Women and Other Animals Part 12

"Will you two shut up!" yelled Sharon. "Just shut up and drive!"

"Honey, aren't you supposed to be breathing deep or something?"

As they came into town on M98, lights. .h.i.t the truck from all directions-the overhead street lights, lights from the Hot 'n' Now drivethrough and the Total gas station. Tommy made a lot of deliveries downtown, so he knew this stretch of road, knew to slow down over the first set of tracks so as not to cause Sharon any discomfort. The hospital was almost within sight. And just as naturally as night follows day, when the lights began to flash red and the gates fell across the road, Tommy pulled to a stop and shifted into neutral.

"What are you doing?" asked Bob.

"There's a train coming," said Tommy.

"You can make it," said Bob. "Go around."

"I can't take a chance like that with Sharon in here."

"Tommy, you idiot!" screamed Sharon. She opened the door and let herself slide out onto the road.

"Honey, wait!" said Bob and jumped down after her.

Sharon supported herself against the side of the truck, but when Bob stretched an arm around her, she pushed him away and headed toward the tracks. But before them all, as big as a movie screen, the locomotive engine appeared, oily black and unforgiving. It riveted them all in their places, approaching in what looked like slow motion. Tons and tons of steel, enough to mangle flesh and pulverize bones, enough to crush Tommy's truck and wrap it around him. A second engine followed the first, then a boxcar from the Chessie System with "Red + Julie" spraypainted on it. Then a hundred more.

With his automatic window b.u.t.ton, Tommy lowered the pas Page 169 senger side window and yelled down to them, "Get back in. We're almost there." But Bob and Sharon were arguing.

Luckily, the train kept rolling, and it didn't stop and back up the way they sometimes did. When Tommy saw the last train car, he looked behind him to see about thirtyfive vehicles spread out across four lanes. As the gates lifted, cars started honking, but he couldn't pull out because Sharon and Bob were still in the road.

Tommy put on his flashers, desperate at the prospect of somebody hitting Sharon or crashing into the back of his truck. Cars swerved around them. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, thought Tommy. He'd wanted to help Sharon, wanted to do the right thing for her.

"She's got to get in, Bob."

"I know that. We're working on it," said Bob. "Honey, you can't walk to the hospital."

The first time Bob tried to help Sharon back up into the cab, she slipped back down on him. "I hate this G.o.dd.a.m.n truck!" she yelled, punching the side of the seat. She kicked the rocker panel and then walked back and kicked the rear tire. She leaned against the rear fender like a girl on a real bad drunk and moaned as some sort of a spasm took hold of her. "G.o.d, I just want to have this baby."

"Sharon, honey, we're almost there," said Bob, "I promise it will be all right." Tommy wished he could say something to comfort Sharon, but the more he tried to think of something, the more blank his mind went. Bob finally got Sharon up inside the cab, sideways onto the seat so that her back pressed against Tommy's shoulder. Bob got in but couldn't shut the door, so they drove the rest of the way with the dome light on and the door buzzer screaming. When Sharon turned to face forward, Tommy saw tears raining down her face. He shifted gently so as not to move the shoulder that supported her. Tommy wondered if he was going to have to sleep alone for the rest of his life.

"Lay on the horn," said Bob as they pulled up to the emergency entrance. By the time Bob got Sharon out, a nurse and an orderly appeared with a wheelchair.

Evidently Bob had called ahead. Tommy tried to a.s.sist, but they didn't need him, and as Sharon rolled away, he felt himself bobbing in her wake. Her moans trailed behind her until the gla.s.s doors swung shut, and she was immediately around a Page 170 corner and out of sight. Back in Tommy's truck, all that remained of Sharon were her fleecelined slippers, one on the seat, the other on the floor mat. Like his wife, Sharon had rejected all Tommy had to offer-she even hated his truck. Tommy thought of all the things his wife had taken when she moved away: stacks of neatly folded jeans, the couch, a plastic basket of makeup she kept in the bathroom, a bra.s.s floor lamp. It was hard to get used to the empty places where those things had been. The hood of the truck glowed shiny purple in the sodium lights of the hospital lot.

