Walk It Off

by Ruth Marshall

  Then Henry forgot his French horn.

  Rich had just dropped him off at school on his way to work, but now had to double back home to retrieve the French horn and schlep it to him. In the old days, it would have been me who jumped in the shower and raced down the stairs and ran the French horn up to the school office. But now I stood in the middle of our bedroom on shaky legs, my sensory-impaired feet trying to understand the floor, my butt cheeks flexing to figure out which one needed to activate in order to move my body forward. Rich opened the front door and called upstairs for me, but I was crying too hard to answer. I was free, but free didn’t feel at all like I thought it would.

  “Ru? Where you at?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “I’m coming up.”

  I didn’t want to be crying. I didn’t want to be looking so lame. “I should be the one bringing Henry’s stupid French horn back to school!” I yelled.

  “It’s really not a problem for me to do it, honey.”

  “I know it’s not a problem for you! It’s a problem for me!”

  Rich came over and kissed my face. “You’ve been home less than a week. Everything will fall back into place.”

  “When, Rich? When when when when when?”

  “Soon.” He picked up the French horn, kissed me again, and told me he’d see me a little later. I nodded and then went to the bathroom to pull myself together.

  Sadness tucked itself in the most banal places. It had been there when I opened a new bar of soap at Lyndhurst; when it was time to change my contact lenses, marking another two weeks’ passing; when I ran out of Rich’s T-shirts to wear to bed as a substitute for crawling in beside him. Every time I finished the enormous bag of jujubes my mother brought me, there was sadness. When I opened a new tube of toothpaste, there was sadness. Each thing unwrapped, each thing folded and put away, each thing finished and then restarted: sadness. But that was Lyndhurst. Things were supposed to be different now that I was home. And yet, sitting inside the giant black case of my son’s forgotten French horn: a giant brass sadness.

  •

  I decided to go see Dr. Bright, ostensibly to talk about the digestive issues that continued to plague me, but it was more than that. Without my angel nurses around, I was taking questionable measures with my health, like drinking laxative tea every night before bed.

  “You need to dial that back,” Dr. Bright said.

  I came to her office with a notebook full of questions. She sat patiently while I checked them off the list, one by one, until I had only one left.

  “I hate to ask this,” I said, “but maybe, if it’s okay with you, maybe I can book some time in to see you again?”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she said without hesitation. “Would once a month be okay?”

  “I was thinking every two weeks.” I was really thinking every two days.

  “How about we split the difference and make it every three weeks?”

  I looked at the examination table straight ahead of me. I was sitting upright. I didn’t need to lie down on it anymore. Everything was sorted out. I was fixed. I was cured. So what if my walk was kind of gimpy and my legs buzzed constantly and my feet felt full of pebbles and my calves felt squeezed by invisible elastic bands? No one could see the complete circuitry breakdown that lay just under my skin. And even if someone did, it wouldn’t have mattered—I was standing, I was walking, I was an upright citizen. And yet, I wasn’t healed, not really. When would this end? Would I be on nerve medication forever? Would I ever again be the person I once was? Would I ever poo again normally?

  “Okay,” I said. “Every three weeks.” I couldn’t look at her. “I’m really sorry. I don’t want to be one of ‘those’ patients.”

  Dr. Bright put her hand on my leg. I felt proud that my tears stayed in my eyes and that I could go that long without blinking. Dr. Bright reached behind her for the Kleenex box.

  “Ruth, your life has completely changed.”

  “I can’t tell my mom when I’m sad anymore.” I was barely speaking above a whisper. “I’m her daughter—she cries when I cry.”

  “You’ll talk to me so you don’t have to worry your mom or Rich, okay?”

  I nodded: okay.

  •

  Sometimes I forgot I was no longer in a wheelchair. My dreams also hadn’t caught up with reality. When I woke up, I had to take a few minutes to figure out where I was and how I got around the house. One morning, while reading the real estate section in The Globe and Mail, I became intrigued by a house for sale in Lawrence Park. It was wheelchair accessible with an elevator that went straight from the garage to the second floor. There was a slight ramp leading into the stunning bathroom, and then there was the pearl in the oyster: a marble island low enough to double as a kitchen table so that a wheelchair could be parked there comfortably. I was ready to buy that house right then at the giveaway price of 1.6 million dollars.

  Instead, I did a quick and breathless purge of my closet. My shoes had been sitting patiently for months, like forlorn children at an adoption fair waiting quietly for me to pick them. I chose two pairs of sneakers. I gathered up the rest—my beloved high heels, platform boots, summer wedges, even the black flats that I had worn on my anniversary date with Rich—and put them into two recycling bags. I sold them all. My colorful oxford lace-ups had jump-started my new collection, but I needed something more conservative for my cousin’s bat mitzvah. I enlisted my sisters to go to the mall with me and help me choose. I tried on flat after flat while they watched me walk across the store.

  “Are my feet slipping out of these? Of these? Of these? Of these? Of these?”

