Sunset fumbles for another half hour before suggesting we break for lunch. She watches my mother feed me, just to make sure that our transition to home hasn’t caused her to forget how to shovel tiny bits of food into my mouth. She feeds me leftover lasagna; every bite is perfectly balanced.
When I am full, Mom brings out a fancy salad for two. And sparkling lemonade with slivers of lime floating on the top. Flat bread. Strawberries and cream.
“This salad is so delicious, Mrs. Marder. Jean Pierre makes one like it, except he likes mandarin oranges instead of raisins.”
“How lovely that your boyfriend cooks.”
What’s wrong with raisins?
“Jean Pierre makes the best crepes. I know it sounds like a stereotype—French guy, crepes—but it’s true. I’ll bring some next time.”
Mom plays with her hair as she eats. She shovels the food into her mouth too fast, and she comments “Ah yes” and “To be sure” in her high-pitched voice. From the sound of things, Jean Pierre would be perfect if only he had a job, but hell, for a good crepe, Sunset’s willing to forgive him. He even does the dishes. I bet he’s a great lover.
My father does not prepare any food. He does no dishes. He’s a good lover, too, I’m sure, but I bet my mother is thinking that now she wishes he wasn’t so good. She shovels even faster.
“We do what we have to do,” she says.
Sunset nods and smiles. “Yes, we do, we sure do.” She doesn’t understand that my mother is warning her. My mother gets no pleasure doing what she has to do.
Shovel, shovel, shovel.
* * *
They finish lunch and slog through the final steps to download the software.
“This is your key to accessibility,” Sunset says. She seems very proud of herself.
She’s wrong. It is entertainment, something to keep me busy.
“I thought my chair was the key to my—”
“Frank.” My mother puts her hand over her mouth.
Sunset says, “You’ll be able to receive and send your schoolwork from here. You’ll be able to write. All you have to do is speak. It will do anything you say.”
Fine, fine, fine.
Sunset rubs her hands together. “Frank, why don’t you try it out? Say something. Say a couple of things. Just speak into the microphone and it will do the work.”
“Normal voice?” I’m stalling. The last thing I need is an audience.
“Come on, Frank. Try it. You’re going to love it. This machine will do anything you say.”
“Later.”
“Now.”
An ambulance drives by. No one says anything until the siren fades.
“Okay,” I say. Sunset smiles. Mom leans over my chair. Her hair tickles my ear. “Walk.”
Mom frowns. “He’s always like that now,” she says, like I’m not sitting here, in the room, with the two of them. “Cheeky.”
Sunset sympathizes. “His attitude is normal and understandable. A trauma like this affects the whole family. Frank needs time to heal. So do you. Be patient. There will be hard days ahead. But remember, each day you will discover something new. Each day, Frank will overcome a new hurdle, just the way he did when he was able-bodied.”
“Easy for you to say.” I hate when people talk about me like I’m not sitting there listening.
My mother throws up her hands. “He used to be a quiet, polite kid. I raised him to be respectful.”
Sunset does not look surprised or insulted. “Give him time,” she says. “Every story has a beginning. This is his.”
Wrong again.
My story begins with a phone call. Harry, who else? He knew I was home, licking my wounds. Betsy Sinclair and I were through—she broke up with me, two weeks earlier, in front of a small audience at the Mooretown Marauders soccer game. It could have been much more humiliating, but honestly, her desertion did not mean much. She was a skinny, vain girl who thought, for a moment in time, that I would elevate her social status.
Silly girl. I was a regular guy. Not popular, not a jerk. In the middle. Elevation potential: zero.
“Come on. It’s the party at the park. A perfect occasion to get back in the saddle.” He was serious.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Frank,” he went on, “everyone will be there.” It was true. The junior/senior picnic was the kickoff party of the year.
I sighed. “So go. Have fun.” Harry was quiet on the other end. “Harry, I really don’t feel like it. You know how much I hate sitting in the sun.”
