Woman on the Edge of Time

“I’ll work, Lu–Lewis, I’ll work! Ask them here if I don’t clean up the whole ward. If I don’t sweep and mop up and dust. I learned a lesson, please let me show you. I want so bad to get out for Thanksgiving!”

“Guess it’s lonely in the hospital, huh, Connie?” He was playing cat and mouse with her.

Her hand sweated on the greasy receiver. The gray butter of human anxiety. “Please, my brother, let me visit you. Let me help Adele. Let me see my nephew and my niece. I’ll clean and cook. I’ll do the dishes. I’ll make the house shine!”

“You never were much of a housekeeper, unless they taught you something. Besides, we’re fixing the house up with a tropical motif, going to put plants everywhere. You don’t like to work around the nursery, remember? You said the sprays gave you a headache.”

“That was years ago! I’ll work so hard you’d have to hire four men to do the work I’ll do for you. Just let me out of here for a couple of days. Just let me be with you a little!”

“I’ll take it under advisement. Don’t call again. I’ll let the hospital know if I decide to give it a try.” He hung up.

Shaking with anger, she left the pay phone. She despised herself for begging to be given the privilege of scrubbing Luis’s floors in Bound Brook. Claud would have stopped speaking to her if he’d heard that conversation; he’d have taken off like a shot. But it is war, she thought. I am conducting undercover operations. I am behind enemy lines and I must wear a smiling mask. It is all right for me to beg and crawl and wheedle because I am at war. They will see how I forgive. That made her feel stronger.

Sybil was waiting for her in the lounge. “What did he say?”

“Maybe, he said. He wouldn’t let me off the hook by letting me know one way or the other.”

Sybil touched her shoulder lightly. “Well, Thanksgiving together … I’ve had worse.”

Only Alice, Captain Cream, and Connie were let out on Thanksgiving furlough to relatives. Connie put on her old turquoise dress that fitted a little loose, and straightened the new wig on her head. Everybody was clucking and cooing over her except Sybil, who hung back, and Alice, who sat like a wrapped present in the hall, waiting. Sybil managed to catch Connie for a moment to whisper, “I hope you … fly away.”

“I’m going to try.”

Briefly, before the attendant could catch them (“No PC!”–physical contact–the slogan of the ward), they kissed. “I hope I never see you again,” Sybil whispered. “My dear friend, run!”

Luis’s house had an upstairs, a downstairs, and a level in between, most of it open space without doors or walls, like a big hospital ward. Rooms, rooms upon rooms. She was led up stairs covered with gold carpeting that must show dirt easily, to a room on the top floor. She had a bathroom all to herself, with a shower and a toilet and a wash basin and a mirror, a full‑length mirror on the back of the door. She had not seen herself entire in months. The basin was like a vanity table, everything white with gold trim.

The room had twin beds, and she felt dizzy at the thought of choosing one or the other. For a moment tears burned the inside of her eyes. She blinked. Why should a bed make her cry? For months she had not chosen anything. Luis dropped her little overnight bag on one bed, so she decided to sleep in the other. She felt relieved. So much space around her, it was almost frightening. It made her dizzy, it distracted her as if it were freedom instead of fancier imprisonment.

The room had one window, covered with filmy blue curtains and white and gold Venetian blinds. Quickly she pried two of the slats apart to look out. Ay, too bad! She stared down two stories onto a concrete paved area floodlit by a fixture high on the house. An outdoor fireplace was set into one side of the area, before the yard sloped away into shrubbery. No way out through this window.

The yard was elegantly planted, with borders swooping in and out in drifts of pine and juniper, but in the night and the cold, it looked only bleak. The ground was frozen and bare. Through the glare of light surrounding the house to protect it against burglars, she could not see whether the night was clear or cloudy. She hoped it would not snow. That would make it harder to get away. She wished that Luis had invited her out a few more times in the past so that she knew something of the area. Which way would she walk to get to public transportation? She must figure that out.

Without knocking, Adele opened the door. “If you want to set the table, we’re going to have pie and coffee before we turn in.”