myself. Though my doctors insisted otherwise, I felt prone to breakage. I feared having a child and being too sick to care for her. I feared dying and leaving her without a mom.

  Then other times, I felt strong.

  One unseasonably warm evening in late October, I ran alone for the first time all the way to the Mass. Ave. bridge, over three miles from my front door. The river widens there, and when the autumn sun is low, the city of Boston glows orange and the water is liquid light.

  “I think I’m starting to be ready,” I told Eli when I got home. “Are you?” I was sure I already knew the answer. We’d had this conversation before, two summers earlier, one night in bed right before I got sick. His answer had been yes, and had stayed yes, as far as I knew. Trying to conceive was something we had looked forward to once we had learned it would be safe. My body just had to get strong enough again. I was the one we were waiting on.

  Eli looked away and did what I call his “uncomfortable yawn,” an unconscious move of his that buys him some time when he’s about to say something hard. It starts out as a fake yawn with his chin jutted out to one side, then blossoms into a real one. I felt my chest tighten.

  “We need to talk about your head,” he said.

  “No.” I knew where he was going.

  “I think we should go see the plastic surgeon. See if he can fix it.”

  “No way.”

  “Jess—”

  “Are you crazy? Another surgery? No. It’s just a stupid dent. I don’t even care. I want to be a mom. I want to do this. I’m ready to do this.”

  “You do care.” His voice was soft. “And you should.”

  “It’s just my head. It’s just my face.” I was crying. “I can’t believe after everything . . . The risks of another surgery . . . We know what can happen. I need you to understand.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I wanted to shake him. We’ve escaped! We’ve made it! I can’t go back.

  “Don’t you at least want to know?” he pressed. “Find out if something can be done? I’m just talking about getting some information.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Please stop.”

  • • •

  We didn’t exactly decide to “start trying.” What we did was more along the lines of “stop preventing.” Anything else would have felt too medical, and I needed this to feel like the opposite of medical. We’d had sex—careful, attentive sex—when I was still missing a part of my skull. Now we could lose ourselves again. Or, almost. I wondered sometimes when Eli closed his eyes if it was because he didn’t want to see. Wherever his hands were, I felt where they deliberately were not: along the side of my face, my temple, my brow. Sometimes, when Eli would pull me close in the darkness, he’d accidentally brush his lips against my sunken skin. I’d shrink back from the soreness, then try to mask my recoil as a coy pivot, sliding my body into a different position alongside his.

  I’d read somewhere that even under perfect conditions, when both of the relevant parties are as fertile as can be and timing is spot-on, there’s still only a 33 percent chance of conception with each cycle. So it wasn’t the not being pregnant that troubled me those first few months. It was the conversation we’d inevitably circle back to. If I wasn’t pregnant, surgery was an option again. We would be eating breakfast, doing the crossword puzzle in bed, or driving up to a friend’s wedding in Montreal, and Eli would get that look and yawn that yawn.

  “Just think about it,” he’d say.

  “I have,” I’d insist. “And no.”

  I was fine. Fine! Doing the work. Running the miles. Attending classes and giving talks. But back in the library stacks, in seminars about the very writers who had inspired me to go to graduate school in the first place, something wasn’t right. I felt like I was moving around in a life that was two sizes too big and two sizes too small at the same time. At night a jolt of adrenaline would sometimes shock me awake, and I’d start sobbing, afraid. But of what?

  All those months, the helmet had concealed the part of my head that was broken. Cruising the frozen foods aisle, sipping tea at a café with a hockey helmet on my head, I didn’t look particularly damaged. I think I mostly just looked like a weirdo. “Hey, killer!” someone had called out as I stuffed my bag into the overhead compartment on our way to Seattle. Sometimes, I’d be walking down the street and hear a voice shout, “Safety first!” That my actual illness was invisible made me feel invisible. Now, with the helmet gone and a head that looked more or less like a head, I waited to reappear. Instead, I felt more invisible than ever. If the helmet had hidden my secret, my newly reconstructed skull, however flawed, hid it even better. But I am still broken! I screamed inside. I wanted no one to know. I wanted everyone to know. I said nothing.

  Simplest Tomato Soup

  I go through phases with recipes, making the same granola, for example, week after week, eating it daily. Then one morning, for no good reason, I stop. I eat eggs for breakfast, or Grape-Nuts, or toast. I develop some kind of amnesia that keeps me from knowing that granola ever existed. Until, months later, when I remember that it does, and off I go again on a mad granola streak, wondering how I ever got along without it.

  This kind of ebb and flow in the kitchen creates a sense of seasonality beyond peaches in the summertime and apples in the fall. I remember who I was the last time granola came around, what I was doing, the book I was reading, the friend who came to town. And vice versa: When I think of that book or that friend, granola springs to mind.

