It’s all about the view, how the light and shadow play their game. How sunrise
and the horizon merge with the three rivers and swirl into a kaleidoscope of color, steel and industry. Winter accentuates the magic of Pittsburgh. Steam floats up from rivers threatening to freeze as massive barges push silently along, leaving a wake that ripples steely-silver and black then mellows to smooth glass. Spindly tree branches interlace and crawl up steep hillsides that just a memory earlier were festooned with brilliant autumn pride. Now the bare oak bones glitter crystal-like with fairyland ice. A sky so blue it screams at you contrasts against silhouetted buildings, old and new, shiny and patina from weather and time.

Every city on the planet has its mojo, but the ‘Burgh rumbles energy almost the same way Los Angeles does … minus the earthquakes and stars you can’t find in the sky. An Iroquois Queen once held court at the confluence where the rivers meet and to this day, if it is silent enough and just the right time of the moon, you can hear her voice.

Nothing about what you see is all there is. The twenty foot high spraying fountain at the arrow tip of Point Park shoots from a fourth river deep beneath the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Monongahela. Secrets, secrets everywhere and many will never be revealed.

Take the curious case of the lights I no longer see. Who knew I’d miss something so annoying, but I do. When a door closes, God opens a window and I had become the poster child for developing senses. I could not speak. The doctors and shrinks were so frustrated they finally decided to leave me alone, just like the tiny firefly sparkles. Alone.

All right, it didn’t happen that easily. From the hospital, I found myself at home. We lived in a beautiful old revived Victorian on Grandview Avenue. It had an intriguing history, as many say it was a surreptitious, high-class brothel in the late 1800’s. Alone while Mike hustled and bustled in his makeshift home office in the granny apartment over the back garage, I found myself moping around, playing loud music or blasting the television just so I couldn’t hear the happy copulating ghosts or my own once vital life, panting, climaxing, laughing at me. Twenty days and I’d already almost given up.

Still, no words come from my mouth, but oh the words that flew through my fingers. Vicious words. Frustrated, evil, desperate words. Fruitless words. I packed everything into those thoughts, all the energy and power I always used to gain ground were reduced to nothing more than speed tapping on a computer keyboard or scribbling with whatever I could get my hands on, onto whatever I could write on. “Fuck you!” blazed in red lipstick on the sheets; “Absolutely not!” texted via phone to my shrink; “Over my dead body!” emailed across town to Barb who thought I might like a little visit from the crew at the office.

At first, communicating was a relentless inconvenience. Why couldn’t Mike see in my expression what I wanted or needed? How hard could it be to interpret a grunt as no or yes or bite me? He just wasn’t getting it.

Realizing the basic grunt was not an optimum communications solution, I opted for our laptops. He would talk, at first standing behind me to read my typed response, then reading it via instant-messaging from his own laptop so we could at least observe each others expressions. Viva la technology. All we needed to do was discover who sank who’s battleship. I refused to be beaten.

This solution worked well with my phone too and texting, a thing I had previously despised and relegated to the angsty young adult population, quickly became my business communication of choice. In some cases, the succinct nature of it worked better than flowery phone conversations and often clients would forget my disability until a face-to- face meeting or live verbiage became vital to close a deal. The partners would step in to pinch hit for me … or so I thought. In reality, they were wisely covering their own asses.

Twenty two frustrating days had passed but that day, standing in the freezing cold and watching the living city below Grandview Avenue, I’d learned more in a sort of slam, bam, thank you ma’am duo of events than I ever imagined possible. One could say I had a rough morning.

At six a.m. I sat in my psychiatrist’s waiting room. Out of habit and foolishly thinking this would end very soon, I didn’t want to change my normal routine. Even my dentist knew I’d only make super early morning appointments, just like my hairdresser and optometrist. As usual I went to the gym at five, then sat patiently waiting for the shrink, showered and smelling sweet although there were icicles at the tips of my hair. I had to walk or take public transportation. You see, they wouldn’t let me drive. Since when does a person need their voice to shift gears, turn on windshield wipers or hit the break? Only God knew, but that was the new law. Everything had a new law, from nature to civil rights, where I was concerned.

