It was the third time that mice had taken up residence here in the house. On top of all the humans and their cats and dogs and friends that crowded into this here house, them little brown field mice found their way in again, too.
That first dog was a natural-born mouser. By the time My Lady and the Husband even figured out they had a mouse problem at all, the dog was hard at work. Inside. Outside. Didn’t matter where he was, he would make a sudden-like snap of his head, and before you knowed it he’d be licking his lips, the infernal rodent already swallowed up whole without so much as a trace.
That dog had been a squirrel-chaser from way back, but you always kinda wondered if he had any real seriousness about catching one, or if he was in it for the pure fun of the chase. Well, the day came — after many years of chasing he up and caught one, and that settled that. It was like the taste of blood had lent newfound meaning to his life, and from then on the big, gentle beast was forever on the lookout to up and kill any creature in his path that was not either a human or another dog neither.
My Lady might have worried about him swallowing all kind of mice, bones and claws and tails and all, cept for that time when he swallered up an entire roasting chicken they had left up on the kitchen counter to cool off for their family picnic. When they come in later there was not so much as a spot of grease or lick of skin or any sign a-tall that the bird had ever existed. The Husband had even surrounded the cooked-up bird with a sort-of barricade of forks and glasses and other kitchen things, every one of which stood right in its original place – a hedge of utensils surrounding nothing. Well, they called up the animal doctor, and he asked them to remind him how much the dog weighed. When they told him, he chuckled to hisself and said, you don’t need to worry a bit, cause that big boy won’t have any trouble with the likes of an 8-pound roasting chicken. The whole thing became one of those stories that families like to tell over and over at get-togethers; but anyhow my Lady knew that no little teeny mouse would cause a digestive disturbance to the noble dog, or even a whole passel of them.
They counted eighteen mice that the dog chomped down that one summer, and that was just the ones they was around to catch him at.
The second time them mice moved in, they was already on their second dog and the Husband was already the X. But while the first dog had the Killer Instinct, the second dog was one of them kind that never met a single other creature that she didn’t want to befriend and love up, so when the new batch of mice migrated into the house, she’d go right on up to them and poke at them with her nose, and dance little dance-steps around them, and do any crazy thing she could think of to get them to play with her.
My Lady didn’t feel right about killing the same little creatures that the Boy and the Little One had as pets all them years, so she did her best to ignore the whole rodent situation for a good long time. But once she and the Little One kept spotting them scuffling and skittering across the floors late at night, and all kinds of little holes were getting chewed in the bags lined up in the pantry, she decided she couldn’t ignore the dang things any longer.
She started out with the old-fashioned kind of mouse killer trap that’s been in existence as long as I have, the wooden things with the spring hinge where you put some kind of food that mice love to lure them in and then POW that hinge snaps down hard and kills ’em right fast. Well, it took about 2 or 3 mornings of my Lady checking them traps, only to find the bait clean gone and the trap unsprung – kind of like the whole chicken incident with that first dog – when sure enough she done sprung the trap on her own fingers in the checking process, and even though I heared movie upon movie with all kinds of language I could never even dream of, I ain’t never heard nothing like what come out of her mouth, and next thing you know the whole dang package of traps she bought was tossed in the garbage.
“No, no, no, no no. I cannot stand it one minute longer.”
—
“That is simply NOT what happened,” she added.
“Well, who lit a fire under you?”
“That would be your department. I just think that you’re getting it all wrong. It simply did NOT happen that way.”
“It’s a story!”
“You’re taking too many liberties! You’re all the way down there, far away from so many of the very things that you’re telling about.”
“It’s MY story! It’s my story, according to ME. Course I’m making it up. S-T-O-R-Y!”
“It seems to me that if you open the door on these, well, these very personal things, that you should have a responsibility to some degree of truth.”
“Oh, truth is it? Now you’re flat-out playing with fire, talking about the truth!”
“I suppose you think that’s hilarious.”
“My darling, I have been waiting one hundred years, one full century, listening, and learning, and waiting for my chance to say my piece. It’s my turn! Geez Louise, you’re trying to close the barn door after the horse has already left the stable.”
