Movie Night

Lou Gehrig's disease has stolen her ability to walk, talk or even eat unassisted. But Margy Watkins is still the life of the party

The first time I went to Movie Night, I was nervous. Also squeam-ish. For months, my friends in Charlotte County, Va., had been urging me to join them on a Friday night at Margy Watkins's house to watch a movie. But I knew that even in this cinema-deprived county, Movie Night wasn't just about catching a new flick.

The problem is, Margy has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- ALS, known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The last time I'd seen her, she could still move her leg to press a button on her electric-powered wheelchair, and could speak enough to spell out a joke, letter by letter, until I got it. In the year since, I'd gotten regular updates on her declining condition from our mutual friends but had shied away from visiting myself, wary of trying to talk with someone who has lost her power of speech.

I imagined that on Movie Night everyone would stand around awkwardly, wearing the heightened, over-animated expressions of people trying to avoid looking at the person in the wheelchair, who might be, well, unattractive. The Margy I had only briefly met a few years earlier was a vibrant, active, opinionated woman of about 50. I was not among her inner circle of old friends: some were devastated at her diagnosis but gathered around to help and support; others could not bear to see her immobile and silent and stayed away.

But Movie Night had become an important weekly ritual for my good friends, particularly Ann Charlton and Sharon Reilly, and I wanted to know why. I've been a part-time resident of Charlotte County in south-central Virginia for nearly 25 years, long enough to know and be known, and Margy was becoming a legend. Ann and Sharon, who are related by marriage, are very different, and yet both spoke intensely of how Margy amazed them with her determination to enjoy life when fate and medicine had pretty much consigned her to the back bench.

As I pulled into the driveway of her small ranch house in Charlotte Court House (population 404, give or take), I was relieved to recognize some of the other cars. There was Eve Bader's van, and Sharon's Subaru, Ann's Toyota and Liz Walker's Chevy SUV.

Through the side door (nobody uses front doors around here) I surveyed the scene for a moment. Women were working in the kitchen, opening plastic containers of food they'd brought, putting out a stack of red and blue plastic plates, tossing a salad. Others sat at the table, glasses of wine in hand, mouths in motion. Another woman, unknown to me, sat nearby reading, looking up every few seconds at her patient.

Who, of course, was Margy. She was in her wheelchair, a red shawl over her torso, her computer screen on the table in front of her. Her face by this time seemed to have frozen in place, but in an impish grin. She raised her eyebrows in greeting as I opened the door. An operatic tenor was in full throttle over the audio system. "We're always arguing," said a short woman with a toy poodle in her arms as she greeted me. "I think the best tenor of all time was Jussi Bjoerling. But not everyone agrees with me."

This was an issue I was ill-equipped to take a position on. We ate, serving ourselves from the dishes on the kitchen counter, getting caught up on what our children were doing, on Eve's fifth-grade pupils, on the health of our aging parents. The woman with the poodle turned out to be Norma Williams, who whispered to me that, although the presidential campaign was in full swing, we shouldn't discuss it, because Margy's parents, who were there for dinner, were Republicans, and everyone else was a Democrat. Margy, listening, started to type me a message on her computer.

As she moved her head almost imperceptibly, the cursor jumped around an alphabet grid, building words by plucking each letter. If she made a mistake, the cursor would back up, and she'd try again to get it right. I sat next to her, reading as she wrote, unsure whether I should keep up or wait for her to activate the eerie automated voice that spoke her words. I read:

"I once got my Republican parents to vote for Chuck Robb." (She knew I was familiar with the Democratic former senator and governor.) "But I had to cry."

I laughed. It was a genuine laugh, but also tinged with relief that I could laugh. That in fact I could not resist laughing. In that moment, we became co-conspirators, like little girls giggling behind the teacher's back. I laughed at the thought of anyone crying on behalf of stiff Mr. Robb, and at the befuddlement that must have been felt by Margy's parents.

I confess I don't remember the movie we watched that night. It was German, with subtitles. But I do remember that I forgot to be squeamish.