And I begin to make my nightly rounds, to walk until my ankles can’t support me any longer.
I sit in the great room, tears streaming down my face. Dog is trying to lick them off, but I push him away. This is what I remember: my son Mark on the table, his chest open. Flatlining. Everyone has left the OR, the lights have been turned off. I can barely see, but I know it’s him. A coronary artery bypass grafting gone awry, a simple procedure, but one I am not qualified to perform. This was not a dream. I have not been asleep. That I have done something terribly, terribly wrong is beyond a doubt. The gallery is full of people, no one I recognize. All sitting in judgment. All in possession of knowledge beyond my reach.
My pills sit untouched on the bedside table. I will not take them. Not today. I want to see clearly. I have a plan. I awoke with it fully formed in my mind. It grows stronger as the day progresses.
At breakfast we are reminded that the Girl Scouts are coming today and we will stuff cambric squares with lavender to make sachets.
A little later, the painters arrive. Not just a touch-up. All the walls in the great room are being redone, painted the inevitable green. The door opens and closes as they bring in equipment, buckets of paint, tarps. They set up a barrier of tape, wet paint signs hanging from it.
This does not prevent incidents. A new arrival to the floor plunges his cupped hands into a bucket of paint, begins drinking it like water. Attendants run toward him, emitting cries of dismay. There are calls for the doctor, and the man is grabbed by the arms and hustled toward the front desk. I see my chance.
I go to my room. I put on my most comfortable shoes. Is it summer or winter? Hot or cold? I don’t know, so I struggle into an extra shirt just in case. If it is winter it will be hard, but I will make it. I will go home. My mother and father are worried. They always worry.
I wasn’t allowed to have a driver’s license. I had to learn secretly during college. Even though I was still living at home, my boyfriend taught me in the parking lot of St. Pat’s, and took me to the testing facility. When my mother went through my purse looking for contraceptives, she found the license. A greater betrayal, in their eyes, a worse sin against them, such an unexpected rebellion.
I catch the door with my foot just before it closes. I take one look back. The man in the clean clothes is talking to a tall gray-haired woman, gesturing with his hands. Old people are crowding around them, attendants trying to entice them away. I open the door wider, feel the rush of hot air. I won’t have to worry about frostbite, at least. One more step, and I am through. I let the door fall behind with a click.
THREE
The sun is blinding. How long since you were so bombarded with un-filtered light? Overpowering heat, the air thick and foul-smelling from the fumes of softened asphalt under your feet. It gives as you step, makes a dark, sucking sound with each move. Like walking on a tarry moon.
You tread carefully over the sticky black surface. Sweat trickles down your neck, your bra is already soaked. You pause to take off your sweater but then are confronted with the problem of what to do with it. You hang it carefully on the antenna of a small blue car parked nearby and keep walking. There is some urgency to move, some sense that there are conspiracies afoot, that lightning will strike multiple times if you stand in one spot.
You are in a lot filled with cars of all makes, models, and colors. Which one is yours. Have you been here before. Where is James, he has the keys. And your purse? You must have left it at the hospital. Your phone. It should be embedded in your flesh so critical is it to your ability to function.
Fiona once threw your pager down the toilet and flushed. Mark, not nearly as competent, merely buried it in the back garden, and you heard it chirp at dinner. You didn’t punish either of them, understood that they were merely playing out their Darwinian destinies. Who will inherent the earth? Not any scion of your flesh.
You are nearly at the street. Placards everywhere, violators will be towed. A gate, a gatekeeper adjusting a waist-high sign, lot full. He nods to you.
The sidewalks are crowded with people, mostly the young, dressed in as little as possible. Girls in short summer dresses with spaghetti straps holding insubstantial fabrics against small breasts. Young men in oversize shorts that reach below the knee, falling from their slight hips. Sidewalk cafes, umbrellaed tables encroaching upon the sidewalks, forcing people out into the street. Cars honking. Planters that trail flowers too bright and perfect to be real. Yet you see a woman pick off a blossom and put it in her hair. Waiters hefting trays over their heads. Colorful red and pink and blue cocktails in large v-shaped glasses. People sipping from small white cups. Enormous salads.
Everything as it should be. Everything in its place. Where is your place. Where do you belong.
You realize that you are impeding the flow of traffic. People are politely navigating around you, but you are inconveniencing them. One man bumps your elbow as he passes and stops briefly to apologize. You nod and say, not at all, and begin moving again.
Summer in the city. How exciting when your mother and father allowed you to begin coming here by yourself, away from the row houses of Germantown, the concrete schoolyards and industrial storefronts, the glazier shops and printing presses. Away from the grime-colored house with the trains running through the backyard. Your mother and her gypsy charm. Black Irish, full of magic.
In your teens you turned yourself to stone to withstand her. You vowed to never rely on trickery to bind others to you. Not a difficult vow to keep, as you had no such tricks at your disposal. Your charm nonexistent. Your beauty minimal.
Whatever power you had to attract was of a colder variety.
