Walk It Off

by Ruth Marshall

  “It’s hard to imagine being interested in shopping ever again,” I told her. “My legs and bum routinely reject whatever I put on them. It’s them, and not the mirror, that reigns supreme over all my fashion choices, little dictators. Ergo, these.” I pointed. My legs could only withstand the softest and stretchiest of fabrics, which meant leggings. Every. Single. Day.

  “That’ll change,” she said. “Eventually, there will be enough room to bring those things you love back into your life.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I miss being shallow.”

  Somehow, I had conferred a kind of depth to people in wheelchairs, as if by their very disability they carried something preternaturally known, something regular bipeds, with their easily moving body parts, couldn’t possibly understand. I was convinced that my thoughts were fuller, more intense than they were before the surgery. It looked like my friends shared my thinking, given how stressed out they became when they caught themselves complaining. They would abruptly stop talking, midsentence, and look at me with shame or horror. “I can’t believe what I’m complaining about when you’re going through this.”

  This was indicated with one upturned hand, as if my world had shrunk to the size of their palm. But the truth was, I loved hearing the griping because it meant that for a moment they had forgotten my woes, which gave me permission to do the same.

  One day, my friend Michael came to visit me. This was the same friend who was convinced that his eye twitches meant he had ALS. I was in the kitchenette beside the nurse’s station filling up my water jug when I caught him wandering the halls, already sweaty, looking for my room. When I wheeled over to him, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  “It’s okay, Michael, it’s okay. Here—let’s go to my room.” I kept up a one-sided dialogue filled with chipper exclamations: Did you bring me lunch? Ooh, what’s that? Sushi—just what I was hoping for. Let’s eat!

  Once Michael’s color brightened and we squeaked open all the Styrofoam containers, he returned to his chatty self. I wanted to hear everything that was going on in his life.

  “The news isn’t great,” he said, before launching into his most pressing concerns. “It feels as if there are troubles lurking around every corner.”

  “Oh, my friend,” I said. I was listening to every word, but I was also impatient to show him my fantastic leg-crossing trick. He hadn’t even noticed that I was practicing while he spoke, which was perfect. I was going to blow his mind!

  “Anyway,” he continued, just as I lost track of my left foot. I ducked down to see if it was under my footrest. “The point is, I have just been so unlucky.”

  My eyes bulged as if I had been hit in the head with a frying pan.

  Unlucky? I wanted to yell. Are you fucking kidding me?!

  I had a choice: I could cry or I could laugh or I could box his ears. I needed a moment to think.

  “I have to find my foot,” I said. “I know it’s here somewhere.”

  Michael looked horrified.

  Maybe this was my fault, I thought. Maybe I made the whole wheelchair thing look easy, like just another bothersome stage in the aging process. Maybe by taking extra care to make sure everyone else was comfortable in my strange surroundings, I gave the impression I wasn’t having a hard time.

  “Found it!” I said. I put my foot back on the footrest. “Gotta be vigilant or my feet might just leave without me, know what I’m saying?”

  But of course, he didn’t know what I was saying. No one did.

  He shook his head, concern—for himself and for me—etched in the lines on his face. I didn’t laugh or cry or throw a fit. Instead, I gave Michael’s arm an affectionate squeeze. We were all struggling.

  •

  At home on my second day pass, I was in our powder room next to the kitchen, a room so narrow you can barely extend your arms all the way out. While in there, it occurred to me that there were enough things for me to grab—the sink, the towel rack, the glass shelf over the toilet—should I decide to take a few tentative steps on my own. Amanda discouraged this kind of rogue behavior, but she did so halfheartedly. She knew the key to my progress was testing my limits. My daily practice by the picnic table was a means to an end, not an end in itself. All the most significant decisions I had made in life took place this way: in a small moment, without consultation, quickly. I let go of the sink and shuffle-walked to the door with my hands in the air as if a cop had hollered freeze! I turned the door handle, then let go instantly; I didn’t want to depend on its stability for even one second longer than I had to. There was nothing and no one behind me to catch me if I fell. In the door frame, I balanced, swayed. I was, literally, freestanding.

