Janice Furlong
Safety Check
When the emergency room doctor encasing Marina’s left arm in a blue plaster cast asked how she’d fallen, Marina implicated a throw rug and a newly waxed floor.
“Lucky you didn’t break a hip,” said the doctor.
“Good point,” said Marina, keeping her tone light, jaunty even. She knocked the wrist-to-bicep cast with her knuckles. “I’m never going to be able to sleep with this monster.”
“You’ll get used to it.” He shook his head. “I’m just amazed, how my patients adapt so well to living with pain.”
“You’re so right,” she said. Seeing him smile, she began to relax. This doctor, this boy with a spot of acne on his chin and a clear plastic retainer across his top teeth, liked praise. He was sincere. He was naïve. “Should I sleep in a recliner?” she asked.
“Sleep wherever you want.”
“Like where I’m most comfortable?”
“Sure. Just keep your arm elevated,” he said. “Do you have a family member who can pick you up?”
“My wife’s on her way.”
“Tell her to come straight to the emergency department. A nurse will review the after-care plan with you both.”
“What’s to review?”
“You’ll need help with your ADLs.”
“My whats?”
“Activities of daily living. Grooming, bathing, stuff like that. Ever tried to get dressed using just one arm? Your wife will have to help you.”
Marina was in no mood to let Jess button her buttons or zip her zippers. “Can I tell her she has to do all the housework, too?” Marina gave him a wink. “Doctor’s orders, right?”
Grinning, he pecked at a computer. “I’m putting in an Elder Services referral for you. They’ll send a case manager to do a safety check.”
Marina felt her stomach clench. “What kind of safety check?”
“They identify household hazards, things you should get rid of. Like throw rugs.”
“Right,” said Marina, flushing. “Of course.”
“Most people over sixty need safety features at home. Like grab bars in the bathroom. Do you have grab bars?”
“I wouldn’t know where to put them.”
“There you go. Elder Services will help you out.” The pager on his belt went off. “Are we all set here?”
She was all set. After he loped off, Marina peeked into the hallway. The only nurse in sight was squinting, transfixed, at her computer screen. Jacket draped over her cast, eyes straight ahead, Marina strode past the nurses’ station to the front entrance of the hospital. Outside, she hailed a cab.
When Marina got home, Jess was seated at the kitchen counter with a glass of chocolate milk and a pile of arithmetic quizzes. Jess taught third grade at Green Meadow Elementary, a private school in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Just three days into the new school year, Jess was already busy grading, affixing heart stickers on the rare bits of good work and frowny face stickers on the rest. Jess ran a tight ship.
Mouth dry, Marina paused at the kitchen door. The speech she’d rehearsed in the cab felt like a chunk of chicken lodged in her throat that she needed to either swallow or cough up. Without turning, Jess raised one pointer finger above her head. This meant wait. Jess could not be interrupted when she was grading.
Marina waited.
Jess put down her red pencil and swiveled her chair around, her face impassive at the sight of Marina’s cast.
“I told you it was broken,” Marina said.
“No. You told me it hurt. And that you felt dizzy.”
“I heard the bone crack.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nobody can hear a bone crack.”
I heard it. So did you, she wanted to yell. But after four years with Jess, two as a married couple, Marina had become an expert non-yeller. Examining a scratch on the linoleum floor, she swallowed, hard.
Jess looked at her watch. “You’ve been at the hospital this whole time?”
“The emergency room was a zoo. I had to wait for x-rays.”
Lifting her bifocals, Jess rubbed each eye with a forefinger. “Look, there’s an issue I’ve wanted to mention for a while now.” She paused. “I’m worried about you.”
Jess’s eyelids did appear puffy. Maybe she had been crying. Maybe.
“Your balance has been getting worse, little by little,” said Jess. “That’s why you fell.”
“That’s not why.”
“Bad balance and poor coordination can be signs of a neurological condition. I read three articles about it online.”
