Troika

by Adam Pelzman

  The center gets down in position and puts his hands on the ball, ready to snap it. And then Julian does it again! Smacks the ball out of the center’s hands. Now the booing is even louder, and the Livingston guys are calling him a sore loser and an asshole. Another penalty, half the distance to the goal line and now they’re at the two. Then he does it again. A penalty and now to the one. And again and again and again and again; the half-yard line, quarter yard, eighth of a yard, sixteenth, and the ref is having a harder and harder time trying to spot the ball. Finally, after about the tenth penalty, the ref places the ball on the grass and the tip touches the goal line. Touchdown! the ref yells, and the game is over.

  No one on the field feels worse than I do, because I’m the one who lost the game for us. I’m crying and I look up in the stands and see my parents standing there in the front row. My mom has her hand over her chest and I can tell she’s having trouble breathing. My dad is standing up straight, stiff and proud. He grinds his teeth, which is what he always does when he feels powerless. It’s also his way of holding back tears.

  I walk off the field, trying my hardest not to limp, trying not to be noticed. And then something magical happens. Julian walks over to the ref. He puts his arm around the ref’s shoulder and says it’s not a touchdown. And the ref says it sure is a touchdown, the ball’s touching the goal line. Julian shakes his head, smiles, says it can’t be, because what we’ve got here is Zeno’s Paradox. Zeno’s what? the ref wants to know. Zeno’s Paradox. Zeno was a Greek philosopher, Julian explains, said if you keep moving half the distance toward a fixed end point, you can never get there. The ref looks confused. Think about it, Julian says, there’s always a smaller amount of distance that can be covered. You might need a damn microscope to calculate the distance, but you can never get to the end point. The ref is pulling at his chin with his thumb and index finger, starts nodding his head up and down, and says yes, yes, I think I see what you mean. And then he waves his hands wildly and declares no touchdown, the ball will be placed at the one-centimeter line. Zeno’s Paradox, the ref yells.

  Well, the Livingston players go nuts and their coach starts screaming who the fuck is Zeno? And the ref says he’s a Greek philosopher, and the coach responds, well, what the hell does a Greek know about American football? And the ref says Alex Karras was Greek, and he played pro for the Lions and knew a hell of a lot about football. Then the coach screams at the ref, says coach, your mother must have been a mongoloid, and the ref understandably calls an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, because who uses a word like that, mongoloid, that’s just terrible and bizarre, and the ref sets Livingston back fifteen yards. Next thing, one of their players sticks his finger in the ref’s chest and says Zeno was a mongoloid and a homosexual, and damned if anyone has any idea what that even means, but the ref gives Livingston another fifteen-yard penalty, and now they’re backed up to the thirty-yard line. Plus a centimeter. It takes a few minutes for them to calm down, and they finally get lined up again for the field goal. But because they’re so far out now, the kicker has to change the trajectory of the ball, has to hit it lower to get the distance.

  The center snaps the ball and the kicker takes his shot, but hits it so low that Julian blocks it and the ball hits the ground. It bounces right in front of Julian, and all he has to do to end the game—there’s only a couple of seconds left at this point—all he has to do is to fall on the ball. But instead he picks it up and he grabs me by the jersey and says you’re coming with me. And before I can say no, he hands me the ball and pushes me forward, toward Livingston’s end zone. Everyone is so dazed by what happened that I’m halfway down the field before anyone notices. Julian is running by my side, keeping his eye on the Livingston players, blocking for me.

  I’m fifteen yards from the end zone and I glance up to the stands and there’s my parents, clapping like circus seals and my dad is crying, he’s so happy. Ferrara, the prick who called gimpy forty-five, is chasing me and I’m running so slow with my bad foot that he’s getting closer and closer, and I don’t think I can make it. So I try to lateral the ball to Julian, put it right in his hands. But he just hands it right back to me. Unfinished business, he says, and he’s gasping for air, maybe because he’s exhausted or maybe it’s the adrenaline. Ferrara is now within a couple of yards of me. Julian trails behind, his eyes on Ferrara. Five yards from the end zone and I’m pushing as hard as I can. My bad foot hurts because it’s just not designed to run this fast, this hard, and I don’t think I can make it. I look back and Ferrara is just a couple of feet behind me now, but Julian is right there between us.

