THE SIMPLE ACT OF BREATHING
“I call apples tomatoes sometimes. Not when I say it out loud. But, if I’m looking at the apple, I’ll say tomato. In my head I said apples, but my mouth says tomato. It’s, it's sitting right in front of me. It is clearly an apple. In no way does it look like a tomato. Somehow, my mouth says tomato. I don’t know it though. I don’t catch it. And there it is, out in the open. Gotten away from me, and I can’t get it back. Then its there. Like that, calling birds bricks, or a car a fence. They know then. You know now.” Kate said it all in what seemed like a second. She scratched at an imaginary itch at her shoulder and tugged at the bottom of her skirt, desperate to pull it over the top of her knee.
“That’s funny,” her date said.
“But it's not. Its infuriating, I, I don’t try to do that. And I stutter sometimes. Not majorly, but I’ll, I’ll repeat things. I probably already have.” She lifted her wine glass up for a moment; her hand shook as it usually did. She put it back down, and picked up a fork.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply what you’re going through is a joke. I just mean out of anything that’s not so bad. Right?” he said with a mouth full of lettuce that he crushed between his teeth in annoying crisp bites.
“I guess. If minor brain damage amuses you. It’s the oxygen you see. Oxygen didn’t get to my brain because of the crack on the back of my skull. So now I call apples tomatoes, and I have to walk with the walker. That’s how come I have the walker.” Lisa parted her hair and stared a moment, “Are you enjoying your steak?”
He looked down. “It’s salad.”
“I know. That was a joke. On account of what I said earlier.” She shifted again in her seat, and studied his face for a laugh, a smirk, anything. “Do you like me?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Suppose?”
“Yeah, I mean we just met last week. I walked into the library and there you were.”
“Yes there I was but I was sitting down. I was concentrated on checking in books.” She cleared her throat, and shifted again, “I’m sorry I get the impression you’re uneasy about me. When you picked me up you had this look. Like you pitied me?”
“No I -”
“If that’s the case I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. And I made a joke you see. You were eating salad and I called it steak. And you said it’d be funny to witness me do that. But you didn’t laugh when I called your salad steak, you corrected me and stared me down.”
“Listen, Kate. I just met you. Okay. Let’s let the judgements come afterwards.” His eyes scanned the room and he shoved another forkful of lettuce into his mouth.
“Can you not do that,” Kate said, pointing at him with her fork, “Please, stop.”
“What?”
“You’re crushing the lettuce so loud.” She saw his expression change, “Oh god, I’m sorry. No, I’m not sorry. My ears are sensitive. On account of that accident, and my fractured skull, and the oxygen. My breathing was shallow. And the oxygen, I wasn’t taking in enough. It's a lot of problems. We need air to live, but too much, too little, it kills you. I was dying. It screwed me up okay, like, my ears, my ears are sensitive. And you're chewing your lettuce, not steak,” She attempted to feign a faux laugh but she wasn’t sure it came out, “And it's just loud and obnoxious. I feel like you don’t care.”
“Katie, you don't know me.”
“And you don’t know me. You saw me walking down my driveway with my walker, and you looked to your right.”
“I was clearing my passenger seat.”
“No, no, no, you were, you were looking to your passenger for help.”
“It was just me in the car.”
“Society demands your courtesy, but you wanted to speed off, and leave me there.”
“Katie, calm down.” His eyes searched left and right, looking at the other people nervously.
She was talking loud. She had been talking loud the entire time. It wasn’t shouting. “I’m not angry. I’m trying to work it out. I just think it's shitty the niceties people have to use to talk to one another. To get to know one another. You decided in your car that you didn’t want me.”
“Maybe we should leave.”
“People are staring and now you’re nervous that this is a scene. This is why we should go. I want to go back home. You should have drove away.”
“My last date didn’t go very well. I, I think I ruined his pride.” Kate kept her palms flat on her skirt as she spoke. There was a slight breeze in the park and she was afraid it’d catch around her legs and blow up her skirt and expose herself.
“Where did you go?” Paul said.
“Some fancy place. Three, three course meals and what not. He was eating steak, and it was crunching in his teeth.”
“Crunchy steak?”
