Left Neglected

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  MIKE PULLS ME BY THE rider bar onto the Magic Carpet lift, and we move, both standing on our snowboards, up the slight but steady incline of Rabbit Lane. The Magic Carpet is like a conveyor belt, and the people on it—mostly young children, a few parents, a couple of instructors, Mike and me—remind me of pieces of luggage at the airport or groceries at the supermarket riding along a ribbon of black rubber, waiting to be scanned.

  I look around for Bob and Lucy, both wanting them to see me and praying that they don’t. What is Bob going to think when he sees me on a handicapped snowboard? Will he think I’ve given in to my Neglect and given up? Have I given up? Is this accommodating or failing? Should I have waited until I’m recovered enough to ski like I used to? What if that never happens? Are my only two acceptable choices sitting in the booth in the lodge or skiing like I did before the accident, with nothing in between? What if someone from work is here for the weekend and sees me? What if Richard is here and sees me clutching on to a grab bar, guided by an instructor from the New England Handicapped Sports Association? I don’t want anyone to see me like this.

  What am I doing? This might’ve been a really impulsive, really bad decision. As we approach the top—which isn’t the top of anything but simply the arbitrary end of the Magic Carpet, visible from the booth I was safely sitting in back in the lodge before I had to go nosing around—the anxious chatter in my head grows louder and stronger, blooming into a full-fledged panic.

  I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to snowboard. I want to go back to my booth and work on my word search puzzles. I want to be at the bottom of the hill. But we’re at the top of the lift now, and there is no Magic Carpet ride to the bottom. And unlike the kids who freeze up and freak out for their own legitimate or irrational reasons, I can’t decide to abandon my board and walk the moderate distance to the bottom. My granny cane is back inside the NEHSA building, and I can’t imagine that Mike would agree to assist me down the hill on foot without at least my giving the snow-board an honest try.

  Mike yanks me to the side so I don’t cause a pileup at the end of the conveyor belt. He then turns and faces me and places his hands outside of mine on the rider bar.

  “Ready?” he asks, his teeth all excited.

  “No,” I say, clenching mine, trying not to cry.

  “Sure you are. Let’s start by sliding forward a little.”

  He leans downhill, and we begin to move. Whether I like it or not (and it’s decidedly not), I’m about to snowboard.

  “Great, Sarah! How does it feel?”

  How does it feel? It feels like excitement and terror are tumbling around inside my chest like clothes in a dryer. Each second I’m overwhelmed with one and then the other.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s try turning. Remember, peeing in the woods to go left, squatting over the toilet to go right. Forward and up on your toes, back and on your heels. Let’s try forward first.”

  I rock my hips forward, and we begin to turn left. And that feels horribly wrong. I lock up my knees, stack my hips over my thighs, and stand upright. I lose all control over my balance, but then I feel Mike correcting for me, and he keeps me from falling down.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “I don’t like turning left. I can’t see where I’m going before we’re already there, and it scares me.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye out for where we’re going. I promise we won’t hit anyone or anything, okay?”

  “I don’t want to go left.”

  “Okay. Let’s slide a little, and when you’re ready, go back on your heels and turn right.”

  He nudges backward on the rider bar, and we begin sliding down the hill together. After a few seconds, I go back onto my heels, squatting over the imaginary toilet, and we turn to the right. I return my hips to neutral, and we slide forward. I decide to do it again. Squat, heels, neutral, forward. Squat, heels, neutral, forward.

  “Great, Sarah! You’re snowboarding!”

  I am? I release my concentration from the death grip it’s got on the separate steps of what I’m doing and begin to realize the whole of what I’m doing. Slide, turn, slide. Slide, turn, slide.

  “I’m snowboarding!”

  “How do you feel?” he asks.

  How do I feel? Even though Mike is maintaining my balance and checking my speed, I decide when we turn and when we go downhill. I feel free and independent. And even though I’m holding on to a handicapped bar and normal snowboards don’t have handicapped bars, I don’t feel abnormal or handicapped. Walking with Neglect is so belabored and choppy, requiring miles of effort to drag myself a few miserable feet. As we glide down the hill on our snowboards, I feel fluid and graceful and natural. I feel the sun and breeze on my face. I feel joy.

