also been asleep?
I looked up.
Miss Milofski?
Who? It took me more than a few seconds to understand that this nurse was speaking to me, that
I
was Miss Milofski.
No.
It had been years since I'd been her—that girl who was a combination of her unmarried status and her father's name—but, still, in a brilliant flash I saw her again,
Miss Milofski,
sitting behind the receptionist desk of the dentist's office where I worked in the summers during high school. She was dressed too provocatively for her job, for her office full of matrons, for the conservative town she lived in. Skirts too short, blouses too sheer, sundresses without straps. Eventually some middle-aged dental hygienist would pull her aside and tell her that the dentist had mentioned it, and didn't like it. I looked up at the nurse. I said, "No. I won't be staying for dinner."
I was, I realized, flushed.
Funny, how just remembering that ("You need to dress
less
..."—she'd never been able to say it...) had made me blush.
I could feel the hot splash of humiliation on my chest—still, or again.
I pulled the sweater closed around my collarbone.
The nurse left as quietly as she'd come.
My father was still deeply asleep. I looked around his room. It was almost entirely empty. He'd never liked any of the framed prints I'd brought, or even the calendars, and had finally said, "Nothing on the walls, please."
There was a radio on his nightstand. A Bible (Gideons—not his, everyone had one). A silver shoehorn on the table next to his chair. And someone had put a fat red rose in a Styrofoam cup on the windowsill.
Who?
Had one of the nurses or aides taken a particular shine to my father? Or the art therapist? Or some old lady from a local church, visiting the shut-ins?
It was the kind of rose you could buy at the grocery store for a couple dollars—mutant, huge, and blindingly red, the kind of flower nature alone could never grow. Science and commerce and nature together had made that rose. It was leaning dangerously over the edge of the cup it was in, seeming to grow more and more top-heavy, as if burdened with its hyped-up beauty, as I watched.
Its stem was too long, and there was no longer enough water in the cup to anchor it down, I realized.
I stood up and took a step toward it, but it was already too late.
The whole thing was toppled—by what? gravity? my gaze?—onto the floor as I stepped toward it, water splashing over Dad's slippers.
And the petals, which were older and looser than they'd appeared, scattered over the linoleum, looking like the remnants of something violent—a shredded valentine, a little red bird torn to pieces by hungry, older birds, a bloody fight between flowers. My father woke up blinking at it, but said nothing. I cleaned it up and put it in the trash before I walked Dad down to dinner.
(4:30. Who eats dinner at 4:30?)
And then I left.
A T THE airport:
A tall thin young man in a flannel shirt carrying a duffel bag:
Is that my boy?
It had been less than two months since I'd last seen him, but seeing him there at baggage claim, leather jacket draped over his shoulder, I had the stunned sick feeling that I'd sent a child to California and a stranger had returned without him.
"Ma," he said, stepping toward us. "Dad." I glanced at Jon, who didn't look stunned, not even surprised, just happy to see Chad.
He kissed my cheek. He smelled of airplane—upholstery, ether, other people's laundry. He tossed an arm around Jon's shoulder. He said, kidding, as if I couldn't hear, "So, what's wrong with Mom?"
"She's just happy to see you," Jon said. It was an old joke between them:
Mom cries when she's happy.
Sentimental birthday cards, graduations, baby pictures.
But I wasn't crying. I was staring. I felt unmoved. I felt that I was still waiting for my boy to get off the plane.
As we waited for the shuttle bus to take us back to Jon's car in the parking garage, I saw a woman waiting with a little boy.
Nine? Ten?
Buzz cut,
I looked up.
Miss Milofski?
Who? It took me more than a few seconds to understand that this nurse was speaking to me, that
I
was Miss Milofski.
No.
It had been years since I'd been her—that girl who was a combination of her unmarried status and her father's name—but, still, in a brilliant flash I saw her again,
Miss Milofski,
sitting behind the receptionist desk of the dentist's office where I worked in the summers during high school. She was dressed too provocatively for her job, for her office full of matrons, for the conservative town she lived in. Skirts too short, blouses too sheer, sundresses without straps. Eventually some middle-aged dental hygienist would pull her aside and tell her that the dentist had mentioned it, and didn't like it. I looked up at the nurse. I said, "No. I won't be staying for dinner."
I was, I realized, flushed.
Funny, how just remembering that ("You need to dress
less
..."—she'd never been able to say it...) had made me blush.
I could feel the hot splash of humiliation on my chest—still, or again.
I pulled the sweater closed around my collarbone.
The nurse left as quietly as she'd come.
My father was still deeply asleep. I looked around his room. It was almost entirely empty. He'd never liked any of the framed prints I'd brought, or even the calendars, and had finally said, "Nothing on the walls, please."
There was a radio on his nightstand. A Bible (Gideons—not his, everyone had one). A silver shoehorn on the table next to his chair. And someone had put a fat red rose in a Styrofoam cup on the windowsill.
Who?
Had one of the nurses or aides taken a particular shine to my father? Or the art therapist? Or some old lady from a local church, visiting the shut-ins?
It was the kind of rose you could buy at the grocery store for a couple dollars—mutant, huge, and blindingly red, the kind of flower nature alone could never grow. Science and commerce and nature together had made that rose. It was leaning dangerously over the edge of the cup it was in, seeming to grow more and more top-heavy, as if burdened with its hyped-up beauty, as I watched.
Its stem was too long, and there was no longer enough water in the cup to anchor it down, I realized.
I stood up and took a step toward it, but it was already too late.
The whole thing was toppled—by what? gravity? my gaze?—onto the floor as I stepped toward it, water splashing over Dad's slippers.
And the petals, which were older and looser than they'd appeared, scattered over the linoleum, looking like the remnants of something violent—a shredded valentine, a little red bird torn to pieces by hungry, older birds, a bloody fight between flowers. My father woke up blinking at it, but said nothing. I cleaned it up and put it in the trash before I walked Dad down to dinner.
(4:30. Who eats dinner at 4:30?)
And then I left.
A T THE airport:
A tall thin young man in a flannel shirt carrying a duffel bag:
Is that my boy?
It had been less than two months since I'd last seen him, but seeing him there at baggage claim, leather jacket draped over his shoulder, I had the stunned sick feeling that I'd sent a child to California and a stranger had returned without him.
"Ma," he said, stepping toward us. "Dad." I glanced at Jon, who didn't look stunned, not even surprised, just happy to see Chad.
He kissed my cheek. He smelled of airplane—upholstery, ether, other people's laundry. He tossed an arm around Jon's shoulder. He said, kidding, as if I couldn't hear, "So, what's wrong with Mom?"
"She's just happy to see you," Jon said. It was an old joke between them:
Mom cries when she's happy.
Sentimental birthday cards, graduations, baby pictures.
But I wasn't crying. I was staring. I felt unmoved. I felt that I was still waiting for my boy to get off the plane.
As we waited for the shuttle bus to take us back to Jon's car in the parking garage, I saw a woman waiting with a little boy.
Nine? Ten?
Buzz cut,
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