I stared out into the dark and still hot night and I listened to a thousand bugs singing the same note and I listened to the grass remaining still in the dark and humid air. There were many kinds of insects, I knew—I had seen many of them—but how many kinds of respect existed?
MONDAY
I WOKE UP still wearing my shoes and clothes, in the attic, on a bed, on my side, one foot already on the floor. Stray images passed through. A half memory of a place—a narrow hallway. I could almost see something else, could almost remember a word or sentence someone had said to me, but I could not tell if that had happened while I was awake or asleep. I could almost remember a feeling, an old feeling, the feeling of what it’s like to be so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you somewhere. Once, I don’t know when, I had been sitting in a diner and a small child was screaming and weeping and a person behind the counter was frowning at that child, telling the person with that child to make it stop, angry about being an audience to all that tiny pain. The person behind the counter must have forgotten the feeling of being so small that anyone could just pick you up and take you anywhere at any time. What a terror a body must live through. It’s a wonder there are people at all.
HILDA TOLD ME that Steven had decided—and she agreed with him—that I could not be left in the house alone while everyone was at school and work and elsewhere, so she drove me down the block to a small white house surrounded by some flowering bushes, blooms all burst, the petals burnt brown.
Mrs. Gladstone will look after you this morning. Then someone else—his name is Roger and he’ll come get you later. Roger is a very good friend of ours, so be good for Roger. He has something he wants to show you, or a sort of game the two of you can play together. Do you like games?
Hilda hesitated, briefly, waiting on some kind of answer.
Well, I bet you do. I think everyone likes games! Don’t they now? Well—be good for Mrs. Gladstone—I know you will. She’s very old and very tired. She’s had a hard life and she just wants to be quiet … I’m sure you’ll take to each other just fine. Hilda spoke quickly to me as we stood on the front porch, then opened the front door of this little house and shouted, Pew is here now, Paulina—all right? Bye!
Hilda shut the door and I listened to the fast steps taking her away from here. An old woman was sitting in a wheelchair in front of a blank television. The room was cold and punctured by a ticking clock. I sat on a couch covered in stiff plastic, wondering if anyone was ever intended to sit there. Maybe the couch was supposed to sit on the floor and be left alone.
It’s only the fools you’re fooling, Mrs. Gladstone said, speaking directly to the empty television. Only the fools.
We sat in silence for some time after that. It was not clear if she was talking to me. She could have been talking to herself or to someone I could not—for whatever reason—see. For a while there was this look on her face as if she were just about to say something or just about to sneeze.
I married late, Mrs. Gladstone eventually said. I was already thirty-three if you can believe it, which may not seem so old now but back then it, well, I tell you, it was ancient. Everyone had given up on me ever finding someone and at that age no one has their pick anymore—even if you did once, you don’t anymore. I can’t be sure, since I don’t know hardly anyone who is marrying age these days, but I think this is still true. A decent woman will take care of finding a good man quickly because it only gets harder and harder.
But I suppose I was lucky, in a way. Charles, he was a widower and a good deal older than me, but that’s what I mean about how you don’t have your pick anymore. His first wife had been very beautiful, everyone agreed about that, but she had died anyway. Not from being beautiful, of course—I believe it was the cancer, though nobody said as much. That left Charles nearly fifty and with two children he didn’t know much of anything about raising, so he had no choice but to go find another woman. Our mothers introduced us, then he decided it was best that we get married. And even though his children bothered me, I was more bothered by being so old and alone, so we did. It’s a simple arrangement—marriage. No one wants to say so, but it is. Maybe you’ll see one day—when you’re old.
A silence.
When you’re old, Mrs. Gladstone repeated. When you’re old like me!
She laughed a long time, or what felt like a long time. Anyway—I was telling you about Charles. I keep getting sidetracked because I’m so old and useless—I forget everything. Everything.
Charlie was beloved by the community—by everyone, every single one. And we were happy. He never even had to lay a hand on me, not even once, and there weren’t many women in those days who could say that without blushing. Charlie and I had many good years together. No children of our own, though we did try. It’s just that I was so old, and he’d already had two from his first wife, and they were a handful already. They were unhappy children, really just such a bother. I think he just didn’t want all the trouble of having any more if they’d be like the first two. We traveled a good deal, up the East Coast, now and then to Virginia, and once to California. Once to Canada. He liked to drive and that suited me fine.
But then came the diagnosis and this was … well … almost twenty years ago now? Could it have been that long ago? We didn’t have many options about what to do. Now it seems they have all sorts of treatments—but then, well, there just weren’t so many. The doctors said he didn’t have long, that we should get everything in order, to make arrangements and such. He talked to his lawyer about his last testament, I remember, and pretty soon word got around that he was dying, so the house filled with flowers and people—white people and black people and even that one Indian, or maybe they were a Mexican family, the one out on that county road that Charles had helped years ago with something—lots of people called on us, to him and me, bringing pies and such, and just so many flowers. So very many flowers. Then one night I was sitting up just looking at all those flowers in the front parlor, when the nurse came in and said to me—she said, I’m afraid this is it. He’s going to God.
Mrs. Gladstone stopped here, her mouth hanging open, holding on to each word, blinking at them.
I can still see that nurse’s face, and how she wasn’t afraid of death, it being her profession and all, but of course I was afraid, just terrified. This whole life I had with him—just those ten short years after waiting for so long to have a husband, and now it was about to end and I really did believe it was God’s will, but even so, that didn’t seem to make it easy to accept. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t. I knew I had to be strong and accept that God was taking him back now, but I have always had such a wicked heart—I just didn’t want to be alone. I want to have my own way, always have been so selfish and wicked. I’ve deserved every bad thing that’s ever happened to me, and I was so selfish that I hated God for it all—and I wanted to keep having a life with him. I loved him so much. I really did. He was such a good man.
She stopped again. Something in her face reminded me of a loose horse I’d found in some woods once, peace and terror tangled together.