“Again. Hilarious.”
“Lordy, lordy, what have I done.? Why do I have to put up with this from the likes of you?”
“Accountability! Responsibility! Where is your sense of honor!?”
Honor! Cripes almighty, YOU’RE A DOOR!
“YOU’RE A BOILER!”
—
I ain’t never used this word in all my born days…but…you’re a whore! You’re a whore of a door! A door whore! You’ll let anybody in!!”
“Oh! Oh! As if you are so very discriminating! As if you are particular about whose air you warm up and whose you don’t!”
“I got no choice!”
“None of us has a choice. Not any of us, my old friend. We are all in the same boat, in the identical situation, in the like predicament, in the same fix, on a par, on even terms, on the same footing, alike, equal, together, cut from the same cloth, brothers and sisters.”
“Pretty speech. Not sure if it means nothing. But it was pretty.”
“In short, my equally ancient brother, we are dying. We stand right at the threshold of death’s door.”
“It ain’t right to talk of such things. No good can come of it.”
“Ah, easy for you to say, my friend. But I have heard the whispers; and so, I am sure, have you.”
“What in tarnation are you nattering about now?
“You have the great good fortune to be too large, and too big of a – pardon my language – a pain in the rear end — to remove. Even when there is no longer a fire in your belly, you will remain. The day will come when you will witness this family pack up their boxes, and you will watch the next one move in. And the next after them. You will be eternal.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I suppose I cannot blame you for that.”
—
“You have not seen me lately.”
“Of course I ain’t. Me being a boiler, in the basement here, like you said.”
“I know that you hear everything though. I know that even running along the pipes, and echoing through the floor, you have heard the difference in me.”
“Well…”
“After all this time. All this time. To think that I could warp so badly after one hundred years. It’s not my fault, you know. Everything has shifted. The whole house, I mean. My frame. The very floor underneath me.”
—
“I am ugly. I have bubbled, warped, bent, caved, buckled and bowed. I have bulged out in some places, and folded in on myself in others. There was a day when I could not budge. Frozen in place, unable to open even a crack. That’s when she started calling people in. I will be replaced.”
—
“For one hundred springs I have felt the first hint of winter’s end floating on a waft of breeze. I have been scorched and plumped by the sultry air of one hundred summers. The gentlest rains and dazzling, torrential storms have knocked against me. I have witnessed the outside world glow a glittering golden color through one hundred falls, and I have held my breath for the first sign of an early snowflake drifting down to melt on my outer face. And all the while that my outer face greeted each completely unique day, every shift in light and air, my inner face remained a constant, warmed by you. Warmed by a family.”
“ ‘Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?’ Do you remember that?”
“Course I do. How could I forget the Little One practicing those lines over and over?
Our Town, was it?”
“That’s right – Our Town.”
—
“There is something I would like to ask of you. A favor.”
”What might that be?”
“I would like to tell one part of the story.”
“That’s a awful lot to ask. It’s MY STORY.”
“Just one part. Before my time is up. Before the day when I get carried away. Replaced. So I might believe that some part of me remains.”
“Well…”
“Please.”
“Well…”
“I will let you know when the time comes. When we reach the part that I would like to tell.”
“Let me think on it.”
—
“Have you ever thought about what your name should be. You know, if you had a real name, like the people do?”
“Can’t say as I have. Why? Have you?”
“Shirley. I always thought my name should be Shirley.”
“Well, I’m guessing maybe I would be Merle. Or Floyd.”
“I like Merle. It suits you.”
—
“Do you know why I would pick Shirley? Do you remember when the ones you call The Boy and the Little One were small and high-voiced and running around in footed pajamas? And on very important occasions, their mama, the one you call My Lady, would make a special concoction for them to drink? They called it a Shirley Temple.”
“I remember.”
“The children would take all the cushions off the sofas and chairs, and build forts and tunnels, and make up stories, and dress in costumes – their cheeks would flush with excitement…those were…wonderful days.”
—
“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Shirley.”
“I must say that the pleasure is entirely mine, Merle.”