Kate laughed, “I’m sorry. He was eating salad. It was crunchy salad. And my hearing is sensitive. I had an accident.”
“Yeah you mentioned that in the car. Someone hit you with their car?” Paul was leaning his elbow on the back of the park bench, his eyes locked on her, and it made her slightly uncomfortable but also important.
“Yes. I was twelve. I was always like this. The doctors said it's like getting cerebral palsy. My brain forgot how to function, and it messed up the signals to my muscles and my brain does weird things.”
“Like what?”
“My brain?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I call apples tomatoes, and cars fences. But only when I see them. I also stutter sort of. Like, I repeat words sometimes.”
“That doesn’t sound fun.”
She shook her head, “No it is not fun at all. I spent a few months in the hospital. Not enough oxygen to my brain is what they said. When I woke up I forgot how to walk. Well, my body forgot how to do it. My legs forgot how to be legs, and they kind of felt just like Jell-o beneath me. Like a couple pieces of straw. You could blow on me and I’d fall over. But I’m better. I’m better.”
“That sounds like quite the ordeal.”
“Yes, yes it was. And I had started my period during that time.” She turned away shyly for a minute, “I didn’t mean to share that. That’s not important.”
“It's okay. It's a fact of life. I had three sisters, trust me I know all about that.”
“They called me retard.”
“Who?”
“The people at school. The ones who forgot they knew me. They thought I had become less intelligent because you see I slurred my words back then. I slurred and stuttered, and I was going through puberty, and I was getting breasts, and bleeding, and growing, and no one noticed. I was just a retard. But i’m not, I’m not mentally challenged. Its physical. It has no bearing on my intelligence.”
“I believe you. It seems like you’ve come a long way.”
“Yes, yes. I have. I have come a long way.” She lifted her palms off her skirt and tried to copy his posture. She put an elbow on the back of the bench, and laid on her palms, and smiled at him. At least she hoped she was smiling, “Do I look happy?”
He smiled, “I think so.”
“Good. Sometimes I can’t tell if my face is doing what I want it to.”
“Well, what is it you are trying to convey to me, Kate?”
“Longing.” She cast her eyes down a moment. He cupped his fingers under her chin and lifted her head up, a tear left her eye, and she felt it rolling down her cheek and she wanted to wipe it away. She kept her eyes looking down even though her face was pointed at his, “I’m scared. I’m scared that I like you already. And I want you to want me. And I want you to kiss me. God, I want you to do that.” She lifted her eyes up, “Even if you don’t ever love me. I want to you kiss me while looking at me the way you are looking at me now, I want -”
His lips met hers and he suckled on her bottom one a moment, and lightly caressed them with a few sorted pecks, and then he backed up. “Like that?”
“Mmmhmmm,” she responded, and she hoped she was smiling.
“You look happy,” he said.
“I think I am,” she said, “But it's been so long that I’m not exactly sure how happy should look. They say breathing too slow can cause injury. That’s what my accident was, my accident was a result of my breathing being labored. Not enough oxygen. And they called me retarded, and and I’m not.” She knew she was crying.
“Kate. You are an intriguing, intelligent woman. I’m sorry that those assholes growing up didn’t see it. I’m sorry that you’ve felt victimized because of something that is out of your control. So you call apples tomatoes, and you can’t walk unaided. Inside here,” he lightly placed a finger on the side of her head, “Inside here is a brain that kept fighting. That kept going. And I’m not just talking about your accident. I’m talking about your life after. Your mind kept you alive, it kept you strong, it brought you back up from that brink of death. You witnessed sides of life that people seldom get to witness and you are a strong woman. I’ve liked you since the moment I met you while I toiled away for hours in the library studying my textbooks. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I decided a long time ago that I was going to be with you.”
“You decided?”
“Yes.”
“You decided, a long time ago that, that, that you were going to be with a woman who calls apples tomatoes?”
“From the first time you told me I had late fees.”
Then she laughed fully for the first time in a long time. Her shoulders settled and she relaxed into her arm, and they spoke at length. The people passed on by, and the sun disappeared till the pair were only
illuminated by lamp posts. “It’s getting late,” she said and so it was and nothing ever sounded so beautiful.
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