Day One, Year One: Best New Stories and Poems, 2014
Page 2
“Are you certain, Mr. Wilson?”
He nods, and pain shoots up and over the top of his head. He falls against the pillow, exhausted.
The woman lets out a sharp gasp, a strangled whimper. “Oh, Cuthbert. My darling.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Dr. Richmond gestures to the door.
“I’m his wife.” The woman clenches her fists and sets her jaw and lifts her head. “I’m staying.”
“I understand this is a difficult time for both of you, Mrs. Wilson,” Dr. Richmond says. “In cases like this, with the extent of memory loss not yet known, it’s hard on everyone. But our top priority now is to keep your husband calm and relaxed so his body can heal. And if having you wait outside makes him more comfortable, then we have to respect that.”
The woman says, “Cuthbert?” But he refuses to meet her gaze.
Dr. Richmond says, “Please, Mrs. Wilson. Don’t make me call security.”
The woman’s cheeks turn red, and tears gather on her lashes. She says his name over and over and pleads with him to let her stay, and there is a single brief moment where Cuthbert worries he might be wrong about her, maybe it’s like Dr. Richmond says, maybe there’s something he’s forgetting, but before the idea can take hold completely, Dr. Richmond leads the woman by her elbow to the door.
“Please,” she says. “He needs me here. Let me stay. Who else will take care of him?”
“Your husband’s in good hands, Mrs. Wilson. I promise you. We’re taking excellent care of him.” He moves her gently into the hallway. “The waiting room is around the corner to your left. I’ll be out to speak with you shortly. Please.”
She goes, and Cuthbert is safe now.
Dr. Richmond returns to Cuthbert’s bedside and waves a penlight in his eyes. “Mr. Wilson, do you know who the current president of the United States is?”
He swallows, and then nods and croaks, “Obama.”
“Very good, Mr. Wilson. Very good.” Dr. Richmond puts the penlight back in his pocket. “And your address? Do you remember that? Can you tell me where you live?”
“1192 Southwest Jefferson Street. Portland. Oregon.” Every word is a physical struggle, though he has no trouble remembering.
The doctor turns to type something on the computer, and Cuthbert Wilson slides his left hand under the sheets. With his thumb, he rubs at a gold band circling his ring finger, wondering how it got there, for he’s quite certain he wasn’t wearing any rings at all when he left the house this morning.
II
Love found Prudence on the very same Tuesday that Mrs. Barbado in A12 suffered a heart attack.
At the ungodly hour of 5:55 a.m., sirens ripped through the neighborhood, wrenching Prudence from dreamless sleep. Red and white lights flashed across her ceiling. She got out of bed, put on gray and tattered slippers to match her gray and tattered bathrobe, shuffled to her bedroom window, and pulled aside the curtains just a sliver—enough to see, but not enough to be seen.
Parked crooked against the curb like a broken tooth, an ambulance blocked the northbound lane. Though no one but Prudence seemed to care. Her fingers twitched the curtains. She pushed her shoulders straight and gathered a trembling breath. She’d count to six and then march out her front door, straight to the driver, and give him a piece of her mind. Certainly there was no need for such rude behavior. Certainly they could park straight and close to the curb so that cars coming and going could pass without trouble. Certainly they didn’t need to use such loud sirens and bright lights this early in the morning. Before she could start counting, three EMTs came into view.
Prudence recognized Mrs. Barbado by her round shape and dark skin, and wasn’t at all surprised that she was the one they were taking away. People were always tramping in and out of A12 at all hours, day and night, and what a ruckus: thumping music and clinking glassware, loud conversations and explosive laughter. “Life is a fiesta, mija,” Mrs. Barbado had told her once when they passed in the hall and Prudence reminded her of the building’s quiet hours. “You must embrace it while you can. You must live full and loud.”
But Prudence knew that nothing good ever came from such debauchery and decadence, and here was her proof. The paramedics lifted Mrs. Barbado into the back of the ambulance, slammed the doors shut, and drove away.