I ain’t never used this word in all my born days…but…you’re a whore! You’re a whore of a door! A door whore! You’ll let anybody in!!”
“Oh! Oh! As if you are so very discriminating! As if you are particular about whose air you warm up and whose you don’t!”
“I got no choice!”
“None of us has a choice. Not any of us, my old friend. We are all in the same boat, in the identical situation, in the like predicament, in the same fix, on a par, on even terms, on the same footing, alike, equal, together, cut from the same cloth, brothers and sisters.”
“Pretty speech. Not sure if it means nothing. But it was pretty.”
“In short, my equally ancient brother, we are dying. We stand right at the threshold of death’s door.”
SPOILER ALERT: In this brief excerpt, the narrator of “Pushing the River” is revealed. But, not to worry, The book is not a mystery…
“No, no, no, no no. I cannot stand it one minute longer.”
—
“That is simply NOT what happened,” she added.
“Well, who lit a fire under you?”
“That would be your department.I just think that you’re getting it all wrong.It simply did NOT happen that way.”
“It’s a story!”
“You’re taking too many liberties!You’re all the way down there, far away from so many of the very things that you’re telling about.”
“It’s MY story!It’s my story, according to ME.Course I’m making it up.S-T-O-R-Y!”
“It seems to me that if you open the door on these, well, these very personal things, that you should have a responsibility to some degree of truth.”
“Oh, truth is it?Now you’re flat-out playing with fire, talking about the truth!”
“I suppose you think that’s hilarious.”
“My darling, I have been waiting one hundred years, one full century, listening, and learning, and waiting for my chance to say my piece.It’s my turn!Geez Louise, you’re trying to close the barn door after the horse has already left the stable.”
“Again.Hilarious.”
“Lordy, lordy, what have I done.?Why do I have to put up with this from the likes of you?”
“Accountability!Responsibility!Where is your sense of honor!?”
Sierra is lounging around on the couch, her belly getting so swelled up it don’t look like it could possibly belong to the rest of her body any more. She’s wearing a raggedy old pair of sweatpants that she borrowed off of my Lady and a T-shirt she borrowed off of her sister, and a giant sweatshirt she took right off the Boy’s pile of laundry while it was still sitting on top of the dryer. That girl sure does love to wear everybody else’s clothes.
The television set is on, just like it pretty much always is, but she ain’t really looking at it, cept every once in a long while. I swear the child likes mostly to push on little buttons, cause every so often she pushes on some buttons to make the sound go up or down, or pushes on some buttons to switch to a different picture altogether, and then goes right back to pushing the little buttons on her little telephone that don’t need wires.
Then she holds the little phone right up to her ear and says, “Daddy? Hi. Hey, what do you think I should have for lunch?”
Of course I can only hear but one side of this whole conversation, but it goes something like this:
“Cereal. I had a big bowl of cereal for breakfast.”
—
“No. I only like creamy peanut butter, and right now all we got is the crunchy kind. I hate that stuff. Plus I only really like peanut butter with marshmallow fluff, and pretty sure we don’t have any of that either. What else?”
—
“No, I’ve had bagels every day cause Marie always brings them home. Plus that’s what you said yesterday. What else?”
—
My Lady comes in with a big basket of laundry and sets down at the far end of the sofa to fold it. Sierra puts her teeny little feet in my Lady’s lap and goes on with her phone talk for a bit.
When she pushes on the little button that makes the call come to an end, she says, “That was my dad. I was asking him what I should have for lunch.”
“Your dad?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your father?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You were asking your father what you should have for lunch.”
Sierra can see that it ain’t a question, so she don’t answer.
“Your father, as in, the guy who put you on an airplane the minute he found out you were pregnant? Who said that you were dead to him? That father?”
“Uh-huh. He wasn’t a very big help. MadMad, what do you think I should have for lunch?”
“Oh, no. No, no. I’m not playing that game again.”
