Louise Page 9

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Through all that has happened I always made hair appointments. I have kept it trimmed and light-colored. There is always someone who will do that for you. There is always someone who will ring up new clothes, cash your check, or point to the line where you sign a lease. There are people who will bring you food and clear away your dirty plates. You can pay someone to counsel you on your self-esteem, on your self-abuse. An eating, drinking, smoking, or sex problem. You can hire someone to help you exercise, or shop. You can have someone come in your house and organize your kitchen cupboards and bedroom closet. There are places that will take all of your old clothes and other things and give them to other people. You do not have to throw them away yourself. If you call a certain number, someone will tell you directions to anywhere, and if you look on the computer, you can see your apartment from a camera that shoots from space. You can go on dating websites and find potential partners. You can see their pictures. You can know their personalities, their weaknesses, even. But that is as far as it goes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Janet’s doctor boyfriend has proposed. Her engagement ring is a band of blue diamonds, quite rare. They arrange a dinner with Louise, Tom, and Michael a few days before Christmas. The couple started dating soon after Louise’s brain surgeries, which means they have only been together for eight months. Janet and the doctor stand up and announce their plans, and Louise gives the doctor a big hug. This surprises Janet. Maybe volunteering has helped her become more compassionate, she thinks.

  “I’m expecting a call,” Louise says, and plops her phone on the table.

  Janet and the doctor discuss which songs and flowers will be featured at the wedding. They will serve a nontraditional cheesecake. Everyone nods approvingly. Louise checks her phone every other minute. Janet wonders who Louise could be waiting for—a friend? Some kind of date? Who can Louise date? Can she, even? What would the doctors say? Her therapist?

  Janet wonders if she should have a talk with Louise. But any conversation about dating would be ridiculous because Janet does not have any advice for Louise. None at all.

  •

  In the middle of dessert Louise’s phone rings. “I have a date!” she says after hanging up. Janet is relieved to see that this person in her daughter’s mind really does exist, and that she is so excited, just like she used to be. But Janet is also very scared. She wonders what this guy is like. Why did he choose Louise? Who, besides them, her family, knows how to treat her? Who else can be good enough to her?

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Hat Guy and I have a date. I met him in a writing class and he said that we should hang out. I hardly know him. I have heard he plays poker for money, gambles at kitchen tables in smoky rooms where people’s animals are on chains in the side yard. I know that he skateboards and always wears a baseball hat. I’m not sure if I like him, but I cannot afford to be picky. No matter what anybody says, I am as bad as I think. Probably worse.

  We go out to dinner, and I use his arm for balance. He holds it strong. Our waitress looks at us quizzically, like she is doing a silent logical equation. Maybe she thinks we are related. The waitress speaks loud and slow, until I say my order and she realizes that I can both hear and speak.

  Hat Guy teaches me how to play Texas Hold’em at his apartment, in his bed. He wears his hat while we have sex, and when we are finished, he goes to the bathroom and throws up. He comes out and says he’s not used to drinking so much. He falls asleep and I cry into the back of his hat. The next morning I start crying again, and he squeezes my shoulder and tells me I have nice, womanly curves. This makes me feel better. We drink soda from a two-liter bottle.

  •

  I tell my new friend Janey about Hat Guy, and she laughs so hard about his puking that take-out coffee explodes out of her mouth and all over the dashboard of my car. We are in the parking lot of a tattoo parlor. I take the bandage off my wrist, and little beads of blood are seeping through the ink. The tattoo is of two angel wings crossed at the bottom so that the shape is a heart. We got the idea from a necklace we saw minutes before at Urban Outfitters.

  “This has got to be good for you, getting out there and sleeping with guys,” she says. “It’s recovery.”

  I think so, too. I’ve got to start somewhere.

  “My mom could use your sense of humor,” she says, redoing her high ponytail in the visor mirror. Janey’s mom is in the serious stages of multiple sclerosis and does not tell funny life stories. She lives halfway across the country, gets morphine shots every day, and is in a wheelchair. Her hair and teeth are almost gone. I found all this out the first day we spoke.

  We were both taking a seminar on how to write a professional book review. One day I showed up with a bag of bagels because the class was so long, and there was a note on the door. The professor was sick and the classroom was empty, except for Janey, who was crying on a wooden desk. We left, and went out for brunch and had Bloody Marys, and she told me about her mom. I told her my story, too. “God, you’re amazing,” she said. “I think you’re gorgeous. I can see it.”

  Her phone is always ringing. It rings while we’re in the parking lot, talking about Hat Guy. “Hey lady!” she says into the receiver, which means it’s her mother. She mouths to me. “Wanna talk to her?”

  She always asks me this. And I always say no. I don’t want to hear what that kind of sad sounds like.

  •

  I meet Hat Guy’s friends. He takes me to a place with air hockey and he starts pounding beers and gets the hiccups. Some of the girls try to get me in a group photo. I refuse.

  “Come on, Louise, what’s the big deal?” Hat Guy says. “You look fine.” The girls have on thick black eyeliner and high heels, which I never will be able to walk in again.

