Holding Up the Universe

by Jennifer Niven

  “Could something like that cause face blindness?”

  “Yes. It’s not as common as developmental prosopagnosia, but it’s possible.”

  “I banged it pretty hard. I had to have stitches.” Instinctively, I reach for the thin raised line along my scalp.

  She types away, and as she does, it hits me: This woman is going to dig around in your brain. You can’t hide from her.

  She wants to know what kind of tests were done after I fell, and then she wants to know if I was able to recognize faces before the age of six.

  The honest answer is I don’t know. Yeah, I had every test imaginable to see what damage had been done to my brain. But did I know people by their faces back then? I’m not sure.

  She says, “Certainly your parents would have noticed a difference if you suddenly had trouble recognizing everyone.”

  “I think I’ve always been good at compensating and covering up. I mean, even back then. Maybe I could recognize people before, but I was so young…”

  “Did your parents notice behavioral changes?”

  “My mom said they expected me to become this cautious kid, but I got louder. She says that’s when she started going gray.”

  I give her a smile, but she’s busy typing. I sit there looking around, telling myself to man up, son, stop feeling nervous. In a minute, she folds her hands in her lap and begins talking. “I’m not sure how much research you’ve done, Jack, but one of the earliest documented cases of prosopagnosia dates from 1883…Lewis Carroll was rumored to be prosopagnosic. The next time you read Alice in Wonderland, you might see the clues…I’m sure you’re familiar with identifiers. As you know, hairstyle and clothing can change on a daily basis. We’ve met a lady who identifies people by their wedding rings because this is an identifier that rarely changes…”

  She’s about to see everything you’re hiding.

  Suddenly, I feel naked. I actually have to look down at myself to make sure I’m still wearing clothes.

  —

  The first test is famous faces. This is similar to one I took online—photos of celebrities with their hair and ears removed. Dr. Klein says, “Okay, Jack. The clock isn’t ticking here, so feel free to take as much time as you need.”

  She turns the laptop around so that I can use it. A face appears on the screen. It’s just an oval with eyes, a nose, a mouth. If I look at it long enough, it doesn’t look like a face at all, but a planet pocked by craters and shadows. One by one, I type in the names, but to be honest I’m making shit up.

  When I finish, we go right into the next test. Dr. Klein says, “The system that processes reading emotions on a face is separate from the system that reads features. Can you typically tell if a person is angry or sad or happy?”

  “Almost always. I can’t recognize faces, but I can read them.”

  “That’s because there is a visual processing system that exists only for face recognition, and specifically only human faces. Your dog or your cat is actually identified by your brain as an object. The configural processor is what allows people to see the face as a whole and not just its individual parts.”

  This test is about identifying emotions. I want to think I nail every one of the answers, but I actually don’t have a clue.

  Next is a series of upside-down faces. I’m supposed to match them to the right-side-up faces, but I can’t. I know I can’t.

  The more defeated I feel, though, the more energized Dr. Klein appears. She leans over the laptop. “Humans who have no problem recognizing faces are very bad at identifying upside-down ones because once you turn that image upside down, you can no longer use the configural processing strategy to recognize that face. So you start using a feature-by-feature strategy instead, which is how we identify objects. It’s comparable to how you are with regular faces because the human processor only works with upright images. Unlike monkeys, who are adept at recognizing other monkeys, no matter the orientation.”

  The thing I take from this is Even monkeys recognize each other.

  “Now we’re going to test your ability with object recognition. This way, we can know it’s strictly a face recognition problem and that it doesn’t extend to objects.”

  I sit there matching houses, cars, guns, landscapes, animals, and suddenly I’m thinking, What if I get these mixed up too, all these things I’ve never had trouble identifying? What if I only thought I recognized a cat, a dog, a house, a car, but I find out I don’t know them any better than faces? I sit back for a minute and close my eyes, mostly because I want to get away—from this computer, this lab, this campus, my own head.

  Dr. Klein says, “I want you to remember that everyone gets some right and some wrong. It’s how the test was designed.”

  Which doesn’t make me feel any better. But I open my eyes. I go on.

  I feel even worse with the next one, the Bald Women test, which is photo after photo of regular, non-celebrity females with the hair and ears missing once again. I’m supposed to hit a button if I see one that looks different, but they all look the same to me so I don’t even bother trying—I just hit Same over and over.

  The last test reminds me of an eye exam. I lean on the chin rest and press my forehead against this contraption that looks like a mask. Dr. Klein wants me to study the computer screen, where there’s a small camera pointed at my pupils. This, according to her, will record my method of processing a face.

  “Normal perceivers go for the internal features of the face and use a triangular sequence that moves between the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. Prosopagnosics, on the other hand, start with the external features, such as the ears and the hair. They usually avoid the eye region.”

  This sounds about right. And then I wonder what Libby is doing and where she is.

  I’m standing in the Department of Brain Sciences, Cognitive Neurology, at Indiana University, Bloomington, where there are answers all around me. I was young when my mom died and when my dad and I talked to the doctors about testing. I let my dad decide whether I should do it or not. But I’m here now, and I can ask to talk to one of these white-coated doctors or scientists. My mom died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and I need to know if I’m going to die that way too.

