Holding Up the Universe(79)

And then, maybe to prove there are no secrets between us, he tells me about the woman he’s been seeing off and on for a while. Her name is Kerry and she teaches math at one of the middle schools. She’s his age, married once, no kids. He didn’t want to tell me because he’s not sure where this will lead or what their relationship means, and he wants to be careful with me, with her. But I think really he just didn’t want me to feel bad about being the only one in the world who hadn’t moved on.

I say this to him now, and he takes my hand. “It’s not moving on, Libbs. It’s moving differently. That’s all it is. Different life. Different world. Different rules. We don’t ever leave that old world behind. We just create a new one.”





It’s after 1 a.m. when Marcus and I get home. I stand in front of the open fridge for at least five minutes, maybe more, willing something good to materialize—a pizza, a whole chicken, a giant steak, or a rack of ribs. When it doesn’t, I grab a soda and some kind of guacamole/spinach/cheese dip, scrounge up some chips from the pantry, and sit down in the dark kitchen to eat myself a feast.

I’m halfway into the chips when my phone lights up across the room, where I left it. I get up, in case it’s Libby, even though I know it won’t be. It’s Kam. He says:

Shit. This prosopagnosia is one trippy mo-fo. But hey man, we’ve all got something. We’re all weird and damaged in our own way. You’re not the only one.



I read it three times because, honestly, I’m stunned. Maybe Dave Kaminski will actually turn into one of the good guys before adulthood.

Another text comes in.

Douche.



I text back.

Dick.



And then I leave everything and walk up the stairs to my parents’ room. I bang on the door. I just bang the hell out of it till another door opens and this skinny kid with big ears goes, “Jack?”

“Sorry to wake you, buddy. Can you get Marcus?”

“Sure.”

The door to my parents’ room opens, and the woman who answers looks half-asleep. Her hair is sticking up, and she’s got one eye closed. “Jack?” At the sight of me, both eyes open wide, and she’s reaching out toward my face, my chest. “Oh my God, what happened to you?” And I remember, Oh yeah, the Hunt brothers kicked the shit out of me.

“It’s nothing. I’m fine. Listen, I need to talk to you and Dad.” I look past her, but the room is empty. Behind me, there’s the sound of a door opening, and the man who must be my father appears from the guest room.

The five of us sit on my parents’ bed, just like it’s Christmas Eve and we’re kids again. Marcus hasn’t said a word. He just stares at me from under all that hair.

I say to them, “It’s a rare neurological disorder.”

Mom is googling as I talk.

Dad: “Are you having vision problems or headaches?”

Dusty: “Maybe it’s a concussion.”

“It’s not a vision problem, and it’s not a concussion.”

Dad: “I get confused sometimes too. I forget names all the time. All these years at the store, I still can’t remember people.”

“It’s not the same. There’s a specific part of our brain called the fusiform gyrus twelve that identifies and recognizes faces. For some reason, mine is missing or doesn’t work.”

Dusty wants to know where it is, and I show him, and then Mom finds a diagram of the brain. They all lean in, even Marcus, and Mom reads, “ ‘People with prosopagnosia have great difficulty recognizing faces, and may fail to recognize people that they have met many times and know well—even family.’ ” She glances up at me like Is this true? and I nod. “ ‘Prosopagnosia is caused by a problem with processing visual information in the brain, which can be present at birth or develop later due to brain injury.’ ”

Marcus says, “Like when you fell off the roof.”

I tell them I was tested, and they have a million questions. I answer them as best I can, and at some point my mom says, “I want you to remember that you can’t feel responsible for everything. We’re your parents, and we will figure us out. All you need to do, any of you”—she looks at my brothers—“is be a kid for now and let us be there for you.”

“All of us?” Dusty says. “Even those of us without neurological disorders?”

“All of you.”





I’ve always thought you should be able to freeze time. This way you could hit the Pause button at a really good point in your life so that nothing changes. Think about it. Loved ones don’t die. You don’t age. You go to bed and wake up the next morning to find everything just as you left it. No surprises.

If I could freeze time, this is the moment I would choose, falling asleep on my dad’s shoulder, George on my lap, like I’m eight years old again.

This is what I know about loss:

It doesn’t get better. You just get (somewhat) used to it.

You never stop missing the people who go away.

For something that isn’t there anymore, it weighs a ton.



By the time I started eating—really eating—the loss was already so big it felt like I was carrying around the world. So carrying around the weight wasn’t any heavier. It was trying to carry around both that got to be too much. Which is why sometimes you have to set some of it down. You can’t carry all of it forever.