There is also a dull ache in my hip, but it is my breathing and the odd sensation in my chest that concerns me more. I wait until my breath grows steady before I attempt to move. It turns out not to be much of a move. I manage to prop myself up on one elbow, and then that arm turns to rubber, and I am forced to lie down again.
I decide I will try again in a few minutes. I still don’t have my strength back—that much is clear—and it is foolish to rush. After all, I have nowhere to be until dinner. So I lie there on my side, the painful hip up in the air. I tuck my arm under my head and am relatively comfortable. I look around and confirm that I have stranded myself in the only clear spot in this small room. The loveseat and the coffee table are a few feet behind me. The television is more than an arm’s length beyond my head. There is nothing solid within my reach.
However, I can see plenty. The photographs on the wall above the loveseat. The waving trees through the window. I can make out only part of the view, but I know the entire scene. It is just past one o’clock, which means the two old men are reading their newspapers on the bench beneath the oak tree. The more able Alzheimer patients will be crossing the grounds on their supervised daily walk. Mrs. Malloy will be standing at the edge of the parking lot, waiting for the driver she hires to take her into town once a week. She asked me if I wanted to accompany her today, and I declined because Mrs. Malloy talks too much for my liking.
Perhaps, I think, my head cushioned on my arm, trying to breathe as lightly as possible, I should have said yes. Then I wouldn’t have been sitting on the loveseat. I wouldn’t have stood up for the remote. I wouldn’t have settled into this room after lunch. I would have picked up my purse and met Mrs. Malloy at the end of the hall. I would be listening to her talk about her grandson the lawyer right now instead of lying here. But then I hear a car engine outside the window, and the light tap of a car door closing. So, Mrs. Malloy is gone. My chance for a different present has driven away.
I glance back by the loveseat, to see what it was my foot caught on. I want to get a look at what made me fall. It felt like a book, or a stack of magazines. But I don’t see anything, at least not from this angle. Only the smooth Oriental rug that used to be my mother’s. I am lying in the center of the rug now. Its weave is soft beneath my cheek. I think how odd it is that although I have lived with this rug for most of my life, I have never done anything but walk over it until now. My children used to crawl and play and watch television from this rug, but I never had time to sit down with them. And, honestly, it never would have occurred to me to sit on the floor. During that time, parents didn’t play with their children like they do today. I was amazed, years later, by the ways in which my children enjoyed their own children. Theresa adored Mary and John from the minute they were born. She played house with Mary, and went to every one of John’s football games before he quit the team. Up until Dina turned eleven or twelve and developed such a mouth on her, she and Meggy were inseparable. They even went through a period when they dressed alike. And Kelly, though maybe not as playful with her children, was the proudest parent I ever saw. It seemed as if every time Lila brought home another A, or Gracie got an article published in the school paper, Kelly called me and her brothers and sisters to let us all know.
During my time, parents were the disciplinarians. There was no playing, and enjoyment never entered the picture. There were so many children, and it was so much work to get them from infancy to adulthood. I was exhausted for fifteen straight years. I didn’t mind that, though. It was my job. I got the children up and dressed and to