The next morning, the kids go back to school. After breakfast, a minivan comes for Ashley, and I drive Nate to a collection point about twenty minutes away.
"I"ll call you tonight," I say as he"s getting out of the car. He slams the door-I don"t know if he heard me or not. I beep. His shoulders tighten, but he doesn"t turn around; he adjusts the straps of his knapsack and keeps walking towards the bus.
I wait to leave until after the bus pulls out and then go home and sit with the kittens, who are doing well; their eyes are open, they"re standing-it"s amazing.
Cheryl calls. "Don"t you think it"s weird that you vanished without telling me? Who did I hear about it from? Julie. And how did that make me feel? She said you went to Williamsburg on a school trip."
"Something like that," I say.
"A little colonial action? A happy ending over a keg of gunpowder? A w.a.n.k in the stockade?"
I say nothing.
"Oh, please," she says, "I"ve been there, done that."
"If that"s what it was like when you went, then I went someplace else-the other Williamsburg. Were your kids on break last week as well?"
"Tad did a community-service project, Brad went to football camp, and Lad stayed home. So-when can we meet-does Friday work?"
"Trust me, now is not a good time."
"In what sense?"
"I came home with a parasite, they"re not sure which one yet. It could have come from undercooked venison, or from the volunteer firemen"s breakfast we went to. I"ve got to bring a stool sample to the doctor this afternoon."
"TMI," she shouts, like a referee calling for a time-out.
"You seem to want to know everything." I continue: "It"s very contagious. I have to wash my hands constantly, and my clothes."
"I"ll give you ten days," she says.
"And after that?"
"I"m not prepared to discuss that yet."
"Do me a favor," I say. "Don"t tell Julie."
"Of course not," she says. "Some things are private. Meanwhile, I"ve been doing some reading on Richard Nixon. I"m not sure I think he was such a good guy."
"He wasn"t a good guy."
"Well, then, what do you see in him?"
"So much. His was an intractable personality; he believed rules didn"t apply to him. I find it fascinating."
"It"s interesting," she says. "I would have imagined you going for someone either more conventional, a Truman or an Eisenhower, or perhaps even more modern and heroic, you know, like JFK. But Nixon-it"s almost kind of kinky."
"Almost," I say.
"I"ll call you in a few days; if you"re feeling better we can make a plan."
Something is missing. I feel like I"ve fallen into a s.p.a.ce between s.p.a.ces, like I don"t really exist-I"m always out of context. Searching for clarity, I visit my mother.
In the lobby of the home, there"s a large dry-erase board. "Feeling bored? Need a lift? Join us and Make Your Own Smoothie, 1011 a.m. and 34 p.m. (We have fresh fruit, fiber, probiotics, and frozen yogurt.)"
"She"s not here," the woman at the front desk tells me. "She"s gone out with the others, they"ve got a new hobby."
"What"s that?" I ask.
"Swimming," she says. "Eleven of them went off in the minivan to the local YMCA. They"ve all got floaties on their arms, and some of them are inside inflatable kids" rings-like ducks and frogs-and they"re all wearing bathing caps. Big babies, we call them-because they all wear diapers. We get them dressed before they leave. It"s great for their mobility."
"Since when does she swim?" I ask.
"We got lucky with this new therapist who also works with the psychopharmacologist; this place is hoppin". More work in some ways, but very exciting. Sometimes we joke that we"re bringing back the dead. And they all seem so happy-well, almost all." She nods towards an older man heading down the hall, seeming quite purposeful; he approaches us.
"What the f.u.c.k is going on around here? That"s all I want to know. What the f.u.c.k? Who is that man in my office? Did you f.u.c.kin" replace me behind my back? I"m the G.o.dd.a.m.ned boss around here, or at least that"s what I thought. We"ll see what you"re thinking when Friday comes, see if I"m signing your check. Who the h.e.l.l are you?" he asks, looking at me.
"Silver," I say.
"Good job," he says. "Keep up the good work."
"Now, where the f.u.c.k is my secretary? She said she was going to lunch, and I swear that was ten years ago...." The man wanders off.
"Like I said, it"s been good for most people, and it"s nice to see him up and around," the woman says.
"What are they giving him?"
"I"m not at liberty to discuss the patients-in fact, perhaps I"ve said too much already. It"s a little of this, a little of that-there are advances being made every day. It"s a lot about movement-getting them up and out. Short of true paralysis, there"s no reason a person should be in bed or sitting down all day...and for those who are too weak, we start them off just hanging up." She leads me down the hall to a room and opens the door. Dozens of long springs hang from the ceiling, and each pair of springs is attached to a modified straitjacket/canvas lace-up vest, and laced into the vests are old people. They hang like limp puppets, half standing, half bouncing, half dancing to music, as physical therapists make their way from person to person. "They seem to like it," the woman says. "We invented the units here-weighted standing-a.s.sist devices. It cuts down on the respiratory illnesses-better lung function."
"They seem pleased," I say, unable to get over the sight of a roomful of "suspended" elderly.
"Enough show-and-tell for one day," the woman says, closing the door. "Are you going to go down to the YMCA and look for your mother? They just left, so you should be able to catch them."
I have to pay fifteen dollars and fill out a liability waiver before I can enter the pool area of the YMCA, and the fact that I am not going swimming seems irrelevant to the person at the desk.
