Louise (14 page)

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.

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.

M
y therapist suggests that I ask Nick to lunch. She says lunch 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.

We go to the shoe department, and I pick out some flats with straps.

“He's met my mom,” Mallory says.

A
day later the phone rings. It's Nick. He wants to know if I'd like to go out. At night.

A real date.

When Nick pulls up, I find myself terrified that Mallory will be in the front seat.

After dinner we go to a bar, the kind with dartboards and scrawl on the walls. I almost get turned away because the bouncer thinks I'm drunk. A friend yells at the bouncer, “She had brain surgery, you idiot.” Inside, I sink into a conversation with some friends and watch Nick laugh with his brother. Later, we head to the back patio to smoke, and Nick takes my hand to guide me down the steps. Someone says, “Whoa there, had too much to drink?” Another guy asks why my glasses are taped. He's drunk and loud. Nick squeezes my hand. “Want to go?” he asks. I say no. It's the truth. I want to be here. With him.

Nick didn't want to leave his camera in the car, so he's wearing it around his neck. A group of people ask him to take a picture. They all have their arms around each other. I know a few of them. “Do you want to get in?” Nick whispers. “No,” I say. “Okay,” he says, “I'll make this quick.”

•

Pretty soon, the laundry, the grocery store, and weeknights have all turned into opportunities for Nick and me. He empties his pockets on top of my dresser at the end of
the day. Mallory calls and invites me out for a smoothie. I sit across from her and we each suck our drinks and she talks about the new cupcake café and where to get a cheap pedicure. Then she says, “I'm really happy for you and Nick, you know?” I never hear from her again.

•

I need another surgery. Nerves from the tip of my tongue will be spliced and fused with ones in my left cheek. That way, when I push my tongue against the roof of my mouth, the paralyzed side will smile. That's the idea, anyway.

The surgery means two nights in a large hospital in Kansas City. I thought the surgery would be minor, so I told my father and Elizabeth not to come. The operation takes nine hours.

When I wake up in the hospital room my neck feels like a giant pillow. I look in a mirror and find a long gash of stitches that goes up one side of my neck and into my ear. It is crusted with blood and puffy like a snake is stuck inside. The left side of my face is yellow and beginning to bruise, and my bad eye is completely red.

I go to my mother's house in Iola to recover. I listen to chick-lit books on CD. My stepfather puts on rubber gloves from his doctor's bag and cleans the wound gently but firmly, wringing out the bloody sponge in the sink.

Nick wants to make a trip down, but I don't want him to see me like this.

A few hours later he is here, hugging me, kissing my cheeks, smearing my antibiotic ointment on his shirt. We go out for slushies. I'm having trouble finding things to talk about. He keeps asking me questions, and I keep trying not to cry.

“How can you even look at me?” I say. “I'm disgusting.”

A bandage falls off my neck and lies face up on the console, looking like a piece of steak.

Nick says, “Hey hey, don't cry! You'll hurt your face.” I
laugh at myself, gross, sniffing with a giant cup of red slushie in my hand.

“Things are going to get better for you,” Nick says. “Whether it happens the way you want it to, or another way, I just want to be with you.”

And the look on his face—I believe him.

•

The surgery doesn't work.

My surgeon is out of ideas. He says he's sorry. And honestly? I'm relieved.

•

Years later I go to an audiologist for a constant ringing in my ears. The results show moderate hearing loss in my left ear, which I already knew from teaching—when a student asks a question I must look at each face in the classroom until I can find whose mouth is moving.

The audiologist recommends a hearing aid, and as I hold the tiny machine in my palm, she points out its features. She says she doesn't understand why I hadn't come in until now. Didn't I want my quality of life to be all it could be?

To me, it already was.

 

 

I
t has been six years since the Incident. There are many improvements. The left side of my face sags less. My walk has less of a limp. I can do squats in my weight-lifting class, and even attempt yoga on occasion, using the wall for support. I can fold laundry with both hands, and possibly enjoy it more than the average person for this reason. I believe Nick when he tells me I'm prettiest with my hair pulled back so that my whole face is visible.

