“I thought—when the news first broke—that it wasn’t so bad. Losing a leg. As a handicap, I mean. I guess I didn’t know anything about it,” she said.
I didn’t say a word. I knew, if I opened my mouth, no words would come out, or the ones that came would be so rude I’d be ashamed of myself for saying them. My teeth were squeezed together.
She pushed the walker away from her. “I’ve been even stupider than usual, haven’t I?” But she didn’t give me any chance to answer that. “I wondered, you know—if—well, if you had the guts for—you know, this—but I just didn’t have any idea what it was like.”
I made my mouth into a polite smile. “Listen, Rosamunde, it was really nice of you to come and see me, but I’m awfully tired—”
“I’m going,” she said. “I’ve got to go and meet my father. He’s my ride home; he’s getting off at four.”
I nodded, not wanting to delay her by a single word.
Rosamunde hesitated in the doorway, as if there was something more she wanted to say, but she didn’t do any more than look at me, where I sat in the hospital bed. I kept on smiling and she moved out of sight, her shoulders hunched up under the oversized windbreaker.
For a long time I just sat there without moving, letting the solitude of the room wrap around me and soothe me. Weird, it was definitely weird, she was really weird. What was Rosamunde Webber doing coming to see me in the hospital anyway? I was almost amused by the visit, now that it was over. I hoped Lisa would call that night, so we could talk to one another about the weirdness of it.
I remembered how Rosamunde had looked, standing in the walker and trying to move. I wondered how I looked, standing in it, with half a leg hanging down. And I wanted—with a longing that rose up from my heart and ran all around my body with the bloodstreams, a longing so strong that there was no room for anything else, any other thought, any other feeling—I wanted to go home. I wanted to be home. I wanted to go home and be home and to have all of this over with, I wanted things back to normal. I had taken all I could take, I thought, and I wanted to get out of the hospital and go home, so it would be finished.
At that point my mother came in. She didn’t look at me, more than to bend over and kiss my forehead, to brush my hair off it. “You need a haircut, Angel,” she said, “but I’ve just seen the—There was a girl, probably a couple of years older than you and—Oh, not at all pretty, and not well-dressed—in front of the elevators, when I got out. And she was crying. Right out in public, almost sobbing. She looked awful. I wonder what happened?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
“I felt so sorry for her, but I don’t know her. I thought I might ask her, or say something—what the twins would call a full blast of maternal feelings.” She smiled. “Oh, Izzy, we are so lucky to have each other. She looked—like she had no one in the world. Like all the troubles in the world were on her shoulders. And her hair in ridiculous childish ponytails and somebody else’s wind-breaker—as if nobody cared how she looked, anyway.”
Rosamunde? But that didn’t make any sense.
“How do you feel?” my mother asked, sitting down in the chair. “I wish you’d try that needlepoint kit. I worry about you getting bored.”
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to make sense out of what she had told me, and the last fifteen minutes. It wasn’t as if we were friends, Rosamunde and I, and she certainly hadn’t looked upset when she left the room. I thought about asking my mother about it, but then I thought that I didn’t want to hear what she thought until I knew what I thought. If I didn’t know what I thought first, I’d probably just take her ideas for my own.
“How’s Francie?” I asked, which is always a good diversionary tactic.
“Oh, Francie.” My mother smiled, half amused and half worried. “She misses you terribly, I know, but her ways of showing it…”
She went on about Francie, and I half listened to her, while the other half of my mind was seeing pictures: of Rosamunde restlessly pacing this room, then in the walker, then standing crying in the hospital corridor. All the time, behind those pictures, like an overvoice, I heard Rosamunde relentlessly talking at me, about Marco and Suzy and being crippled.
The phone broke into my mother’s conversation and my thoughts. I picked it up without thinking, thinking if it was Lisa I’d arrange to call her back, although I was no longer sure that I would tell her about my weird visitor.
“Izzy? I’m downstairs and—I feel so stupid calling; it’s a pay phone—but I wanted to tell you I know—”
“Who is this?”
“Rosamunde. I’m sorry, I should have said. But I have to say this fast, before I get my foot in my mouth again. I think I shouldn’t have come and I’m really sorry if I upset you.”
“I’m not upset,” I protested. At least, I wasn’t in the way she meant.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Can’t you listen?”
“Okay.”
“I had it all figured out, see, what I was going to say when I came in and what we’d talk about and all. But it didn’t work out that way, and I should have known that, because that’s what mostly happens to me. It’s the kind of stupid thing I do.” Then she waited for me to answer. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
“Anyway,” I said finally, “what were you planning to say?”
“It was a stupid joke.”
“Yeah, but what was it?”
“I was just going to ask, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’”
I was utterly surprised. Utterly surprised. How could she have thought of that too?
“I told you it was stupid. Then I lied about my father, he’s not coming until five, and I just wanted to tell you I don’t think I should have come.”
“Why did you anyway?” I asked. It was easier to talk to a telephone than to Rosamunde.
“Oh—they were talking like it was so terrible.”