  Gimpy forty-five! Julian yells at Ferrara. Gimpy fucking forty-five! Then Julian digs his cleats into the ground and plants his legs. He cocks his shoulder and launches himself into Ferrara with a violence and a force that is difficult to describe. I’m right there and I hear the crack of bones, the blast of air expelled from a person’s lungs, an inhuman groan. As I cross the goal line, I look back. Ferrara is on the ground. He’s unconscious. His left arm is splayed out like the broken wing of a bird. Blood pours from his nose. Julian stands above him, defiant, victorious. He looks like Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston in that famous picture. You know the one?

  Gimpy fucking forty-five, Julian yells at Ferrara, at Ferrara’s body. He pauses. Gimpy forty-five, he says. Then, in a soft voice, he whispers gimpy forty-five. He whispers something I can’t understand. It sounds like moht. Years later, I would learn what he said. Mother. He said mother, in Russian. And then Julian starts to cry. First, soft tears, then stronger, louder. Gimpy forty-five, he wails. He kneels down and pounds his fist in the mud. And all of us, all of his teammates, gather around him, standing in a circle around Julian. We’re quiet, shielding him from the crowd, from the Livingston guys, who are furious and trying to lift Ferrara off the ground, get him medical help. We’re respectful of what is happening to Julian. And even though we don’t fully understand it, we know it’s important.

  We wait in that circle for five minutes. We hold hands, real quiet, rock back and forth on our feet. We’re patient, awaiting a cue from Julian. Then he rises. There are quiet hugs and pats on the helmets. Not the euphoria of a championship, but a somber satisfaction. It’s not a time for celebration. It’s a time for reflection, a time for each of us to recalibrate our understanding of the world and the extent to which a person can go when pushed to a limit, the extent to which a person should go when he finds himself standing before that line—the line where things really start to matter.

  Why Julian cried, Roger says, I don’t know. And I never asked him. Maybe it was Ferrara’s cruelty. Or maybe having to right a wrong—and using violence to do it. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was something entirely different. Maybe he wasn’t avenging me. Maybe it was his own rage, his own trauma that he was trying to fix. Maybe this was Julian righting a wrong done to him. His childhood, losing his parents so young. In a way, it didn’t matter, doesn’t matter, because it can be any one of those things. Or it can be all of them, right? It just depends on who you are and how your life goes. If you got lucky or not.

  Roger finishes off the beer. He holds the empty bottle up to the light. It’s pretty when the light hits it, he says. He holds it up at a different angle near my eyes so I can see for myself. There’s a blinking red light above the bar that hits the amber glass and creates a pretty color—and I say it sure is nice when you look at it like that and almost makes you forget that we’re in such an ugly place. Roger smiles. I guess so, he says.

  He stands up, struggles with his bad foot and I grab his arm to keep him from falling over. He looks at me sort of embarrassed, I’m thinking maybe ’cause he almost fell or maybe ’cause he told me such a personal story, and he leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Nothing creepy, but real sweet like Old Pepe used to kiss me. He says nice to meet you, Perla, but I have a flight to catch. And before he turns to leave, he touches his hand to my cheek, again real sweet and
caring, and he says Julian will be back one day, I’m banking on it. And if you could, please be kind to this man. And patient, too. Because things are more complicated than you think. A lot more complicated.

  135 DEGREES

  Julian Pravdin awoke—not to the sound of her choking, and not to a remarkable clearing of the throat, but rather to nothing more than the faintest hint of a gasp emanating from the parched throat of his paralyzed wife. The brain, he once read, has malleable properties. Neuroplasticity, they call it. The injured brain, the weak brain, the brain with diminished capacity can evolve, mutate, compensate for its deficiencies. It can create new neural pathways, new connection points, new wiring. The brain, he learned after the accident, can remap itself.

