Holding Up the Universe(46)

“I love to love, but my baby just loves to dance, he wants to dance, he loves to dance, he’s got to dance.”

“What the f—?”

“The minute the band begins to swing it, he’s on his feet to dig it, and dance the night away. Stop! I’m spinning like a top, we’ll dance until we drop …”

It’s pretty much the corniest song I’ve ever heard, but Libby is into it. She’s grooving all over the seat, shaking her shoulders, shimmying toward me and away. She winks at me and belts it out louder, and she’s a terrible singer. So I start singing along with her, kind of self-defensively.

And then we’re dancing in unison—heads bobbing to the right, to the left, shoulders forward, shoulders back. Now we’re yelling the words, and I’m pounding on the steering wheel, and she’s got her arms in the air, and it’s the best song I’ve ever heard, and now I’m smiling at her.

And she’s smiling at me.

And it’s a moment.

A definite moment.

She says, “Watch the road, Casanova.” But she says it in this soft voice that I’ve never heard her use before. “Just remember, whatever we learn today, these tests don’t change anything.”

I like the way she says we, as if she’s in this with me.

“You’re still Jack Masselin. You’re still a pain in the ass. You’re still you.”





I am having a moment with Jack Masselin. If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago or even two days ago if I could imagine such a thing, I would have laughed until I laughed the breath right out of me. This is the thing about life outside the house, though: you never know what might happen.

I think he feels it too, but I’m not sure.

He’d better feel it too.

It had better not just be me over here, by myself, on my own, having a moment over him as opposed to with him.

I act like La la la, no big deal, let’s go to Bloomington, let’s see if you’re really face-blind. But inside my chest, my heart is clenching and unclenching and skipping beats and fluttering like it’s about to burst its way out of there and fly around this car. I fix a smile on my face and stare out the window and think, Oh, heart, you traitor.





The lab is busy. An assistant leads us to Dr. Amber Klein (light brown hair, sharp cheekbones, glasses). She is dressed all in black, her sleeves rolled over her elbows, and her hair swept up in a kind of no-nonsense way. She’s probably around forty. The lab is also black, floors, walls, ceiling. The room is divided into cubicles by curtains—black, of course—and it feels like we’ve wandered onto the set of a music video. Libby wears purple and I’m in green, and we stand out like beacons.

Dr. Klein offers us chairs behind one of the black curtains, so it’s as if we’re enclosed in a small room. She boots up her laptop and says, “I understand you need to be home by late afternoon?” She’s wearing an actual watch, and she checks it now: 9:54 a.m.

“There’s a bit of a curfew situation.” I smile at Libby and she smiles at me. She’s still wearing the bow over her left ear, but her smile reminds me of the one my mom wore during Dad’s chemo appointments. Like she’s determined to make the most of things for the sake of him/me, when she knows how hopeless it really is.

“I’m going to run you through a series of tests.” Dr. Klein sits down and starts clicking away at the keyboard.

Libby says to me, “I’m actually going to wait outside. I saw a Starbucks nearby. Just text me when you’re done.” She takes my phone and types her number in. When she hands it back, I feel this weird panic.

She hesitates over my shoulder. “Unless … I mean, I can stay …” But I can tell that she doesn’t want to stay, and I wonder if maybe it’s the whole doctor/brain setting that’s bugging her.

“Nah, I’m good.”

I watch her go, hair swinging.

Dr. Klein says, “Does anyone in your family have prosopagnosia?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“Face blindness is often genetic, but there are three categories of prosopagnosia: acquired, developmental, and congenital. It can also be a symptom of other disorders, such as autism. Did you ever experience a fall or a childhood illness of the brain?”

“I fell off the roof when I was six.”

“Did you hit your head?”

“Could something like that cause face blindness?”

“Yes. It’s not as common as developmental prosopagnosia, but it’s possible.”

“I banged it pretty hard. I had to have stitches.” Instinctively, I reach for the thin raised line along my scalp.

She types away, and as she does, it hits me: This woman is going to dig around in your brain. You can’t hide from her.

She wants to know what kind of tests were done after I fell, and then she wants to know if I was able to recognize faces before the age of six.

The honest answer is I don’t know. Yeah, I had every test imaginable to see what damage had been done to my brain. But did I know people by their faces back then? I’m not sure.

She says, “Certainly your parents would have noticed a difference if you suddenly had trouble recognizing everyone.”

“I think I’ve always been good at compensating and covering up. I mean, even back then. Maybe I could recognize people before, but I was so young …”