Me Again (11 page)

Chapter 13

R
EBECCA EMAILED ME SEVERAL TIMES during the week that followed. One night we actually had something like a real-time conversation, both being logged onto our computers at the same time, one of us emailing the other then waiting several minutes for the other to respond. But we weren’t really talking about much of anything – she continued to be frustrated by her inability to put her thoughts into writing.

I on the other hand was much more comfortable expressing myself in writing, but that skill ended up backfiring on me. After one of my more eloquent messages to her, she wrote back:

see this is why I feel so stupid. you just said a bunch of stuff i totally agree with and said it really well but i cant come up with anything better than saying ‘me too’ when i try to agree with you. even though the stuff you said is really really true. some teacher i would be. i cant even write.

Cursing myself, I wrote a heartfelt (but very simply worded) apology, and suggested maybe she might prefer to talk on the phone, something I’m surprised hadn’t occurred to either of us. I gave her the phone number for my hospital room, logged off the computer, and went back to my room, waiting for the phone to ring.

She didn’t call. And I received no more emails from her that week.

Again and again I drafted email entreaties to her, only to delete them, wary of either being inappropriate, or worse, driving away the only person I considered a friend.

It was a long week, even for a man who couldn’t count the days.

When Tuesday finally arrived, I dressed for the occasion in my finest warm-up pants and T-shirt, reflecting that a shopping trip was definitely in order as soon as I got Outside.

Shortly after lunch, my phone rang.

“Hi, it’s me,” said Rebecca when I answered. “I changed my time so that I could get Lucinda again. We just finished, and I need to cool off. Want to meet me in the cafeteria?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”

Rebecca was seated at the table where we’d sat during her last visit, with a styrofoam cup in her hand and another placed across the table from her. She gave a small smile when she saw me.

“Hi, Jonathan,” she said as I approached. “I went ahead and got our drinks. You like the iced tea, right?”

Although I’d sworn off the vile brown stuff after our last meeting, I smiled and said, “That’s fine – thanks.”

I stationed my walker next to the table and eased into a chair across from her.

“You’re walking better,” she said.

“Thanks. How did your PT go?”

“Really really good,” Rebecca said. “Lucinda thinks I’m ready to lose the cane.”

“Really? That’s terrific.”

“Want to see?” Rebecca said, rising from the table but leaving her cane leaning against the table’s edge. She proceeded to walk down the aisle along the table, with no additional support. Although she still had a slight limp, there was a distinctly feminine sway to her walk that I’d never seen before, which tugged at me in a primal and not altogether honorable way.

Turning around, she spread her hands proudly. “Well? What do you think?”

“You look... great,” was all I could manage. This won me a smile, which, compounded with the walk I had just witnessed, threatened to reduce me to a quivering mass of... I don’t know, something that quivers. Christ, this woman – this
married
woman – rendered me speechless. Not good.

“Thanks,” she said, sitting back down. “It feels so good to just
walk
, you know?”

“I can only imagine,” I said honestly.

She frowned. “Did I do it again – did I say something stupid? Was I not supposed to talk about my walking since you can’t walk yet?”

“No, no – it’s fine,” I protested. “You don’t ever need to worry about what you say around me. Not ever.”

Rebecca sank back in her chair. “God, do you know how nice that is?” she said with a sigh. “When I’m with Big Bob, I always have to be
so
careful what I say. And no matter how hard I try, I always seem to say something stupid.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Tell Big Bob that,” she said.

I suddenly wanted to tell Big Bob that and much more. Perhaps with a baseball bat.

Instead, I said, “Listen, I’m sorry about that email I sent you. I never heard back from you, so I feel like
I’m
the one who must have said something stupid.”

Rebecca leaned forward. “No, that’s not it at all. That was really sweet when you apologized, even though you had nothing to apologize for. You write really well. I only wish I could, too.”

“But I never heard from you.”

“Yeah, Big Bob came in and asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing to you, and he said
Why are you wasting time talking to Coma Boy? You should be hanging around people whose brains actually work.
Then we got into a whole big thing.”

“Coma Boy?” I asked.

She must have read my face. “God, Jonathan, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you. He just really made me mad when he said that stuff.” She paused. “You know
I
don’t call you that, don’t you? I mean, even after my stroke I know not to be a complete jerk.”

This got a grudging laugh out of me.

“Anyway,” she said, “he knows more about computers than me, and I started thinking he might just try to go in and read my emails, so that made me not want to write any more. I mean, it’s not like we’re writing about stuff I want to hide from him – you’re just my friend, and he knows it. But I still don’t like the idea of somebody snooping through what I write, so I stopped.”

I sat silently, taking it in. Trying not to blush from the humiliation of his assessment of me, and stinging from being called just a friend. That was stupid, I know. I
was
just a friend – that’s all I could ever be. So why did it hurt so much to be called that?

“A whole big thing?” I repeated. “You mean you argued about it?”

“Bigtime,” she said. “It went on for hours. I was trying to make him understand how much it helps to have somebody to talk to who has gone through something similar. Somebody who
gets
me, you know?”

She shook her head. “He just kept saying that if I wanted to get healthy – to
get right in the head
, as he likes to call it – I need to hang around healthy people.”

“Not people like Coma Boy,” I said bitterly.

“Jonathan, I’m really sorry I said that.”

“You didn’t,” I said. “He did.”

Rebecca shrugged. “He can be kind of a jerk sometimes.”

