Practical Jean by Trevor Cole Page B

not her name. That was someone who no longer lived here. That was someone she used to be, but that person was not her anymore.
    â€œMrs. Yoon?”
    Someone was still saying “Mrs. Yoon.” How could a person keep calling another person by the wrong name? What was that? Misidentification . Probably a crime of some nature. Determined to make that stop. Tried to open her eyes but the sun poured in like lemon juice, so she kept them shut.
    â€œI’m not Mrs. Yoon.”
    â€œMrs. Yoon, you have to get up.”
    â€œWhat’s my name?”
    â€œMrs. Yoon.”
    â€œNo it’s not.”
    â€œMrs. Yoon, you are on the pavement. Please get up.”
    â€œWhy don’t you listen? I am not, not, not Mrs. Yoon.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Mrs. Yoon. I can’t really understand you. I don’t know what you are saying. But you have to get up now.”
    Mr. Binderman took hold of her arm and pulled her into a sitting position. She knew it was Mr. Binderman because no one else was here now, and also because he smelled like the vineyard, sweet and green, and because she recognized his voice, his old-mannish, Austrian voice—not German—which was kind and imperious and afraid all together. It was Mr. Binderman pulling her into a sitting position, from which she wanted to throw up. So she did throw up.
    â€œOh, Mrs. Yoon, no, that’s not good. Not good. Here, I’m sorry, you take this. Please, you take it.”
    Mr. Binderman shoved a cloth into her hand. A flimsy cloth. A handkerchief. What was she supposed to do with it? Wipe her nose? Be that as it may, she had to throw up again. She did throw up again. All this was best done with eyes closed, Cheryl thought.
    Buzzy was her only friend. Buzzy, the cockatiel, had been there from the beginning, arriving in Cheryl’s life eighteen months before as a grand, angelic gesture, white warbling proof of Tam Yoon’s affection. Cheryl was then just a divorced claims adjuster living in Syracuse, New York, who liked to go on winery tours and sometimes got a little silly and snuggly with well-dressed men she happened to meet. From his perch in his white wire cage, Buzzy had seen it all—Cheryl’s sudden, swooning love for fifty-seven-year-old Tam; the determined effort to defeat the lifelong temptation that could undo her; the fervid plans for a future with someone a foot shorter and many, many times richer thanks to Tam’s very astute investments in the cellphone industry; the campaign to convince Tam to use just a bit of that money to buy a little winery and retire in the very setting that had brought them together; the early, giddy excitement when Cheryl thought she had finally secured everything that mattered and could matter in a life like hers; the gradual weakening of that certainty, and the steady disintegration of everything that had been sweet and new and possible; the shouting and the crying and the horrible, angry accusations; the “you’re pathetic” and “ridiculous”; the slammed door; the nights of Cheryl on the phone, begging Tam to forgive her; the anguish and remorse; the self-hatred; the days of lost hours; the months of lost days.
    The surrender.
    Throughout the formless, shattered days since Tam had gone, Buzzy was Cheryl’s steady comfort. At noon, or thereabouts, he sat perched in his cage on a table in the living room, watching his circumscribed world with black-marble eyes. He never spoke but made a series of chirping and warbling and whistling noises that could sound like the kettle or the telephone or the fax machine or the alarm clock. Some of those ringing noises sounded very much like a phone call from Tam wanting to apologize and come home. But they weren’t Tam calling. There was a dent in the side of Buzzy’s cage to remind Cheryl.
    By about five o’clock every afternoon, Buzzy had stopped sounding like phone calls and often seemed, to Cheryl, to have