Louise Read online

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Warner, Louise’s father, knows there is no one to blame. It was just a medical fluke. But still, he wonders if back when she was nine she should have been on a longer bed rest. Should the doctors have done more tests? Maybe the divorce had been stressful. Did Louise stay out late at night? Did she sleep enough? What about alcohol, cigarettes? Warner does not think he is the right sort of father for this situation at all.

  •

  Warner is an artist, a painter. He does landscapes, working from photographs taken from planes. Crops, rivers, and subdivisions make interesting designs, he thinks. He has taught college classes, but he is happier working in solitude. He wears glasses that are metal and angular, and cooks hot and sour soup from scratch. His cats are on antidepressants. He likes to put on corduroys and mock turtlenecks and ride his bicycle. He used to be a businessman, the publisher of a newspaper. After Louise’s first incident, in fourth grade, the two spent a lot of time together in his studio, where he painted at night. They would watch operas he had taped, The Marriage of Figaro or The Magic Flute. He and Janet separated when Louise was 12 years old. He had moved into a rental house a few miles away, and on the kids’ first night over, the potatoes had exploded in the oven and the toilet clogged. Louise had helped him pick out new dishes and bedspreads.

  It wasn’t that he and Janet fought much, at least not back then. The problem was that Janet liked dinner parties and activities like karate and tennis. She liked the company of other people. Warner had a total of three friends, and even that was too many. After the divorce everything was fine for a while—that is, until Janet decided to take over her father’s newspaper in Iola, Kansas. She took the kids with her. Louise had been out of high school, Tom and Michael in grade school. After that they could not speak anymore without saying something vicious.

  Janet has called to say they will need to find another surgeon, but in the meantime, she needs to go back to Kansas for a week to manage the paper. Warner leaves his new wife, Elizabeth, at home in Michigan and goes to Santa Barbara to be with his daughter. Warner has not seen his daughter sick in bed like this since she was a child. Actually there was one time, shortly after he and Janet divorced, that he found Louise standing over the sink in her pajamas very early in the morning. She’d just thrown up in the sink. He knew she’d been out late with her friends, but he didn’t say anything, and neither had she.

  •

  Warner is not sure what to do after Janet leaves Louise’s apartment. He decides to make Louise a cup of tea. He finds fruity flavors in a drawer and puts one in a cup with water and microwaves it. He peeks inside their bedroom. It is worse than a college dorm. Mattress on the floor. Open suitcases. The walls, bare. Clothes everywhere. And the living room—nothing there but a canvas couch and a small television. Who could heal in a place like this?

  Louise tries to sit up when she sees him, but gets tangled in the purple sheets and he has to help her. She is wearing a giant red T-shirt with a stretched-out neckline. Her left eye is drooping and bloodshot. Her lips are chapped and crusted. The last time he’d seen her was Thanksgiving, and Warner remembers teasing her and Claude as they posed for a picture, saying that they looked like a couple he’d seen in a magazine at the supermarket. Louise had polished off three silver cans of energy juice, but that had been the extent of his worries. He thinks of what he’d just seen on the drive from LAX: endless, bland beaches, showy Italian cars, groups of spoiled women in jogging suits. He’d warned her not to move to Santa Barbara. It’s a terminus, he’d said.

  Warner pats the covers around Louise, rubbing her arms as if she’s cold. Are you hungry? What sounds good? What can I bring you? What can I do?

  •

  Warner tells Louise he would like to take her to Uncle Charlie’s house up in the Santa Ynez Valley, forty-five minutes away. It is quiet there, with golden hills and vineyards, fields of lavender and horses. Unlike here, with the highway so close.

  Louise starts crying. He can smell her medicine breath. Claude comes in the apartment handling cigarettes and a fast-food drink. She calls out to him.

  They give Louise Xanax and she becomes more agreeable. Claude makes sure she has all the necessary gear. Warner is glad Claude knows about these things, although he wishes Claude would button up his shirt a bit more. Claude gets in the passenger seat and lets Warner drive. He asks Warner questions about his art. Not such a bad guy, Warner thinks. The drive through the canyon winds and winds. Louise faces the window. Warner wonders if she is looking at the scenery, or at her reflection with that eye patch.