Prudence started to pull the curtains closed again, but the first bright streaks of dawn gave her pause. Pink and purple and shimmering orange, bleeding over rooftops and spilling through the gray streets and into her window. She hadn’t seen a sunrise since she was a little girl. She pushed the curtains open wider. A ray of burnished gold splashed through the glass and frolicked across her forearm, setting her pale-blonde hairs aflame. And how wondrous, she thought. How incredibly marvelous. She twisted her arm and made the sun dance.
The clock radio on her nightstand read 6:45 a.m. exactly.
Since that morning, Prudence has become convinced that there is most definitely a God and no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason—we only need to be paying close attention to recognize the direction the Universe wishes us to take. When Prudence thinks back over the course of her life, she has no other choice but to believe in destiny, because had certain events played out in a completely different order, she might have gone on living her entire life without consequence, lonely and alone.
If her parents hadn’t died one right after the other, then the bank would never have taken the house, and Prudence wouldn’t have been forced to move into the Park Tower Apartments. And if she hadn’t moved into the Park Tower Apartments, then she wouldn’t be living next door to Mrs. Barbado, whose late-night revelries had most certainly brought about her untimely collapse, which in turn, brought the ambulance. And if not for the ambulance, Prudence’s natural circadian rhythm would have gone uninterrupted and she would have slept soundly until exactly 9:00 a.m., as she had every day before this one. And if she had slept until 9:00 a.m., she would have never opened the curtains, never watched the sun rise, and never seen the man with his hair parted perfectly down the middle walk past her window at the exact moment she was marveling at the light and shadows playing across her arm. And though he tried to make it seem a small thing and unimportant—a quick turn of the head and then face forward again, a glance and nothing more—Prudence noticed. And she felt it too. A flicker, a jolt. A terrifying but not altogether unpleasant feeling of falling from a great height, and unlike anything she had ever felt before. She watched him from her window until he disappeared around a corner.
She did not know where he had come from or where he was going or whether she would ever see him again. She knew only this: they were supposed to be together. She belonged with him, and he with her. Theirs would be the kind of love she had dreamed of as a little girl and stopped believing in after Simon Sommers stole her innocence in the back of his father’s station wagon, laughing when she cried and leaving her in a Wendy’s parking lot to find her own ride home. The kind of love you could wait and search and pray for your entire life and still never find. And yet somehow her Great Love had appeared, by destiny or miracle or the perfect alignment of planets, and it mattered very little that she did not know his name, and he did not know hers. They had from now until forever to work out the details.
At 5:55 a.m. the next day, Prudence woke naturally, without any alarm, her circadian rhythm adjusting to love. She showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and was waiting at the window, the curtains pulled halfway open, by 6:30 a.m.
At 6:45 a.m. exactly, he appeared. Prudence had two minutes—from her apartment to the corner of Broadway—to study him through the glass.
His suit was a slightly darker shade of brown today, but he carried the same black briefcase in his right hand, wore the same navy-blue tie in a Windsor knot, and parted his hair the same—straight down the middle. His jacket was too big in the shoulders, but his slacks were pressed and creased, and his shoes polished to gleaming. He walked slightly hunche
d, and if someone veered too close, he shuffle-hopped to one side to avoid brushing against them. He never waved or tipped his head or spoke to the people he passed. Eyes forward, he marched and marched, bobbing his head in perfect rhythm with his stride. He walked with the quick step of a man who has someplace important to be. A man with purpose.
This morning his steps did not falter and his eyes did not dart. He turned the corner and out of sight without a single gesture of love. Prudence pressed her hand to the cool glass and smiled. He was shy, something Prudence understood very well. She just needed to give him more time.
She gathered her knitting basket, moved the rocking chair from its usual place in front of the television into a ray of sunlight and settled down to watch the people moving to and from wherever, going on about their busy, happy lives. As she watched, her fingers flew—a flurry of yarn and needles, a coming together, a beginning.
