Metaphor of the Falling Cat

It was about a year after the car accident when the thoughts came back to me. They’d been gone so long that I’d forgotten all about them, but when they came back, they came back fast. They came back all at once.

I was at my get-well party when it happened. “Just for you,” my brother had said, putting his arm around my shoulder, breathing in my face. There was a big sign on the wall that said get well soon, wally, but I’d been well for four months. We all knew the party was really just for my ­brother, just so he could show off his wife’s newfound culinary skills, and show off his Brooklyn brownstone, which he’d remodeled from scratch, all cherrywood and spiral staircase. There were fifty people milling around, chatting with their mouths full of shrimp. Most of them I’d...