  I’m pacing up and down the hall. If I’m tested, they’ll either find out I have aneurysms in my brain or I don’t. They will either be able to pin them off and try to control them or not.

  But here’s the thing—even if there aren’t any aneurysms in there, these facts won’t change: I will still be someone who watches; I will still be someone who is prepared and on the lookout, because at any moment the earth could stop spinning. I’ve lived through the worst thing that can ever happen to me, and I know firsthand what the world can do.

  A man in a white coat passes by and nods at me. I nod back.

  I think, He could have answers.

  I watch him walk away.

  I think, If my mom was here, what would she say?

  My phone buzzes and I almost don’t check it, but it could be Jack.

  It’s a text from Jayvee.

  Libby + absent from school = questioning Atticus? I had one other thought. I realized that as bad as it is not to know, the not knowing is something too. You can still do something with that.

  And then she adds:

  As much as a person can while a person’s still in high school in Indiana.

  I wait for Dr. Klein to run the results. I tell myself it’s okay. It’s no big deal. I mean, it’s not as if you don’t already know that you suck at recognizing people. But listen, you do all right. You get by. You’re good at figuring out identifiers, and you’ve done it all on your own without any guidance or help.

  I am giving myself the pep talk of my life when Dr. Klein returns. She sits down across from me and says, “You’re definitely prosopagnosic. Prosopagnosia is on a continuum. You can be mildly bad or you can be profoundly face-blind. You are profoundly face-blind. In fact, you’re one of the most severe cases I’ve ever seen.”


  So it’s official.

  I expect to feel worse or maybe even better now that it’s confirmed.

  “What happens now? Is there a cure?”

  I haven’t come across one in any of my research, but that doesn’t mean Dr. Amber Klein, brain specialist, won’t know of one.

  Her smile is upside down and apologetic. “We’re certainly making great strides in our research, but no. There’s no cure. We’re experimenting with ways to teach people how to better manage their face blindness. We’ve been doing some repetitive training with faces. Research subjects will train for an hour a week. There are ten levels of difficulty. A teenage boy, a little younger than you, has been working with us for five months, and his eye movement strategies have become more normal…”

  “Is he recognizing faces?”

  “No, but we’re hoping increased training will begin to help him in his everyday life.”

  She’s starting to lose me, and she can tell this. She turns around to reach for something, and when she turns back, it’s as if she’s a whole new person. The slate’s been wiped clean, so to speak.

  The thing she reached for is a model of the human brain. She points to it as she talks. “Toward the back of your brain, over your right ear—just here—there is a specific area that’s responsible for identifying faces—”

  “Fusiform gyrus twelve.” I reach up and run my fingers across the scar again, over my right ear.

  “We could do an MRI, and this would provide us with more information. Many prosopagnosics also have trouble recognizing cars and places. They often have topographical agnosia, which means they lose their way easily and don’t recognize their houses or places of work. They can have trouble with their hearing. We think prosopagnosia is the key to discovering how the brain processes objects in general. For so long, we’ve thought of the brain as one entity, but we’re learning now about all these separate machines, if you will, that are a part of its makeup, and the fact that these machines don’t interact with each other, that they aren’t even aware of each other.”

  “Basically the face-processing area of my brain is either missing, defective, or unplugged? But if I do the MRI, there’s still no cure.”

  “Yes.”

  There’s nothing more she can do for me and I know that and she knows that.

  She says, “I suggest telling people, at least your family. Let them know you have this. It will make things easier on you in the long run.”

  I pick up the phone and text Libby.

  I’m done.

  And I am.

  “One more thing, Jack. Most developmental prosopagnosics don’t expect anything from the face in the way that those with acquired prosopagnosia do. Just as a person born without sight has only ever known not seeing, those who are born with this don’t feel that lack in the same way. But for those who have acquired it, it’s not out of the ordinary for them to keep trying to use the face as the key to recognition. That’s the instinct.”

  For some reason this is like a kick in the chest. I did this to myself. If I hadn’t climbed onto the roof that day…if I hadn’t tried to show off…if I hadn’t fallen…I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to a brain specialist. I should be heartbroken for six-year-old me lying on the front lawn, my world changed forever. But instead I just want to get out of here.

  “Thanks, Dr. Klein. I should get home.”

  She shakes my hand, thanks me for my time, apologizes that she couldn’t do more, as if it’s her fault. I want to tell her not to be sorry, that she’s not the one who pushed me off the roof way back when, but instead I say, “Good luck with the research.”

  “Jack?”

  I turn back. I see a woman there with glasses and sharp cheekbones and hair swept up off her neck. She says, “One person in every fifty is face-blind. It might help for you to remember that. You’re definitely not alone.”

  On the drive back to Amos, I ask him questions about the test, and he answers them in this very short yes, no, yes, no kind of way. Then we’re quiet. He is far away, and I know what that feels like, to want to close yourself up. So I don’t force him to talk anymore. We just ride.