He loved its clean bed liner, the flare of the wheel wells, the toolbox stretching across the back, the tapering of the windows, the heavy smooth feel of opening and closing the tailgate. He hadn't been able to talk to anybody about his wife's leaving, but buying this truck had made him feel better. He hadn't cared how much it cost the payment and insurance now took most of his paycheck twice a month. And yet ever since he'd pa.s.sed the Ford lot, he couldn't stop thinking about his old truck, too. After all the hours he'd spent lying underneath it, replacing the starter and the clutch and the Ujoints, he should have been happy to be rid of the clang thing.

He ought to just start up the new truck in neutral, skip first, shift from second to third to fourth, head out some dark farm road, drive past dimly lit houses, quiet barns, and acres of pumpkins lying tangled in fields. But what about poor Sharon up there, Sharon with tears pouring down her face, Sharon whose baby was about to shed her like an old skin?

Tommy leaned back against the seat and let out a breath he must have been holding for a long time. He felt raw, as if all his own outside layers had fallen away. He chose one square window on the third floor and pretended it was Sharon's room. Brushing the back of his hand across the upholstery, he thought of the perfect skin of the new baby, as soft as the velvet lining of his wife's wooden inlaid jewelry box. Sharon was probably cursing Bob and the doctor as she performed her miracle, pushing out something the color of a pumpkin, new life which would fill a small place in the world, a place where before there had been nothing.

Page 171 The Smallest Man in the World Beauty is not a virtue. And beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is a fact like height, or symmetry, or hair color. Understand that I am not bragging when I say I am the most beautiful woman in the bar.

Normally I can make this claim without hesitation because this is my regular bar. But tonight the circus is in town, and there are strangers here, including four showgirls at a table between me and the jukebox drinking what look like vodka tonics-tall, clear drinks with maraschino cherries.

Whenever the circus comes to the Palace, I attend, as I did tonight with my sister, who now drums her fingers on the bar beside me.

"What did you like best?" she asks.

I shrug. My sister gets annoyed when I refuse to talk, but I do not like to answer questions that I have not thought about.

"How about that rhinoceros?" she says. "It was sweating gallons out there. I'm surprised that woman didn't slide off."

"Yes."

"Why do you come here?" asks my sister, spinning around once on her barstool. "There's nothing to do." She spins again. "You should tell them to get magnetic darts or something."

Page 172 My sister always chatters this way. She is warm, communicative, and generous, and I am not-just ask any of my three exhusbands. If you want to know the other difficulties of being close to me, you will have to ask them or her, because I do not intend to enumerate my faults. My sister and I have similar green eyes, high cheekbones, and thick dark hair, and it is a puzzle why I am more beautiful than she. Perhaps it is because she has developed so many other interests. She is a social worker in a hospital, helping fifty families a day in whatever ways she can, she belongs to a softball league, and she has a husband who is crazy about her. Within a year, she will probably have her first child. I work at a hotel, where part of my job is to look good.

"If you're not going to talk to me, I'm leaving," my sister says. "I've got stuff I can do at home." She downs her cranberry juice and heads for the door.

This is a typical end to an evening we spend together. I cannot explain to her that, though I love her company, I do not want to talk. As she exits, two big men in circus coveralls enter, accompanied by the Smallest Man in the World. The big men have identical builds, but one is white with blond hair and slightly crossed eyes, and the other is black and scruffyheaded. Both give the impression that the coveralls are the only clothes they own. When they reach the bar, these two bend in unison, and the small man straightens his arms and allows himself to be lifted onto a barstool, where he stands and looks down on the bartender. To his credit, Martin the bartender does not ask for identification, but brings the small man his whiskey and soda in a professional way that does not suggest surprise that such a tiny man would want a drink, or indeed that a man would be so tiny.

