You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

by Heather Sellers

  “Heather,” Junior said, and he made a chiding, dubious face, tucking his chin and frowning. A pretty mean face.

  Michaela hopped down into her convertible, over the side, her long blond hair spraying across the seatback. “You’re crazy,” she said cheerfully. “David, you’re crazy.”

  He waved his arms. “It’s not a real thing. It’s just not. People! Come on!”

  “David, you know all the times I haven’t recognized you. Been startled in the store. Remember at Walgreens? At D&W, pretty much every time unless you have your name tag? Remember at school yesterday, at the gym? I did not know it was you. You know I didn’t.”

  “You always think I am some random truant psycho thief boy. I know. But that’s not a thing.” He covered his face. “AGH!” he yelled. “There is no such thing as face blindness. You just don’t like me!”

  I reached up and took him by the shoulders. I looked hard in his eyes. “I like you.” I gave him a shake to press the words into him. I said, “Did you see Ken Nakayama, the famous Harvard researcher, being interviewed? He wouldn’t really be making this up. It’s his life’s work.”

  Junior turned his back to me and jogged down the street. The dog looked up at me, completely confused. At the stop sign Michaela slowed her car, he vaulted in, and they sped off.

  Jacob and Dave were upstairs, standing in the living room. Pizza boxes were all over the floor, like little islands of safety in a stormy, chaotic sea. Blankets, socks were strewn about. The apartment had the smell of men living without women.

  I tiptoed over and hugged Dave, shook Jacob’s hand. Jacob covered his face. He made little shutters with his hands and opened them up and said, “I don’t see the problem. I don’t see it, Heather. Everyone has hair and ears. Everyone does!”

  I leaned on Dave. I’d been so happy in my own house. Why had I come down here?

  Jacob lunged forward and yelled in a freaky movie voice, “WHO AM I?!!!”

  “Jacob,” David said, “that’s uncalled-for, buddy.”

  “Sorry, but I’m saying everyone has hair and ears. Hair. And ears. I just do not see what the problem is.” Jacob lumbered down the hall and was gone.

  Jacob and Junior were mad about the divorce. I was not who I was when I met them. It felt like a trick to them. I’d divorced their dad and now I was telling the world I didn’t know people? I’d be cranky too. David said that wasn’t it. They were just teasing.

  Dave said I did a really good job, better than Ken Nakayama. Of the face-blind people, Dave said, I was the best one.

  “The mom was good too,” I said.

  “Which one do you mean?” Dave said.

  “There was just one mom. Wasn’t there? The face-blind mom? The one who wasn’t me, the other lady they did.”

  “There were three face-blind women,” Dave said. “They were sisters.”

  “What?” I said.

  We watched the tape. We went over each scene. Dave pointed out which women were different women, and he pointed to a scene I was in where I hadn’t seen myself before. He said, “Now, that’s the original one, she’s just changed clothes. And now that’s her again.”

  David Junior was reading The Da Vinci Code and talking about it constantly, and I wanted to look at Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks myself, to see his drawings and pages and notes. I had an idea of what they looked like, but I didn’t really know. The college library had two dusty old volumes from the 1930s. When I got home, I dragged them upstairs and got in bed with Leonardo. I picked up volume two and spread it across my lap.

  Volume two opened itself to a page titled “Of the Choice of the Light Which Gives Grace to a Face.” I couldn’t believe it. I loved when books did this: when the book itself seemed to recognize who was reading it, and what would be best to reveal.

  Leonardo wrote:If you have a courtyard which, when you so please, you can cover over with a linen awning, the light will then be excellent. Or when you wish to paint a portrait, paint it in bad weather, at the fall of the evening, placing the sitter with his back to one of the walls. . . .

  I skimmed down, turned the pages. I found a section titled “Of the Way to Fix in Your Mind the Form of a Face.” How great would it be if I could learn tricks for remembering faces from Leonardo da Vinci himself?

