Head Case

by Sarah Aronson

  Mom flops on the couch. “What do you think?” Her lip quivers.

  “It’s okay.” Liar.

  I watch my mother try to get up. But she flops back down, not completely unlike Freeberg, when he doesn’t shift his weight all the way over his feet. “I’m so happy you’re finally home.” She’s a liar, too.

  I sit and wait for her to move.

  She slides out of her shoes and wiggles her toes. When she closes her eyes, I wonder if she dreams she is someone else’s mother.

  I can’t be the same child she’s been doting on for the past seventeen years.

  When other kids ran off to the playground, I clung to her skirt. She would walk me to the swings. “You just have to pump your legs,” she would say, “just pump, Frank. You can do it.”

  She did everything I asked. I was cut from the team, so she organized backyard leagues and took me to games. Baseball and football—she cheered for me and bought me the correct jerseys. When I joined the debate team, she attended every one of our meets. “You made a great argument, Frank. A compelling, first-rate—”

  Hey!

  Sweat and whiskey are in the room, and my chair starts rolling even though the motor is disengaged. “Protocol, Dad,” I say. “You’re supposed to ask first.”

  “Sorry.” My father waves his hand to the wall, his empty glass catching the light. “Look,” he says. A fitting order, because what else can I do?

  In every free space, he’s hung pictures of me jumping, running, swimming, catching. Each picture has a white border and a tasteful, but simple, black frame, the kind you can get at Kmart. It is a cheap but effective shrine of all the things I used to do for fun.

  “Nice, Dad.” I feel his hand tighten around the base of my skull, then release.

  “I need a refill,” he says.

  “Could you get me a Coke while you’re in there?” I really don’t enjoy bossing him around.

  Dad comes back, puts the Coke and a fresh half-empty glass of scotch on my tray table, and tries to reclaim the moment. “Those were the days,” he says, pointing out the picture of me in my vintage Patriots uniform, two sizes too big, with the ball tucked into my pit. He takes the glass off the table and drains it. The remnants of scotch smell like hospital antiseptic and are working their charms. “I remember the day we took that picture. You were so determined.”

  My father tends to rewrite history. That day, he called me a wuss for not running fast enough to catch the ball.

  He points to the baseball shot. My arm is cocked, as if I’m about to hurl the ball. “You had some arm.” Some arm. Some average arm. All I see is a boy who couldn’t throw hard enough, couldn’t catch consistently; an impatient man, a man who wanted to be with someone else. I remember frowns, disappointment, harsh words. You’re wasting my time. You’ve got hands like a girl.

  Now I’ve got no hands.

  “Could you turn me around?” My voice makes him jump. “Could you help me with that—” He pushes the chair to face the bay window and walks away. One order too many.

  The Coke remains, just out of reach.

  Outside my window, the big yellow school bus stops, and the able-bodied girls and boys drag backpacks and musical instruments down the steps to the sidewalk.

  Clunk, clunk, clunk. They walk like it’s a chore. They’re tired. It’s a hassle to move.

  As the bus pulls away, three girls stand and talk at the edge of our lawn in the center of my viewing screen. They are small and skinny, bundled in pink and purple. I watch. I can’t help it. I can’t go anywhere.

  One twirls her hair. The second juts out her hip. The third steps onto our grass. She bends over suddenly—the joke must be hilarious.

  My throat is so dry. “Mom?” No answer. I take a deep breath and try again. “Mom?” I feel like a freak, watching these girls.

  This time she hears. “Just a minute, Frank. I need to look at something.” The TV in the kitchen. The up-to-date news of the moment.

  I could close my eyes, but I don’t.

  The twirler steps away to perform a sloppy handstand. She’s not very good. She tries two more times, but she can’t balance on her hands for more than a moment.

  Maybe her friends laugh. Maybe they encourage her. In any case, she tries again, and this time, flips over onto her butt.

  Ten, the judges say. Ten, ten, ten. You are beautiful. You can move. Do it again and again. Try a cartwheel. Or just walk. Walk across the grass. Torment me.