Doctor Mallard was a savvy woman, I’ll give her that. Never rattled, always calm, tolerant of my early morning appointment demands and even my sarcasm, this woman always looked sharp, like she’d just stepped off a business professional magazine cover. That morning, it was a gorgeous tweed and leather trimmed suit, a hand painted silk blouse and Gucci pumps. Me? I looked like a ragamuffin who had just negotiated early morning winter pedestrian traffic and lost the battle but I was careful to check my irritation at the door. Pissed off might have worked well with my husband, but Doc Mallard, perfect and sleek as the fowl she was named for, took none of it. I smiled, pulled off my hoodie and flipped open my laptop so we could begin.

The cool thing about instant messaging is that you can save the conversations and review them. The downfall of instant messaging is that you can save the conversations and review them and I was about to learn a critical lesson. I am not always right. I’m not always fair. And I’m not always going to win. Period.

“Carina, I think it’s time we discussed solving this communications issue.” At least she pronounced my name correctly. My Sicilian mother must be grinning in her grave.

I shrugged, poised my fingers and tapped away. “I think we’re doing just dandy, Doc.”

Her brows curled. “No Carina, I’m afraid you don’t understand. Let me explain it this way.”

I stared at her. Waited. She uncrossed her long, elk-like legs and re-crossed them. It would take me five hours a day in the gym to get calves like that and I wondered if I was overpaying a shrink who worked fewer hours than my gardener in winter.

“What I’m saying is that I believe we’ve gone as far as we can go together. I don’t think I can help you under these conditions.”

Conditions? Conditions? I saw red. Just how, pray tell, was my situation an inconvenience to her? How was I, the poor stricken party, creating unpleasant conditions for her to deal with? My fingers flew, clattering and misspelling themselves across the screen. “Waht conditins are you talkimg about?”

She read, drew in a long breath and pushed back a shiny Lana Turner wave from her temple. “I understand that you are still working, Carina.”

“What the fuck … (delete, delete, delete, delete) … hell are you talking about? Of course I’m working, I have a job. That’s what people do when they have a job. Work. It’s your job to get me back to full capacity and there’s no way you can do that if you quit. Now, can we get back to it?” I pushed send and yahoo instant messaging boiked onto her screen just as I shot her a tilted scowl.

“We made agreements when we began. What were our agreements, Carina?”

“C A R R I E. My name is Carrie.” I pounded on the keys, sending her my patented stink eye along with the message.

“What were our agreements?” She glared right back. “First, you were to stop working and concentrate on relaxing, meditating, focusing on the issues you are avoiding. Second, you were to finish the daily assignments I gave you. You have presented nothing but excuses. Third, you were to begin learning to sign.”

My fingers flew like the wind. “No point in learning to sign, I’m not freaking deaf, this will be fixed, over and done with and I see no –”

“Those were the stipulations we agreed on, correct?”

I didn’t even get to hit send, dammit. I nodded curtly.

“All right. We’ve been at this for weeks with no progress. Reviewing the situation, there is nothing physically wrong with you. Carina, this is emotional. It is psychological and we have no idea how deep it is or how far it will go. Morning after morning you come here and play semantics games, nothing more. Frankly, I’m very concerned. The human brain is a powerful and complex thing. Will this hysterical silence advance into hysterical blindness? Worse? It’s vital you get to the bottom of this.”

“You’re supposed to be doing that, Doctor! Getting to the bottom of this!”

“I can do nothing, Carina. We talked about this. Only you can do this, only you can do the work. And on that note, I must tell you, it’s vital you get to the bottom of it without me. Now, I have several recommendations –”

I didn’t hear anything else, I couldn’t over the clacking keys. Again, she interrupted me.

“There is a … resort of sorts outside Chicago … staffed with professional personnel … to help deal with your situation. Mr. Ross and I have been discussing this for several days now and he agrees with me that this just may be the best –”

My turn to interrupt. I shot my hand up and felt my jaw tighten. When she sighed and leaned back in her chair, I began to type again. “Do you and my husband think you can just send me away to an institution?” Glare.

“Of course not. Carina, you must realize it is time, perhaps well past time, for you to focus fully on seeking the answers to this.”

My chest tightened. Could they do that? Just send me away? I honestly thought those kinds of things only happened in bad Victorian novels and made-for-television movies. Fear prickled my skin. “Wait! Wait!” My fingers shouted. “Listen, I’ll cut back on work, I’ll do those assignments you gave me. Hey, hey, I’ll even make later appointments so you don’t need to get here at the butt crack of dawn.”

