Woman on the Edge of Time

For an hour and twenty minutes she stood on one foot and then the other, waiting for the telephone. She was sweating with fear it would be time to line up for evening meds before she ever got her hands on the telephone. Finally she dialed. Don’t let it be busy, she begged. Santa Marнa, please let them be home and don’t let it be busy and make Luis answer in a good mood, I beg of you, please!

“Hello?”

Carefully she pronounced the name the Anglo way, the way he liked it. “Loo‑is? Hello, is this Lewis?”

“Yeah, who’s this? Who am I talking to?”

“It’s Connie. Your sister.”

“Yeah?” A nice heavy silence like an avalanche of mud slid through the phone.

Desperately she forged on. “I’m calling from the hospital. They say I’m much better. Lewis, they say I’m much better and I feel really good.”

“That’s nice. You got in a good hospital now, you know that? It’s a first‑rate hospital. If they were making you pay for it, you couldn’t walk in the front door, you know that?”

“Sure, Lewis. How’s the family? How’s Adele? How’s Mike and Susan?” For an awful minute she thought she had the name of the new baby wrong. She had only been to Luis’s home once since the baby was born. Maybe it wasn’t Susan at all?

“Mike’s fine, he’s talking all the time now, give me this, give me that! He’s his mother’s kid, all right. Susan’s teething, so she squawks all the time, but she’s pretty as a picture. She’s a real blond, yellow hair straight as a ruler. She’s going to be a winner, this one.”

“That’s good, Lewis, that’s wonderful. I wish I could see Susan. I wish I could see you. How’s Adele?”

“She’s fine. She got a new foxtail coat. Good‑looking. She wanted mink but she’s going to want that for a long time, if business doesn’t pick up. It’s a bad time for the nursery business, all over. People aren’t spending money the way they did two, three years ago, construction is way down. Except for fruit trees. Lot of people are putting fruit trees in their yards in the suburbs. We’ve tripled our business in fruit trees. But that’s like a one‑time thing. People don’t buy a new apple tree every year.”

“Dolly came in to see me, she said maybe you might come?”

“Sure, Connie. Just it’s hard to get the time. Weekends are the only time and the traffic is miserable.”

“Maybe I could come to you, then … Lewis.” She almost slipped and said Luis in her excitement. “Maybe for Thanksgiving I could visit you? I wouldn’t be any work. I could help Adele. I’d love to see the babies.”

“Yeah?” He didn’t add anything, till the operator interrupted. She stuck in more coins. She had saved a good supply.

“At least maybe for a day, Lewis, for Thanksgiving, just overnight? It’s so lonely in the hospital at holiday time. A real family holiday. Everybody goes home. The doctor says I’m much better. You could talk to him, Dr. Redding. Please, Lewis?”

“We’ll see. You’d have to go back Saturday morning because Saturday night we’re giving a party. But you could help around some. We’ll have enough food to feed an army, we always do … .”

“I could help Adele cook and clean. You know I can cook real well, Lewis, remember? I can help you get ready for the party. It’s a lot of work for Adele.”

“Oh, she has a woman in once a week.”

“But for the holidays, it’s a lot of work. I can help and I wouldn’t mind going back Saturday. I wouldn’t mind at all. That would just be so lovely, to come and see you all Thanksgiving.”

“Well, we might do that. I’ll talk to the doctor.”

“Dr. Redding, Dr. Redding, please?” She was trotting alongside to get his attention. “I talked to my brother, and him and his wife, they’d take me for Thanksgiving. I could have Thanksgiving dinner with them? It would be so nice. You said I’m better.”

“Does your brother want you there?”

“He said yes. He said he did. He said I could help his wife.” She trotted alongside. “He said he’ll call you about it.”

“He hasn’t. We’ll see.” He dismissed her with a brusque nod. “Morgan, has Moynihan taken a reading on her this week? I want to keep her monitored.”

As Dr. Morgan took her off to Miss Moynihan’s EEG machine, he commented on the cologne. “Is that for me?” he said, laughing at her as if she were an idiot. “How nice!” He made fun of her all the time because he wasn’t afraid of her; she was too small to scare him the way Sybil did and Alice had.

For the EEG testing, she was taken off ward and up two floors. Always in the elevator her heart beat quickly and she imagined the opportunity of going down instead of going up, and out into the streets, whose gutters were full of the torrents of cold November rain. Miss Moynihan had made her leave her wig and purse behind, but she could still bolt if given a moment, a door.