Read Online Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy - Free Book Online

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visiting
I was in one place, they were in another, and they were only pausing. We made polite conversation about people at school, from the neighborhood, talked about things entirely inconsequential because it wasn't the subject that counted but the gesture of conversation itself. You could have parsed each sentence not into nouns and verbs but into signs and symbols, artificial reports from a buffer zone none of us really owned or cared to inhabit.
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    My mother was the Visitor Extraordinaire. She'd arrive each afternoon, give me whatever bit of news or information about my health she had as quickly and simply as possible, then sit down in a chair and begin knitting. She'd spend the entire visit knitting. Human presence is the important part of visiting, and she understood that. Her body occupied a space close to my body, but it didn't ask anything of it. Other visitors were more awkward—casual friends of the family who'd stop by and stand over me for long and clumsy minutes, trying to engage me in conversation, when all I wanted was for them to sit down, relax, not say a word.
    My father was the worst visitor. He loved puns and would think of a more terrible one each day. But in the awkward silence that followed his rehearsed routine, what should he do then? Sometimes he'd put on a surgical mask and make a joke about Dr. Dad, the same joke I'd seen dozens of other fathers make with their kids. Then, bereft of a vector, he'd sit down and stare intently at the drip of my IV. He could sit like that for a long time, personally coaxing each drop to form and fall. I knew how hard it was for him, and he probably knew how hard it was for me.
    On certain afternoons after that first big operation and in later years, I would recognize my father's particular gait far down the hall. He'd come on his lunch break, though he didn't have much time to visit, with his hectic work schedule. We both knew that his visits were slow and sorrowful for both of us and that it was okay for him to come only occasionally. One day I heard his step echoing toward me. Carefully, still not entirely sure what I was intending, I got into bed and closed my eyes. His loud breathing and hard-soled shoes entered the room. Silence stood over me for a minute or two, contemplating. I heard hands fumble around in coat pockets for a minute, the crinkle of paper, a pen covering it with soft thips of sound. Then at once everything was leaving the room, pulling out of it and leaving behind that specific, hollow sound of emptiness. I opened my eyes and read the note I found on my night table. "Lucy, I was here but you were sound asleep. I didn't want to wake you. Love, Daddy." I felt I'd let us both off the hook, yet after that the afternoon seemed interminable, something to be gotten through.
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    Gradually I began to improve. I gained strength, the various tubes were removed, and walking became less of a heroic effort. I still resisted speaking, however, keeping my answers to a simple yes or no when I could not just nod my head. I allowed people to believe speaking was difficult, though my mother knew better and kept at me constantly. One day Mary came in when I was alone and announced very casually that I was much better now, that someone else needed this room and, because there were no beds on this ward, I was to be transferred to the floor above. She left as casually as she had come. It was the first day I'd gotten dressed in regular clothes, a Spiderman shirt someone had brought as a present. A feeling of regret came over me. Perhaps if I hadn't gotten dressed they would still think I was sick enough to stay. A few minutes later an aide came in to help me pack. I excused myself and went into the bathroom, where I was overcome by weeping, the first tears I'd shed since I'd been in the hospital.
    How could they throw me out like this? I had come to believe that the nurses there liked me, that they were my special friends, yet now I was just being tossed