  If you desire to acquire facility in keeping in your mind the expression of a face, first learn by heart the various different kinds of heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins, throats, and also necks and shoulders. . . . Take as an instance noses: there are ten types. Straight, bulbous, hollow, prominent either above or below the centre, aquiline, regular, simian, round, and pointed. These divisions hold good as regards profile. Seen from in front, noses are of twelve types: thick in the middle, thin in the middle, with the tip broad, and narrow at the base, and narrow at the tip, and broad at the base, with nostrils broad or narrow, or high or low, and with the openings either visible or hidden by the tip.

  I tried to think of how I would have comprehended this passage if I had come across it before knowing this task was one I would never be able to complete. My explanation would have been: It’s Leonardo da Vinci—he’s a genius! He could see all kinds of thing no one else could see.

  Now I attempted to imagine Dave’s nose, my own, Jacob’s, my mother’s. I couldn’t see any noses. If only this edition had, as perhaps the original notebooks did, Leonardo’s drawings, the original museum of captured noses. I needed a cheat sheet, a little flip book of noses and face parts, indices like the cashiers at the grocery store used, big color pictures of broccoli, cress, kohlrabi.

  To see better, to draw more skillfully, Leonardo counseled a kind of stealing of face parts, the visual equivalent of eavesdropping:When you have to draw a face from memory, carry with you a small note-book in which you have noted down such features and when you have cast a glance at the face of the person whom you wish to draw you can look privately and see which nose or mouth has a resemblance to it, and make a tiny mark against it in order to recognize it again at home. Of abnormal faces I here say nothing for they are kept in the mind without difficulty.

  I heard my mother’s voice, from the distant past. Her taxonomy of noses. How she always said hers was patrician, that patrician was the best kind of nose. At the time, I’m sure I thought she was just making all this up. She had so many odd notions, all kinds of theories for how to sort people into bad, and worse, and bottom-of-the-heap. I didn’t really comprehend what she was talking about when she described faces, but I often didn’t know what she was talking about. She had lots of rules and policies no one else subscribed to; she saw lots of things that weren’t there. I hadn’t thought of her nose thing in so, so long. A cute little button nose. It’s right for you, honey. There’s nothing wrong with your nose. It’s a turned-up little nose.

  Reading Leonardo, I knew absolutely for certain my mother was not face-blind. If I was born with the disorder, I could have gotten it from her, her side of the family, but she wasn’t face-blind. I hadn’t known this was the piece I was looking for. But it was. She wasn’t face-blind. I wasn’t schizophrenic. We shared our love for Portmeirion china, pleated blouses, songs featuring the moon, sheets dried on the line, and grass and little kids and nonpareils and the idea of kitten heels. Our difficulties had come into contact, but these difficulties weren’t what tied us together.

  “So it really could come from Fred.” Dave was sitting across from me; we were at a restaurant on the lake, overlooking the beach where we had taken a walk on our first date.

  Every week we went out for dinner, and Dave listened and always had some insight into my mother, the boys, me, or us. His acceptance—his embracing—of the range of human experience was a kind of genius. I couldn’t live with him, but I didn’t see how I could live too far from him. It was selfish and strange, my friendship with him. It was keeping him from moving on. Almost every Saturday we went to the Blue Star Antique Pavilion—Dave talked silver and gold with the codgers working their booths and I sniffed out v
intage Pringle sweaters, and linens. The vendors always called out when we walked in the door, “Well, it’s the Happiest Divorced Couple in West Michigan!” as though we’d won a prize. I knew I needed to give that prize back soon. But not yet.

  “My father never talked about noses,” I said. He never referenced a chin, or a jaw, or talked about the eyes. I’d never seen him go up to someone on the street and say hello.

  “I wonder if there were times Fred didn’t recognize you,” Dave said. “If this explains why he hated to leave the house. Why he didn’t really have friends. Why he gave all those homeless guys as much money as they asked for, thought of them as familiar, as close friends. Could he tell them apart? I bet he couldn’t.”

