Woman on the Edge of Time

An hour after they had all gone to bed, she got up. Then she discovered that Luis had locked her in. She pushed and pushed on the door and then she tried to stick a comb in between the door and the jamb to push the catch back. It would not slide in. She turned back and slowly undressed. This was only Wednesday night. She had Thursday and Friday. He might forget to lock the door. She might find a key that fit it. He might get careless. A knife might work. Weary, heavy with drug, she let herself fall into the strange soft bed and dissolve into sleep.

“You’re dreadfully slow,” Adele complained. “My cleaning lady gets that done in forty‑five minutes.”

“It’s the drug. It slows me down. They gave me a real heavy shot so I can hardly move.”

“It seems to me you move fast enough when it’s time to eat.” Adele was consulting a list. Everywhere she had lists–of groceries, of dry‑cleaning, of jobs to be done, of people to be called. All morning, while Connie was cleaning and making desserts from the recipe books Adele shoved at her, not trusting her to cook on her own as she knew perfectly how to do, Adele was writing lists at a desk she had at the end of the kitchen. Every list made more work. Connie gripped the handle of the vacuum till her hand ached and took a deep breath and did not allow herself a word. She swept the yellow carpeting while before her the tropical fish Luis always kept swam to and fro in their glass prison in the living room, under the murmur of the bubbler.

Breakfast had been bacon and eggs and toast with strawberry jam and lots of real coffee from the blue and white percolator. All morning whenever she could sneak a chance to do it, she made and drank coffee. How wonderful she felt. Lunch was the next high point. Adele was talking on the phone and told her to help herself to leftovers. First she had a cheese and salami sandwich with a big mug of coffee, sweet and light the way she loved it. She heated the milk first. Then she ate a lot more cheese and salami without bread, so it wouldn’t fill her up too fast.

Each time she opened the door to that paradise of golden possibilities, she felt buffeted by choice. Deciding was so difficult she could hardly move her hand. Too much. She felt like weeping with joy. She went back and forth from the dinette to the refrigerator, carrying each time one new treasure–a piece of leftover apple pie, more cheese, this kind white and blue like the coffeepot and strong‑smelling, a golden delicious apple, chicken salad in a bowl. Finally Adele marched over, five phone calls later, and said, “You can’t still be eating lunch? Really! Lew said you were here to help me, and I have to watch you every minute, just as if you were the hired cleaning lady!”

Connie put on the turkey according to a recipe Adele had clipped from a slick women’s magazine, having filled it with a mix of nuts, cornmeal, mushrooms, green peppers, and raisins. Adele had her cover the poor bird with aluminum foil, although Connie knew that would spoil the bird and steam the skin. She obeyed. She felt chunk with food. Her time sense was altered by all the coffee. The world seemed to have slowed down as she speeded up. On the ward, hours passed and she never knew where they had gone. Now she felt as if she were running and when she looked at the clock an hour later, only fifteen minutes were used up. The drug and the caffeine battled in her, and she felt high and fast.

Candied sweet potatoes made from a can! As if she didn’t know real ways to cook sweet potatoes. Eddie had loved yams. She remembered the time she had told Luciente that with some money and a decent kitchen, she was a good cook! How many ways she had learned to cook in her life: Mexican, Puerto Rican, soul food, and what Professor Silvester called continental. All good food. She wished she could be cooking a feast for Luciente and Bee. She pretended she was making a Thanksgiving dinner for Luciente’s whole family, and for Sybil and Tina Ortiz too. They would all meet and sit down to feast together and they would drink wine and make jokes and maybe she would even, only politely for the season but with feeling, kiss Bee one last time. Then she would be the one cautioning Luciente to remember that the food was not nourishing, was not real, out of your own time!

She and Adele put all the boards into the dining room table, making it very long, and then covered it with snowy linen and set it with china and real silver plates and silver‑plated salvers for breads and rolls and crystal goblets, except for the little children, who got ruby‑tinted glasses for their milk. Luis came in to open the wine himself with a fuss, a sparkling rosй.