The Man She Married

by Cathy Lamb

  Most important, I created a place on a shelf for Grandma Dixie’s antique perfume bottles.

  I didn’t want pretty and clean. I needed pretty and clean.

  For sanity.

  * * *

  Getting a puzzle together with one of my therapists brought me to tears the next day. It was a kid’s puzzle and I couldn’t do it. How was I going to be an accountant again if I couldn’t even get Humpty-Dumpty back on his wall? How can I work if I don’t work?

  If I couldn’t get the numbers to align in my head, if I couldn’t remember how to use deductions and credits, financial statements, and tax projections, and couldn’t work within the maze of the U.S. tax laws, what would I do?

  Sometimes I’m terrified about my new life. Sometimes I’m livid. I’m livid at the driver of the van. He had taken so much of my life from me. Deliberately. Criminally. Sickeningly. And he’s still after me.

  But then I tell myself to buck up, quit whining, that I’ll get better. Then the next day I’m unable to put playing cards in order or I forget to put laundry soap in the washing machine in the practice laundromat and I’m infuriated again.

  And what about my marriage, what about Zack? He married the old me, the smart one, the competent one, the worker, the one who could talk about anything. Now I’m physically weaker and mentally a mess. I also cry a lot, often for no reason other than that I’m having a bad day.

  But I’m angry at him, too. He won’t tell me something I need to know. He is lying. The old me wouldn’t let this go on for one second. I’m a fighter, and I would insist he tell me.

  But the new me doesn’t have enough energy to fight with Zack, even though I know someone’s gunning for us, someone dangerous and demented. Not pleasant. Why won’t I fight? Because I’m a wreck still. I have prioritized walking over truth. I have prioritized speech therapy over insisting on honesty. I have prioritized putting Humpy-Dumpty back together again over dealing with his evasiveness.

  It’s depressing to lose yourself. To be the person you had been your whole life and then to change and morph into someone you don’t recognize. Someone who needs help, someone who isn’t independent, someone who is weak, whose brain and body don’t function like they did. You have become the pathetic person you used to feel sorry for.

  I am not Natalie anymore, and yet I am.

  Natalie can’t add.

  Natalie can’t subtract.

  She can dance

  And she can clap.

  She has a husband.

  True love it be.

  But he’s lying to her.

  One, two, three.

  On Wednesday Architect got so frustrated with the building he made with popsicle sticks that he smashed the whole thing with his fists and started pelting the sticks at the windows.

  Frog Lady grabbed her clay frog and hid under the table. “Come along to my tree, Jewelry Maker,” she whispered with a smile.

  I left my jewelry and crawled under the table. “He’ll stop soon,” I said. “He’ll run out of sticks.”

  “At least he’s not throwing frogs,” she said.

  Soldier stood up and said to Architect, “You are not the enemy so I won’t kill you, but stop throwing sticks at the civilians. We can’t bomb civilians.”

  I peeked over the top of the table. Architect stopped throwing sticks. He started to cry, and Soldier put his hand on Architect’s shoulder, then put his helmet next to Architect’s. I stood up, and so did Frog Lady, holding her frog. We had a group hug.

  “It’s okay, man,” Soldier said. “We’re all at war here and we gotta stick together. We’re buddies. I’ll protect you, you protect me.”

  “Okay,” Architect cried. “Okay. But I can’t get this building to work. The bridge between the buildings keeps falling down. It’s all screwed up. It’s broken. It’s broken. I’m broken.”

  “I’ll help you,” Soldier said.

  “You will?” An expression of happy hope crossed Architect’s face.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll help you, too,” I said.

  “Me too,” Frog Lady said. “I’ll bring my frog and we’ll build a building. Hop to it, scientists!”

  “Finally,” Architect said, wiping his face. “A team. I finally found my team. We can build it together.”

  And that’s what we did. We built a building.

  Together.

  * * *

  It’s hard to see people all beat up, wearing helmets, sitting in wheelchairs or leaning on canes. Some people I met the first day still don’t talk at all. Some mutter. Some go into rages. Some are clearly permanently disabled. Their families are upset, their friends are upset.

  Sometimes all you can do is sit by them.

  * * *

  Jed came to see me again. This was his fourth or fifth visit. Under penalty of being ejected from the Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls, I did not say a word to him of Justine’s undying love and lust.

  “I hear you might be a judge soon.”

  “Maybe.” He smiled. “I hope so. Have you seen Justine lately?”

  I had! “I’m glad you asked. She’s doing very well, not seeing anyone. We’re going to do Portland’s Naked Bike Ride. . . .”

  * * *

  I received a letter from Chick. She had drawn the three of us on bicycles, naked. Our bodies were outlined only. It was hilarious.

  I couldn’t believe I was doing anything like this. Part of me didn’t think I could do it, that my balance would still be so bad that I wouldn’t be able to ride a bike, even one with three wheels and a flowered basket. I can hardly walk a straight line and my brain is still popping and cracking and doing its own thing.

  The other part of me was scared to death that I would be better and I would have to get on a three-wheeled bike naked because I’d promised the Moonshine and Milky Way Maverick Girls that I would try to get my “wild and crazy” back and become who I used to be.