  When I was newly patched up but feeling broken still that fall, I made a lot of soup. One big batch on the weekends to stretch for as many lunches and dinners as I could manage. This simple tomato soup figured heavily in the rotation then. It’s smooth, bold, and improves with age. I ate it all the time, after long hours in the library and runs along the river. I was also into a certain soda bread, a squat little loaf with a craggy crust; a nutty, faintly sweet flavor; and a compact crumb that slices well. It makes terrific toast.

  1 large yellow onion, coarsely chopped

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, divided

  1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

  2 tablespoons tomato paste

  2 28-ounce cans whole tomatoes, preferably Muir Glen

  Pinch of baking soda

  1 cup water

  Diamond crystal kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

  1 bay leaf

  1 cup whole milk, warmed (but not boiled)

  Good-tasting olive oil, to serve (optional)

  In a large heavy pot, melt the butter over medium heat. When it foams, add the onion, and sauté until it softens, goes translucent, and browns a little around the edges. Add 1 tablespoon of the vinegar to deglaze the pot, scrape up the brown bits with a wooden spoon or spatula, and turn down the heat to medium-low.

  Add the flour and the tomato paste, and stir to incorporate. Add the remaining tablespoon of vinegar to deglaze once again, and scrape up any flour or tomato paste that may be sticking to the pot.

  Dump in the 2 cans of tomatoes and their juices and break them up a bit with a wooden spoon. (Watch out, they squirt.) Stir in the baking soda and water, season lightly with salt and pepper, add the bay leaf, partially cover, and simmer gently for about 30 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the bay leaf, and use an immersion blender to purée the soup. (You can also carefully purée it in batches in a stand blender. As with the cream of asparagus soup on page 92, fill the blender only one-half to three-quarters of the way full with each batch. Return the puréed soup to the pot.)

  Add the warmed milk
very slowly, stirring constantly, just before serving. Top each bowl with a drizzle of olive oil, if you’d like, and a grind or two of black pepper.

  Serves 8.

  Brown Soda Bread

  1¾ cups (219 grams) all-purpose flour

  1¾ cups (198 grams) whole wheat flour

  3 tablespoons instant oats (rolled oats chopped coarsely with a knife will also work)

  1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds

  2 packed tablespoons dark brown sugar

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon fine sea salt

  2 tablespoons (28 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes, plus more for greasing the pan

  2 cups buttermilk

  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and butter a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan. Combine the first seven ingredients (everything but the butter and the buttermilk) in a large bowl and blend well with a fork. Add the butter, and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Dig a well in the center of the dry ingredients, fill with the buttermilk, and stir until the liquid is just incorporated. (Better for a bit of dry flour to remain than to overmix the dough.)

  Scrape the dough into the buttered loaf pan and bake for about 35 minutes, until the crust is brown and a tester inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn the loaf out onto a rack and cool for at least twenty minutes before slicing.

  CHAPTER 31

  A Funny Definition

  “Want to spend this summer in Berlin?” I hadn’t planned on asking him just then. The thought hadn’t even come to me until that moment. We were eating breakfast at our red table, the newspaper split between us. Eli looked up. Then, as casually as if I had asked him whether he’d like pizza for dinner, he said, “Sure.”

  A few months had gone by and I wasn’t yet pregnant. I would be soon, though, I hoped. A summer in Berlin could be a last hurrah for just us two. Or maybe a first hurrah, Eli and Jess back out there, two healthy people free again to take on the world. Hurrah! Either way, I wanted to get out of town.

  By noon we had a plan: I’d passed the German proficiency exam required by my department, but barely. If I wanted to do the comparative work I had in mind for my dissertation, I would have to improve my German. There was a summer language program in the center of Berlin. Maybe my department would pay for me to do it? It was February, which meant that summer grant applications were almost due. I completed the forms by the end of the week while Eli approached his boss about working remotely for the summer.

  A few weeks later, we were set. The funding came through, permission was granted, and when we were done pinching ourselves, we started looking for a flat. It was fun, this scheming. I felt as though we were staging something not totally allowed. I couldn’t wait to go.

  • • •

  I always remember the first picnic of the year. Probably because it feels so unlikely. All that snow and ice, months of wind-stung cheeks, pitch-black late afternoons. Then a suddenly spring day sneaks up, and there you are, with grass and a blanket and something to eat, and you slip off your jacket and you’re not even cold. Like the First Day of School, First Night Sheets on laundry days, and the First Ocean Swim of the summer, First Picnic is a thing.

  Ours was in early April that year. We’d gotten home later than expected and had to race against the sun. Eli dug the blue quilted blanket out of the bin in the hall closet. It had been his bedspread in college and for picnics ever since. I grabbed a long-sleeved shirt, and by the time we were lining up our shoes along the edge of the blanket in the park outside our apartment, it was almost a full half hour after the sun had officially set, but still another full half hour before it would be truly dark. We ate steamed artichokes, and pasta with mushrooms, lemon, and thyme. Then we stretched out on the blanket and let our conversation go where conversations go when your bellies are full and you’re flat on your back outdoors, when the stars are already out but you feel like you have all night.

