Turn of Mind

The photo has few other points of interest. They are standing on a porch—a rare feature for the brownstones on this street. It is summer: They are wearing T-shirts, and the honeysuckle vine climbing up the railing is in full bloom.

Behind them are folding lawn chairs, the kind woven from cheap multicolored plastic strips. A small oval plastic table immediately in front. On it, three empty tall glasses and one full one that contains a flat watery amber liquid. There is a slight blur in the bottom right-hand corner of the photo—perhaps the photographer’s hand, gesturing the couple to move together.

The sun must be behind the photographer, because his (her?) shadow shades the woman’s neck and breasts.

And suddenly I remember. No, I feel. The heat. The insistent buzz of cicadas that were everywhere that year—the seventeen-year plague, everyone said, only half kidding. They crunched underfoot, spattered across our windshields, forced us inside during the hottest months of summer.

Peter and Amanda’s house had a screened-in porch, which is what made it possible to sit outdoors that day, to relieve the claustrophobia, the sense of incarceration. We were waiting for James, who was late, as usual.

We’d drunk our beers and were debating whether to open some more when Peter suggested capturing the moment. What moment? Amanda and I had exclaimed, in such perfectly matched tones that we both laughed.

Peter, characteristically, was unruffled. This moment that will never come again, he said. This moment after which nothing will ever be the same. Amanda made a face but went inside for the camera agreeably enough.

And what is likely to be different after this moment? I teased Peter. Do you have an announcement to make? Some revelation? That made him uncomfortable.

No, of course not, he said. Nothing of the sort. He shifted in his chair, picked up his glass, and raised it to his lips again, even though it was empty.

I guess I’m grateful, he said, finally.

That’s an odd emotion to feel when it’s more than one hundred degrees at six o’clock in the evening, I said.

He refused to smile. No, grateful is the right word, he said. Grateful for every moment that the bottom doesn’t fall out. He paused, then laughed. It’s those damn cicadas, he said. They make one think about Old Testament–style wrath-of-God type things.

You know, he continued, there are remarkable parallels between events documented in an ancient Egyptian manuscript, Admonitions of Ipuwer, and the book of Exodus. Pestilence and floods, rivers turning red, and no one able to see the face of his fellow man for days on end because of locusts. Many a doctoral candidate has been grateful for these points. Although if I never read another thesis with the word locust in it, I myself will be eternally grateful. He stopped, leaned forward, suddenly intent.

And you, Jennifer, he said. What would you be grateful for?

Taken unaware, I gave him a breezy reply: Oh, the usual. Health and happiness. That the kids keep doing as well as they’re doing. That James’s and my late fifties are as productive as our early fifties and our sixties not too dull as we start to slow down.

He took it more seriously than I had intended.

Perhaps. Yes. Those are not unreasonable hopes.

Well, I’m a reasonable woman, I said. But frankly, you’re alarming me.

I don’t mean to. But I do have a decade or so on you. Enough to know that the words reasonable and hope don’t always fit well in the same sentence.

Then, a bustle and a little noise, and Amanda was back with the camera. She gestured for Peter and me to stand together. No no, I said. I’m a little spooked by what Peter has been saying. I’d rather not have this particular moment recorded with me in it. Here, let me.

And so I took the picture—my sense memory is so clear I can hear the double click-click of the predigital camera—and at that moment James arrived, bearing flowers and wine and keeping his own counsel on things of import. But I didn’t realize that at the time.

It is a day for the rending of garments. For the gnashing of teeth and the covering of mirrors. Amanda.

I rage at Magdalena. How could you withhold this information from me? I may be impaired, but I am not fragile! I accepted my diagnosis. I buried a husband. I am nothing if not resilient.

We did tell you. Many times.

No. I would have remembered this. It would have been as though my own fingers had been severed. As if my own heart sliced open.

Check your notebook. Here. Look at this entry. And this. Here is the news article of her death. Here is the obituary. Here is what you wrote when you first found out. And we’ve been to the police station twice. Visited by investigators three times. We’ve gone over this and over this. You have mourned. And mourned again. We went to church. We said the Rosary.

I? Said the Rosary?

Well, I said the Rosary. You sat there. You were calm. Not aware, but not distressed. You get like that sometimes. Calm and accepting. Almost catatonic. I like to take you to church when that happens. Magdalena isn’t looking at me when she says this.