My father, at the convalescent hospital outside town, has just called. As always, what he said makes no sense whatever. Alzheimer's is a devastating disease. Abe says he can't stand to see the old man, but I go when I can.
I begin mopping the floor. Soup for tonight is on the stove. A lot of little bugs have gotten in through the screen, looking for coolness, I guess, and will have to be dealt with.
Molly's room is a mess. Her baby picture still sits on the chest. I look at it for a long time.
I notice I am wearing my nightgown, though it is afternoon. This will never do. I go into my bedroom and look in the closet, at the large overfull hamper. I have forgotten to take the dry cleaning. I look in my drawer and find a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. My legs are thick and white.
I sit down on the bed. The soup burns up. The dog knocks over the pail of soapy water on the kitchen floor. I lie down on the bed. The smoke alarm goes off. Someone puts out the fire on the stove.
I close my eyes.
My husband comes home, wanting his supper.
The bedroom door is locked. He pounds and threatens.
“I am thinking,” I tell him.
JUNE 15
“Leo,” I say, “I am taking a leave of absence.”
“You can't do that,” Leo says. He sits me down and tells me to get ahold of myself. I tell him I will finish out the week. He asks me just what he is supposed to do about the Accreditation Committee, the food services manager position, the projected loss of A.D.A., the lawsuit by the disgruntled faculty member, the speech he has to deliver next weekend to the Rotary, travel arrangements for his trip to the Grand Tetons next week, and so on. I am silent.
He cajoles. He threatens.
I leave the office.
He runs after me and fires me. I go home and tell my husband.
JUNE 16
My husband is storming around the house. I am vacuuming. There are cobwebs in all the corners. I clean house from sunrise to sunset. Then I drink my brandy. I still can't read.
JUNE 18
My father calls. I take the call in my bed. “When are you going to get me out of here?” he asks.
“Soon, Pops.”
“Who are these people anyway?”
“I have no idea,” I tell him. “I'll ask around and call you back.” I take some pills so I can go to sleep. It is one o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday.
When I wake up, Abe is sitting on the bed, angry. “Mom,” he says, “I'm hungry.”
I get up and make an exquisite eggplant parmigiana from scratch. Abe takes his plate to his room. My husband and I sit in silence. Finally he says, “Aren't you going to ask me how it went today?”
I look at him. His eyes are bloodshot, and the gray has thickened around his ears. I realize that I have no idea who he is.
JUNE 19
I leave. I bring shorts and toothpaste. I clean out the checking account on the way out of town. I drive for several days. I stay at the Motel 6's along the freeway. A couple of times I call my father, and he always says, “When are you gonna get me out of here?” I think about going to get him, but then he says, “Who are you anyway?”
JUNE 23
I am tired. I stop. The sign says I am in Barstow, California, Gateway to Death Valley. The motel room is dusty, but I am too tired to care. I go to bed.
JULY 25
The maid cleans every day. I eat bread and cheese and drink coffee from the coffee machine. I rinse my shorts out in the sink. I stay inside and sleep a lot.
Over the phone, I tell my father I'm living in a desert, and he replies, “You and me both.”
AUGUST 10
There is a shaded concrete walkway in front of my room and a metal chair. I have been sitting in that chair, watching the people come and go. They never stay more than a day or two, because they think there's nothing to do here.
But I am very busy. I have thought through my life to about the age of ten. It is amazing what I can remember. I have discovered how good cool water tastes, and I drink a lot of it. Although I only leave my room to pick up food at the convenience store across the street, these trips overwhelm me. Crossing the hot asphalt and avoiding cars, all the choices, the customers in line, the dash back… I am knocked off balance and have to rest afterward.
Molly's baby picture sits on the windowsill. A woman is holding Molly in her arms, smiling. Who was that woman?
A cactus grows on the other side of the parking lot, and then a long sweep of cacti recedes into the desert as far as my eyes can see. In the afternoon a wind comes up, swirling the sand. I never noticed the wind at home. There must have been some. This wind is the enemy of the cactus. It beats relentlessly against the cactus from afternoon until evening, twisting its arms into bizarre positions over time.
The days are long, and I look forward to the hour of sunset. So much happens during this hour. The wind dies down at last. The air cools. The shadows lengthen. The light dies down from steady and bright to sparkling black.
I have learned some amazing things. For instance, I can touch my own body and feel it. It feels good to rub my two bare feet together. The skin on my arms is dry and smooth. I look at my wrists and am astonished at their fine modeling. My hands are the most remarkable machines.
AUGUST 15
I took my first walk today, out into the desert. It was early, still cool. The sky is not very deep-I felt the top of it was right over my head. A vulture passed overhead, quite beautiful with its ruff of white feathers. Every morning I'm going to walk, and sit down-here-on this spot of sand, in the shade of this cactus. I have gotten up to my adolescence in the remembering. My mother died during this time. I had forgotten about her. Poor Abe. Poor Molly.
AUGUST 18
My father makes a lot more sense lately. He is always cheerful. He thinks my mother is still alive, and in a way she is. I talk to her myself.
Sometimes in the afternoon as I sit in my chair, my head begins to nod. Smoothly and imperceptibly, a sweet peace steals over me. My thoughts swirl round and round like a whirlpool and down I go. I sink into sleep. I never slept before during the daytime. I'm sure my body wanted to, but I never let my body make a decision about anything.
Sometimes I don't get hungry all day. I always ate three square meals a day. I even found out my body sometimes wants to have a bowel movement at a time other than six thirty every morning. I mentioned this to my father. He laughed, and I laughed, too.
My body is a great silent companion. I follow it around. It knows what it wants.
Sometimes as I walk in the desert, my long shadow beside me, I look down at the ground and it is very far away. I feel vast, like a mountain, aware of how the bacteria view me. I'm like a tourist in the head of the Statue of Liberty, looking out through Liberty 's eyes across the sea.
This morning I stepped on an anthill. The ants were deflected only momentarily from their purpose. All of them together seem to make up one body.
A long time ago I read that the greatest evolutionary step occurred when primitive spirochetes swimming around encountered the precursors of sperm. They attached themselves to the end of the sperm and their flailing tails allowed the sperm to move. Which is how human reproduction became possible, but that is not what interests me. What I think about is that my millions of cells are descendants of free swimmers banding together into an organized and complex universe. I am not trivial; I carry many beings within me. I deserve to survive.
AUGUST 24
It is hot even in the mornings now, hot blue above, hot yellow below. I go out now before the sun tops the black Nevada mountain range on the horizon. In the afternoon the wind whips the sand into stinging clouds and I stay inside.
I give the maid a few extra dollars. She thanks me in Spanish. Spanish is a very courtly language, musical, like water over stones. Leo always complained that the Latinos were trying to take over his college. I wonder why he hated them so much.
In the quiet evenings, the air-conditioning whirring and the shades drawn, I lie on the bed and think about the college. I think how we trained people to become just like us. This kind of thinking is very hard work, but when I have a thought it sticks to the grain of sand that is my soul.
AUGUST 26
Leo and my husband are at the door. When I open it, they look stunned and step back.
They are looking at me. I see myself their way, disheveled and plain. No mask of makeup, no curls, no shoes. My legs are brown now and strong.
They are both sweating in their suits.