As usual, I sit at the far end of the bar, on the bra.s.s and leather barstool nearest the wall so I can see everyone in the place. The wooden bar curves away from me and stretches thirty feet, halfway to the front door, and is stained a reddish color beneath layers of polyurethane. The wall opposite the bar is raw brick, lined with low wattage fixtures designed to look like gas lanterns. After working all day in bright light, I find the dimness comforting.

The Smallest Man in the World looks at the patrons one by one, Page 173 then settles his gaze on me and nods. His hair is thinning. With a closed mouth, I smile. He holds up his drink in my direction in appreciation of my beauty, and I lift my drink in appreciation of his smallness.

I have compared beauty to height, but there is more in common between beauty and smallness: conciseness, the correct arrangement of parts in a confined area.

s.p.a.ce has not been wasted on the Smallest Man in the World. He is perfectly formed, with limbs, trunk, and ears all in proportion. Only at the most perfunctory glance does he look like a child, for he has a serious forehead and a square jaw. His face is slightly swollen, most likely from drinking, but his size obscures this fact.

An art teacher once showed me the trick of making a black ink drawing and then shrinking it on the copying machine-in the reduction, the flaws are less perceptible.

As appears to be the case with the Smallest Man in the World, I sometimes drink too much. When I develop that swollen look, I disguise it by loosening my hair.

Drinking is, of course, an ordinary addiction it is not peculiar to persons who possess extreme qualities. Plenty of plain, normalsized people drink too much. Take, for instance, the sweaty man who has been coming in for the last few months with his shirt b.u.t.tons more and more strained-he has the look of a person embroiled in an unpleasant divorce. That woman at the other end of the bar must be seventy, maybe with grandchildren, and she drinks to excess nightly, done up in foundation and blusher. The edge of her gla.s.s is smeared halfway around with lipstick.

My sister appears in the doorway behind the madeup old woman and makes her way along the bar to me, jangling her keys.

"I forgot that I drove you here. How are you getting home?"

"I can take a cab. Do not worry about me, little sister."

"Okay, take care of yourself. I'll see you soon." She touches my shoulder to prove her concern. My sister is a caring person, no doubt, but I get the feeling she is worried less about me than about the people around me. "Wherever I came I brought calamity," Tennyson quotes Helen of Troy. My sister knows that when I get drunk I become friendly, and she knows that men who came into the bar with perfectly nice women, or who have left women as pretty and caring as my sister at home, will risk future happiness in order to Page 174 spend the night with me. You may consider my willingness to go home with such men reprehensible you also may blame the Trojan War on Helen's misbehavior.

Keep in mind, though, that Helen did not herself launch a single warship or burn a single tower. And in the end she paid a great price for her affair with Paris: while you and I are able to toss off married names for fifty dollars and some paperwork, she remains Helen of Troy for all eternity. No matter that she settled peacefully with Menelaus in Athens and had a child.

My sister almost brushes against the circus men on the way out, and the white guy turns to watch her leave. She has a friendly, bouncy walk. She does not look back.

A paleskinned couple enters and sits on stools halfway down the bar. Perhaps they have been to a play. They move in unison, their onceindependent bodies working as complementary parts of a whole. He helps her take off her coat, and she gets him something from her purse. The Smallest Man in the World jumps down and moves across the room toward the jukebox, onto which his friend lifts him. When a song skips, Martin the bartender looks over coolly, but to his credit does not yell, "Get off the jukebox." Though it has never occurred to me before, I consider this bartender a good friend.

Twenty years ago, when I was in high school, my mother and sister encouraged me to enter my first and only beauty contest, hoping that I could make friends. But even then I recognized most of those girls as shallow and hopeless bits of fluff, unaware of what freaks we were making of ourselves. And then, of course, they hated me for winning. It should not surprise anyone that P.T. Barnum himself pioneered the modern beauty contest, recognizing that striking beauty was fundamentally no different from any other aberration. Such absurdly perfect integration of a woman's bones, flesh, and features was not unlike a third arm growing out of the center of another woman's back. Barnum was the first to figure out that strangers would pay to see this sort of female oddity paraded before them.