“Let me remind you,” he said. “I suffered through six weeks of Accutane. Six weeks.” He stopped talking, probably checking e-mail at the same time. “For parties. And invitations to them. Come on, Marder. Jocelyn Manis called me. She asked if we were going.”
“No one’s stopping you.”
“Frank, Jocelyn Manis. Asked. Me. Don’t let me down. I want to get laid before we graduate.”
I was acting like a jerk, making him beg.
“Come on, man. You know you want to go. You just need me to give you a reason.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Frank, I can’t go alone. I don’t have anything to say.”
Deep breath.
“I’d go for you.”
I let him wait a little longer. The sun was shining. The breeze was light. Harry was my best friend.
“I think we’ve had enough for a while,” Sunset says. “Why don’t I help you into bed for an hour?”
“No thanks. I’d like to stay up and work on the computer. Maybe have another can of Coke.” Mom does not get up to get it.
“Frank, I’m really glad you’re so enthusiastic, but actually, you need to go down,” Sunset says. “Just for a bit. You’ve been in the chair for a long time. Give your butt a break. You don’t want to get a bedsore.” She pushes my chair to the bed and locks it tight. Power-play takedown for Sunset! Bedsore lecture will follow if compliance is not forthcoming. “I imagine that the hardest thing you have to deal with is giving up some control.”
Oh yeah, control is right up there on the crip’s big list of favorite things that he doesn’t have anymore.
“But once we get your schedule down, you’ll find that you’ll get at least some of it back. You’ll know your body. You’ll know your limits. You can tell us…”
Now, later, whenever. Blah, blah, blah. She can do whatever she wants to me. She can pick me up and throw me across the room, or she can leave me here. That’s never going to change. Even the stupid things like going to bed—Sunset doesn’t understand.
“I know my body now. I don’t want to go to bed.”
Sunset smiles and shakes her head. “Sorry, bud, but your mom and I are putting you down.” She grabs me by the hips. Mom stands by, but doesn’t really do anything except look nervous. “Get on the bed,” Sunset says, “and when I sit him down, you support his back with your body.” She takes a deep breath. “This is gonna be fun.”
One, two …
“Sunset, I want to stay in my chair.”
Three …
“Sunset, I mean it.”
Up.
They’ve got me sitting on this stupid bed. Sitting. In space. I can’t see Mom’s hands around my chest, but I can feel her breath, short and fast on the back of my neck. “Put me down,” I say. “Now. Back in the chair. This isn’t funny. You can’t just push me around like a doll.”
“It’s good for you,” Sunset says. Her hands are shaking; her muscles are popping out of her skinny arms. Power lifter, my ass. She’s going to drop me.
“Mom?”
“Right here.” She sounds scared. “I’ve got you.” Her hair grazes my neck. Why can’t she be in front? Why are they doing this?
“You look great, Frank,” Sunset says, and then without warning, Mom gasps, and my body collapses, and my head hits the pillow as Sunset pushes me down on my side.
“Oh no!” Mom holds on to me so I don’t slip off the edge. “I’
m sorry. So, so sorry.” She kisses my face. “I couldn’t hold on.”
The floor looks very far away.
People who are shot, people who are about to die in airplanes—scientists say that their neurological systems turn off. They go into shock. They feel no pain. If I hit the floor, will mine turn on? Will I feel a moment of searing pain through my body? Will a bolt of sensation go through me, just before my head hits the floor?
It would be worth it.
Sunset tries to get me up, but my leg starts spazzing out, so they just hold me there, on the edge of the bed, on my side. More helpless than usual. Scared.
“Don’t worry, Rosemary. Frank’s fine.”
No, no, no—I’m not fine. From now on, I’m deciding when and how to go to bed.
A blue piece of paper is stuck under the leg of my nightstand.
When my leg stops shaking, Sunset sits me back up. “You okay, Frank?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. She grabs me and lays me out on the bed. “No harm done. Before I go, we’ll get him back up in the chair.”
Mom covers me with a blanket. She sits on the edge of the bed and hums until she thinks I’m asleep. On the ceiling is one of Dad’s old posters from college—some chick with big hair in a bathing suit. He said, “Every fantasy I had at your age was about her. Wasn’t she a knockout?”
