When I Found You (34 page)

“It’s OK,” Nathan said. “Relax. It’s normal. The doctor says it’s normal. You’ll have trouble with speech for a while. We’ll probably need to get you a speech therapist. And a physical therapist. There’ll be some muscle weakness. And—”

“What? No!”

He wanted to ask how much muscle weakness, and for how long. But he wasn’t even sure his last two syllables had come through. He couldn’t have muscle weakness. He was a boxer. Boxers can’t have muscle weakness.

He had to ask the important question. He had to make those words come out right.

He gathered his inner resources together, much the way he would if someone had asked him to lift up a car.

“When can I box?”

It was pathetic. Maybe the “when” came through well enough to guess at. The
l
sounded like
a
, and the other words never made it out of the gate in one piece.

“When …” Nathan said. “When what?”

Frustrated, Nat raised his right hand and tried to imitate writing. But the loops came out looking shaky, and bigger than he had intended.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”

A flash of silver caught Nat’s eye. In Nathan’s shirt pocket. It was the clip end of a good silver pen. He pointed to it.

Nathan looked down. “Oh. You want to write something.”

Nathan took the pen out of his pocket. Twisted it open. Then he produced a leather case of index-card-sized note cards. He pulled out a blank card and set it on top of the case, then laid it on the bed within Nat’s reach. He handed Nat the pen, helping him wrap his fingers around it.

Nat knew this wasn’t going to be much easier. So he set the bar low. Just three letters.

They came out looking as though he had written them with his left hand. Or foot. But they could be read.

B — O — X.

Nathan’s face fell. “Nat …”

Nat turned his face away. Squeezed his eyes closed. As if that would close his ears as well, and then he wouldn’t have to hear.

It didn’t work. He heard.

“Nat … You’ve just survived a craniotomy. And you were lucky to survive it. Do you know what that is? It’s a procedure that involves peeling back a huge crescent of scalp and removing a square window of bone out of your skull. So the surgeon could flush out a very large hematoma that was putting pressure on your brain. They replaced the piece of skull, but right now you have steel plates holding it in place. Not forever. But you’ll have other problems, and they’re not going away overnight. Muscle weakness …”

There it was again. Nat shook his head, as if he could deny it and thereby avoid it.

“… speech difficulties. Motor-skill difficulties. You may even have seizures, but they can be controlled with—”

Nathan stopped speaking. Because Nat had raised a hand and was moving it, carefully, inexactly, toward Nathan’s face. The hand, much as he tried to direct it accurately, landed gently on Nathan’s forehead. Nathan remained tensely silent, as though straining to understand.

Nat tried again. This time the hand found its mark. It pressed firmly over the older man’s mouth.

They remained that way for a beat or two.

Then Nathan gently took hold of Nat’s wrist, removed the hand, and placed it on the sheet near Nat’s hip.

“I guess we can talk about that some other time,” he said.

Nat held very still, his eyes closed. Hoping he appeared to be doing something other than what he was doing. Trying desperately not to cry.

“Nat,” Nathan said. His voice low. Almost reverent. “What happened? What happened to you on your last night in New York?” A silence. “How do you sign on for some practice sparring and come home with a traumatic brain injury?”

The tears gained the upper hand. Nat concentrated all his effort, all his strength, into his eyelids. But apparently they were suffering from muscle weakness, too. Or maybe the tears were stronger than he had realized. Stronger than he had ever been. Anyway, it was too late. A couple of tears had made it past the guards. Out where Nathan could see.

“Never mind,” Nathan said. “I guess we can talk about that some other time, too.”

11 August 1980   

At a little after seven in the evening, Nathan set down his newspaper and turned off the light in the den. The darkness surprised him, because both Nat and Carol were home. Then he corrected himself. Carol was home, in addition to Nat. When was Nat ever not home?

In any case, he expected lights to be on in some other part of the house.

He stepped out into the darkness of the living room and heard sobbing. He switched on a lamp. Carol did not look up or respond. She continued to cry, curled in a fetal position, on her side on the sofa.

Nathan resisted the temptation to ask foolish questions, such as, what’s wrong? From the point of view of Carol’s world, what
wasn’t
wrong?

He sat down beside her on the couch. Put a hand on her shoulder. She sat up and tucked under his arm, still crying. Though it made him uncomfortable to play such a role, Nathan sat still with his arm around her while she cried it out.

After a time he said, “I take it he still won’t talk to you.”

“Right.”

“Anything worse than usual going on?”

“Yes.”

But she didn’t immediately elaborate. And he opted for declining to pry. A few seconds of silence. Her sobs seemed to be calming some.

Then she said, “He said one word to me tonight. One word. Guess what it was?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Nathan.”

“Nathan what?”

“He wants to do his physical therapy with you. Not me.”

“How do you get all that from the one word: Nathan?”

“Because I asked him. I said, ‘Nathan what? What about Nathan?’ And he pointed to what I was doing with his leg. And I said, ‘What? You want Nathan to do your PT with you?’ And he nodded.” On that last sentence, she began again to cry softly.

“Why would he want that?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t understand him at all these days. I don’t understand why five months later he suddenly doesn’t want me for the exercises any more. I don’t understand why he talks to you, but not to me.”

“Barely. He barely talks to me.”