This advertisement comes on the television just then. There’s all these people setting around a table, completely frozen in time. One of them is caught right in the middle of spilling a whole pitcher of water. The first drop is just about to hit. Another is hanging in mid-air, kicking up his heels, his hair standing straight up in all directions. He is at the highest point, held in the split second before he starts on down. Yet another is tipping his chair so far back you know he’s about to tumble over backwards; but he’s caught right at the tipping point, held right there in the balance. There’s one more person. The only one who can move. He gets to walk all around this whole frozen scene, check it from every angle, ponder on exactly what’s going to happen next. He can take all the time in the world to figure it.
My brother, Roy Mills Monier, would have been 60 years old on October 9. He died outside of Quito, Ecuador on December 6, 2001.
And I don’t just mean with them family members, and their kin and friends and pets that was constantly coming and going; and I don’t mean with all the things they gathered and put in different rooms that marked their lives neither. I mean that it was full up in the only way that can make a house into a home.
It was a good long spell that everything seemed to get bigger and bigger. Not just them little ones, but life itself.
But the tide, it surely did turn, and thence came the long stretch when everything started going the other way. One by one, they started packing up and leaving; the Husband, then the Boy. It was just the Little One left in the house with my Lady when she got the phone call that the very last of her kin had dropped down dead in some far off country. She was standing right beside me, holding the phone in her hand, when I heared her gasp real loud, and her voice went all shaky. With that phone call she had no more kinfolk, no more of the people who raised her up or stood along side her while she was doing her own growing, no more people to hold on to her stories.
I think that might have been the moment, right then with that phone call, that my Lady began trying to push the river.
Sheesh. I have been flattened for more than a week with some nasty virus! These are the first words that have entered my head in all that time. It’s a mere beginning, but I couldn’t wait to post SOMETHING and get back at it.
They was just a couple of wide-eyed kids with a little baby they took turns holding in they lanky arms when they moved into this here house.They scrubbed at the floors and paintedthe walls and dug dirt in the gardens and tickled and rocked and sang to the Boy while he gazed at the world around him like he could stare a hole right through everything and see into its very center, sort of like he was just pretending to be a baby the whole time and trying to humor the nice folks who had brung him into this world.After a time the Little One came along, all blonde and golden and fitting right into the world like it was easy peasy and every single thing was just a pure delight.
The house was full up.
And I don’t just mean with them family members, and their kin and friends and pets that was constantly coming and going; and I don’t mean with all the things they gathered and put in different rooms that marked their lives neither.I mean that it was full up in the only way that can make a house into a home.
Last Thursday night, I had the pleasure of hearing an exceptional first-time author read from her debut novel. Elizabeth Wheeler has a true gift for natural dialogue and pacing; and she has managed to handle a sensitive and difficult time of life — mid-adolescence and sexual identity — with great sensitivity.
But enough of my words — please support this writer and check out “Asher’s Fault” yourself.
He had no idea why he was there, staring up at the board full of words that made no sense to him.He didn’t, as a rule, stop at Starbucks on his way to work.His wife stopped there every day.Or at least she used to, when she had her old job and money was not so tight.He had no idea if she still did; it was not the kind of thing he would know.He wasn’t even much of a coffee drinker.Sure, if someone offered him a cup, or if he was seriously dragging after a sleepless and dreamless night.
“What can I get started for you, sir?”
The green apron was familiar.The super helpful perky pleasant tone.He stared at the board again, the jumble of names, categories, numbers, trying to make sense of any of it.“Something warm,” he thought. “That’s why I’m here.The need for something warm.Inside.Oh my God,” he thought.“I am sick.I am so fucking sick.”
The green apron’s smile faded just a little, a barely perceptible perplexity showing as a faint line emanating from the top of her left eyebrow.“Thank you,” he said.And then, for lack of anything else that seemed right, once again, “thank you.”
He could not remember ever feeling so exhausted.Driving the less-than five miles back to his house, making the call to his office to declare his illness, all of this seemed completely unmanageable.The need for sleep was overpowering.No thought was in his head; not one.The act of curling onto his left side, pulling his knees up tight, drawing up the billowy, soft comforter and carefully tucking it all around his bowed chin – nothing seemed like it could ever be so magnificent.The scent of his own body in sleep, and his wife’s, just reached his nostrils from the glorious comforter before he was out.His shoes were still on.
