Louise (10 page)

T
he Michigan rehab team gives me a face-shock kit. It comes in a black zippered carrying case in two parts. The gun-like part holds D batteries, and there is a thin piece of plastic extending from it that the therapists call a wand. It looks like a toilet-paper tube with a pencil sticking out of it. The wand has a black fabric-covered tip. The second piece is a box with a lever, which adjusts the voltage from one to ten. The two pieces are connected by a cord.

The idea is to touch the wand to the parts of my face that are paralyzed and to shock them into movement. Once the muscles are shocked enough and have moved enough by force, they will remember how to do it on their own. The surgeries damaged some of the facial nerves that control movement. I still have feeling on the paralyzed side of my face, so when I pull the trigger on the gun I feel it, like a sharp yank, and a flash of light behind my eyes. The therapist says this is lucky: Her husband has movement but no feeling, so he cannot tell if he has food on his cheek or is drooling. I envy him.

For about two months, I use the kit at least twice a day, and picture Claude, smoking, or turning a steering wheel, or I think of a photo of us at his graduation where we are arm in arm in our dress clothes and he is looking over at me, laughing, and I am smiling straight at the camera, my face moving so naturally. I shock and I shock and I shock, and the muscles move for a fraction of a second, then nothing.

•

I will not be talked into smiling for pictures—the asymmetry is too awful. The only way I will tolerate being in a photo is wearing my sunglasses, staring expressionlessly at the camera, my mouth a straight line, waiting for it all to be over.

C
laude is back. Louise suggests that they go to the pool because it has steam rooms and saunas. Good towels and a smoothie bar. She wants Claude to see how much she's improving, how hard she's working. She can walk in the water! Without a cane! But Claude says he has not brought his bathing suit. Louise doesn't understand—she'd told him about her water exercises on the phone, and he said he wanted to see, to help her practice. Why doesn't he want to now? Why hasn't he thought of additional swimming moves that would be good for her to do, done some research on the computer?

She ends up screaming at him in the car on the way to the pool.

“I know this is hard for you to remember,” he says. “But I have a job. I have other things in my life besides you.”

Louise doesn't know how to respond. His complaints seem less and less real to her.

There is an Aquatic Exercises binder with instructions on techniques, and drawings. Her favorites are the Snow Angel, the Butterfly Flutter, and the Super Eight.

•

Claude sees the pool, greenish and still, through the glass door. All around them are echoes of people yelling, but he sees no one. He tells Louise to start without him.

“I just want to play a quick game of racquetball,” he
says. He walks backward toward the hallway with the courts. Louise shouts, “But you don't have a racquet!”

Claude holds up a silver money clip, and waves it, flaglike.

“But I have this binder,” she says.

“Five minutes,” he says.

He jogs toward the courts.

•

We break up three days later over the phone, when he is back in California and I am in my bedroom in Michigan. I say the words and Claude doesn't disagree, but the last thing he says to me is, “Just remember that you ended this—that you did it”—and then he hangs up.

L
ouise has started to admit that she will not go back to Santa Barbara. She will not be pursuing that dream of toasting champagne glasses with the rich and beautiful, of being part of some glittering crowd. In Montecito her face and body would be met with confusion by her newspaper boss, who hired her to cover dog shows and “Beat Hunger” 5Ks—how could she interview people with an eye patch on, clutching a cane? How could she eat tapas next to an aging supermodel, when it was hard enough to show her face to her own friends? People in Montecito do not want to be confronted with disability. They want to believe that perfection can be achieved by plastic surgery and the right agent.

Maybe she should get a job in a hospital, she thinks, and be a receptionist or an orderly. Or go to culinary school—she enjoys helping Elizabeth make pastries with spun-sugar wraps. She likes to read, so maybe there is something in that.

T
om visits his sister at Warner's house. He is on summer vacation from college and wants to help.

Warner's house is twenty minutes from the beach, so Tom drives Louise there and they stick their plastic chairs in the sand. The winds are high, and tiny grains are blowing everywhere, but Louise wants to tan, so they stay.

Tom doesn't know how to talk to his sister anymore. Since she got sick, she doesn't want to hear anything positive. She shoots down any optimistic comment he makes, about anything, which was understandable for a while, but Tom had assumed that after the surgeries, her attitude would be better. If anything, it's worse. She's jealous of all her friends, their careers, their relationships—everyone but her seems to be moving into nicer and nicer apartments, moving up. They are all beautiful, every one of them, she says. Her bad eye bounces up and down as she complains.

Tom is three years younger than Louise, and three years older than Michael. Tom and Louise were in college together for one year, when Tom was a freshman. He tutored her in math. She became frustrated so easily, slamming the book shut and swiping it off the table. Tom has to be careful not to raise his voice to Louise in any manner. Sometimes, feeling brave, he asks Louise softly to please be a little pleasant.

At the beach, sitting stiffly in her fold-out chair, Louise says she wants to start driving again. She says that if she passes a special driver's education program for disabled people, she can get her license back.

“Paraplegics drive,” she says. “I could get a handicapped pass and park anywhere I want.”

Tom does not know if she should be thinking about handicapped passes.

•

Tom makes a corner of Warner and Elizabeth's basement into a painting studio for Louise. He arranges a card table with some watercolors in a plastic palette, a jar of brushes, and a short stool. Louise has not painted since she was a kid, but Tom did not know what else to do, and thought she might like it. She looks at the table, then looks at him, and goes back upstairs.

Warner is not doing much painting either. When he does work, he makes watercolors of the brain, giant and multi-colored. He walks around the house in socks while Louise watches the big TV screen. Tom gets depressed watching them. Elizabeth bakes pear tarts. She smiles a lot and brings home gifts. But nothing helps much.

