Tom Lake(72)



“Be happy for yourself. The film editor fell in love with you. When he cut it all together he made you the star.”

“I’m not the star.”

“Wait till you see it. It’s a sharp bit of work, kiddo. You’re fantastic. I need you out here for publicity. Publicity is all about sitting down, you know. Plus the injury makes you relatable. How did it happen?”

“Tennis.”

“Tennis in the summer in Michigan. Beautiful.”

My toes were sticking out of the plaster, a pale row of little mushrooms. I could move them, which I took to be a good sign. “Always glad to be picturesque.”

“Did you ever wonder when things were going to change?” Ripley asked. “Well, now they are. This is it.”

I hadn’t wondered when things were going to change. I had wondered when things were going to stop changing. “Ripley, I’m in the hospital. I’m on Demerol. I’m not going to walk away from my commitment.” I didn’t know if I was on Demerol but it seemed possible. I was definitely on something.

“Are you listening to me? You can’t walk and you don’t have any commitments in Michigan. You’ve got a commitment to this film.”

“The nurse is here,” I said, because surely if it was after nine o’clock a nurse would be here any minute.

“Don’t go cagey on me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I have to go.”

“Do I need to come get you?”

“Ripley, listen to me, I’m hanging up now. Say goodbye.” I said it but then I didn’t give him the chance. I hung up before he did.

Ripley’s announcement that I wasn’t going to be acting on one foot was my first glimpse into the future. The second came by way of the doctor making morning rounds. He told me I would be non--weight--bearing for a minimum of six weeks. I had raised the bed up to sitting, thinking it was more polite.

“Meaning what, exactly?” I wished there had been someone with me so I didn’t have to ask all the stupid questions myself.

“Meaning the cast”—-he stopped and pointed to the cast with his pen—-“does not touch the ground for a minimum of six weeks. Do you want a wheelchair?”

I shook my head.

“Okay. I’ll have someone from P.T. come up and show you how to use the crutches, how to transfer.”

“I’m going to another hospital?”

He paused for a minute, looking back at my chart. “Okay. So. Transfer means getting in and out of a car, in and out of a chair, in and out of the bath. You do those things differently when you’re trying to keep your foot off the floor.”

It wasn’t until he’d left that I realized he had mistaken me for an idiot.

I never thought about New Hampshire in those days, though I missed my grandmother. I wrote her postcards, and every now and then she’d send me a dress. Sometimes she put molasses cookies in the box, sturdy, reliable cookies that were well suited for mailing. I’d offered to send her a plane ticket a couple of times when I was in L.A. but my grandmother didn’t believe in planes, at least not for personal use. She’d been made in New Hampshire and planned to die there, that’s what she always said. I would have liked to have her with me in the hospital. I bet she could have made it as far as Michigan if I told her I needed her. I bet my parents would have come too, or either of my brothers. Even if we weren’t a particularly close family, they were decent people. They would have taken care of me. The problem was they couldn’t have done it on intuition alone and I wasn’t about to call and make them worry. In fact, I couldn’t call and make them worry because the phone was rigged for local and inter--hospital calls only. I could call the patient in the room next to mine but could not call my mother, who I hadn’t called all summer anyway. I was fine. I was taught how to transfer, how to get to the bathroom by myself. A girl in a pink striped smock came around with a book cart and I found a copy of The Bridge of San Luis Rey by one Thornton Wilder. Imagine that. It was about a bridge that snaps and sends a group of strangers careening to their deaths. I’d never read it before.

I had some trouble with swelling and the doctor wanted to make sure he wouldn’t have to change the cast so they kept me for a second night. I thought about all the time I’d spent sitting in my apartment in Los Angeles on the days with nothing to do, and how those days had prepared me to be alone with my thoughts. I had a knack for it, not everyone does. I ate my dinner off a tray and read my slender novel and practiced crutching to the nurses’ station and back. I looked out the window as the sun was going down and realized that Pallace would be going on right about now. Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibb would be calling their children to breakfast from the opposite sides of the stage. I ran the whole scene in my mind. I wondered if Pallace would be nervous, but then I thought of her dancing on that chair in her red two--piece. I couldn’t imagine Pallace getting nervous about anything.

Because I couldn’t call my grandmother, I called Tom Lake and asked if they could send somebody to pick me up in the morning. Jeanne, the morning nurse, washed my hair while I sat on a stool in the shower, my foot in the cast, the cast in a plastic bag. I was brushed and braided and ready to go when Sebastian arrived.

Sebastian! “I thought you’d be gone!” I cried, by which I mean tears filled my eyes at the sight of him. Had I been able to jump out of the bed and throw my arms around him I would have done it.

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