  “Richie,” I called. “Rich!”

  “Do you need me?” he called back.

  “Come!”

  I blinked and he was standing right in front of me, unsure if what he was seeing was real.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said. “Just hold your arms out.”

  I started my toddler-of-Frankenstein walk out of the powder room, my eyes locked on the third button of his shirt. He took tiny steps backward as I took tiny steps forward.

  “Boys! Come here!” Rich called. They got off their computers faster than I’d ever seen them do before or since. Rich snapped his fingers. “Joey!”

  In a flash Joey was behind me; Rich stayed in front. Henry, who was practically in tears, could do little more than hang on to the kitchen counter, watching in disbelief.

  I was breathing hard, staccato breaths that threatened to turn into full-on hyperventilating.

  “Relax,” Rich instructed.

  I walked fifteen steps, beating Joey’s first baby steps by a measure of four. Then, just as my son had done so many years ago, I collapsed into the waiting arms of my family.

  •

  Galvanized by the steps I had taken at home, Amanda added the treadmill to our daily physio appointments. Victor was my designated people-walker. He was a much-loved, much-needed presence at Lyndhurst, filling in all the gaps that fell out of other staffers’ jurisdictions. He helped move patients in and out of gym apparatus, walked alongside them as they got used to their walking sticks, was always squatting down to fix or adjust something—a wheel, a shoelace, an ankle. He was a handyman for the animate and inanimate alike.

  I couldn’t walk on the treadmill unassisted, which meant I had to wear the harness that hung from the ceiling. It looked like a fetishistic diaper. At the beginning of my stay at Lyndhurst, I would watch people get holstered into that thing and feel a jealousy fiercer than anything I’d ever known. But when my turn came to finally use it, I was gripped by fear. It was as if the few steps I had taken at home had never happened. I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with the two long appendages hanging from my hips. Victor stood behind me, holding the back of the belt that was attached to the holster like a leash. He called out instructions to me as I slowly walked: Squeeze your glutes, activate your bum, lift the knee, roll your foot, heel then toe, heel then toe. How could I activate my bum muscles when I couldn’t even feel them? Since I couldn’t differentiate between my toe and my heel, how on earth was I supposed to figure out which one came first? My left leg wanted to be someplace else, while my right leg tried hard to stay the course. I always thought my legs were such good friends, but it turns out they were just two folks married to the same body, living together but apart. The right sleeve of my cardigan had grown damp from where I kept wiping my blurry eyes and my runny nose. Victor was trying not to notice that I was falling apart.

  “Can I please have a Kleenex, Victor?”

  He pulled two tissues from the box at the far side of the room and returned to me. I could see him thinking: If I don’t become too reactive then Ruth won’t become too reactive. I took the Kleenex and honked and wiped and sighed and, in time, got it together. His grace under pressure, in the face of a crying woman wearing a giant diaper, actually helped calm me down. Victor unhooked me in various spots around my body. I was
done for the day.

  “Sorry about my blubbering,” I said.

  “No need to apologize,” he said. “See you tomorrow—same place, same time.”

  Everything was homework. Dancing in my room, while fun, was homework. Learning how to keep time, how to force my feet to move in appropriate ways, was homework. I would close my eyes and tell my feet to turn this way and that and then open my eyes to make sure they were doing it right. Always, my right foot was the A student, while my left foot was a spaced-out stoner. I would lay a napkin on the floor and try to grab it with my toes with the understanding that gripping was one of the key components of walking. This was when the spasticity in my toes was most evident. Each toe felt like the size of a balloon. Scrunching them, while doable, still didn’t make sense to my brain. I slid one foot up and down my calf and then again on the other side, just like my cousin Joel told me to do, every night. I put my feet through their paces, every single day, and then hoped that sleep would do the rest: Commit the work to memory, reset my will, keep the tears at bay.