  Don’t stop moving.

  Old Mrs. Houston, our neighbor for the last ten years, limps toward the girls. She’s carrying a stack of white bakery boxes and a small bouquet of flowers.

  Apology yellow.

  It takes her a while to reach the girls. She’s got a bum hip. Arthritis. Tells anyone who will listen that she can predict the weather with that hip.

  She’s says something, then waves at the window.

  I smile. She can’t tell.

  She waves again.

  Again.

  She can wave all day if she wants to—I’m never going to wave back.

  Mom comes in and bangs on the window. “Honestly, I don’t have time for this.” But it looks to me like she does. She looks happy to walk out the door and take the pies and flowers. She looks happy to stand and talk. The girls grab their bags and run.

  Run for your lives! Didn’t you know? The quad king is home!

  Mrs. Houston waves with her cane in my direction a few more times before limping home. No. Oh no, Rosemary. I don’t want to disturb your family, not on Frank’s first day home.

  Does she think I’m contagious or just disgusting? Just because I cannot wave or grab her flowers or even drink this stupid Coke, still sitting on my tray. It used to be so easy. Me, the person, reaches out, grabs the Coke. No problem. Now I need a holder, a wiper, a placer, a cleaner-upper. And don’t forget the empty-er of the bladder. “Mom! I’m thirsty.”

  The straw is floating up, up, up to the top of the can.

  The straw pops up and out and sits on the tray.

  My lips are dry.

  Rage.

  “You sit,” my mother says. Reflex over reality.

  “Do you think you need to remind me?” Reality over humor.

  She takes the Coke and puts a newspaper on my tray table. “You shouldn’t joke. There was a car bomb in Jerusalem this morning.”

  She flips on CNN. “Oh my god, would you look at that.” Some celebrity is getting divorced. “I thought they were so happy. Didn’t they just have a baby?” My mother is addicted to those twenty-four-hour news networks. It all started on September 11. She began to obsess over bad news and petty gossip.

  Unlike other mothers, who shielded their children from visual images of disaster, she marked the anniversary by clipping out the photos and displaying them next to our toast and cereal. Over the photo of the burning towers, she wrote, “I love you. Mom.”

  At dinner, we heard the day’s highlights. I like to call it “The Sick and the Dead Report.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Rosemary.” Dad rolled his eyes every time she got going. She ignored him and launched into her report. Disaster, natural or otherwise, always came first, followed by the local and family highlights: who’s divorcing, whose mother had a stroke, and who had to sell their house to pay their bills, as if their bad luck was our fortune. “Rosemary, not again,” my father said, night after night, until he decided it was easier to come home after the dinner hour.

  The anchor breaks for a commercial, and she scans the channels until she finds coverage of the bombing from the paper. She’s glued. “Nineteen people dead. Mothers and children, too.”

  She watches two cycles of stories. National, international, celebrity, traffic, and weather. A storm is going to hit Boston sometime today. She gets the slant desk from the back room to prop up the paper. “Relax and read. Dinner will be ready soon.”

  She takes out the garbage. She sets the table. She puts a pile of newspapers in the recycling containe
r. The pile must be very high. Like a mechanical doll, she walks past me, back and forth, again and again, each time with an armful of bags filled with newspapers.

  I read the headlines on the front page three times. Car bombs. Car wrecks. Accidents. A famous politician has brain cancer.

  “You done with this?” Dad takes my soda, his glass, and a stray plate into the kitchen. Expressionless. His white button-down shirt has newspaper ink on it. He looks like he wants to punch the wall.

  “We know you would help if you could,” Mom says.

  She puts dinner in the oven, then sweeps around me, then sweeps some more. I sit in the living room, no better than a potted plant. I wish I could take out the garbage, do the dishes, set the table, make dinner, take out the newspapers, clean the bathroom, make my bed. I would do it all, without complaining.

  Now I can’t even turn the page.

