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Authors: Ann Packer
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him.
This is hard to explain. I knew what had happened to him—I was never far from the sight of it, especially compared to his mother, who at times seemed to keep the neck injury in a different compartment of her mind from the head injury, as if all he had to do was regain consciousness and then he’d be all right. But the idea of that place on his back opened up the whole geography of his body to me, and I felt physically bereft all at once, as if my body were only now catching up with my mind and understanding all it had lost. If he woke, how would he bear it? The diminishment, the dependence. How would he stand it? It was almost more daunting to consider that prospect than its opposite, that he wouldn’t wake; wouldn’t become, as the doctors put it, responsive again. But if he did, what about me? Would I become responsive again, too? Could I?
Early the previous summer, to celebrate graduating from college, we had gone to Chicago for a weekend, excited less because we’d finished school than because we were moving forward, taking a step: Mike’s job at the bank would start when we got back, and I had the library until I knew what else I might want to do.
The hotel elevator was lined with smoky mirrors and we rode up looking at our reflections, Mike’s arm around my shoulder, mine around his waist, two of my fingers tucked into his change pocket. The car clanked to a stop, and just before we got off Mike took a last glance at the mirror and said, “That guy’s got it made.” I didn’t know it, but he had bought me an engagement ring the day before and carefully tucked it into his suitcase.
A sign pointed us down the hall, and we made our way to our room. The key was on a bulky plastic tag, and Mike fitted it into the lock and turned it until the door swung open. Inside, we saw the foot of the bed, and beyond that a window with filmy white curtains half-drawn across it. We stood there for a moment, and then—simultaneously, both of usacting at once—we turned toward one another, I lifted my arms, and Mike scooped me up and stepped over the threshold.
How does love change? How is it that I remember that day so clearly, Mike’s smile as he dumped me on the bed, the little gray box that held the ring, even the peanuts we ate from the tray on top of the TV, never guessing we’d be charged four dollars for them? How is it that I can trace a line through eight years from one happy day to another but can’t locate with any accuracy at all what happened to me next? A slow draining away of my feelings for him, a trickle I hardly noticed at first until the level was so low it was all I could notice, until what remained was dark and murky and it seemed that in no time at all I’d be bone-dry. We’d had dim times before, of course, but with quick, bright rescues: college and the notion of adulthood; my apartment and actually sleeping together, learning that that was something in itself, ultimately the most prized. In the months before the accident there was no rescue in sight. I couldn’t decide if I wanted a rescue. On bad days it was as if I were looking through cold glass at the two of us together while with some kind of remote control I operated my body and my voice. On good days I did my best to ignore myself.
But Mike could tell—I knew he could tell. And sitting there in my apartment, unable to start on my mother’s curtains, I desperately longed to undo so many things: my turning away from him; his awareness of it; his hurt and his pain; his fruitless efforts to woo me back. More than anything, I wanted to eradicate that final fruitless effort, the idea for which had overtaken him on the pier: that a playful gesture on his part, half foolhardy and half brave, could wake me to the old feelings at last.
C HAPTER 5
Viktor and Ania lived on the other side of the isthmus from me, near Lake Monona, on the second floor of a big pink stucco house that had been divided into apartments. I parked under a
This is hard to explain. I knew what had happened to him—I was never far from the sight of it, especially compared to his mother, who at times seemed to keep the neck injury in a different compartment of her mind from the head injury, as if all he had to do was regain consciousness and then he’d be all right. But the idea of that place on his back opened up the whole geography of his body to me, and I felt physically bereft all at once, as if my body were only now catching up with my mind and understanding all it had lost. If he woke, how would he bear it? The diminishment, the dependence. How would he stand it? It was almost more daunting to consider that prospect than its opposite, that he wouldn’t wake; wouldn’t become, as the doctors put it, responsive again. But if he did, what about me? Would I become responsive again, too? Could I?
Early the previous summer, to celebrate graduating from college, we had gone to Chicago for a weekend, excited less because we’d finished school than because we were moving forward, taking a step: Mike’s job at the bank would start when we got back, and I had the library until I knew what else I might want to do.
The hotel elevator was lined with smoky mirrors and we rode up looking at our reflections, Mike’s arm around my shoulder, mine around his waist, two of my fingers tucked into his change pocket. The car clanked to a stop, and just before we got off Mike took a last glance at the mirror and said, “That guy’s got it made.” I didn’t know it, but he had bought me an engagement ring the day before and carefully tucked it into his suitcase.
A sign pointed us down the hall, and we made our way to our room. The key was on a bulky plastic tag, and Mike fitted it into the lock and turned it until the door swung open. Inside, we saw the foot of the bed, and beyond that a window with filmy white curtains half-drawn across it. We stood there for a moment, and then—simultaneously, both of usacting at once—we turned toward one another, I lifted my arms, and Mike scooped me up and stepped over the threshold.
How does love change? How is it that I remember that day so clearly, Mike’s smile as he dumped me on the bed, the little gray box that held the ring, even the peanuts we ate from the tray on top of the TV, never guessing we’d be charged four dollars for them? How is it that I can trace a line through eight years from one happy day to another but can’t locate with any accuracy at all what happened to me next? A slow draining away of my feelings for him, a trickle I hardly noticed at first until the level was so low it was all I could notice, until what remained was dark and murky and it seemed that in no time at all I’d be bone-dry. We’d had dim times before, of course, but with quick, bright rescues: college and the notion of adulthood; my apartment and actually sleeping together, learning that that was something in itself, ultimately the most prized. In the months before the accident there was no rescue in sight. I couldn’t decide if I wanted a rescue. On bad days it was as if I were looking through cold glass at the two of us together while with some kind of remote control I operated my body and my voice. On good days I did my best to ignore myself.
But Mike could tell—I knew he could tell. And sitting there in my apartment, unable to start on my mother’s curtains, I desperately longed to undo so many things: my turning away from him; his awareness of it; his hurt and his pain; his fruitless efforts to woo me back. More than anything, I wanted to eradicate that final fruitless effort, the idea for which had overtaken him on the pier: that a playful gesture on his part, half foolhardy and half brave, could wake me to the old feelings at last.
C HAPTER 5
Viktor and Ania lived on the other side of the isthmus from me, near Lake Monona, on the second floor of a big pink stucco house that had been divided into apartments. I parked under a
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