Left Neglected

by Lisa Genova

  “I’ll have the same,” says Bob. “We can probably get our order in now, too.”

  We know the menu by heart, which is especially handy tonight because that means I don’t have to struggle to read the left page or the left side of the right page or ask Bob to read it for me. We order our usuals.

  “You back?” I ask, nodding at his phone.

  “Yeah, sorry. Looks like there’s going to be another layoff. Man, I hope my head’s not on the chopping block.”

  “Would that really be the worst thing?” I ask. “You’d get severance, right?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “But everyone else has been getting three to four months.”

  “Yeah, but that well is going dry, if it isn’t already.”

  “But say you did get four months, that wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “It wouldn’t be so good, Sarah. I’ve invested too much of myself to have it all be for nothing. I’ve got to hang on. The economy’s going to turn around at some point. It has to. I’ve got to hang on and see this through.”

  It seems that while I’ve been praying for Bob to lose his job, he’s been praying to keep it. I don’t know if God is much of a mathematician, but my guess is we’ve been canceling each other out, like when I vote Democrat and Bob votes Republican. I do understand and admire his drive to succeed and never give up. I’ve got that same natural will to win, but while I’ve got it in my blood where levels fluctuate from time to time, Bob’s is rooted in the marrow of his bones.

  “What did we do for our anniversary last year?” I ask, hoping to move our conversation away from Bob’s job.

  “I don’t remember,” he says. “Did we come here?”

  “I can’t remember. We might’ve.”

  We got married in Cortland, Vermont, nine years ago. We picked the week before Christmas because it’s such a festive and magical time of year there. Lights, bonfires, Christmas carols, and good cheer all seemed to be celebrating our union in addition to the coming holiday. And we spent our honeymoon skiing on freshly packed, wide-open trails for an entire week, knowing that everyone else and their kids would be coming after Christmas.

  The downside to having married this time of year is that our anniversary now tends to get lost in all the hoopla that surrounds preparing for Christmas with young children. It’s also year-end performance evaluations time for me, which means I’m even more slammed and preoccupied than usual. So our anniversaries have been less than monumental events.

  We give up on our doddering memories and talk about the kids. I talk a little about my outpatient therapy and carefully avoid talking about Berkley or my mother. Meanwhile, every few seconds, Bob glances down at his phone, which is sitting there in plain sight on the table in front of him, silent but begging to be touched. He looks tortured, like a recovering alcoholic staring down his favorite martini. I’m about to suggest that he either check it again or put it away when our meals arrive.

  I ordered the grilled beef tenderloin with horseradish whipped potatoes and roasted asparagus, and Bob got the Nantucket sea scallops with butternut squash risotto. Everything looks and smells amazing. I’m starving and ready to dig in, but then I’m stumped and embarrassed, realizing that I didn’t think my dinner choice through.

  “Honey, I can’t eat this,” I say.

  “What, is there something wrong with it?”

  “No, there’s something wrong with me.”

  He looks up and down between me and my untouched meal, trying to figure out what I’m talking about, using the same analytical thinking he brings to any high-priority work problem, not seeing it. And then he does.

  “Ah. Here, let’s switch for a minute,” he says.

  He swaps my plate for his, and I eat a few of his scallops and some of his risotto while he cuts my meat. I feel foolish as I watch him cut my entire tenderloin into neat, bite-sized pieces, like I’m an incapable child. The young couple next to us burst into more laughter. I look over my shoulder, discreetly eyeing them, my insecure ego assuming that they must be laughing at me, the thirty-seven-year-old woman who can’t cut her own meat. The young woman is still laughing, wiping tears from her eyes, and the young man is grinning as he lifts his glass of champagne. I can’t figure out what was so funny, but it clearly wasn’t me. They’re so into each other, they probably haven’t even noticed that Bob and I are here. I need to get a grip.

  “Here you go,” says Bob, re-swapping our plates.

  “Thank you,” I say, still feeling a bit sheepish.

  I stab a piece of my precut beef tenderloin and pop it into my mouth. Bob does the same with a scallop.

  “How is it?” asks Bob.

  “Perfect.”

  We finish dinner, too full for dessert, and wait for the check. My glass of wine turns out not to have been the best idea, not because I feel buzzed (although I do just a little), but because I now have to go to the bathroom, and there’s no way that I can hold it until we get home. But I really don’t want to use a public restroom. I try to put it out of my mind and think about something else. I really want to go to Vermont soon. I really want to go back to work. I really want to go home and go to the bathroom. It’s no use. I won’t be able to hold it four long blocks plus the car ride. If I thought a thirty-seven-year-old woman needing her husband to cut her meat looked embarrassing, imagine the sight of a thirty-seven-year-old woman wetting herself in the middle of Pisces. The young couple next to us would definitely roar over that one.

  “Bob? I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

  “Uh, okay. Let’s get you there.”

  We maneuver past the young couple, who I swear still don’t notice us, through the labyrinth of tables, past a tight spot where we block a waitress with a tray full of food and a barely disguised look of impatient irritation, and amble into an empty corridor. Cane. Step. Drag. Breathe. Hold.