  Did the new theory explain, in part, Fred’s heavy drinking, his failure at employment, his inability or his refusal to fit in with the world? In the dark bars, the regulars sat, like students in classes, in their same exact positions, on their same stools, came at the same times, wore the same clothes. The bartender called them by name. Maybe at work there were too many people to keep track of.

  Maybe even his cross-dressing was a way for him to say I know this is me, Dave theorized, like when you put a red tag on luggage.

  Face blindness could make you lose yourself to yourself, but not exactly in that way, I said. I didn’t think face blindness explained everything about Fred. A disorder wasn’t really an explanation—ever; it was always more like an extra limb. I didn’t feel like I needed to know which of my parents had passed it on. Maybe they both had. Maybe I got it a whole other way. I would not ever know, and the great triumph of the year was that now I could sit and not-know the hell out of something and it was a perfectly pleasant, non-chaotic way to spend time.

  “He’s really good with strangers,” I said. “He was always super-friendly to people he didn’t know. And frustrated around everyone else.”

  Dave said for a paranoid person to be really successfully paranoid, you would have to recognize people. It wasn’t strangers that freaked you out, it was known people. This, I thought, was a fascinating point. We talked about it for a long time. We finished our dinners, ordered another round of drinks. The sun was down, but the sky was still full of aqua and pink, the lake a perfect mirror.

  “You know I will always love you,” Dave said.

  “Yup, I’ll always love you too,” I said.

  Five

  The week after I sent it, I got thirty-eight responses to my e-mail. And they kept trickling in, months later:Thank you for the email but how long have you known and why are you telling us now?

  From a prof in religion:When did you know you had this?

  I decided to save the e-mails as one would save get-well cards. Replies weren’t required. I decided that no matter what they actually said, people were trying to say, Thanks for telling us, let us know if we can help.

  I noticed as I went from class to the library, from the library to the dining hall, from my car to the coffee shop, a lot more people on campus were saying, “Hello, Heather.”

  No one was saying who they were, but they were greeting me by name. Suddenly, I had all these new people to not know.

  It must be really hard for you because you are such a vibrant and outgoing person. You are such a people person.

  I wanted to write back and explain that prosopagnosics were prone to acting this way, all showy, because we were desperate to be seen. Because we didn’t recognize people, a deep part of us feared it was us that was invisible.

  This is Amy Van Dort. Do you know who I am?

  When I write to you do you know it is me?

  My friend Lisa e-mailed me and asked if I could pick up her toddler at day care; then she called me. She was nervous. She had talked to her husband. “How will you recognize my kid?” she said. I told her the truth: “I won’t. But he will recognize me.” I told her to tell the day care people. They would have to give me the right kid. “You can tell me what he’s wearing.”

  “We’re just not comfortable with it,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  The e-mails kept coming in, a couple a week:We live in such a caring community isnt that lucky?

  This is Brad Pitt. Hey! Gotta keep ya laughing!

  (Really it is Jack. Hahaha).

  This explains a lot. I always wondered why you give me such a funny look, like you do not know me or like me.

  (I do not like this person.)

  I have seizures. Do you think i could come and talk to you about the brain and these things sometimes?

  I could treat us to coffee. I know you are busy.

  You are so brave!

  You are so courageous.

  Hug hug hug. You are so courageous, Heather.

  I got your email. How courageous. This is Bob

  Luidens. I have a beard and grey hair. I will always introduce myself to you. But I have a question. How is it you never noticed this before? What about your parents? If you had such a serious disability, wouldn’t they have taken you to a doctor?

  I think I have this. Not as bad as you. Can we meet for coffee my treat?