  I chose a pair of nude and black flats, patent, with a bow. I hated them but my sisters said they did the best job of keeping my feet in lockdown. When we were required to stand during the service, I used the opportunity to do deep-knee bends. My children barely noticed my public exercises anymore.

  I continued to think about sex all the time. I was desperate to get the ball rolling again. Rich and I were having sex more, subscribing to the notion of use it or lose it. Although I had to concentrate hard on the mechanics of what we were doing, I was pleasantly surprised to note that in those brief moments when I wasn’t wondering can I feel this, shouldn’t I be feeling that? I was actually starting to register more sensation. The old sensations bore zero resemblance to the new sensations, which now felt like firecrackers flaring up, then fizzling prematurely, leaving me to wonder where all that fiery potential had disappeared to. I stopped thinking of end results; I just rolled with it.

  Joel was at the bat mitzvah. I was nervous about seeing him. I must have asked my sisters a dozen times if my left foot was slipping out of my shoe.

  “You’re fine, Ruthie!” they kept saying.

  “Okay,” I said, without preamble when I found him. “Wanna watch me?”

  He didn’t even say “Watch what?” He just nodded. I passed him my mimosa. Then I walked away from him and back toward him. I tried not to favor my right leg. I tried to walk naturally, not with bracing stiffness. I tried to swing my hips, but not with a “catwalk” swing, as the PTs at Lyndhurst referred to it. I tried to walk like someone who didn’t have a four-inch scar down her back; like someone who didn’t wake up each morning praying for a little poo; like someone who could run up and down the stairs holding a newspaper, a hot cup of coffee, and three clean towels.

  “Well?” I said. “Pretty good, right?”

  “Very good,” he said. He took a sip of his mimosa. “How are your bowel and bladder?”

  “Good, good,” I said.

  “Can you feel anything down there, when you clean yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about everything else . . . down there?”

  I blinked several times.

  “Sexually,” he clarified.

  In his hands, the mimosas were as still as a lake at dawn. He must be an exceptional surgeon, I thought.

  “Well, Joel. Between y
ou and me, it’s not what it used to be, but Rich and I are doing it a decent amount just to get something going.”

  He gave me back my mimosa as though it were a reward for saying the right thing. We walked into the dining hall together.

  “But, Joel, this numbness thing in my bum is going to go away, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said, in a conversation-ending way. He was on the move, searching for his wife, his mother, his children—anybody who would free him from talking about sex and butt numbness on a Saturday morning in a holy place.

  17

  The New Normal

  New Year’s Eve meant I had been home for almost as long as I had been in rehab. I thought that ushering in 2013 meant flushing away the troubles that had riddled me through almost all of 2012. In anticipation of feeling great about what lay ahead, I invited my sister’s whole family over to celebrate. At four that afternoon, shortly before they arrived, I called my mother.

  “You’re not in the mood for having them,” she said.

  “Why would you even say that?”

  “Because I can tell.”

  “That is not true at all. I’m just concerned that I won’t be able to stay up until midnight, at least not in a sitting position. Or a standing position.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m perfectly fine with them coming over.”

  “Okay.”

  “God!”

  I made garlic bread. I didn’t smell it burning because I was mixing the margaritas and the blender was so loud it seemed to block out my sense of smell, but the kids noticed and then I saw smoke and the smoke detector went off and the room filled with fog. I slid over to the oven and took out the burned toast.

  “Fuck.”

  “Mom!” said Henry.

  “Sorry, but fuck.”

  I opened the fridge to get the guacamole and saw Rumy with her latex gloves sitting on the shelf next to the orange juice. I saw myself turn over on the bed. She firmly shoved the magic bullet up my bum. I slammed the fridge shut, but the image remained. I remembered a rumor I heard that Elvis didn’t die of a drug addiction but of constipation so intense it brought on a heart attack. My obsession with my bladder and bowel continued, every visit to the bathroom torturous.

  By eleven thirty, all the food eaten, the drinks drunk, and the dishes put away, my sister’s family went home and our family went upstairs to get ready for bed.

  Henry called out. “Where are you, Mom?”

  I put on a happy voice. “In the bathroom, honey! Where are you?”

  “In your bed!”

  I heard him turn on the TV and rustle himself under the covers.

  “Oh God oh God oh God,” I muttered under my breath. I was sweating.

  Eventually, I got up and went to wash my face. I had to sit down to do it. I couldn’t stand over the sink with my eyes closed—I lost track of where my body was in space. It was also why I had the shower chair. I couldn’t risk closing my eyes while standing up, not even for a second.

  I came out of the bathroom. Rich was now in bed with Henry, watching the throngs of people in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop.

  “Where’s Joey?” I asked.

  “Other bathroom.”

  “Hope he has better luck than me.”

  “Nice.”

  A bunch of actors were discussing past New Year’s Eves and with whom they had shared kisses. I watched for a couple of minutes. Rich looked at me and smiled and then I went downstairs in the dark. I sat on the top step of the basement stairs. It was fifteen minutes to midnight. I called my mother.