  I tell Hat Guy I don’t like pictures of myself. He gulps his drink, and says, “Nobody notices your face. Nobody cares.” He tugs me into the group. His tug tells me I’m not getting out of this. I link arms with someone I do not know. I make sure to look at the ground.

  When we get back to his apartment he throws up again. With his baseball cap still on, he comes out of the bathroom and gets into bed. He calls me babe, and lets me take off the hat. He is bald underneath, with a fringe of hair around the bottom. He says his friends loved me. He doesn’t say what he thinks about me though. He lies on his back and passes out.

  •

  Janey calls me late at night to sleep on my couch. She does this more and more. She wants some of the prescription pain pills that are left over from the surgeries. I give her more than I should. It is all I know to offer. We have morphed from girlfriends into something more like crippled dependents; there is no more charming or convincing each other of likability or goodness. No more compliments or caring conversation. She seems to expect me to always answer the phone or door, and I always do.

  At restaurants she orders too many appetizers and expensive wine and pays for it all. She buys me gifts—one, a necklace of a stone hanging on a thin gold chain that I tangle. She lends me piles of books and clothes I might like. She kidnaps me: picks me up for a quick cup of coffee that turns into a scavenger hunt for the perfect pair of tiny jeans. We drive by the homes of her ex-boyfriends and just sit there, staring. I don’t know what good I am doing her. I am scared that her mom will die. Then she will only have me.

  •

  Hat Guy keeps suggesting that we go jogging or bike riding or that I try skateboarding. “It will help you get better,” he says. “How do you know you can’t if you don’t try?”

  I wonder if he’s noticed that I can’t walk in a straight line. That I rise from a chair and nearly tip over. When I confide to him that being surrounded by pretty girls who wear eye shadow and dangly earrings makes me feel strange, he never responds. I don’t wear accessories anymore—I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I don’t want people to look at me, ever. I don’t know what people see, and this scares me.

  Hat Guy refuses to a
cknowledge the extent of our physical differences. He only sees part of me. It’s like he sees me, but squinting.

  One night, on the phone, I end it.

  “What?” he says. “Why? I thought we had a good thing going.”

  “I know,” I say, “but I can’t have you pretending that I am normal and will get better soon. It annoys me and I can’t be annoyed anymore.” I get off the phone.

  What I am thinking is that after Claude, I can’t be the pathetic one. I can’t wonder why a guy is with me, is it guilt or pity, or is it real affection. I am not here to make a martyr out of anybody. That part of me was used up last time. The next guy I meet has to be made of different material.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Louise is walking carefully down some campus steps with a hot lunch and holding on to the railing. She sees a blind woman coming up with a guide dog. They are taking the steps quickly. Louise tries to move over, shuffling sideways across the concrete until she can get a hand on the railing on the other side, but before she can make it the dog leaps up like a wolf and knocks her down. Then the dog steps on her as it goes on up the stairs. The dog does not bark, its tags just clink. The woman goes around. Louise’s lasagna has spilled on her shirt. She feels like she should say something, but what would she say? I’m handicapped, too?

  Sometimes Louise goes back to that same stairwell around lunchtime. She stands in the corner, waiting, and sure enough, close to noon, there they are, the woman and her seeing-eye dog, practically racing up the steps. Louise imagines lying down in their path, horizontal, making her body pencil-straight so she fits on a single stair. The dog’s paws would punch her stomach and the woman would plant a shoe in her chest. Louise would get some satisfaction out of this. She would let them do it again and again and again. Thinking of this makes her think of Claude for some reason. It makes her laugh.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  It is Halloween, and a guy named Nick is driving me and my friend Kelly home from a party. Kelly is an eighties girl and I am dressed as nothing. This guy is in a suit and a bow tie with a camera around his neck; he says he’s supposed to be some historic photographer. He is a photographer in real life, too. He’s cute, in a shaved-head sort of way. I like the stubble on his face and his voice, which is soft. We drive through the smashed-pumpkin streets.

  He gets out and opens the car door for me and Kelly. I ask him not to watch as I walk up my building’s stairs. I tell him it will take me a while. He says okay, and his eyes meet mine and do not look away, which startles me. I watch him drive off.

  Kelly lives two houses down. She follows me up the stairs to make sure I don’t fall.

  The next day I email Nick a thank-you. I don’t know his last name or where he lives, and I don’t know what he knows about me. We have mutual friends, and I’m sure he’s heard enough. A back-and-forth starts. On the road for his job, he sends me photos of his hotel rooms in Las Vegas or Dallas, and sometimes images of the sky. I try not to hope. I try.

  •

  A gold weight the size of a pinkie nail is sewn into my left eyelid. This is so my eyelid will close at night, if pulled down by a finger, and stay closed. “You have some real jewelry and you’re not even married!” says my surgeon. He injects the movable half of my forehead with Botox, to match the paralyzed side. This isn’t just cosmetic. He says the weak half might start moving if the strong side is stilled. “Motivate the little guys to do their job,” the surgeon says. After a few days, my whole forehead stops moving. I try to wiggle my left eyebrow, the weak one. Nothing. The little guys seem to have given up for good.

