by Lauren Marks
Jonah’s stubbornness probably complemented my own in our old relationship, and the ways we were slightly combative with each other—how we could both dig in our heels during one of our debates—must have even been part of the allure. But I didn’t operate that way anymore, I simply couldn’t. As a result, Jonah had become much more the mouthpiece of the relationship, and my concern now was that he might have come to enjoy that position of power. Maybe he preferred me a little broken?
I didn’t express most of this to Jonah, but my inner voice was percolating with these ideas. Jonah intuited that my silence was somewhat fraught.
Lauren, Jonah said gently. This isn’t easy for me, either. I’m trying to support you, and trying to make this work. But you effectively live in LA now. I understand why, of course. I’m just . . . I mean . . . How long do you want me to wait for you?
It was a legitimate question, and I tried to answer it honestly.
Six months, I said. A year? I didn’t have a good answer for him.
But to be fair, Jonah, I never actually asked you to wait, I said. And there’s no way for me to know whether you’ve been waiting for me or not. . . .
Jonah was startled by my comment. I hadn’t meant to question his fidelity, but that was exactly how he received it. His intake of breath sounded like he was on the verge of tears.
What a thing to say. Jonah’s voice started to tremble. Of course, of course, of course, I have been waiting. I assumed you knew that, Lauren. And I would continue to wait if you would let me. Jesus, he said. You are not the only person who has changed in the last year.
It was true—I was certain of that. But I am not sure how much that mattered anymore.
I wonder what would have happened if Jonah had offered to come to California then, to start over near me, instead of asking me to return to him. Would that have changed the direction in which our relationship was heading? What if he had asked more questions about my rehabilitation and was less assertive with his opinions of it? What if his senses of integrity and inflexibility weren’t so closely aligned? What if he liked my family a bit more? Even a small change on any front could have made a big difference.
I suppose that the extremity of Jonah’s moods was a factor as well, but I am hesitant to say that it was the main one. His unease about where his life was heading was a strong undercurrent in many of his preoccupations, but I had heard similar concerns in our social group in New York, too. The years after college were just an uncertain time for ambitious people.
What was so different in me was that I was protective of, and maybe even a little selfish with, my newfound joy. I would not let my curiosity be eclipsed by anyone else’s concerns. And though I had plenty of my own uncertainties in my life, it hardly resembled Jonah’s anymore. It wasn’t neurotic, it wasn’t self-punishing, and it was certainly not defeatist. I appreciated how sincere he always was, but couldn’t plunge into cynicism the way he could or the way I used to. Since the rupture, I had been exposed to so many positive and mystifying and terrifying experiences, and death was a lot more present and possible to me. It was a constant reminder not to stray far from things that I valued. If I could die any day, at any time, in any room I was in, I had to make the best of where I was. I didn’t need to have a partner who felt exactly the same way, but if I was really going to pair up with someone again, it couldn’t be someone who hindered my ways of approaching the world. I preferred comfort to conflict. There were probably a variety of ways in which I could have tried to let Jonah in more. It wasn’t very fair of me to exclude him in the way I did, but I really wasn’t thinking about how to make any partnership work at that time.
When it comes down to it, I also think Jonah wanted an impossible mix from me. He hoped I would be involved with him and our relationship at the exact level I had been before the rupture. But at the same time, he wanted me to remain wiped of memory regarding our somewhat problematic history. However, memory is what gives us the depth to our experience; it is the way we prioritize the things we hold dear.
A woman without access to her memories, the good and the bad? She would have no reason to invest in anything, or anyone, at all.
20
As the first anniversary of the rupture approached, I opened an e-mail from Krass, who was back in Paris, and I noticed that he had forwarded me a document as well. Above the main text, Krass had written a preface: “Came across this tonight. Perhaps of interest. It is (and was) to me.”
As I continued to read, I realized that he had attached a letter I had sent him a year earlier. It was soon after I had left him in Paris. I had written to him during a low point of the Edinburgh tour, when it had become clear that neither audiences nor critics would be turning out for our production. BJ was irritable, Laura depressed, and my confidence was shot. In addition to feeling like my lack of preparation and experience had let my friends down, I had also recently come across a Fringe publication highlighting the previous year’s best shows. The feature article profiled a group of former classmates of ours from NYU, and it was hard not to make quick comparisons. Why had their show been such a success and ours such a failure? What had we been doing wrong? And smack dab in the middle of the page was a large picture of the girl Jonah had had an affair with, the one he thought he might have loved. Her face was shining up at me in smug triumph.
The Girl I Used to Be let her mind reel then, telling herself a story of victimhood.