“I don’t have a neurological condition.”
“Are you a doctor? Are you an expert on balance problems?”
Marina knew better than to answer questions that weren’t really questions.
“You need to see a specialist,” Jess said. “And you need to take off a few pounds. That would help your balance too.”
“What I need to do is make sure my arm heals right.” Marina cleared her throat. “I’m sleeping in the recliner.”
Jess paused for two beats. “And why is that?”
“Doctor’s orders. I have to keep my arm elevated. For six weeks. Maybe longer.”
“Suit yourself.” Frowny face stickers in hand, Jess went back to her grading.
That night, with Jess ensconced in their canopy bed, Marina set up camp in the living room, one part lonely and three parts relieved to be sleeping apart from her wife. Climbing into the La-Z-Boy, red plaid coverlet bunched over her feet, misshapen memory foam pillow behind her head, she opened her sketchpad. She’d fallen in love with drawing back in junior high school, when her art teacher, Roberta, promoted sketching as a healthy form of expression. Hungry to express, Marina first tried keeping a diary. This experiment ended a month later, when her mother joined Marina and her sister at breakfast one morning, Marina’s diary in hand, and proceeded to read a series of entries aloud in a sarcastic sing-song voice. Today Roberta wore puffy pink harem pants. Roberta gave me a cool nickname: “Reeny.” I asked mom to call me Reeny but she won’t. Roberta put her hand on my shoulder. Roberta likes my linoleum print. Roberta this, Roberta that. As Marina cowered, her sister tittered. Humiliated, Marina destroyed her diary and replaced it with a sketchbook. Drawing felt satisfying, like scratching an itch. Images floated into Marina’s head, unbidden; she drew them all, without thinking. A cupcake with an acorn stuck on top. A work boot with a stiletto heel. A sunflower blooming beneath the soil rather than above. Drawing felt like writing in code. If her mother went snooping in Marina’s sketchbook, as Marina knew she would, her mother would find studies in shading and perspective, nothing more.
Plaster cast propped on the armrest, Marina wedged her sketchbook between her knees, grateful she still had use of her dominant hand. She drew a lopsided tree, with a bird’s nest nestled in the crotch of two leafless branches. Even after she added a tiny beak poking out of the nest, the desolation she saw on the page disquieted her. Junking her sketchpad, Marina fished out her iPhone and googled “how to test your balance.” The first test was walking twenty steps, heel to toe, in a straight line. Marina walked the length of the TV room twice, with just a few bobbles, which she chalked up to the lingering effects of pain medication they’d given her in the hospital. The second test involved standing on one leg for a full minute, hands free. She held the pose for thirty-eight seconds. According to the website, her score was in the low-average range for women in their sixties. Marina began to fret. Was there something wrong with her? Her doubt felt like a tiny poppy seed stuck between two teeth, impossible to dislodge even with aggressive tongue-swirling.
Marina made herself remember that morning in the bathroom. Jess shouting. Jess shoving her. Feeling herself lurching, falling, hearing that snap. Hunching on the edge of the pink bathtub, cradling her left arm. Jess handing her Tylenol and holding a cup of water to her lips. Watching Jess leave for work, exactly on time. Calling a cab to get herself to the hospital. The driver saying “please don’t puke in my cab, lady.” Remembering made her queasy all over again. Tiptoeing into the kitchen, she poured an inch of Hershey’s chocolate syrup into a glass of milk. For three decades, she’d lived alone in a musty studio apartment, working night shift food prep in a nursing home. For three decades, she had to make one can of Hershey’s last a whole month. That silky chocolate sometimes felt like her only comfort. The only sweet thing in her life. Now that Jess bought cans of Hershey’s by the case, Marina could have chocolate milk whenever she wanted a treat, or when her stomach acted up, or, like now, when she struggled with the urge to leave. Just take off. Just for a while. Like a vacation. Except longer. Except not with Jess.
