In the Age of Love and Chocolate (20 page)

Sweet Jesus, I thought just before my heart stopped, Sophia Bitter had really loved Yuji Ono. It almost made me laugh: some people never got over their high school boyfriends.

THE AGE OF LOVE

XX

HAVING VOWED TO BE ALONE, I AM NEVER ALONE

W
HEN I AWOKE,
I was in a hospital bed. Without knowing why, I could tell that this was different from any other time I had been injured. I was not in pain, but my body had a peculiar, ominous numbness to it.

The miniature nurse said something encouraging in Japanese. It seemed like she was saying, “Yay, you are not dead!” But I couldn’t tell. She scurried out of the room.

Moments later, a doctor came in, and with him were Mr. Delacroix and my sister.

I knew whatever was wrong with me must be serious if Natty had been summoned to Japan. She took my hand. “Anya, you’re awake, thank God.” Her eyes filled with tears. Mr. Delacroix stayed in the corner, as if he were being punished. It did not strike me as particularly odd that he had come, as there was business to attend to in Japan. With me indisposed, either he or Theo would have needed to make the trip.

I tried to speak, but there were tubes in my throat. I pulled at them, and the nurse grabbed my hand.

“Do you remember what happened to you?” the doctor asked. It was a relief that he spoke English.

I nodded because that was the only response I could make.

“You were attacked and stabbed.” He showed me a diagram: I was represented by a one-dimensional cartoon girl with an intimidating series of red Xs to indicate areas of trauma. The girl looked as if she had made many mistakes.

“The first wound went from under your shoulder blade, penetrating through your chest, to below your collarbone. Along the way, it grazed the wall of your heart. The second wound penetrated your lower back, severing nerves along the left side of your spinal column. That is why you can’t feel your left foot.”

I nodded—same reason as before.

“Luckily, the wound was very low. A bit higher and your entire leg might not work. A bit more central, and you might have been paralyzed entirely. The other good news is that your right foot should work perfectly, and it is likely that you will be able to walk normally again but no one can say how long that will take.”

I nodded though I considered rolling my eyes to mix it up.

“When the wall of your heart was damaged, it set off a series of cardiac incidents. We had to perform heart surgery to repair the wall and to return your heart to normal function.

“You’ve broken your ankle, so you will notice that your foot is in a cast. We suspect you tried to stand at some point after you were stabbed, and you must have twisted your foot.”

I had not noticed, but now I saw that it was. It didn’t seem to make much difference as my foot apparently didn’t work anyway and obviously this was only one of many problems.

“Also, your larynx was badly bruised, but as you are intubated, we can’t yet know the outlook for this injury.

“You are on a morphine drip, and your pain should be manageable for the time being. I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation, Ms. Balanchine. You have a long recovery ahead of you.”

He probably didn’t need to say that last sentence. The fact that it had taken over two minutes to deliver a cursory description of my injuries was a pretty good sign that I would not be up and about for a while.

“I’ll leave you to your friends,” the doctor said, and then he left.

Natty sat down on my bed and immediately began to cry. “Annie, you almost died. Does it hurt?”

I shook my head. It didn’t. That would come later.

“I’ll stay with you until you’re well,” she said.

I shook my head again. I was glad to see her, but even in my current condition, I could think of nothing worse than her staying with me when she was supposed to be at college.

Mr. Delacroix came over to my bedside. He had not spoken once during this scene. “I am, of course, attending to the openings of the Japanese clubs while you are out of commission.”

I wanted to say thank you, but I couldn’t.

He looked at me with eyes that were steady and unemotional. He nodded and then he left.

Natty kissed me, and though I had been awake for less than a half hour, I fell asleep.

*   *   *

And now a small irony: I, who had only recently vowed to be alone, was never alone. I had never been so humbled. I could do nothing for myself. I could not get to the bathroom without assistance. I could not eat without help. Moving my right hand to the level of my mouth would reopen the stitches in my back and chest, and so I was encouraged to stay very still. I was worse than a baby, because I was so unwieldy and not adorable in the least.

