“Scared,” Annie said in a little girl's voice, as tears started to flow. “I miss my mom. I keep thinking I should have tried to save her. It's my fault that she died. I couldn't grab the steering wheel. I didn't have time.” She looked anguished as she spoke.
“It doesn't sound like you could have. I read the accident report before I came here.”
“How did you read it?” Annie asked her.
“I had it translated into braille. That's pretty easy to do. I type all my reports in braille, and my secretary retypes them for sighted people.”
They talked for over an hour, and then Dr. Steinberg left her. She said that if Annie wanted her to, she would come back again.
“I'd like that,” Annie said softly. She felt like a child again, at everyone's mercy. She had told her too about Sabrina and Candy wanting her to move into a house with them.
“What do you want to do?” Dr. Steinberg had asked her, and Annie had said she didn't want to be a burden to them.
“Then don't be. Go to school. Learn what you need to know so that you can be independent.”
“I guess that's what you did.”
“Yes, but I wasted a lot of time feeling sorry for myself before that. You don't need to do that, Annie. It sounds like you have a good family. I did too. But I punished everyone for a long time. I hope you don't do that. It's a waste of time. You'll enjoy your life again, if you do what you need to. You can do almost everything that sighted people can do, except maybe watch movies. But there are so many things you can do.”
“I can't paint anymore,” Annie said sadly. “That's all I ever wanted to do.”
“I couldn't be a surgeon either. But I like psychiatry a lot better. There are probably a lot of artistic things you can do. Talents you don't even know you have. The secret is to find them. To accept the challenge. You've been given a chance here, to be more than you were before. And something tells me that you're going to do it. You have a whole life ahead of you, and new doors to open, if you're willing to try.” Annie didn't answer for a long time, as she thought about it. And a few minutes later Dr. Steinberg got up to leave. Annie could hear her cane sweeping the floor.
“You don't have a dog?”
“I'm allergic to them.”
“I hate dogs.”
“Then don't have one. Annie, you've got most of the choices you had before, and more. See you next week.” Annie nodded, and heard the door close. She lay back in her bed, thinking of everything Dr. Steinberg had said.
Chapter 13
The next few weeks were insanely hectic for Sabrina. She took care of her father, and tried to buoy his spirits. Candy wasn't as much help as she'd hoped. She was easily distracted, disorganized, and still too upset about their mother's death to assist in the ways Sabrina needed. In so many aspects, Candy was still a child, and now she expected Sabrina to mother her. Sabrina did her best, but sometimes it was very hard.
After signing the lease, they went back through the house to decide which of the furniture they wanted to keep. There were a lot of pretty pieces that Sabrina and Candy both agreed they liked. She helped Candy put her apartment up for rent. It was off the market in three days, at a profit to Candy. She was going to make enough from it to cover her rent. And Sabrina got out of her lease, for a minimum penalty. She sold some of her furniture, put other pieces in storage, and earmarked what they'd need on East Eighty-fourth Street. Candy had rented her penthouse fully furnished, so they had nothing to move from there. Sabrina had told Candy to book the movers for August first. It was something she could do to help. And between the four hundred phone calls she had to make, Sabrina visited Annie every day. She had finally agreed to move in with them and see how it went. After her second meeting with Dr. Steinberg, Annie had told both of her sisters that if they babied her or made her feel helpless, she would move out. And both Candy and Sabrina had agreed, and said they would be respectful of her and wait until she asked for their help, unless she was about to fall down the stairs.
By the third week of July, when Annie was released from the hospital, all three girls were excited about the house and living together again, in spite of why they were moving there.
Annie's first days at her father's house were difficult. Being there without their mother was newer to her than to the others. They had already been there for three weeks without her. For Annie, it was all fresh. She knew the house perfectly, so could move around fairly easily, but in every room she expected to hear her mother's voice. She walked into her closets, and felt her clothes with her fingers and put them to her face. She could smell her perfume, and almost sense her in the room. It was agony at times being there, and reminded her again and again of her last vision of the steering wheel slipping out of her mother's hands as she flew out of the car. The memory haunted Annie, and she spoke of it during every session with Dr. Steinberg. She couldn't get it out of her mind, nor the feeling that she should have done something to stop it, but there hadn't been time. She even dreamed of it at night, and losing Charlie after the accident just made things worse. In some ways, she was glad she was moving to New York, and not back to Florence. She needed a fresh start. But her father had agreed not to give up her apartment there for a while.
Her treatment plan when she left the hospital was fairly straightforward, and the ophthalmologist explained it to Sabrina as well. Sabrina was beginning to feel more like Annie's mother than her sister. She was responsible for everyone now. Annie, Candy because she was still so young and irresponsible at times, and their father, who seemed to be getting more helpless by the hour. He lost things, broke things, cut himself twice, and couldn't remember where anything was, or worse, had never known. Sabrina commented to Tammy on the phone late one night that their mother must have done everything except chew his food for him. He had been totally pampered, protected, and spoiled. She had been the consummate wife, and it wasn't Sabrina's style. She tried to get him to do some things for himself, with very little success. He complained a lot, whined constantly, and cried often. It was understandable, but Sabrina was at her wit's end dealing with him and everything else.
Annie's doctor wanted her to have follow-up CT scans after her brain surgery, and he had strongly recommended that she attend a training school for the blind in New York for six months. He had told her and Sabrina that it would allow Annie to become independent, and able to live successfully on her own, which was ultimately their goal. Annie had been sullen about it for days after they talked, and wandered around her father's house looking depressed. She had a white cane, but wouldn't use it. In her parents' house she managed well, as long as no one moved anything. Candy left a chair out of place in the dining room, and as Annie cruised through the room unsuspectingly, she fell flat on her face. Candy apologized profusely as she helped her up.
“That was not cute!” Annie said, furious with her, but more at the fates that had humbled her this way. “Why did you do that?”
“I forgot… I'm sorry…I didn't do it on purpose!” It was the kind of thing Candy would have said as a child, and still did. Intent was all that mattered to her, not result.
Annie was determined to bathe herself alone, and forbade her sisters to come into the bathroom with her, although she'd never been modest before, and no one in the family really was. Their father was circumspect and never appeared at breakfast without a robe, and their mother had been as well, but the girls had always drifted in and out of each other's bathrooms, looking for hair dryers, curling irons, nail polish remover, clean panty hose, and a missing bra, in various states of undress. Now Annie went in fully dressed and closed and locked the door. Her second day home, her bathtub had overflowed, and as water poured through the dining room chandelier directly below it, Sabrina realized what had happened, and ran upstairs. She pounded on the door, and Annie finally let her in. Sabrina turned the tub off for her, standing in two inches of water on the marble floor.