Page 78 of How to Walk Away

“And a half,” I added.

“After insurance runs out,” my dad said, “you’ll come home to live with us.”

I snorted. “I amnotcoming home to live with you.”

My parents looked at each other. My dad asked tenderly, “Where would you live, sweetheart?”

“At my place,” I said, like,Duh.

My dad proceeded very gingerly. “Your place is three stories high. With stairs.”

I closed my eyes. “I’ll stay on the ground floor.”

He was almost whispering now. “There’s no bathroom on the ground floor. Or kitchen.”

I knew that, of course. “I’ll figure it out.”

We all knew I wouldn’t. What would I do—climb the stairs on my knees? Actually, maybe that could work.

“Nonsense,” my mother said, in her most authoritative voice. “You can’t keep that place. I’ve already spoken with a real estate agent. He says now’s a perfect time to sell. You stand to make a good profit.” Then she added, “He also loves your décor.”

This from the woman who’d told all the neighbors I’d be good as new by summer. “I am not moving in with my parents,” I declared. “I am not a child!”

“Just temporarily,” my dad said, ever the spoonful of sugar.

But I pointed at my mother. “Do not talk to agents! Do not sell my place! You said I’d be good as new!”

It was such a childish accusation, in one way—to get mad at her for my misfortune, the way little kids sometimes do before they’ve come to understand that, in so many big ways, parents are just as powerless as they are.

At the same time, it was a declaration of independence. My whole life, I’d turned to my mother for instructions on what to do, and where to go, and how to get it done. My mother had insisted to me, and the doctors, and, apparently, all our neighbors, that I was going to “beat” this paralysis.

She’d always interpreted my life. Though to be fair, I’d always let her.

But maybe that wasn’t her job anymore.

In the strangled silence that followed, we all felt the shift in my thinkinglike a little, earth-trembling rumble of plate tectonics. Even if we didn’t know what it was.

Faced with this Kitty-like behavior from me, my mother dropped it. She put up her hands in surrender. “Fine. We won’t sell your condo.”

“Of course not. If you don’t want to,” my dad said.

“I don’t want to.” How could anybody possibly think that I would? Hadn’t I given up enough?

“The point is,” my mom said, getting back to business, “you are running out of time here.”

“I’m aware of that,” I said, stubbornly leaving my lunch untouched.

“And so we’re thinking,” my dad said brightly, “why not do everything possible right now to promote healing and recovery?”

I looked back and forth between them for a good long minute before I said, in a low voice like a growl, “My whole life is ‘doing everything possible.’ I don’t go five minutes without ‘promoting healing and recovery.’”

My mom leaned in. “Did I forget to tell you that I just read the most inspiring story? About a girl—a former ballerina—in just exactly your situation? She tried very hard for weeks, and got nowhere at all—and then one morning, out of the blue, her right big toe wiggled. Then, the next morning, her left big toe wiggled. The morning after that, she could wiggle them all. The morning after that, she could bend her knees. And by the end of the month, she could do apas de bourrée!”

Quietly, then—secretly—I tried to wiggle my toes.

Nothing.

I wasn’t even entirely sure I remembered how.

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