A tube of rolled-up pictures arrives at The Gallery. An intern picks it up. It’s her job to investigate the unsolicited work that comes through the doors despite the warning on The Gallery’s website, now common knowledge: No unsolicited art.
The girl is about twenty, an art student with family connections to The Gallery’s owner. She is dressed in black, as usual. She is afraid of wearing anything else. Color might label her as someone less serious than the artist she wants to become someday. She carries the package through the rooms bright with white paint and carefully placed spotlights, to the smaller, dimmer room in the back. Pictures hung on the unpainted walls there are lopsided as coats on hooks. Along one section of a wall, there are samples of frames, colorful edges of cocked eyebrows. The girl hides her smile as she passes, and climbs deeper into the part of the gallery nobody ever sees. Spread out before her is expensive camera equipment, a complicated system of lights, and a white backdrop for the staff to photograph the artists’ works. The information on each piece of art shown is carefully recorded along with the corresponding photos of the individual pieces. The stack of black ledgers containing all the information is so unwieldly that none that none of the staff wants to tackle shelving the many volumes. It seems the employees’ supervisor would rather do it himself, anyway. His own people help him, several burly men not associated with the gallery but who appear as if summoned by some kind of silent whistle. The men never talk or smile and nobody has ever seen their eyes behind the dark glasses. The supervisor also takes the photographs, rather than waiting for the drink-addled pro to stagger in off the street to do it. The boss takes a pretty good picture, everyone agrees, but they are also unanimous in the opinion that there must be something wrong with a guy who does so much more work than required, especially when the pay is so minimal. Not that they’ve ever seen his paycheck. He keeps the details of his personal life quiet, too. He doesn’t do the see-and-be-seen circuit of shows. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring. There are no family photos on his desk. The only time he seems approachable is during a staffer’s birthday celebration. He makes sure the cake is ordered and decorations hung up, he always shows up on time and stays throughout the entire party. Emboldened by these isolated expressions of warmth, the intern asks him for the date of his birthday, so they can all have a celebration for him, too. He will not tell her the date. “Maybe he wants us to track it down,” says one of her friends. “What—like a treasure hunt?” says another. “On the other hand, he could be hiding something. A person’s date of birth can be used for finding out all kinds of other personal information.” “We should leave it alone, then. He’s entitled to his privacy.” This is what is on the intern’s mind as she weighs the mailing tube with her hands. She is still a girl given over to fantasies featuring happy romantic scenarios. She has a terrible crush on Richard (at least she thinks that’s his name) and finds him a tantalizing mysterious figure. She places the tube on the worn work table. It’s stained with dirt and coffee and crushed in a couple of places, but is not heavy. She grunts anyway, more as a comment on her life than from physical effort. The postmark is months old. Where in the world has this package been? There is a loosened piece of paper hanging off the outside of the cardboard, barely holding on with two strips of Scotch tape. She pries the paper off with her black polished nails and pushes her glasses higher up on her nose. Dear The Gallery, the message reads, I forgot to put this in my cover letter so I’m sticking it here. I hope you see it. I need to get a gallery as soon as possible because my brother is trying to kill me. This is no joke. I hope you like my pictures and can help me escape my brother Eddie to come to New York. I tried to drive there already, but I got lost and crashed Mom’s car. Thank you. Amanda Patterson The intern’s hands begin to shake and she drops the paper. It flutters past her knees to the floor. “What’s wrong now?” The man asking is also dressed in black, but zaps the monotony of his uniform with red shoes, one of which he places on the notepaper to trap it. He is the only one who still wears red shoes, according to the intern’s friends. It’s so cliché, worse than his ponytail. Someone should get him drunk and cut his hair. The intern would like to be the person with the scissors. I bet you would, her friends would say, collectively smirking. “It’s got a letter attached like some kind of cry for help or all