I enter through the men"s locker room, an unappealing old green tile s.p.a.ce dotted with male flesh and the smell of sneakers.
As soon as I enter the pool area, I am sent back-told that I must take off my shoes and socks and wash my feet in the shower before entering.
"Hi, Mom," I call out when I get into the pool area, my voice echoing off the tile walls and then absorbed into the chloramide fumes rising off the pool"s surface. "Hi, Mom," I repeat.
The entire cla.s.s turns to face me. "Hi," all the ladies in the pool answer.
My mother is wearing a latex cap, the same kind she used to wear thirty years ago-white with large rubbery flowers in full bloom bursting off the top. Could it be the same bathing cap she"s had all along? She swims towards me and, considering that not so long ago she was bedridden, it"s disorienting to watch her kicking, swinging her arms through the water"s surface. She b.r.e.a.s.t.strokes to the edge of the pool, where I find myself staring down into an oddly open face-framed by the latex flowers-and a deep, wrinkled cleavage.
"You look great," I say. "How are you?"
"Fantastic," she says.
A barrel-chested man swims to her side.
"h.e.l.lo, son," he says.
"h.e.l.lo," I say.
"Good to see you," he says.
"You too," I say, going along with it.
"How"s your sister?" he asks.
"Good," I say, even though I have no sister.
"I"m very worried about your mother," he says. "I can"t find her anywhere." He speaks in a booming voice, like a former radio announcer.
"You can"t find her because she"s gone," my mother reminds him. "But you"ve got me now."
"You have each other?" I ask.
"Yes," they say.
"And what about Dad?" I am confused, suddenly a child again.
"Your father"s been dead for years-I"m ent.i.tled to have a life," my mother says.
"Would you two like to come back to cla.s.s?" the instructor asks, and they turn around and swim back to cla.s.s, their diapers poking out from under their suits.
On the way home, I stop at the A&P. It"s not my regular store, I just happened to go there. A woman seems to be following me through the store, everywhere I go.
"Are you following me?"
"Am I?"
"Are you?"
"Hard to know," she says. "Most people go up and down the aisles," she says, "they go row by row; unless you have a system of your own, you"re bound to see the same people twice."
"Sorry," I say. "Have we met before?"
She shrugs, as though it"s irrelevant. "What kind of cake do you like?" she asks. We"re in the frozen-foods section, stopped by the desserts. "Plain pound cake, or something with frosting?"
"I"ve never bought cake," I say, and it"s true. "If I wanted cake, I think I"d go to a bakery, but I"m not really a cake person."
"I think young people like frosting, old people like plain," she says, putting a plain Sara Lee pound cake into her cart.
"You don"t look old," I say.
"I am, inside," she says.
"So how old are you?" I notice that her body is thin, sinewy, more like that of a child than a grown woman. Her hair is long, thin, almost stringy-dirty blond.
"Guess," she says.
"Twenty-seven," I say.
"I"m thirty-one," she says. "You have a lousy sense of what"s what."
I push my cart onward-perhaps I should be grateful for her attention, but at the moment I"m not, I"m distracted-dog biscuits, cat litter...
She intercepts me again: "You"re an animal lover?"
"The cat had kittens," I say.
"I always wanted pets," she says, "but my parents hated the idea: "They track in dirt," my father would say. "It"s all I can do to manage you and your sister," my mother would say."
"Well, you"re thirty-one now," I say, "so I guess it"s up to you."
"I recently had a cat," she says. And then pauses. "Can I meet your kittens? Can I? How about I come to your place for hors d"oeuvres?" She throws some frozen cheese puffs into her cart.
I don"t really know what to say-or, more precisely, I don"t know how to say no.
And so, when I pull out of the A&P parking lot, she is behind me, following me-almost b.u.mper to b.u.mper. Her car is as nondescript as her person-a white compact of indeterminate age-one of a million. As I"m driving, I"m realizing that I didn"t pick her up, she picked me up, and it makes me nervous. Why is she following me? There"s a reason people used to be "introduced," a reason why polite society is called polite and why it evolved the way it did-with great castle b.a.l.l.s and formal letters of introduction.
She parks behind me in the driveway and comes in carrying a bag of her frozen things, asking if she can put it in the freezer for the moment, and suddenly it"s entirely awkward. It"s not like she"s stopping by to borrow a roasting pan, or so I can show her how to make tarte tatin.
Tessie barks.
"Who is this big bad doggy?" she asks, in a babyish voice.
"It"s okay, Tessie, it"s a woman from the produce section who wanted to come home with me," I say.
"You invited me over," she says, still bent and talking to Tessie. "He said, "Do you want to come to my house and play with the p.u.s.s.y cats?""
"I don"t think so."
"Um-hummm," she says to the dog, who wags her tail, grateful for attention.
I put away my groceries and ask if she"d like some coffee or tea.
"How about a gla.s.s of wine?" she says.
"Sure." I go into George"s wine closet, feeling like I"m raiding the supply chest; I go in hoping to find something unremarkable-i.e., cheap. "You know," I say as I"m digging around, "it"s not really my house."
"Oh," she says. "You seem to know where everything is."
"It"s my brother"s; I"m long-term house-sitting." I find a Long Island Chardonnay that looks like a gift someone brought to a cookout rather than something George got from his "wine dealer." "So do you do things like this frequently?" I ask.
"Like what?"