Our conversation continued through the game and over pizza afterward. I couldn’t believe how connected I felt to this woman. I am ashamed to say it, but when she told me she was twenty, I fibbed and told her I was twenty-eight instead of the truth, that I was thirty-five. I was already afraid of losing her.
We started doing more things together. Soon, it was as interesting for me to be out of the house as in it. I was just as obsessed with math and science as before, but now I didn’t have to sit alone with it; I had someone to discuss it with who really cared. We went to a party at her friend Carolina’s house and I guided her through the crowd, making very detailed observations about the body language of various people as they appeared to me, something I realized might be a new obsession since I was back in public. But she didn’t find it strange. On each date, I showed her a few more of my tics, waiting for her to run for the hills. Instead, she accepted me and began to share more about herself. But we’d yet to be totally alone.
I asked her to a movie and she said yes. About two-thirds of the way through it I took her hand and held it. I had butterflies. I tried to kiss her that night but she turned her head. It was okay—for this special woman, I’d be willing to wait as long as I had to.
For our next date, we took Megan to Seattle for the day. The two of them got along really well. This was so important to me and a big step forward. I washed my convertible and asked Elena before we set off if she minded having the top down. I wanted to make sure she’d be comfortable with the wind blowing her hair around. She was game, and about halfway through the trip, as we cruised down the highway, she threw her head back and told me that it felt like heaven.
I knew I wanted to invite her to our home at that point, so I set a date two weeks out. I’d have liked it to be sooner, but I thought about my place, with the papers and drawings piled high everywhere, and I knew it was going to take a while to clean. It was not like there were moldy plates of food lying around—it was germ-free, given my cleanliness phobia—but it looked like a birdcage freshly lined with drawings of pi. And, oh, the hole in the roof with the pigeons flying in and out. I was nearly red with embarrassment even though she couldn’t see the picture I was conjuring in my mind. I’d have to call my cousin to do a low-cost but total rehab on the place before Elena came over.
We spent the next two weeks getting the place Elena-worthy. My cousin and I repaired the hole in the roof, the siding, and the wonky doorbell, working seven days a week. I organized my papers, separating my own work from Megan’s school projects. I was a hoarder when it came to my daughter’s creations and I kept every one of them.
The day of Elena’s visit arrived. I cut the lawn and washed my car and then went to a Russian florist I’d found to see about getting the right flowers. I was surprised to learn that in Elena’s culture, even numbers of flowers are presented only for sympathy or funeral arrangements. I still bought a dozen red roses, but I put eleven in a vase and handed her one when she came to the door. I had ordered take-out and had a rented movie ready. She looked nervous at first, but then we got to talking, and our chemistry was easy and obvious. Over dinner, Elena said she understood how hard it had been for me. She said she liked both the person I’d been and the person I’d become. For my part, I realized that my old self never would have been good enough for Elena, and my paradoxical feelings about the outcome of the mugging now also included an unexpected infusion of gratitude.
It wasn’t until Elena started spending more time with me that I realized how much I had been missing in recent years. I had been without much human companionship or happiness. While she was a serious student and every bit my intellectual equal, Elena had no interest in sitting at home and just thinking, going up and down scientific rabbit holes. She inspired me to look outside of my own mind for destinations, to engage with my surroundings and achieve a balance between exploring my new abilities and finding their place in the wider world.
I wanted to return the favor. Elena hadn’t seen much of the United States yet. She’d been busy getting straight A’s at our college, which she’d chosen because it had a good program for international students and she wanted to learn more English. She grew up enamored of the American soap Santa Barbara. The influence of that show in Russia was like Dallas’s in its heyday here in the States, and for Elena, it defined American culture. She had planned to travel to the actual Southern California city with Carolina, but her best friend had returned to Chile. I decided to step in and start making some of her dreams come true if at all possible. Getting her to Santa Barbara was easy. “I’ll take you,” I said, and she threw her arms around me. I couldn’t believe how good that felt. When Elena’s face lit up, I felt like I could fly. It helped to have someone to focus on besides me. It felt good to make someone else happy.
We made plans to see some of the iconic sights of the city and bought tickets to Disneyland as well. But when we arrived, Elena came down with the worst stomach pains she’d ever had. We didn’t know if it was one too many fast-food hamburgers or the sheer excitement of the journey, but she was down for the count. I realized how much I’d grown to love her as I nursed her in our hotel room and honestly didn’t give a second thought to the vacation plans. My only concern was for Elena, who recovered in time to catch a few highlights of the planned journey.
As we began our abbreviated tour of Santa Barbara, we stopped at a light at one of the main intersections. Just as a slightly queasy Elena was starting to ooh and aah at the places she recognized from her favorite series, a fight broke out between two motorists behind us in traffic. So much for the idealized American mythology of the TV show, I thought. Elena and I flagged down a nearby police officer, who quickly jumped into the melee and arrested the guys. We pulled away laughing at the unfortunate interruption of the fantasy.
