An Abbreviated Life

by Ariel Leve

  “Don’t be such a brat. I’m an artist. Do you understand that? Do you have any idea what it means to have to earn a living from being a writer?”

  The sounds were making her nervous. I was practicing on the piano. I was whistling too loud. I was a child, existing on the high wire of having to consider her needs above all else. And if I slipped, I would tumble into her rage.

  JOSEPHINE WOULD WAKE me up in the mornings so that I could get ready for school. She would open my door, stand with her hands on her hips in my bedroom like a drill sergeant, and announce: “Time to get up! Time to go to school!”

  Then she would turn and head for the kitchen to continue making breakfast. I would get out of bed and dress myself in my uniform—the blue-and-white-striped pinafore, navy blue knee socks, and plain white short-sleeved blouse underneath.

  In the fall, before school began, Josie took me to visit the special uniform store. It was on a low floor down a poorly lit hallway in a midtown building—not a store exactly, but an office filled with measuring tape and materials. I would be fitted for a new uniform and then would choose from a rack of blouses. All of them buttoned down the front, but some had puffy short sleeves with rounded collars that reminded me of clouds. These were worn in the warmer months. Others were more tailored with clean lines, like a man’s oxford shirt, long or short-sleeved, and were available in pale blue, light green, navy blue, or white. Each year the uniform size would increase and it would be hemmed to fall at my kneecap. Josie decided that was an appropriate length. A few weeks before school began, we would go to collect the new uniform and there was a sense of excitement; it was a marker of the passage of time. I was getting taller. I was growing up. I would experience these transformative moments of adolescence with Josie and share with her the anticipation about returning to school—a place I felt safe. I was beginning third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade. A new uniform was something I looked forward to.

  As I got older, some of the girls in my class would wear their uniforms very short—mid-thigh—but those were the girls with long, lean legs they were proud to show off. I never wished to have my uniform shortened, but when I mentioned it once to my mother she was contemptuous. “Why would you want to look like a hooker?”

  When I asked her permission to get my ears pierced, she was equally disapproving. This time for my lack of originality. She shot back, “Don’t you have enough orifices on your body as it is?”

  AFTER COLLECTING THE uniforms, Josie and I would go to Indian Walk on Madison Avenue for new shoes. Indian Walk was aimed at children who went to private schools, and the selection was limited to practical footwear. There was a long single row of chairs stuck together that ran down the center of the store, with seating on both sides and shiny chrome arm rests. And a pervasive scent of clean new leather. The walls were deep bookshelves stacked with cardboard shoeboxes instead of books, and there were several wooden ladders that the salesmen would climb to reach the various sizes on the higher shelves. The shoes were displayed on top of stacked shoeboxes that rose like columns from the well-worn carpeting. Black-and-white lace-up saddle shoes, shiny brown penny loafers, Wallabees in beige suede with the neutral rubber wedge, patent-leather Mary Janes for parties, and the dream shoe: a slip-on tan moccasin. In the springtime, the sandals would be on display: red leather, white leather, all with a thick brassy buckle that dug into the anklebone. But at least your toes would be free.

  We would take a number from the ticket dispenser and wait our turn. Someone at the counter who’d worked there for fifty years in a striped shirt with half a dozen pens in the pocket would pull on a string, and tick, the number would change. “Who’s number fifty-seven?”

  “Over here!” I’d call out. Waving my paper ticket to show we were next. Josie and I would be sitting together and one of the shoe salesmen would pull up a footstool with a small slope that resembled a slide. He would sit on the padded part of the stool and then motion for me to extend my foot out and rest it on the slope. When that happened, he reached for the foot-measuring device—a steel contraption that seemed very high tech to my nine-year-old eyes. He would place my foot on the device, my heel snug in the curved metal cup at the bottom, to get the most accurate fit—the length, the width, the arch—it was a meticulous process. He would scribble the measurements down on his notepad before instructing me to switch feet. He would then announce my new size, which I had been eagerly waiting to hear. It was a joyous moment when I discovered my feet had grown.

  Josie believed I should wear only sensible shoes. There was no need for a moccasin. No need for a wedge. The Bass penny loafers were the standard purchase, and I would slip on the brand-new pair, and the leather was so stiff and uncreased, I’d slide on the carpet as I strode around testing them out, to the point where I nearly did the splits. Before we left the store, she would reach in her purse and produce two shiny copper pennies for me to place in the empty slots. She’d never forget to give them to me.

  Josie remembered these things. She kept track of my appointments at the dentist, the doctor, or the math tutor. She brought me to the after-school activities and the birthday parties of my classmates and we’d shop for their gifts together at Rappaport’s Toy Bazaar across the street from 180. It was a family-run store that had been in business for ages. The oak-paneled cases displayed the games and toys, from Silly Putty to pick-up sticks. The store sold everything from bicycles to sporting goods. Items were wrapped in a distinctive polka-dot-covered paper. Sometimes as a treat when my uncle came to visit he would take me there and say, “Pick out whatever you want, champ.” I always chose the same thing. A box of Colorforms. This toy was a collection of vinyl adhesive shapes that would stick on a shiny plastic board. The shapes and figures could be arranged to create different scenarios. When I got older, I read that Colorforms was a toy designed to stimulate a child’s imagination. But that wasn’t why I chose it. My reasons were simple. It was a quiet toy that didn’t require another person and could be enjoyed alone.