  In the morning, I went straight from physio to the treadmill where Victor was waiting to push my wheelchair up the ramp and strap me inside the diaper. I didn’t think about what I looked like—I didn’t care. I also stopped caring if my legs went all jelly-like and lost stride or my ankles turned over when my rhythm was off.

  “I’m fine,” I’d call back to Victor. “I’ll get it. Let’s just keep going.”

  “You got it, boss.” He held on to the leash attached to my holster.

  I couldn’t help thinking: I’m Victor’s bitch.

  “How many minutes have I gone?” I called.

  “Six or so. Can you make it to ten?”

  “Maybe.”

  Sometimes I could only get to eight, sometimes ten, on a bad day, five. I accepted these numbers, dropped them into the void, and then shook it off. There was always tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

  “Ruth,” Victor said one afternoon, after slowing the treadmill to a halt.

  “What’s the matter? Why did we stop? Was I messing up?”

  “You went twelve minutes.”

  “I did? I thought we were only going to go ten.”

  “Well, you went twelve.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I think it’s time to move on.”

  I knew what he meant. I was already crying. “You think I’m ready for the sticks.”

  “I do.”

  “Holy holy shit. Get me out of this thing.”

  Two walking sticks with tiny rubber feet on the bottom.

  I practiced going round and round the PT room with Amanda by my side. I could tell from the stiffness in her arms that she was holding back from holding on to me. I kept my back as straight as possible, my head held high. I aimed for dignified but had to settle for Monty Python.

  My balance was wonky and unpredictable. I still had the sense my feet were hovering above the ground rather than touching it, but I tried to play it cool, tried not to stare at them too much as if staring might give them performance anxiety. Once I had practiced several times with Amanda, I was cleared to do it without supervision.

  Alone in my room, I removed my shoes and placed them neatly to the side of my chair, like I was entering a Japanese teahouse—quietly, simply, elegantly. Then I planted my feet and scrutinized them. I memorized their position on the floor and gathered as much sensory information as I could. I hoisted myself up using my sticks as leverage. I looked left and right, as if a car might suddenly vroom out of my tiny closet. Then, almost like any other regular biped, I walked out of my room.

  Several nights into this new routine, I had to make my way past two senior wheelies in the TV lounge watching Dancing with the Stars. The ladies’ smiling profiles told me how much they were enjoying the show. They didn’t look at me, not even during commercial breaks. I was a little disheartened by this, as I had grown dependent on my daily dose of praise, whether it came from my apple supplier, Neville, or my new best friend, Dr. Zimcik, or my comrade in arms, Rei. In return, I paid it forward, tossing out motivational words whenever it looked like a patient could use them. But I was barking up the wrong ladies if I thought I could eke a compliment out of either of them. After three walkabouts, I finally gave up when I realized, with some embarrassment, that not every patient grew excited by the prospect of another patient’s newfound ability to walk. I went to the nurses’ station. Lorna, a big nurse with brown, bushy hair, was there. She was loading pills into little pleated paper cups.

  “Watch me, Lorna?”

  She stopped counting her pills.

  “Do I look lame?”

  “No.”

  “Do I look gimpy?”

  “No.”

  “Do I look . . . pretty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We looked at each other. Her blue eyes exactly matched her blue scrubs.

  “Well, it’s true,” she added.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Thanks.”

  14

  Working Girls

  There were two TV shows I couldn’t stop watching—shows that for different reasons were the worst possible programs a person living in a hospital could watch. The first worst was The Big C, with a premise that revolved around the main character secretly having cancer—but it was funny! As a result, many nights before I fell asleep, I would make a mental note to discuss my latest ailments with Dr. Zimcik, since I was pretty sure I also had cancer. Sometimes I thought it was ovarian, other times bowel, often kidney.