I could not bathe. I could not brush my hair. I could not walk across the room, obviously. My ribs had been broken during the surgery to repair my heart, so those hurt, too. For a while, I was considered too fragile even to be placed in a wheelchair. I did not see the outdoors for weeks. It hurt to talk so I avoided it, but it hurt more to write. So I whispered. But what was there to say? I did not feel clever anymore. I did not care about the news from home. I did not care about the Family or the clubs.

I had been in the hospital before; I had been sick before. But this was not comparable in any way to those other occasions. I could not do anything except lie in bed and stare out the window. There was no revenge to be plotted. I had killed Sophia Bitter and I was tired.

The police came to see me. As Sophia had attacked me, the case appeared fairly cut-and-dried to them. We were both foreigners,
gaijin
, and so no one much cared what her, or for that matter, my reasons had been.

*   *   *

After a week or so of being tended to, I no longer had much in the way of self-consciousness. Who cared if my breasts were exposed when they re-dressed the stitches on my chest? Who cared if my hospital gown fell open when the bedpan was slipped below me? Who cared if I could not do anything without the assistance of at least one other person? I gave myself over to it. I did not fight with anyone like my nana had. I smiled sweetly and let myself be attended to. I was like a broken doll. I believe the nurses liked me very much.

Although I had stopped caring about most everything, my one concern was Natty. She had been a superb advocate in those first days. Though I was broken, I was no longer in danger of dying. I wanted her to return to college.

“I have a nurse and I don’t like you to be away from school,” I managed to say in as cheerful a voice as I could muster.

“But you’ll be so lonely,” Natty said.

“I am not lonely, Natty. I am never alone.”

“That’s not the same thing, Argon, and you know it. You almost died. The doctors say you have months of recovery ahead of you. You can’t travel, and I won’t leave you here.”

I tried to sit up in bed but couldn’t. “Natty, I don’t find it relaxing to have you here. I find it relaxing to know you are at college, learning important things.”

“This is ridiculous, Annie. I will not leave you!”

From the darkest corner of the room, Mr. Delacroix spoke: “I will stay with her.”

“What?” Natty said.

“I will stay with her, and then she will not be alone.”

Natty stood very tall. Her particular facial expression, a daunting combination of queen and gangster, was one I had seen many times before—on my nana. “With all due respect, Mr. Delacroix, I’m not going to leave my sister with you. I don’t even know you that well, and what I do know, I am not sure I much like.”

“Trust me, Natty,” Mr. Delacroix said. “This is for the best. I will stay with her. I am already seeing to business in Japan.” He took off his jacket and set it on the chair, as if to indicate that he was planning to stay awhile. “Do you remember the year she went to Liberty?”

“Yes, that is precisely what makes me not like you,” Natty said.

“Essentially, she traded her freedom so that you could go to genius camp in Amherst, and I was able to strike that deal with Anya because of the great love she had for you. And what she wanted that year is not dissimilar from what she wants right now. Respect her wishes and leave. You may call me as much as you like, and I will bring her home to you when she is safe to travel in the summer.”

Natty turned to me. “You would rather him stay with you than me? You would prefer Win’s awful father, who we used to hate? I mean, even his son, who is the nicest boy in the world and who gets along with everyone, hates him.”

Of course I would rather have had Natty, but more than that, I wanted her back at school. “Yes,” I said. “Besides, shouldn’t he have to do something for me for once in his life?”

Natty turned to Mr. Delacroix. “If she takes even the slightest turn for the worse, you need to contact me immediately. You need to come see her at least once a day and make sure she is being taken care of. And I expect reports, too.” She left the room in a huff, and three days later, she was back at MIT.

“Thank you,” I told him later that day, or maybe it was the next. I slept a lot, and the days often blended together. “But you don’t have to check on me so often. I do have nurses. I’ll be fine, and I can’t very well get myself in any trouble in the condition I’m in.”

“I promised your sister,” Mr. Delacroix said. “And I am a man of my word.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Anya,” Mr. Delacroix said, “would you like to go over some business details with me? The Light Bar in Hiroshima is—”

“I don’t care. I’m sure whatever you decide will be fine.”