Her expression was pitifully blank, or perhaps a better description would be pitilessly blank.

It was a stalemate and her tight lips were as speechless as mine. With no reason to continue, I packed my backpack and walked out.

Doctor Mallard’s office was six blocks from mine, six miserable blocks in the splattering chill of wet, grey February snow. I needed time and the freezing cold to simultaneously make me sharp and numb so I walked. I swear my life felt like a country music song – Lost my driving privileges, lost my doc and now I had to discover if I’d lose my job too. Good thing I didn’t have a dog or a pick up.

Right there on the glass doors to the nineteenth floor, I could clearly see that the name Ricci-Ross had not yet been added to the Carter, Baker & Baumann sign. Okay, maybe they just hadn’t had time yet, maybe everyone’s been too busy. I plowed inside, right past the shocked receptionist, past Barb who closed her eyes painfully as I charge directly into Gary Carter’s office. He stood and calmly walked over to close the door.

Gary was fine-looking in a Charlton Heston, slightly graying at the temples kind of way. His broad shoulders had long been the perfect wall of protection for me … and the barricade to scale for battle or play. He was everything I wanted unless I wanted Mike. That morning, I more than wanted Gary, I needed him.

“Carrie, sweetheart, are you all right?”

Why didn’t that sound sincere? Was he in on the lock Carrie away plot too? Nah, that would just be too odd.

Refusing to rely on anything but my facial expressions to communicate with the man who had been my lover for ten years, I simply stepped into his arms and let him hold me close.

“Now, now, don’t cry, baby. This will all be fixed. It’ll … just … well … take time, that’s all.”

Suddenly I was standing alone, wavering like an unprotected new willow in the wind. He went to his big boss chair behind his bog boss desk and sat, eyes avoiding me a though I wasn’t even there. I stepped closer, set my hands flat on his glass surfaced desk and waited. And waited. And waited. It was when I slapped my palms hard that he finally looked up.

There are three pieces of advice my beautiful Italian mother gave me the day I left for college. Sophia Ricci was a stunner, classier than Sophia Loren and smarter than the average bear. She met my dad when he visited Rome on his college spring break. They married and came here and although she made several Italian speaking friends, she never really recovered from the shock of America. I suddenly understood her at that moment. I suddenly saw the strangeness of her new world through my new world. If I’d known, standing in the driveway and anxious to hit the road for my sunny west coast studies at UCLA, that it would be the last time I’d ever see her, I might have listened harder, asked questions, stayed longer.

“Carina,” she said, her dark eyes sparkling. “Always remember … wear a good bra to look good, never marry a Kennedy no matter how handsome he is, and always, always watch what you say. Words have power, mio bello, so always watch what you say.”

Thinking on her long-ago words I looked into Gary’s eyes and knew I was royally screwed. Gary’s words were about to have some serious power.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered. “We have decided to place you on temporary disability with an extended, indefinite leave of absence. You should go get yourself well.”

I tugged a contract from the nearest folder and scribbled on the back. “Or what? I work here, Gary. I’m a partner. A huge percentage of your clients come from me!”

“You need to rest, Carrie. Somewhere … else. Stop texting the clients, stop emailing. Step away. You’re no longer cleared for any contact with this company’s clients or offices. This is for your own good.”

Tears blurred my vision while vengeance began to build great thick walls of sticks and stones. “Gary Carter, you forget, I know the size of your stubby prick and where your wife has her hair done,” I scribbled so hard the paper tore.

His hand gripped tight on my wrist. “Carrie, baby, please don’t make me call security. Just … leave.”

I opened my mouth and tried to say “I love you”. I tried to express my fears and terror, but what tumbled from my lips could have come from a drunk at the butt end of a weekend binge. Slurred, unclear, guttural.

Everything I needed to know was written on Gary’s face. I disgusted him. His revulsion was so intense I actually stepped back.

“Just … leave, Carrie. Now.”

I swear a piece of me remained behind in Gary’s office, a piece I never knew was removable before.

I leaned over the railing and looked straight down through the fairy-land glass encased trees at the railroad tracks, the rivers. My vision rose slowly to take in the bridges and buildings, the distant Cathedral of Learning piercing a foggy, snow soaked sky. Then, strangely the moon appeared, almost full, a whisper of her near wholeness teasing me through thinning cloud cover.