Men in suits and women in heels talked on cell phones. A mother pushed a baby stroller. A pack of teenagers wearing backpacks and matching uniforms jostled by, shoving each other, laughing and talking so loudly their squeals came through the glass. A homeless man, carrying his entire life in a garbage sack over his shoulder, shuffled to the corner bus stop. Two older women in Lycra jumpsuits and colorful headbands speed-walked around the block, passing in front of Prudence’s window several times. Three large dogs dragged a ponytailed blonde toward the park across the street.
Every day these people were here, whether or not Prudence opened her curtains to see them. So many hearts beating. So many lives weaving together and apart. So many words jettisoned into the silence. Yesterday the walls were too thin, the space between her and them too narrow, the balance she’d struck too fragile. Remarkable, how one glance changed everything. How suddenly bold love had made her.
She wanted to push open the front door, sing and spin and dance in the streets, tramp through rose gardens while little birds flitted alongside her, spreading her joy with their feathers. She wanted and wanted and wanted. The whole world expanding, stretching possibility.
Her fingers moved faster, transforming the blue-gray yarn into a scarf that would complement perfectly his navy-blue tie.
At noon the boy came with her groceries. He knocked three times. “Mrs. Alton? Mrs. Alton, you there?”
She had never bothered to correct him before—that she wasn’t a Mrs., but rather a Ms. or Miss. Today she opened the door smiling and said, “Call me Pru.”
The boy frowned and shoved the sack of groceries into her arms. “Fifteen seventy,” he said. “Plus tip.”
She gave him a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change.
He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind, and maybe she had. She didn’t even double-check the dead bolt after she closed the door; she didn’t knock six times and six times more. She simply locked the door—once was good enough today—and then carried the groceries into the kitchen and made her usual lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup. Maybe tomorrow she’d go to the store and buy her own groceries. Maybe.
Prudence knitted and watched and waited and wanted, and finally, at exactly 4:15 p.m., he came around the corner going the opposite direction. She held her breath as he passed in front of her window, and released it in a rush when he was out of sight again. Just like earlier that morning, he came and went without acknowledging what was growing between them. But Prudence wasn’t worried. She would wait by the window as long as it took—days, weeks, years, if she had to—for him to make up his mind and choose love. Choose her.
Every day she followed the same routine: wake at 5:55 a.m., shower, dress, eat breakfast, then settle into her rocking chair by the window and knit. At 6:40 a.m. she would set aside the blue-gray scarf, now long enough to wrap several times around his neck, and stare out onto the street. At 6:43 a.m., he would appear. At 6:45 a.m., he walked past her window. At 6:47 a.m., he disappeared around the corner. In the afternoons he returned, walking past her window again, and Prudence watched and Prudence waited, and every night she suffered disappointment. They carried on in this fashion for some time, and then, and finally, exactly three weeks to the day after that first glance, he gave her another sign.
She almost missed it. 6:46 a.m. and he had already passed her window and was almost to the corner where he would turn and disappear when, without a single faltering step, he switched his briefcase from his right hand to his left.
Prudence clutched the nearly completed scarf to her chest and said, simply, “Oh.”
He turned the corner and was gone.
“My love,” Prudence whispered.
She finished his scarf with an hour to spare.
At 4:00 p.m. Prudence dragged a large cardboard box from her closet and began to dress. Long johns first. Then jeans and her mother’s moth-eaten snowman sweater. Over this, she wore her father’s black trench coat, which was missing a button. To complete the ensemble: three pairs of wool socks, red rain boots, an orange knit cap, her father’s leather driving gloves, a red scarf, aviator sunglasses, and a dab of vanilla-scented oil behind each ear.
At the front door, she counted to six and then turned the dead bolt six times. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She knocked six times, opened the door, and knocked six times more before finally stepping outside for the first time in nearly two years.