  We stop in front of the door to the ladies’ room.

  “You okay from here?” Bob asks.

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “Into the ladies’ room? I can’t go in there.”

  “Sure you can. No one will care.”

  “Fine, then let’s go into the men’s room.”

  “No, okay. But what if I need you in there?”

  “Then call for me.”

  “And you’ll come in if I call you?”

  “I’ll come in if you call me.”

  “And you’ll wait right here at the door?”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  “Okay. Here I go.”

  Bob holds the door open, and I carefully make my way inside. The sinks are in front of me and to the right, which means that the stalls must be somewhere to my left. Of course. Scan left, look left, go left. I find them. There are three regular stalls and one handicapped. The handicapped stall is large with plenty of room for walking in and turning around and would be the stall that any of my therapists would tell me to use. But it’s also the farthest away, and I really, really have to pee. And I’m not handicapped.

  I make it to the first stall and push the door open with the forward step of my granny cane. It swings open and then swings back, banging into my cane. I inch forward until I can’t move anymore and am now standing over the toilet. For the first time in my life, I wish I were a man.

  But I’m not a man, so I begin the painstaking process of trying to turn around and sit down. This is where the grab bars at Baldwin and the ones installed in our bathrooms at home always seem to magically appear in just the right spot, exactly where I need to cling on for dear life. There are no such generously placed handholds in a public restroom. The door has no doorknob, only a flimsy metal latch, and the toilet paper dispenser is now somewhere to my left and so completely useless to me.

  After a lot of banging around, grunting, and muttering to myself, I manage to turn around and slide my underwear and pantyhose down. I hear the toilet paper spin in the stall next to me. Great. I’m sure whoever it is can’t imagine what I�
��m doing. Forget about her. You’re almost there. I decide my best route to the toilet seat is to slide my hand, slowly and carefully, down my granny cane, like a fireman down the pole, until I land. Miraculously, I make it squarely onto the seat.

  When I finish, I realize, to my complete horror, that I’m stuck here. I must’ve knocked my cane forward during the landing because it’s now leaning against the stall door, out of reach. I try to visualize standing up without it, without a grab bar, without a moderate upper-body assist from a highly trained therapist, without Bob, but when I do I see myself either falling headfirst into the metal stall door or falling backward into the bowl.

  “Bob?” I yell.

  “Uh, no, it’s Paula?” says the woman in the stall next to me.

  Paula flushes.

  “Bawwwb?!”

  I hear Paula’s stall door fly open and her feet walk toward the sink.

  “Hi, how are ya? Nice dress,” says Bob.

  “Uh, I uh,” says Paula.

  “Sorry, it’s our anniversary, and we can’t stand to be apart,” he says.

  I laugh and hear Paula’s shoes scurry out of the room. The stall door gently swings open, knocking my cane back toward me. I grab it. And there’s Bob, grinning at me.

  “You called?”

  “Can you please help me out of here?”

  “Ready?”

  He lifts me by my armpits and drags me out of the stall.

  “You should’ve seen the look on that woman’s face,” he says.

  We both burst into laughter.

  “She couldn’t get out of here fast enough,” I say.

  We both laugh harder.

  The ladies’ room door opens. The young woman from the table next to us enters. She takes one look at Bob holding me up by my armpits, glances down at my feet, gasps, spins on her heels, and rushes back out.

  Bob and I look down. My underwear and hose are lying limp around my ankles. We both lose it. I haven’t laughed with such abandon in Bob’s arms in a long time.

  “Well, babe, I don’t think we’ll ever forget this anniversary,” says Bob.

  No, I don’t believe we ever will.

  CHAPTER 23

  Come on,” says Bob.

  He’s wearing his blue North Face ski jacket, ski pants, his reflective sunglasses hanging from a black cord around his neck, and his very best cheery optimism. He’s holding my new skis. K2 Burnin’ Luvs. They’re sleek and shiny, sporting a rusty orange swirl design on never-used white, my big Christmas gift from Bob. They’re gorgeous, and normally I’d feel giddy at the sight of brand-new skis, imagining how great they’ll respond, anxious to get onto the slopes as early in the morning as possible. But all I feel is pressure.

  “I’m not ready,” I say.

  It’s three days after Christmas, and we’re in Vermont. Linus is napping, and Charlie and Lucy are in the mudroom getting dressed for a day of ski lessons. I’m sitting at our dining table still in my pajamas with last Sunday’s New York Times spread out in front of me. Bob’s here through the weekend, and my mother, the kids, and I are staying for the week of school vacation. Bob’s not too keen about leaving me up here for a whole week without him and in a house that hasn’t been professionally Sarah-proofed, but I convinced him that a week in Vermont would be good for me. A week in Vermont is always good for me.

  “This was your idea,” says Bob.

  “I never said I wanted to ski,” I say.

  “Then why are we up here if you don’t want to ski?” he asks.

  “I like it here.”

  “Come on, I think you should give it a try,” says Bob.

  “How am I going to ski? I can’t even walk.”

  “Maybe it’ll be easier than walking.”

