Chapter 28 Amanda

CHAPTER 28 AMANDA

2006

Bolton Landing

I might have taken physical therapy more seriously if the location wasn’t so depressing. Picture every single-story senior living center you’ve ever driven past thinking “God, I hope I don’t end up there” and, bingo, you know the building. Physical therapy is already a bad time: some part of your body isn’t working properly. (In my case, many parts.) The least they could do is have some big windows looking onto the Adirondacks—an inspiring view for the daunting climb ahead. But no, the building was at the far side of an icy parking lot behind a strip mall in the town over. I guess if someone slipped and fell on the way inside, they were already in the right place.

Janet, though, I loved her. Physical therapist extraordinaire. Short blond hair, stocky build; I came to learn she did triathlons on the weekends, and that made perfect sense to me. I could picture her sucking on one of those goo packets while stripping out of a wetsuit. In the first months we worked together, I was skeptical of her. She was so energetic, so positive, so hopeful—traits I would come to love and depend on her for, but not what I was feeling after three brutal months in the rehab hospital. We clashed.

After about a year together, she was in her plush leather rolling chair, and she scooted herself to me, chart on lap.

I hated those charts. They were filled with shorthand, these seemingly innocuous combinations of letters that packed a devastating punch such as SCI (Spinal Cord Injury) or ADL (Activities of Daily Living). I’m wary of all acronyms now. My diagnosis was Incomplete Quadriplegia, meaning all my limbs were affected, though my legs much more than my arms.

“Let’s talk about goals,” she was saying, eyes down. Clearly this was to be our come-to-Jesus moment.

My entire life to that point had been wordplay with Annie, usually infused with cheekiness and sarcasm, so I said, “My goal is to invent time travel. Yes, I would go back to the accident, but that’s not why I’d want to invent time travel. I think America had a real before-and-after moment with JFK’s assassination, so back to 1963 I would go.”

That got her eyes up, and I could see there was a little glimmer in them. I thought of Annie—of course I did.

“JFK?” Janet said. “A little cliché, don’t you think?”

That’s when I knew we would be okay. And a few minutes later, when she got back on task and asked me, “But, seriously, Amanda—what do you want from this journey?”

I responded, not as unkindly as I might have, that I’d like her to never again use the word journey except if referring to the band. It called to mind voluntary trips, far-flung travel. Juxtaposed with my actual circumstances, it only served to remind me of how terribly earthbound I’d become.

She nodded, considering. Was I just being my snarky self, or did I have a point? Her mind was churning.

I added: “And it’s not that I don’t understand that I am on a kind of… journey—to use your shitty little word. It’s just if I think of it as this yearslong thing, of all the work ahead, I think my head might explode. The only way for me not to melt into a puddle of sadness is to just think of this session and what we’re going to work on today .”

She looked me right in the eyes and said, “I get it,” and I never heard her use the word journey again.

“What do you want to work on today ?” she asked next, and something immediately popped into my mind. I lifted my right arm off the chair and held my palm open to her, tried to touch each finger to my thumb, but it was clumsy. Then I mimicked turning a page on a book—the kind of intricate dexterity needed, I wanted it back.

“Can we work on turning a page?” I asked. Reading had never been my thing as much as Annie’s, but that could change. Plus, if I could turn a page, then I could also button a shirt—it was a two-for-one.

She sat up straighter, her face brightened. A simple, reachable goal with a powerful metaphor smuggled inside: I was speaking her language. Plus, almost every time I came into PT she had her legs up on her desk, nose in a book.

Slowly, so slowly, Janet made me better. But I think I made her better, too. (At the very least, she’s not going around crushing people’s souls asking them about their “journeys.”) Physical therapy became the only place I allowed myself a modicum of normalcy, perhaps even optimism. Ironic that I found my first slice of blue sky in that sad little building. I’d leave sessions with a glimmer of something different, but then later that day Kerri would come home from school, her energy harried and stressed that she’d abandoned me for so long. Like I was a puppy who might go on the rug. She’d drop her backpack in a rush, and no matter what I said to her, I’d be forced to remember that I was siphoning her life force. Back into darkness I’d spiral.

What many people don’t understand about serious injury or illness is that what you’re really coming to grips with isn’t the physical limitations (although there is that); it’s how the physical limitations alter your interactions with the world. At first, you can only take. You take people’s time, their physical energy, their emotional reserves. You’re in a state of need and you take, take, take without giving. And taking without giving, that messes with your head. You start asking yourself what the point of your existence is. A drain on the world’s resources, on the resources of those you love, nothing else.

But eventually—and it may take years, as it did for me—you discover ways to start giving again. Honestly, you’d be shocked at how many ways exist to give in this world if that’s all you’re looking for.

But enough of that. Back to my girl Janet.

It was more than five years after the accident, and we were quite obviously coming to the end of our journey together. We’d hit a dead end: I wasn’t adding additional movement or dexterity, and Janet wanted me to acknowledge this. But I wasn’t ready. One of our last sessions together, I arrived in a sour mood. She hadn’t seen me yet because she was reading the final pages of some book. I parked my chair right in front of her and still she didn’t look up. After a moment, she lifted one finger, acknowledging my presence. She must have been on the last page, because a minute later she let out a satisfied sigh and tenderly closed the book.

