Stir (10 page)

T
he next morning I met the weekend therapist for my first physical therapy session. She was tall, thin, and strong looking, probably in her early forties, and wore a purple linen shirt with short sleeves that buttoned at the biceps. “I have that shirt,” I said, after we'd introduced ourselves. I thought it was a perfectly normal thing to say, but she didn't respond. Instead:

“Can you tie on your sneakers by yourself?”

Maybe I'd said the wrong thing. I imagined this healthy woman lifting the shirt from her drawer that morning, quickly pulling it over her head, and shooting out the door. Suddenly, what I'd said about the shirt felt ridiculous, like saying to Roger Federer, “I play tennis, too.”

The therapist told me that my first task was to get comfortable walking again. I had no neurological damage, but after a month in bed, my muscles had grown so weak that I'd shake when I tried to stand.

She started me on the edge of the bed, had me lift one knee to the palm of my hand, then the other, kick my right leg out in front of me, then my left. It was time to stand up. She buckled me into a harness, two loops of nylon rope, one on each leg, and a handle that dangled behind me for her to grab on to. This way, I could practice walking without leaning on someone or something, and the therapist could still catch me if I started to fall. I was a dog on a leash.

We made our way slowly to the rehab gym at the end of the hallway. Me in the lead, the therapist hanging on to me from behind, my father pushing a wheelchair, just in case. The hallway felt as wide as a football field and at least twice as long. All that space and nothing to reach for made me anxious. The blindness made things worse. When I'd see someone coming, I'd freeze. Everyone was moving so quickly, the therapists, the nurses. Nothing felt safe. Because of the depth perception issue, I didn't notice that the floor rose in a slight ramp where it met the main walkway to the lobby. I just felt my heels tip back. I couldn't figure out if the slant was real or in my head, and I had the urge to squat down and crawl.

At the gym I was allowed to sit for a minute. When my legs stopped shaking, we got to work. I stood up; I sat down. Stood up, sat down. The therapist had me put my arms out to the sides while standing and close my eyes. I immediately started to tip and felt the tug of the harness keep me upright. She asked if I could raise one foot just a little bit off the ground. I tried, but my foot stayed glued to the floor. I looked over at my dad, who was watching from the side, and I started to cry. The therapist waited silently for me to cool it. She didn't say anything one way or the other about how I was doing, not a word about how it would get easier, how I would get stronger, that this was temporary. I knew better, but I started to wonder if that was because I wouldn't, and it wasn't.

 • • • 

On Monday, I met Jeff, the physical therapist who'd be with me the rest of the week. He was just a few years older than me, with a ponytail and a face that was easy on the eyes. We started out with more of the same. I'd march the hallway and Jeff would urge me to pick up the pace. In the gym he'd have me lift one foot. I could do it now, if only for a few seconds. I would wobble; he would catch me.

“I'm terrible at this,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But you know what you're really good at?” I shook my head, genuinely unable to think of what I could possibly be good at just then.

“Not dying,” he said. I smiled. He had a point.

“Hey,” he said, grinning, “would you like to go outside?”

I grabbed my sweatshirt and followed him out and around to the side of the building. I tried to look casual as the double doors automatically swung open and the fresh air rushed in. Outside on my own two feet felt different from outside in a wheelchair. It felt good.

Jeff said he wanted me to try walking on grass. From the edge of the asphalt parking lot, I slid one foot over onto the lawn and pressed, then stepped all the way onto the spongy ground. It was uneven in places. My one eye couldn't tell me where, so I moved slowly, feeling ahead with my toe the way you do when you're bumping around in the dark. A tree sneaked up on me from the left and I walked into a thin-fingered branch. “Ouch,” I said, running my thumb across the scratch on my forehead. The branch had been right in my blind spot. Nervous, I moved forward, ducking my head as though an invisible beam were hanging from the sky.

 • • • 

I think it was my second day at the rehab center when a neuropsychologist came by. His job was to make sure that, cognitively, I was as together as everyone seemed to think. He gave me lists of things to remember, then had me do math problems before asking me to repeat the items back. There were also scenarios, narratives that would end with the question “What would you do?”