  And so it was, after Sophie became paralyzed from the waist down, that not only did her brain crackle and spark and mutate into a different organ, one that allowed her to exist, to eat, to drink, to brush her teeth, to communicate, to laugh, to grieve—to extract some modest amount of pleasure from a life that had become irreversibly less enjoyable, but so did Julian’s own brain undergo a conversion.

  In response to her injury, Julian’s hearing became acute, animal-like, so that he could now register in the early morning darkness her somnolent gurgle before it occurred. His myopic vision, once the object of Sophie’s playful ridicule, could now detect in the lilac twilight a nearly invisible, purplish hue in her calf, a ruptured capillary that foretold a circulatory crisis. And his sense of smell became so acute that, from a distance of twenty feet, enveloped even amid the foul stench of a Chinatown street in August, the odor of feces from her soiled diaper would rip through his nasal concha and set off his olfactory receptors—prompting Julian to move his wife to a bathroom and clean her up as she grimaced in shame.

  And it was these heightened sensitivities that allowed Julian to care for his wife, to keep her alive, to ensure that her reservoir of dignity would remain protected, untouched.

  When Julian heard her gasp, a result of the sleep apnea that had plagued her since the accident, he turned and reached for her shoulder—and at that moment of contact, the muscles in the back of her throat flickered and tensed, opening the passageway and again permitting the free flow of air. Julian reached for a pillow. He watched her lips twitch, listened for her raspy exhale. He lifted the pillow and observed the contour of her face, the bump on the bridge of her nose, the beauty mark on her right cheekbone, a pale scar along her hairline—imperfections that perfected her.

  As if he were strangling the last breath from his most odious enemy, Julian squeezed the pillow. He calculated the angle of his approach and cleared a strand of hair from Sophie’s forehead. Then he lifted her left shoulder and wedged the pillow underneath her, elevating her upper torso and turning her slightly to the side—a position that drew her tongue away from the back of her throat and allowed her to breathe more freely.

  Julian rose and moved to the foot of the bed. There, he checked to make sure that the compression machine was functioning, that it continued to slide up and down Sophie’s attenuated legs every five minutes, stimulating the flow of blood, maintaining what little muscle tone remained. Satisfied, Julian returned to bed. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. He listened to Sophie’s breathing—smooth, metronomic. Grateful, he closed his eyes and wished for a quick transition back to sleep, the opportunity for two more hours before the day started.

  Julian reached for Sophie’s hand. It was gelid, wet. He squeezed tightly, hoping to transfer his body heat to her. He stared up at the ceiling, at the ornate molding surrounding the room. He recalled their first visit to the apartment, an innocent time when they were propelled forward by a surge of optimism, giddy, buoyant—how Sophie gasped when she saw the twelve-foot ceilings and the intricate molding, how she pressed her hands to her chest and mouthed the word wow. Julian had noted his wife’s reaction. He turned to the broker and said we’ll take it. It’s ten million, the broker replied, and they received an offer this morning for the asking price. Then make it ten-five, Julian said. All cash.

  The recollection of that joyous day had a soothing physiological impact on Julian. His heart rate slowed, his breathing deepened, his jaw loosened, his otherwise busy mind approached stillness. But then, mere seconds from unconsciousness, a siren roared down Fifth Avenue and the frantic howl created in him an instant mental acuity that precluded sleep.

  Conceding the hopelessness of it all, Julian lifted the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He repositioned the cashmere blanket so that Sophie’s shoulders were covered. He stepped out of the bedroom and down the hallway—toward the bathroom—in a manner designed to reduce noise and thus avoid waking Sophie: shoulders hunched together and pushed up toward his ears, forearms pressed against his rib cage, and tender steps taken not on the soles of his feet, but on the balls and toes. Still, despite this deft technique, it seemed that each such carefully orchestrated step transferred to the wooden floor the same amount of pressure as any uninhibited step—and as Julian made his way to the bathroom, each step noisily announced his departure.

