Range of Motion (7 page)

I
t’s midnight, and Alice’s dog Maggie and I are rocking again, though we are on the sofa this time, not in the rocker by the window. She has actually fallen asleep; I can hear her damp snoring. I am thinking about the man named Ted and his wife Jeannie. I still can’t think who he reminds me of. Maybe nobody. Maybe he’s just the kind of person who’s good-looking enough that you think he ought to look like someone famous. I’ll bet people come up to him all the time saying, “Are you …?” And he has to all the time say, “No.” I wonder what his wife looks like, what kind of couple they made. And then I think about all the other people there must be who have loved ones in a coma, who live in a state of desperate hope, not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing, not knowing, not knowing. And then, because I just can’t think about this anymore, I turn on the television. I flip through the channels until I see Lucy saying, “Awwwww,
Ricky!
” and then I sit back to watch. I hope Lucy
calls Ethel on the phone. Every time she calls Ethel on the phone, it’s a good one.

Maggie is actually getting a little heavy. I shift her over to my other shoulder. This wakes her up, and she pushes away from me, walks stiff-legged along the sofa to the end of it, lies back down. She puts her chin on her paws, sighs loudly through her nose.

“Well, pardon me,” I say.

Her ears twitch.

“You want some baloney?” I ask.

She raises her head, looks at me.

“Baloney?” I say.

She cocks her head, actually looks cute.

I go into the kitchen, peel off a slice of baloney, bring it out to her all rolled up.

“Don’t get it on the sofa,” I say.

She eats it in one bite, looks to me for more. “Forget it,” I say. “But maybe later we’ll have popcorn.”

She barks.

“Yeah, all right. Whatever you said.”

“ ’Course, we never watched television,” the ghost woman says. She is standing in the corner, opposite the set, in her faded red chenille robe and white nightgown and slippers, hair in a braid over her shoulder. “Didn’t have one till after the kids were gone. We used to play cards a lot: gin rummy, canasta, poker, too—just for pennies. We’d set up the card table, invite the neighbors over, or my husband and I would
just play ourselves. We did a lot of gabbing, laughing. When other folks were over, somebody would always run to Dixie Cream for donuts, bring back a whole box of them and then of course we’d have to make a pot of coffee. The kids played out on the porch, all rough-and-tumble, somebody was forever coming in crying, but then they’d want to go right back out there. Worst thing that ever happened is the night little Billy Ellerby got smacked in the head with the porch swing—we had a big white porch swing out there, lovely to sit in and watch the world go by. Well, he got seven stitches and you’d have thought he’d been elected king of the universe. Other kids couldn’t get enough of looking at them, standing up close and staring at them till they got the willies; then they’d run away, and then they’d come back and do it all over again. He charged a quarter to feel them, never mind that he could have gotten a terrible infection, you’d have to practically call out the reserves to get any of those kids to wash their hands before dinner. But he charged a quarter and darned if he didn’t earn enough money to buy the supplies he needed to make a go-cart. Built it right out in the backyard, entered it in a contest at the State Fair that summer and won himself a blue ribbon.”

I rub my eyes, sigh. I’m not much bothered by this anymore. I’m used to it. It’s my odd comfort, listening to simple stories about a simpler life. I look back at the TV screen—Lucy
is
calling Ethel on the phone!—and when I look back, the ghost lady is gone.

At the commercial, I get up, stretch, yawn. I ought to go to bed. I turn off the TV, look out the window at the moon, draw comfort from its presence. I call Maggie, let her out the front door onto the porch, then outside. She’ll stay in the yard, sleep behind the rosebushes. Alice and Ed let her run free, I really like that. She doesn’t even have a collar.

I close the door to the porch, then walk to the end of it, look up at the ceiling. There, where I knew they would be, I see the marks from the hooks that held up the swing. And it comes to me as naturally as taking the next breath what her name was: Evelyn Arlene Benson, called Evie. And then I understand that there is an explanation for all of this. I remember that after I first moved in Alice and I found some old pictures of the house in the basement. Surely there must have been a photo of the porch swing. There must have been some old letters, too. I probably read them and then forgot about them. I must have. I do that sometimes, forget about things. Jay used to get mad at me for that. I would forget things he told me. “Why don’t you pay
attention
when I talk to you?” he’d say. “What is it that you’re
thinking
about all the time?” And of course I’d say I didn’t remember. I close the front door to my house, lock it, dead bolt and chain.