  “How would that be possible?”

  “I don’t know, maybe the thing that reconnects you to the left isn’t picking balls up off a tray. Maybe it’s getting back to doing the things you love to do.”

  Maybe. Maybe skiing would awaken that dormant part of my brain that doesn’t seem to be jazzed one bit about picking up red balls. Maybe I could simply point myself down Mount Cortland in my new K2s, and my left and right appendages would naturally work in concert, carrying me safely to the bottom. Or maybe, and more likely, I’d fall and break my leg or tear the ligaments in my knee, or I’d veer off the trail and crash into a tree. My red ball therapy may not be my recovery’s magic bullet, but at least it doesn’t carry the risk that I could end up in a wheelchair and even more dependent on my mother than I am now.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” asks Bob.

  Two broken legs. Another brain injury. Death. Bob should know better than to ask me, of all people, an extreme question loaded with doom. I tilt my head and raise my eyebrows. Bob sees that he’s chosen the wrong tactic.

  “The only way to know if you can ride the horse again is to get back in the saddle,” says Bob.

  A lame cowboy cliché. I shake my head and sigh.

  “Come on. Give it a try. We can take it nice and slow. We’ll stay on the Bunny slope with the kids. I’ll hold on to you and be with you the whole time.”

  “Bob, she’s not ready to ski. She could break a leg,” says my mother.

  She’s standing behind me in the kitchen, cleaning up the dishes from breakfast. She made buttermilk pancakes and sausage. It feels strange to have my mother here, making breakfast for my family. And it also feels strange to hear her come to my defense, to be of the same opinion. But I have to admit, her pancakes are delicious, and her voiced concern gives me the best possible excuse to stay home in my pajamas. Sorry, my mother says I can’t go.

  “You’re not going to break anything. I promise, I’ll stay with you,” says Bob.

  “It’s too soon. You’re pushing me,” I say.

  “You need a little push here. Come on, I think it’ll be good for you.”

  Skiing would be good for me. But even if I subtract out the possibility of death or serious injury, I still can only envision myself in a constant tangled knot of legs and skis, my skis popping off with each embarrassing fall, the impossibility of balancing on my left foot on a slippery hill while trying to fit my right boot back into the binding, and the equally impossible thought of balancing on my right foot while trying to coax a less than responsive left foot, toe first, into the binding of my left ski. Not one second of this sounds fun to me. And it can hardly be called skiing.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You know, you’re the one who said you wanted to ski this year,” says Bob.

  “This Season,” I say, correcting him. “I do. I will. But not today.”

  He stares at me with his hands on his hips, thinking.

  “Okay, but you can’t stay squirreled inside forever,” he says and looks over at my mother for a pointed second. “You have to get back to all the things you used to do—your job, skiing. We’re getting you on that mountain this season, Sarah.”

  “Okay,” I say, knowing he means well but feeling a bit more threatened than inspired.

  Bob leans my new skis against the kitchen table across from where I’m sitting, probably so that I can see them and think about what I’m missing, the consequences of my decision. I kiss Bob and the kids good-bye, wish them a fun and safe day, and listen to them swish in their nylon shell pants and clomp in their heavy boots out the door.

  After I hear the car pull out of the driveway, I sigh and prepare to settle into a nice, quiet morning of reading. I look for where I left off in the paper. I read a couple of words and look across the table at my shiny new skis. Quit staring at me. We’re not going today. I read a couple of words. My mother is clanging dishes and pans in the sink. I can’t concentrate. I need a coffee.

  I bought Bob a new coffeemaker for Christmas, the Impressa S9 One touch, the best of the very best, top-of-the-line cappuccino, café mocha latte, latte macchiato machine. It’s insanely expensive, so it wasn’t a smart purchase given our current financial situation, but I could
n’t resist it. With the touch of a single button on its polished stainless steel panel, it grinds beans, froths milk, and brews coffee to the precise temperature, volume, and strength desired. It cleans itself automatically, boasts being the quietest coffeemaker available today, and looks oh-so-pretty sitting on our kitchen countertop. It’s like the perfect child—well groomed and educated, it does exactly what we want, does its chores without even being asked, and brings us nothing but joy.

  Bob and I both drank ourselves silly yesterday. I must’ve peed at least a dozen times, including the three times that necessitated pit stops on the way up to Cortland (Bob was ready to diaper me), and I lay in bed wide-eyed, caffeine still grooving in my veins, unable to put the brakes on my buzzing thoughts for hours after I should’ve been sound asleep. But it was worth it.

  Since both of us couldn’t bear to spend the weekend apart from our new baby, we brought the Impressa up to Vermont with us. But unfortunately, we somehow forgot to bring any coffee beans, and the closest grocery store up here that sells coffee worthy of touching the Impressa is in St. Johnsbury, which is about twenty miles to the south. As much as I crave another perfect latte macchiato and to breathe in that rich and comforting aroma throughout the house, the quickest way this morning to a cup of coffee (and relief from the caffeine-withdrawal headache twisting its screws into my temples) is to go to B&C’s Café.