floor, her hair sticking up in a classic hospital-head style, and she wishes she had a camera. She has one camera planted inside of her head, the same one every mother has, every woman has, who wants to seize a moment and put in a place so that she will never forget it.
“I don’t suppose you remember the part last night about me being a traveling hooker who works out of a tattoo parlor in Cyprus now that I’m retired,” Connie says, moving to get the rest of breakfast. “Get up, use the bathroom, young lady, eat and then—don’t you have a business to run?”
“You act like my mother,” Jessica says, obeying her and wishing that her mother had managed to hang the entire door as she asks Connie to turn her head and then comes out with the screwdriver in her hand.
Connie has the door up in ten minutes and, when she turns around to congratulate herself, Jessica is sound asleep and looking as if she could sleep for a year.
“Now what?” she asks herself as she sits down gently beside her daughter and removes the warm coffee cup from her hand. She sits on the cheap sofa bed, unable to move, unable to decide what she should do next or right after that or the week following.
Connie’s touchstone—her rope to a reality that she is creating every moment—is the feel of the white slips of paper in her pocket and a stolen moment, while Jessica slept, to read through her list of dreams book. Beyond that she is winging it, flying without a compass, hovering in New York City—which she is thrilled to say is #20 on her list.
There is also the reality of Jessica’s life and the lingering promise from her daughter to tell her a very important story. But first Jessica must get to her Diva office and apparently must make arrangements to travel to New Orleans. During the course of their alcohol-laced marathon meeting, Jessica mentioned training new clerks, budgets, her home office, some major problem, expanding, her business partner Geneva and life in the fast lane. Connie places her hand on Jessica’s hair, a soft reminder of a long-ago ritual when Jessica had gone through her nightmare stage and could only fall asleep if Connie was stroking her hair and sitting right next to her on the bed.
“You have to close the closet,” Jessica would insist with the covers pulled over her face.
“There’s nothing in here,” Connie would respond almost every night, and then she’d push through the hanging clothes and sometimes actually crawl through one side of the closet and out the other to prove her point.
“Only I can see them,” Jessica would explain patiently. “They’re
my
monsters.”
Occasionally, as the monsters screamed on from one month and into the next and then into the third and fourth, Connie would lose her patience. One night she let Jessica cry until the door rattled with her anguish and then Connie, filled past her eyebrows with guilt, raced into the room, pulled Jessica out of bed and carried her into her bedroom where she held her until the sun rose and apologized every three seconds for abandoning her and leaving her alone with the bogeymen.
The monsters finally departed for good, as they always do, and Connie braced herself for the other monsters that would eventually move into Sabrina and Macy’s closet and she’d lose her patience again and no one died and the monsters did not eat one single daughter.
Connie can still see a glimpse of the baby who was terrified of monsters when she touches Jessica and she cannot stop herself from running her fingers from the tips of Jessica’s hair to the side of her daughter’s face where her hand lingers and her heart stops. Connie then imagines her daughter’s monsters since the days of the permanently closed closet. What could they be?
School. Friends. Lovers. The impossibilities of the still male-dominated business world. That guy Jacob who called incessantly for months even after he knew Jessica had moved to New York and Connie had stern
“I don’t suppose you remember the part last night about me being a traveling hooker who works out of a tattoo parlor in Cyprus now that I’m retired,” Connie says, moving to get the rest of breakfast. “Get up, use the bathroom, young lady, eat and then—don’t you have a business to run?”
“You act like my mother,” Jessica says, obeying her and wishing that her mother had managed to hang the entire door as she asks Connie to turn her head and then comes out with the screwdriver in her hand.
Connie has the door up in ten minutes and, when she turns around to congratulate herself, Jessica is sound asleep and looking as if she could sleep for a year.
“Now what?” she asks herself as she sits down gently beside her daughter and removes the warm coffee cup from her hand. She sits on the cheap sofa bed, unable to move, unable to decide what she should do next or right after that or the week following.
Connie’s touchstone—her rope to a reality that she is creating every moment—is the feel of the white slips of paper in her pocket and a stolen moment, while Jessica slept, to read through her list of dreams book. Beyond that she is winging it, flying without a compass, hovering in New York City—which she is thrilled to say is #20 on her list.
There is also the reality of Jessica’s life and the lingering promise from her daughter to tell her a very important story. But first Jessica must get to her Diva office and apparently must make arrangements to travel to New Orleans. During the course of their alcohol-laced marathon meeting, Jessica mentioned training new clerks, budgets, her home office, some major problem, expanding, her business partner Geneva and life in the fast lane. Connie places her hand on Jessica’s hair, a soft reminder of a long-ago ritual when Jessica had gone through her nightmare stage and could only fall asleep if Connie was stroking her hair and sitting right next to her on the bed.
“You have to close the closet,” Jessica would insist with the covers pulled over her face.
“There’s nothing in here,” Connie would respond almost every night, and then she’d push through the hanging clothes and sometimes actually crawl through one side of the closet and out the other to prove her point.
“Only I can see them,” Jessica would explain patiently. “They’re
my
monsters.”
Occasionally, as the monsters screamed on from one month and into the next and then into the third and fourth, Connie would lose her patience. One night she let Jessica cry until the door rattled with her anguish and then Connie, filled past her eyebrows with guilt, raced into the room, pulled Jessica out of bed and carried her into her bedroom where she held her until the sun rose and apologized every three seconds for abandoning her and leaving her alone with the bogeymen.
The monsters finally departed for good, as they always do, and Connie braced herself for the other monsters that would eventually move into Sabrina and Macy’s closet and she’d lose her patience again and no one died and the monsters did not eat one single daughter.
Connie can still see a glimpse of the baby who was terrified of monsters when she touches Jessica and she cannot stop herself from running her fingers from the tips of Jessica’s hair to the side of her daughter’s face where her hand lingers and her heart stops. Connie then imagines her daughter’s monsters since the days of the permanently closed closet. What could they be?
School. Friends. Lovers. The impossibilities of the still male-dominated business world. That guy Jacob who called incessantly for months even after he knew Jessica had moved to New York and Connie had stern
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