I awaken to the sight of my younger daughter beside my bed. The clock says 1:50. Amy is making little snuffling noises, crying, her hands held together before her and caved in a little,
as though in lazy prayer. “What?” I say sleepily, hold out my arms to her. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

She climbs into bed with me, turns onto her side, pushes her butt into my stomach and her thumb into her mouth. “I had a bad dream,” she says.

“You had a bad dream?” I say. “Is that what you said?”

She turns around, pulls her thumb out, studies my face. “Yes. It was about a man who had no eyeballs. It was all white in there where his eyes go. He kept looking at me, though.”

“That must have been really scary.”

“Yes.”

“But you know it was only a dream.”

A pause, and then, “Yes.”

“Would you like to stay here and sleep?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

She turns away again, and her breathing changes within a minute; she’s back asleep. The man she dreamed of had eyes that were all white, but he could see her. It’s Jay she was dreaming of. He seems blind to us, but he sees. That must be it. This dream is the fragile intervention I need to keep up my faith. Not tearing up sheets. Why did I think that that kind of acting out was going to get me somewhere? If I lie on the floor kicking and screaming, who will be moved? The hard and constant lesson is that we are only observers here. We do not move the pieces. We do not chart the
course. We have our little parameters, like an insect captured in a shoebox. We strut back and forth, arranging and rearranging the arbitrary layout of the grasses we’ve been given. But with all the head-nodding we do, all the lip-smacking, all the self-satisfied pats to our overfull bellies, all the putting forth of what is really only speculation from our beginning brains, we aren’t aware at all of the thing that is before us. Jay and I used to talk about this, how something superior must be so amused. Inside the box, we arrange and rearrange. We plan and plan. We are so foolish, but we can’t help ourselves. The shoebox seems so much to us. We plan and plan.

I get out of bed quietly, go to look at Amy’s sheets. Yup. I take them off her bed, put them out in the hall. Tomorrow is soon enough to wash them.

A
fter the kids go to school in the morning, I put Amy’s sheets in the wash, then get back into bed. I’m too tired to go and see him. I need some rest, or I’ll fall apart. Just after I go back to sleep, the doorbell rings. I punch the pillow, punch it again, harder. Meter man, I’ll bet.

I yank open the door, annoyance all over me, and stare out at nothing. Then I look down and see Timothy looking up at me.

“What are you doing here?” I say. “You’ll be late for school.”

“That’s secondary,” he says.

“Uh-huh. Well, what’s primary?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you know, why are you here?”

“My mom’s sick. She needs a thermometer. We can’t find ours. Do you have one?”

I open the door wider. “Come in, sure, I’ve got one. I’ll get it for you.”

He follows me to the bathroom, and I find a thermometer in the medicine chest, hand it to him. “Should I come with you?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Up to you.”

We cross the porch to their side, go into their house, and I see Alice lying on the living-room sofa. I sit beside her and before I can say anything, she says, “What’s wrong with you? You look like shit.” Then, to Timothy, “You didn’t hear that. I think you’d better go on, honey. I’ll be fine.”

He looks at me. “Go,” I say. “I’ll be here.” I say this, and I mean it, and I want to do it; but I am also thinking, Oh God, oh no, I want to sleep, and then I need to go see Jay. But I’ll go tonight when Ed gets home. I’ll do the day shift with Alice, the night shift with Jay. The edges of my stomach ache.

But then I look at the circles under Alice’s eyes, her wan color. I love her. Someday I should tell her. “I look like shit?” I say. “You ought to see you.”

“I know,” she says. “I’ve been puking. I’m sorry.”

“You’re ‘sorry.’ For God’s sake, Alice.”

She smiles. “No. You know. I can’t watch your kids this afternoon.”

“Oh dear. I’ll have to fire you.” She starts to say something and I say, “Alice.
Thanks
for getting sick. Thanks for letting me do a little something in return. What
can
I do, by the way? Should I stay here?”

She thinks about it, then says, “No. I’m loaded up on medicine, I think I’ll sleep for a while. If you could just bring me the phone. I’ll call you if I need anything.”

“Are you going to take your temperature? You look kind of flushed.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” she says, and slides the thermometer under her tongue. The mean thought comes to me that now I’ll have to get another one what with the way no family wants another family’s germs. Then I think how terrible I am to think that and that no one else would. I go to get their portable phone, which is in their bedroom.