  But did I have to get my wild and crazy back buck naked, at night, in a thriving city?

  * * *

  “Hey, sweets.”

  “Zack.” I had been resting in my room between appointments with my neuropsychologist and Dr. Doom and Dr. Hopeless, who were coming to visit me and talk to me again about being awake in my coma. I was feeling nervous, anxious.

  “You look beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” I had washed my hair that morning. I had put on makeup. I had put on my light blue jeans, a shirt with a parrot on the back that I’d bought in Mexico, and two necklaces I’d made here: one with faux turquoise I’d wrapped in wire and the other with five silver hearts that I’d made as a choker.

  Zack ran his hands through my curls. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He tilted his head. “What is it?”

  “I was worried about . . .”

  “About what?” His eyes narrowed. His body, close to mine, became taut.

  “About . . .”

  “Natalie?” he prompted. He was worried about my answer, I could tell.

  “About my job.”

  He relaxed. He seemed relieved by my answer, as if he had expected something else. He pulled me in closer. “Babe, don’t worry about your job right now. Seriously. You need to worry about continuing to get better.”

  “I am. But it’s so scary, so depressing not to be able to add, to subtract. The numbers run all over, I can’t keep them in my head.”

  “It takes time, Natalie. This whole thing will take time.”

  “But what if I can’t be an accountant anymore?”

  He kissed the top of my forehead and then pulled back. “Then you’ll do something else.”

  I sagged against him. On one hand, it was devastating for him not to say, “Natalie, you’ll be an accountant again in no time. Wait a month and your mind will clear and you’ll go zipping back to work!” On the other, it was a relief for him not to lie to me, not to try to smooth this over or pretend. He was honest.

  “I don’t know what else to
do.”

  “I know what you can do.”

  “What?”

  “Help me with the designs for my business. Full time. I need help. I don’t always ask you for help, because you’re running your firm and I don’t want to overburden you, but I need help, Natalie.”

  I thought about that. “Working for the man I sleep with?”

  “You wouldn’t be working for me, Natalie. We would be working together. Every time you study the plans for the houses I want to build, you add things I hadn’t thought of. All the tiles and counters and flooring that you pick out are so much better than what I can do. The reclaimed wood has helped to sell my homes more than anything else I’ve done. Before you came along, well, you saw my houses.”

  “They were perfect.”

  “No. They weren’t. They were solid. They were well designed. But they weren’t original. They weren’t creative. From the time you started helping me, I’ve increased the price for all of my houses because of you.”

  “But I like numbers.”

  “I know, honey. I do.”

  I hugged him and kissed that hard jaw. “You’re still my apple pie, Zack.”

  His eyelids lowered, then he glanced down at my mouth. Well, this ol’ girl did not need any more of an invitation. We had a long and hot kiss then and there....

  * * *

  I wrote a poem in my head that afternoon after Zack left.

  With Zack I like to kiss.

  He makes me feel hot bliss.

  He’s warm and snuggly.

  That is true, that’s why I said “I do.”

  And his hands of magic

  Make me groan and moan.

  What is he hiding, I don’t know.

  I only wish he wouldn’t go.

  Again, I never said my poems were well written.

  Chapter 11

  Once I put aside my FOA (fear of abandonment) and Zack gave in and put behind him whatever had been preventing him from committing to me, things went quick from there.

  He was six years older and ready to move on down the aisle. I met his friends from college, from work, from his pickup basketball team, and two fishing buddies, and I liked them all. He met Chick and her family and was quite comfortable around the chaos.

  Chick said, “Marry him. Haul his butt to the altar as soon as you can.”

  He met Justine, and she declared him “a fine specimen. Speaking in mathematical terms, statistically I’d say you have a one hundred percent chance of this working out happily ever after.”

  My dad loved him. They had a lot in common: Home construction. Fishing. Hunting. Me.

  My dad did say to him, “Zack. There is no one in this world I love even a fraction of how much I love my Natalie. You hurt her and I will get my rifle out.”

  Zack nodded. “I understand. I swear I will never hurt Natalie. I love her. I will always love your daughter, and I will protect her my whole life.”

  Zack still didn’t talk much about his childhood—he always changed the subject, but that was because of the death of his parents and that terrible grief, wasn’t it? Sometimes I still felt as if he was holding back, hiding something, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?

  We were in love and lust, and we made plans to build our dream home. One day.

  Zack and I were married on the Deschutes River right where we’d met. I wore a hippie/bohemian/country girl white lace dress with a train, a flowing gauzy veil, and my blue cowgirl boots, given to me by my dad to symbolize “something blue.”

  There were about 150 people there. His friends, my friends, many from Lake Joseph, including Rosie, Jed, and all of Justine’s family. My dad came in a tux, and my mother was there, too, with her latest husband.

  “It must hurt your father terribly,” my mother whispered to me in her fancy, pink mother-of-the-bride dress, “to see me with my new husband, Hank. I mean, Ted.”

