Out of the Blue

Book by Mandel Sally

I pictured God feeling a little bored one morning and sifting through his files until he found my name. Oh yeah, that little jock, Annie Bolles. That flibbertigibbet who never sits still. Let's toss a thunderbolt her way and see how she handles it.

I knew there was something amiss when my legs disappeared. I was on my third lap around the Central Park Reservoir on one of those autumn mornings when the mist sighed from the surface and the gulls rose up through it like ghost birds. First, there was a tingling sensation in my toes, intensifying with each step until it felt as if my running shoes had been hot-wired. I tried to run it off, assuming it had to be some kind of weird cramp or shin splints. But within another quarter mile, the current had crept up to the knees, microwaving my muscles. And then my legs just pureed. I kind of collapsed against the chain-link fence until Armando, one of the regulars, came along and helped me hobble to Fifth Avenue and put me in a cab. It was my last great run.

MS--multiple sclerosis. For a while that was how I thought of myself. "Anna Marie Bolles, MS," as if it were some kind of advanced degree that followed my name everywhere. But as it turned out, getting MS was not the most significant event of my life.

That was five years ago, and I'd put in a lot of adjustment time before the Saturday afternoon I wheeled myself into the American Institute of Photography. During those periods when I was completely immobilized, I often surrounded myself with art books. Leafing through them gave me the pleasant illusion that I was strolling through a museum. Anyway, photos had always interested me.

This particular exhibit at the A.I.P. was called "Our Own Backyard," and it featured local amateurs. It was a summer afternoon, really steamy, and I hadn't done anything more than brush my hair back into a ponytail, a decision I lived to regret. The uptown bus wasn't air conditioned, but at least it had a functioning handicapped exit.

I saw him as soon as I got inside the gallery. Anybody would have noticed that striking face, but it was more than that. I found out later that he'd recently been on the cover of Crain's magazine, which is sold from wheelchair-eye-level at my neighborhood newsstand. But I wonder now if the jolt of recognition went a lot deeper. He was leaning oh-so-casually against the doorway, pretending to look at the photographs, but I knew he was faking. One of the advantages of this chair is that after people give me that first uneasy glance, I seem to become semi-invisible and I can stare at everybody to my heart's content. I figured he'd dropped by to check out the women.

I started looking at the pictures, taking my time--also something I never used to have the patience for. Most of them were fairly clichéd. I, too, love that old lady in the park with pigeons perched on her head, but I think it may be time to give it a rest. I moved along, and then I stopped. I stared. I set my brake because I knew I wasn't going anywhere for a while. It was a bridge, but photographed from underneath so you could see the gridwork. It loomed upward in a pattern of delicate intricacy that contrasted starkly with the steel's violent power. I don't even know how long I sat there gazing. But sometimes if I remain in the same position for too long, I begin to ache. Finally,I noticed that the backs of my legs had started to throb, and when I shifted in my chair, the man I'd seen when I first came in was standing beside me. God knows how long he'd been there.

"You seem interested in this photograph," he said.

"Very," I answered. I was rattled, disoriented, as if he'd shaken me awake from a disturbing dream.

"I wonder why." It wasn't a casual question--he really wanted to know. I took a closer look at him. He was about six feet tall, a little stooped and on the slim side, in a navy polo shirt and faded jeans. His hair was dark blond with sun streaks in it, and of the straight fine texture I always, after seeing too many Merchant-Ivory movies, think of as belonging to English aristocrats. He had blue eyes set deep into the bony planes of his face. He hadn't shaved.

I glanced at the picture again, pretending to consider it, but I was trying to make out the name on the placard: Joseph D. Malone.

"Well, Mr. Malone, I hope you've got a good shrink," I said.

His eyes opened a little wider, then he grinned. "That bad?"

"Or good."

"I think it's brave of you to hang around while people look at your work," I went on.

"I've never had a photo exhibited so I was curious. But I'm not sure I'd do it again."

"Are all your pictures so tragic?"

"I didn't think this one was." He stared at it. "I wasn't in the best state of mind when I shot it, actually."