  “Mom?”

  “What is it, darling?”

  I pressed my eyes shut.

  “Ruthie?”

  I took off my glasses and put them beside me.

  “Are you crying?”

  I didn’t want the kids to hear me.

  “Ruthie,” my mom said. “You are doing amazing. Just think of how far you’ve come and how far you’re going to go still. I have no doubt whatsoever that you’re going to be perfect again—even your bum. I watched you walking down the hall when you were here last week and I was amazed, amazed at how well you did. You can’t even tell. Honestly. Can you feel me hugging you from here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t broken down before this.”

  Rich appeared. He was standing over me, frowning. “It’s almost midnight,” he said.

  I shushed him away, then gave him the thumbs up, then gestured for him to go upstairs to the kids, then shushed him away again. He shook his head, then brought me a Kleenex box. I blew my nose, then gave him the thumbs up twice more.

  “Come on!” Joey called from our bedroom. “It’s almost midnight!”

  “Go. Just go,” I said to Rich.

  He didn’t move, and then he did. I heard him slam the wall before heading upstairs.

  “I’ve heard your mother,” my father said, picking up the extension. “And I agree with everything she said. Oh—there goes the ball. Ten, nine, eight . . .”

  I was still sobbing.

  “Go kiss your wonderful hubby,” my mom said.

  I said my good-byes and then sat there for a few more minutes before going upstairs. Almost every light was off. Rich and the boys were still awake in our bed. Rich didn’t look at me as I came in. I put my hand on his arm and then leaned over him to kiss Henry, then Joey.

  “Happy New Year, boys.”

  And then I kissed Rich, but it was too late.

  The kids went to bed and I crawled in beside him and leaned my head on his shoulder. Rich left to go to the bathroom and I followed him. He was standing at the sink and I hugged his back until he turned around and hugged me proper.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “I do. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  We went to bed and lay there with our eyes open.

  “You slammed the wall,” I said. “Did you hurt your hand?”

  “Since 1995, we haven’t missed a kiss on New Year’s,” he said.

  I had rung in the New Year with my parents. I was thinking how hard the year had been for them because there is nothing worse than seeing your child in pain. Somewhere in the countdown, I had heard my father say that he wanted to go kiss my mother. I ended up spending the last moment of 2012 alone. I felt sick. My husband, who had done everything for me, while also going to work every day, looking after the kids, updating our family and friends with emails about my progress, keeping on top of what the doctors said, and taking my teary calls at all hours of the day, was denied a kiss at the end of this terrible year because I thought everything was still all about me.

  We were back to back. I tried to make it so that our bums touched. They might have been, but I couldn’t tell. I pushed my feet toward his. Knowing they rarely hit their target, Rich made sure his feet found mine first. I rubbed them against his, until I had to ask, “Are you wearing socks?”

  “Mmmm,” he said. He was dozing off.

  I started to doze off then, too. I was happy to lie touching him, maybe bum to bum, maybe feet to feet, relieved to know that all was forgiven.

  •

  “I got the number of this girl you might want to call,” Rich told me, shortly after New Year’s. “One of my poker friend’s friends. Apparently, she had something very similar to what you had.”

  “That makes me nervous.”

  “Just take her number. You don’t have to call her if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  He gave me her number and I carried it around in my purse for a long time. After my faith-shaking conversation with Carmen back at Lyndhurst, I had decided never again to compare my surgery and progress to others. But my history shows that making a mistake just once isn’t enough for me to get the message.

  I decided to call this woman, Erin, only after creeping her online first. Her Facebook page showed that
she had three children (almost like me!) and was in the arts (just like me!) and loved to climb mountains (not like me!) and go on great family adventures (sort of, almost, just like me!). Still, I proceeded with caution. There remained one red flag that could just as easily have been interpreted as a positive sign: Erin described herself as fully recovered. I was skeptical of this “fully recovered” business. I also presented as “fully recovered.” I wasn’t. I didn’t know if I ever would be. In Erin, I was looking for someone to answer my current, most burning question. I felt confident she could do that.

  Erin seemed excited to hear from me, ready to help in whatever way I needed.

  “You had a spinal meningioma, right?”

  “Yes. Did you?”

  “I had an ependymoma.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A tumor that developed from cells in the lower back part of my brain.”

  “How did you know you had that?”

  “Excruciating headaches.”

  “I’m so sorry. That sounds awful.”

  “I learned some pretty cool stuff about it, though.”

  I heard some of the words: cells, structures, cavities, canals, something called a lumen. Erin was clearly a card-carrying member of the knowledge-is-power party.

  “Do you know I have a website for tumor sufferers?” she asked.

  I had looked at it only moments before I called her but immediately regretted it. The stories were heartbreaking; too many issues dovetailed with my own. Even the uplifting posts made me anxious.

  “Really? I’ll have to take a look at that,” I lied. “Listen, did you have numb bum after your surgery?” I blurted.