Josephine wanted to protest, to say that James was anything but steady, but that seemed to be what Christine was really saying anyway.
“You could move into the shelter for a while,” Josephine said instead. She was sick of herself; she could barely stand the sound of her own voice. Didn’t she have anything more insightful to offer, anything more complex? Christine ignored her again and sat down on the couch, handing Josephine a glass clinking with ice.
Joe raised the uncapped markers above his head, walking toward his mother. She uncurled his fingers, prying the markers from his hands and shoving them under the couch, rolling her eyes as Joe fell to his knees to pull out large tumbleweeds of dust.
“Their father is supposed to pick them up in a few days, take them for a while,” Christine said. She brushed the bangs from her face with her splinted finger, revealing the scar from where the boys’ father, who was not James, had cut her with his other girlfriend’s switchblade. She fingered the indentation. “‘My body is marked by the men I’ve known. It’s a calendar of bad love that tells me nothing.’ I heard that song on the radio this morning.” Josephine studied Christine’s cheeks as she spoke, slabs of tender meat.
Josephine felt a sudden urge to ask if she could move in with Christine, sleep on the dusty couch, eliminate the differences between them altogether.
“What can I do to help you?” Josephine asked, meaning the exact opposite.
Christine pulled a clump of dust and hair from Joe’s hand. Stan sniffed the clump where it fell, then fell over on his side, his boil hanging loose with fluid, pregnant with possibility.
“Look,” Christine said. “I appreciate you coming by. I do.” She held her hands in front of her as if she were holding a steering wheel, her splinted finger sticking up like a stiff ghost. “I’ve got my brother in Florida,” she said. Whenever Christine mentioned her brother in Florida, she pretended she was driving his imaginary car and the conversation was over.
“Christine,” Josephine said. She spoke before she realized that her words were more than thought. “I think I’m going blind.”
Christine looked up wearily. She reached the hand with the broken finger over to rub Joe’s back awkwardly.
“Never mind,” Josephine said.
“At least it’s only one finger,” Christine said firmly. The adhesive tape of the splint scratched up and down Joe’s sweater, snagged, and moved on.
Josephine’s shoulders stiffened with embarrassment. She’d wanted Christine to jump up from the couch in horror, fluff the couch pillows for Josephine to lay her head. “Blind?!” The blood rushed to her face, heating it up from the inside out.
Josephine was nothing like that doctor in Haiti — she wandered out into the squashed-down world looking for comfort from the people she should be comforting. Christine flipped her arm over to scratch her wrist with the splint and Josephine had a sudden murderous impulse to cut the wrist Christine offered up, to see real blood. She shook her head to empty her mind of the image. She would go home and call Eli. He would straighten her out. “Pull the shades, Jo,” he’d say. “Make a cup of tea. Take a nap. Be kind to yourself.”
Last night Josephine had found brief comfort on a late-night public TV talk show. A guest scientist had warned against the dangers of bowing down to genetic determinism. And yet all this talk about genomes — how could they not, in addition to everything else, dictate human behavior? That’s what the talk show host had said, striking a thoughtful pose, hand on his chin as if he were in the midst of discovering something himself. The trick, Josephine thought, was to arm yourself with your own life philosophies, to learn to tell your own narrative in a way that allowed you to influence your own evolutionary path. My mother lost her mind so I didn’t have to. The fact that I’m aware of the danger makes it that much more preventable. Yeah, my father left — it made me strong, independent, self-sufficient. No, I didn’t feel abandoned, actually. She had these conversations frequently with imaginary dissenters, who often took the form of the late-night talk show host. He’d ask challenging questions, that hand on his chin. But Josephine, you’ve had moments where you too wanted to retreat to your bed. Long naps in the afternoon, yes? Your work — is it guilt that motivates you? And how about this Eli? He has made it clear that he loves you, and yet you refuse to even discuss the possibility of marriage. What is this about? Perhaps you are afraid you will drive him away the way your mother did your father? Oh, shut up, she told herself.
“Call me if you need anything,” Josephine said to Christine, knowing Christine never would. Then she had an inspiration. She wrote her home phone number on a piece of paper and slipped it into Christine’s good hand.
“What’s this?” Christine asked.
“My home number.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
Get set, the spiders whispered.
Back at her office, Josephine took herself to task for giving a client her home phone number. She shouldn’t foster dependency. She’d gone to social work school after her mother died to be able to give something to people who wanted to receive it. At first that provided a joyous, mind-expanding satisfaction, which then became more of a cleaning-the-house kind of satisfaction. Clean laundry folded neatly in drawers; kitchen counter wiped clean; a bathroom that smelled of fake-smelling flowery disinfectant; groceries unpacked, refrigerator arranged so that the levels of food made sense, cans carefully stacked in the cupboard. A now-that’s-done kind of satisfaction. She knew she’d shut herself down, wrapped herself in the snappy maxims she offered the women she counseled—“Take care of yourself; no one else will,” or “You can’t undo your past.” It kept their sadness from seeping through. Now that felt wrong — she should feel some of that pain. This talk with herself wasn’t having the desired effect.
She thought about calling Eli, then decided against it. His kindness infuriated her. “You need a break,” he’d say as he often did, level-headed and calm. His solutions infuriated her.
“You’ll be like this someday, no matter how hard you try,” her mother had said to her, always quietly (so much better when she screeched), after her father fled. This was before her mother stopped leaving the house altogether, when she still faked fainting spells in movie theaters. Josephine would throw down her popcorn to come to her rescue. That’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? Or was it? Kindness infuriated her too, and solutions enraged her. In a train station once, she thought she was going deaf because the clerk behind the counter began to speak as a train pulled into a station. Josephine, excited by how easy this round of reassurance would be, pointed to the train, something tangible, something right there in front of them. She laughed with relief.
“You think this is funny?” her mother had said. “I’m in pain here.”
“I know that,” she said. “I know.”
“I wish I would go deaf so you could see the thing devouring me from inside.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Josephine said, packing her bags in her mind. “Never think it again or it might come true.”
“I wish it would,” she said, and Josephine unpacked her mental luggage once more, feeling the inevitable tug of guilt in the blood they shared.
Josephine canceled her next appointment and went home, where she lay down on her bed. She fell asleep and had a dream in which she walked around and around her own squat house, crowded together among the other one-story houses in the neighborhood for protection, plucking bits of flaking paint to reveal a different color underneath. As she walked, she realized she couldn’t remember what day it was, whether it was yesterday or today or tomorrow or next year.