Left Neglected Part 10

"Helen, will you go sit on Sarah's other side?" she asks.

My mother pops up and disappears. Maybe I judged Martha too quickly.

"Okay, Sarah, lie back, here we go. Ready?" she asks.

But before I can give my consent to whatever it is we're about to do, she places her strong hand on the side of my face and turns my head. And there's my mother again. d.a.m.n this woman.

"Here's a washcloth. Go up and down her arm with it, rub her hand, all her fingers."

"Should I wash her other arm, too?"

"No, we're not giving her a bath. We're trying to remind her brain that she has a left arm through the texture of the cloth, the temperature of the water, and her looking at her arm while this is happening. Her head is going to want to drift back over here. Just turn it back to the left like I did. Good?"

My mother nods.

"Good," Martha says and leaves us in a hurry.

My mother wrings the cloth out over the basin and starts wiping my arm. I feel it. The cloth is coa.r.s.e and the water is lukewarm. I see my forearm, my wrist, my hand as she touches each body part. And yet, although I feel it happening to me, it's almost as if I'm watching my mother wash someone else's arm. It's as if the cloth against my skin is telling my brain, Feel that? That's your left shoulder. Feel that? That's your left elbow. But another part of my brain, haughty and determined to get in the last word, keeps retorting, Ignore this foolishness! You don't have a left anything! There is no left!

"How does this feel?" asks my mother after several minutes.

"It's a bit cold."

"Sorry, okay, hold on, don't move."

She springs up and scurries into the bathroom. I stare at the prison and daydream. I wonder if she'd be fetching warm water for me if I were over there. Without warning, her hand is on my face, and she turns my head. She starts rubbing my arm again. The water's too hot.

"You know," I say. "Bob really needs to get to work on time. He shouldn't be driving you in here in the morning."

"I drove myself."

Baldwin sits in the eye of a colossal ma.s.s transit tornado, a difficult destination to reach for even the bravest and most seasoned Boston drivers. Add rush hour. And my mother.

"You did?"

"I typed the address into that map computer, and I did exactly what the lady told me to do."

"You drove Bob's car?"

"It has all the car seats."

I feel like I missed a meeting.

"You drove the kids to school?"

"So Bob could get to work on time. We've switched cars."

"Oh."

"I'm here to help you."

I'm still catching up to the fact that she drove my kids to school and day care and then into Boston by herself from Welmont during rush hour, and now I have to wrap my brain around this doozy. I try to remember the last time she helped me with anything. I think she poured me a gla.s.s of milk in 1984.

She's holding my left hand in hers, our fingers interlaced, and her hand feels familiar, even after all this time. I'm three, and my hand is in hers when she helps me climb stairs, when we sing "Ring Around the Rosy," when I have a splinter. Her hands are available, playful, and skilled. After Nate died, at first she held my hand a little tighter. I'm seven, and my hand is in hers when we cross the street, when she leads me through a crowded parking lot, when she paints my nails. Her hands are confident and safe. And then I'm eight, and my hand must be too awkward to hold along with all that grief, so she just lets go. Now I'm thirty-seven, and my hand is in hers.

"I need to go to the bathroom," I say.

"Let me get Martha."

"I'm fine. I can do it."

Now, since the accident, I have yet to get up and use the bathroom on my own, so I don't know why I suddenly feel like I'm perfectly capable of this. Maybe it's because I feel normal, and I have to pee. I don't feel like I'm paying attention to only half of me or half of my mother or half of the bathroom. I don't feel like anything's missing. Until I take that first left step.

I'm not sure where the bottom of my left foot is relative to the ground, and I can't tell if my knee is straight or bent, and then I think it might be hyperextended, and after a shocking and herky-jerky second, I step forward with my right foot. But my center of gravity is wildly off, and the next thing I know, I go cras.h.i.+ng to the floor.

"Sarah!"

"I'm okay."

I taste blood. I must've cut my lip.

"Oh my G.o.d, don't move, I'll go get Martha!"

"Just help me up."

But she's already out the door.

I'm lying on the cold floor, trying to imagine how to get myself up, licking my wounded lip, and thinking that it might take longer than two weeks to get back to work. I wonder who's handling the Harvard recruiting for me. I hope it's not Carson. And I wonder who's overseeing annual evaluations. That's a huge project. I should be tackling that right now. My shoulder's throbbing. I wonder what's taking my mother so long.

