to gain weight with every step. I slowed in the four-seventies,
then stopped entirely between 481 and 483. I couldn't do this. Sweat
as cold and sticky as half-frozen syrup crept out of my hair in
little trickles. My stomach was knotted up like a fist inside a
slick glove. No, I couldn't do it. Best to turn around and skedaddle
like the cowardly chickenshit I was. I'd hitchhike out to Harlow
and call Mrs. McCurdy in the morning. Things would be easier to
face in the morning.
I started to turn, and then a nurse poked
her head out of the room two doors up . . . my mother's room. "Mr.
Parker?" she asked in a low voice.
For a wild moment I almost denied it. Then
I nodded.
"Come in. Hurry. She's going."
They were the words I'd expected, but they
still sent a cramp of terror through me and buckled my knees.
The nurse saw this and came hurrying toward
me, her skirt rustling, her face alarmed. The little gold pin on
her breast read ANNE CORRIGAN. "No, no, I
just meant the sedative . . . She's going to sleep. Oh my
God, I'm so stupid. She's fine, Mr. Parker, I gave her her Ambien
and she's going, to sleep, that's all I meant. You aren't going
to faint, are you?" She took my arm.
"No," I said, not knowing if I was going
to faint or not. The world was swooping and there was a buzzing
in my ears. I thought of how the road had leaped toward the car,
a black-and-white movie road in all that silver moonlight. Did
you ride the Bullet? Man, I rode that fucker four times. Anne Corrigan lead me into the room
and I saw my mother. She had always been a big woman, and the hospital
bed was small and narrow, but she still looked almost lost in it.
Her hair, now more gray than black, was spilled across the pillow.
Her hands lay on top of the sheet like a child's hands, or even
a doll's. There was no frozen stroke-sneer such as the one I'd imagined
on her face, but her complexion was yellow. Her eyes were closed,
but when the nurse beside me murmured her name, they opened. They
were a deep and iridescent blue, the youngest part of her, and perfectly
alive. For a moment they looked nowhere, and then they found me.
She smiled and tried to hold out her arms. One of them came up.
The other trembled, rose a little bit, then fell back. "Al," she
whispered.
I went to her, starting to cry. There
was a chair by the wall, but I didn't bother with it. I knelt on
the floor and put my arms around her. She smelled warm and clean.
I kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She raised
her good hand and patted her fingers under one of my eyes.
"Don't cry," she whispered. "No need of
that."
"I came as soon as I heard," I said. "Betsy
McCurdy called."
"Told her . . . weekend," she said. "Said
the weekend would be fine."
"Yeah, and to hell with that," I said,
and hugged her.
"Car fixed?"
"No," I said. "I hitchhiked."
"Oh gorry," she said. Each word was clearly
an effort for her, but they weren't slurred, and I sensed no bewilderment
or disorientation. She knew who she was, who I was, where we were,
why we were here. The only sign of anything wrong was her weak left
arm. I felt an enormous sense of relief. It had all been a cruel
practical joke on Staub's part . . . or perhaps there had been no
Staub, perhaps it had all been a dream after all, corny as that
might be. Now that I was here, kneeling by her bed with my arms
around her, smelling a faint remnant of her Lanvin perfume, the
dream idea seemed a lot more plausible.
"Al? There's blood on your collar." Her
eyes rolled closed, then came slowly open again. I imagined her
lids must feel as heavy to her as my sneakers had to me, out in
the hall.
"I bumped my head, ma, it's nothing."
"Good. Have to . . . take care of yourself."
The lids came down again; rose even more slowly.
"Mr. Parker, I think we'd better let her
sleep now," the nurse said from behind me. "She's had an extremely
difficult day."
"I know." I kissed her on the corner of
the mouth again. "I'm going, ma, but I'll be back tomorrow."
"Don't . . . hitchhike . . . dangerous."
"I won't. I'll catch a ride in with Mrs.
McCurdy. You get some sleep."
"Sleep . . . all I do," she said. "I was
at work, unloading the dishwasher. I came over all headachey. Fell
down. Woke up . . . here." She looked up at me. "Was a stroke. Doctor
says . . . not too bad."
"You're fine," I said. I got up, then took
her hand. The skin was fine, as smooth as watered silk. An old person's
hand.
"I dreamed we were at that amusement park
in New Hampshire," she said.
I looked down at her, feeling my skin go
cold all over. "Did you?"
"Ayuh. Waiting in line for the one that
goes . . . way up high. Do you remember that one?"
"The Bullet," I said. "I remember it, ma."
"You were afraid and I shouted. Shouted
at you."
"No, ma, you--"
Her hand squeezed down on mine and the
corners of her mouth deepened into near dimples. It was a ghost
of her old impatient expression.
"Yes," she said. "Shouted and swatted you.
Back . . . of the neck, wasn't it?"
"Probably, yeah," I said, giving up. "That's
mostly where you gave it to me."
"Shouldn't have," she said. "It was hot
and I was tired, but still . . . shouldn't have. Wanted to tell
you I was sorry."
My eyes started leaking again. "It's all
right, ma. That was a long time ago."
"You never got your ride," she whispered.
"I did, though," I said. "In the end I
did."
She smiled up at me. She looked small and
weak, miles from the angry, sweaty, muscular woman who had yelled
at me when we finally got to the head of the line, yelled and then
whacked me across the nape of the neck. She must have seen something
on someone's face--one of the other people waiting to ride the Bullet--because
I remember her saying What are you looking at, beautiful?
as she lead me away by the hand, me snivelling under the hot summer
sun, rubbing the back of my neck . . . only it didn't really hurt,
she hadn't swatted me that hard; mostly what I remember was
being grateful to get away from that high, twirling construction
with the capsules at either end, that revolving scream machine.
"Mr. Parker, it really is time to go,"
the nurse said.
I raised my mother's hand and kissed the
knuckles. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said. "I love you, ma."
"Love you, too. Alan . . . sorry for all
the times I swatted you. That was no way to be.
"But it had been; it had been her
way to be. I didn't know how to tell her I knew that, accepted it.
It was part of our family secret, something whispered along the
nerve endings.
"I'll see you tomorrow, ma. Okay?"
She didn't answer. Her eyes had rolled
shut again, and this time the lids didn't come back up. Her chest
rose and fell slowly and regularly. I backed away from the bed,
never taking my eyes off her.
In the hall I said to the nurse, "Is she
going to be all right? Really all right?"
"No one can say that for sure, Mr. Parker.
She's Dr. Nunnally's patient. He's very good. He'll be on the floor
tomorrow afternoon and you can ask him--"
"Tell me what you think."
"I think she's going to be fine," the nurse
said, leading me back down the hall toward the elevator lobby. "Her
vital signs are strong, and all the residual effects suggest a very
light stroke." She frowned a little. "She's going to have to make
some changes, of course. In her diet . . . her lifestyle . . ."
"Her smoking, you mean."
"Oh yes. That has to go." She said it as
if my mother quitting her lifetime habit would be no more difficult
than moving a vase from a table in the living room to one in the
hall. I pushed the button for the elevators, and the door of the
car I'd ridden up in opened at once. Things clearly slowed down
a lot at CMMC once visiting hours were over.
"Thanks for everything," I said.
"Not at all. I'm sorry I scared you. What
I said was incredibly stupid."
"Not at all," I said, although I agreed
