Dawn Raffel - Further Adventures in the Restless Universe

“My new home,” the mother says. “A week, then? A weekend? You’ll come for a weekend.”

“Didn’t I say it?” the daughter says.

“Maybe a long one.”

Here is the server. The dish, he says, is national and comes recommended.

The daughter assents.

“You will, then?” the mother says.

“What are you getting?” the daughter says.

The order is given. “I worry — you know that I do,” the mother says.

“Enough,” the daughter says.

“It’s just—” the mother says. She is looking in her purse. She is fishing for something, the daughter thinks.

“Look at that,” the daughter says. Something is blinking at the edge of their view. They are turning from it.

“There is never enough time,” the mother says.

In the night the daughter listens — she sits up and listens — as the mother sleeps.

The blush they have purchased, the daughter says, or rather, the mother has purchased for her, suits her a little.

“It does,” the mother says.

The drapes are shut, the beds undone.

The daughter is standing inspecting her face, which looks, she thinks, like her mother’s in features, if not in expression.

“Do you mind?” the daughter says.

“You’re hovering,” the daughter says.

“Not hovering,” the mother says. “It’s just you’re not used to living with someone.” She opens the drapes. She pulls at the windows, having forgotten, the daughter thinks, or else unwilling to remember.

“Glued,” the daughter says.

“Gusendheit,” the mother says. “What do you want to do today?”

“Don’t know,” the daughter says.

“God bless, I said,” the mother says. She pulls out a guidebook. “Churches, museums…listen,” she says, but the daughter is not listening. She scrunches her cuffs. The daughter has a scar, very slight, at the wrist from where the mother, the mother insisted, saved the daughter’s life, or maybe only a limb. “You were walking in traffic,” the mother had said. The nail left the mark.

“Getting late…” the mother says.

The daughter sees the mother is beautiful in profile.

“What did I say?” the mother says.

“There is plenty of time,” the daughter says.

“It is only the season,” the chemist says. Nevertheless, she has something to sell them. “Take it with plenty of fluid,” she says.

“Try this on,” the mother says. “I want to buy you something.”

“Not my style,” the daughter says.

“It could be,” the mother says.

“I said, not my style.”

“What is, then?” the mother says.

“Don’t, now,” the daughter says.

“Then talk to me,” the mother says.

“I am,” the daughter says. “I said I would.”

The mother says, “Then, do you promise? Seriously, I am buying you this.”

The daughter is eager to take her dose. “Water,” she says. “You know I won’t wear it.” Later, the daughter will wish she had said something kinder or better, or, at the least, different. Already, she does. “Mom,” she says. She touches the mother on the arm, on bone.

The daughter is holding a bag in her hand.

“When you come,” the mother says. She is wearing a faint shade of blue on her lids, which are only the slightest bit swollen today. The concourse is crowded with what, to the daughter, appears to be families, and also with lovers.

The daughter is thinking of killing an hour, all the ways. Announcements are spoken. The floor is clean. The mother’s plane is boarding first. Arms, scent, breast, breath — the mother surrounds her.

“Mother, please,” the daughter says.

The mother is feeling for tissue again, the daughter thinks, inside her purse. But no, it is money.

“I don’t need—” the daughter says.

The mother says, “Take it.”

The mother says, “Call.”

The daughter is jamming a bill in her pocket.

“Such a lovely getaway,” the mother says — and then, as the daughter watches, is gone.

First, she broke her anklebone. How this was accomplished, I am not equipped to say. Will you listen to me? She could not abide a bath — no oil or Epsom — even when she could get wet. And now, you know, they had to keep her stable, immobilize the bone with a variety of substances, all of which were soluble, and therefore to wash it — the ankle, the foot, and, to get down to logistics, the neck — was rather out of the question.

“Can’t,” she said.

“Cannot,” she said.

“Can’t you please see that I’m sleeping?” she said.

She was knitting a scarf in a brilliant red.

She asked me just to use the cloth in places in between again.

She used the word pearl .

The bruises were looked at professionally. This was not a fall, they said — not simply a fall, they said — but likely a condition. They were firm about this, and spoke as if in confidence, if not out of earshot.

“Can’t you turn it down?” she said. Voices, a faucet. “The phone off the hook,” she said. “Just pay attention.”

On the floor the atomizer lay where she had dropped it, beading the plank.

“Careful where you step,” she said. The room smelled expensive.

She gathered up pillows, in a strategy, apparently, to elevate herself — at least some of herself. She was ripping out something. “Look at,” she said. Things wadded inside her. Additional symptoms: nostril, the works. She needed to flatten herself and pinch.

Balls of wool were on the throw. “It’s crooked,” she said.

There was more of her broken.

The experts were summoned, consulted, apprised. These were uninflicted damages. Everyone was compensated.

There amid the draped sheets; a slung arm, this, that—”I’d call it disagreeable,” she said in concurrence. She tapped on the drip. “Prop me,” she said. “Lift me a little. Pummel and plump,” she said. “Go ahead and hit.”

She had what she’d made, retrieved from the house. It was as she’d requested. Needles too.

They told her to make a fist and squeeze.

“What was the question?”—the woman in charge of sensation, a nurse. Marrow, cells, etcetera. A density ratio. “It works like this.”

It was a button and such. “Easy,” they said. “Easy does it with that.”

I was not next of kin. There was no one who heard me.

They covered her later.

Salt was on her lip in there, and fluid leaking out of her. The odds were against this.

It was I who dried her. I wrapped the thing around my neck — tassels dampened — as she’d intended, arguably. I said the odds were against it.

The ankle was healing still, they said.

“Are you sleeping?” he said.

“Are you?” she said.

“I guess,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Or nothing you want to say,” he said.

“I didn’t say—”

“Listen—”

“Goodnight,” she said.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t go to sleep angr y.”

“Who’s angry?”

“Or cross,” he said.

“Not cross,” she said.

“What now?” he said. “What on earth is wrong now?”