Shapiro - Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Life Rescued by Tragedy

Copyright 1998 by Dani Shapiro

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., for permission to reprint eleven lines from For an Album from Times Power: Poems 19851988 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright 1989 by Adrienne Rich. Reprinted by permission of the author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Certain names in this book have been changed. The altered names are Lenny Klein, Jess Marcus, John Feeny, and Special Agent Anderson.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shapiro, Dani.
Slow motion / Dani Shapiro. 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82800-2
1. Shapiro, DaniFamily. 2. Women novelists, American20th centuryFamily relationships. 3. ParentsDeathPsychological aspects. I. Title.
PS3569.H3387Z47 1998
818.5403dc21

[B] 97-32667

Random House website address: www.randomhouse.com

v3.1

O ur story is of moments when even slow motion moved too fast for the shutter of the camera: words that blew our lives apart, like so, eyes that cut and caught each other, mime of the operating room where gas and knives quote each other moments before the telephone starts ringing: our story is how still we stood, how fast.

Adrienne Rich
For an Album

T he night before I receive the phone call that divides my life into before and after, my face swells in an allergic reaction to a skin cream, then blisters and chaps. I am at a health spa in Southern California, a place where wealthy older women go to rest and rejuvenate, where young matrons snap their bodies back into shape after pregnancies, where movie stars stretch out on massage tables in private Japanese gardens, offering their smooth backs to the sun.

I am none of the above, and for the past three days, since arriving at the Golden Door, I have often paused amid cacti and rock gardens to wonder what, exactly, Im doing here. I am twenty-three years old, and my life has become unrecognizable to me. I have slid slowly into this state the way one might wade into an icy lake, dipping a toe in at first, then wincing, pushing past all resistance until the body is submerged, numb to the cold.

When the phone interrupts my post-hike breakfast of a half-grapefruit sweetened with honey, I am sitting cross-legged on my bed, listlessly flipping through the pages of the San Diego Herald, staring out the sliding glass doors at my private patio. I am upset about my face, which is itching and beginning to blister. My eyes are slits. I have never been allergic to anything before, and am worried that this rash might spread down my neck and across my chest, causing me to swell inside, my body choking on itself.

Hello?

Dani, its Aunt Roz, darling.

Hi, Roz, I respond, confused. This aunt, who lives in suburban New Jersey, is not someone to whom Im particularly close, and she would have no reason to know that I am at this health spa, much less track me down here at the crack of dawn. Though it doesnt occur to me to be frightened, though no alarm bells ring in my mind, I watch as my thighs begin to shake for no apparent reason.

Dani, Im calling because

She pauses, speaking very slowly, as if to an imbecile.

The first thing you should know is that everythings all right, she says. And then, Mother and Dad were in an accident.

What kind of accident?

In their car, they

Where were they? Where are they? Why are you calling me?

Now, Dani, if youll just slow down

She keeps repeating my name, and she says it the way I hate, the way my mothers family has always said it, with a sort of pseudo-classy soft a, as if were from England, not New Jersey. There is an edge to her voice, as if shes somehow holding me accountable for being on the other side of the country at a moment like this. She thinks Im a fuckup, a college dropout, a high-class drifter.

Theyre both in intensive care, she says.

Where?

Overlook Hospital, in Summit. They were driving home from your mothers office last night

Last night?

It was latethere was nothing you could have done

I file this away somewhere, under miscellaneous family insanity. I am my mothers only child. My father has a daughter from his first marriage, my older half sister, Susie, who lives in New York City.

Has someone called Susie?

No.

Jesus.

How did you find me?

Your mother gave me the name of the place youre staying.

So shes conscious

Aunt Roz snorts, actually snorts into the phone.

Dani, your mother has two badly broken legs. Her tibia, her femur

Roz is a doctors wifethe kind who thinks her marriage license includes a medical degree. Her husband, my uncle Hy, is a surgeon, and my favorite family member. I may be speaking to the wrong person.

Wheres Hy? I want to talk to Hy, I say. My voice has begun to shake along with my legs. Hy will tell me the truth. His hoarse, pipe-smoking voice will soothe me, tell me this isnt as bad as it sounds. I look wildly around my room at the sliding Japanese screens, the elegant, lacquered breakfast table upon which a fan has been set, detailing my days activities: 9 A . M . aerobics, 10:30 stretch n tone, 12:00 massage.

Uncle Hy is with the doctors.

Hows my father?

Hell be fine Roz says flatly. Not a scratch on himand he wasnt even wearing a seat belt. Its your mother you should be worried about.

I dont stop to wonder why, if my father is fine, he isnt the one calling me in Southern California. My brain has gone numb, my instincts taking over. I will find out what has happened to my parents one small, manageable blow at a time.

Ill get the next flight home, I say, calculating how long it will take to get to the San Diego airport.

Good idea, Dan, says Roz.

I sit on the edge of the bed and dial a number in New York. There is a high-pitched buzz in my head: sounds, thoughts, language itself distilled into a single note of terror. I float out of my body and watch myself from a corner of the ceiling; this is something I do oftenwatch myself as if my life were a movie, as if I were only acting a role in this moment, as if it can be played back, cut, edited later.

His office phone rings once, twice, then is answered by his secretary, Marie, a woman who knows meand my role in his lifewell.

Mr. Kleins office

Her voice is low and sexy, modulated within an inch of its life.

Marie, its Dani.

Dani, how are you? Hows California?

I have often wondered how she keeps it all straight: wife, daughters, girlfriend.

Is he there? Its an emergency.

She puts me on hold and I close my eyes, try to quiet the buzzing in my head. My heart is skipping beats, thumping irregularly in my chest. Years from now, when this happens, Ill wonder if Im having a heart attack. But at this moment in my life, at twenty-three, I think Im indestructible. I figure I have until Im thirty. At thirty Ill expire, like a bright flame burning itself out.