insulted me—
“No,” I say, and shake my head. “It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
S HE’S WEARING A WHITE NIGHTGOWN, STANDING IN THE
doorway of my bedroom. “Kat
,”
she says, “I put my hands in the water, and they disappeared.”
She holds her arms up, the sleeves of her nightgown slip down to the elbows, and I can see that the hands are gone
.
“What water?” I want to know: I’m her daughter. I’m worried about my own hands
.
“The dishwater
,”
she says. “I was feeling the bottom of the sink for a spoon. The water was too cold
.”
I look at my fingers, which are longer than I remember them. They look fragile, and thin. From now on I’ll be more careful, I think.
I look at my mother again.
There’s no blood.
It’s as if her wrists have sucked the hands into their sockets like something stared at too long, sealed up cleanly in two sealed eyes.
P HIL’S MOTHER SEARCHES THE ROOM WITH HER EAR, COCKING her head, moving it from side to side. “Do you hear that?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Hear what?”
“It sounds like scratching,” she says, then makes the sound, “
Scratch, scratch, scratch
.”
“The furnace?” I offer, but she seems unconvinced.
“No,” she says. “It’s electrical. Like radio static. But regular. Rhythmical.”
Phil looks annoyed: One good thing about having a blind mother is being able to roll your eyes right at her without getting slapped. Mrs. Hillman’s face is pointed in his direction, but she can’t see his expression—the boredom and total irritation with which he glares at her.
Still, I’m embarrassed for Mrs. Hillman. I look at her feet. Shoeless, in beige panty hose, they look a bit like Cornish hens, or fists—gnarled, with crooked, plucked wings. Her legs aren’t long enough for those feet to touch the carpet as she sits back in my mother’s stiff armchair, which also has stunted wings. She’s a small woman, with drab curls. No makeup. She’s wearing a housedress with big brown flowers on it—who ever saw a brown flower?—as if the garden’s gone stale, all the roses overdone by sun or rusted in the rain, the gardener having long ago defaulted on his obligations.
Perhaps the salesgirls had a big, silent laugh behind the cash register as the blind lady bought that dress.
Mrs. Hillman is nothing like the other mothers in Garden Heights with their chunky gold jewelry, their designer slacks. She’s nothing like
my
mother, who, despite her fondness for Phil, couldn’t stand Mrs. Hillman.
“I know the new neighbors,” I said one evening, trying to sound casual. Mrs. Lefkowsky, who’d lived next door to us all the years we’d lived in Garden Heights, had died. It was winter then, too, and a damp snow had begun to fall outside—big, white flakes in the pewter blue 5 P.M. sky. My mother was coming in from outside, and I could see that snow behind her when she opened the front door and stepped into the living room, a blanket of it covering Garden Heights with a camouflage of purity. Some of it was in her hair.
Next door, Mrs. Lefkowsky’s porch light was on, but, of course, no one was home. She’d been dead for a month. The shades were pulled in each of her square windows, as if to separate the dark emptiness on the outside from the dark emptiness inside. Snow had buried her front steps, too—cloaked the roof in white corpse hair, and I remembered my mother’s bitter adages about snow, quotations taken from her own mother:
The farmer’s wife in heaven is plucking her white hen.
Or,
God is beating his angels again
.
I thought of our dead neighbor, Mrs. Lefkowsky, wearing a pair of skeletal wings in a frenetic afterlife. God going after her with his fists. A flurry of spine and feathers, which turned silver, then grizzled, as they hit the ground.
We hadn’t liked her much, or thought about her often—Mrs. Lefkowsky. She was just the Daffodil Lady, the Widow Next Door. And then
“No,” I say, and shake my head. “It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
S HE’S WEARING A WHITE NIGHTGOWN, STANDING IN THE
doorway of my bedroom. “Kat
,”
she says, “I put my hands in the water, and they disappeared.”
She holds her arms up, the sleeves of her nightgown slip down to the elbows, and I can see that the hands are gone
.
“What water?” I want to know: I’m her daughter. I’m worried about my own hands
.
“The dishwater
,”
she says. “I was feeling the bottom of the sink for a spoon. The water was too cold
.”
I look at my fingers, which are longer than I remember them. They look fragile, and thin. From now on I’ll be more careful, I think.
I look at my mother again.
There’s no blood.
It’s as if her wrists have sucked the hands into their sockets like something stared at too long, sealed up cleanly in two sealed eyes.
P HIL’S MOTHER SEARCHES THE ROOM WITH HER EAR, COCKING her head, moving it from side to side. “Do you hear that?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Hear what?”
“It sounds like scratching,” she says, then makes the sound, “
Scratch, scratch, scratch
.”
“The furnace?” I offer, but she seems unconvinced.
“No,” she says. “It’s electrical. Like radio static. But regular. Rhythmical.”
Phil looks annoyed: One good thing about having a blind mother is being able to roll your eyes right at her without getting slapped. Mrs. Hillman’s face is pointed in his direction, but she can’t see his expression—the boredom and total irritation with which he glares at her.
Still, I’m embarrassed for Mrs. Hillman. I look at her feet. Shoeless, in beige panty hose, they look a bit like Cornish hens, or fists—gnarled, with crooked, plucked wings. Her legs aren’t long enough for those feet to touch the carpet as she sits back in my mother’s stiff armchair, which also has stunted wings. She’s a small woman, with drab curls. No makeup. She’s wearing a housedress with big brown flowers on it—who ever saw a brown flower?—as if the garden’s gone stale, all the roses overdone by sun or rusted in the rain, the gardener having long ago defaulted on his obligations.
Perhaps the salesgirls had a big, silent laugh behind the cash register as the blind lady bought that dress.
Mrs. Hillman is nothing like the other mothers in Garden Heights with their chunky gold jewelry, their designer slacks. She’s nothing like
my
mother, who, despite her fondness for Phil, couldn’t stand Mrs. Hillman.
“I know the new neighbors,” I said one evening, trying to sound casual. Mrs. Lefkowsky, who’d lived next door to us all the years we’d lived in Garden Heights, had died. It was winter then, too, and a damp snow had begun to fall outside—big, white flakes in the pewter blue 5 P.M. sky. My mother was coming in from outside, and I could see that snow behind her when she opened the front door and stepped into the living room, a blanket of it covering Garden Heights with a camouflage of purity. Some of it was in her hair.
Next door, Mrs. Lefkowsky’s porch light was on, but, of course, no one was home. She’d been dead for a month. The shades were pulled in each of her square windows, as if to separate the dark emptiness on the outside from the dark emptiness inside. Snow had buried her front steps, too—cloaked the roof in white corpse hair, and I remembered my mother’s bitter adages about snow, quotations taken from her own mother:
The farmer’s wife in heaven is plucking her white hen.
Or,
God is beating his angels again
.
I thought of our dead neighbor, Mrs. Lefkowsky, wearing a pair of skeletal wings in a frenetic afterlife. God going after her with his fists. A flurry of spine and feathers, which turned silver, then grizzled, as they hit the ground.
We hadn’t liked her much, or thought about her often—Mrs. Lefkowsky. She was just the Daffodil Lady, the Widow Next Door. And then
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