They were all business—coming together for the greater good, focusing on the task at hand, meeting in the coffee shop of a Barnes & Noble and then scouring the self-help books to find some inspirational reading to get me back on track. Kitty and my mother wordlessly agreed to set aside everything that had gone down between them, and they wound up spending a hundred dollars on titles like Why Me? A Daily Guide for Getting Back to Normal and The Joy of Suffering.
My dad suggested that Kitty should be the one to bring the books to me because I’d be less likely to view her as a foe.
“I’m not a foe!” my mother protested.
But she was outvoted.
*
IT WAS NICE for them to have a project, in a way, Kitty admitted later. What purpose would it have served to rehash all their conflict and strife, anyway? They left things unresolved but moved on to the more important pressing problem of me.
“Didn’t the two of you at least apologize to each other?” I asked, when Kit confessed what they’d been up to.
“Apologize? What for?”
“Well,” I said, “you, for telling me Mom’s biggest secret against her wishes. And Mom, for pretty much your whole childhood.”
Kitty shook her head. “There was no apologizing. Have you ever heard Mom apologize?”
Fair enough. Apologizing wasn’t Mom’s thing.
I refused to read the self-help books, of course. They should’ve seen that coming. When Kitty tried to read some excerpts aloud, I plugged my ears and sang Aretha Franklin. So, late at night—or rather, after 9:00 P.M.—after I’d fallen asleep, Kitty read the books herself with a flashlight.
If I wouldn’t help myself, by God, she’d do it for me.
It was the time pressure that got to all of them. I had three and a half weeks left before the window of improvement would slam closed for good, and, in the wake of my depression, my improvement had stalled.
In truth, my improvements had stalled before Chip’s confession—the whole week before had been significantly absent of improvements, as well. We all just noticed it after the breakup. Before, when I still believed in my fairy tale, I viewed the stall as a natural plateau—an adjustment period on the way to more inspiring success.
Now, I saw the slowdown as part of a different narrative: the beginning of the end.
I didn’t say that to anybody, but I guess it was obvious.
Then my parents decided I needed a “tutor.”
My mother brought it up at lunch. We were eating Vietnamese noodle salad from their favorite spot, and my dad was enjoying it so much, he was smacking.
“So,” my mother said brightly, holding a forkful of noodles, “you’re starting your last three weeks here—”
“And a half,” I added.
“After insurance runs out,” my dad said, “you’ll come home to live with us.”
I snorted. “I am not coming home to live with you.”
My parents looked at each other. My dad asked tenderly, “Where would you live, sweetheart?”
“At my place,” I said, like, Duh.
My dad proceeded very gingerly. “Your place is three stories high. With stairs.”
I closed my eyes. “I’ll stay on the ground floor.”
He was almost whispering now. “There’s no bathroom on the ground floor. Or kitchen.”
I knew that, of course. “I’ll figure it out.”
We all knew I wouldn’t. What would I do—climb the stairs on my knees? Actually, maybe that could work.
“Nonsense,” my mother said, in her most authoritative voice. “You can’t keep that place. I’ve already spoken with a real estate agent. He says now’s a perfect time to sell. You stand to make a good profit.” Then she added, “He also loves your décor.”
This from the woman who’d told all the neighbors I’d be good as new by summer. “I am not moving in with my parents,” I declared. “I am not a child!”
“Just temporarily,” my dad said, ever the spoonful of sugar.
But I pointed at my mother. “Do not talk to agents! Do not sell my place! You said I’d be good as new!”
It was such a childish accusation, in one way—to get mad at her for my misfortune, the way little kids sometimes do before they’ve come to understand that, in so many big ways, parents are just as powerless as they are.
At the same time, it was a declaration of independence. My whole life, I’d turned to my mother for instructions on what to do, and where to go, and how to get it done. My mother had insisted to me, and the doctors, and, apparently, all our neighbors, that I was going to “beat” this paralysis.
She’d always interpreted my life. Though to be fair, I’d always let her.
But maybe that wasn’t her job anymore.
In the strangled silence that followed, we all felt the shift in my thinking like a little, earth-trembling rumble of plate tectonics. Even if we didn’t know what it was.
Faced with this Kitty-like behavior from me, my mother dropped it. She put up her hands in surrender. “Fine. We won’t sell your condo.”
“Of course not. If you don’t want to,” my dad said.
“I don’t want to.” How could anybody possibly think that I would? Hadn’t I given up enough?
“The point is,” my mom said, getting back to business, “you are running out of time here.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said, stubbornly leaving my lunch untouched.
“And so we’re thinking,” my dad said brightly, “why not do everything possible right now to promote healing and recovery?”
I looked back and forth between them for a good long minute before I said, in a low voice like a growl, “My whole life is ‘doing everything possible.’ I don’t go five minutes without ‘promoting healing and recovery.’”
My mom leaned in. “Did I forget to tell you that I just read the most inspiring story? About a girl—a former ballerina—in just exactly your situation? She tried very hard for weeks, and got nowhere at all—and then one morning, out of the blue, her right big toe wiggled. Then, the next morning, her left big toe wiggled. The morning after that, she could wiggle them all. The morning after that, she could bend her knees. And by the end of the month, she could do a pas de bourrée!”
Quietly, then—secretly—I tried to wiggle my toes.
Nothing.
I wasn’t even entirely sure I remembered how.
I’d been thinking I hated these inspirational stories, but that wasn’t quite right. I loathed them. “What is your point?”
My mom blinked. “We think you might need a tutor.”
A tutor? I frowned at my dad. “What is this?” I said. “The SAT?”
“Someone to give you a little extra practice,” my dad said.
“That’s not a thing,” I said.
My dad shrugged. “A personal trainer, then, if you like.”
“Someone to help you—physically—do more than the bare minimum that insurance requires.”
Bare minimum struck me as deeply insulting. Spoken like a person who had no idea what it was like for the bare minimum to be your own personal ultimate maximum.
My mom went on, “We just want to be sure you’re doing everything—while you still can.”
“I am doing everything I can!” I said.
My mom gave me a look, like, Come on. “I saw you study for finals, and the SAT, and the GMAT. I know you’re capable of more than this.”
I heard my voice get very quiet. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
My dad jumped in. “I think your mother’s just trying to say that we want to help. However we can.”
That wasn’t what she was trying to say. I suddenly saw it very clearly. She wanted to help—but only in the ways that she had already chosen. My mother was always very helpful—when you did exactly what she wanted.