  Sophie’s eyelids lifted. She scanned the room, the scope of her vision limited by her immobility—a range of no more than 135 degrees, as she had once calculated from this very same position. A strand of warm drool slid from her mouth. She reached over and felt the empty bed next to her, the perspiration, the dampness left behind by her husband. She closed her eyes.

  REALITY NUMBER THREE

  Since my injury, I have learned that within a person are multiple levels of reality—realities that may oppose each other, contradictory realities that may appear identical to the person in whom these realities reside, realities that, despite their differences and because of their similarities, may coexist. The two most common are what we know to be true and is true—and then what we know to be true but is false. These are not views of reality, not perceptions, distorted or accurate, not hallucinations or altered states of consciousness. Rather, they are realities that carry with them all of the trappings of truth—crispness, clarity, irrefutability, immediacy, pervasiveness.

  Sometimes these multiple levels of reality are of equal potency; sometimes one exercises dominion over the other; sometimes that dominion is temporary, transient; and sometimes it is permanent. But it is exceedingly rare, some would say impossible, for one reality to extinguish fully the other, for the weaker of the two (or three or more) has a life that co-terminates with its stronger counterpart: star-crossed lovers toasting goblets of hemlock brew.

  For Julian, one reality is that he drove the car in which I became paralyzed—but that it was neither his fault nor mine. In that reality, he wasn’t so drunk that his reflexes were impaired—just a hair under the legal limit, the police would determine—and that even if he were stone-cold sober, he still had no choice but to veer hard left to avoid the deer and would have hit the utility pole. That reality is coupled with a necessary assumption—that my insistence on driving instead of walking had no bearing on his decision, that he is not the type of man to be cajoled into doing something he does not want to do. One without the other and this reality is negated.

  Julian’s second reality is that he drove the car in which I became paralyzed—but that it was entirely his fault. This is a reality to which I do not and have never subscribed. There are, of course, two integral parts to this reality: that he was indeed too drunk to drive and that he allowed himself to be coerced into doing something that he did not want to do. Again, one without the other and this reality is negated.

  It is this second reality to which Julian most often attaches and in which he curiously finds some comfort. I asked him once, and only once, to explain why this reality dominates his psyche, and he mumbled something about categorical imperative and certainty, even if faulty, as an antidote to the horror of ambiguity. Now, what this has to do with categorical imperative, I have only the faintest idea, and when he said it I smiled and made an awful jok
e about Kant being a word that should almost never be used, an imperfect homonym that gave us a good laugh. But, really, maybe what he meant by it was that taking sole responsibility was, for him, a moral obligation that might free me from my own guilt.

  My first reality goes something like this: it was not Julian’s fault and it was only partially my fault, because even though I shouldn’t have pressured him to drive, especially knowing how much champagne he had that night, how could I possibly have anticipated that a deer would leap out from nowhere on a quiet sandy lane and guide us straight into a utility pole at no more than twenty-five miles per hour, and that all of this would have happened? What are the odds that such a thing could happen? Infinitesimal, I have been told.

  My second reality is that it was entirely my fault, and it is this complete accountability that is the most unpleasant of my realities. Why had I not agreed to walk home with Julian on that lovely summer night? Would not most women have done anything for the chance to walk with this man along a winding, seaside lane through the nectarean air? What compels a woman to make a foolish decision that puts everything at risk? Is there a root cause of such a decision, some unresolved childhood conflict? A trauma? The belief that any good fortune is undeserved? Or is it something else? Maybe there is no root cause at all. Just a silly decision, random and impulsive, that changes the course of many lives.

  My third reality (yes, I have three) is the most beneficial to my well-being. But sadly, it is the most elusive, accessible only in my darkest moments—an option that becomes apparent to me only when I think about the limits of my life; about the near-sexless existence my condition has imposed upon me and Julian; about the body not as a mechanism for joy, pleasure and action, but nothing more than a mushy, sloppy host that houses my intellect and my dwindling soul; and about my infertility, the internal injuries suffered in the crash that made it impossible for me to have a child. It is at these dark moments that I eye the bottle of pills on the side table and wonder what it might be like to take the leap. The deep sleep.