I had untwisted one, I would realize it was connected to a rat’s nest of others. Now, years later, these Word documents haunt me more than any unreliable memory. Maybe it’s true what Thomas Moore said: “It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.”
That night I walked into the family room and announced to my mom and Allen, “I’ve figured it out. It’s Stephen. It’s too much pressure. It’s too much. I’m too young.” My mom and Allen nodded empathetically. I left the room, but then, a few feet outside the doorway, another solution emerged. I retraced my steps. “Actually, it’s the
They nodded again. I left and then turned straight around again.
“No. It’s my lifestyle. It’s New York City. It’s too much for me. I should move back to St. Louis or Vermont or someplace quiet. New York isn’t for me.”
By now they were staring at me, concern creasing their faces, but still they continued to nod accommodatingly.
I left once more, cantering from the family room to the kitchen and then back. This time I had it. This time I had figured it out. This time it all made sense.
The Oriental rug scraped my cheek.
Oval droplets of blood marring the pattern.
My mom’s shrill screams.
I had collapsed on the floor, bitten my tongue, and was convulsing like a fish out of water, my body dancing in jerking motions. Allen ran over and put his finger in my mouth, but in a spasm I bit down hard on it, adding his blood to my own.
I came to minutes later to the sound of my mother on the phone with Dr. Bailey, frantic for some kind of answer. He insisted that I keep taking the medication and come in for an electroencephalogram (EEG) on Saturday, to test the electrical activity of my brain.
Two days later, that Friday, Stephen came to Summit to visit and suggested that we get out of the house and grab some dinner. He had been debriefed by my family about my deteriorating behavior and was on high alert, but he knew that it was important for me to leave the house (because of the threat of seizures, I could not drive a car) and maintain some semblance of an adult life. We headed to an Irish pub in Maplewood, New Jersey, where I had never been before. The bar was crowded with families and teenagers. People hovered around the hostess’s desk, jockeying for reservations. I knew immediately that there were too many people.
“Susannah, Susannah,” Stephen repeated. “She said it’s a forty-minute wait. Do you want to wait or go?” He gestured to the hostess, who did in fact look at me curiously.
“Umm. Umm.”
Stephen grabbed my hand and walked me out of the restaurant into the freedom of the frigid air. Now I could breathe again. Stephen drove me to nearby Madison, to a dingy bar called Poor Herbie’s where there was no wait. The waitress, a woman in her midsixties with frizzy bleached blond hair and gray roots, stood at the table with her left hand on her hip, waiting for our orders. I just stared at the menu.
“She’ll take the chicken sandwich,” Stephen said, after it was clear I was incapable of making such a momentous decision. “And I’ll have the reuben.”
When the food came, I could focus only on the greasy french dressing congealing on Stephen’s corned beef sandwich. I looked down at my own sandwich despairingly; nothing could convince me to put it to my lips.
“It’s too… grizzly,” I told Stephen.
“But you didn’t try it. If you don’t eat this, there’s nothing but gefilte fish and chicken livers at home,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood by pointing out Allen’s strange eating habits. Stephen finished his reuben, but I left the chicken sandwich untouched.
As we walked to the car, two conflicting urges struck me: I needed either to break up with Stephen here and now or profess my love to him for the first time. It could go either way; both impulses were equally intense.
“Stephen, I really need to talk to you.” He looked at me oddly. I stammered, growing red before conjuring up the courage to speak, although I still didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth. He too was half- expecting me to break up with him at that moment. “I just. I just. I really love you. I don’t know. I love you.”
Tenderly he grasped my hands in his own. “I love you, too. You just have to relax.” It was not how either of us had hoped this exchange would happen; it was not the kind of memory you recalled to your grandchildren, but there it was. We were in love.
Later that night, Stephen noticed that I had begun to steadily smack my lips together as if I was sucking on a candy. I licked my lips so often that my mom started to apply globs of Vaseline to keep them from cracking open and bleeding. Sometimes I would trail off midsentence, staring off into space for several minutes before continuing my conversation. During these moments, the paranoid aggression receded into a childlike state. These times were the most unnerving for everyone, since I’d been pigheadedly self-sufficient, even as a toddler. We didn’t know it then, but these too were complex partials, the more subtle types of seizures that create those repetitive mouth movements and that foggy consciousness. I was getting worse by the day, by the hour even, but no one knew what to do.
At 3:38 a.m., on March 21, as Stephen snored away upstairs, I wrote again in my computer diary:
Okay there’s no place to start but you have to, ok? And don’t be all “wow I didn’t spell check this.”
I had the urge to baby stephen instead of allow him to baby me. I’ve been letting my parents baby me for too long.
you have a mothering instinct (you held him in your arms). you felt you have untangled your mind when you are around him. you found your phone and remembered.
talking to my father makes me feel more with it. my mom babies me way too much because she blames herself for the way I am. But she shouldn’t. She’s been a great mother. And she should know that.
who gives a shit what anyone things about me. I’m going to
Stephen: he keeps you sane. He’s also very smart. Don’t let how humble he is fool you, okay? You got this crossroads because of him and you should be forever grateful for that. So be kind to him.
Reading these entries now is like peering into a stranger’s stream of consciousness. I don’t recognize the person on the other end of the screen as me. Though she urgently attempts to communicate some deep, dark part of herself in her writing, she remains incomprehensible even to myself.
CHAPTER 12
THE RUSE
On Saturday morning, my mom tried to get me to return to Dr. Bailey’s for the EEG. I had had two identifiable seizures and had developed an increasing number of worrying symptoms in the past week alone, and my family needed answers.
“Absolutely not,” I grumbled, stamping my feet like a two-year-old. “I’m fine. I don’t need this.”
Allen walked outside to start the car as Stephen and my mother pleaded with me.
“Nope. Not going. Nope,” I replied.
“We have to go. Please, just come,” my mom said.
“Let me talk to her for a second,” Stephen said to my mom, leading me outside. “Your mom is only trying to help you, and you’re making her very upset. Will you please just come?”
I thought this over for a moment. I loved my mom. Fine. Yes. I would go. Then a moment later—No! I couldn’t possibly leave. After a half hour more of persuading, I finally got into the backseat of the car beside Stephen. As we drove out of our driveway and onto the street, Allen began to speak. I could hear him distinctly,