like that.” The girl bends down to pull the paper out from under his shoe, and hands it to him. The man draws his features into an interested expression, not especially concerned, but curious. He flips his ponytail out of the way as he leans in closer to the note. Frowning, he opens the tube. All at once a look of delight crosses his face. “I’m aware of his woman. She’s got a good resume and lots of experience. I hope nothing awful has really happened to her.” The intern says, “It’s probably just someone who stuck the note on her submission for a prank, or it’s her own misguided way to get our attention.” “The package itself looks like it’s been on quite a trip.” He carefully unrolls each watercolor, as carefully as the intern has ever seen him handle anyone’s work. “These are beautiful! Sophisticated, expressionistic. A wonderful use of color.” She hears the satisfaction in his voice, a kind of burrowing warmth that pricks her with jealousy for the unknown artist. “Too bad we’re not taking on anyone new right now,” he says. “These fit right in with our aesthetic. Tell her that, and add something complimentary about the work itself. It’s very good. And don’t be such a snowflake, Maryann.” Something has happened back home; a misstep, a fall, a trip to the ER. So when Clara tells me that Mom has been admitted, I offer my help. She will need it during Mom’s recovery from her injury. I can move in before she gets discharged and get everything set up. We still have equipment from the time Mom broke her hip. There’s a bath chair and bedside commode, transfer belt and all kinds of useful plastic things. Besides, I should be the one to help Mom get well. I am a better nurse than Clara. I have our father’s instinct for doctoring. My sister is frazzled enough to jump at the idea. “But are you sure that you’ve gotten everything you want from the aftercare program and you’re ready to come home?” Clara loves to get me to answer her questions as if they’re my own. Here’s one—why do I get the feeling that she doesn’t really want me around? Every few months, she breezes in and upends everything. She thinks she knows what’s best for everyone and believes she’s making improvements in the way we all do things around here. Maybe Steven is right when he says she just wants control over Mom. Eddie is the one who says that Clara is saving the day by moving in. We’re supposed to be grateful for her martyr complex. But Mom isn’t that bad off. I can take her to lunch soon, the same as always, as long as somebody gives me a ride or cab fare. Clara should buy me a car. Why is she making me ask for things? She never used to. There was a time when all I had to do was look at her dessert, for instance, and she’d hand it right over. “I don’t have to stay in the program. All they’re doing is teaching me how to be poor. Shopping at Goodwill, discount movies, how to take the bus. These are the skills they think I need. And most days we’re herded together for some silly excursion. It never works out for me. Tuesday, we went swimming and I got sunburned; Thursday, there’s an outdoor concert and I know the loud music will give me an anxiety attack. The Saturday treat is usually some horror movie that only amplifies the one going on in my head. We take a nature walk and my leg hurts so much it won’t move for two days afterward. My roommate tells me I should be in a nursing home, what with all my physical problems.” “Wouldn’t you miss the group therapy with all the colorful characters?” “All they do is talk about their hallucinations.” “Do you talk about your own hallucinations?” My sister is one cool customer, but I’m a step ahead of her and her trick questions. “I don’t have them anymore. I told you.” “At all? After all these years of hallucinating? That must be a first. Hope your docs are getting a research paper or two out of it.” I’m a little shocked that she doesn’t believe me, but I don’t respond. I just wait for the next dumb question. Here it comes. “But what about the art therapy sessions— don’t you like them?” “I hate them. The other day they had us making collages that represent some issue. Forgiveness was one of the themes, like it always is, so I chose that. Nobody got what I was getting at. I’d hate to be an art therapist.” “Well, you’re already something much more to the point—an actual artist. So, if you come back home early, what services will the outreach program continue to provide?” “I’ll let my caseworker keep handling my bills, and I’ll go to the weekly support group. That’s good enough.” “And see your doctor. And take your shot. They’ll send someone to take you to the hospital if you try to skip, remember.” “Yeah, yeah. I may not remember much, but I remember that.” Once I get back