  We come to a stop at the bottom, still facing each other. I look at Mike’s smiling face and see my reflection in his polarized sunglasses. My teeth look as huge and excited as his do. How do I feel? I feel like Mike hurled a huge rock through the glass wall of my preconceptions, hitting it dead center, shattering my fear into a million glittery pieces on the snow around me. I feel unburdened and beyond grateful.

  “I feel like I want to do that again.”

  “Awesome! Let’s go!”

  Now on flat terrain, Mike pops one of his boots out of the binding and tows me by the rider bar over to the Magic Carpet. Because he’s with NEHSA, we’re heading to the front, cutting the entire line.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  It’s Lucy, standing next to Bob in line ahead of us. And Charlie is with them. Mike pulls me alongside them, and I introduce him to my family.

  “Look at you!” says Bob, surprised to see me, but beaming, not a trace of disappointment or judgment in his words or in his eyes, where I can always see his truth.

  “Look at me!” I say, bursting with childlike pride. “I’m a snowboarder, just like Charlie!”

  Charlie looks me up and down, inspecting the validity of this statement, lingering on Mike’s gloved hand, which is resting on my rider bar, deciding if my declaration needs qualifying, if my enthusiasm needs a reality check.

  “Cool!” he says.

  “She just had her first run and did awesome. She’s a natural,” says Mike.

  “We were about to do one more run before lunch,” says Bob. “Can you join us?”

  “Can we jump in here?” I ask.

  “Sure,” says Mike, and he pulls me into line behind Lucy.

  We ride the Magic Carpet and gather together at the top.

  “Ready?” Mike asks.

  I nod. He leans back, and we begin to slide. Slide, turn, slide. I smile as we’re snowboarding, knowing that Bob and the kids are hanging back to watch me, knowing that Bob is probably smiling, too. I’m at the top of Rabbit Lane instead of the summit, and I’m on a handicapped snowboard instead of skis, but nothing about this experience feels less than 100 percent, less than perfect. I’m on the mountain with my family. I’m here.

  Slide, turn, slide. Smile.

  CHAPTER 30

  It’s Monday morning. I know it’s Monday morning because we drove back to Welmont from Cortland last night, and so last night was Sunday night. It’s the beginning of March, and I’ve been out of work for four months now, which also means that I’ve been existing for four whole months outside of the rigorous daily schedule that used to map out my Who, What, When, Where, and Why for every single waking hour of the day. I know it’s a weekend when we’re in Vermont, and I know Mondays and Fridays because we’ve either just returned or we’re packing to leave again, but the days in between have started to blur together. By Wednesday, I won’t know if it’s tuesday or Thursday. And it doesn’t much matter.

  I also know it’s Monday because Linus didn’t go to day care today. He still goes there Tuesdays through Fridays, but he doesn’t go at all now on Mondays—one of the many efforts we’re making to save money. Charlie and Lucy a
re at school, Bob is at work, and Linus and my mother went to the grocery store. I’m home alone, still in my pajamas, sitting in my favorite chair in the sunroom. My sacred space.

  I’m reading The Week magazine instead of the Sunday New York Times. I’m so done with the Sunday New York Times. I discovered The Week in the waiting room at the pediatric dentist’s office, and I love it. It debriefs me on the week’s main stories in three quick pages and includes opinions from the editorials and columnists of major newspapers like the New York Times. It even devotes a page to us closet People fans on the latest Hollywood “News.” All the articles begin and end on the same page, and the whole magazine is a pleasurably manageable forty pages.

  It possesses the same qualities I appreciate most in my favorite Berkley consultants—efficient yet thorough, cutting straight to the chase. As I flip the page and dwell on this comparison, I suddenly remember the 80–20 rule.