I knew who she meant by they. Her voice took on a special tone, as if my friends weren’t even worth naming.
“And they were so stupid—I don’t care what you say, they are not nice people and they are stupid—and I thought I’d help you put things into perspective. You know? Do my comic routine, and cheer you up because—they were saying how they just couldn’t bear seeing you, it was too painful for them—”
She must have heard my silence.
“See? I never can say it right. And I’m not much better than they are, am I? I am a little better, no matter what you’re thinking—”
At that I smiled, because she wasn’t going to give them an inch, however much she might be sincerely sorry for what she named her stupidity.
“—because, of course, when I saw you and you looked—”
“Terrible was your word,” I reminded her, thinking of what she would have seen: the girl in the bed and the flat blanket where the leg was not.
“Yeah, really down and trying to look cheerful. Well, anyway. That’s what I wanted to say and I feel better.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said, sarcastic.
“Okay, okay. But should I come back again, do you think?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, then maybe I won’t. I probably shouldn’t.”
“Wait,” I said. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “Really,” I said.
“The trouble with you, Isobel Lingard,” her throaty voice said, “is that you’re so nice, I can’t even tell when you’re being nice and when you mean what you’re saying.”
She hung up before I could answer.
“Who was that?” my mother asked.
“Just someone from school.”
“What did he want?”
“She.”
“All right, what did she want?”
I shook my head, because my throat was suddenly tight. My mother was thinking along the same lines, I could tell: The boys seemed to have completely disappeared, the ones who used to call up and come hang around, or ask me out. E
verything was not going to be what I wanted, ever again.
“We are not going to let this ruin your life,” my mother said, angry.
8
I could understand it. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with a cripple either. I had passed Jeannette Wheatley in the halls and pretended she wasn’t there: I had felt my eyes being drawn to the right side of her face, where the skin was thick and lumpy, with white scars and unnaturally smooth hot-pink flesh, where the drawn muscles pulled so that her mouth was always smiling on the right side and her right eyelid slanted down over half of her eye. I had felt how my eyes were always drawn to stare at her deformity and how I made it seem as if I didn’t see anything wrong by letting my glance kind of skate over her face and away. I had never spoken a word to her. Because she was so horrible to look at.
That was the normal reaction. I could understand it, even though—thinking about it—I didn’t think I had acted very nice. I didn’t even know, for example, whether or not she had a good figure. I didn’t even know what color her hair was, although I knew how she wore it. She wore it Veronica Lake style, a long curtain of hair falling over the right side of her face. I knew that only because I had noticed how she tried to hide her scars, and how she couldn’t. I hadn’t even really looked at her, even though I’d stared at her. As if her troubles were contagious. As if something would show up on my skin if I said hello.
I wondered if I was being punished, somehow, for thinking I was nice while I wasn’t, not really. I remembered the kind of talking Lisa and I did about Suzy, when she wasn’t there. We talked as if we were concerned with her well-being, but really we were talking about whether she was promiscuous, and how far we were sure she had gone with some boy or another, and how far we thought maybe she might have gone. I never said anything about it and neither did Lisa or Lauren, but I always found talking about what Suzy got up to something of a turn-on, like reading the juicy parts of a book.
Which wasn’t a nice thing at all, for a friend.
I slipped down into the gray watery feeling and could not rise up. I was tired, too tired to do much, and the daily PT sessions wore me down even more, the black nurse with her eyes always on me, never saying anything as I tried to drag myself along the rubber pathway, hauling my left leg along, up twelve feet, turn, back twelve feet, every step dragging, every minute dragging, until she said I could stop. The only thing I did that I liked was I never asked her if I could stop, no matter how my shoulders ached. After that first day, I didn’t ask her for anything.
Until that Friday, at the end of the second week in the hospital. I don’t know what was so wrong about that day, why it should have been especially hard for me to get through the PT session. It wasn’t as if I had my period or anything, or anything new and bad had happened. The only thing that had happened that week at all was that Rosamunde Webber had come to see me, and that wasn’t exactly bad even if it wasn’t exactly good. Otherwise, the week had been the wet, gray world that was all I had left now, and a list of the things that hadn’t happened, like who hadn’t called. I was even, that morning, sort of looking forward to the next couple of days. At least, I wouldn’t have to have PT. I wouldn’t have to see the black beady eyes looking at me, bored with me. At least I wouldn’t have to pretend to be brave for a couple of days.
It was like a vacation coming up, but somehow, that day, I knew I couldn’t. Not any more. I just couldn’t. So I said, about ten trips down the line, “Please, could I stop?”
She looked at her wristwatch and shook her head.
“But I’m tired.”
She shook her head.
I knew how helpless I was. I couldn’t even get back to my room on my own. Her eyes were watching me as I draped myself over the railings of the walkway, just to have a little rest. Her little eyes didn’t like me a bit, and they were glad I was unhappy. She was glad I was crippled, I thought, because I was a privileged person, a white girl from a well-to-do background.
I didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything else, just did what she told me and then rode back to my room, as silent as she was. I just wanted to be alone in my room. I just wanted her to be gone.