  “Get the husbands’ names right, Mom.” We glanced over at my dad, laughing with Chief Knight and Annabelle and a couple of their kids. “Yes,” I drawled, “he looks totally broken up.”

  Zack and his best friends from college made an altar from wood. Justine and Chick covered it in flowers. We propped up fly-fishing rods. A minister from Lake Joseph, Leesa Arrowsmith, who was two years older than Chick, Justine, and me in high school, married Zack and me. We both cried happy tears, as we had when Zack asked me to marry him in this exact spot, on one knee, ring in hand nine months ago.

  We had the meal catered. The wedding cake was four tiered, steelhead painted in icing around the sides. It was delicious. The day was bright and sunny, the river rolled, kids played, the younger ones in life jackets, we danced, and I held on to Zack knowing that I would be happy with him by my side forever.

  And I have been.

  I have been happy by Zack’s side, even though now and then I’ve felt as if he was hiding something from me, that he had a secret.

  As soon as I get better, as soon as I can walk right and get my brain in gear, as soon as I don’t exhaust easily, as soon as I trust my own instincts, I will figure out what the heck is going on with a cut-up Barbie, a headless bird, and a hit-and-run accident and how that’s all tangled up with my husband.

  * * *

  Oh no, it was my mother. Again. She hadn’t called, as usual. When my mother wants to visit, she arrives.

  One of the nurses, Olivia, came to get me in the activities room. I was making a necklace for my dad; Architect was building a tower with toothpicks and marshmallows; Frog Lady had drawn a detailed monkey, which was a curious departure for her; and Soldier was drawing his grandma another picture of, in his words, “a playground for Sleeping Beauty.” The drawing was of a mess hall where members of the armed forces were eating, two with their heads wrapped in bandages and one with his head in his hands in despair.

  “Mom.” I patted my hair. My blond curls were a mess. She would tell me that. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here?” She was standing near the doorway of the visiting lounge. I walked over, still unsteady on my feet but coming along. I prepared for a headache after her visit.

  She was dressed impeccably, her thick blond hair in its usual bell. She had applied a full spackle of makeup with foundation, powder, blush, three colors of expertly applied eye shadow, and fake eyelashes, not too long. Today was Blue Topaz Day. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a ruffle on the hem. Matching blue topaz earrings, a necklace, and a bracelet completed her ensemble appropriate for a visit to the Brain Bang Unit.

  She handed me her coat; it was wet. It was a designer coat. I hung it over a chair. Then she handed me her umbrella, soaking. Mother Monster even had a designer umbrella.

  “I’m your mother. I have come to visit you, Natalie.” She sat down at a table. I sat down, too, reluctantly, as if I were going to get my head chopped off by an executioner in a black mask.

  She eyed me over her clasped, perfectly manicured nails, the blue topaz and the diamond ring flashing. This was what she wanted. This was why she left my dad and went through a series of husbands. She wanted the designer clothing. The coat and the umbrella. The jewelry. She wasn’t “social climbing,” she was “money climbing.” Taking divorce settlements from each new husband.

  “I have therapy in about twenty minutes—”

  “What are you wearing?” She examined me head to foot, even leaning over the table for a more complete style examination.

  I rolled my eyes. I was in a pink T-shirt and jeans. I was wearing tennis shoes because I needed the balance they gave me. “I’m wearing comfortable clothes, Mom. I’m in rehab.”

  “There’s never a time when a woman shouldn’t dress, Natalie.”

  “Not even here?”

  “No. Remember, your clothes say who you are, what you are, your social standing, and your financial class.”

  “As I have told you before, I cannot even imagine worrying about something so shallow and silly.”

  “My gracious. How can yo
u stand this? You need to go home soon. When I was waiting an interminably long time for the maid to tell me where to find you—”

  “Olivia is not a maid, Mom. She’s a nurse. She’s one of my nurses.”

  She waved her hand as in, Do not bother me with these facts that I do not wish to hear. “I spent too much time waiting in the entrance for you, waiting to be checked in, and all these people were wandering around with helmets and wheelchairs and walkers, all tottering about. Many of them are having trouble speaking, did you know that, Natalie?”

  Was she serious? Yes. She was. “Yes, Mom. I did. I am having trouble speaking, too, as you can tell.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You speak slowly, Natalie, and it is somewhat irritating, but your words are much, much improved. In the other hospital you sounded like you were gargling a mouse, but now I can understand you. I can hardly stand the thought of you living here, Natalie, with all these sick people in helmets.”

  She was deranged. No empathy. Zip. “I am living here until I can talk better and walk better and think better.”

  I thought her eyes might have softened, sympathy lurking. I realized I saw something that wasn’t there when she said, while fiddling with her mongo-sized wedding ring, “Anyhow, have I told you that Dell and I had an argument?”

  “Not yet.” This was my mother, Jocelyn Miller Fox Andretti Moscovitz Chavez Smith, facing a daughter with a brain injury. The conversation could focus on the daughter for a few minutes, but no. We were now on to her favorite subject: Herself.

  “We had an argument.” She wiggled in her seat, then crossed her hosed legs, one expensive heel rocking with angry agitation. “He is giving me a monthly allowance. As if I’m a child.”