Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

On some days, blessed clarity. Today is one of those days. I walk through the house taking joy in claiming things. My books. My piano, which James played endearingly clumsily. My Calder lithograph, purchased by James for me in London, 1976, its lines as fresh as ever. My artifacts, the seventeenth-century santos and the ex-votos, doubtless stolen from churches, which we bought from roadside peddlers in Jalisco and Monterrey: all the trappings of the devout without the burden of faith. I touch everything, rejoicing in the feel of leather, mahogany, canvas, porcelain, tin.

Magdalena is what I can only describe as sullen. She breaks a plate, curses, sweeps up the pieces, and drops them again while struggling with the lid of the trash can. Her job cannot be fun. I suspect, however, that she needs the money badly. Her car is at least a dozen years old, with dented rear fenders and a cracked windshield.

She dresses simply, in faded blue jeans and a white man’s button-down shirt that hangs over her substantial hips. She bleaches her dark hair, not very competently—you can see the roots. Thick eyeliner and mascara that make her eyes appear small.

Her age: perhaps forty, forty-five. I catch her writing in my notebook. A very good day for Jennifer. A not-so-good day for me. I ask her why, and she shrugs. Her face is haggard, and she has circles under her eyes.

Why should I explain again? she says. You’ll just forget anyhow.

I wonder if she is always this rude. I wonder many things. How long has it been raining? How did my hair get so long? Why does the phone keep ringing, yet never seems to be for me? Magdalena picks it up, and her face closes in secrecy. She whispers into the receiver as if to a secret lover.

I am in the middle of a street. Dirty snow has been pushed to either side, but still treacherous going, I have to tread carefully. There is shouting. Cars everywhere. Horns blaring. Someone grabs my arm, not gently, pulls me faster than my legs want to move, practically hoists me up a curb onto a cement island. I am suddenly surrounded by people. Strangers. From afar a voice calls, a familiar one, and the strangers part like the waters of the Red Sea. Here she comes: bright auburn hair, shivering in a short-sleeved T-shirt that exposes her rattlesnake tattoo.

Wait! I’m her daughter! Please don’t call the police!

She arrives, breathless.

Thank you, thank you. Whoever got her out of the street, thank you. She takes a deep breath. I apologize for the trouble. My mother has dementia. She is forcing out the words, and her thin frame is starting to shiver. It is bitterly cold.

As the crowd begins to disperse, she turns to me.

Mom, please don’t do that! You scared us all.

Where am I?

About two blocks from home. In the middle of one of the busiest intersections in the city.

She pauses. It was my fault, I was putting my bag up in my old bedroom. You know, I’m spending the night again, Magdalena thought it would be nice for you. We got to talking, didn’t notice that you’d wandered off. Where were you going?

To Amanda’s. It’s Friday, isn’t it?

No, actually it’s Wednesday. But I understand. You were trying to find Amanda’s house?

It’s our day.

Yes. I understand. She thinks for a moment, seems to make up her mind. I think we should go to Amanda’s, see if she’s in.

What’s your name?

Fiona. Your daughter.

Yes. Yes, that’s right. I remember now.

Let’s go. Let’s see if we can find Amanda. Look. The light is green now. She is holding my arm and urging me forward with purpose. Although I am at least three inches taller than she is, I have trouble keeping up with her stride. We move past the thrift store, past the El station, around the corner of the church, and suddenly the world tilts into place again. I pause at one house, a brownstone, with a short black iron fence around its yard. A tree stripped of leaves leans over the path to the front steps.

Yes, this is our house. But we’re going to visit Amanda.

I remember, I say. Three houses down. One, two, three.

That’s right. Here we are. Let’s just knock on the door and see if Amanda’s here. If she’s not, we’ll go home and have a cup of tea and do the crossword puzzle. I brought a new book.

Fiona knocks loudly three times. I press on the doorbell. We wait on the porch, but no one comes. No face appears behind the curtains of the living room window. Not that Amanda would ever peer like that. Despite Peter’s admonitions, she always flings open the door without looking. Always ready to face whatever life brings her.

Fiona has her back to the door. Her eyes are closed. Her body is shaking. Whether it’s from the cold or something else I can’t tell. Let’s go, Mom, she says. No one is home.

Strange, I say. Amanda has never missed one of our Fridays.

Mom, please. Her voice is urgent. She pulls me down the steps, so fast I stumble and nearly fall, and pushes me back down the sidewalk. One. Two Three. We are back in front of the brownstone.

Her hand on the gate, she pauses, looks up. Her face is full of pain, but as she gazes at the house, the pain dissipates into something else. Longing.

How I love this house, she says. I’ll be so sad to see it go.

Why should it go? I ask. Your father and I don’t intend to move. The wind whistles past and both of us are white with cold, but we stand there on the sidewalk in front of the house, not moving. The frigid temperature suits me. It suits the conversation, which strikes me as important.

Fiona’s face is pinched and there are large goosebumps on her arms, but she still doesn’t move. The house before us is solid, it is a fact. The warm red stones, the large protruding rectangular windows, the three stories capped with a flat roof emblematic of other Chicago houses of the era. I find myself yearning for it as desperately as when James and I first saw it, as if it were out of our reach. Yet it is truly ours. Mine. I bullied James into buying it, even though it was beyond our means at the time. It is my home.

Home, she says as if she could read my mind, then shakes her head as if to clear it. She takes me by the elbow, propels me up the steps, into the house, helps me off with my coat, my shoes.

I have something to show you, she says, and takes a small white square out of her pocket, unfolds it. Look at this, she says. Just look.

A photograph. Of my house. No, wait. Not precisely. This house is slightly smaller, fewer and smaller windows, only two stories high. But the same Chicago brownstone, the same small square of yard in front, and, like my house, crowded in from brownstones on either side, one in pristine condition, the other, like this one, slightly shabby. No curtains at the windows. A sold sign in front.

What is this? I ask.

My house. My new house. Can you believe it? I try to take the photograph from her to see more closely, but she has trouble relinquishing it. I have to pull to get it into my own hands. Even so, she leans toward me, as though she can’t bear to let it out of her sight.

It’s in Hyde Park. On Fifty-sixth Street. Right off campus. I can bike to my office.

It’s eerie, I say. The similarity.

Yes, I thought so too. I paid too much for it, of course. It needs tons of work. But these things don’t come on the market very often. I had to act fast.