  If a fly lands on your leg and you can’t see it and can’t feel it, is it really there? If your best friend waits until the end of your first day home to show up, is he still your best friend? If you yelled at him, but it was while you were in the hospital, and he left without saying shut up or good-bye, and it was really only about the stress and anger and shock and mourning about being a head, do you still have to apologize?

  If you can’t have, can you still want?

  If your wheelchair only rolls at one or even two predetermined speeds, can you still throw a temper tantrum?

  Yes. Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

  * * *

  When Harry shows up, he greets my mother first. “The room looks great, Mrs. M. I like it.” For a moment, she looks like she believes him. The room doesn’t look like a hospital waiting room, space is a wonderful thing, light is best when it sends an uninterrupted shaft to the floor. He steps into the space in front of the bay window and streaks of yellow sun fan out from behind him. “You really have a knack,” he says.

  My mother gives him another hug. “That’s just what I needed to hear.” They stand, together, in front of my chair and look at each other in the light. My mother parts his moppy bangs off his face, flattens the creases in his shirt, and wipes the trace of lipstick off his cheek. They look like old friends, reunited after a long separation. Organ music plays in my head. He looks at her with the respect she never got from me.

  This has never bothered me before. Harry always pays reverence to my mom. He always compliments her good cooking, the house, her newest acquisition.

  But now I wonder: could she love him more than she loves me?

  Harry sits. All I can see is the top of his head. “How’s it feel to be home?”

  “Okay.” Now he stands. Too high. I don’t like him looking down at me.

  “That’s good.”

  In our past life, I couldn’t get him to shut up. Dad said he had goddamn diarrhea of the mouth.

  He walks across the room and stares at my father’s shrine. “Hey, I remember that day. You had a good fastball.”

  Today, everyone’s a liar.

  If I apologize, will he smile, take a deep breath, and become good, old, horny-as-hell, motormouthed Harry? Will he sit back and put his feet on the couch the way he used to? I’m sure he has gossip, maybe even actual news to share. There have probably been auditions. He might have even heard from Vassar. I should ask him. Offer to celebrate. If he got in and he didn’t tell me, does that mean we aren’t friends? If he didn’t get in, will I feel better?

  The words are stuck somewhere between the Hey, how’s it going and him trying not to ask How do you feel?

  I try to break the ice. “Hey, man, we should start planning our trip to Bermuda.” It doesn’t come out right. Harry stiffens. He goes back to the photos. My words are sad and pathetic and false.

  I try again. Lighthearted and casual sounding, even though they’re just as delusional. “For spring break. Like we planned.”

  Harry does not turn away from those pictures. “Yeah, that would be great, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” This is not lighthearted conversation. I’m a jerk. I know I’m not going to Bermuda. I know he’s having a hard time coming up with something to say. But he’s just standing on his legs, half looking at the pictures, and all I want to do is not cry. I don’t need him to feel sorry for myself.

  “Cool. It would be great if you could go.” Maybe he thinks the accident also made me stupid, like the head injury guys on the rehab floor, the ones who have to wear helmets to cover up where the doctors opened up their brains.

  We sound so formal.

  There are many things we could talk about. The debate team. Or drama. I can’t remember if he is in a play or about to try out for one.

  But why should it be easy for him?

  I sit and wait.

  Harry digs through a bag. “I told everyone you were coming home. They made cards.” They always say the same thing: Get well soon, Frank. I’ll visit you, Frank. You’re the man, Frank. He pulls out a thick stack, and I laugh a nervous, oxygen-deprived laugh. We can’t throw a ball. We can’t even play rummy. My Bermuda comment lingers.

  He opens one card after the next, reads them out loud like I’m blind. Hi Frank, welcome home. Love, Britney. Hi Frank, when are you coming back to school? Love, Miranda. Hey Frank, basketball team sucks. Really miss seeing you on the sidelines. From, Jack Carlson, Mike Bogler, and Tom Stengle. Harry sounds so earnest, using every one of his drama club lessons.

  “That was nice of Tom to send a card,” my mother calls from the other room.