  They pull up to the house, which is stucco with pillars and rambling. It is ten minutes away from Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.

  •

  As soon as Louise is tucked into bed, Claude says he has to drive back to the office to catch up on work. Warner drinks wine on the patio with Charlie and his sister-in-law. When Louise calls down the hallway, Warner jogs to her bedroom. Her eye patch is off. One eye is crossed. He looks. Louise says she is feeling a bit better, so he carries her outside. She has not moved in many days; her right side is too weak to support her. The night is cool. Small white lights are strung up around some chairs and a fountain trickles. She talks with her aunt and uncle. Warner wonders about his daughter. He has no clue if Louise reads magazines or watches the news. He doesn’t know who her friends are, or if they are smart. He can’t remember if Janet is a good mother, and if she is, then what exactly she is good at. Warner can’t remember teaching Louise anything of importance. He doesn’t recall showing his children how to solve a math equation or mow a lawn. He wonders what they think of him. He wonders what he has missed.

  The next day, Warner and his brother sit in the kitchen, petting Charlie’s two small dogs, golden corgis with big ears. “She’s not eating,” Warner says. They wonder if the anti-anxiety medication or the headache pills have killed Louise’s appetite. They try and think of foods that will tempt her.

  “Fast food? Or is she a salad girl?” Charlie asks.

  “I don’t know,” Warner says. “I don’t know what she likes.”

  The brothers look similar. They both have neat hair and are slim. They walk with their hands in their pockets, swaying a little. Charlie plays the piano and wears cashmere sweaters in earthy tones. He has an office in Santa Barbara, but no one can ever remember what it is that he does.

  Louise can hear them talking as she lies in the bedroom. She is afraid that she needs to be thought of in this way, as someone whose nutrition and emotional health must be monitored. She feels removed from her body and what is happening to her, and she watches herself like a ghost.

  “Meditation?” says Warner.

  “Maybe stretching,” Charlie suggests.

  •

  Warner has researched Louise’s condition late at night on the internet and found a neurosurgeon in Phoenix who wrote a book called The Color Atlas of Microneurosurgery. Apparently, the neurosurgeon listens to heavy metal rock music while he operates. Warner is compiling a list of surgeons to contact. He has four big books on illnesses of the brain and is reading them simultaneously. His brother and sister-in-law help him research. Their teenage children keep Louise entertained with funny movies and teenager talk. The coffee table is now a mailing center, full of envelopes and sticky pads. The only topic of conversation: Louise’s health.

  Warner feels alone in all of this. It’s his own fault, he knows. He should call his wife Elizabeth more often, talk longer. The last time they spoke she’d offered to come to California, and he hadn’t really given her a straight answer. In truth he’s not sure he could handle any more changes right now.

  He thinks about Claude. They have only been together, what, a year? This must be more than he bargained for. Claude usually shows up during the ten o’clock news, and Warner has noticed that when Claude hugs her, she hangs on so tight, for such a long time, that Claude has to shake her off. Warner wonders if it is love, or fear, that makes Louise act the way sh
e does.

  Louise will let no one shower her but Claude. She wants Claude to do everything. Claude sets an alarm that goes off every two hours during the night so he can give her those pills. Their bedroom is right below Warner’s, and sometimes Warner wakes up and just listens, wondering if he should go knock on the door and see if Louise is awake. But what would he say?

  •

  Warner and Louise go for daily walks in the backyard, which is full of trees. She can’t balance on her own, but she can shuffle, with long pauses between steps, leaning on trees. Warner helps hold her up. Fields of grapes can be seen from a distance, yellow shuttle buses of tourists.

  “Remember when we took the trip to Sea World?” Louise asks. “Before Michael was born? And our car broke down on the freeway?”

  Warner says yes.

  “When you left the car to find a pay phone, I thought you were never coming back,” Louise says. “Mom told me not to drink any more juice boxes because Tom needed the last one. I thought she meant that was the last juice box ever, and that you were gone forever, and that we would all die. Dumb, right?” She laughs.

  Warner doesn’t know what to say. He isn’t sure what she’s getting at, but it seems important, so he takes her hands off the tree and puts her arms around him, holding her steady.