Tom remembers when he was in middle school, seeing Louise, a teenager, pour vodka from their mother's liquor cabinet into a water bottle. It was a winter day after school, just them in the house, and the living room was filled with sunlight bouncing off snow. He'd been shy at that age, uninterested in team sports and skateboarding like all the other kids at school. Louise used to taunt him, ask him why he didn't have any friends and what he did all day. All he had done that day was walk in the living room and see her in the liquor cabinet, but she'd grabbed him, hard, and told him to shut up and go away, as if he'd been spying. He never told on her.

Another time, in college, Louise had invited him to a party. The apartment had been full of sweaty drunks, and Louise was wearing a sparkly tank top and lots of makeup. When she handed him a drink, he said no thanks. It was his first semester.

“You'll never make any friends here,” she'd said, and handed the cup to someone else.

Tom does not want to remember these things. He wants to connect with his sister the way they used to, as kids, before she became a moody teenager, and then this. He would like to tell her about his new girlfriend. About his housemates at the scholarship house—a place where they all pitch in and do chores to keep the place running. But all Louise talks about is her physical therapist, her breakup with Claude, and how nothing will ever get better. “You don't believe that,” he tells her. “Sometimes I do,” she says. “And sometimes I don't.”

•

In Michigan, the family goes to an animal shelter. A kitten will make Louise happier, everyone agrees. Louise will be responsible for feeding it, filling its water bowl, and scooping the small litter box. It is an experiment.

Louise chooses the cat that meows the loudest. A volunteer tells them the sad story of how the cat got there: It was put into a paper bag and thrown into the local river. A man walking his dog saw it happen and pulled the cat out. Louise smiles and kisses the cat's ears. Her wrists are already bleeding in little pricks from the cat's claws. She names it Ivan.

“Ivan the Terrible,” she says.

Tom remembers the family cat they had to put to sleep. It had been attacked by a Rottweiler in their front yard and its intestines were on the outside, touching the grass. Janet had rushed it to the vet, and Warner took Tom and Michael to pick up Louise from a birthday party at the mall. Louise had been eleven, and came out holding a giant jawbreaker.

At the vet, Louise held the cat's paw, sobbing as it was injected. On the way home she held Tom's and Michael's hands in the backseat of the station wagon and stared out at the dark. Tom remembers her friendship bracelets and lace glove.

Now, Louise keeps the kitten in a small room in the
basement, away from Warner and Elizabeth's two older, bigger cats. She spends lots of time in that room. Sometimes Tom stands at the top of the stairs, listening to her talk to the kitten, even laughing at times. As he packs up to go back to school, Tom thinks, everything is okay now. Next time I see her, she will be stronger than ever before.

I
t is Louise's fifth month at her father's house in Michigan. Warner and Elizabeth go away for two days, leaving Louise alone. This is another experiment. For the first time since her illness, she makes herself coffee. She does her own laundry. She makes an omelet. At night, she locks up the house. She washes the dishes carefully, one at a time, soaping up each glass and plate and spoon and setting them all on a towel to dry. It is exhausting. It is a big step for her, everyone says. Learning to live alone will teach independence and instill confidence.

Right, Louise thinks. But my face still doesn't work.

Louise finds an old deck of tarot cards in the basement. She had been looking for something to guide her. She does not believe in God. She does not believe that Jesus or some other benevolent witness is watching. Jesus has failed her whole family, and for that reason, she decides to give the cards a try. Maybe there is an energy or force that ties all things together. Maybe the cards will help her see into the unknown. It has never been failure or rejection that scared Louise—it was always the unknown.

She learns how to do readings with a book:
The Everything Tarot Book: Discover Your Past, Present and Future: It's in the Cards!
She learns the different spread types: the Immediate Situation Three-Card spread, the Practical Advice Five-Card spread, and her favorite, the General Life Conditions spread. She practices them on her bed, well into the night. Her question is always the same: What happens next?

B
ooks Louise has bought or been given:

—
How to Heal a Broken Heart in 20 Days

—
The Purpose-Driven Life

—
I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse?

—
A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing

—
Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside

—
Don't Leave Me This Way, Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry

L
ouise calls Janet and announces that she is moving back to Kansas, to the college town where Tom lives. Janet is stunned. It's October, only six months since the craniotomies. Janet knows she still walks with a limp. Warner says Louise cannot stand up from a chair without tipping over, or sip water while walking. “I don't know about you living alone,” Janet says. “Too late—I've already signed the lease,” Louise says. “Well, you always were headstrong,” Janet says, and realizes what a great thing it is, to be able to say that Louise is still Louise.

When Janet sees Louise on moving day morning, Louise is wearing the big, grey orthopedic shoes Janet ordered her. She is trying to be fashionable in dark jeans and a pretty blouse, big earrings, but her glasses are still taped. The left side of her face is still paralyzed. Janet strokes her daughter's hair, which is now shoulder-length and layered, and notices the scar from the incision, pink and shiny. Just be upbeat, Janet tells herself.

The whole family, Warner and Elizabeth included, spend the day moving Louise into her new apartment. “New” isn't the word, Janet thinks, as she looks around the wobbly complex with wood panels down the front, like a bib. The place is crammed with college kids probably not old enough to drink. Janet cannot picture Louise making friends with any of them. Every balcony is cluttered with miniature grills, stereo speakers, and empty beer bottles. Louise says she picked
it because it is right next to the university where she will start classes soon, the same school she went to as an undergrad, but Janet wishes she would have tried a little harder to find a better place—maybe she could rent a room in a kindly professor's house? It's like she's trying to insert herself in her old, party-girl life again.