  My left eye is operated on again. The goal is to pull the pupil toward the center so I no longer see double. The dream is to get both of my eyes to gaze at the same thing at the same time. This will require multiple operations. After each one, we have to wait a few days for the stitches to dissolve to see if the surgery has worked.

  I test myself. I lie on my bed and watch the ceiling fan rotate. I watch the yellow lines on the highway as my mother drives me back to the hospital for a checkup. Everything is still double. “Maybe next time,” the surgeon always says.

  There is some good news: My eyes appear less crossed now. This makes me happy, maybe happier than it should.

  •

  I learn that another girl likes Nick. She claims to be his best friend. Her name is Mallory, and one night out of the blue she calls me and invites me out for drinks.

  We go to a biker bar. It is really a brand-new building with linoleum floors and posters of motorcycles on the walls. Nick is in Hawaii for a shoot—a college basketball tournament, Mallory tells me, which I already know from the emails. “I have him write down his traveling schedule for me,” she says. “The guy can’t take care of himself. I need to know when to feed him!”

  I ask her if they’re together, or ever were. She’s sitting on my left, so I have to turn my whole head to see her.

  “No, no,” she says. “Nope. We’re too close for that.”

  She is very cheerful.

  I take big swallows of an icy gin and tonic. The windows are open and the wind is freezing. My hand aches from gripping the glass. Mallory asks me if there is anyone I like. I say no one. “Oh, I have the perfect friend for you!” she says. She means her roommate, who spends most of his time playing video games and hasn’t had a girlfriend since high school.

  On the way home, we drive by Nick’s apartment building. “I decorated it, of course,” she says, “beige and blue.” She laughs, and I laugh, too, but we are not laughing at the same thing.

  As she drops me off, she says, “Nick’s just not really a girlfriend kind of guy, you know? He works too much. Besides, he’s very picky.”

  I slam the car door. She isn’t looking at me anymore.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  I am scheduled for a facial reconstructive surgery, one that we hope will bring some mobility to the left side of my face. Before I go through that, I want to get the rest of my stuff from Claude’s place. I want our lives separated, our ties permanently severed.

  Two friends from college fly out to California and help me pack up my things. Claude has left for the afternoon because I do not want to see him. Claude has shoveled all of my belongings into a pile in the middle of the room. Tampons are mixed in with t-shirts and picture frames.

  “Let’s just get in and get out,” one friend says, and I agree, but find myself wanting to look at everything.

  I see Claude’s dirty dishes, plates crusted with melted cheese, and bowls with graying milk and cereal bits. At the desk, I pick up a pile of hot pink sticky notes that could only have been mine. The bedroom is the same dark mess of purple sheets and a mattress, and I remember lying there, day after day, after returning from that Los Angeles hospital. One of my friends finds me in the bedroom closet and stops me from pulling all of the buttons off Claude’s shirts.

  I don’t have Nick. I don’t have Claude. I don’t have anything but my own self-pity.

  No, I tell myself. Don’t.

  •

  The facial reconstructive surgeries happen in two parts. After the first, the nurse gives me a pass to go to the restaurant across the street. My mother wheels me across the street and into a restaurant. I’m starving, so she sets down a huge plate of club sandwiches with lots of bacon and mayonnaise and shiny french fries. The left side of my face is so weak that I have to hold my lips together in order to chew and swallow without food falling out. My mom doesn’t say anything, not about this. She talks and talks so I won’t have to.

  Nick and I have been emailing this whole time. His jokes and little anecdotes make me laugh and forget everything else. While my mother’s talking, a thought comes into my head: What if he was sitting across from me right now?

  The strange thing is, the thought didn’t make me any less happy. I will not give up like Mallory thinks I will. It is my time now.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  My therapist suggests that I ask Nick to lunch. She says lunc
h is no pressure. She says the only way to get rid of your fears is to confront them head-on.

  The next day Nick is sitting across from me. We eat soup and salad and he tells me about his trip to Hawaii to photograph the college basketball tournament. He’d taken a picture of the head coach with no shirt on, and the picture made the front page of the city paper. “The coach called the paper and complained,” Nick says. “He said his stomach looked flabby. Like that was my fault!”

  When Nick laughs, it is a real, whole laugh, a laugh that enjoys itself and makes me smile, and for once I don’t think about how my face looks.

  But I can’t help but remember Mallory. Maybe he’s like this with everyone. When we say good-bye, I am still afraid.

  •

  The next day the phone rings and I say hello on the first ring. It’s Mallory. She drives us to a small mall between two cornfields. All she talks about is Nick.

  “I had to go over to Nick’s the night he got back from the tournament and cook him something. I just knew he’d be sitting there, starving. His favorite food is macaroni and cheese. I make it a special way, but I can’t share my secret!” she says.

  I keep saying “cool” as I rifle through clothing racks, taking some dresses that I think might look good on me. Before I make it to the dressing room I catch sight of myself in a mirrored wall, and turn away quickly, only to face another one. I put the clothes back. I was so stupid for thinking Nick would like me. He, an attractive, normal guy, deserves an attractive, normal girl. Someone who could buy a dress off a hanger and smile about it. He doesn’t want someone hanging onto his arm for balance, somebody he has to worry about tripping down a rocky sidewalk.