  “People tell me I’m brave,” I said. “Do you think I’m brave?”

  “Do I think you’re brave?” He was buying time.

  “I asked you first.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But not because you were sick. Bravery doesn’t mean living through something hard.”

  I rolled over onto my stomach and pushed myself up on my elbows. “Say more, say better.”

  Eli sat up and folded himself into a cross-legged position, pulling his left heel against his body at the top of his thigh. “Bravery is when you go against the momentum of your life to do the scary thing,” he began. He plucked a piece of grass and rolled it between his finger and his thumb. “So . . . okay: If a lion comes after you and backs you against a wall, and you face him, that’s not brave. It’s when you go after the lion yourself and stick your head into his mouth. That’s brave.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Like, not just living through the terror, but hunting it down. It’s only called bravery when you’ve made a choice. And that’s just it. I didn’t choose anything.” The way I saw it, I’d just lived alongside something really bad for a while. I’d recognized that the only way out was through, and then I had waited, the way you do when you’re caught in a downpour and have no choice but to get soaked until the storm clouds pass. Cowards and heroes and everyone in between would have done the same, I figured, because really, what was the alternative? I realized that I didn’t know very many brave people at all, and that I wasn’t nearly as brave as I wanted to be.

  “You’re braver than you think,” Eli said.

  Back inside, we opened a bottle of wine and sank into the sofa. I saw the question starting to form on Eli’s lips, the same question he had been asking me for eight months now. This time, when I cut him off, he started to cry.

  “You’ve worked so hard to get back to where you are,” he said. “You’ve made your body strong again. You’re running. You’re back in school. You are better. You are whole. But when you see that dent, you feel like you’re not.”

  “Because I’m horrible,” I said.

  “Babe—”

  “No, I am. If I need to fix anything, it’s the thing inside of me that can’t just be grateful. I know how things might have turned out. I know how they should have turned out. I’m supposed to be dead, Eli. Dead. I am lucky to have this dent.”

  “You have a funny definition of luck.”

  I bit my lip, suddenly angry. “You’re wrong. Plastic surgery won’t change what happened to me. It won’t undo the fact that my body broke or give me back the sight in my left eye. God, what is wrong with me? Since when do I care about my looks, anyway?” I’d always been a shower-and-go person, letting my curls do whatever they pleased. At twenty-nine, a tube of lipstick was all the makeup I owned. It was the same color I’d once tried when I was sixteen from a sample tube that Amy had gotten along with a purchase. Even on my wedding day, I wore only that lipstick and a bit of eyeliner my cousin Katie brought along. I’d done my hair myself that morning, by which I mean I washed it. “It’s not like I was some kind of beauty before all this,” I said. “It’s not like, with this dent in my head, I’ve lost something.”

  Eli closed his eyes. “It hurts me to hear you talk about yourself this way.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, love. You didn’t sign up for this.” Now I was crying, too.

  “You didn’t sign up for this. And you can’t move past it if every time you look in the mirror, you’re reminded of it. You shouldn’t have to remember it all the time.”

  “You don’t solve problems with plastic surgery,” I insisted.

  Eli gathered my feet onto his lap. “It’s not that kind of plastic surgery.” His tone had changed. He was no longer pleading. “All you want is to look the way you did. To recognize yourself in the mirror again.”

  I felt tired. I didn’t know what to say. I crawled over to his side of the sofa and laid my head
on his chest, dent side down. He swept his hand across my back.

  “I’m going to make an appointment with the surgeon,” he said. “If you want to, you can cancel it.”

  • • •

  I didn’t cancel it. The doctor walked into the examining room and around to the dented side of my head.

  “I can fix that,” he said. Just like that. Like a mechanic looking at a bent fender. He would go in along the old incision line, peel my forehead back down, and fill my remaining hole with something called methyl methacrylate, a hot putty that hardens as it cools. I asked if the reconstruction would take care of the remaining tenderness and discomfort, but he couldn’t say. I hesitated.

  “I need more time,” I told Eli, and I could have it. The OR was booked for months. We were leaving soon to spend Memorial Day weekend with my family in Ohio. Maybe they could help me figure this out. I could think about it while we were away in Berlin, and by the end of the summer, maybe, maybe I could be ready.

  • • •

  I was in the kitchen at my dad and Amy’s house when the phone call came in: There was an unexpected opening in the doctor’s schedule on June 9. If I wanted the surgery, I could have that slot.

  “You mean, twelve days from now?” I asked the secretary.

  “Yes.”

  The doctor knew about our planned trip to Berlin, that we were leaving at the end of the month. I’d have three weeks between the surgery and our departure, and he said I’d be recovered enough to make the trip.

  My brain switched into solve-it mode.

  “Okay,” I said, getting my bearings. “Thank you. I’ll need to speak with my husband, call the insurance company . . .”

  “Oh, they’ll cover it,” she said. “If they cover reconstructive surgery, which I bet they do.”

  I paused. “This is reconstructive surgery?” I hadn’t thought of it that way.