He must have put it up there to entertain me, but it just takes me back to August and the park.
The party was in full swing. Skin everywhere. People talking and laughing. Faces. Legs. Chests. Footballs flying through the air. I froze on the sidelines, still as a statue, unable or unwilling. My classmates were all having fun. It was a sunny, breezy day. We were seniors. They made it look so easy.
“How’s it going?”
“What’d you do all summer?”
“Where are you applying?”
Harry took a swig of root beer. “There she is,” he said, looking into the crowd. “Do I look okay? Am I breaking out?”
“What are you, a girl?” I shook my head. “Go on ahead. I’ll find you later.”
He didn’t hesitate. Long hair, floppy hats, shaved heads, and other assorted lids swallowed his blue baseball cap. I scanned the crowd for familiar faces and watched him greet Jocelyn, expecting her to smile, blow him off. I figured he’d be sitting next to me momentarily. But instead, she put her hands on his shoulders.
Jocelyn Manis was bursting out of a very skimpy bikini. Damn. The guy was going to beat me to the Promised Land.
I grabbed a hot dog off the grill and sat down on a swing. Put my towel on my lap. There was plenty of time to socialize.
“Nice party, huh?” she asked.
Meredith Stein had her brown hair pulled up in a tangle of a ponytail, and her aviator sunglasses were mirrored. She was hotter than Betsy—ten times hotter—and completely out of my league. I looked past her smile to see if maybe my ex-girlfriend was looking this way.
“Yeah,” I said, wiping my lip for potential mustard residue. Checking my fingers. Thinking about my shorts, my chest. I was too white, too concave, too obviously unaccustomed to socializing. “How’s it going? What’d you do all summer? Where are you applying?”
Meredith laughed. “You sound like a reporter.” She extended her hand, and I put mine in hers, and she took me into the crowd to finish our conversation.
Meredith Stein was holding my hand. My hand, holding my hand, she was holding my hand and we were talking, or rather, she was talking.
“My summer was great. At my camp, the summer before senior year, you get to be a CIT—I mean, counselor-in-training. I worked with eleven-year-old girls. I couldn’t believe it—all they wanted to do was wash and blow-dry their hair.”
We were nearly shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, hip to hip, and she was holding my hand.
“Really.”
“I know! This one kid had scoliosis, and so she had to wear a brace, and it was so sad. For Fourth of July, I let her take it off, so she could hang with her boyfriend. Isn’t that cute?”
“Yeah.” She could talk all day, as long as she kept holding my hand.
She had freckles on every inch of her skin. Her face, her shoulders, her chest, her legs. She had muscular legs. Great legs. I tried to keep my eyes moving, head nodding, so she couldn’t tell how obviously excited I was to be standing there, looking at her, listening to her talk. Eyes, breasts, hair, breasts, tummy … she had a belly ring. Gold. A cloud obscured the sun, and she shivered. “Brrrr. When the sun goes in, it gets so cold.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.” Let the sun go in. Let it get real cold. Her nipples were visible through her top.
She stood there, making words, talking to me, like we knew each other, like we were friends. “What’s your favorite class?” She had great lips, too. Full, hot pink lips. Shiny. The bridge of her nose was starting to peel. Her shoulders looked burned, too. I wished I could concentrate on what she was saying. “Someone told me you like to play baseball.”
“Yes, I like baseball.” I didn’t understand why she was so interested in me. My internal alarm was clanging, screaming, telling me to run, get out of there, go to the bathroom, away. “But I don’t play for the team. Just for fun. What do you like to do?”
What is the thing that doesn’t go with the others? There was something happening here. She asked more questions: “Who’s your favorite band? Do you like art? Have you been to the MFA in Boston?”
“I like Sargent,” I said, but she didn’t hear me through the blast of a bullhorn. She pointed to her ear, shrugged her shoulders, and mouthed, “Later.” Then she tapped another guy on the shoulder.
