by Louise Krug
“Really? What does your therapist say about me?” Louise says.
“Nothing.”
“Tom. Come on.”
His girlfriend reaches for his hand.
“She says I shouldn’t be afraid to tell you no. And to be honest with you about how self-pitying you are. Sometimes, I mean.”
She starts petting her cat. “Tom. You don’t know what real problems are.”
He about flies out of his seat. “You have no idea what I do for you,” he shouts. “How I defend you to my friends. How many parties I miss so that we can hang out!”
“You don’t go to parties,” Louise says.
His girlfriend puts her arm around him. She kisses his fingers. She rubs the back of his neck. Louise is staring with her one eye. He knows he shouldn’t be doing romantic things in front of Louise. She always used to have a guy around who would lift her up and kiss her hard.
But he does not pull back.
CHAPTER FORTY
Tom takes me to an acupuncturist. It was his idea. He thinks my facial nerves might regenerate if the right spot is stimulated, if a needle worries it just right. I go along. Tom’s optimism makes me want to believe it will work. We pull up to a renovated Victorian. It smells like a spa. Tom waits in the lobby with a plug-in fountain. The acupuncturist has me strip to my underwear and lie on my back. He puts little needles in my earlobes and pinkie toes and other places. After 30 minutes, he takes the needles out.
In the car, Tom asks me if I feel any different. “I feel buzzed,” I say. Tom and I laugh. We decide to treat ourselves to whipped-cream coffees.
On the way I tell Tom that I still call Claude. There is silence. He guns past a spot. “Tom—” We swerve, and one wheel ends up on the curb.
“No more, Louise. No more Claude.”
“I just want him to say he’s sorry,” I say. “I can feel that he is, I just want him to say it.”
“Well he’s not,” Tom says. “You are not feeling that. What you are feeling is something else.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Louise calls Davy, her old boyfriend. He doesn’t answer and she leaves a message. She sits on the floor and blares the music Davy used to listen to, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. She wears headphones. Tom visits, and she tells him she’s working. “On what?” he shouts, but she turns up the volume until the sound is screaming, until her whole world is this. Tom leaves.
She thinks about a pink and white striped dress Davy picked out for her at a thrift store. It was made in the 1950s and had a full skirt and a tight bodice with thick straps. She wore it to classes with flip-flops. Davy used to wear old, slim-fit jeans and thin cowboy shirts with pearl buttons. They used to go to a bar made of cinder blocks on the edge of the county line. People in there had bare feet and shouted. Louise and Davy talked to everyone, sat with strangers. On quiet nights, they would sit on the futon in his apartment and look at art books. Davy’s favorite artist was Hieronymus Bosch. He lived in the third floor of a run-down house. They called it the Tree House.
That summer, Louise had grown a Magic Garden in a shoe box. The display was paper cutouts that grew crystals when liquid was added. Overnight, it became an upright scene of trees and flowers with a prickly, tissue paper texture. They accidentally left the window open one morning, and when they returned that night, only skeletons of the trees remained. The tiny colored leaves and petals were scattered on the floor like real ones would have been after a storm.
Once Davy said to Louise, “I will never hurt you.” She had thought it was a strange thing to say. She had never thought he would.
•
Davy gets back to her. He feels bad for her, she can tell by his tone, even though she dumped him for a guy named Claude. Davy says he’ll take Louise to one of his guitar-playing gigs, that he’ll come and pick her up in the camper.
•
Louise remembers the camper—she’d gone with Davy to pick it up at his father’s place out in the country. It was parked between a bunch of four-wheelers and a wooden swingset. His dad was on his second round of kids.
She is nervous before their date. Her scar runs from the top of her scalp to the nape of her neck, so she wears her hair down, hoping it doesn’t show. She waits on her building’s steps.
Louise would sometimes drive the camper. The steering wheel was the size of a pizza and the seat was huge and leather, a captain’s chair. They called it a spaceship. On weekend trips to Missouri or Arkansas, through national parks and hill country, they slept on the second story, in the cubby above the front seats. They’d leave the air-conditioning on all night. Once, they visited some friends of Davy’s in Little Rock, a married couple who lived in a trailer with quilts and clipped coupons tacked on the walls. The woman had served baked chicken that was pink and bloody inside.
•
Louise shouldn’t be drinking yet, but this is her first party since the Incident, and Davy is playing. He moves his body the way guitar players do, thrashing. He and the other musicians make bad jokes into the microphone and drink from the same bottle of whiskey.
After his set, he and Louise stand outside on the lawn. Louise tosses her cane into the bushes. Davy smiles and holds out his arm. He is a good person, with clothes that are purposefully a little too small. She turns her face so only the good side shows. He says she looks very thin. He says she is a poor thing, and waves to someone walking by. He pushes his yellow hair around. Louise wants to touch his hair but can’t because of the cups they hold and the rule about touching an ex. Let them touch you first.