I suppose it would make me a better person if I said I no longer sat for pedicures, or favored hair salons that offer green tea and aromatherapy head massages. Why on earth do I still read gossip magazines? Why do I use whitening toothpaste, or ask Nick to pluck my eyebrows? Here's what it is: My face may no longer be classically symmetrical, but I still have the feeling of beauty. The feeling of beauty has nothing to do with perfection. It is about self-respect. It is about caring for oneself. I try to be a little less careless now. Being careless never felt right.

Nick and I are married now. We have a baby girl, Olive. Throughout my pregnancy I felt very self-conscious, unsure if people were staring because of my belly or my face, or both. Did people wonder if I should even be having kids? It hurts to think it, but I know that it will be a sad but inevitable day when our little girl asks about my face, my eye, the rest of it. She will realize that I look different from other
mothers, that I cannot run after her in crowds, or find her easily on a playground, and I have to wonder if on some level she will resent me for it.

The other day Nick, Olive, and I were on a downtown sidewalk, squinting in the bright sun, thinking of getting coffees or maybe having tacos; it was that kind of day. I was pushing the stroller because it's nice to have the subtle extra balance. Nick said hello to a man and a woman walking toward us. “Nice to meet you,” I said, and stuck out my hand. The strangers looked at me with puzzled expressions. “We've met many times,” the man said. “We saw you just last month, at that party—”

“But we really didn't get a chance to talk,” the woman said, shooting her husband a look.

Nick stayed quiet. He understood how stupid I felt, but also that there was nothing he could do. Before Olive, I would have pretended I was a ditz and bounced my palm against my forehead, not wanting to tell the couple that I'm not good at remembering faces because I have vision problems. Faces bob up and down, and I see double, so I rarely recognize a face until I have met the same person several times. But maybe that urge to denigrate myself is gone, or at least going away, because now, this time, I managed to raise my chin, smile my lopsided smile, and show these people my daughter, who was looking up at these strangers so seriously before breaking into a gummy smile.

Now I tend to let myself be looked at, despite the voice in my head that tells me to turn away. Maybe it is because I've realized that perfection is not what pleases the eye. What pleases the eye is what pleases the heart. My daughter looks to me for cues on how to act in this world, and I want to show her that you look people in the eye, you speak up, you stand as tall as your body will allow, and you say your name.

THANK YOU
to my editor, Elizabeth Koch, for believing in this book, and for your vision that brought it to its best; I consider myself the luckiest girl in the world. To Lori Shine, Janna Rademacher, and everyone at Black Balloon Publishing for making this book what it is. To Devereaux Milburn and Nadxieli Nieto Hall, and the team at February Partners. To Deb Olin Unferth, an amazing role model who taught me how to be a writer and believed in this book from the start. To Mary Karr, for her generous reading and support. To Tom Lorenz, an incredible teacher, mentor, listener, and friend. Your constant encouragement means the world to me. To my supportive and inspiring teachers Joseph Harrington and Michael L. Johnson. To Jameelah Lang and Andy Anderegg, the best writers, readers, cheerleaders and friends all in one. To Kelly Schetzsle, Kelly Lemuir, Dana Bremner, Lindsay Metcalf, Corie Dugas, Cate Bachelder, Martina Bucci, and so many other friends: before, during, and after the craniotomies your friendship made it possible to keep on being myself, I am so lucky. To Uncle Charlie and Aunt Cheryl Stauffer, for helping me through those first scary days, to the rest of the Stauffer and Lynn families for their overwhelming support. To the Krug, Henry and Byrne families for their warmth and welcome. To all of my doctors, nurses, physical and occupational therapists, thanks for amazing care and such kindness. To my father, my mother, my stepmother, stepfather, and brothers, thanks for endless, endless patience and love. Lastly, to Nick and Olive, my husband and daughter, my life.