Part 15 (2/2)
”Clarentine,” he said This word, this na, sour
”Yes,” she said, encouraged ”And your son, Barker”
The terrible hole of aaround the edge of sound
”And I' The silence was terrible
”Daisy Goodwill,” she said loudly into his good ear
”Day-zee” He sighed it out, the tops of the consonants, at least the wind of vowels He pronounced it, she could tell, obediently,else?-but sorope under the sheet and reach for his hand, but feared what she htly on the coverlet, perceiving the substantiality of tethered bones and withered flesh
A faint shuddering The rising scent of deco the merry, social tone she took ”And I've finally found you”
She would like to have said the word ”father,” testing it, but a stiff wave of selfconsciousness intervened
She believes, though, what she sees in front of her She believes the evidence of her eyes, her ears, her intuition, that an Naturally it will take some time for her to absorb all she's discovered A conscious revisioning will be required of her: accommodation, adjustment Certain stray elements which are anomalous in nature, even irrational, will have to be tapped in with a jeweler's hauesswork Balanced Defended But she's willing, and isn't that what counts?
Willingness has been a long ti for Daisy Goodwill Flett
The oldweakened, eht as a spirit, and seehtlessness, that fragrance that ain Look at the way she walks freely out the door and down the narrow stone street of Stroht
CHAPTER NINE
Illness and Decline, 1985
Eighty-year-old Grandma Flett of Sarasota, Florida, is sick; every last cell of her body, it seems, has been driven into illness
When she collapsed athe row of eraniums on the south side of her balcony, she went down hard on the concrete paving and broke both her knees Luckily Marian McHenry, whose balcony is separated from Mrs Flett's by a flimsy bit of lattice-work, heard her cry out, and summoned an ambulance
A double bypass was performed two days later at Sarasota Memorial Hospital (the possibility of such an operation had been discussed by Mrs Flett's cardiologist more than a year earlier, but for various reasons postponed) A week after the surgery, just as she was beginning to come around nicely, Grandma Flett suffered what appeared to be partial kidney failure, and one of her kidneys, the left, was reoldarn thing out sweet and clean,” her urologist said, in the muddied southern tones that Mrs Flett's fa
Suddenly her body is all that matters How it's let her down
And how fundamentally lonely it is to live inside a body year after year and carry it always in a forward direction, and how there is never any relief fro, even when joined, briefly, to the body of another An x-ray of her left knee reminds her just how insubstantial she is, has always been-an envelope of flesh, glassine She lives now in the wide-open arena of pain, surrounded by row on row of spectators The nights are endless, the s!
A therhly taken, and a cardiac monitor rolled into her room, heavy, masculine, with dials like a human face, ready to conde out at the side of the sheet have an oyster-like translucence and are always cold, though, oddly, no one notices this, no one says, ”Why is it your feet are so cold, Mrs Flett?” Urine passes fros and disappears along with other cloudy fluids into the unknown Into the universe She spits into a basin,old teeth, trying to remember a time when her body had been sealed and private
After a few days the drainage tube is removed from her nose and the intravenous needle froratulatory salute-that she has earned the right once again to partake of food and liquids ”Soirl yells into her ear ”A person can never, never get enough fluids” This girl with her rolling cart of apple juice, hteen years old, black-faced, purple-lipped, with a high, tight, one-note laugh: oppressive
In the early ht all the way to her heart's core, and their subject, which she can never recollect afterward, is violent ”It's just the drugs,” her doctors tell her, ”a common complaint”
In her h scenes shabby like old backyards, dusty, with strewn trash in the flowerbeds and under piles of dead shrubbery, past streets where white-facedlawns choked with plantain, dandelions, and creeping charlie, lawns that because of ignorance and insufficient money are doomed never to flourish
In the pleat of consciousness that falls between sleeping and waking she is capable ofvivid scenery Laying out conversations, arguments Certain phrases, re her with their rhyth
”The chaplain's here to see you, sweetie-pie”
”What?” Out of a spiral of thin-colored sleep
”The chaplain, Mrs Flett Y'all feel like talking to the chaplain?”
”Who?”
Louder this time ”The chaplain Reverend Rick You remember Reverend Rick”
”No”
”Hey, you do so You had yourself a real nice prayer together just yesterday And soive me that stuff-you remember the chaplain, sure you do”
”No”
”No what?”
”No, I don't want to see him Not today”
She has a private room at the end of the hall with a wide uncurtainedIn the days following her surgery she lies, wretchedly, in bed and during her brief waking moments stares out at the pale concrete Florida architecture, pink, green, lavender, like frosted petits fours shaped by a doughy hand and set out to stiffen and dry The sun shi+nes down on dented station wagons, glints on the heads of youngcar doors, and boils into whiteness the cracked ce lot Doctors park their Mercedes and Lincolns in a reserved section close to the hospital doors, and the tops of these cars gleam with the hard brilliance of cheap candy, a rainbow of hues
”No, I won't see the chaplain today,” she says with dignity, hat she believes is dignity
”If that's what you want, so okay” Shrugging
”That's what I want”
”It's up to you”
”I know”
”It does a world of good, though, the words of Jesus, the sweetest words there are in this crazy mixed-up world of ours”
”I'm too tired today”
”It'd perk you up Hey, I see it happen every day, that's the honest truth 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want' The best ”