“Getting late…” the mother says.
The daughter sees the mother is beautiful in profile.
“What did I say?” the mother says.
“There is plenty of time,” the daughter says.
“It is only the season,” the chemist says. Nevertheless, she has something to sell them. “Take it with plenty of fluid,” she says.
“Try this on,” the mother says. “I want to buy you something.”
“Not my style,” the daughter says.
“It could be,” the mother says.
“I said, not my style.”
“What is, then?” the mother says.
“Don’t, now,” the daughter says.
“Then talk to me,” the mother says.
“I am,” the daughter says. “I said I would.”
The mother says, “Then, do you promise? Seriously, I am buying you this.”
The daughter is eager to take her dose. “Water,” she says. “You know I won’t wear it.” Later, the daughter will wish she had said something kinder or better, or, at the least, different. Already, she does. “Mom,” she says. She touches the mother on the arm, on bone.
The daughter is holding a bag in her hand.
“When you come,” the mother says. She is wearing a faint shade of blue on her lids, which are only the slightest bit swollen today. The concourse is crowded with what, to the daughter, appears to be families, and also with lovers.
The daughter is thinking of killing an hour, all the ways. Announcements are spoken. The floor is clean. The mother’s plane is boarding first. Arms, scent, breast, breath — the mother surrounds her.
“Mother, please,” the daughter says.
The mother is feeling for tissue again, the daughter thinks, inside her purse. But no, it is money.
“I don’t need—” the daughter says.
The mother says, “Take it.”
The mother says, “Call.”
The daughter is jamming a bill in her pocket.
“Such a lovely getaway,” the mother says — and then, as the daughter watches, is gone.
THE WOMAN IN CHARGE OF SENSATION
First, she broke her anklebone. How this was accomplished, I am not equipped to say. Will you listen to me? She could not abide a bath — no oil or Epsom — even when she could get wet. And now, you know, they had to keep her stable, immobilize the bone with a variety of substances, all of which were soluble, and therefore to wash it — the ankle, the foot, and, to get down to logistics, the neck — was rather out of the question.
“Can’t,” she said.
“Cannot,” she said.
“Can’t you please see that I’m sleeping?” she said.
She was knitting a scarf in a brilliant red.
She asked me just to use the cloth in places in between again.
She used the word pearl.
The bruises were looked at professionally. This was not a fall, they said — not simply a fall, they said — but likely a condition. They were firm about this, and spoke as if in confidence, if not out of earshot.
“Can’t you turn it down?” she said. Voices, a faucet. “The phone off the hook,” she said. “Just pay attention.”
On the floor the atomizer lay where she had dropped it, beading the plank.
“Careful where you step,” she said. The room smelled expensive.
She gathered up pillows, in a strategy, apparently, to elevate herself — at least some of herself. She was ripping out something. “Look at,” she said. Things wadded inside her. Additional symptoms: nostril, the works. She needed to flatten herself and pinch.
Balls of wool were on the throw. “It’s crooked,” she said.
There was more of her broken.
The experts were summoned, consulted, apprised. These were uninflicted damages. Everyone was compensated.
There amid the draped sheets; a slung arm, this, that—”I’d call it disagreeable,” she said in concurrence. She tapped on the drip. “Prop me,” she said. “Lift me a little. Pummel and plump,” she said. “Go ahead and hit.”
She had what she’d made, retrieved from the house. It was as she’d requested. Needles too.
They told her to make a fist and squeeze.
“What was the question?”—the woman in charge of sensation, a nurse. Marrow, cells, etcetera. A density ratio. “It works like this.”
It was a button and such. “Easy,” they said. “Easy does it with that.”
I was not next of kin. There was no one who heard me.
They covered her later.
Salt was on her lip in there, and fluid leaking out of her. The odds were against this.
It was I who dried her. I wrapped the thing around my neck — tassels dampened — as she’d intended, arguably. I said the odds were against it.
The ankle was healing still, they said.
THE MYTH OF DROWNING
“Are you sleeping?” he said.
“Are you?” she said.
“I guess,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Or nothing you want to say,” he said.
“I didn’t say—”
“Listen—”
“Goodnight,” she said.
“Wait,” he said. “Don’t go to sleep angr y.”
“Who’s angry?”
“Or cross,” he said.
“Not cross,” she said.
“What now?” he said. “What on earth is wrong now?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. You know what I think?”
“No, what do you think?”
“Forget it,” he said.
“No, tell me,” she said.
“Please,” she said.
“I ’m thinking. That story you told…”
“Which?” she said. “What’s that?”
“The wind,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“The woman?”
“What woman?”
“The lake,” he said. “The woman on the lake.”
“The river?”
“The river. I guess it was the river. The woman who drowned.”
“I’m beat,” she said.
“Who was she?”
“No one.”
“Everyone is someone.”
“Okay, someone. But no one we knew. A story my mother told,” she said.
“You sure?” he said.
“I’m sure,” she said. “I think so.”
“Oh,” he said. “Still—”
“What made you think of that?” she said.
“Just…” he said.
“Shhh,” she said.
“What is it?”
“The children?”
“The children are sleeping.”
“But—” she said.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“It’s late,” she said.
“This house,” she said. “It moves in the night.”
“You mean it creaks,” he said.
“It spooks me.”
“Nothing but the wind. The woman,” he said.
“What of her?” she said.
“How was it that she drowned?”
“Who knows,” she said. “She couldn’t swim. Or cramps. Maybe undertow. The undertow was wicked.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, what do you mean?”
“I mean people were there,” he said. “That’s how you told it. A crowd on the shore.”
“That’s what the myth is: Drowning is noisy. It isn’t,” she said.
“It isn’t,” she said.
“I heard you the first time.”
“Tired, I said.”
“Broad daylight,” he said.
“And shallow,” he said. “No one could see her?”