One was about a lake in the woods. I'm out walking alone, the doctor told me. There's no one for miles around. As I approach the lake, I notice that there's a dock, and at the very end of it sits a two-year-old child, all by himself. “What would you do?” the doctor asked me.

“I'd get help,” I said.

I waited for the doctor to say something back or nod his head or make any sound at all. He didn't.

“I mean, I'd ask him what he was doing there,” I stammered. “If he was alone. Where his parents were.” Wait, was that right? Do two-year-olds even talk? Maybe he'd been kidnapped and his abductor had left him there.

“I guess I'd take him with me and try to find his parents,” I offered. Unless his parents were the ones who had left him there in the first place, in which case, should I really be tracking them down? Wasn't it irresponsible to hand this kid over to people capable of such neglect? Then again, was it legal
not
to?

“Or, no—” I paused. “I'd wait with him. For ten minutes, maybe. See if anyone turned up. If not, I'd drive him to the nearest police station.”

The doctor listened unmoving, expressionless.
This is part of it,
I told myself.
He's not supposed to approve or disapprove.
That, or I was brain damaged after all, and I'd just said something so horrifying that he was contemplating reporting me to social services. Great. So much for ever having a child of my own. I couldn't even handle an imaginary one.

I thought about revising my answer yet again, but the doctor was on to something else. He wanted me to tell him about the fall in the conference center gym that morning, and about everything that had followed. I recounted for him the story as I understood it: the ruptured aneurysm, the surgery to fix it, the compressed optic nerve, the surgery after that.

“And why do you think this happened?” he asked when I was done.

I paused. I didn't understand the question.

“Why do I think this happened?” I repeated. “You mean, like, the aneurysm?”

He didn't answer.

“Okay . . . Um, from what I understand, there was a weak blood vessel in my brain. Over time, the vessel wall stretched, forming an aneurysm. About a month ago, it popped.” I assumed he was after biology, since what else could he be asking? We were both silent for a minute.

“But why?” he wanted to know. “
Why
do you think it happened?” He was doing his best not to lead me. I wondered again what he was asking.

I'd assumed he was testing me to make sure I'd heard everything Dr. Tranmer had said and that I had a full understanding of my condition. That my answer hadn't satisfied him made me think I had missed some crucial aspect of how a ruptured brain aneurysm works. Finally, I spoke up.

“I don't think I'm answering your question.”

“Well, sometimes people who have been through a thing like this say that they know why it happened,” he explained. “They believe it's because of something they did or because of some reason they can point to.”

“Wha—? I . . . No. No, I don't believe that.” I shook my head.

The doctor's question was a version of something I'd start hearing a lot: “Everything happens for a reason.” People said it to me all the time. I know they meant to comfort; the words that followed usually had something to do with the good to be found in everything, or my “path” and how the meaning of my illness would one day be clear. I'd feel my chest tighten every time and do my best not to roll my eyes.

Everything happens for a reason? I don't see it that way at all. To me, only the first part is clear: Everything happens. Then other things happen, and other things, still. Out of each of these moments, we make something. Any number of somethings, in fact.

What comes of our own actions becomes the “reason.” It is no predestined thing. We may arrive where we are by way of a specific path—we can take just one at a time—but it's never the only one that could have led to our destination. Nor does a single event, even a string of them, point decisively to a single landing spot. There are infinite possible versions of our lives. Meaning is not what happens, but what we do with what happens when it does.

“I don't know why it happened,” I said. “Um . . . do you?”

I
moved from Seattle to Cambridge alone, a month and a half after our city hall marriage and less than two months before our wedding. It was Labor Day weekend, and my graduate program was starting. Eli would remain in Seattle, wrap things up with work, fly in for our wedding at the end of October, and stay. A moving truck would follow in early November with both of our apartments' worth of stuff.

All my belongings would be in a Seattle storage unit until then, except for a few basics I'd crammed into my suitcase: a dinner plate, a cereal bowl, a frying pan, a small pot, one fork, one knife, and a spoon. At the hardware store near the university I bought a bamboo cutting board, a drinking glass, and an oversized mug. For furniture, I had an air mattress. That was it.