The sweaty man with the strained b.u.t.tons walks by on his way to the bathroom. When he glances at me, he trips over a runner on the carpet he catches himself and regains his balance awkwardly, as though his own body has recently become a stranger to him. I tend Page 175 my own body with such care that I cannot imagine losing touch with it-I am far more likely to lose my mind, something n.o.body notices. The man looks away as he straightens himself up, and a few minutes later he returns to his seat by a circuitous route.

In a thick accent, the Smallest Man in the World yells something to the table of showgirls, and at first they ignore him. "Brandy," he then shouts, several times, and I first think he is ordering a drink. "You looking pretty tonight." His voice is nasal and highpitched, sadly comical.

The redhaired woman turns and shouts. "Why'd you follow us here? Find your own bar, Shrimp."

"You are my loving, Miss Brandy." His strangelyaccented voice is far more sad than comic, I decide. The showgirl shakes her head and turns back to face her friends, who laugh. She lights a cigarette.

At the jukebox the two men who accompany the Smallest Man in the World stand near him so they form an equilateral triangle, as if this can protect him. They are heartbroken at what transpires between their small man and the showgirls. After all, they must love him they have become attached to his smallness the way men become attached to my beauty. When a man is with me, he cannot forget my beauty the way he forgets everything else. Intimate conversations and promises are forgettable, as are meals created with attention to every detail of taste and presentation. Even the loveliness of naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s can mean nothing when the skin remains covered for too long. But his size is a constant reminder, as is my face.

I do not like to see my own face, because, despite my makeup, I look sad-sometimes as sad as that rouged old woman slumped over the bar opposite me. When I fix my face in the morning, it sometimes occurs to me to make myself up as a clown by lipsticking a ma.s.sive smile onto my cheeks. Or exaggerating the sadness by painting a frown and a few shiny tears. I have heard that each circus clown must register a face with the national clown organization, that they cannot coopt the faces of others. Maybe women should have to do that, for we are famous for reproducing the full lips and long curving eyebrows of teenage runway models perhaps women could be forced to be themselves, the way my sister is herself. This clown urge of mine becomes so overwhelming some days that I Page 176 even fantasize about becoming a clown, although anyone, including my sister and exhusbands, will tell you that I am not funny.

The Smallest Man looks away from the showgirls and over at me. He sways slightly, drunkenly, against the music. He whispers something to the black man, sending him to the bar. The Smallest Man then jumps down, walks over to the showgirls, and disappears from sight.

Martin brings me another drink before I have finished the one in front of me. He gestures with a nod toward the jukebox and says, ''The small guy sent this to you, says it's for 'the most beautiful woman'." From him the compliment means something, and it means something to me that Martin conducted the message. "Have you been to the circus?" Martin asks.

"I went tonight with my sister. That was my sister with me." My arms stretch out brightly on the bar, my skin a bronze color which makes unclear precisely what my race is. Some people a.s.sume I come from an island where all the women are beautiful.

"She looks like you," Martin says. My hair is swept off my face, twisted softly at the back of my head, so that my neck is bare. Martin's gaze sweeps over me he never lets his eyes linger, perhaps out of respect or maybe because he doesn't trust me, having seen me leave the bar with dozens of men. Martin is about to lift his foot and place it on a shelf under the bar so he can lean toward me and say something privately. But the lookalike couple interrupts our moment by motioning to him.

They want a bag of nuts.

Shrieks erupt from the showgirl table, and I do not see the Smallest Man, but soon the redhaired woman screams, "You little pervert midget." The Smallest Man emerges from under the table on all fours, brushes himself off, and returns to the jukebox. He holds up a black platform pump and sniffs it, until the redhead marches up in bare feet and grabs it from him. Her skirt is short and filmy. The Smallest Man grins, but the two big men look worried.