  Considered to be a universal truth and one of the Ten Commandments for Berkley consultants, the 80–20 rule is an economic principle that states that 20 percent effort yields 80 percent value. Essentially, it means that for anything anyone does, only 20 percent really matters. For our consultants who need to deliver an answer to the client in a few weeks and therefore don’t have the luxury of studying a particular business problem for the next year, the 80–20 rule reminds them to focus on the 20 percent of information that is vital and to ignore the 80 percent that is likely to be irrelevant (our superstar consultants are the ones who have an intuitive sense for what to focus on and what to ignore).

  The editors of The Week have basically culled the 20 percent of news that matters to me and published it in a tidy little magazine. I’ll finish this whole issue by tomorrow if not today, which means I’ll be sufficiently informed of the week’s world events by Tuesday, which leaves the rest of my week free and clear to do something else. The 80–20 rule is pure genius.

  I look out the windows into our suburban yard and then through the French door windows into the living room and sigh, unable to think of what that something else might be. There are only so many word search puzzles I can work on, only so many red balls I can find and pick up off a tray. My outpatient therapy, which was two times a week, is now over. It’s not over because I’ve fully recovered (I haven’t) or because I quit (I didn’t), but because our insurance only pays for ten weeks, and my time was up. How any human being with a molecule of reason, a shred of compassion, and a pulse could establish and stand behind this preposterously premature cutoff is beyond me.

  After waiting on hold on the phone for what felt like ten weeks to speak with an actual human being at our insurance company, I expressed my unedited outrage to some poor customer service representative named Betty, who I’m confident had no part in creating the policy and who surely has no influence over changing it. But it felt good to vent. And so that’s it. If I’m to recover 100 percent, it’s going to be 100 percent up to me from here on out to make it happen.

  I finish reading The Week. Now what? I’m surprised that my mother and Linus aren’t back yet. Linus is really on the move now, running whenever he gets the chance simply because he can. He hates to sit still, and he’s exceptionally single-minded, a trait my mother claims descended directly from my DNA. He doesn’t get it from the wind, she says. I hope he isn’t giving her a hard time. She’s been amazing with all three kids, juggling their schedules, preparing their meals, laundering all their clothes, and she’s enjoying the time she spends with them, but I can see by four o’clock on most days that she’s worn out. I feel bad that she’s working so hard, but I can’t imagine how we’d be managing without her.

  I snuggle into the deep chair, close my eyes, and absorb the relaxing greenhouse-like warmth of the sunroom. But I’m not tired and don’t feel like napping. I wish it were Saturday. If it were Saturday, we’d be in Vermont, and I could go snowboarding. I can’t wait to go back.

  The phone rings. My mother handed me the phone like she always does before leaving me alone in the house, but I don’t see it tucked into the cushion next to me where I normally keep it. It rings again. I follow the direction of the sound and locate it on the small occasional table opposite me, remembering now that Linus had been playing with it and must’ve discarded it there. Three feet and miles away.

  I could get up and granny cane over to the table, but probably not in four rings. I should let the machine answer the call, but I was just wishing for something to do. I’m going to try to beat the machine. The phone rings again. I only have three more.

  I grab Granny by the shaft and shimmy down until I’m holding one of the rubber feet. Then I reach out and lob the handle end onto the table. I wiggle the cane until the phone sits inside the U of the handle. Ring number four. I yank on the cane, and the phone flies off the table and smacks me square on the knee. Ow. The phone rings at my feet. I reach down, pick it up, press Talk, and almost yell I win! instead of Hello?

  “Hi, Sarah, it’s Richard Levine. How are you?”

  “I’m good,” I say, trying not to sound out of breath or in pain.

  “Good. I’m calling to see how you’re doing, and if you’d be ready to discuss the possibility of your coming back to work.”

  How am I doing? It’s almost noon, I’m in my pajamas, and the proudest moment of my day will be that I retrieved the phone with my granny cane before the sixth ring.

  “I’m doing great, much better.”