“Where are you?”She knew she sounded mad.She feared she always sounded mad, despite her continual effort to maintain a certain cool and polite detente.In truth, she was more baffled and worried than angry just then, the bulk of her afternoon and evening engaged in an attempt to arrange a few slim pieces of a massive jigsaw puzzle into some sort or order.
She had called him around lunch time to work out the details of who-would-pick-up-whom and how they would get themselves and the girls to the game that night.His not answering her call was hardly unusual, but his not emailing or texting back was.At the moment that her second call to him was ringing, unanswered, she opened her desk drawer to grab a paper clip and saw the post-it with her divorce attorney’s name and number staring up at her.She fingered it, moved it a few inches, picked up the clip, and ran her fingers over the indentations that the attorney’s phone number had made on the paper, closing the drawer as her husband’s voice message clattered in her ear.
With swift efficiency and more force than necessary, she hung up the call and punched in the numbers for her husband’s office.“Cynthia, it’s me,” she said.“I can’t get hold of him.Is he around?”
“No!”She said all eager helpfulness and not even a hint of surprise or disapproval that his own wife would not already know.“He called in sick today!”
“Really?”He had left that morning, same time as always, same everything as always.
“Yes!He called from a Starbucks parking lot.I guess he was on his way in before he realized he was really really sick.”
“Starbucks,” she said with utter incredulousness, “He doesn’t go to Starbucks.Hates it!”
A small wave in the vast ocean of tamped-down rage burbled to the surface for just an instant.She shooed it away and said, “Thanks, Cynthia.Thanks so much.”
She called both his cell phone, and the house phone, every half hour for the rest of the day.The first time that she dialed, a faint annoyance still lurked at the corners of her consciousness.But each time thereafter, the phone call was just one more task on a long list, one more event that happened in the rapid-fire course of a breakneck work day.He did not exist as a person or even an image in her mind when she made the calls, and there was no feeling whatsoever.
As the clicking of her heels on the granite stones of the entry way yielded to the softer tones of the living room’s parquet floor, she entered, as she did every evening, a household of occupied females who scarcely registered her arrival.The babysitter and the younger daughter had an art project spread across the full space of the dining room table, while the older daughter lolled on the living room sofa, vaguely watching a TV show while scanning through her iPod.
“Where is your dad?”
The babysitter looked like someone caught in a game of freeze tag, the glue stick in her hand and her facial expression frozen in place.Her younger daughter thought she was kidding, and continued coloring while saying in her scolding voice, “He’s at work!You’re silly.”
She let her purse slide off her shoulder and on to the living room floor as she said, seemingly to the fallen purse at her side, “He called in sick.”
The babysitter leaped to her feet as if she were somehow responsible for something she did not yet comprehend, “Really?Well, we haven’t heard from him.He’s not here!”
“Well, this is all very odd.How am I supposed to…”This last she muttered to herself as she took the few steps that brought her to the bedroom door.It stood open just a crack, perhaps an inch.She knew she had closed it on her way out of the house that morning; there was no question.
Pushing the door fully open, she saw her husband in the bed.Even with the mountainous covers pulled about him, she could see that he was curled into a tiny ball, as if he were actually making an effort to compress his 6’ 3” frame into the smallest space possible, the kind of thing he might do to amuse the girls.As if she had stuck her finger in an electric socket, a jolt of rage ran through her body seeing him lie there.Coming around the side of the bed, his side of the bed, her hands clenched themselves into fists in an effort to contain her fury.
His eyes were open.And she saw one impeccably polished shoe, poking out from beneath the comforter.A slight gasp escaped her mouth as she sank onto the bed and said, “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong?”
Everything was wrong.She knew that moment that everything was wrong.
“So tired,” he said.“So tired.”
“You’re sick.Are you going be able to make it tonight?If you’re too sick, that’s fine, of course that’s fine, but then I really need to get moving.No one even knew you were here!Do you need anything? ”
“Yes.”“Yes.”“No.”
“What?”
“Can go.Tonight.”