“Was it that good?” I asked. I meant it snidely, but she rose above, took my words at face value.

“Loved it, loved it, loved it,” she said in a singsong voice. I ducked my head to try to see the title, and Janet lifted the book, showed me the front: The Very Last . By someone named Cate Kay. The title struck a chord, and I remembered Kerri mentioning it the week prior—she was on the waiting list for it at the local library.

“Do you own that copy?” I asked, thinking of Kerri, how it might make her smile if I brought a present home. A gift—a way to give, to hold the demons at bay.

“You want to borrow?” Janet was thrusting the book at me, desperate to encourage a healthy impulse. I took it from her, looked at the black and tan cover, the crumbling CITY HALL subway station sign. Cate Kay.

“I’ll bring it back soon,” I said.

She waved me off. “Books are meant to be shared,” she said, then slapped her knees, ready to get to work, and asked the question she’d asked at the start of every appointment the last many years: “What are we working on today?”

“Walking,” I said without hesitation.

She leaned forward and said, “I just—I don’t think that’s the best use of our time.”

“ Our time?” I said cruelly, even though one of my favorite things about working with Janet was how we were a team. She flinched. A wall went up.

“If that’s what you want,” she said, standing.

That afternoon before Kerri came home, I opened the book and the first thing I noticed was that the dedication said “For a…,” which perplexed me because it seemed unfinished. For a… what? For a… who? The TV was muted, and I was in the den. Dad was back at the garage, so no one else was home, and I started reading: Chapter 1: The Big Apple . Samantha and Jeremiah are in New York City and they’re talking intimately like only best friends do, and then— bam! There it was. On the very first page. Their exchange—about the sunsets of New York—sent me cartwheeling back in time; me and Annie in a boat in the middle of Lake George. But then just as quickly, I’m returned, and slightly bewildered. I read the scene again, same experience. Reading is not quite what this feels like; it’s more like remembering.

The whole book was like this, a remembering of various moments with Annie, and then that climactic scene with Jeremiah wearing those black Converse! I When I finished, a satisfied sigh is not what I released. I let the book tumble from my hands; it bounced off a wheel and landed awkwardly on the carpet—spine propped in the air; pages bent blasphemously.

We kept envelopes in the kitchen drawer, and I rolled over and pulled one out. This was new for me, this desperate need to get something inside of me out, and I carefully tore away a piece of lined paper from a scratch pad and wrote a quick “note” to Annie—I’m sorry, to Cate Kay —then folded it precisely and tucked it inside an envelope.

When Kerri came home that day, she was confused to find The Very Last crushed like roadkill in our den. (It’s possible I ran over it on my way to the kitchen, then again on the way back.) She picked the book up, tried smoothing the pages.

I never returned it to Janet. Kerri read it, apparently none the wiser about the book’s author, then The Very Last stayed on my bedside table to keep my anger fresh.

Every night I would look at that book and silently scream. That’s not a metaphor or an exaggeration. I’d pause before transferring myself into bed (okay, who am I kidding?—it was more of a flop) and stare at the book that Annie had written instead of staying with me, thought of every shred of us she’d shared with the world instead of sharing herself with me. I’d let the pain and anger swell, then rage at the gods—all without making a sound.

I would picture her sitting inside her fancy house, brimming with creative fulfillment, or maybe out for drinks with her new, sophisticated friends—all of them sipping on brown liquor poured over a single big ice cube. Like the city folk.

CATE KAY

The Very Last

Jeremiah collapsed outside city hall; the camera crashed to the ground, leaving viewers with a shot of the curb. Samantha knelt next to him, shaking his shoulders, trying to wake him up. But then she heard the crackling of audio and looked up: two firemen, in full hazmat suits and gas masks, running toward them. They looked like astronauts. Samantha squeezed Jeremiah’s hand, held it for a moment, hoping his eyes would open. But a second later the men were pushing into her space, covering his mouth with an oxygen mask. She stood, backed away without a word.

She glanced at the camera, still by his feet, then toward city hall. She hated herself for the thought, but she knew she needed to keep going—to finish the story they had started. After all, they’d come this far, hadn’t they? The world needed to see what happened next, and only Samantha could show them. She bent over and grabbed the top handle of the camera, lifting it up, careful to keep the lens pointed away from Jeremiah. She took one step backward, then another, unwilling to fully commit to this terrible course of action, but as she framed a shot of city hall, she told herself that this decision was essential, maybe even brave.

Love didn’t always mean staying. She walked toward city hall, talking to the viewer about what she hoped to find inside— a working subway station, survivors, information. What those hundreds of millions of viewers didn’t see was Samantha glancing over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the soles of Jeremiah’s black Converse, her tears mixing with the dirt and dust and God knows what else.

I . Note from Cate: I once asked Amanda why she almost always wore those black Converse, and she said it was because they gave off an air of classic, low-key confidence. “They got it right with these,” she would say, lifting her foot and admiring their simplicity.