  We ride for ten miles without saying a word. The silence covers us like a blanket. I’m staring out past the road into the great beyond, but after a while the blanket of silence starts to feel smothering, like it’s cutting off my circulation.

  I almost tell him I was this close to getting tested too, but what comes out of my mouth is “I want to be a dancer. Not just a Damsel, but a professional dancer.”

  To his credit, he doesn’t go veering off the road. He echoes, “A dancer.” And he’s still far away. But I can hear him tune in a bit.

  “When I was little—not just young, but literally little—I took ballet. And I was great at it. I have this picture of me in a black leotard, standing in the most perfect fifth position you’ve ever seen. It was taken the night of our recital, my first ever, and I was glorious. Afterward my teacher told me, ‘You will never be a dancer. I can continue teaching you but it will only be a waste of your parents’ money. Your bones are too big. You don’t have the body for it. The sooner you learn this, the better.’ ”

  “Wow. What a bastard.”

  “It crushed me. For a long time I didn’t dance, no matter what my mom said. She offered to find me a different teacher, but something was ruined. I let that woman ruin it for me.” I stare at his profile, fixed on the highway. “But she can’t stop me from dancing. No one’s going to tell me not to dance anymore. No one should tell you what you can or can’t do either. Including you.”

  We’re riding in silence again, but everything is lighter and cleaner. The mood has lifted and he’s back.

  “My dad is having an affair.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. It’s Mrs. Chapman. At school.”

  “As in Mrs. Chapman, chemistry teacher?”

  “The very one.”

  “Really?” Except for being young, there’s nothing about Mrs. Chapman that screams Take me for your mistress. “And you have to see her at school.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, you have to run into her at school.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a bastard.”

  “I’m sorry that people give you shit about your weight. I’m sorry for anything I did to make it worse for you.”

  “I’m sorry you have to date Caroline Lushamp.”

  He laughs, and suddenly the car is warm and crackling with electricity.

  “I’m not dating her anymore.” These five words surround us, taking over the air, until he says, “I’m sorry my friends can be assholes.”

  “I’m sorry you can’t recognize the people you know. Maybe if you could, you’d pick better friends.”

  He laughs again, but not as hard.

  “Look at it this way—everyone you meet, everyone you know, if they get on your nerves or piss you off, it’s okay. The next day they’ll just be new people. Different people.”

  “I guess.” He’s not laughing now.

  We come up on a road sign: AMOS…5 MILES.

  He says, “We could keep driving.”

  “Into the sunset?”

  “Why not?”

  And suddenly it’s like I’m watching us from the sky—two outlaws, Jack Masselin and Libby Strout, sitting together in the front seat of a badass mo-fo of an old car, his leg inches from hers, his hands on the wheel, breathing the same air, thinking the same thoughts, sharing things with each other that they don’t share with anyone else.

  His eyes are on mine again, and he says, “As someone recently diagnosed with prosopagnosia, I’m told that I don’t process faces like normal people. For instance, I avoid the eyes. But I don’t seem to have any trouble looking into yours. In fact, I like looking into them. A lot.”

  Our eyes lock.

  As in they lock.

  As in I can’t imagine ever looking away.

  “The road,” I say, but you can ba
rely hear it.

  I think about making a move on her. It would be so easy—pull the car over, lean in, touch her cheek, lean in a little more (close enough so she can feel my breath), catch her eye, look right into her, maybe brush her hair off her face. All the things I’ve learned to do in order to be the Guy Girls Want.

  Her head is turned away so that I can only see her hair. When she speaks again, her voice sounds a little throaty, a little full, and there’s something else in it.

  The something else is:

  She might like you back.

  Which means you might like her.

  Because to like someone back indicates reciprocating something that was already in existence.

  As in you liked her first.

  As in I like Libby Strout.

  Oh shit, do I?

  And because I’m thinking about cancer and this old guy in San Francisco with face blindness and Dr. Amber Klein and aneurysms and how, when you get down to it, so much of life is out of our control, I decide to take control of something.

  I reach over and take her hand. It’s soft and warm and fits exactly in mine, and to be honest I’m not really expecting anything, but suddenly my entire body is wired, as if I’ve been plugged directly into the sun.

  We stare down at our hands, as if we’re seeing them for the first time.

  Somehow, I remember I’m driving, so my eyes go back to the road, but I don’t let go of her hand. I rub her skin with my thumb, and you can almost feel the electrostatic discharge, that flow of electricity between two electrically charged objects suddenly coming into contact. ESD, as it’s called, can create amazing electric sparks, but it can also have harmful effects, like coal dust explosions or gas. Unlike with Caroline, who is mostly gas and coal dust, there aren’t any harmful effects here.

  Libby is solid. She is real. As long as I hold her hand, she won’t vanish before my eyes.

  He turns off the highway onto the Amos exit. We pass the Welcome Center and the Ford dealership and the mall and all the chain restaurants. We pass the old Victorians that line Main Street, and the little history museum, and the four blocks of downtown, and the courthouse. We pass the high school and the college and the mortuary, and then, finally, we pull into my neighborhood.