  •

  Louise is thinking of another trip. She’d just graduated high school, and Warner surprised her with a trip to Paris, just the two of them. He took her to Versailles and the Louvre. They’d walked up to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. He’d smoked a cigar while she ate ice cream and looked at the city sparkling below.

  On the last afternoon they ate sandwiches in a dark café at a table next to an old man and his Great Dane and discussed the Monica Lewinsky scandal. For some reason her father was defending Clinton. “Dad, he’s the president!” she’d said. Louise had been amazed that Warner wasn’t more outraged. The blue dress, the cigar, all of it.

  Warner swished his wine around, staring into the glass.

  “Really, it’s not that interesting,” he’d said. “As you get older, you’ll find that people do all sorts of idiotic things.”

  She’d stared at him. She’d been drinking red wine.

  “Let’s order dessert,” he said. “You’re young, you should have something.”

  Louise had been unsettled by this conversation. She had wanted there to be certainty. She had wanted her father to weigh in. But now she thinks she understands what he meant. Other people’s actions and their problems are not of her concern. We all, sooner or later, have enough drama in our own lives to keep us occupied. We all have enough pain of our own.

  •

  On Valentine’s Day Claude brings Louise flowers and take-out Italian food. Warner gives her a big cane with a red bow tied on it. They all laugh about the cane, which has a four-pronged base for extra stability. Rubber grips! The cane is the winner. Now she won’t have to hang on to furniture for support. Louise hugs her father, hiding her face in his blazer. It is clear, now, that she is a disabled person. That is how everyone sees her, and will continue to see her.

  •

  On his commute to work early the next morning, Claude hunches over the steering wheel, shirt unbuttoned, windows down. He is angry. He hates doing this, hates getting up early and tiptoeing out of the huge house to avoid seeing anyone. If Louise wakes up while he is combing his hair she will start to cry, and attending to that will make him late. He has gotten lax at caring for her. Her aunt and uncle have a large, glass shower that he can stand in while Louise sits on a stool. He sudses her hair quickly with loose fingers. He brushes her hair but she ruins it by lying down while it is damp, so it has weird waves. Her skin is red and pimply in a way he has never seen.

  He remembers the Ugly Party she threw with her college roommates. Everyone was supposed to wear the ugliest, most insane clothes they could find. Louise went to a thrift store and bought a black and teal paisley sweater that she wore as a dress, with a wide belt and fishnet tights and high-heeled gold sandals. It was sexy. She had looked good. She’d cheated.

  •

  While lying in bed in the dark, Claude asks Louise why she thought the cavernous angioma had burst now. Why now, of all times?

  “Maybe you were stressed, moving out here?” he says. “You were anxious about finding a job. Remember?”

  “So it’s my fault?” Louise asks. “I did this to myself? What about all of those parties you took me to? Those dinners with your terrible boss? The drugs. The drinking. We did all that together. Remember?”

  “I didn’t mean—that came out wrong.”

  He knows he should apologize. He should reach over and stroke her face, but he can’t make himself. She doesn’t say anything more.

  Everyone at his job asks what happened to his pretty girlfriend. Was it lack of sleep or unclean air? Bad diet?

  Claude knows this does not happen because of nothing. Everything has a cause. People hurt themselves, whether they know it or not.

  •

  The next day, Warner takes Louise for a car ride around the hills of the Santa Ynez Valley. They barely get out of the driveway before she starts screaming. Her eyes do not know where to look, she says. She tears off her eye patch and covers her ears and presses her head to her knees. “The light, it hurts, it hurts,” she moans. Warner is scared. She is getting worse, he thinks. He thinks of his own father, who used to taunt Warner’s brother for wearing sunglasses, saying, “What’s the matter, Charlie? The sun hurts your precious eyes?” And to Warner, “What’s up with the paintbrushes? Why don’t you go to military school and toughen up?” Warner would never run a finger across the top of Louise’s dresser to see if she had dusted. He would never make her pull weeds in the hot sun while he sat on the porch drinking scotch. He wants Louise to know he is a comforting, sensitive dad. He wants her to know he is sorry for the car ride, for her pain, for not knowing any better than he does.