Now they are back in the camper. The wallpaper is peeling, and it smells like cheese snacks and dampness. She settles back on the couch, and sets her special glasses on the window ledge. This is better, she thinks. She has some great feelings. Davy remains in the passenger seat. Louise talks to the back of his head, asking him to remember karaoke night, how they made the whole audience cheer. She thinks that happened, anyway. He says nothing. She reminds him of how he liked to undress her in the camper and throw her clothes out the window. These are her best thoughts. He keeps his feet on the dashboard. It is getting a little light out. It is getting pretty bad. She sees his head on his knees. She kneels down beside the passenger seat and waits. “Davy?” she says quietly. He says this will never happen. He says he is sorry.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Warner emails Louise the link to the Myers-Briggs personality test. He sets her up with someone in Kansas who finds her aptitude for certain careers. A librarian or some sort of nurse come up a lot. Warner encourages her when she talks of going to graduate school, seeing new physical therapists, starting a part-time job. He imagines her doing light clerical work, something that keeps her mind occupied, makes her feel productive. But he doesn’t want to pressure her, doesn’t want her to think she’s not already succeeding. He waits for her phone calls and tries to be enthusiastic about whatever she’s done that day.
Elizabeth mails Louise packages of inspirational books about women overcoming obstacles. She gets on the line with Warner when Louise calls, tells her the latest family news—who adopted a baby or whose birthday is coming up. She invites Louise to come back to Michigan for quick weekend trips, to see fine museum exhibits and eat in the best restaurants. Elizabeth wants to help Louise enjoy things.
•
Janet comes to visit Louise, and Louise suggests that they have a drink after dinner. On the walk to the bar Janet is worried that Louise, weaving all over the sidewalk, will fall. On a street corner Louise says, “Mom, would you mind if I had a cigarette? We’re both adults, right?”
“Right,” Janet says, and watches Louise light it, cupping her hand in a practiced way.
After a few minutes of smoking, Louise says, “This is too weird, ha ha!” and throws the butt down and stomps on it. As they order drinks at the bar, Janet cannot think of what to say to her daughter. She would like to tell Louise about her new website at work, or maybe her house renovations, how she is painting the outside step
s yellow. But when she looks at Louise, all she can do is wonder how she is really doing. She doesn’t know if she can bear the answer. Louise is drinking gin and tonics very fast. She remembers the present she got for Louise’s 23rd birthday, some comfortable clothes and a poster. “That’s it?” she’d said. “This is my present?”
Every time Janet and Louise are together, whether out shopping or on their way to a doctor’s appointment, Louise makes Janet follow a few steps behind her on the sidewalk. “How does my walk look?” she always asks, sometimes several times a day. Janet always answers with, “Better! Much better!” but in truth it is hard to tell. Louise cannot walk in a straight line, and her limp is still significant. But it might be better than three months ago, when she first moved into her own apartment. Janet wonders if Louise asks her friends how her walk is when she’s out with them. She has friends, doesn’t she?
•
Louise takes a recreational-therapy test called, “Recreation Is Where You Find It.” It says she needs to resocialize herself. The directions are to check boxes marked Frequently, Occasionally, or Never, next to statements. One section is called Social Interaction, with questions like:
—I invite friends to visit my home
—I seek new friends
—I write letters
—I attend parties
—I attend club meetings
—I go to parades
—I argue
—I make social telephone calls
I never go to parades, Louise thinks to herself.
The test results say she needs to volunteer somewhere. She could choose a hospital off the list. Other choices are: the zoo, a meals-on-wheels van, a church daycare, or homes of shut-ins.
•
Lately Janet has been talking a lot about her boyfriend, the doctor, whom Louise does not like. Janet goes on and on about how much she loves their after-dinner walks and Saturday gardening. He’s an Eagle Scout, she tells Louise.
“We never fight,” she says. “He is so easygoing. Not like your father, who would want dinner ready when he got home every single night. Now we just both eat bread and cheese if we feel like it.”
Janet goes on. “His body is so warm. I could just snuggle up to him for the rest of my life.”
Louise does not like listening to this.
“How did you meet this guy?” Louise says to Janet on the phone. She is lying on her bed, looking at the dirty ceiling.
“Your grandparents introduced us, he’s their doctor, isn’t that funny?” Janet says.
Louise thinks that is weird. She thinks: You are not allowed to have a boyfriend. She thinks: You should be 100 percent focused on your daughter’s suffering. She wonders what her mother would say if she said these things out loud.
•
Another quiz lands in Louise’s inbox. It is titled, “Spectator Appreciation” (check Frequently, Occasionally, or Never):
—I watch television
—I attend movies
—I watch children play
—I travel or go sightseeing
—I go to a ball game
—I watch car racing
—I people watch
—I see stage plays
—I notice changes in buildings and landscapes
There is a list of activities organized into categories: Nature (appreciative), e.g., yard work, organized wilderness trips, county, state, and federal parks; or, Nature (sportsman), e.g., fishing (lake, stream), ice fishing, bow hunting, hunting, chartering a fishing boat, or taxidermy (you’ll never know until you try it!); dating is under the Social Activities category, as is: Going to a coffee shop, waffle lunch, or having an at-home spa day. Louise has already thought about dating. She is trying to figure out who would want her now.