Since giving birth to Linus, it's become embarra.s.singly difficult for me to contain a full bladder. Much to Bob's annoyance, I can no longer "hold it until we get there," and I have to beg him to pull over at least once whenever we're in the car for more than an hour. I drink twenty ounces of coffee at a time at work, which means I often spend the last ten minutes of any hour-long meeting tapping my feet under the table like I'm an Irish step dancer, consumed with a desperate plan to sprint to the nearest bathroom the second it ends.

I've abandoned any delusions I had of getting up on my own and am now devoting 100 percent of my energy and focus on not peeing right here on the floor. Thank G.o.d my bladder or whatever part of me I'm concentrating on is in the center of me and not somewhere on the left. I pray I don't sneeze.

My mother finally rushes in with Martha behind her. My mother looks frantic and pale. Martha sizes me up with her hands on her hips.

"Well, that was impulsive," she says.

I can think of a few choice things I could do or say right now that would be truly impulsive, but this woman is in charge of my care, and I need to get to the bathroom before I pee, and I need to get back to work before I lose my job, so I bite my b.l.o.o.d.y lip.

"I should've helped her," says my mother.

"No, that's not your job. That's my job. Next time, press the call b.u.t.ton. Let me be the therapist, and you be the mother."

"Okay," says my mother, like she's just taken an oath.

Be the mother. Like she has any idea what that means. Be the mother. All at once, those three words irk me and amuse me and pinch a delicate part of me. But most of all, they distract me, and I pee all over the floor.

CHAPTER 11.

It's early in the morning, before breakfast, before any of the therapists have started working on me, probably even before the kids have gotten dressed at home. And Bob is here.

"Can you see me now?" asks Bob.

I see the prison, the window, the visitor's chair, the TV.

"No," I say.

"Turn your head."

I turn my head. I see the prison.

"No, the other way."

"There is no other way."

"Yes, there is. Turn your head to the left. I'm standing over here."

I close my eyes and imagine Bob standing. In my mind's eye, he's wearing a black, long-sleeve, crewneck tee and jeans, even though he never wears jeans to work. He's got his arms folded, and he hasn't shaved. I open my eyes and turn my head. I see the prison.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can. It's simple."

"It's not."

"I don't understand why you can't just turn your head."

"I did."

"To the left."

"There is no left."

I hear him sigh in frustration.

"Honey, tell me everything you see in here," I say.

"You, the bed, the window, the chair, the table, the flowers, the cards, the pictures of me and the kids, the bathroom, the door, the television."

"Is that everything?"

"Pretty much."

"Okay, now what if I told you that everything you see is only half of everything that's really here? What if I told you to turn your head and look at the other half ? Where would you look?"

He doesn't say anything. I wait. I imagine Bob standing in his tee-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, searching.

"I don't know," he says.

"Exactly."

ELLEN IS DANCING TO THE Black Eyed Peas. She's hysterical. Much better than Regis and what's her name. I wish I could get up and boogie with her, but I've learned my lesson after yesterday's misadventure to the bathroom.

Bob left for work over an hour ago, and now my mother is here, hovering next to me in "her" chair. She's wearing a lavender fleece sweatsuit and white New Balance sneakers. She looks like she's ready for a jog or an aerobics cla.s.s at a gym. I doubt she's ever done either. I catch her watching me instead of Ellen, and I feel like I just made eye contact with a cornered sparrow. She looks down and inspects her sneakers, s.h.i.+fts in her chair, turns to see what's going on outside the window, s.h.i.+fts in her chair, throws me a skittish glance, darts her focus to the TV, and fusses with her hair. She needs some sort of project.

"Mom, will you go get me a hat?"

"Which one?"

I have only one non-ski hat that I can think of, a huge straw sunhat, but I'm clearly not on a tropical vacation or sitting poolside. I own plenty of bandanas and scarves and could use one of those to cover my head, but I don't want to look like a cancer patient. I want to look normal, like someone who could theoretically go back to work in two weeks. And I don't want to scare the kids.

"Can you go buy me one?"

"Where?"

"The Prudential Mall."

She blinks a few times. I know she wants a way out of this proposed field trip. I don't know where that is, I don't know what kind you want, I don't want to lose my seat.

"I need an address," she says.

"Eight hundred Boylston Street."

"Are you sure that's right?"

"Yes, I work there."

"I thought you worked at some business company."

She says this like she's busted me in a big lie, like I really work at the Gap, just as she's suspected all along.

"Berkley's in the mall."

"Oh."

I wish I could go myself. I'd pick out something hip and pretty at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue, and then I'd swing into work, check in with Jessica and Richard, find out what's going on with staff evaluations, correct any misguided decisions Carson is making about our next generation of consultants, and maybe sit in on a meeting or two before coming back.

"But you have therapy in a few minutes," she says.

"You can miss it."