coalesce:
to combine and form one whole.
I was in the hospital for six weeks. It wasn’t like I needed to be in that long. My ribs healed quickly. The infection was cured. My energy returned. I got plastic surgery on a nasty wound to my head. They used diamonds to try to remove the gravel ground into my skin, but I was left with a kind of tattoo from where my face was scraped on the blacktop by the Three Stooges.
It was my lack of voice. There were neurological workups, psychiatric evaluations, a scare when an MRI showed a growth on my brain—but it ended up being a mix-up, an older man’s brain scan and not mine. Poor guy.
What occurred to me, when I woke up after what felt like a month of sleep, was that I could see again. I could think straight. The timeline of my journey and my memories of the past were organized in a linear fashion rather than shooting at me randomly like missiles in some computer game.
Margarite brought in the book catalogs, the trade journals, and I pointed out what she should order, tried to communicate to her the balance between carrying the commercial stuff in quantity—Oprah’s Book Club, the New York Times Best Sellers List—and carrying smaller quantities of the rare and the beautiful. We had loyal customers who looked to us to find stuff the chains wouldn’t carry: the small presses, experimental literature, hard-to-find translations. I shook my head to show her my disapproval of books written by celebrities, even if they were on the Times list. My parents had been upset that celebrities with huge advances were crowding out the real writers, people who had devoted their lives to their craft. But I wanted Margarite to add her energy to the store, to pick stuff she liked.
She wanted more kids’ books. She added a section on disabilities, then sent out fliers to schools and gave talks on the subject. She started a Friday night reading series for local writers.
Cory visited me once. He kept blinking his eyes. “Shit, Adam. I don’t know what to say. Shit.” Finally, he came over and hugged me. “I’m just glad you’re alive, man. Just so glad.” Ms. Ross came, too. She didn’t say much, just squeezed my hand and gave me a look like, Goddamn it, you are going to be fine, even if I have to drag you to the ends of the earth.
Then there was Mira. Her first response to me was the opposite of Margarite’s. She walked into the hospital room and stared at me, just stared, like she was seeing a new country for the first time. Her eyes got wide; her voice was as silent as mine.
Finally, she came closer and put out a single finger to touch me. It was as if she thought I might crumble into pieces, or disappear like a ghost. As soon as she touched me, I started sobbing. For the first time since the accident, I cried. And she joined me—a regular crying fest.
She came every day. She showed me cards from the other kids, and she read to me. She read Oliver Twist, then started on Huck Finn. It kind of cracked me up that she brought in books about young boys.
When the nurse wasn’t around, she climbed into bed with me. The first time she did that, I remembered, with a stab of guilt, Stacey, my Wiccan friend—my desertion of her, and worse, my unfaithfulness to Mira.
Mira was always a mind reader, though. One day she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Anything that happened when you were away—anything—is history. It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t count. Because you’re back. Understand?”
I nodded.
“And you’re gonna talk. I know that. You’ll talk when you’re ready.”
Yeah. I knew that too. I just had to get rid of the tears that were crowding my throat, to make space for my voice to rise. I worked on that, on the crying. I worked on it every day.
In addition to seeing the past with clarity, I could also envision the future. I could see myself walking to collect my diploma. The school would forgive me the time I’d missed, and I’d graduate with my class. I’d go to Brown, like I planned. I wouldn’t live in the dorms with the other kids, though. I’d stay in Bristol with Margarite and Joey and run the bookstore. Mira would go to Johnson and Wales, so she could be a chef. We’d make the drive to Providence together.
I could see the headstone I would put on my parents’ graves, one headstone for the two of them, with my Dad’s poem inscribed on it. Still the wing flaps. The feathers lift. On air as bold as strong.
They were in the historic cemetery by my house. I would go there every week for the rest of my life and talk to them about books, the shop, Margarite, Joey, Mira, and the grandkids that would eventually come.
People don’t die. That isn’t how it happens. They float inside of you. Like leaves on water. They drift away sometimes, pulled under by the current, tugged toward the shore. But then they resurface, defining you as much by their absence as they did when they were there.