Zuni

Throughout it, all three hours of it, I periodically checked on Marlou. I wanted to make sure she wasn't crying too much. We held hands occasionally, exchanged hugs in the dark and necked, as much as was musculoskeletaly possible. It's a long haul, Madame Butterfly, when there's an air of sadness and loss in your own life. Fortunately, the poignant beauty of the San Francisco Opera production was so infectious that we couldn't help emerging into the crisp December afternoon enlivened and enlightened. Gordon and Jeanette were with us. We wandered outside and paused for a moment in what was left of the sun. We had all watched Butterfly's life ascend and disintegrate as Japanese screens slid across the stage. Spooky kabuki, and very affecting, and now it was time for something else. I yanked out my mobile phone. Traffic honked on Franklin Street, while Marlou and I argued about where to attempt an early post-matinee dinner. The maître d' at the Zuni said there was no wait. But, at this pre-reservation time of day, things could change. The Zuni was too far, Marlou said, and the day too cold. Fine, I said, meaning the opposite. Jeanette asked if I was okay. Getting older, I said. A standstill. Some discussion. In the end we were off, heading for the Zuni Café.

By any sensible standards, it's an expensive restaurant. But since Marlou got ill, I haven't been sensible, and my standards, and priorities, have shifted. Moments are precious. Moments with the four of us seem priceless. Jeanette has been in a wheelchair most of her life. Gordon has spent half of his life with Jeanette, and I can say the same of us. We've known each other more than 30 years. So, why not roll down Franklin Street, Jeanette and I under battery power, Gordon and Marlou choosing neuromuscular propulsion. Headed for the Zuni.

The restaurant is on one of those pie-shaped San Francisco street corners, wedged in the acute street angles of some post-earthquake urban planner. The entrance is off an alley, and that's where I went barging in. People in power wheelchairs do a lot of barging into things. Perhaps people more delicate and refined than myself can maneuver a joystick subtly and inch through an open door. But not me. My footplates hit too hard to do anything but fling, even bang, a door open. Any door. Even this particular door which brought me face-to-face with the two less-than-smiling, moderately snooty, pair behind the reception kiosk. There are four of us, I said, taking in the Zuni crowd, thirtysomethings and fortysomethings sunning themselves on the windows, drinking and looking prosperous and sportif, a whole evening and a whole lifetime before them. With me before them, too, watching the young man and woman behind the reception podium. Their expressions, particularly his, darkened. He drew in his breath, set his jaw, moved his eyes up and down an apparent list, speaking before meeting my gaze. "Sorry, but it's going to be about an hour and a half."

I was old, taking up lots of air space in a bulky wheelchair with thick tires, blasting into a soirée for the young, fit and successful at an hour when no one took reservations, and the mission having failed, it was time to abort. I rolled outside and explained things. A long wait. Let's go. I rolled across the alley, assuming others would follow. No one did. Gordon went inside and asked how long the wait was for a single diner. He left before he got an answer. Jeanette joined me across the alley. Gordon muttered that he'd seen this sort of thing too many times. Rolling up Market Street, he told me about watching maître d's place Jeanette's wheelchair next to the kitchen door, then move her somewhere even less desirable...under a stairway...too close to a restroom. It made him angry, he said. At the moment, all this talk only made me retreat, retract my head between my shoulder blades like an experienced tortoise.

What would you do, I asked Jeanette? She ought to know, after all. Jeanette has been handling restaurants, and restaurants have been handling her, for decades. I have been in a wheelchair for less than 15 years and have some catching up to do. And the Zuni encounter had not occurred in one of my more robust and expansive moments. Marlou and her health are on my mind.

I would look at them, Jeanette told me. I would make eye contact, let them know through my expression that I was perfectly aware of what was going on. And wait.

I asked her what was going on. Jeanette seemed surprised, mildly amused. Hadn't I been around the disability block? Didn't I know?

I seems that I've had a lifetime of knowing and not knowing. I am sensitive enough to pick up what's happening, yet so easily shamed and unnerved that I can swallow down my suspicions. Yes, there was something going on back there at the Zuni. How would Jeanette describe it? Open discrimination? Cripple hating?

No, no, she said. They just think that wheelchairs are big, obtrusive and trouble. They didn't know what to do with two of them. Though, at the last minute, they had tried. The woman from the Zuni's front desk had wandered outside and offered Jeanette a couple of cocktail tables. If we wanted them. Marlou went in, judged the space, and decided two wheelchairs wouldn't fit. The hostess knew she hadn't handled us very well, Jeanette said. No, it wasn't pure discrimination, just human ignorance and bias. Measure a wheelchair, Jeanette said, and you'll find that it doesn't take up much more space than a conventional seat...which patrons tend to slide around anyway.

And wheelchairs, being more maneuverable, can actually adapt to space better, I thought. But I thought this too late. We were gone. The moment of confrontation was lost. I could see how it would have gone. "An hour and a half wait, I'm afraid." Oh? I just called. There was hardly any wait at all. Wonder what happened.

Would that have worked? Would that have made any difference? By now we had turned up Franklin Street and, blocks being short in this part of the City, dipped down curb ramps and crossed intersections, one after another. I never forget why this is possible. Curb cuts, the wheelchair spaces at the Opera House, the accessible toilet back at Zuni, all this exists because someone yelled and screamed and made a general nuisance of themselves. Did they go on yelling and screaming a bit too long? Yes, sometimes. More commonly, did my generation's disabled pioneers permanently cast themselves as outsiders, forever stuck in an us-versus-them worldview? Oh, I suppose. Still, there's not a major street in San Francisco a wheelchair can't cross...well, at least not many.

"My friends in Washington wouldn't put up with what happened at the Zuni," said Jeanette. She was speaking of disabled advocates in various government branches and NGOs. I know some of these people, having worked with them decades ago. We have gone our separate ways, yet with me in a wheelchair our ways may be converging. They're too old to protest. I'm too old to forget what they accomplished. Particularly now as we roll into Absinthe, another brasserie near the Opera House. This time I let Jeanette handle it on her own.

There's no room, she says rolling out, but there's no bitter feeling either. The maître d' was a nice guy. He's sending us next door to the coffee bar in the wine shop. The place turns out to be self-service, but the Hispanic guy behind the counter eyes the two wheelchairs and decides to become a waiter. First thing we know, he's at our table taking orders. One croque monsieur, one lentil salad, wines. We have a convivial meal, rich in conversation and calories, without the haute price.

On the way out of the coffee bar, I make it a point to roll up to the cash register and thank the man who helped us. Maybe that's the deal. We acknowledge people who are kind. We confront those who aren't. So indecorous, so high profile to make a fuss in a restaurant. Yet, like Gordon, when I'm angry, I can make a fuss myself. More precisely, I don't worry about fussing. I simply get assertive. Actually, within myself, I simply get clear.