  Am I ready to consider going back? My mother would probably point out that if I can’t coordinate the steps it takes to change a diaper, how would I possibly coordinate human resources? But Bob would say that I’m ready. He’d tell me to go for it. And customer service Betty from our health insurance company would tell me that I’m ready. Pre-accident me is popping corks of champagne, patting me on the back, practically pushing me out the door.

  “And I’d love to discuss coming back.”

  “Great. When can you come in?”

  Let’s see. I was planning on going for a walk around the block this afternoon before taking my nap, my mother’s coming home from the grocery store, which means I probably own a new word search puzzle book, and there’s a new episode of Ellen on the DVR.

  “Any time.”

  “How about tomorrow at ten o’clock?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Great, we’ll see you then.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I hang up the phone, tuck it into the seat cushion, and absorb the impending consequences of that unexpected conversation along with the heat from the sun. Both are making me sweat. I’m ready to discuss returning to work. But am I ready to go back? I ripped into poor customer service Betty, denouncing her criminal policy for discontinuing my therapy before I was 100 percent recovered. Before I was 100 percent ready. So how recovered and ready am I? I can read and type, but it’s slow. Walking is even slower. I worry about being late for meetings and deadlines, about not noticing some critical document placed on the left side of my desk, about forgetting to open files stored on the left side of my computer desktop. I think of the 80–20 rule. Am I even at 20 percent?

  I’ve always prided myself in being a perfectionist, for dotting 100 percent of my i’s, for doing it all. But what if less than 100 percent were enough? What if I’m 20 percent recovered, and that’s enough to return to my job? It could be. My work is in human resources, a desk job. It’s not performing surgery (requiring two hands) or the fox-trot (requiring two feet). I can be less than 100 percent better and still be brilliant at my job. Can’t I?

  I sit in my favorite chair in my sacred space, my heart pounding, each beat fueled by equal parts exhilaration and fear, wondering if my proclaimed readiness is reasonable optimism or a laughable lie. I look out the windows into our yard and sigh, unable to lean far enough either way into an answer. I guess we’ll all find out tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 31

  I glance over at my alarm clock again. It’s four minutes later than the last time I checked. And we
’re still working on my pants. I keep sucking in, and my mother keeps tugging, but my black wool suit pants won’t zipper all the way up.

  “I think you should wear these,” says my mother, holding one of my many identical, black synthetic, elastic-waistband pants.

  “I think you should try one more time,” I say.

  “That’s as high as it’s going to go.”

  “It’s fine then. Once my suit jacket is buttoned, it’ll cover everything.”

  We move on to my blouse. In the time it used to take me to get fully dressed without memorable effort, I manage to fasten two of my blouse buttons by myself. I fasten one more, not breathing and grinding my teeth, before I give up and turn the entire project over to my mother. I look at the clock. I can’t afford to be late.

  My mother finishes with the buttons of my blouse and then the suit jacket. She clasps my turquoise bead necklace around my neck and my jingle charm bracelet around my left wrist. I pick out diamond stud earrings. She fits them into my pierced ears and secures the backings. She brushes my entire face with foundation and bronzing powder, sweeps a light pink eye shadow over my lids, plucks a few rogue hairs from between my eyebrows and my chin, and colors my lips with a subtle gloss. I look in the mirror and approve of her job.

  We reach a gridlock, though, when it comes to my footwear. I refuse to wear my Merrell mules (or her other suggestion— white sneakers!), and my mother refuses to drive me into work if I choose to wear heels.

  “I have to look completely put together. I need to portray power and sophistication.”

  “How powerful and sophisticated are you going to look when you trip and fall flat on your face?”

  Sadly, it’s not an implausible prediction. I decide not to risk that particular humiliation with a compromise. Bruno Magli ballet flats. My mother prefers the sticky rubber soles of the Merrells to the “slippery” bottoms of the flats, but she acquiesces and fetches them for me. There. Aside from my Annie Lennox hairdo, which I happen to love, I look pretty much like I did four months ago. Appropriately corporate, sophisticated, powerful, and most important, not disabled.