When I didn’t respond, she flushed and said, “Look at me – I’m doing it again. I shouldn’t talk that way about my husband. God, Jonathan, do you have any idea how hard it is to always be worried about saying the wrong thing?”

I smiled feebly. “Actually, I think I do. In your case, you may not know certain unspoken diplomatic rules. In mine, I just don’t know much about anything or anybody.”

“Boy, we’re a pair, aren’t we?” Rebecca said.

God, I wish we were, I thought.

Trying to steer the conversation back on course, I said, “So, Project Orange Sherbet is hitting some speed bumps.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling grimly at the reference. “And that isn’t even the worst of it.”

“How do you mean?”

Rebecca’s face grew more serious. “Things got really messed up when we started having sex,” she said, looking directly at me.

I willed myself not to react. Yes, this was jarring and unexpected, but I’d just finished telling her how she never needed to worry about what she said to me. I mean, wasn’t that what true friendship was about?

“What happened?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“We started having sex,” she said simply. “I mean, he’s my husband, and we sleep in the same bed, and my body is healthy enough for it. And he’s waited for weeks now, so it seemed like it was what I was supposed to do.”

It was the most loveless description of two partners coupling that I’d ever heard. Not sure how to proceed, I said, “And there were problems?”

“It felt so weird,” she said. “I mean, physically it felt okay. Everything still works, and all. But as far as what I felt for him – that was all weird.”

She stared at me. “And he could tell,” she said. “I wasn’t responding to him like I used to, and that made him upset. The first time, we ended up just stopping.”

“How about the next time?” I asked, the question piercing me like a sword.

“The next time was better,” she said. “At least for him.”

“Not for you?” I was unable to avoid asking. This conversation was awful to endure, but seemed to provide a necessary release for her. And I wanted desperately to live up to the reality of being her friend, despite her inclination for bluntness. I’d said repeatedly that her honesty was one of the things I liked about her; it was time for me to walk the walk. Even if I needed a walker.

“No, it was still just as weird for me. I just think I hid it. And I think he was too busy enjoying himself to notice. Afterwards he was all sweet and reassuring, saying stuff like
That’s more like it, baby – see? We’ve still got it
.” She had a way of changing her voice when she quoted Big Bob that made me hate the man even more, something I’d thought was impossible.

I remained silent, at a loss for words.

Rebecca wasn’t finished. “But the last time was the worst.” A tear broke free and began to work its way down her cheek.

“What happened?” I said, putting my hands under the table to hide my clenched fists.

“Things were going okay,” she said. “I was still feeling weird, but I was trying to be, you know, enthusiastic. And he seemed to be enjoying it.”

She stopped, looking down.

“But then he wanted me to do something. Something I didn’t want to do.”

Rebecca looked back up, her eyes locking with mine. “He said he wanted to put it in my ass. But I didn’t want him to.”

“Did you tell him?” I said, aware that my head seem to have suddenly become pressurized. I prayed I wasn’t about to have another stroke.

“Of course I did,” she said.

“Did he... did he force you?”

“No, he wouldn’t do that,” she said, shaking her head. A second tear began tracking downward. “It’s not like he raped me or anything.”

I felt my muscles loosen a bit.

“But what he did was almost as bad.”

Trying to remain calm, I whispered, “What did he do?”

Rebecca shuddered. “He started talking to me. Pleading with me. Telling me how I always used to love that.”

Rebecca leaned forward, her hands on the table. “Jonathan, he was lying to me. He was telling me things that weren’t true. Things I never did. It’s like he honestly believes I don’t remember how I used to be.”

She choked back a quick sob, and sniffled violently. “Jonathan, I lost my personality, not my memory. He tried to lie to me – to take advantage of my brain damage – to get me to do something I never wanted to do.”

At this point my poker face must have failed me, because she drew back, her face stricken with horror.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. I can’t talk to you about this, can I? I can’t talk about this to anybody!” She buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

“No, no,” I said, reaching across the table to touch her arm. “You
can
talk to me. About this. About
anything
.”

Rebecca lowered her hands, revealing eyes already bloodshot.

“But I’ve upset you – I can see it on your face.”

“You didn’t upset me,” I insisted. “
He
did. I want to strangle the bastard.”

I immediately regretted my words. Now it was my turn to be horrified. “God, Rebecca, I’m sorry. I have no right to talk that way.” I stopped before I said anything worse.

Then I realized she had placed her hand on mine.

“It’s okay, Jonathan. I wanted to strangle him, too. I mean, it’s one thing to have some problems communicating. It’s something else to lie to somebody to get sex.”

“So what happened?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“I threw him out of bed,” she said, with a simplicity that made me want to hug her. “I told him what I just told you – that just because my personality may be messed up, it doesn’t mean that my memory is.”

“What did he say?”

“I think he was embarrassed to get busted like that. He took his pillow and went off to the couch in the living room. And the next day he was all apologetic and bought me flowers.”

Trying to be supportive and hating it, I said, “So is everything back to normal?”

Rebecca gave me a look that was hard to read. It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown. “He’s still on the couch,” she said, with a look that let me know this portion of the conversation was over.

I was keenly aware of her hand still being on mine.

“Jonathan,” she said, “If you’re really my friend, will you do me a favor?”

“Of course,” I said, finding my voice choked.

Her eyes remained locked on mine, unwavering. “Don’t ever lie to me. Not ever.”

“I won’t,” I said, and I meant it. “I promise.”

* * * * *

Our conversation lightened up after that, but all too soon it was time for her to go.