Big news, I guess—but it didn’t do me much good if nothing else had changed.
And nothing else had changed.
After the scan, Dr. Nicole gave me a battery of facial recognition tests to compare to my baseline. And I was exactly the same on those as I’d been a month ago. The same identical numerical score.
I knocked my head against the table at the results.
“Please don’t do that,” Dr. Nicole said.
“How can I be exactly the same?” I whined.
“These results are to help you—not make you pound your head on the table.”
“Well, they don’t feel very helpful.”
“Now that the edema is resolving, you should start to see some changes in your facial perceptions,” she said, like that might cheer me up. Then she added, “No guarantees.”
But I wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up. I flopped down on her sofa in despair. “Nothing is going right.”
“Maybe you need to broaden your definition of right.”
“Don’t throw that cheery nonsense at me. My life is a shit show.”
This right here felt like my lowest moment so far. I thought I was supposed to be getting better, not getting worse. Learning to cope, at least. What the hell was going on?
“Tell me what has you feeling down,” Dr. Nicole asked.
“Everything?” I asked. Like, did she really think she could handle that?
“Sure. Everything.”
Okay. She asked for it. “I still can’t see faces. I submitted a portrait to this competition that I should have won—handily—that’s guaranteed to come in dead last. I’m being menaced by my evil stepsister. I’m embarrassed to go back to my favorite coffee shop. My best friend eloped to Canada and left me dateless for what’s sure to be the most humiliating event of my life. My stepmother wants to build a relationship with me and she’s coming to the show over my vociferous objections. My dog is a thousand years old. I broke up with my fantasy fiancé. And the very cute guy in my building who I might genuinely be in love with kissed me senseless the other night and then fully disappeared.”
“Ah,” Dr. Nicole said.
“That’s all you’ve got? Ah?”
“Of all of those,” she asked next, “which one is the worst?”
“All of them,” I answered. Then I had an idea. “Any chance you could be my date to the art show? So I don’t have to go alone?”
It was a long shot, of course.
But she didn’t budge. “I find our work goes better in here,” she said, “when we don’t see each other out there.”
* * *
BY THE SATURDAY of the art show, it had been a full four days, fourteen hours, and twenty minutes since I’d had any contact from Joe.
It seemed pretty clear at this point that he’d moved on. Though I continued to hold out hope for Sue’s Sicilian grandmother scenario. Or maybe an unexpected car accident, like in An Affair to Remember. Or maybe some kind of head injury-induced amnesia?
There were still a few possible explanations that were forgivable.
Sort of.
Oh, well.
He was out of my life now, which was probably a good thing, I kept telling myself.
But I missed him anyway, is what I’m saying. Against my better judgment. I confess: I had moments when I felt tempted to call in sick to the art show.
I mean, how could you go to an art show that you were guaranteed to lose without any hope at all?
But on the other hand, how could I not go?
It’s one thing for dreams to shift slowly—for you to evolve and long for different things. It’s another thing to abandon your dream out of spite.
I thought about my mom. My courageous, kindhearted mom. She would have given anything to go to this exact show fourteen years ago. She would give anything to be here right now, fully alive, facing whatever life threw at her, and just cherishing it all.
Maybe the best way to hold on to her wasn’t to obsess over her paintings or wear her skates or listen to her music or copy her style or worry over what would happen when I finally lost Peanut. Maybe the best way to keep her with me was to embrace her spirit. To emulate her courage. To bring the warmth and love to the world that she always—fearlessly—had.
She had loved us without reservation. She adored us wildly. And laughed. And danced. And soaked it all up—every atom of her life—every moment of her time She felt it all. She lived it all.
That’s what I loved about her. Not just that she was a great mom or a great wife or a great dog rescuer. She was a great person. She knew some divine secret about how to open up to being alive that the rest of us kept stubbornly missing.