Though there is no table service on week nights, Martin walks around the bar to the showgirls and brings them another round. The women must have been wearing wigs during the show, because all of them have closecropped hair. Their eyes are painted large. The redhead has long, muscular legs, the legs of an athlete, legs Page 177 smooth and strong enough to lure a bartender away from his post. Martin lets his gaze wander all over those legs, even after he returns to the bar. These are probably the kind of women he prefers: energetic, acrobatic, clever.

One showgirl holds her fingers an inch apart toward the jukebox, and when the Smallest Man looks over, all the women burst out laughing. Their mouths seem large enough to swallow his whole head. When the redhaired showgirl notices me staring, she narrows her eyes. I turn back to the bar. I am accustomed to the looks she and the other showgirls give me. They think I have cheated in order to look this way. Have I had surgery? they wonder. They a.s.sume that, one way or another, I have sold my soul to the devil.

And I understand why the Smallest Man in the World cannot leave them alone. For the same reason that I cannot resist beautiful new men who come into this bar, because desiring them is uncomplicated. It is not the showgirls' fault that the Smallest Man humiliates himself-their cruelty is ordinary, and they could not possibly know what it means to be tiny.

The showgirls were best at halftime, when all the animals and performers came out in a Wild West spectacular the showgirls wore fake leather miniskirts with oversized pistols on their hips. I should have told my sister how much I liked the halftime show. My sister was right-the girl riding that sweaty rhinoceros practically had to do the splits as she bounced on its wide, slippery back. During this event, the Smallest Man in the World stood on top of a fancy horsedrawn wagon and waved. He appeared also in the grand finale, standing and waving from an elephant's back.

There is no separate sideshow tent in the circus anymore. You have to go to county fairs for that kind of grotesquerie, or else watch television. This July I traveled thirty miles and paid two dollars each to see the world's smallest horse, the fattest pig, the longest alligator. You must take for granted that they really are the longest, the smallest, and the fattest. Who is to say that the posted weight, height, or length is even honest? Who is in charge of freak show weights and measures?

Surely the man who bought me this drink is the true Smallest Man in the World the Greatest Show on Earth would not lie so Page 178 boldly. Before I finish my second drink, the Smallest Man has ordered his third. He seems drunk already, the way a regularsized man would be drunk had he taken six or eight.

On my way to the bathroom, I look straight ahead, avoiding the eyes of the redhaired showgirl, but on my way back, I walk slowly enough to study their heads and shoulders and to smell their perfume, which is flowery and applied too heavily, perhaps to disguise sweat. Though they portray beautiful women, they are not particularly beautiful. Real beauty would be too quiet on the arena floor, and it could not compete with the menagerie of elephants and horseback riders. Beauty cannot transmit over long distances, could not possibly stretch into the upper tiers of a stadium costumes do a better job than the real thing. Helen's beauty was transmitted by hearsay how many of the men who died at Troy ever saw her? These showgirls are not as young and foolish as they seem in costume. They are actors and magicians, good with the sleight of hand, the sleight of face.

Even the Smallest Man in the World used a few tricks. When he appeared in the center ring at halftime, sitting and then standing on the seat of his circuspainted stagecoach, he wore a suit jacket that had been cut long so that his legs, which are actually in perfect proportion to his body, looked short. The horses pulling the wagon were draft horses, beasts that would dwarf any human.

A crack like thunder sounds through the bar, but the showgirls do not look up. They are accustomed to elephants stampeding, vendors hawking, cannons blowing humans across arenas.

"Off the jukebox," says the bartender. He says it quickly, directly, without sharpness, and he is already turning away to avoid a confrontation. Martin is a genius. The Smallest Man in the World has not taken offense. He holds out his arms, signaling to his friends that he wants to be carried.