  Last year, we referred to Mike Bogler as Bulger and I didn’t think Carlson knew who I was or even how to write. I don’t care about these people.

  She puts some cookies on the table for Harry, who grabs two and stuffs them in his mouth. She stands between us and feeds me a morsel. He looks away, like I’m naked again.

  “I also printed some of the latest comments from www.Quadkingonthenet.com. Yesterday, sixty-seven people posted.” He goes to his backpack and pulls out a stack of paper, half an inch thick. “The Anonymous person wrote again.”

  He is fascinated by the Web site and Anonymous. When he shoves the papers in front of me, I read only the last few entries:

  John1123: Judge O’Malley sucks! Frank Marder should be N jail 4ever! But since he’s paralyzed, he gets special treatment. No fair. Meredith Stein is dead.

  Maryann837: AFAICS, U can’t drive drunk NTM kill someone and just WALK AWAY. You have to pay your debt to society. L

  This is “walking away”?

  I read to the bottom of the first page.

  Anonymous: Frank Marder is a victim, too. He cannot move. Instead of punishing him, we should show him and his family mercy. Putting him in jail will not bring back Meredith Stein.

  John1123: YGBK! DIKU? OT: Maryann837, R U going to practice? I need a ride.

  Harry takes the printouts and puts them on the dining room table, as if I might want to look at what people are saying about me later on.

  He stares.

  My chin.

  My neck.

  The floor.

  We used to talk about girls, sex, and baseball. Stats. The preseason. Come on, Harry, speak! Let’s talk like men!

  Now we sit. Harry goes back to the pictures. “You think the Sox will win the pennant?”

  I don’t care.

  He tries again. “Or the Blue Jays? They look good.”

  I know Harry wishes he could take back everything that happened up until that night—he doesn’t have to say it. I know he wonders if I blame him. If I ever think what might have happened if I hadn’t gone to the party. If I had not talked to Meredith. If I had not …

  Dad walks in and drunkenly drapes an arm around Harry’s shoulder. Together they return to the couch. “Nice to see you, Mr. Lassiter.” Dad slurs just enough to send a spit ball toward my tray. No comment. He picks up the pile of cards.

  Harry is a lot more comfortable around my mom. When Dad picks up a big yellow card, a piece of poster board, folded ove
r, Harry scoots to the edge of the couch.

  Dad reads, “Harry told us in class that you’re doing great. He says that you are learning to walk again. Good for you.”

  I can’t believe it. “You told them I was learning to walk?”

  “Not exactly,” Harry says.

  I can’t help it—this makes me laugh, first a little, then a lot, then too much. I start coughing, because I don’t have enough lung capacity to laugh that hard anymore. My father takes his cue to go. “I never did understand what you teenagers find so funny,” and I laugh even harder, which makes me gag. Harry screams for my mother, who starts freaking out that I’m going to die right here, like a sputtering engine.

  I scare them. Laughing.

  They can’t wig out every time I have a coughing fit. What if my leg starts spazzing out? What will Harry do then? He’s supposed to be my best friend, not some zombie who eases his guilt trip by bringing pansy-ass cards from school. I don’t want to see some class project full of construction paper and fear disguised as caring.

  He should stop visiting me. Right now. This is not his fault. I drove the car. I hit the man. I killed Meredith. Those people are right to hate me. I’m responsible.

  Only I can set him free.

  “So,” I begin without even a hint of a smile. “Who else do you think might want to go to Bermuda? Jocelyn?”

  Harry glances at the door. “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.” I smell my father’s scotch.

  “Really? You haven’t talked about what you’re doing for break? Not once?”

  Sweat forms on Harry’s forehead. He gathers up the cards. “No. Not yet.”

  Even though this is going to hurt, I do it anyway. “Listen, Harry, I really want to go. Because I need you.”

  “Need me?”

  I don’t care who hears. “Yes. I need you to hire me a hooker. Someone who will sit on my face.” I take a deep breath. “You know, there are girls who will.”