•
A therapist at the rehab center tells Louise to look in the mirror every morning and smile ten times. Your brain and body need to learn to communicate with each other again, he says. He tells her to take a third quiz. The quiz is called: “Do These Prevent You from Enjoying Life?”
—Often I don’t feel like doing anything
—Work is the main priority
—I don’t think leisure is important
—There won’t be enough money for me to do what I want
—I won’t have the physical skills
—I won’t have enough free time
—I don’t know what is going on or what is available
—There is no one to do things with
—Following through on my intentions is difficult
—Social situations are awkward for me
—I never feel well enough
All right all right! Louise thinks. Enough!
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Louise announces to Tom that she’s going back to school in the spring. She’s going to take writing classes, and apply for a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, and probably volunteer somewhere, or maybe get a part-time job. But spring semester doesn’t start for months, and as far as Tom can tell, she hasn’t applied anywhere, or ever left the house. She spends all her time watching the students walk past and playing with her cat.
She is making a big pot of spaghetti with meat sauce. It is the first thing she has cooked in Kansas, as far as Tom knows, and he’s encouraged. “It’s Davy’s favorite,” she says, as she dumps a bottle of wine in the mix. She tells Tom that she and Davy hung out a few weeks ago, and she hasn’t talked to him since. “I can’t call again,” she says, smooshing the sauce with a wooden spoon. “I’ve already called too many times.” Tom gets out two bowls and two glasses of grape juice. Louise raises a shaky hand to Davy and sloshes some on the rug.
Tom is worried. He doesn’t like it when he comes over for dinner and can tell that she has been in there all day. He can smell the wasted life as soon as he walks in the door. He tells her that tomorrow he has five appointments and sixteen things to do. One of them is taking a friend’s baby to the park. Then he will wash the house’s sheets. After that he will drive a van full of people to the roller rink. He asks if she wants to go with him.
“To the roller rink?” she asks.
She says they should save some spaghetti for Davy.
•
Two tornadoes tear apart the town. It hails, and small balls of ice break windowpanes and dent cars. Tom drives to Louise’s door after the first one. He isn’t supposed to be outside, but he has this vision of Louise just sitting in front of the television with her cat. He finds her standing in front of the window in the main room, watching the weather. They run to his car. The sky is yellow-green, the street silent. Everything is still. Then the sirens sound.
The next day they drive past Davy’s house. The second story is just a shell, the rest already boarded up. They see the camper: it’s in the yard, under a fallen tree and hacked in half.
Tom asks if she wants to see if anyone’s inside.
“Keep driving,” Louise says.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Janet would like Louise to move back in with her for a while. The apartment experience has been okay, but really. There are places in Janet’s town where Louise could volunteer. That would be good. Janet would never tell Louise this, but she thinks that if Louise thought a little less about herself and a little more about others, she would not be so unhappy and tear-stained all the time. Louise needs to see people who are even worse off, she needs to exercise some empathy. Janet’s new boyfriend is a doctor, so he could make sure all of Louise’s sleeping, depression, and anti-anxiety prescriptions were filled. She hopes that Louise will start being friendly and talk to him soon.
Louise says no way is she going back to Iola.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Louise starts volunteering in a hospital. She hopes her mom is right, that helping other people who are suffering will snap her out of feeling so bad all the time.
She makes lab deliveries. She has to wear latex gloves. Volunteers are told to take the stairs when carrying lab specimens. Pa
tients don’t want to see fluids in containers and vials, especially when labeled with words like “CAUTION” and “HUMAN WASTE.” They don’t want to see urine, sometimes a dark, frightening color, sloshing around in jars with color-coded lids.
•
Conversation topics for volunteers are restricted to the weather or sports. This is under the supervisor’s instructions. She wrote it on the marker board in orientation. Other topics that may seem harmless might upset patients.
Louise always starts out with the weather: what it has been like, what it is likely to be like, what it is like somewhere else. If she mentions that she is originally from Michigan, the news is met with surprise, pleasure, and many more questions: What is it like where you come from? Why are you here? Where are you going next?
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
On a cross-country drive to Georgia to visit his parents, Claude passes through his college town in Kansas. He knows Louise has moved here. He wonders what she looks like now. He has not seen her for more than six months. He thinks maybe he will call her. Ask her to meet him for coffee, dinner, a drink. Louise used to be a wild girl. He would see her flirting with strangers in bars late at night—it used to make him jealous.
Even though he has slept with a few girls, he misses Louise, how she used to be, how they used to be together. Maybe Louise still likes vodka, maybe she still crumples those little square bar napkins one after another. Maybe she still has that brown purse, the one with metal studs all over it. It was the size of a grocery sack. Maybe they can just have a talk in her driveway, wherever that is. He can swing by, stand with his car door still open, engine on, bell dinging. It could be casual.
Over the phone Louise says yes, they can meet. Then she calls back and says no. She says no about eight times. Fine, no big deal, he says.
He stops in the town anyway, he needs to move his legs. He parks and gets out on the main street. His shirt is rumpled and open at the collar. He walks the downtown sidewalks exactly twice, looks in the windows of all the bars and shops, and doesn’t recognize a face.