My self-loathing quotient was pretty high, though I had tried to tone it down a little when I dashed that e-mail off to Krass. The letter was dated two days before the aneurysm’s rupture. And it was clear that Krass himself had noticed this dividing line because he had remarked, “From 21 August, 2007, aka another life.” And this is what I had written to him:
“sometimes i wonder how it is i got this deep into theater in the first place. an undergraduate degree, dozens (hundreds?) of shows, theater actor, director, reviewer, script editor, dramaturg, and now i’m getting a phd in it? do i really like it that much? i think i am using this degree in many ways simply to sharpen my critical thinking and hone my writing style, that was simply the most complete vocabulary i had to work in/with when applying to graduate schools. wouldn’t i rather be writing in poetry in near holyrood or a novel on the rue d st. louis? the answer is an unequivocal yes, but how one makes a career of something like that (without a large parental endowment) is a little more obscure. i certainly enjoy grad school more than being a secretary or a waitress, but the fact that those options are the only ones that seem readily popping to mind is really fairly disgraceful.
this is what is on my mind, between the minutes of 9.09 and 9.36, and may be some of what has been fueling the anxious nightmares from paris to edinburgh.”
There was so much about this note that amazed me a year later. The uncertain girl. The girl at the brink of change. Mentioning her writing and her parents, without knowing that her relationships with both were about to alter dramatically. The things that moved this girl, scared her, set her mind on edge would seismically shift in an instant, and would be rendered almost unrecognizable. How could she know what her nightmares were actually portending?
I realized I was so much more satisfied with my life than this girl had been and that much of her dissatisfaction was self-imposed. Now I was working against much more powerful forces, was threatened at much higher stakes, and yet my appreciation and gratitude were abundant. I was much happier now with so much less.
Linguistically, too, there were fascinating aspects in this letter for me to fixate on. The Girl I Used to Be couldn’t have been more fluent. In this letter she’d adopted a tone of utter informality, shrugging most aspects of grammar, but even her carelessness showed her mastery. I had to be so much more attentive these days. Carelessness and ease were not something I experienced in my language anymore. But revisiting this piece of writing produced right before the rupture made it easier to review the way I was writing right now:
As I continue to work on the bo
ok and the journals, I see the fissures of damages. When I write quickly, words change.
“A” and “I” become interchangeable. The past stense and the present can switch in the same sentence. Words that sounds like each other “reel” to “deal,” “knack” to “knock,” materialize without my knowing
And strangely, in dialogue, he/she can quickly become me (and I become them) in or around the quotation marks.”
If I take time to write or review I see them the they “there” the “their” “they’re.” A pothole on the street. Will it be repaired? Or does the driver need to drive around it always?
Almost exactly a year after my onset of aphasia, I was still demonstrating aphasic symptoms. In this journal entry, I was detailing them explicitly and describing how they still surfaced every day. But there was also a clarifying self-consciousness in this entry. It was true. I couldn’t keep myself from making mistakes, but I also had come a long way from the woman in the Edinburgh hospital who couldn’t even know that mistakes were being made. And in confronting my deficits so directly, I was taking charge of my own care, slowly assuming the role I had needed speech therapists, friends, and family members to fill previously. I might never have the linguistic effortlessness of the girl who had jotted that e-mail to Krass, but I was not totally hapless in language either. Not anymore.
I doubt that Krass would have known that sending me that old e-mail was going to spark so much self-reflection. His aim was more direct, practical even. Krass was in Europe again this summer, and this time he had decided to pop over to Edinburgh, to see the Fringe Festival himself. He just wanted to let me know.
Not only was he going to Edinburgh, he would be there a year to the day from the aneurysm’s rupture, my near-death anniversary. So I asked him for a favor: to visit Priscilla’s Bar. When I called him to make this request, though, he thought it was a little odd.
That’s a bit morbid, he said, slightly reluctant to take on the task. Why would you want me to return to the scene of the crime?
Well . . . I struggled to think of a good excuse. I did lose a shoe there. . . .
Uh-huh, Krass said. So this is about replacing a piece of inventory in your closet? Krass was clearly not going to let me get off that easily. You know, Lauren, last I checked there were plenty of shoe stores in Los Angeles. Are you going to tell me what is actually going on here? Or does someone just have a serious Cinderella complex?
I admitted to him then that my motivations were based almost purely on emotion. And actually, that was something he valued and would not dismiss so easily.
What had happened in Priscilla’s Bar was not something I wanted to ignore or neglect. I desperately needed a way to mark the occasion of this event, and he might be the only one who would be willing to do it. BJ and Laura probably wouldn’t want to relive their traumatic experiences of that day, and I knew my parents would rather forget about it too. Jonah had long ago expressed that I could only celebrate a single birthday. But Krass had already made overtures indicating he was able to appreciate the event more like I did. He had even adopted the language I used about “another life.”
So, with no more explanations required, Krass agreed to visit the bar on my behalf. Because he understood what this day meant for me: a rebirth.
21
After living on opposite coasts for almost a year, my relationship with Jonah began its gradual but inevitable dissolution. Every time we’d see each other, we would resume some amount of our intimacy, but it happened less and less and then it stopped entirely. We remained friendly for a long while, though, and he continued every now and then to indulge my desire to hear him read to me.
One particular night in August 2008, he selected Pieces for the Left Hand—an excerpt called “Underline Passages.”