  OUTSIDE OF MY office, the girls are playing with a mouse caught overnight in the rusted metal mousetrap in the kitchen. One of them had the idea to put a peanut in the cage, and it worked. They are elated. They burst into high-pitched delighted laughter and one of them shouts, “Let’s put him in the sink and wash him so he doesn’t smell bad!” I don’t want to know what sink the mouse is going in. They laugh and squeal at piercing volume and enjoy the assorted creatures. There is no apprehension, no fear. They are making a mess. They are banging on instruments. Sometimes they shout. Sometimes they whine. They are seven. They are playing. They are happy.

  23

  It is 1979 and my mother and I are seated in the offices of Dr. Barry Farkas, an optometrist who has just examined my eyes.

  “Our family has an obsession with going blind,” my mother tells him as he is taking a seat in the chair behind his desk. He has my file in his hands. “Whatever you say, whatever you do, please make sure that you do not bring up any bad news in front of my daughter.”

  She is instructing him to be cautious with how he speaks to me. And as she says this in my presence, it causes me to feel that I am vulnerable. That I am in danger. I have bad vision and will need a prescription for my nearsightedness. But her jump to the worst possible conclusion has taken over.

  DR. FARKAS AND I are seated in the same office on East 60th Street; over thirty-five years have passed.

  “I would never had said anything to an eleven-year-old girl about her vision,” he tells me now in a sturdy voice. I am forty-four years old and he has remained my eye doctor throughout the years. A consistency that I appreciate. The office has been redecorated, but the size of the room and the view out the window are exactly as they were. On the wall, there is a framed poster of a Giacometti sculpture. I have seen that poster for so many years and am attached to it in a way that transcends nostalgia. I might feel the same way returning to a neighborhood I had grown up in where there is nothing left standing but a tree, and that tree s
tands as evidence.

  DR. FARKAS’S PRESENCE is avuncular and caring. He calls me kid in an affectionate way. “I’m happy for you, kid,” he says when I tell him about Mario and the girls.

  I’ve asked him to recall what happened that day in 1979. The day a lifelong fear of going blind was carved out of a routine office visit. I tell him I remember sitting in the office and my mother getting increasingly emotional.

  SHE SAYS, “MY father went blind.” We are sitting close to each other but in separate chairs in front of Dr. Farkas’s desk, and she is holding my hand. She is squeezing it so tight that her rings are pinching my flesh. “I am very worried about the same thing happening to Ariel.”

  I TELL DR. FARKAS about this memory and add, “I recall that she insisted you reassure me that I wasn’t going to go blind.”

  “Yes,” he says softly, “I remember that, too.”

  I tell him that I recall that her anxiety and terror-stricken manner were scaring me.

  He nods. “I would say it was disproportionate to what was happening.”

  He is a soft-spoken man and his voice is naturally reassuring. But I can tell he is measuring his words.

  “I don’t remember her being easy to deal with.” He pauses. “I’m in a quandary here because I’m not comfortable talking about her. But I can talk about you. I can speak to you about the common experiences when we were all together.”

  I picture my mother coming into the exam room, contaminating it with her hysteria. “Did I seem as though I was more of the parent?” I ask. “Because I remember telling her it would be okay. I remember reassuring her that I wasn’t going blind.”

  “MOMMY,” I SAY, “I’m not going blind. Don’t worry.”

  She starts to cry.

  She says, “Your vision is precious. I don’t know what I would do if you lost it.” She plummets into distress. “My father and I had a secret handshake in case he went blind so that no matter where in the world we were, we would always be able to find each other.”

  I’m confused. She had said earlier that he was already blind.

  She takes my hand and shows me the handshake. It is a regular handshake, only the pinkie fingers are locked together. “This will be our secret handshake,” she says. “So that we will never be apart. Ever.”

  DR. FARKAS LEANS forward so that both of his elbows are on the desk and his hands fold neatly together. “Well, I didn’t have that kind of an insight,” he says, referring to my question about being the parent. “I had other concerns. I was trying to give you the right care and do what I do best with an overly concerned and anxious mother in the room. And I thought excessively anxious about blindness in particular.”

  “The worst-case scenario,” I affirm.

  “Always.”

  WHEN IT WAS discovered that I would need glasses, it was as if I’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The swirl of panic was in motion. The phone calls. The hypervigilant conversations. Contingency plans. My mother’s momentum to seek help was comprehensive. There was no time to waste. I remember her alerting my father in Thailand. “Ariel is going blind,” she announced. When I overheard this, I was standing by her side in her bedroom and she passed me the receiver. Hearing his voice from the other side of the world was a comfort. He told me not to worry. “You promise it will be okay?” I asked. He said yes. I believed him.

  24

  I am sitting with my father at his house in Bali. We have just finished breakfast and have been talking about the past.

  “Yes,” he says gently, “I remember when you thought you were going blind because your mother told you that you were going blind.”