She hefted me into bed and pulled up my covers, as if I couldn’t do that for myself. She didn’t look at me and I didn’t look at her. But I felt her leave the room and felt the door close. I didn’t see it because I had doubled up over my stomach and tears were streaming down my face, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t make any noise, and I guess that is why Mrs. Hughes-Pincke was so surprised to see me. Because usually I was sitting up in bed with a smile on my face.
At least she didn’t ask me how I was feeling. Instead, she opened a drawer of the night table and took out a box of tissues. She put the rolling table over my lap and put the tissues on that. I hauled one out and blew my nose. Mrs. Hughes-Pincke sat down in her chair.
But I couldn’t stop myself. Things were piling up, over me, swallowing me up. I wanted it to be my mother there, who would wrap her arms around me if she saw me like this, who would care about me. I wanted to be home, home in my own bed, in my own room, with my own family around me. And I wanted none of this ever to have happened.
It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair at all. It was Marco who should have been crippled because it was his fault.
All Mrs. Hughes-Pincke did was sit in the chair and look at me. I knew she was looking at me, I could feel it.
Finally, I could stop. Then I was embarrassed. I took a long time blowing my nose and wiping my eyes. I took a long time gathering up the wet tissues, dropping them into the waste-basket and feeling—I was squirming inside, and I wanted her to go away so badly I actually said it aloud.
“Could you please go away?” My voice was tiny and high and thick with mucus. Hearing myself started me off again. She didn’t get up, she wouldn’t even go away, and it wasn’t polite to sit and stare at someone as if someone were a TV show, not a person with feelings.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Isobel,” she finally said. I didn’t look at her. My hands fiddled with the box of tissues, turning it around and around, laying it on its side. “Crying is like—a pressure valve on a radiator. You’ve got to let off pressure sometimes.”
I shook my head. She didn’t understand. How could she understand? She had both of her legs and a husband and she was going to have a baby.
“And it’s not as if you don’t have something to cry about,” she said.
I didn’t look at her. It was like PT—sooner or later my time would be up and she’d go away. It wasn’t as if she even cared personally about me.
“You’ve got to let off pressure, just like a radiator.”
If I were a radiator, I thought, I’d be thrown out, because I was broken.
“But what happened?” Mrs. Hughes-Pincke asked, her voice cool. “I mean today, especially, what happened?”
“I was just tired,” I said, “and I wanted to stop the walking because it doesn’t do any good with the cast, and all. It’s not making me any better, I’m not getting any better at it.” I stopped speaking then, because my voice was getting high and thick again. “And she wouldn’t let me.”
“Who?”
“The nurse.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know. Because she doesn’t like me.”
“Oh I doubt that,” Mrs. Hughes-Pincke said.
I shrugged.
“There’ll be some reason, Isobel. She’s a professional. You’re not eating enough to keep your strength up, you know.” Mrs. Hughes-Pincke was assuming what adults always do, that it was the kid’s fault somehow. “Crying is healthy, Isobel,” she said, holding my eyes with hers. “People who don’t sometimes just—blow up. Like radiators.”
“I’m not a radiator,” I pointed out.
“No, I know. I’m just trying to tell you that what you’re feeling is absolutely normal.”
I looked out the window. Because I wasn’t normal
anymore.
“Isobel, believe me, I know how hard this is on you. You’re so young—I’d be surprised if anything really bad has happened to you before. It’s no consolation to hear about worse things, is it?”
“No,” I said. At least she understood that.
“Nobody ever knows, until they’ve been through something, how they’ll do,” Mrs. Hughes-Pincke said, but not really talking to me.
“It’s not fair,” I wailed.
“Agreed, it’s not fair at all,” Mrs. Hughes-Pincke answered. I wiped at my eyes. At least I wasn’t feeling so embarrassed about crying anymore. She was going to have to watch me cry if she didn’t have the manners to give me privacy. She sat very still, but not relaxed. She had one hand resting on her belly, as if she could touch the baby inside. “Isobel, have you looked at your amputated leg yet?”
I shook my head.
“You should. I guess you’ll be starting swimming when the cast comes off, so you’ll have to. Dr. Carstairs did beautiful work. It’s smooth, the flaps of flesh, and the seam is buried under. You’ve got your knee.”
“So what?” It was my leg I wanted.
“Then when you have your prosthetic leg, you’ll walk more normally. That’s so what.”
“On a wooden leg?” She could tell I was being sarcastic.
“Plastic, actually. And yes. Just think about it. If you didn’t have a knee, think how you’d walk.”
“From the hip, I guess,” I said, feeling it. The little Izzy inside my head walked down where I could see her, her whole body swiveling as she dragged her stiff plastic leg. She couldn’t bend over either, with her knee gone.
“With your knee intact you’ll have some trouble with balance, but—”
The little Izzy went haltingly along. Step with the left leg. Hesitate. Pull up right thigh. Put down plastic foot—a foot like a fake doll’s foot—that pale flesh color dolls have that doesn’t look a bit real and that waxy smoothness. I emptied my head.