Kathleen Alcott - Infinite Home

Her eyes welled. She had gotten dressed, put on makeup, left her apartment with a purpose, but now it was gone. Paulie watched her slow crumple and felt an immediate sense of guilt. How had his cheerful intentions betrayed him in their brief trip from his mouth to her ears? Shoelaces flying, he rushed down to meet her.

Most people he knew, even Claudia, tried to smother any complicated emotions in his presence, and so he found himself in some way honored when Edith didn’t try to conceal her crying. The tears drove tracks on her face, snatched up the beige powder from her eyelids and moved it through the unblended pinks and reds.

“Did staying inside with all your things start to feel bad?”

Paulie knew you should ask someone before you touched them, but he didn’t, this time, before he cradled her. The swollen pads of her fingers groped at the back of his neck as he lifted her half an inch, and her body’s weight left the floor in small increments as his frame received it. When she kept shaking, Paulie searched his body for a solution, then started to lead her towards her door, which remained open, as though she hadn’t been sure she had everything she needed.

Paulie escorted her in, mentally reviewing a list of the ways Claudia comforted him, tried to remember how his mother had spoken when he was sick. He placed Edith on the couch, crouched and kissed each of her cheeks, then her eyelids. Then an idea came to him, and he bounced on his knees. “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Upstairs, Paulie handled the Nesquik as though it were holy. To stop it from trembling, his left hand held his right wrist, which grasped the spoon and stirred. He could smell the froth of the cocoa on his way down the stairs, and he ached with wanting it for himself.

“Chocolate milk!” he announced, near her again, on the dining room chair next to hers. She appraised his offering as if it were an idling, unfamiliar car, so he said, more softly, “For drinking.” Finally, he brought the glass to her lips and she pushed out her tongue, touched the milky surface.

“Drink it like a dog!” encouraged Paulie. “I don’t care! It probably tastes better that way.” It did — he could tell by the way her breathing had changed. He sat beside Edith and moved his hands in what he hoped were perfect circles on her shoulders.

“What now?” He was unsure how long consolation should last. “I have another idea!” He turned so that their knees met in two neat points and put his hands up in a gesture that could have meant stop. Edith regarded him warily, but then the song he sang,

Three, six, nine

The goose drank wine

and the way he pushed his hands forward to meet hers, his right to her left, then both of his on both of hers, then his left to her right,

The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line

called her back.

The line broke

The monkey got choked

Jenny, as a shy little girl in a linen jumper on the stoop, had loved this song, the elaborate hand-clapping pattern, how Edith had trusted her daughter’s small palms to meet her larger ones, how her mother’s voice bounced, carried all the animals to the safe homes the story kept for them—

And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat

Clap, clap

The song stayed with her, and later that afternoon, as she crossed into the kitchen to put on the kettle, she was mouthing the words to herself, thinking of the mother she’d been in her best moments, when her right foot moved into the cocoa-colored puddle Paulie had left behind. As her legs flew out in front of her, she pictured the tufts of down and fur, the oars pumping skyward.

EVEN ADELEINE — who gripped the frame of the door and kept one foot inside — came out to see the ambulance. Owen stood near the vehicle into which Edith had just disappeared, and gestured elaborately, his hands hinting at the arc of a fall. “… Just lying there when I came in,” they heard him say.

The four tenants watched him speak with a carefully groomed EMT, who touched a gold crucifix on his chest and stepped back towards the van. “Thank you for your help,” came Owen’s voice, wheedling, pitching up. The man in all white retreated further, his hands up to brush off the thanks, and hopped up and into the bright interior lights, which were hard and loud on the blues and violets of dusk. Paulie couldn’t believe how quickly it vanished — was it safe to go that fast, he wondered — and started to cry almost immediately and asked whether Edith was still alive. Claudia let out a small gasp, and Edward put a hairy hand on the back of his neck. Adeleine shifted the two inches back into the foyer and slipped up the stairs with her milky palm on her mouth. In the summer twilight, the wallpaper that followed her upward glinted.

Owen, with his hands on his head and his fists full of hair, swayed a little. His mother’s renters observed as he grew still for a time, then how his eyes came open, newly serene. He brought his wrist up and checked his watch, approached the building and climbed the stairs as efficiently as a commuter at rush hour. As he reached Claudia and Edward and Paulie, he wiped his hands on his khaki shorts and settled on the step beneath where they stood. “It’s hard to know,” he said, his voice speculative and restrained. “How do you tell someone her life has become too much for her?” Above him, unsure of their position, they transferred their weight from one hip to another, fiddled with the bodega receipts in their pockets. Paulie worked two fingers into the band of Edward’s pants. Soon they turned to go, leaving Owen to look down the view he’d been born into, the tall narrow buildings of the same cheerful brown, the old trees reaching for each other above the street. He looked like a child transfixed, face pressed to cool aquarium glass, willing cognition from mystery.

A FEW DAYS AFTER the ambulance took Edith away, Edward and Claudia sat on his tiny couch, dark bottles of beer in hand, their faces lit by a stand-up comedy special. Paulie sat between them on the floor, leaning his head lightly against Claudia’s knee and occasionally patting Edward’s calf. They passed things to each other wordlessly as they laughed: Claudia handed Edward the carton of lo mein; Edward removed a cushion from the sofa and placed it behind Paulie’s neck; Paulie, without taking his eyes from the screen, removed a pinecone from his pocket and placed it on Claudia’s right foot. That afternoon, while the three of them picnicked in the park, Drew had placed a trash bag on their stoop: Claudia’s dirty laundry, worn underwear and coffee-stained nylon button-ups she hadn’t bothered to wash before she left him.

Paulie finished eating first and began silently farting. Edward’s face contorted as though witness to a quick accident, a knuckle hacked off in shop class.

“Paulie! What the fuck ! That smells like if celery were homeless!”

Claudia choked on her beer at this, sprayed it out the side of her mouth, and Paulie’s face reddened furiously. They were hidden in the safety of the moment, the comfort of intimate ridicule, when the lights went out.