  “This isn’t a contest to see who is the bravest,” he says. “You can always tell me what you want. Would you like to go inside and sit on the couch? Do you want your eye pillow, the one filled with lavender buds? How about that? Some soda?”

  “Dad,” Louise cries. “Soda is not what I want.”

  •

  Claude picks Louise up from Uncle Charlie’s and takes her back to their Santa Barbara apartment. She has a flight the next morning to go back to Kansas to be with her mother for a while, until the family can find another surgeon.

  Claude packs up her things. “Your mom can help you better than we can.”

  She watches him. “I don’t want to go.”

  By the time Claude is finished packing her up it is dark out. He says he is going to the office. She begins to cry.

  “Look,” he says, “I took the afternoon off to drive you here so you can lie under a blanket, just like you would do anywhere.”

  “Don’t you want to spend our last night together?” she asks.

  “It’s not like it’s our last night ever.”

  “But what if it is?”

  Claude runs out to Louise’s favorite take-out place. He waits in a long line and finally leaves with the seafood soup and corn tortillas she says she can’t live without. Claude likes the way things are going at work. His boss tells him he is smart and has potential, even stops by Claude’s desk sometimes to chat about the national news or sports. He assigned Claude an interview with the golf club president and printed the whole thing verbatim on the front page with Claude’s byline. Claude makes sure to never leave work before his boss, and he is always serious, unless, of course, he needs to laugh at a joke, or make one. He can’t ditch his job now. He knows that’s what she wants.

  When Claude gets back to the apartment Louise is watching a crime show. She begs him to please not leave her alone. “If a serial killer breaks in, how would I defend myself?”

  Claude sees she is serious. He starts yelling. He gets close to her neck, saying she is a bloodsucker, that he is no nurse
. Why doesn’t she try to help herself? Why doesn’t she do something to improve her situation instead of just lying around? She throws her shoe at him. He slams the door.

  The office is empty. He sits in his boss’s leather chair. The phone rings and rings, but he does not answer. He switches on the computer. He stays there all night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Warner and Janet email.

  The emails begin with “Hi” and “Dear.” They end with “Best.”

  One thing about the trouble with their daughter: It has made them want to be kind.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The main industry in Janet’s town, Iola, Kansas, is a chocolate candy factory. There is also a defunct rubber plant.

  When Janet sees Louise helped off the plane by an attendant she is shocked. Her daughter is still wearing an eye patch. She has a cane, and her limp is worse. Her T-shirt and sweatpants look like she’s been wearing them for a week. Louise is crabby and teary and can’t even snap her right fingers together anymore.

  Janet feels guilty. Her shirt is crisp and clean. Her hair is curled under and held back with a headband. She does a yoga video every day and has an exercise ball. She rarely gets sick. Louise has very little luggage. Janet grips her daughter’s arm and leads her to the car.

  People around town have filled Janet’s house with gifts for Louise: a stuffed toy lamb, a framed poem about Jesus, a sign to hang over a doorknob about staying strong. Janet has opened piles of cards, most of which contain pre-printed phrases such as, “We are praying for you,” “Everything happens for a reason,” or “God has a plan.” Louise had announced that she does not believe in God and is irritated by people who do. Janet goes to church, but seeing Louise like this, she has to wonder.

  Louise walks past all the gifts and turns on the TV.

  •

  Claude calls Louise, but not as often as he should. She can’t hear that well. He keeps having to repeat: “I miss you. I love you. How are you feeling?” Louise says Claude should send her more letters and packages, that he should buy one of those video cameras he can hook up to his computer, that he should always answer his cell phone when she calls, no matter what. She reminds him of the sweet things he used to do for her, like the time in college when she flew out to visit him, and he blindfolded her outside his house, a white duplex on a little street, saying he had a surprise. It had been night, and the air had smelled like a candle. You could hear the ocean and the neighborhood was quiet. He took her by the hand and led her up the stairs, carefully, so she would not fall. There was a trail of rose petals leading to the bedroom. All the lights were off and little votive candles made a heart shape on the floor. A bubble bath was filling up. “It had been like a dream,” she says to Claude now. “It had been what every girl wanted.”