“Nice meeting you,” I said. “Maybe I’ll call you sometime.”
“Huh? What did you say? You got a partner yet?” John Guttman introduced himself and started firing questions like bullets.
It was a mixer, a game meant for people like them to draw in people like me. After Guttman, I went back to the swings and watched. The bullhorn blasted again and again.
“Isn’t this great?” Harry asked. His cheeks were bright pink.
“You forgot to put on sunscreen.”
Harry laughed. “Jocelyn Manis talked to me for three separate rotations. Three times. She says I crack her up. She says—”
Meredith Stein appeared out of the crowd. A T-shirt wrapped around her head turban-style. Bikini top. That gold ring like a bull’s eye on her bare belly. A big pink towel wrapped around her hips. I stared at her yellow flip-flops. “Are you coming?” She put her finger under my chin and lifted my face.
“Absolutely,” Harry said without consultation. “See you at camp in twenty minutes.”
“Camp?” I asked. “Where is camp?”
Meredith laughed. “My family owns this big piece of property. We call it camp. Weren’t you listening? I invited you to a postparty party.”
* * *
It took us forty-five minutes to find the right field. “You made it,” she said. “I wasn’t sure.” She kissed both of us on the lips. Meredith Stein tasted like cheap beer and potato chips. “Come over to the bonfire,” she said.
Harry licked his lips. “Jocelyn’s here.” He patted me on the back. Second time in three hours. “Have fun.”
Meredith handed me a beer. “Loosen up,” she said, tipping back her own can. “Have fun.”
I took the beer.
She walked away.
I didn’t drink it. Not that day.
As promised, Sunset puts me back in my chair just in time for the Parade of State-Supported Ladies. They all start the same way: “Hi, Frank, can I talk to your mom a minute?” Then they go hush-hush into the living room to talk strategy. As if they are talking about things I have never heard before.
Mobility, skin, my mother’s health.
Skin, my mother’s health, mobility.
My mother’s health, mobility, skin.
Victoria, the physical therapist, is the third person on the schedule. She barges into the living room fast, then stops ba
m, and wipes her brow. “I thought I was going to be late,” she says. Victoria is one of those super-cutesy girls—pink-and-orange T-shirt and cute raggy jeans, torn at both knees. Short, short hair. Her purse is covered with buttons: PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING. MY BOYFRIEND IS A DEMOCRAT. SAVE THE WHALES.
“Okay, Frank Marder. Let’s talk,” she says, sitting in front of me, legs wide open, elbows on her thighs. “I want to know what you have done, and if you’ve experienced any changes. I want to know everything. A twitch. A pain. I’m an unadulterated optimist, and I don’t mind saying so. You know, people like you sometimes get as much as a level back. Why I once worked with a patient…”
She talks continuously. “… I can’t tell you his name—confidentiality and all—but this one guy spent seventeen days in a coma only to wake up and start walking. Then I also had this other guy who wouldn’t stop masturbating.” She rolls her eyes as if masturbating was the most unheard-of activity on the planet. “Every time I walked into his room, there he was…” She makes the standard gesture. “He was always going at it.” She laughs. My mother laughs. But it’s not funny. I’d give more than a big chunk of change for one more hour in my bedroom with a functioning wrist and a hard-on.
“I think what Victoria is saying, is that if you are determined, you might be able to learn something.”
Victoria nods vigorously, making her gigantic breasts wobble. “Feel free to ask me anything,” she says. “Anything. Especially sex stuff.” She does not turn red, but my mother does. “I wrote my master’s thesis on sexuality and the paralyzed male. There are still a lot of things you can do with a lover. Believe me, you can still have sex. And not just oral sex, although that alone is pretty satisfying for any partner.”
My mother is still in the room.
“You do have a functioning tongue, I presume.”
My mother leaves the room. “I can see I’m not needed,” she says on her way out.
Victoria won’t drop the subject. “I work with this one guy who’s got the same injury you have. And he has a very active sex life.”
I laugh, but she’s not joking. She reaches over and behind me and shifts my weight.
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