let me down. They look unfamiliar to me now, though. There are new lines around the knuckles, and a rash of freckles I never noticed before.
“It’s a deal,” Louis says.
I remember standing beside Mrs. McLaughlin at the window in her room. She seemed to be mesmerized by something outside. I watched her and wondered if she were seeing my brothers and sisters, my childhood outside, tied to a massive oak tree. I wondered if she was right— that it was her job to set me free. I wondered, watching her old face pointed toward daylight, if I would know when that moment took place.
Perhaps being free feels like flying. Or, like I fear, it is the most terrifying thing that can happen to a person, because all of a sudden anything is possible. When my mother used to untie us at the end of an afternoon, my brothers and sisters and I would hesitate, staying close to the tree trunk for a long moment before bolting in every direction. We wanted badly to be untied, but there was safety in that rope looping us together, in that solid tree firmly rooted in our yard. We couldn’t lose one another or ourselves then, whether we were playing games or singing songs or just kicking at one another and the tree and the air. There was security in the noise of our thirteen separate voices hoarse from calling out and reminding the world we were still there, still waiting.
Louis has his eyes on my face, wanting me to make everything okay. I am wondering if this is how he looks at his wife—as if it is her responsibility to make miracles happen—and if this is why she is so rarely in the same room with Louis, when the front door of the house clatters open.
It is Meggy, her voice jumbled with necessity, her long arm waving in our direction. “We need help. Come on!” she says, and then disappears back inside. There is a moment’s pause while Louis and I stare at Meggy, then at the space where she used to be. Then I am running toward the house. Meggy’s voice, with that familiar life or death urgency that has threaded its way through my professional career, shimmers in my ears. The hot air seems to part before me, allowing me to run faster than I ever thought possible. I have left Mrs. McLaughlin for too long. I have momentarily lost sight of my duty. I am in danger of letting everyone down, but still, with the August afternoon buzzing around and through me, I know that it is within my power to make it right. I run like I have watched my daughter Jessie run: my body weightless, my focus absolute. Aware only of the pumping of my arms, the complete efficiency of my body and the fact that with each step my feet barely touch the ground.
CATHARINE
I watch Lila slink into the room behind that nice boy who came to visit me in the hospital. Neither of them looks happy. When I scan the room, that is the case across the board. My daughters and daughter-in-law and little Mary are busy writing dates and times and other numbers on the white scraps of paper Kelly handed out. They are bent over and serious.
But there is something else in the room as well, something besides serious. I can’t put my finger on what it is. It has to do with the way Gracie has her hands wrapped around her stomach, and the way Lila is looking at Weber, and the way Kelly is racing around, her cheeks flushed. There is something going on between these women that I don’t know about. I am no longer up to date on my grandchildren’s lives. They are living at a distance from me for the first time since I can remember. I realize this all at once, watching their faces. How could I have let this happen?
“Do you need help with that?” Noreen says into my ear.
I look down at my blank white sheet. “No,” I say. “I just think this is stupid.”
Heads rise up. I notice that several of my daughters have gray hairs mixed with brown.
I agree, I hear a voice say, from across the room. I follow the sound with my eyes and see my mother sitting on the couch next to Theresa. She is wearing white gloves and the same gray dress with a belted waist that she wore the