Authors: Gen LaGreca
There was the financial strain of losing her job. And the disruptions in her sleep caused by the inability to distinguish night from day. Gone was her glorious confidence in facing the world. In its place crept a pervasive anxiety about a barrage of mysterious sounds and objects. The unknown was the frightening, and her entire new world was unknown. To be awake was to be anxious.
After a life of relying on her own inner resources, Nicole felt the crushing loss of her privacy and independence. She who had opened the huge gate of achievement now needed assistance finding the bathroom door. The result was, inevitably, depression. Gone was the radiant face, the easy laughter, the childlike exuberance that colored her manner. Nicole mechanically received Mrs. Trimbell’s guidance on eating, dressing, arranging household items, walking with a cane. Without excuses, complaints, or anger, the bewildered dancer practiced the simplest tasks, such as eating with a knife and fork. She tried, fumbled, and repeated the same actions countless times. Mrs. Trimbell patiently attempted to bring order and self-respect to the chaos and indignity of Nicole’s new condition, while her student developed an austere acceptance of her predicament.
Cheerlessly, Nicole entered her studio, a bare room with a hardwood floor, wall of mirror and ballet barre, where she spent hours each day practicing. She was supposed to dance holding the barre. When she disregarded her doctor’s instructions and ventured into the center of the room, every turn left her disoriented, discouraged, helpless.
There were, however, two sources of light in the dark chamber of her existence, two people whose glowing presence burned through her stoical indifference and rekindled her capacity for pleasure—her doctor and the Phantom.
David made an arrangement with Mrs. Trimbell in which he visited Nicole once a week, allowing the teacher time off. When he first appeared at her door, Nicole protested what she described as baby-sitting.
“I’m perfectly fine being by myself, David.”
“I’m not,” he replied.
“Do you mean that I need company, or that you do?”
“Both. I mean that I’m here because I want to be. Because I didn’t come to monitor you clinically, you’re of course free to throw me out.”
“And if I don’t, then it means you’re here because
I
want you to be.”
“That’s right,” he said, smiling.
“Then come,” she said, finding his arm and drawing him in, “and tell me what the world looks like today.”
Each time he visited, David chronicled the surroundings from the balcony of her apartment or from a nearby park they visited, lifting the gray clouds of Nicole’s internal landscape and filling the scene with color. He spoke lavishly, as if giving words to the sights before them was as much a need for him as it was for her.
“The city looks as if a stage crew backlighted it tonight,” he said one evening at dusk. He leaned against the brick border of her balcony. She stood beside him, her hand resting gently on his as he pointed to the sights. “The skyscrapers are dark gray columns silhouetted against a royal blue sky. Many lights from the windows dot the tall steel frames, defining them in the darkening sky. The buildings look serene and solid, like something you can count on. There’s a point of light above the city, too, the first evening star in a cloudless sky.”
“Where is it?”
“Right there,” he pointed above them, with her hand over his.
She leaned her head back, drinking in the beauty of the world she saw through his eyes.
*
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*
*
*
One day while they walked home from the park, to Nicole’s delight, a thundercloud burst in a brief but violent summer storm. They took shelter under the canopy of a building.
“I like the rain. When it hits things, I’m aware of them,” she said. “I hear the low, rumbling sound of the rain beating against the awning over our heads. And the rain has a higher pitch where it strikes the roofs of the cars,” she observed with a childlike fascination. “I can hear the car wheels hissing against the wet pavement, and more drops seem to be landing on something to my left, maybe a windowsill.”
“It
is
a windowsill. You have a good ear for the music of the rain, Nicole.”
With the air suddenly cooled, he removed a light jacket that he wore and wrapped it around her. He held her in the warmth of his arm as she shivered in a thin blouse and shorts. Sprouts of blond hair barely covered her scalp, and a few freckles dotted her suntanned face, giving her a boyish, childlike look that pleased him.
“The sky is angry today,” he said. “It’s dense with ominous black clouds that have swallowed the tops of the buildings in fog. The city is dwarfed, robbed of its towering presence. And the sky also stripped the color away. Everything, from the buildings to the people to the pavement, is different shades of gray. The sky, which is vapor, wants to swallow the steel, glass, and flesh that is the city.”
She detected a tinge of bitterness. “David, that’s something the Phantom would say.”
“And what would you tell him?”
“I’d say that the city won’t let anything swallow it, certainly not something as wishy-washy as the sky. I’d tell the Phantom that the city will prevail. Don’t you think it will, David?”
She was shivering more now. Her enchantment with the rain had vanished, and the question she asked left a troubled look on her face. Instantly regretting his remarks, David tried to dismiss the gray clouds that were creeping into his thoughts—the upcoming hearing, the idle hands restless to work, the innocent life before him for whose sake
he
must prevail.
“You bet, Nicole,” he said, his arm tightening around her in a reassuring squeeze. “The city will prevail.”
Ignoring the forced cheerfulness in the voice whose shadings were becoming familiar to her, she told herself that he believed his words, and that she did, too.
When they returned to her apartment, David read Nicole a play from her voluminous collection of classical dramas.
“I love reading, and I love literature,” she said of her library, which could rival any English professor’s.
Afterward, she played music for him. The lighthearted spirit of her selections made him think of his work. He described the history and problems of nerve repair, speaking as if she, too, were a doctor, sparing no technical terms. Interrupting only to have him define the words she did not understand, Nicole listened with interest, her quick mind grasping everything.