In the short story, a husband encounters a book of philosophy that profoundly moves him, and afterward feels its pervasive and positive effects everywhere. But at some point, he discovers the book already exists in his house. Not only did he own this book, he had read it already—there were many underlined sections to prove it. How could he have forgotten something so important? Was his sense of the world so faulty? The man starts to doubt everything around him, including his relationship. He and his wife eventually divorce. And while divvying up their possessions, the book appears again. This time, under closer inspection, he sees his ex-wife’s name scribbled inside the front cover. It was her book all the time. They were her notes, which he had mistaken for his own.
When Jonah finished reading the story, he whispered, You still awake, Lo?
I am, Jo. It was a good story.
Really? He laughed but sounded like he didn’t exactly believe me. You sounded pretty drowsy before I even started. You are telling me you heard the whole thing?
It was a very short story, I said. So, yes, Nosey-pants. I was awake for the whole thing.
Okay, pop quiz. What happened to the couple in the end? Was the conclusion uplifting or depressing for those two?
Hmm, I said. We don’t exactly know for sure. It’s kind of open-ended. But they have more information about the source of their conflict at least.
You were paying attention after all. I could hear Jonah’s smile stretching in his voice. You’re learning, Grasshopper.
I gave Jonah an eye roll he couldn’t see. I am always paying attention, I told him. But I think both of us might be slow learners.
When does anyone START a true story and when do they teLL it? Like Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy. We hear the story as the villanous Darcy. More history fills in the discrepant knowledge of the story. Time tells him the villains the hero.
A novel begins and ends. The non-fiction story continues with gaps and the fissures.
(For me, there will be details mistakes that Iwwill miss in this book. Prob medical problems, and problems of scientific thinking. But more than that the collating, the rememberig, the re-collecting of this new-time and future time. What what appens after this book is done. The future always the past)
22
August 23. As promised, Krass visited Priscilla’s Bar for me (“a dump,” he called it; the tone was loving but I knew he meant it, too. He said it was a poor setting to play out the “primary event of your life,” adding he believed my mother “chose the FIRST birth with a little more . . . discernment”). It made me chuckle.
Back at home in LA, I was planning my own visit to Priscilla’s. I got up, showered, dressed, and sat down on the piano bench at my desk. Pulling my laptop closer to me, I opened the e-mail from BJ and clicked on the link to his blog he had sent months ago.
I read the video’s time signature: sixteen seconds. I knew this wasn’t the full recording. BJ had warned me that he couldn’t find the full-length video anymore, so this would have to do.
The screen had a small, frozen version of Laura and me, arm in arm. The image was grainy, but I could clearly see what I was wearing: my grey-and-white dress with the pockets. There was no reason to be surprised—it had been one of my favorite outfits and was still in rotation. But while getting ready for today’s viewing, I had unwittingly put on the same exact dress. Costumed for the performance.
My feelings about what I was doing were still a little uncertain. Few people had documentation of the very second their lives changed forever. Did anyone want to revisit the moment their lives veered onto a different course? But I stopped asking questions and just pressed play.
It all happened too fast. I was up, I was down, and then it was over. I had to watch the video several more times for it to even make an impression. I watched second by second, pause by pause. There was the smile. I am smiling for one and a half seconds. Then the collapse. Laura and I are linked until the moment I slip off her shoulders like a scarf. I disappear from the frame on the word forever. And, after that, I can’t be seen at all. BJ laughs his unmistakable laugh, his camera shaking quite a bit. The light reflected from the disco ball makes the room look like a purple snowstorm. I am on the floor, but BJ isn’
t recording the floor. BJ keeps on laughing and Laura keeps on singing and smiling too, looking down at me, waiting for me to return to the song, bruises and all. But things change around second ten. BJ stops laughing. Second eleven, the audio track is going on without Laura’s voice accompanying it. Twelve seconds in, the camera shakes, the angle turns, and the recording stops.
Of the sixteen seconds of the video, I could only see myself for fewer than two of them.
I had expected a lot from this recording—a eureka moment. But I didn’t see the transition from one person to another. I only saw a fall, and even though I was seeing it from the audience now, I was the only person who knew how important this fall was.
It’s every actor’s nightmare that something truly dangerous will happen while they are onstage. And the fear is somewhat justified. Fight scenes, duels, and murders are written into a lot of scripts. Performers are taught to disguise the aches and pains they acquire and learn to keep going because the show must go on. But the nightmare scenario is that they might get seriously wounded, too, and amid all of that pretending no one will actually recognize their genuine distress.
What did people think when I fell from the stage? It was a bar after all, it probably happened all the time. They thought that it was just another clumsy girl who hadn’t seen the step at the edge of the platform. They thought of the silly American and how foreigners couldn’t hold their drink. But they would not have imagined that a dam of blood had broken inside this girl’s skull and she was drowning in her own head. A life was seeping out before the audience’s eyes, and not one person—not even her friends—realized it right away. The first few times I saw the video, I saw the actor’s nightmare come to gruesome fruition.
But as I kept watching, different things came into focus, especially in the final moments. A man off-screen shouts Oi! Oi! That’s when the hands appear. Laura’s hands, the bartender’s hands, the strangers’ hands—all of them are reaching down for an out-of-frame me.