  And then there was Friday Night Lights—a show I should have stopped watching after the first episode, when the star quarterback of the series, after one brutal hit in his first football game of the season, ends up paralyzed from the waist down. In the hospital scenes, I noticed that the set was dressed with, among other things, the exact same tray table that I used every day. I became fascinated with the quarterback’s journey. I watched, pressing my hand tightly to my chest, as he moved through the five stages of grief and I cried when he arrived at the same sets of challenges that I had: the blisters on my hands from pushing the wheels of my chair, the switch to batting gloves, the frustration of transferring from the wheelchair to anywhere else. I had never been so invested in a TV character—including the ones that I had played. I searched for false notes in his performance but couldn’t find them. I watched, with my fingers over my eyes, as he attempted to have sex with his girlfriend, still unsure what exactly he was working with. And when he miraculously made another girlfriend pregnant, I wept happy tears for both of them, but also sad tears for myself, for the lost narrative in my life that would have catapulted my story into movie magic. What if I had become pregnant after Rich and I had sex in the hospital? What would that have looked like for someone in the midst of relearning how to walk, let alone in her late forties? But what I was also experiencing was a lost sense of self. Although I wasn’t feeling like much of a wife or a mother, I knew those parts of my life would eventually bounce back, but my career? I wasn’t so sure.

  One night, after finishing an episode of The Big C and then having a Big Cry, I decided to check my IMDb page, where an actor’s complete résumé is listed along with her headshots. I found my page easily but my accompanying photo had mysteriously disappeared. In its place was a generic gray and white silhouette. Was this a sign? Was the universe sending me a message? Were my acting days over?

  It made me think of a lecture Rich and I had attended. The speaker, a rabbi, had just found out his wife was pregnant when he learned he had cancer. Lying in his hospital bed next to another patient, he was asked why he never prayed to God to spare him, and the rabbi said: Why should God take the time to spare me over someone else? What makes me so special? Remembering this brought me back to earth; this wasn’t a sign, it was a glitch, and who cared that my picture was gone? It wasn’t as if I was acting anymore, anyway.

  But how long had my picture been down? Did Jennifer’s a
ssistant, in an attempt to divest her of the dead weight on her roster, make the unilateral decision to take it down? Did Jennifer know something I didn’t? Did somebody somewhere know something I didn’t?

  I wrote an email to my agent.

  Hi Jenn!

  I noticed that my headshot is no longer on my IMDb page and it made me very sad because, well, it makes me feel as if I’m disappearing.

  So although this could hardly be considered a priority at this stage, can you please ask your assistant to call IMDb headquarters and kindly ask them to put my fucking picture back up?

  Thank you so much!

  Ruth

  I remembered an argument my father and I had had many years earlier, right after I graduated from university. I was getting ready to move out and he wanted to know how I planned on making a living. That part was easy: I would temp and wait tables while looking for a talent agent to represent me.

  My father was dubious. “You want to be an actress,” he said. I didn’t like his tone and looked to my mother for support. Wisely, she let my father and I have it out without running interference (a skill I never quite learned).

  “I can’t believe I have the kind of father who would stop me from following my dreams!” I shouted.

  “I’m not stopping you. I just think your talents would be better served elsewhere.”

  I snorted. “Doing what? I have a degree in English Lit. I am qualified to do approximately nothing.”

  “I happen to think you’d be a very good writer.”

  I was thrown. He had never mentioned this before—this was even more bonkers than wanting to be an actress. “You really think I’d make more money as a writer?”

  Despite his reservations, my father didn’t stand in my way—in fact, once I made it clear that I was going to do exactly what I set out to do, he became my champion. At forty-seven, with a healthy acting career behind me, I felt for the first time as if I might have wrung out as much from my career as I could. Maybe it was time to try something new. The one thing that I had been doing every single day—besides crying, taking pills, and talking about sex—was writing. I had been keeping meticulous notes for months, ever since my feet began tingling. It had become a habit.