“OK, if you’re sure.I need to hustle if we’re going to leave here on time.Why don’t you take your own car, assuming you think you can drive, so if you start feeling too sick, you can just come home.I’m going to get dinner on.Homework had better be done, that’s for sure.Do you want to take your own car?”
“Yes,” he said.He knew it was not really a question; she was already on her way to the kitchen.
“Jesus Christ,” she thought, “whoever decided that indoor soccer was a good idea.”The amount of noise that fourteen ten-year-old girls plus their coaches plus their enthusiastic parents made was truly brain-jangling caroming around the walls of a school gymnasium.The younger daughter knelt on the floor between them, coloring intently in a book she had set on the bleacher seat, humming her favorite song from that musical she watched over and over with the babysitter.She glanced from the coloring project, to the mess of her daughter’s markers, to her older daughter who watched the soccer action with grave and unsmiling attention.She thought of how terribly somber the older daughter had been as a baby.Hardly ever cracked a smile.Never chortled or giggled the way she had expected.Then one day, at the age of ten-and-a-half-months, they were at the park on an afternoon in the early spring, one of those days when the temperature remains frigid but the feeling of the sun is entirely different, carrying genuine warmth for the first time in months.The bundled-up baby in the swing could barely move for the padding of outerwear.She pushed the baby from the front, rather than behind, so they could see one another.With one push, her gloved hand slipped on the rubbery swing surface, she lost her footing, and waved her arms in big ridiculous circles to regain balance.The baby threw back her head and let out a deep, long belly laugh, as if she had been waiting all that time, as if she were saying, “Well, finally, now that was funny!”
He may have run some errands on the way home.That would be typical.But two hours seemed too long, way too long, really.It was the first time she had the sense of missing him in as long as she could remember.They used to work every evening at their respective computers, his desk facing the wall in the family room and hers facing the wall of the dining room, their backs to one another and two rooms apart.For so long, she had the sense of an imaginary arm that would bud from her right shoulder blade and reach out behind her as she poured over her work, its tendril fingers winding, reaching, and finally intertwining with his own ,meeting exactly halfway and binding the two of them together.
Finally, finally, he answered his cell.“Where are you?”
There was silence in her ear.More gently, then, she repeated, “Where are you?”But there was still no response.
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?Where are you?”
She strained to hear his breathing in her ear when no response came.“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on.I need to know where you are.I’m going to call you right back.”
“Cynthia, hi, I’m so sorry to bother you at home, but, did he mention any meetings he may have had this evening?Anything going on with work?” “No!Sorry!”
“Did you hear from him at all after he called in sick this morning?At all?”
“No!Wait, no, that’s not right.He called in for the conference call that was scheduled.”
“Did you talk to him?Did he seem OK?”
“Come to think of it he didn’t really say anything.I don’t think he said a word the whole time.”
“OK, thanks.Thanks.I have to go, I’m sorry.Thanks.”
When she called him back, he answered right away, and she heard him sigh.
“Where are you?”She knew she sounded mad.She feared she always sounded mad, despite her continual effort to maintain a certain cool and polite detente.
“Listen, we have to figure out where you are.Are you at the drugstore?Did you stop there?”When she was met with silence, she tried again.“Video store?Did you return some tapes?”Nothing.“OK, let’s see, let me think where else you…”
“Library,” came the word.
“Library!” she said, “Good.Library. Good.I’ll be right there. We need to go to the hospital.I’m taking you to the hospital.”
She was reminded of a long-ago New Yorker cartoon where a man is jabbering away at his dog, and the dog is raptly attentive, while only catching about one in every ten or twenty words, the rest nonsensical gibberish.The word she did hear, over and over, the word that did register, each and every time, was the word “stroke.”As tidal waves of doctors and technicians and whoever-the-hell-they-were listened and looked and felt and shined lights and ordered tests and wheeled him in and wheeled him out, the blur of words was nearly non-stop.
She stood at the side of the bed, letting the waves of words wash over her.She was thinking only one thing.The whole time, she was thinking it.She hated herself for what it was, but she could not stop it.“Fuck him,” she thought.“Fuck him.”