The bed is unmade, a stain in the center of the sheet. I know what from. I lay my hand across my stomach, stare at the stain. It occurs to me that I’d forgotten all about that. I try to remember the last time; then, thinking it is too dangerous to do that, I go back downstairs, hand Alice the phone. She puts it beside her, then pulls the thermometer out of her mouth. “Yikes.”

“What is it?”

“A hundred and two point six.”

“Are you serious?”

She nods, a cross between pissed and sorrowful.

“Want me to take you to the doctor?”

“Not unless it turns into a hundred and two point six.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, it’s the flu. It’s just the damn flu. Just put a pan with some water in it beside me here. My mom always did that with us when we were kids. If you were sick, you got to lie on the living-room sofa with a pan of water to puke in. It was only for puking, thank God, imagine how we’d have felt if she’d have mashed potatoes in it the next day. Anyway, if I have to puke and don’t think I can make it to the bathroom, I’ll do it in there. Then I’ll call you to empty it, aren’t you lucky?”

“I don’t mind, Alice, I really don’t. Please. Don’t worry. Just get better.”

“I’m telling you, you don’t look so hot yourself. Honestly.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Okay.”

“Want me to turn the TV on for you?”

“God, no. Then I’ll puke for sure. No, I’ll just sleep. I usually get over these things really fast. I’ll be all right.”

Back at home, I sit in my kitchen, listening to the birds. I can’t go back to sleep. I am so scared she has something
bad. I am so scared she’ll die, that’s what it is. I don’t know why this kind of thinking should surprise me. But it does. I twist the dishtowel in my hands for a good twenty minutes, asking for a calm that does not come and then I get dressed.

H
ere, at the back of my throat, a tickle. A cough? Winter and the snow falling in fat flakes, a silhouette before glass, fire. On my knee, a child sitting, my live hand on the back of her head, such fine yellow hair. The sound of your voice, Lainey, coming from the kitchen, sliding drawer, the bang of a pan. Silver, tinfoil stars, blunt-ended scissors, the first day of school. Mittens wet on the radiator, rippled air. A rustle of paper, the news on the television, steps walking across the carpet, those big shoes, my own father. Dad?

Ted and I are in the little break room at the nursing home. It’s mostly used by the staff, but visitors can use it too. Ted is eating Cheez Doodles and drinking a Dr Pepper. I’m having a Nestlés Crunch. It’s a celebration, because Alice did not die. No, did not die and felt fine the next day and showed me that not everything turns out crazy. It’s 7:30, dark outside; really, I should go home, but I saw Ted in the hall on the way out and it was clear he needed to talk.

He squeezes his empty bag into a cellophane ball, throws it across the room into the garbage, then asks, “Do you ever feel guilty?”

I shrug. “Sure. I mean, you know, about all the times I yelled at him, stuff like that?”

“No. What I mean is … do you ever feel like it was your fault?”

“Well, no. It was ice. It hit him in the head. I wasn’t even there.”

“Right.”

“Why, do you, Ted? It wasn’t your fault. She had an aneurysm! How could that be your fault?”

He nods, stares at the tiny table top, rubs at a stain with the flat of his fingers. He has graceful hands, like a pianist. He looks up at me. “I think I made it worse, though. I think I made the vessel pop, or leak, or … something.”

“How could you have done that, Ted? You didn’t do that.”

“Well, I … On the night she went into the hospital, they told her she had to stay in bed. But she wanted to go to the bathroom. I told her I’d go get a nurse to give her a bedpan. She said she didn’t want to use a bedpan, she was afraid it would spill, she’d mess up the sheets. She didn’t want to use a bedpan. She wanted to walk to the bathroom. So I thought, well, what the hell, I was there, wasn’t I, I’d help her not to fall, I could even carry her back to her bed if I needed to, she didn’t weigh anything. But she did fine—I really
didn’t help her at all, just walked behind her. She had just gotten back in bed when the nurse came in, asked if she wanted to wash up a little before she went to sleep. She asked if she needed the bedpan. And we just sort of looked at each other, Jeannie and I, our little secret. And then the next day in surgery she hemorrhaged. See, I think maybe she shouldn’t have gotten up. I think that might just have been too much. And you know …” He looks up at me, starts to speak, stops.