When Janet’s daughter was in the fourth grade, she collapsed at a Civil War site in Alabama. They were coming back from a family vacation in the Gulf Shores, famous for the squeaky sand. They had stayed in a high-rise condominium and swum in salty water for a week, and were now crowded in the station wagon again, pushing up north to their home in Michigan. This was before the divorce. Janet and Warner both wore gold rings and took turns driving. The children—Louise, Tom, and the baby, Michael—were sunburnt, and sipping apple juice from small tin cans. Warner had wanted to take a break and see a battlefield, so they had stopped at sunset. The air outside was so hot it made them pink, their stomachs and scalps stung with sweat. Then, right there in the graveyard, nine-year-old Louise fell and balled up on the scratchy yellow grass. She said she saw double and had a headache so bad she couldn’t move. For a second, Janet thought Louise was psychic, feeling the pains of those killed beneath her. Then she saw that Louise’s left eye had turned toward her nose. She couldn’t walk straight; Warner had to guide her to the car. Janet followed, carrying the baby and holding Tom’s sticky hand. He was five, silent and staring. Janet could do nothing.
At first the doctors had thought Louise had a brain tumor. Then they said no: It was a clot of blood pressing down on her brain stem, a genetic irregularity. Their prescription: complete bed rest to allow the blood to reabsorb into her brain. She had to miss the last three months of fourth grade, but her symptoms all went away. Her eye rolled back to the center and locked there. In gymnastics, she could walk across a balance beam. The blood was gone. She was allowed to go to summer camp with her friends, but the doctors had said she should abstain from “contact sports” just to be safe. She ran track. Not much was mentioned about it in the family again, except every so often, someone would say how strange it all had been.