home, everyone will stop micro-managing me. They will scatter. I have that effect on people these days. I’ll sit down next to somebody at a park or in a movie theater, close my eyes for ten seconds, and when I open them, the other person will be gone. It’s like they can hear the chaos in my mind. How? They can’t understand what my soft curses mean. I might as well be whispering in Greek, like Virginia Woolf said the birds did whenever she got sick. My sister says, “Speaking of which, isn’t it time to go get your injection?” So I get my shot, I see my shrink. The doctor is very sneaky when she asks me questions. She reads the answers in my face. My words don’t count. She knows everything I say is a lie. I awake on moving day and ask Dad if he’s mad that I hoped an accident like this would happen just so I could get back into the house. He shakes his head, in my head. At least I didn’t engineer the accident myself. It would have been so easy. Mom is very breakable these days. I carry my boxes out of my old room in the halfway house, and one girl grudgingly moves her broom from the front door to let me pass. I grimace, and another patient stares at me. I hope he doesn’t think I’m smiling at him. We both know I’m out of his league. And these are the people I was expected to make friends with, to prove the counselors wrong when they said I tend to isolate. I pull up at the house in Clara’s car and begin to lug my boxes up the thirteen front steps. My brother and sister won’t help me because they’re too busy getting Mom discharged from the hospital and settled in at home at exactly the same time I’m moving in. My leg hurts but everyone is focused on Mom. Finally, after what seems like hours of effort, I get to lie down on my bed and close my eyes. How many times have I moved in and out of this house? My brothers and sister, too, even Steven’s sons, have all come and gone and come back again—this house is like a dog that recognizes us even after long separations. I can’t even remember why I wanted to run away from it in the first place. It’s nice to be in my own bed again, and now that Mom is home too, I will probably sleep better. I don’t know if she will. She’s supposed to mostly stay in bed with her back brace on for the next four months. She won’t though. She’s always been restless. It’s her nature. We all have our true natures to contend with. It’s no use to fight against them—they always win. I start to doze when I hear Eddie whisper to Clara as he passes my door, “She’s baaaack.” Clara hushes him but I think I can hear her giggle. I turn on my side and sink into quicksand sleep, but as soon as I wake up, here comes Steven. He makes a showy entrance, carrying a big TV and setting it on Mom’s dresser. We already have a TV. It’s downstairs. “This one should keep her in bed. Just turn it to some gardening show or slapstick comedies. Do you still laugh when people fall down, Mom?” He smiles at her and she smiles back. He doesn’t realize that Mom won’t cooperate about that or anything else. She won’t stay in bed, no matter what show is on. She won’t drink enough Ensure. She won’t tell me or Clara when she’s wet. She’ll rip apart her Velcro back brace and kick off the blankets no matter how tight I tuck her in. So when Steven says, “You’ll do most of the caregiving, right? I’ll stick around for a while to help you. You deserve a break,” I laugh in his face. The idea of my brother as rescuer wasn’t always so laughable. He was devastated by my first breakdown, after it dawned on him that I was destined for only a limited recovery. So they all thought. I remember him bringing his little sons over all the time as an incentive to make me want to live. They were cute kids, sure, and could sometimes cheer me up. But just as often, when they banged on my bedroom door, I had to ignore them. I couldn’t stop crying for a couple of years and I didn’t want them to look at all that misery. What I remember most about Steven from those days was that he never really connected with me again. He just basically faded away. He divorced his wife, married another, and seemed to forget about his original family. He had never been able to juggle his attachments very well. A new one meant the end of an old one. But now, for some unknown reason, here he is again. That first evening, the four of us sit around the kitchen table together, updating one another on our mother. We each think we’re the world’s expert on what she needs but at least we’re all ready to pitch in. Maybe that’s a good thing. Dad used to say, “Many hands make much work light.” He nods his head in my head. I wonder when the boys will start to fight. It usually doesn’t take them long to start snarling. Clara must be nervous about