The asphalt heaved, and the sky dropped low, pressing her flat. She blinked and reached for something to hold on to and tried to think of what her old therapist would have said about this situation. “It’s all in your head, Prudence, my dear. The world is only as dangerous as you believe it to be.” Of course, Prudence had gone to only one session, deciding within the first five minutes that the therapist was crazier than the patient, and certainly not worth the $200 an hour she charged. Her father would have slapped her on the back and said, “Buck up, old sport.” Her mother would have scowled and said, “Really, Prudence. There’s no need for such a fuss. Come, dear, people are staring.” Useless advice, and none of them loved her, not really, not the way he did.
Prudence tucked her hand in her pocket and knotted her fingers in his blue-gray scarf. The sky receded. The asphalt stilled. And here he came around the corner. He smelled like a used bookstore. She double-checked that her front door was locked, and double-checked again, and then hurried to catch up with him.
Two blocks west, he turned left onto Southwest Jefferson and walked another few blocks to a row of narrow townhouses. His was on the far end, a winter-storm gray, the trim and door painted red, a basket of purple fuchsias hanging from the porch eaves. He pulled a stack of envelopes and magazines from the mailbox, dug in his pocket for his keys, unlocked the door, and disappeared inside.
Prudence watched all this from the opposite side of the street. As his door swung closed, she darted into traffic. A car honked and slammed on its brakes. She pulled her orange knit cap low and shied away from the car, making it to his small front porch in time to hear him shout, “Goldie, I’m home!”
She had a moment of panic that he was not alone, that there might be another woman, and then, when there was no response from Goldie, relief and a flush of shame for doubting him. So maybe Goldie was a dog—though Prudence hoped not, as she was allergic—but there was no barking, no click-clacking of nails on linoleum. A cat? Prudence did so love cats. She listened at the door another few minutes, listened to his silence. How she longed to see inside, to watch him move about the rooms. A fly on the wall—certainly that was not too much to ask.
A woman passing on the sidewalk below paused and gave Prudence a hard and narrow stare. Prudence pulled away from the door and pretended to look for keys in her pocket. The woman left, and Prudence knew it was her time to go too. Her feet were starting to itch, her clothes to feel too hot. Before leaving, she traced the numbers and letters stickered to his mailbox: “1192, C Wilson.” She traced them over and over until she had memorized the curves and swoops of each one.
She took his blue-gray scarf from her pocket, touched it to her cheek, and then hung it over the doorknob. Hand pressed flat against his closed door, she whispered, “Sweet dreams, C Wilson, my love.”
She smiled the whole way home.
The next morning he came around the corner wearing her scarf. True, he wore it wrong—had it wrapped around his neck two times instead of the proper six, so the ends dangled nearly to the ground—but he was wearing it, and that meant something. As if that wasn’t love enough, when he passed her window, he smiled. Barely smiled. A twitch, really. A movement so small no one but Prudence would have noticed, because no one loved him as much as she did, but a smile nonetheless. She hadn’t expected so much so soon.
She had precious few seconds before he turned the corner and disappeared. She tugged on the long johns and her mother’s sweatshirt, her jeans and boots and her father’s leather driving gloves. She dabbed vanilla behind her ears. On her way out the front door, she grabbed her red scarf and her aviator sunglasses. She didn’t have time for her three pairs of socks, the orange knit cap, or her father’s trench coat; and she didn’t have time to knock six times and then six times more.
On the sidewalk, Prudence didn’t hesitate. Fearing she had already lost him, she shoved past two mothers with oversized strollers and almost knocked an old woman to the ground. She turned the corner onto Broadway just in time. There he was, several steps ahead of her and almost out of sight. The blue-gray scarf fluttered and flapped, and people moved out of its way. She followed him to a skyscraper on Southwest Fifth Ave.
The building stretched taller than any she had ever seen before. Up and up and up, the top disappearing inside low-hanging clouds. Prudence reached to pull down her orange knit cap but then remembered, horrified, that she had left it at her apartment. Too late now. Her love marched up a dozen concrete steps and disappeared through a set of revolving glass doors. Prudence unwrapped her scarf, pulled it over her head and around part of her face, and followed him into the building.