A man in a dark suit approaches this end of the bar and catches my eye. He has not been in here before. He is perhaps twentyfive and has on his face a look of mild astonishment. If my attention were not elsewhere, I might nod to him and invite him to sit beside me. Instead, he leaves one empty stool between us and motions to the bartender. His jacket hangs from broad, straight shoulders.

Page 179 Perhaps I will see him tomorrow at the hotel desk, or later tonight in a hotel bed.

At the hotel, I mostly work behind a gla.s.s wall, filling out forms, designing staff schedules, and making phone calls, unless there is a problem. In that case, I walk on three inch heels from behind the gla.s.s, and I say in the most elegant voice you can imagine, "Is there a problem?" My mouth is perfectly darkened, and I do not open it again until the customer and the clerk have said all they want to say, and still I wait a little longer in silence. Only occasionally do I have to refund money.

Before I have an opportunity to speak to the man in the dark suit, the two men in coveralls carry the Smallest Man in the World to the bar. From here I cannot tell if the jukebox gla.s.s is cracked. Hank Williams Senior continues singing a very old heartbreak. The circus people have been playing countrywestern all night.

I wonder if the Smallest Man in the World thinks about growing the way I think about growing less beautiful. Perhaps he and I could live together, drink less, entertain in our home. I know how difficult it would be to really know the Smallest Man in the World, to see beyond his height, and I would work for us not to be strangers.

Along the stairway leading to our bedroom, beside the studio shots of our children, would hang photos of our old deformed selves. Thirtyfive is not too late to start a family. My second husband, who already had two daughters, said I was too selfish to be a mother, but I could change. My own lateborn children would have an easier time than his girls. When my girls looked at photos of me they would say, "You were so beautiful, Mommy," and that past tense would be much easier on them at thirteen than, "You are so beautiful." My husband would say, ''I used to be the Smallest Man in the World until I met your mother."

You might suggest that if I genuinely look forward to growing plain, I should skip the facials, the weekly manicures and the constant touchups for my auburn highlights I should let my hair hang in an easy style like my sister's, or cut it short and convenient as the showgirls have done. Well, you may as well suggest to a tall man that he slump for me to neglect my beauty now would feel like a denial of the facts.

Page 180 Though I try to ignore the stranger beside me, my body moves toward his the way a flower bends toward the sun. I close my eyes in an attempt to resist, but when I open them, he is looking into my face. He smells musky and a little smoky, and his eyes are c.o.c.ktails with tiny black olives. I would continue to slide closer, except that the Smallest Man in the World is making a fuss. He has jumped onto the bar and is standing with his hands on his hips, like the most outrageous, arrogant child in the world. Perhaps Martin has refused him a fourth drink.

"You're going to have to get down," says Martin.

The Smallest Man shouts in a language that I have never heard in the hotel-Hungarian, perhaps. He is angry and hurt, but his two big friends continue to man the second and third corners of his triangle. They love him too much to encourage him to get off the bar. He is not a child after all. He wears what looks like a boy's sneakers, but his pants are tailored, and his safaristyle jacket is cut to his figure. He stands tall on the bar, enraptured in hostility toward the bartender, and I hope I do not have to choose sides. The showgirls have finally noticed, and they are watching too-everybody loves a spectacle.

The Smallest Man in the World turns and looks across the room, not at them but at me. "Beautiful Lady!" he shouts. "Help me!" He hands his drink to his white man, and he starts down the bar toward me. The old woman with rouge clings to her drink at the other end. The Smallest Man leaps over most of the gla.s.ses between himself and me but knocks over both drinks of the pale lookalike couple. They lean back from the bar, Siamese twins, both mouths limp in one expression of confusion. The man beside me jumps up and gets out of the way. The Smallest Man in the World holds out his arms to me, and without hesitation I put down my drink and open my arms. With my beautiful but sad eyes I promise that if he reaches me, I will protect him. I will hold and shelter him like my own first child, embrace him as my blood brother, honor him as my true husband. He crushes a bag of potato chips and kicks loose peanuts into the air. I stand and step slightly back from the bar. If he is brave enough to jump, I will catch him.