that, too, from the way she’s running around dishing out the food, spilling it on the floor, the table, the rims of the plates. I feel the urge to start something to egg my brothers on. The doctors say I have poor impulse control, so I try to relax and let the hum of the familiar voices vibrate in me without trying to influence them. “So, Ed, are you living part time at your condo?” Steven asks. Small talk, ultra-polite. It always starts like that. “I go check on it every weekend, and it’s still my legal address, but I live here, more or less. Mom and the girls need me.” Steven looks at me for confirmation. I shrug. Steven grins. Eddie frowns. He’s about to deliver the fine points of his contribution to the family, I can tell. Steven distracts him by saying, “I think we should set up a fund for Mom’s future nursing care and sell all the old stuff in the garage. My kids’ bikes are still in there, my riding lawn mower and snowmobile, stuff like that. Ed, you could help me with the physical work. We could put the money from the sales into the fund.” “Oh, I don’t think there’s any hurry. Aside from dementia, Mom’s in pretty good shape. She hasn’t had to spend much time in a hospital.” “She’s already broken her hip once, and now this spinal fracture. Once they start falling, they don’t stop.” “What’s your source for that?” Ed’s face flushes. This is getting interesting. “My father-in-law, who ended up in a facility; and then there’s ordinary common knowledge and anecdotal evidence. I’ll leave it to you to look up the statistics, if you want them.” Eddie holds two degrees in science, and the family, since Daddy’s death, has considered him to be the expert on medical things. I see that Steven is no longer automatically ceding that position to him. Steven abruptly turns to me. I guess he doesn’t want to fight Ed tonight, though there’s a dangerous light in his blue eyes. I’m slightly confused. “So, how are you doing, Mandy? Do you like your new doctors? Still painting?” “Yeah, I’m ok. My leg bothers me a lot and I’ve got anxiety. I don’t get to paint enough because of Mom.” “We have a nurse, the one we used before,” Eddie says, annoyed now at both of us. “Also palliative care nurses come in every other week, and a podiatrist who comes to the house because nobody else can cut Mom’s toenails.” “Plus, I’m here for the duration,” Clara chimes in. “I gave up my place, so if you kick me out, I’m officially homeless.” So that’s that. She’s staying. She’ll probably start giving piano lessons right there in the living room, so she can stick to Mom like glue. Too bad she never got married, but I always came first with her. I’m like Mom’s Aunt Ruth. She wrecked her son’s engagement when he was young, and he never tried again. He just stayed with his mother until she died. Clara’s more stubborn than that. She’ll keep trying for a normal coupled-up life, and I’ll keep reminding her that she can always get another guy, but she’s only got one sister. We’ve always taken care of each other. Earlier tonight, I caught her looking at the long row of amber medication bottles on my dresser. When she turned away, she had tears in her eyes. I look at her face now, to see if the tears are still there, maybe hardened into diamonds in the corners of her eyes, like that Man Ray photograph. She doesn’t see me staring, because she’s also staring: the big window frames a sudden storm moving in. The boys look worried. They look for markers of climate change the way our grandmother scoured the Bible for signs that the world was ending. The boys have come to see weather as an enemy, and when lightning strikes close enough to shake the house, they lurch out of their chairs and bop against each other like balloons. We all turn away from the sight of the blinding zigzag in the sky and toward the sound of our collection of family pictures tumbling off the wall in the hallway. Broken bits of our relatives are strewn all over the floor. There is glass everywhere but it reflects nothing. I can’t breathe. I gotta get out of there. By the time I get to the gallery and out of the storm, I’m almost calm. I do not have to live exclusively in my family’s house, or in my frilly girlhood bedroom. I can wrap myself inside my other, more real life as an artist. Right now some of my work is in this show, and tonight’s the opening reception. It’s a nice, new space. Clara found it for me and submitted my slides while I was in the hospital. She wanted me to have something to look forward to when I got out, I guess. As if whatever she throws my way is my only option. But at least she knows how important my work is to me. She’s not one of those people who ask “Are you still painting?” if they haven’t seen me in a while. There’s a coffee shop and a dancefloor for the musicians here. I see the red wall where the curator’s helper hung my paintings. There are matching couches below the pictures, but nobody would mistake my portraits for over-the-couch art. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar. My hair is growing in fast and thick after all my ups and downs with medications, and it’s long enough now to pull into a ponytail. Even after everything I’ve been through, the mirror shows that I don’t look my age. I look up to see the reflection of my friend Michi over by the red wall. She’s crying her eyes out, not because my work moves her, but because she can’t paint. Not that she’s ever tried. “Oh why can’t I be an artist? It’s all I ever wanted,” she whines. I think of my breakthrough show in NYC years ago. Clara, Mom, and me had traveled by train to come to the reception. It was in a beautiful space, and Clara kept thrilling to the fact that the Center had museum status. The staff had taken off the wood stripping on my pictures and framed them in brushed silver. A pony-tailed waiter, obviously a poseur wearing all black with his red shoes, circulated trays of champagne among my friends, the few who came. They were so jealous. They couldn’t deal with my success, but they let Mom buy them dinner after the reception. Freeloaders. Now I look at the young bearded artist shaking my hand like he hopes my talent will rub off on him, saying “These are miraculous! I’d be honored to sit for a portrait sometime,” I think to myself, Take a number, pretty boy. What the hell, and now there’s a mic in my face. I try to push it away, but the guy holding it is insistent. “Tell the people where you get your ideas!” “What, right now?” “Yes, the tape is running.” “Oh I dunno. Images just pop into my head.” I feel him sag with disappointment. He turns away before I can come up with something more interesting to say. This is not how it goes in my head when I imagine my shows. I never expect to get tongue-tied, but I always do. I want to say things the public eats up. I want to be applauded, really. But it’s not happening here, and now all I want is to leave, before the band starts up and gives me anxiety. I look at my paintings again, and see that somebody has done something to the lights on them. They’ve aimed footlights at them, in addition to the usual spotlights over them. They look too exposed. It’s like there’s nowhere for them to hide, and they look like they’re being tortured or something. The light hurts my eyes. I have to put on sunglasses. Michi is still crying so loud I can barely hear Tom Waits through the speakers. Luckily I don’t need speakers to hear him. I can summon him up in my head anytime I like. I could still take him away from his wife if I wanted. I’m not that crazy anymore; I could do it. Hey. There’s a guy in a belted trench coat thumbing through my catalogue at the counter. Will he say anything to me? No? He’s got an interesting face, an angular jaw his beard can’t hide, and wide green eyes. Young. Twenties? I might want to do his portrait. Did he really just put my book inside his coat? I stand behind him like a shadow. “Are you really going to steal my book?” He doesn’t blink an eye−a thick-lashed, gold-flecked green eye like a marble. “I’d rather steal you.” Well, that’s different. I put my hand through his arm and we walk out into the weather together. It’s still raining and the clouds are bearing down, heavy with a message I can’t read. The guy prattles on about how lucky it is for me that he likes older women. Cougars, he calls them. It turns out he’s an art wannabe who’s followed my work for a long time. Followed, not stalked, he reassures me. To him, I’m famous in our small town. “The director of the museum downtown called you one of the treasures of the city, did you read about that?” I hadn’t, but I like the boy’s smooth voice and I want him to keep telling me about myself. I wonder where he’s taking me. He’s old enough to have his own place, isn’t he? I wouldn’t want to meet his parents, although I’m sure they’re very nice. They’d probably turn out to be old classmates of mine. It could be embarrassing. We pass Dad’s old hospital and I wave discretely enough so the guy can’t see. Dad sees, though. He nods his head in my head. From here I can see the brass nameplate that marks his old parking spot. They’ve kept it for him all these years, like some kind of shrine. The guy suddenly veers into the lot and parks sideways across two spaces, and starts to tug at my clothes. “Wait. This is my dead father’s old parking place. Nobody is allowed to park here. Let me out.” I stand at the sign and trace the engraved letters of my father’s name. I wipe the rain away from the brass surface