Mrs. Trimbell returned to find David lying on the couch, talking about nerve regeneration. Nicole sat on an area rug facing him, her long legs stretched in a split with her elbows resting before her, a pose that only a ballerina could find comfortable. The two greeted Mrs. Trimbell absently, surprised to see her, unaware that an entire day had passed. Then they continued their conversation. Mrs. Trimbell soon became accustomed to feeling invisible.
*
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*
*
The Flower Phantom made his presence felt during the six weeks between Nicole’s homecoming and the hearing. His table occupied a prominent place in the living room. It held the dried remains of his flower arrangements. Nicole continued her search for the letter he had sent to her in the hospital, the one that was missing, but to no avail. The Phantom quickly obliged by sending another, along with a porcelain vase filled with fragrant white jasmine. Every week, a new arrangement followed, which served as the centerpiece on the dining-room table. David read the new letters as Nicole inhaled the scents of the luscious bouquets.
“The Phantom found out where I live,” she remarked to David when she received the jasmine.
“So it seems.”
“I wonder when he’ll come to see me. He doesn’t seem in any hurry,” she complained.
“Why don’t you give him a break?”
“Why do you take his side over your patient’s? And why are you laughing? My affairs seem to amuse you.”
“I’m sorry, really I am.”
“But you’re still laughing! The Phantom’s probably waiting to see if I’ll ever be normal again, and I don’t blame him.”
“Nicole,” he said, the amusement tapering off, “maybe he has a pressing matter on his mind and can’t step forward. When he does appear, you might give him a chance to explain. Maybe he would be thrilled to have you just as you are. Maybe you’re absolutely perfect for him right now and you don’t even know it.”
*
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David arrived at Nicole’s apartment one afternoon to hear a thump as he entered. He found her on the floor of her studio, in a leotard, her hands covering her face. She felt his comforting hand touch her shoulder.
“Are you okay, Nicole?”
“Yes,” she mumbled through her hands, her voice heavy with despair.
“No one said it would be easy,” he said sympathetically.
After he helped her to her feet, they stood still, holding hands, her bent head brushing his shoulder, a few tears dropping onto his shirt.
“I tried to turn and lost my balance.”
“You’ll get it. But right now you’re supposed to be at the barre,” he gently admonished. “You were nowhere near it.”
“I know I disregarded your instructions. But I just wanted to dance one simple routine, free of any crutches. I almost had it! It was the first dance I do as Pandora, after the gods create me.”
“That dance is too dangerous! I don’t want you flying through the air now. If you fall—”
“I modified it to— Hey, do you know the number? Have you . . . seen . . . my show?”
“Yes.”
She looked astonished, her tears drying. “How come you never mentioned that you saw my show?”
“It didn’t seem . . . relevant.”
“It’s
very
relevant, David! What did you think of it?”
“I think the Phantom has good taste.”
“That means you liked my show? Did you really?”
“Oh, yes.”
The solemnity in his words made her forget her discouragement. They were still holding hands. She squeezed his.
“I want to try the dance again. And I want you to watch, if you’d like to.”
“No! It’s dangerous. I don’t want you to—”
“Please try not to worry, David. I’ll do what you don’t like anyway when you’re not here. But you
are
here, so would you like to . . . see me . . . dance . . . for you?”
She felt a sudden breathless excitement at offering herself to his eyes to watch. Without waiting for his answer, she walked to a sound system in the corner and began the music.
That was how David received a private showing of Pandora’s first dance, which had held him spellbound since a desperate night the previous winter. He thought of that snowy evening when he had discovered Nicole Hudson. Armed with Pandora’s hope, he had reclaimed his rats and completed the first successful nerve-repair experiments. Now, as she danced exclusively for him,
her
spirit reawakened. He saw in glorious close-up the qualities he had admired from the audience, the stunning mix of a disciplined, almost ascetic, skill with the exultation that was Nicole. She danced flawlessly, the pride of her achievement glowing on her face. When she finished, he approached her, a rush of afternoon sun from the window beaming across him.
“You’re lovely, Nicole.”
She stood facing him with her head lifted and her body pulled back. Although she avoided gestures underscoring her blindness, at that moment she urgently wanted to touch his face. She raised her hand to the features that she had never felt, but she did not complete the movement. She suddenly developed a strange fascination with her arm, shining in the sun’s rays. She waved it from side to side. David stared intensely. He grasped her chin to hold her head still. Then he waved his arm before her. Nicole’s eyes followed the movement from side to side. Then up and down. When his arm stopped waving, her eyes stopped, too.
“David!” she whispered incredulously. “I can see a dark shadow moving. It’s your arm, isn’t it? I can see your arm waving!”
*
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On a cloudless day in September, David and Nicole sat in the park near her apartment, enjoying the delicious nip of the first fall air. Nicole’s sight was improving. She could see light and motion from greater distances. The once-empty canvas of her perception now held shadings of gray masses that moved. The five cats in David’s laboratory mirrored these improvements. The severed optic nerves were growing back. From his past experiments, David expected Nicole’s limited vision to plateau and then to deteriorate as the scar tissue grew to impede the regenerated nerves. His experience with animals indicated that he must perform the second surgery to remove the scar tissue before Nicole lost her newfound vision entirely; otherwise, she would never see again.
Such were the matters on his mind that day, a week before the hearing, sitting with Nicole on the park bench. Her face was serenely calm as it caught the crisp fall breeze, her swanlike neck accentuated with a turtleneck sweater and short blond hair, her shapely legs outlined by her slacks. She felt contentment in his presence, in the rich baritone voice and warm hands that conveyed the thoughts and feelings of the man whose portrait was missing from her mind’s collection. She also enjoyed the intimacy of their frequent moments of comfortable silence.