Our time in Santa Barbara was largely spent tooling around in the car with Elena jumping out to take photos at the locations she recognized. When she began to tire, we called it a day. She needed to rest for Disneyland.
We made our way to the Anaheim amusement park, and Elena confessed she’d never been on a roller coaster before. That had to be remedied, queasy stomach or not, I told her. She was a real sport and decided to join me for the enormous California Screamin’ coaster. She squeezed my hand really tight as they locked us in, and we began our ride.
At that point, I realized I had not been on a roller coaster since the brain injury. It was too late to back out and I was really apprehensive. As the cart sped through the loops and up the humongous inclines and back down them with increasing velocity, the stop-action frames I was used to seeing for motion flew by at an amazing clip. I couldn’t believe how exciting this was. I whooped and hollered at every twist and turn. Elena closed her eyes for the worst of it but was beaming when we exited, having checked ride roller coaster off her list of American things to do.
Not long after the trip I decided to tell her the truth about my age. I explained that I’d thought we’d never have a chance if I told her the truth at the outset, before we got to know each other. She stared at me stone-faced and said, “Drive me home.”
For the next three days in school she wouldn’t even look at me. I was distraught. But on the third day, she pulled me aside and took my hand. She’d been thinking about it and she realized she loved me despite the age difference and the deception. Holding back tears, I promised never to lie to her again. I told her I loved her too. For the first time in my life, I was in a serious relationship and I wasn’t afraid of where things were headed. I knew we belonged together.
The semester ended all too soon and Elena had to return home to Russia. Before leaving, she admitted she’d known it was serious that first day at the soccer match. In the beginning, she explained, she thought she was going to be in America for only a few months of studying and she figured she should take the opportunity to get to know as many interesting people as possible. But apparently, she had strong feelings for me. “I felt safe,” she told me. “And I always lov
e people who have a passion in their life, as you clearly did. I could tell you were fascinated by these important ideas and it made me see the world differently. I’d never met anyone like you.”
I drove her to the airport. Our farewell was so full of tears that people around us in the terminal looked upset. We were both sobbing and clinging to each other, not wanting to let go. Elena said it first—there was no way of telling if the geography would be a permanent barrier. And if it caused long separations between us, who was to say we wouldn’t both meet other people?
The instant she disappeared behind the gate, I knew I would go to Russia to win her hand. There would be no stopping me. Reality solidified, and all the different potentials for my life became one point. On the drive home, I actually felt my spirits lift because of this certainty about what I must do. And in the following very long days without her, I began making arrangements for my first overseas journey. I’d go to Russia and convince her to live in the States permanently.
Still, when I really thought about it, making the trip seemed impossible. It hadn’t been that long ago that I’d been hiding behind my windows with blankets over them, completely isolated. Getting on that plane to a strange place so far away would be one of the hardest things I’d ever do. But my feelings for Elena trumped everything else, and I did it.
We arranged for her to travel from her small town of Pskov to St. Petersburg to pick me up at the airport. This was a four-hour journey over rough terrain by bus, not to mention the long walk to the bus station she had to make from her town to begin the trip. I was worried for her and worried we’d miss each other.
The plane landed, and I picked up my luggage and then went to the customs agent to get checked through. Something was apparently wrong with the way I’d filled out my customs declaration, however, and pretty soon there were three agents, all speaking to me mostly in Russian. I had no idea what was going on. I saw passenger after passenger being let through; an hour later, I was still there with the customs agents. I worried that by now Elena would think I stood her up and she’d leave. Down the hall from me was a window. I was not sure if Elena would be on the other side of it but I bolted to it and waved.
Elena was feeling dejected as she asked the last straggling passengers if there was anyone left behind them. They said no and then expressed sympathy. Miraculously, she saw me waving and asked to be let in to help me. The guards who followed me down the hall when I ran were only too anxious to speak with her by this time. She cleared up the mistakes I’d made on the form and we were let go; we left and headed to the hotel where we planned to spend a couple of nights before continuing on to her town.
When we exited the airport and made our way to the city, I found myself overwhelmed by all the new shapes of the architecture and the other sights and sounds and even the unfamiliar aromas. From the gilded cupola of St. Isaac’s Cathedral to the domes, spires, and intricate mosaics of the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, traditional Russian architecture was so ornate that I could hardly take my eyes off the extra geometrical angles. Even the modern, huge, and boxy apartment complexes were on such a large scale that I found myself staring at the seemingly endless numbers of windows on their facades. I was used to seeing my own complicated geometrical imagery, but to have real, solid, complex, and new forms to consider was very discomfiting.