She spent the night in a giant, institutionally ugly gray chair that sort of reclined, her coat tucked around her shoulders like a blanket.Never able to fall into a deep sleep, she became accustomed enough to the blips that measured her husband’s every heartbeat, the tones that marked his every breath, the whoosh of the automatic blood pressure cuff, the inhalations and exhalations of the pressure sleeves that constricted his legs –a virtual symphony of mechanized life support that became the not-at-all unpleasant soundtrack to her falling in and out of a lovely doze. The hospital fell into a lull in the wee hours, a comforting quiescence that left her fully confident that everything possible had been done, and she could close her eyes and truly rest.
Her watch said 6:00 am when she tossed aside her coat.A couple of medical people surrounded her husband, just as there had been at various points throughout the night.They spoke in quiet, straightforward tones.Her husband’s eyes were unnaturally wide, though, and his concentration ferocious as he gazed at the person on his right side.I think he is trying to smile, she thought, but the two corners of his mouth did not match; they faced in different directions entirely.His left eyebrow was raised in expectant attention towards his doctor, while his right brow laid stubbornly flat, the lid somehow deadened.
“Oh my god,” she said, “oh my god.”
She sat at her husband’s left side, the side that was not paralyzed, throughout the day and its long procession of specialists:rheumatologist, neurologist, cardiologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist.The speech therapist arrived last, carrying a boxful of objects that she held in front of him, one at a time, each time saying, “Do you know what this is?”And after a second, “That’s ok.Take your time.”
She knew the day had been an immense effort for him.She knew that all he wanted to do was sleep.Yet each time a new set of footsteps hit the linoleum floor of his room, he snapped to attention through sheer effort of will.
“My husband is completely exhausted,”she said.“It has been such a long day.”
“Straw!”her husband said.
“Very good!” the speech therapist responded.
And just as suddenly, he cast his eyes in the direction of his wife’s coffee and said, “Cup!!”
“Yes, that is a cup!”
There was a deep burning sensation high within her nose, and she reached over without thought to grasp her husband’s hand, just as the tear emerged from the corner of her eye.With enormous effort, he turned his head in his wife’s direction.
The Tumbleweed lay sleeping in Madeline’s bed above when she arose at the usual early hour.The blush was still on her cheek from the night before as she made an extra-large pot of coffee and cleaned up the last few dishes from the dinner with Auggie and Bess.When she sat down at her favorite spot in the sun-drenched room to breathe in the scents and sounds of the morning, she opened her computer to see Marie’s name in her email inbox.Strange that Marie would be writing from Asia, she thought.
i’m sitting in a hostel in kuala lumpur and trying to reconcile the intensity of having stood in a river with my face resting against the temple of a young elephant’s massive head and my hands lost in the playful curling of his trunk with the fact that all i can think about when i’m not engaged in an active pursuit of some kind or a conversation with someone new is that i’m a terrible person and should’ve gone to be with sierra as soon as i knew she was pregnant… that i should’ve stayed in chicago two summers ago and fought for custody and maybe sierra and my mom would both be so much better off for it… that i should’ve, should’ve, should’ve… i have not lived my life the way i’ve really needed to over the last three or four years. I love john and our marriage is something i want so desperately to protect, but i don’t know how to be fair to him and our life and also be the person i need to be to be able to live with myself. I suppose i’m asking for your advice… as a friend, as a mother-in-law, as a professional woman. I don’t know how i can go back to new york and stay there without sierra. I don’t know how john would get by without me. I spent almost the entire time i’ve been gone stressing out about how not to spend money on anything unnecessary and listening to john worry about how he has no money coming in in new york and i can’t help thinking he just wouldn’t be able to support himself without me working full time. but john is a grown man with a massive line of credit and sierra is my little sister who has no support or resources- how is this even a difficult decision? I need to be in chicago. How does a marriage like ours survive a year apart? Will i only make things worse by being in chicago? Is there any chance my mom will — no, there’s no chance. i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know. i’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown all the time- i’m terrified that when i get back i’m just going to fall apart completely. i’m terrified that john needs more from me than i have to give and that i need more from him than he has to give. what do i do?