but other drops blur it. I look up at the lightning clawing the air. The sky flashes, the car honks. A security van is aiming straight at me, red and blue lights spinning. My guy peels out of the lot, leaving me standing beside my father’s name, the letters flickering through a sheet of rain. When I get home, I shuck off my muddy clothes the way I shucked off that boy. He did not get what he came for, did he. He did manage to make off with my catalogue, though. Maybe that was more valuable, anyways. I take my pills. In twenty minutes I should feel drowsy enough to sleep. That gives me plenty of time to check on Mom. She’s sleeping in the twin bed she’s always slept in. Clara sleeps in Dad’s bed now. They’re both up. Have they been waiting for me to come home? Only a thin wall separates their room from mine and I can overhear them easily. I listen because I want to know what they’re saying about me, but on most nights I don’t even come up in the conversation. Tonight it’s even worse than that−Mom has awakened in tears. “Mom, are you crying?” Clara says in a sleep-thick voice. “Yes.” I hear my sister bounce up from the mattress. I bet she’s holding Mom’s hand now. “What’s wrong?” Clara says. “I used to be a special person. Now look.” Mom shakes the railing on the bed. “No, Mom! You’re still a special person! That’s just a safety rail so you don’t fall again.” “I fell?” “Yes, and you had to go to the hospital. Now you’re getting better, and almost ready to walk around your house.” “I have a house? Where is it? Let’s go see it!” “OK, but wouldn’t you like to stop off at the kitchen first and have a waffle?” It’s a reliable distraction. Mom loves waffles. And cookies. “Oh yes, I would.” That’s when I come into the room. I push past Clara to help Mom out of bed. “Sorry. We didn’t mean to wake you!” Clara says. “It’s alright. I just got in from the gallery and haven’t slept yet. You go back to bed. I’ll take it from here.” “What’s happening?” Mom questions the pile of cushions on the couch as we pass through the living room on our way to the kitchen. Steven has made a temporary bed for himself on the couch, since his old room is so full of my paintings, there’s no room for him. He snores as loud as ever. Mom jumps at the sound, but she’s more interested in the shapes the pillows make in the dim light than in the stranger on the couch. The moonscape of stacked couch cushions does look other-worldly, with the big window shepherding the outdoors inside. Mom likes the strangeness of it, in the same way she likes the shadows of wind-tossed trees on the walls, and the dance of fireplace flames. We pass by her curio cabinet, and she stops to run her fingers over a favorite Hummel figurine. A collector tried to buy it from her at a generous price once, and Mom wouldn’t hear of it. “What would I be without my memories?” she said. We all say stuff that turns out to be ironic. Like that poem about the anniversary of our own death, how every year we live through the date without knowing what it will someday mean to our survivors. As I settle Mom into her chair in the kitchen, she protests, “This is not my house. Whose house is this? Does it belong to you?” “It’s your house, Mom. Daddy bought it for you fifty years ago.” What a joint! he had said on first look. “I did have a husband once. I was amazed I got someone so good! Did you know him?” “He was my father. I was his birthday present. He drove you all over the bumpiest roads to make you go into labor on his birthday, just so he could have me as his gift.” “He was very affectionate. Do you have a mother, dear?” I nod. A brief silence, then this: “Where is your mother?” “You are my mother. That’s why I call you Mom.” “I wondered why they call me that.” “It’s because you are our mother.” “I know, but I mean…” and she makes the universal gesture for pregnancy. “Yes, you gave birth to me. I am your child. You have four children, and I am your youngest daughter. I’m the skinny one who had blonde bangs, and braces on my teeth.” Mom studies my face for a long moment, and finally says, “Well, hello there! Where have you been? I haven’t seen you. Why did you leave me?” “I never did, really. I never would.” Mom seems to consider this, looking into the middle distance. Who knows what she really sees there. She yawns, all at once drooping in her chair like a blown dandelion. “I’ll tuck her in,” says Eddie, who has come into the kitchen for a snack, or else to check on me. I get out of the way so that he can pick Mom up and carry her to bed. It’s not the first time I’ve been pushed aside. Not even the first time today. Once he’s gone, I turn the lights off and sit alone in the dark kitchen. I can hear my brother and sister whispering as they settle Mom under her covers. “Did Mandy go back to bed?” “Nope. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with the lights off, having a chat with the overhead beams.” “Eddie! That’s not nice.” They don’t know the half of it. About three in the morning, the sliding glass door to my bedroom opens from the balcony, and a policeman in full gear shouts at me to get up. “What’s going on?” I try to climb out of bed and cover my body at the same time. More police burst through the unlocked front door and swarm the house. Eddie comes up the stairs two by two, already punching numbers on his cellphone. “He’s got a weapon!” one cop bellows and they all point their guns at him. He raises his hand and shows his phone. “It’s a phone. I was calling the police.” “We are the police!” “I see that. What seems to be the problem?” “An elderly woman called from this address, saying she had been kidnapped.” “Mom thinks we kidnapped her?” Eddie’s shock must have sounded convincing, because he is not thrown to the ground, nor handcuffed, nor struck with a Taser. “She’s in her nineties and we just brought her home from the hospital. She must be disoriented.” “I should check on her.” Steven appears in his underwear, draped in a blanket. An officer’s gloved hand on his arm stops him. “That’s our job.” He and his backup enter Mom’s room where Clara is holding her, trying to soothe her. I hang back until the female cop beckons to me. “Your mother needs you both,” she says. Another cop quizzes Steven. He wants to know why, if this is the family home, he’s sleeping on the couch. “We’re reorganizing. My sister’s artwork is taking up all the space in my old bedroom.” The cop pulls out his pad and pen. “Show me the room.” Steven shrugs and says, “Right this way.” In the kitchen, Eddie spreads out Mom’s house documents on the table. Besides the ownership papers, he opens a family album to a group picture. The cop laughs, “We don’t need all that.” Steven and his cop climb back up the stairs. The cop writes out a ticket and Steven whispers to me, “Did you know your pictures are a fire hazard?” “Yeah? Critics can call them incendiary as well as visionary now, I guess.” It’s hard to take any of this seriously. It’s not going the way I thought it would. The police conclude their business and leave through the front door, not my bedroom balcony. “I’m amazed Mom knew how to call 911. She hasn’t made a telephone call for months,” Eddie says after they’ve gone and the house breathes a sigh of relief. “We have the numbers in big print right on the phone, though,” I rush in to say. “So it’s possible.” “Well, obviously, since she did it. I’m just surprised she was capable.” He flips through the pages of the album on the table. We use it to help with Mom’s memories, which are like wallpaper always curling off the wall. We try to paste them up again, reciting family stories about big moments in our lives. They bind her memories, and become hers again, if only for a little while. Mom pulls the book toward her. She points to a picture of her father, and says, “I keep thinking he was not a good man. Is that true? Did you know him?” “No, Momma. We only knew your mother.” “Where is Mum?” Nobody answers, and in a moment she has forgotten her question. She lets us put her to bed easily, and then we reassemble in the kitchen. Clara wants to hash things out some more. She’s no good at letting sleeping dogs lie. “Mom must have been running on adrenaline to have figured out how to dial. I wonder what upset her this time. I never sensed her getting up again after we got her back to sleep the first time. I never forget to lock the front door, either, but the police said it was unlocked. Mom couldn’t have done that. If she tried it, I would have heard her fumbling from the bedroom. And how did I not hear her whisper into the phone? It’s right between us on the bedside table.” I glance at the kitchen phone, a reflex. I quickly look away. “I wonder if she’ll try it again. We better pull the plug before we go to bed. If she can’t make the phone work, she’ll forget how to use it pretty fast.” Steven says, thinking outside that box everyone talks about. “Or else she’ll get frustrated and break it,” I say. Three pairs of questioning eyes lock into mine. They don’t think Mom is strong enough to break anything, but I know she is. It’s the tyranny of the weak. People always underestimate the damage an impaired person can do.
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AuthorCheryl Snell is an award-winning poet and novelist, author of the new family saga Bombay Trilogy, a retelling of her previous novels Shiva's Arms, Rescuing Ranu, and Kalpavriksha. Archives
October 2020
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