  “Do you remember how old I was?”

  “Ten or eleven.”

  “So,” I continue, “at eleven I thought I was going blind.”

  “Your mother told you that you were going blind.”

  He emphasizes this distinction in a pronounced way. To clarify the difference between being told something bad was happening and believing it to be real. Even though at the time it all blurred together.

  “Now you’re forty-five,” he says. His tone is even. Pragmatic. “You understand these things and you’re in control of your life. Why can’t you just beat those demons and destroy them?”

  He sounds genuinely baffled.

  “You mean why can’t I just get over it.”

  “Yes.” He pauses. It’s illogical to him that I would be a thinking person who can’t control my thoughts. “Or if you can’t get over it, then deal with it in a rational, sensible, mature way. Which you’re capable of doing with other kinds of decisions.”

  THE NOVELIST AND I stood in the restaurant, leaning against the long wooden bar, waiting for a table to open up. We’d arrived early—fifteen minutes before our dinner reservation. The hostess had flinched when she said, “I am so sorry the table isn’t ready.” She looked devastated. “Don’t worry,” he replied. “It’s no problem at all.” Southern manners were in full force.

  He suggested we have some oysters at the bar. “Sure,” I said, why not. I was in Oxford, Mississippi, a place I had never been, having oysters—a food I rarely ate—with an eminent southern novelist whose work championed a life-affirming view.

  Being on assignment, specifically for writing a profile, was a mission I enjoyed. To extract and explore another person’s inner life meant I could temporarily set aside all the uncertainties and anxieties in my own life. Personal details shared were no less real, but there would be no fallout. Talking in this context was a designated freedom.

  But this conversation was different. We had gotten into a genial debate. Is what happened to us what we become? His position toward overcoming misfortunes of the past banked on the virtue of self-discipline. A hardening of one’s emotional arteries.

  “How we are imprinted is something we are not to be victimized by,” he had said. Part of this conversation—his point of view—would later find its way into the interview I was doing.

  There was a toughness in his stance that I respected, even though it rattled me. He had a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attitude that was intolerant of any alternative.

  I had taken a stand, without trying to. And suddenly things had flipped. Rather than reveal something to him, I had revealed something to myself.

  “There are,” I countered, with a conviction that surged from the tips of my toes, “certain people who have been front-loaded with trauma that shapes who they are. They are disabled. Psychologically. And this does not make them victims. It makes them soldiers.”

  I thought of people whose limbs were not long enough to step over the mess or swat it away. They tried and failed. Why? Did they lack strength of character? Were they simply not dogged enough?

  25

  Whether abuse of a child is physical, psychological, or sexual, it sets off a ripple of hormonal changes that wire the child’s brain to cope with a malevolent world.”

  DR. MARTIN TEICHER has a sedate manner. I am at ease in his presence. His fingernails have moons of bright white at the tips and he rests his hands, fingertips touching, in a triangle under his chin.

  He is the director of a research program at Harvard Medical School and a leading neuroscientist whose focus is on altered brain development in children as a consequence of abuse.

  I am seated with him in his office at the McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. A few months have passed since Emily’s assessment of brain damage and now, in my early forties, I am seeking to get unstuck. He has agreed to let me interview him. I am searching for information. A molecule of logic in an orbit of uncertainty.

  “Is my brain damaged?” I ask.

  “It’s more altered than damaged,” Dr. Teicher says.

  Over his shoulder, the screen saver on his computer displays an Eagles album cover from his iTunes collection.

  “I appreciate the clarity,” I say.

  Altered feels less severe.

  HE TELLS ME that scientists have found connections b
etween children who are psychologically abused and permanent changes in the brain. We are discussing the neurological effects when a child’s rational responses are continually invalidated.

  “The coping mechanisms that were adaptive in childhood become maladaptive as an adult,” he says.

  He gives an example.

  “When you have an erratic, unpredictable, and aggressive parent, a child will detect signs and know when not to say something or know when to hide, so a threat-detecting sense begins to emerge early on. In the end, it wires the individual to be acutely aware and highly reactive to perceived threats.”

  HE EXPLAINS THAT the brain is being shaped by these early formative experiences and develops in a way to cope with a world that it believes to be unsafe.

  “Children who are exposed to trauma and stressful situations become hypervigilant as adults. So they’re always scanning, looking for danger. It’s hard to settle down and feel secure if you’re wired to always be on your toes. You can wind up with a mismatch if the world you live in is much more benign than your childhood. And so you may be overreacting and over-interpreting stimuli because you’re wired in that way.”

  AS I LISTEN to him describe how consistency, continuity, and routine are the foundation for children to develop a cognitive understanding of trust and security, there is vindication in his proof. My emotionally impaired beliefs have a source.

  This information is comforting because it is a real, scientific explanation. Feeling grounded in an uncertain world is not a matter of willpower or getting over it in the way one might get over a breakup, a lost job, a death, or an outrage. Adaptive behavior had a price.

  “WHEN THE BRAIN is deprived of adequate levels of hormones that are needed for this development, it changes. The cascade of chemicals that are released changes the software of the brain. This is where beliefs, thoughts, and feelings are being formed.”