MY DAD VISITED ME EVERY EVENING.
I wanted him to go away.
He tried to talk to me but it wasn’t working. He pretty much just sat there. That made me crazy. I got this idea into my head. “Dante left two books,” I said. “Which one do you want to read? I’ll read the other.”
He chose War and Peace.
The Grapes of Wrath was fine with me.
It wasn’t so bad, me and my father sitting in a hospital room. Reading. My legs itched like crazy.
Sometimes, I would just breathe. Reading helped.
Sometimes I knew my father was studying me. He asked me if I was still having dreams.
“Yes,” I said. “Now I’m looking for my legs.” “You’ll find them,” he said.
My mom never brought up the conversation we’d had about my brother. She just pretended it hadn’t happened. I’m not sure how I felt about that. The good thing was, she wasn’t pushing me to talk. But, you know, she just hung out, trying to make sure I was comfortable. I wasn’t comfortable. Who in the hell could be comfortable with two leg casts? I needed help doing everything. And I was tired of bedpans. And I was tired of taking rides in a wheelchair. My best friend, the wheelchair. And my best friend, my mom. She was making me crazy. “Mom, you’re hovering. You’re going to make me say the ‘f’ word. You really are.”
“Don’t you dare say that word in front of me.” “I swear I’m going to, Mom, if you don’t stop.”
“What is this wise guy role you’ve been playing?”
“It’s not a role, Mom. I’m not in a play.” I was desperate. “Mom, my legs hurt and when they don’t hurt, they itch. They’ve taken the morphine away
—”
“Which is a good thing,” my mother interrupted.
“Yeah, okay, Mom. We can’t have a little addict running around, now can we?” As if I could run around. “Shit. Mom, I just want to be alone. Is that
okay with you? That I just want to be alone?” “Okay,” she said.
She gave me more space after that.
Dante never came back to visit. He’d call twice a day just to say hi. He’d gotten sick. The flu. I felt bad for him. He sounded terrible. He said he had dreams. I told him I had dreams too. One day he called and said, “I want to say something to you, Ari.”
“Okay,” I said.
And then he didn’t say anything. “What?” I said.
“Never mind,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
I thought it probably mattered a lot. “Okay,” I said. “I wish we could swim again.”
“Me too,” I said.
I was glad he called. But I was also glad he couldn’t come to see me. I don’t know why. For some reason I thought: My life will be different now. And I kept repeating that to myself. I wondered what it would have been like to lose my legs. And in a sense, I had lost them. Not forever. But for a while.
I tried using crutches. It just wasn’t going to happen. Not that the nurses and my mom didn’t warn me. I guess I just had to see for myself. It was just impossible with both my legs completely straight and my left arm in a cast.
It was hard to do everything. The worst thing for me was that I had to use a bedpan. I guess you could say that I found it humiliating. That was the word. I couldn’t even really take a shower—and I didn’t really have the use of both hands. But the good thing was that I could use all my fingers. That was something I guess.
I got to practice using a wheelchair with my legs out. I named the wheelchair Fidel.
Dr. Charles came to visit me one last time. “Have you thought about what I told you?” “Yup,” I said.
“And?”
“And I think you made a really good decision by becoming a surgeon.
You would have made a lousy therapist.” “So you’ve always been a wiseass, huh?” “Always.”
“Well, you can go home and be a wiseass there. How does that sound?”
I wanted to hug him. I was happy. I was happy for about ten seconds.
And then I started to feel really anxious.
I gave my mom a lecture. “When we get home, you’re not allowed to hover.”
“What is this about making all these rules, Ari?” “No hovering. That’s all.”
“You’ll need help,” she said.
“But I’ll need to be left alone too.”
She smiled at me. “Big Brother is watching you.” I smiled back at her.
Even when I wanted to hate my mother, I loved her. I wondered if it was normal for fifteen-year-old boys to love their mothers. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.
I remember getting into the car. I had to stretch out in the backseat. It was a pain in the ass to get me in. It was a good thing my father was strong. Everything was so damned hard and my parents were so afraid of hurting me.
No one said anything in the car. As I stared out, I looked for birds.
I wanted to close my eyes and let the silence swallow me whole.