Eli had flown across the country with me for the long weekend to help get me settled into the apartment we'd rented. We picked up our keys, made ice cubes, bought toilet paper, milk, and eggs. On Sunday we drove up to the North Shore to see, for the first time, the wedding site we'd chosen from afar. We made a morning of it, wandering through the rooms of the Stuart-style mansion at the top of Castle Hill, walking the grassy slopes that tumbled a half mile down to the ocean, and stopping for cider doughnuts, hot out of the fryer, at the nearby farm.

We were on our way back to the highway when we spotted an antique wooden bench by the side of the road. Behind it was more furniture, spilling out from a large gray barn. We looked at each other. Eli turned the car around and pulled into the gravel driveway.

Up close, the bench was more imposing than it had been from the moving car. It was six feet long and solid oak, stained a deep chestnut, with six square, sturdy legs that matched the armrests. Its straight back was paneled with vertical slats hugged by two horizontal beams, like a railroad track. Into the top beam, someone had scratched “Bird.”

We thought the bench was perhaps an old church pew, but there were no kneelers or slots on the back for books. The seller told us that it likely once lived in a railway station, sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. A few feet from the bench stood a narrow wooden table painted rust red. Along the length of both sides hung two hinged flaps that, when raised, turned it into a perfectly respectable dining table, small and square. A half hour later, we were on our way again, having purchased both.

Deliverymen arrived in Cambridge with the furniture a few days later. They heaved the bench into place against a long wall opposite the kitchen and put the table—a full two feet shorter than the bench in length—down in front of it. I'd borrowed a green canvas camping chair from an aunt and uncle when I moved in, and I set it up on the other side of the table, facing the bench. Now, in addition to an air mattress, I had an office and a dining room in one.

My office was the bench side. I kept my laptop on the table and piled my books and notes beside me on the bench, where there was more than enough room. When I got hungry, I'd adjourn to the other side of the table and take my meals in the green camping chair.

Food was limited to what I could prepare stovetop in my small frying pan and even smaller saucepan. There was a lot of rice and soft-boiled eggs. Canned sardines with mustard on crackers. Stir-fries happened, my one small spoon pushing broccoli spears around the pan. I chopped salads of cucumber, tomato, lettuce, and parsley with my dinner knife and topped them with olive oil, salt, and a squeeze of lemon. Then, because my only bowl was often busy with leftover rice in the fridge, I'd eat directly from the board. (I still do this, by the way, even with a cupboard full of dishes nearby. A salad board, stacked with thick slabs of bread and a wedge of sharp cheddar, makes a handsome solo feast, and a romantic meal for two.)

I'd likely have eaten similarly—sparely, simply—those first weeks, even with every knife, bowl, and baking sheet on-site. I like to break in a kitchen slowly. Get a sense of where it's best to stand when spreading peanut butter on toast, and how long it takes for the water from the faucet to run cold. Soon comes a pot of something, oatmeal or soup. I learn where the garbage pail should live, the oils, salt, and spices. How wide and hot the flame burns when the dial says medium-low. The first quiet beats of a rhythm emerge. Routine enters on tiptoe. You cannot rush these things.

Meanwhile, there was a neighborhood to explore.

 • • • 

The best part about being in a new city is figuring out what's there to eat. When I moved to Jerusalem for a year at twenty-three, I paced the supermarket aisles every day for a week, inspecting the packaged snack foods, the milk sold in bags, the yogurts and cheeses arranged on the shelves by percentage of fat. I bought halvah by the pound on Fridays at the open-air
shuk
and shaved away at it every afternoon to eat with oranges and tea. I wasn't only stocking my kitchen; I was mapping out a version of home.

Mine and Eli's new apartment was on the western edge of Harvard Square, steps from the university, a five-minute walk from the T, and, if you cut through Radcliffe Yard, less than one block over from a street called Brattle. Down a ways on this street, in the heart of the square, was Cardullo's, a small grocery selling foods from all over the world. My cookies were there, the amaretti in red and white tins. Also, marmalades, spices, and teas. They stocked treats from my life in England: Dairy Milk chocolate bars, hazelnut wafers, and HobNobs, digestive biscuits made with oats. Around the bend and across the street was the Algiers Coffee House. There I discovered
mujadarrah
, a mound of tender, spiced lentils, rice, and deeply caramelized onions surrounded by a moat of yogurt. Continue on in that direction and you'd arrive at L.A. Burdick, home to the richest hot chocolate (dark or milk, your choice), served in small, white, handle-less mugs. And right next door, in an old yellow house set back from the street, was my favorite spot of all: a bakery called Hi-Rise Bread Company.

