with us?”
She sighed. “It’s not fair.”
I was puzzled. “What’s not fair?”
“It’s not fair that you’re handicapped.”
“You’re telling me!” I laughed.
“It’s not fair for you, and it’s not fair for Paul, who’s in love with you.”
“Paul is in love with me?”
I was astounded. Other than a little teasing, there had been no sign of any love interest. He showed up at the right time to help me get in and out of inaccessible buildings—that was all. The IOUs for kisses had remained unclaimed.
“How do you know Paul’s in love with me?”
“We’re friends. He confides in me.” She sounded burdened. “It’s very painful for him, you know, to be in love with you, knowing nothing can come of it. I understand him so well. I know all about love that cannot be. I was once in love with a priest.”
What the hell was she talking about? Love that cannot be? In love with a priest? Oh, yes, of course. Like being in love with a cripple. Knowing nothing can come of it.
“I understand him so well,” she repeated, and sighed. “Poor Paul!”
I couldn’t stand it. “Come on! You don’t expect me to feel sorry for him!”
“Well, you could try to be more considerate of his feelings. The priest I was in love with tried to stay away from me…”
I’d had more than I could take. “I don’t want to know about the priest, Anna. Good-bye.”
I called Audrey from a pay phone. She was home from school that day. “I can’t believe this!” she kept saying as she listened to my story. When I stopped talking, she asked, “Do you have any more classes?”
“American history at three.”
“Cut it. Get in your car and drive out here.”
“I don’t know…”
“Drive out here,” she insisted. “I’ve got a story, too, very similar to yours. You’re not going to believe it.”
She was waiting for me in her car. She pulled out of her driveway and motioned for me to pull in. I parked, got out on my crutches, and went to sit in her car. She told me her story while driving around the neighborhood. I listened as I looked for signs of the coming spring: daffodils ready to bloom in front of one house, violets around the lawn of another…
“What are you looking at? Are you listening to me?” She got annoyed when she didn’t have my undivided attention. Her story was better than mine. I’d learned about Paul’s love from a third party. She’d learned from the guy himself, who confessed his love for her and his anguish at knowing nothing could come of it.
“To me, you’re like a nun,” he had declared.
And Audrey had replied, “I can’t be a nun! I’m Jewish!”
That struck me as outrageously funny. I started laughing and couldn’t stop. Audrey was soon laughing, too, so hard that she couldn’t drive anymore. She parked the car on a quiet street, in front of someone’s newly planted lawn, and we both grew hysterical, laughing harder and harder, hitting each other, then hugging, shaking and hiccupping, mascara-stained tears running down our cheeks. Until we weren’t even sure if we were laughing or crying.
Later that day, I called my mother to tell her I would be spending the night at Audrey’s. Then we got all made-up and dressed to kill. She wore a skintight electric blue sweater and I wore a skintight hot-pink one—one of hers. We put both our chairs in her car, which was always a feat, and drove out to a club that had no steps. She parked in the “No Parking” zone in front of the door.
“You’ll get a ticket,” I said.
“Fuck it!”
“You have a foul mouth.”
“I know.” She laughed.
While struggling to get our chairs out of the car, we couldn’t help but notice a group of young people on the sidewalk—staring at us. I tried to concentrate on securing my leg rests. Audrey, sitting straight in her chair, pushed her long blond hair back with a flick of her hand, raised her head defiantly, and stared back.
“Like the show? Wanna give us a round of applause?”
I knew she was in top form.
We’d been to that club before, but we’d never attracted so much attention as that night. Was it the skintight sweaters, the way we were moving to the music in our wheelchairs, or the vibes we were sending out?
Audrey started it. “If I wasn’t handicapped, you could come home with me and fuck me all night,” I heard her say to a guy with longish blond hair who’d bought her a drink. He must have whispered “Let’s do it anyway,” because she said, “Oh no, believe me, you don’t want to risk falling in love with me! It would be very painful for you because nothing can come of it. A handicapped girl is like a nun.”
I caught up quickly. I wrapped my arm around the arm of the guy who had just handed me a drink and whispered, “Isn’t it a shame I’m handicapped? I could be dancing with you, rubbing my breasts against you…”
“Do you give money to the telethon?” Audrey was asking.
“If you give enough money, we’ll get cured, and then you’ll want us to be your girlfriends,” I chimed in.
We kept the game going all night—or at least until our bladders got too full. Accessible rest rooms were unheard of. When we couldn’t hold it anymore, we had to leave.
“I’m gonna wet my pants in five seconds,” Audrey whispered as we rolled out the door.
There was a ticket stuck under her windshield wiper. She left it there. Once in the car, our chairs folded and jammed into the back, she handed me the jar she kept under the seat for emergencies.
“Don’t you want to go first?” I asked.
“Too late for me.”
I saw her pants were all wet. I peed in the jar, emptied it out the door, and we headed back to her house.
Audrey’s mother had opened the foldaway bed for me. I got undressed quickly, took off my braces, and lay down. I was tired. I needed to get at least a few hours’ sleep. I wanted to drive to St. John’s in the morning and not miss my nine o’clock English class. I unfolded the blanket Audrey’s mother had left for me and got under it.
But Audrey kept moving around in her wheelchair, not at all eager to get in bed. She was still wearing her sexy electric blue sweater but had taken off her wet pants and underpants and sat there bare-assed. From her hips to her knees, her thighs, lacking muscles, formed a soft flattened V against the wheelchair seat. Her skinny legs, lined with pink scars, dangled, her bare feet, not quite reaching the footrests, pointing straight forward from surgically fused ankles. We both made a point of looking at our naked bodies in the mirror only from the waist up, but we were so familiar with each other’s bodies. Looking at Audrey’s legs now was like seeing my own in a mirror.
She was fumbling with her jewelry box, which she had taken out of the bottom drawer of her dresser and unlocked with a tiny key.
“Want to see what I’ve got?” She didn’t sound mischievous, which she usually did when she asked that question.
“Sure.” I was too sleepy to show much enthusiasm.
She took out a pill bottle and held it up to me. There were quite a few pills in it, judging by the sound it made when Audrey shook it.
“What are they?”
She twisted the cap off and let some pills fall into her palm. She smiled as she stuck her hand in front of my face. It was full of red capsules.