  Four people on campus wrote me with similar stories: after reading my e-mail, and taking the tests at the Harvard site, they each thought they were face-blind. I wrote back to each person right away. We met individually that week, and I met two of them again the next week. I was convinced: these were face-blind people. I encouraged them to join the online support group, to contact the researchers at Harvard and MIT, and to read Andrew Young’s wonderful, difficult book. The most important thing, I stressed, was to tell everyone. People needed to know. Otherwise, one misunderstanding after another steadily eroded one’s confidence and well-being. Things were so much easier, once everyone knew. Tell!

  They insisted on remaining anonymous.

  I remembered the feelings of shame and fear, so wrapped up in my experiences with my mother and her illness, that had kept me from wanting anyone to know. But with all the fervor of the newly converted, I wanted everyone to know everything. I wanted everything told. “You have to tell,” I said over and over, as politely as I could. I was aware I sounded exactly like Helder, calm but definitive, serious and all therapist-y. I sounded exactly like Peter Helder when I had loathed him most intensely. But I assured my face-blind colleagues I would never reveal their identities. I would keep their secrets, absolutely. And, we joked, we were safe with each other. We wouldn’t recognize each other at our faculty meetings.

  I made plans to meet Dave and Jacob and Junior for lunch. I had just sat down in a booth toward the back when I got a tap on my shoulder. “We’re already here, sweetheart.” It was Dave. “We’re right here. You walked past us, sweetheart, but it’s okay.”

  I joined them at their table.

  “You looked right at us,” Jacob said. He threw his hands out wide and held them there, exaggerating his stunned condition.

  “She’s faking,” Junior said.

  “Didn’t see you,” I said. I smiled.

  “Right at us!” Jacob said, waving his arms around.

  “Jakey,” David cautioned. “Be nice.”

  “But she looked right at us. And then sat over there!” Junior cried out.

  I looked at Dave. I took his hand in my hands. “I’m not mad, but I think I’m going to go. I know no one at this table means any harm.” I looked at the boys, who were looking hard at the tabletop. “But if you had a hearing impairment, or dyslexia, I wouldn’t doubt you. I would be kind and supportive—at least, I hope I would be. I guess I would keep trying to understand. No hard feelings. It’s a very weird disorder. It’s hard to understand. It took me my whole life to figure it out.” I stood up. They looked really sad and hangdog and I felt like I’d been clear, but also too harsh. “I’ll see you at the pool later, Jakey?”

  “I’ll be there,” he muttered.

  “How will you recognize him?” Junior piped up, his voice high and cheery. He made little window shutters over his face with his hands and flapped them open and shut. H
is father told him to knock it off. I laughed and said I knew they’d find me. “I’m easy to find,” I said.

  Months later, I would hear Jacob explaining to his friends that I had a rare neurological disorder, one that had affected Kurt Vonnegut and affects Jane Goodall too. He was always soft-spoken, and he sounded kind and gentle and a little proud as he explained how I didn’t know him sometimes. When Jacob and his friends sat in a circle on the living room floor, playing Dungeons & Dragons, I couldn’t tell the boys apart, not even Jacob, except for Teddy. “So, keep dyeing your hair blue, man,” Jacob said to Teddy. And the conversation turned back to superpowers, and charisma points, and whose turn it was, and why Flinchie’s family appeared to love him so much. Junior and I never spoke about face blindness again. He enrolled in a college, Michaela dumped him for the second time, he dropped out mid-semester, and Dave said I shouldn’t worry; he said the kid was finding himself.

  In the year to come, Fred ended up in a nursing home on Orange Blossom Trail, a nursing home that had been a Holiday Inn when I was in high school; he still knew who I was when I called, but he never wanted to talk for long. The last time I’d spoken with him, he’d had a cardiac event an hour later, been rushed to the hospital. It was days and nights on pins and needles, with midnight calls from the hospital. Was I his daughter? Was I the person who could say do not resuscitate, who could tell them his wishes? Yes, I was this person. I faxed the paperwork. I hired people to help. I called him every couple of hours. He yelled at me. “I’m fine,” he said. “Fine.”