“You have to try.”

“Try to do what? I don’t have to do anything except lie here, Mr. Delacroix.”

They were weaning me off morphine that week, and this turned out to be the kind of adventure best experienced in solitude.

XXI

I AM WEAK; REFLECT ON THE TRANSFORMATIVE NATURE OF PAIN; DETERMINE THAT MY CHARACTER IS BUILT

M
R. DELACROIX CAME EVERY DAY
and usually for several hours. I am certain I was terrible company. One day in late October, he brought a chess set with him.

“What is this?” I asked. “Do you think I want anything to do with games?”

“Well, I am bored with you,” he said. “You don’t wish to discuss the business and you say nothing even slightly amusing, so I thought at least we could play chess.”

“I don’t know how to play,” I said.

“Grand. That gives us something to do then.”

“If you’re so bored with me, perhaps you should go back to America? You must have business there.”

“I promised your sister,” he said.

“No one expects you to honor your promises, Mr. Delacroix. Everyone knows what you are like.”

He propped a pillow behind my head. Sitting up was uncomfortable for me, but I tried not to complain. “Is this okay?” he asked gently.

I gritted my teeth and nodded. There was not a single part of me that felt or operated as it once had. I thought about Leo, when he’d been in the crash, and Yuji, and of course, my nana. I had not been patient enough with any of them.

He set the chessboard on my bed tray. “Pawns move forward. They seem boring but the game is won or lost on pawn management, which is something a politician like myself knows perfectly well. The queen is very powerful. She can do anything she wants.”

“What happens if she’s hurt?”

“The game goes on, but it’s much more difficult to win. It’s best to watch your queen.”

I cupped the black queen in my hand. “I feel so stupid, Mr. Delacroix,” I said. “You told me to hire security over and over again. If I’d listened, I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in. You must be glad to be right.”

“In this instance, I am not glad in the least to be right, and you shouldn’t blame yourself. You would not be you if you didn’t insist upon doing things your way.”

“My way is seeming fairly stupid at this point.”

“That’s in the past, Anya,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “We are where we are. Sophia Bitter was a psychopath, and I am astonished that you managed to survive. Now the knight is perhaps the most difficult piece to master. He moves in an L.”

“How do you know the knight’s a he?” I asked. “There could be anything under that armor.”

He smiled at me. “Good girl.”

*   *   *

At the end of November, I checked out of the hospital and moved back to Yuji Ono’s house. A nurse came with me, and she set me up in Yuji’s old room, which was the most convenient room in the house. I tried not to think of the fact that the last inhabitant of this room had died slowly and painfully.

By December, I was moving around with a walker. By February, I had crutches. By the middle of March, my cast came off, revealing a spectacularly lifeless foot in sickly shades of yellow, green, and gray. Structurally, it did not look sound either: the arch was flat, my ankle was as skinny as my wrist, and my toes curled strangely and uselessly. I looked at those toes and wondered what purpose they had ever served. I would rather have avoided the spectacle of my foot, though this was not an option—I had to look at it constantly, because it didn’t work! When I set my foot down, I could not feel the ground. They gave me a brace and a cane. I lurched around like a zombie. It is beyond boring to have to instruct your brain to move your leg and then your leg to move your foot and then to have to check to see where the ground is with every step.

As for the rest of my body? It was not what I would call attractive. Thick pink scars snaked up the middle of my chest, under my shoulder, down my lower back, across my neck, down my leg and foot, under my chin. Some of the scars were from the attack; some were from the measures the doctors had taken to save my life. What I looked like was a girl who had been stabbed by a maniac and had heart surgery, which is exactly what I was. When exiting the bath, I tried not to consider myself too closely. I took to wearing long, loose, high-necked dresses, which Mr. Delacroix said made me look like a frontierswoman.

The truth was, the scars did not bother me very much. I was far more self-conscious about the fact that my foot didn’t work properly and far more annoyed by the constant pain I was in due to the nerve damage I’d sustained from being stabbed in the spine.