Page 181 Bringing Home the Bones Like hundreds of times before, Charlotte had lifted the eightquart canner off the stove, only this time she'd lost her grip on one of the handles. Gallons of nearboiling water cascaded over her lower leg. For a stupefying moment Charlotte had stood rigid, listening, as if waiting for her name to be called, and then the pain began to boil in her skin. Before she lost her nerve, she had wrapped the blistering, slippery tissue in bandages made from a torn sheet and smeared with salve. Ten days and ten throbbing nights later, she opened the bandages and discovered the flesh had turned gray. Still, she had waited before phoning her daughter Andrea. She didn't even remember arriving at the hospital, but now, when she looked down, it became all too clear. Her left leg ended bluntly just below her knee, a stump wrapped in beige bandages, the butchered aftermath of these people's human body experiments. She shook off the smooth thin hand that touched her hand and threw aside a bed sheet the color of skimmed milk. Each attempt to focus on the limb was like falling off a cliff, like being dragged over a waterfall in a current of thinned pigments. She dropped her head back onto a foam pillow and stared up at ceiling tiles.

"Mrs. DeBoer." A nurse appeared beside her.

"What the h.e.l.l did they do to my leg?" Charlotte asked, in a weak Page 182 voice she didn't recognize as her own. The surgical tubes had ruined her throat. An antibiotic drip invaded her through a needle stuck just above her wrist. Charlotte resisted an urge to give it a yank and disengage herself. Andrea pulled the bed sheet over Charlotte's knee with long, smooth fingers, the nails painted translucent icecream pink. Charlotte pulled off the bed sheet again to expose the atrocity.

"It was gangrenous, Mrs. DeBoer. The doctors had to amputate." The nurse looked not at her, but at Andrea.

"Don't you remember, Mom?"

"I remember I came in here with two legs. If I'd thought you'd send me home with one, I wouldn't have come." Charlotte's whole body felt waterlogged, but she refused to sink. "Look," she said to Andrea. "Look at what they've done.''

"These are for pain," said the nurse, offering her a tiny plastic cup.

"I don't need your d.a.m.n pills." Charlotte's eyes watered at the strain of speaking.

"Doctor's orders are for you to take these. You don't want to make a fuss, do you?" The nurse had wide cheek bones, shaved and painted eyebrows.

"All right, give me the pills and go to h.e.l.l." As the nurse left, Charlotte turned to Andrea. "I suppose your sister knows I'm here."

"Liz came while you were in surgery."

"She was here?"

"She was here for thirtysix hours. You saw her in the recovery room. You kept telling her she was named after your mother."

"Is she coming back?"

"She's in court this morning. It's only her second case ever and she can't miss it. She'll come back from Chicago as soon as she can."

Andrea stepped out, saying she wanted to get some coffee. Charlotte didn't acknowledge her leaving, but missed her the instant she was gone. Had Lily been milked?

she needed to ask. Had somebody fed the chickens? If n.o.body fed them, they'd start pecking apart their own eggs. Ragweed, pokeweed, and burdock would eclipse her tomato plants within a week. They held you prisoner in these places with no regard for what you had at home. And she didn't like the Page 183 way colors of objects faded into one another here. She liked her colors strong and separate: the greens of ryegra.s.s and alfalfa, the blue of sky, the darkness of garden soil, and the colors of cows. Brick and white Herefords. The pure black of a Black Angus. Her fawncolored Jersey against the gra.s.ses of her field, against a clear horizon.

Jersey milk had the highest fat content so it tasted the best and it made good b.u.t.ter. Charlotte used to make ice cream for her daughters, but when the girls got to be teenagers, they wouldn't eat b.u.t.ter or ice cream-they'd even skimmed the cream off the milk they used on their breakfast cereal. Two decades later they were still keeping themselves skinny like little girls, like starved Jews. Their underdeveloped muscles hung slack on thin arms.

"I should have had sons," she mumbled.