I knew right away that I'd found someplace special. Heaped on the wooden countertop were craggy scones, filled brioches, cookies, quick breads, and quiches. Golden loaves lined the side wall. They had egg sandwiches for breakfast, and killer oatmeal topped with toasted pecans and dried cherries. But what really tipped me off to the greatness of this place was a single word, printed on the menu in line with the heartier breakfast fare: toast. It was no side dish here.

My order came out in a paper-lined basket, one thick slice of yeasted cornbread and another from their Huron loaf, baked with whole wheat flour and sprouted wheat berries. Toasting here wasn't a hasty pass through a heated oven, but a thorough browning of crust and crumb. The surface of the bread had gone crisp, sharp, even, along the edges, with enough moisture left inside to lend some chew. Nestled into one corner of the basket were a triangular wedge of European butter, the kind with the highest fat, and a small cup of the bakery's homemade preserves. This was toast as it is meant to be: its own thing, a main event.

I went back to Hi-Rise as often as I could afford. Lunch there was a cup of soup and a savory raisin pecan roll, its crust so delightfully hard that the only fitting verb to describe the action of eating it is “gnaw.” Or, if I was feeling big-stomached enough to tackle it, I'd have a grilled sandwich of caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, mustard, and two kinds of cheese. More often than lunch, though, I stopped by in the late afternoons for a single, perfect almond macaroon.

The Hi-Rise almond macaroon is plump and squat, a round, rosy cookie with a whole almond pressed into its belly and dusted with powdered sugar. Squeeze, and the crisp outer crust sinks into the chewy center. Two days a week I was done with classes by 4:00 p.m. I'd take the roundabout way home, along Brattle, and stop in at Hi-Rise. If they hadn't sold out yet that day, I'd buy my macaroon. The person behind the counter would twist it up in a square of white wax paper. I'd tuck it into my tote, walk home, fix myself a mug of Earl Grey tea with milk, pull the green camping chair over to the empty side of the room by the window, put my feet up on the radiator, and eat.

The power of that almond flavor was as potent a trigger as ever. I felt the tug of homes past, New York, Ohio, cooling almond cakes, red amaretto cookie tins lost and found. All of this in a new place, on the cusp of a new life. This after-school snack was my first real ritual in Cambridge, a way of digging my heels into fresh terrain. Untwisting my macaroon from its paper, my tote bag slumped on the floor beside me, the scene felt new but also not, as though I were claiming something that was already mine. It was the feeling of a home becoming home.

I looked forward to bringing Eli to Hi-Rise, and the week after our wedding, I did. November was unseasonably warm that year. I wore a brown embroidered skirt, a muted yellow sweater, leather riding boots, and a wedding band. It was lunchtime. We ordered a sandwich to share, plus two tart lemonades, and found a table outside on the cobblestones beneath a tree. The woman who took our order recognized me. She knew we'd just married, that this was Eli, who was now here to stay, and with our order she brought a basket stuffed with treats to celebrate it all. Vanilla bean pound cake and a banana bread “cork,” a brioche filled with apricot preserves, a homemade Oreo, and an almond macaroon for me.

 • • • 

My first few days in rehab, Eli was back in Cambridge. He'd gone home to get stuff in order, to catch up on work, and for a break. In addition to the feather pillow and purple fleece blanket I'd asked him to bring when he returned, I wanted one more thing: a Hi-Rise almond macaroon. I needed it, to know that my life back home actually existed, that I hadn't just dreamed it all up. It was real. Sometimes, during those long days and nights in Vermont, I had to convince myself that it was.

I sat in my pajamas in a chair by the bed and stuck my nose into the white paper bag. The macaroon smelled sweet and floral, as ever, and I couldn't wait to take a bite. But anesthesia does a number on your taste buds. The sweetness registered like something metallic. My tongue felt coated in fuzz. I dropped the other half back into the bag and told Eli to take it away.