Turn of Mind

The girl rolls her eyes. Here he goes again, she says.

Why on earth? you ask.

I mean, if I were thirty-five and were in the position I am now. Stupid job. Not getting on with anything. Not having written my novel. Things like that.

Are you working on a novel? you ask. It seems like this is information that a lot of people divulge in bars, on examining tables.

No. That’s the point. Here I am, still in my twenties, so I have an excuse. But at thirty-five you don’t have any more. Excuses, I mean.

You’d be surprised, you say. Mark will have plenty of excuses when he’s that age. Just wait and see.

Who is Mark?

You are confused. Who is he?

Just someone I know, you say. I think he might be my nephew.

You think? The girl starts to laugh and then looks at your face and stops.

An image rises up in front of you. A distraught face. Slight shoulders shaking. Someone in deep distress. Her face is familiar.

Fiona, you say slowly. Fiona is someone else I know, someone I admire very much, who seems to have gotten herself into some trouble. Mark, on the other hand. You pause to think. Mark has always been in trouble.

The girl looks confused. Fiona?

Fiona is someone who always knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, you say slowly. But sometimes that is not the best thing. No.

I find I don’t really like those kind of people very much, the girl says.

No. You would like Fiona.

The girl nods politely. She has lost interest in talking about people she doesn’t know. She whispers something to the young man next to her and he smiles in return. He has turned his attention back to the television. It’s now the national news, all bad. Catastrophes natural and manmade. Money lost by millions, upticks in flooding, natural disasters, murders committed and unsolved.

You have finished the food on your plate, and both glasses, the tall and the short one, are empty. The heavyset man is at the other end of the counter, talking to another man in a suit.

Do you know where the bathroom is? you ask. The girl points. There. Near the door where you came in.

You get off the stool, stumbling slightly. You feel your way across the crowded room, using the backs of chairs and sometimes people’s shoulders, as guides. You are unsteady and feel intense pressure on your bladder.

The door marked toilet is locked, so you wait, shifting from one foot to the other like a small child. You hear the toilet flush, water being run in the sink, and the click of the door as it finally opens. A woman emerges.

You stumble past her and barely make it to the toilet to relieve yourself. Even so, there is a wet patch on your pant leg. You take a paper towel and rinse it out, making it more prominent than before. At least it’s not as bad as blood. You think of all the times you locked yourself in public bathrooms like this, scrubbing at pants to rid them of bloodstains from tampon overflows. For a doctor you’ve had remarkably little insight into your own body. You secreted tampons everywhere: in your purse, in the glove compartment of the car, in your desk drawer, and yet you were continually caught short. Your body was always betraying you.

It got worse as you got older. There were days in your forties and early fifties when you hesitated to schedule surgeries because of brief, intense episodes of hemorrhaging that could happen any time. Your body defeated you in ways it had never in the past. You wore double tampons and pads underneath that. You’d go into the surgery wearing adult diapers, waddling slightly when you walked. But once the gushing started, there was no stopping it. You learned to live with the humiliation. Blood in the OR. You kept extra clothes in the office, in the car. Two years of that. You thought you might mourn the loss of fertility, but the trauma of perimenopause made you welcome it.

You look in the mirror as you wash your hands. What you see there startles you. The very short crinkly white hair. Your face covered with red blotches, liver spots on your forehead, and the slack skin over the jawbone. Too much sun.

You never did listen to the dermatologists, felt their cautions were old lady-ish. Now you are an old lady. Your life should be discussed in the past tense. You are suddenly tired. It’s time to go home. You exit the bathroom only to stop, disoriented.

Where are you? A crowded restaurant. Overwhelming smells of heavy garlicky sauces. The noise makes your head ache. Bodies press up against you, propel you back into the open door of the bathroom. As if from far away, you catch sight of a door marked exit. You start to make your way toward it.

Voices are shouting behind you. Hey! Lady! A man holding menus nods, opens the door for you. Stop her! The man sings a cheery Good evening! Evening? you ask, and then you are outside, a warm breeze caressing your face.

When did day turn to night? The heat into deliciousness? The streetlights are on, all the shops and restaurants are lit and welcoming, and bright lights shine amid the leaves of the trees, which are in full bloom. People everywhere, holding hands, linking arms, the warmth of human bodies in harmony. It is a party. It is a fairyland. You plunge deep into the festive night.

You have not lived until you have seen fish striving for the moon. By the dozens they burst out of the water, their silvery bodies flashing as they rise. The perfect shiny arc as they peak. The downward trajectory is lyrical: perfect dives back into the blue gray depths.