No kidding, I thought. "What about that one?" I pointed to the next photo by someone named Smith, a bicycle leaning against a bodega.

"You first," he said. I got the feeling he was testing me.

"It's an interesting idea, but not very well executed. It's too flat."

"I think we'd better get some coffee." Not waiting for a response, he took hold of my chair as if it were the most natural gesture and starting shoving me to the exit. Maybe he just figured since I was disabled, I wouldn't have anything pressing to do. I didn't know whether to be angry or embarrassed at my reaction, which was all too passive-female circa 1950. Not only that, I was revoltingly grateful that I'd pulled on my pale blue tank top because I knew it made my eyes seem almost navy.

"Who's got easy wheelchair access around here?" he asked when we hit the wall of heat outside.

"Jackson Hole's fine," I answered. I knew I could rely on the air conditioning there, and I was going to need it soon. I don't do so well when it gets over eighty degrees.

It took some maneuvering to get me through the narrow doorway into the restaurant. They seated us against the window where I wouldn't trip anybody up. Joe faced the interior of the room and I had a dazzling view of the street. Ordinarily I can't drag my attention away from the New York parade passing by outside, but now I had to force myself to keep from gawking at Joe Malone's face. Close up, his eyes held prisms of gold that lent them an unusual aqua tint. His eyebrows and lashes were dark, much darker than his hair. The effect served to further outline the extraordinary eyes.

Since I got sick, most people start out with, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" So I was surprised when Joe said, "You're a perceptive critic. Are you a photographer?"

I laughed. "If you're partial to snapshots of people's feet with acres of lawn. I'm just an art junkie. Any kind of art."

"You know, you really brought me up short. I always thought of that bridge shot as a comforting image."

"Well, it just shows what a good photographer you are. That the other feelings percolated up as well."

"Or what a sensitive eye you have," he said.

I was inordinately pleased, but I was dying to ask him about the unhappy time he'd referred to back in the gallery. Maybe he'd been breaking up with a girlfriend or getting a divorce. I looked at his finger. No ring.

"I want to know every goddamn thing about you," he said, and our eyes snapped together with what seemed an audible click. I don't know who was more startled.
"Jesus," he murmured.

But since I'd already jumped on the freight train, I decided to get it over with. "It's MS. Why I'm in the chair."

"How long have you had it?"

"Five years."

"Do you get remissions?"

"Mostly I do pretty well. I've only had to resort to this," I tapped my chair, "twice. I still work out at the gym when I can."

"Did something set you back?"

"I don't know, really. It just seems to happen periodically, and I'd picked up a cold." Actually, it was a urinary tract infection, but I was hardly going to tell him that.

I liked that he didn't get all maudlin about what a pity it was, wasted youth, etcetera, etcetera. He just nodded as if I was telling him how many siblings I had.

We spent an hour over lunch, during which Joe spoke easily and passionately about photography and reading, another of his avocations. He was reticent regarding his career, and it wasn't until we'd left the restaurant for the park that I got him to open up. I use the term advisedly since he imparted information in such a detached manner. But I did determine that he worked for a small charter enterprise started by his father, upstate near Utica.

As for me, I told him about my early years as a dilettante, how difficult it had always been for me to make choices when I wanted to do it all. I confessed that I owed my career to my mother's bullying me into a teaching degree. Thankfully, as it turned out, since I'd had to give up my other gigs--tutoring tennis, teaching gymnastics on the West Side, coaching jazz dance. The Cameron School had been incredibly flexible, in part because I was an alumna but also, I suspect, because the headmaster thought it was instructive to have a disabled teacher on the staff.

Joe had pushed me down to the Great Lawn, where several ball games were going on. It took only minutes for the tops of my knees to turn pink in the broiling sun, but I wasn't about to complain. I knew the heat could make me sick, but I figured I was still semi-frozen from Jackson Hole and it might take me a while to defrost.

"What about men?"

I gave him a stare.

"I told you I want to know everything," he said. When he smiled, lines crinkled beside his eyes and an indefinable sadness evaporated. I could see that his bottom teeth were a li...