“Well, it’s a pile of words compared to how much he says to me.”

“Have you ever asked him why? Oh. Never mind. That was a foolish question. I forgot. He doesn’t talk to you, so what good would it do to ask questions? I’ll go in and see if I can find out what’s going on with him.”

“Thanks, Nathan.”

•  •  •

Nathan found Nat lying on his back on the bed, in just a pair of boxer shorts, listening to the irritating drone of some kind of raucous cartoon comedy show on TV. The TV he’d insisted on having placed in his and Carol’s bedroom. He did not look up as Nathan came through the door.

Feathers lay on the bed beside Nat, snoring audibly, his chin on Nat’s belly. Nat stroked the dog’s head absent-mindedly while he gazed at the TV screen.

Nathan stood over the bed for a moment, expecting the young man’s eyes to meet his eventually.

It was hard not to notice that Nat’s body was changing.

Nathan’s mind filled with the image of Nat’s last night in the Golden Gloves in New York. In the remembered image, his chest was so fully developed. Carved, almost. Visible right through his tank top. The muscles in his calves looked like thick ropes. The circumference of his upper arms was so remarkably impressive.

Now he looked as if he’d gained twenty pounds and lost twenty pounds of muscle, all at the same time.

Nat’s eyes finally came up. Questioning.

Nathan turned off the TV.

“Hey!” Nat said. Just that one word, exiting Nat’s mouth all by itself, sounded almost normal.

“You need to do your physical therapy,” Nathan said.

The young man turned his face away.

Nathan picked up one of Nat’s bare feet. Raised Nat’s leg so that his knee bent, and his calf paralleled the bed. He waited for Nat to push against his hand. And waited. He shouldn’t have needed to say, “Push against my hand.” After five months of physical therapy, both the professional and the homework variety, Nathan figured he must have caught on to the routine by now.

“What’s going on with you tonight?” Nathan asked. Nat only shrugged.

“Would you like to start by pushing against my hand?” Light pressure from Nat’s bare heel. Very light. “I can’t imagine that’s all you’ve got.”

First only silence. Then Nat spoke. “Don’t you know… I’m a cripple?”

The words twisted in the usual way as they made their way through Nat’s mouth, sounding like the words of a deaf person guessing at speech. But Nathan was able to understand each one.

“Your speech is getting better.”

Nat snorted bitter laughter. “I sound like … a retard,” he said.

Much as Nathan hated to admit it, and unlikely as he was to say it out loud, Nat did speak as though he suffered from a serious learning disability.

A thought struck him for the first time. “Is that why you won’t talk to Carol?”

Nat turned his face away again, and did not reply.

“Carol loves you, Nat. That young woman genuinely loves you. You have to trust that. You have to trust that it’s really you she loves. Not the speech patterns or the biceps.” The minute the words left his mouth, Nathan realized that the comment about Nat’s muscles would have been better left unsaid.

A long silence, during which Nat did not bother to push against Nathan’s hand.

Then Nat moved his right hand in a way that suggested writing. Asking Nathan to give him something to write with, and on.

“No,” Nathan said. “I promised your speech therapist I would not let you write things out any more. She says it’s a lazy habit. You need to keep practicing your speech, Nat. You won’t get it back without practice.”

More silence. Nathan watched the young man move his jaw in some indecipherable, repetitious pattern. Finally, Nat took his leg back from Nathan and let it fall on to the bed.

“Tell me what’s wrong tonight,” Nathan said. “I know a lot has been wrong for a long time. I know this is a hard adjustment for you. But something changed tonight. And I’m hoping you’ll tell me what it is.”

Nathan sat down on the edge of the bed and waited.

A split second before he gave up and left Nat to his solitude, the young man spoke. His words formed slowly, with long breaks in between. A pattern that suggested great concentration and stress on his part.

“Finally … figured out …” He trailed off.

“What? You figured out what, Nat?”

“I won’t …” He trailed off again, as if refusing to finish.

“What, Nat? You won’t do what?”

“Make the doctors eat their words.”

A long, sad silence. I should have known, Nathan thought. Whatever the doctors told him to expect, I should have known he wouldn’t believe it. Not Nat. He’d think those rules applied to everybody else except him.

“Nat—”

“I’m disappearing.”

“You’re still here, Nat.”

“Look.” He raised his right arm, somewhat unsteadily, and tried to flex his bicep. With less than dramatic results.

“I really don’t think a big bicep is the heart of the issue here, Nat. But if you want your muscle tone to improve, you need to throw yourself much harder into your physical therapy.”

“Tired,” Nat said.

Nathan sighed. “I understand. I can imagine you would be. But I’ve never known you to give up before. So I know you’ll keep up with the exercises.”

Long silence.

“With you,” Nat said.

“You don’t want Carol to help you with your therapy any more?”

Nat shook his head.

“Because you don’t want her to see you like this?”

Nathan waited. But Nat never answered.

After a time, Nathan rose, turned the TV back on, and left Nat alone.

4 March 1981   

“Yeah? Who is it?” Manny Schultz’s voice, calling through his battered and poorly painted apartment door. It was like a flashback for Nathan, who had stood in this spot on one previous occasion. Only the weather had changed. It was now a lovely, cool spring afternoon.