As happy as I was to be reunited with Elena, the smog created by the old cars of the fallen empire burned my eyes and stung my throat. And there was rust everywhere; time and again, I was offended by its presence on things that must have once been so beautiful. I retreated to the hotel room at one point and went to my safe space, staring at the water coming out of the faucet in the bathroom sink like I did every morning at home. I thought if I kept my normal routines I wouldn’t be so addled, but when I looked at my webby water forms for some sort of comfort, I realized the water was yellow and smelled of sulfur. There was no use hiding in the boxy room either, as room service delivered one strange dish after another, and nothing on TV made sense. I noticed that alphabet graphics in the news reports were different from English and quickly turned the television off, stung by the letters’ shapes.
Worse than that, my eyes began to hurt, and my whole body bristled at the new landscapes. It was a feeling of being closed in; I felt like the buildings were leaning in toward me and I was trapped in a canyon. It took me a few days to adjust to the new forms; this odd, new structure of things was overwhelming. It was as if I could feel my brain growing new neurons to adapt to my surroundings. I realized I was acquiring a totally new definition of what a city looked like. As stimulating as these images were, it was still the overlay of shapes I saw synesthetically and my acquired savant response to them that left me the most fascinated and started to make me feel at home.
I remember seeing a train go by in St. Petersburg. There was a man leaning out the window of one of the cars, smoking. When the choppy frames of the train going by and the new landscape behind it became overwhelming for me, I focused instead on the puffs of smoke around the man. The little particles I saw within the swirls of smoke were also swirling or darting within the cloud. I’d seen this before, even while avoiding smokers on sidewalks back home, and just that tiny detail grounded me again.
I would find even greater comfort looking at the Velikaya River in Pskov. Standing on a bridge above it one day, I saw the waves of the water interfering with one another as they flowed past the cement support columns below me. It reminded me of the physics double-slit experiment, in which photons can interfere with one another while acting as waves. To me, it was reminiscent of a drawing I had done, and the very memory of the illustration comforted me greatly in this new environment.
I tried to escape to these familiar visions when I was uncomfortable. Even if something was very beautiful, I found it could overwhelm me. This was never more clear than when Elena took me to the Hermitage, the former Winter Palace of the czars that’s now a treasure-filled art museum. She later said our time there was classic Jason. I suppose it was.
We were walking in a gallery filled with eighteenth-century portraits. The ceilings soared and the archways were enormous. It was gilded—no expense had been spared in its creation. The paintings were also oversize; anything smaller than those gigantic canvases would have been utterly lost in that space. Elena was feeling great pride in her heritage and carefully paused at each face or faces, explaining to me the history behind them. We were so important to each other by then that I knew she wanted me to not just see the paintings but feel them, to know her through them. However, I was distracted, and I kept looking over my shoulder. She told me later how it hurt to lose my attention. She tried to emphasize certain points louder and look in my eyes directly to hold my gaze, but it was no use. I couldn’t help it. I walked away, down the hallway, where I ended up with my face about an inch away from a mirror hanging there. I’m not usually that rude. Elena followed me down the hall and asked what I was doing.
“Elena,” I said, all seriousness. “Do you see the way the light is reflecting off this mirror? It’s so beautiful.” Though I had seen and even been obsessed with light playing off glass and mirrors before, the scale of the mirror as well as the enormous window letting the light in created the most elaborate, incredible, prismatic fanning-out of light rays I’d ever seen.
I learned later this light play is known in Italian as gibigianna, which translated to “charming woman.” It certainly charmed me.
It was not that I didn’t appreciate the collections in the Hermitage. But something in me saw more beauty, more value, in the natural and geometric underpinnings of the world. I may have had treasures untold at my feet in that moment, but they paled by comparison.
We made our way to Pskov and I gained even more appreciation and affection for Elena when I realized the difficulty of the journey she made to meet me. Compared to St. Petersburg, Pskov was pristine and reminded me of some of the small towns I’d lived in in Alaska. I’d arranged to rent a small flat ab
out a mile from Elena’s apartment. Her parents’ place was too small for another person and they didn’t know me yet. I vowed to win her parents over.
Elena’s mom and dad were very kind to me from the start, and Elena translated patiently as we got to know one another. Through them, I saw the fall of the empire. Her father had lost his government engineering job in the breakup of the Soviet Union. He spoke briefly of having worked at Chernobyl after the nuclear meltdown and how he hadn’t felt well since then. But he mostly talked about what happened to one of his friends. The colleague found a wristwatch in the largely abandoned town of Chernobyl and carried it around in his pants pocket for a couple of days. One day when he stripped to bathe, he noticed the skin on his leg under the watch had turned completely black.
Later, Elena told me that during Joseph Stalin’s purges, her father’s family home was burned. I felt nothing but sympathy for these people I’d been raised to fear during the Cold War. (Her father has since passed away.)
Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel Page 12