Except she had no place to go. Having retired last year from her cafeteria job at Green Meadow, Marina’s only source of income was a social security check, too small to cover a subsidized unit in the seniors’ housing project. Besides, last time she checked, that project had a three-year wait list. She drained her glass. Alone in the dark, flooded with shame and resentment and what she thought must be love, Marina had to admit the truth. She wasn’t going anywhere. When they got married at City Hall, when Marina recited until death do us part, Jess, who never cried, grew tearful and whispered, “you’re mine now.” Marina could not break their wedding vows. But death would come for them, someday. Barring a car crash that killed them both at the same second, one of them would have to go first. She imagined having a stroke, collapsing in the bakery aisle at Fairway Market, toppling a display of chocolate sprinkle cupcakes, bashing her head on the tile floor, gone before the bile inside her oozed out, gone before she said things that might make Jess hate her. Marina didn’t want to die. Sometimes she just couldn’t see another way out.
Awake all night, Marina grew anxious as the clock neared six. When Jess’s alarm clock beeped, Marina feigned sleep. Jess left for work at six-thirty sharp. At seven, Marina’s phone dinged.
Jess: how are you?
Marina: gold frowning face emoji
Jess: not feeling great myself, heartburn again
Marina swiped through rows of emojis, searching for a face with a fuck you expression.
Jess: text me if you need anything
Marina typed: I need you to stop harassing me about my so-called balance issues and my weight. Just lay the fuck off.
Ten minutes later, she had still not pressed send. Because the message was mean. Because Jess shouldn’t be disturbed at work. Because the message would start a conversation Marina did not know how to finish.
Delete.
Marina: more Tylenol extra strength, thank u
Jess: gold thumbs-up emoji
Marina couldn’t stop looking at that fat gold thumb. Pulling out her sketchpad, she began to draw her own left hand. Cast. Knuckles, chapped. Fingers, bent. Thumbnail, chipped. Veins, bulging like worms. Though pleased with her shading, the hand looked limp, almost lifeless. She should have drawn a hand doing something. Like hammering. Squeezing. Clenching. Something.
Jess arrived home that night bearing a rotisserie chicken, a carton of mashed potatoes, four dinner rolls, and a lemon meringue pie from the market. “I hope you’re hungry,” said Jess, presenting her loot with a flourish.
Hearing Jess sound so cheery, seeing her glide around their kitchen in that business-as-usual manner, Marina felt the fury she’d tried to delete surging back. Tight with tension, Marina excused herself to wash up. With nothing to cover her cast, showering was out. Marina hated baths; how could a person get clean soaking in their own grime? Still, she filled the tub and threw in a handful of Jess’s lavender bath salts.
Immersed only to her navel, angling her casted arm to the side like a wing, Marina splashed water under her arms and down her back. Clutching the towel rack, she clambered out of the tub and dried herself. One-handed, she pulled on Bermudas with the elastic waistband and a baggy T-shirt that fit over her cast with ease. So there, she thought. She could take care of her own ALDs or LSDs or whatever they were called.
Jess was waiting, table set with her good blue china. Marina scooped a fingerful of mashed potatoes into her mouth: perfect. Suddenly ravenous, she sat. The chicken skin was crispy, the flesh tender. They devoured the whole beast, even sucked on the bones. Despite her resolve to maintain distance, Marina’s resentment began to melt. As Jess entertained her with tidbits of gossip from the teachers’ lounge, they each had two slices of pie, the lemon curd tangy, the meringue gleaming with beads of moisture.
“Let’s take walks together,” said Jess, picking at the remains of her pie. “Like we used to. Down by the Hudson? Remember?”
Of course she remembered. Marina had not expected to fall in love at sixty years old. Meeting Jess was a shock, a revelation, a prayer answered. Having just started her cafeteria job at Green Meadow Elementary, Marina noticed Jess right away. Mid-fifties, gray hair styled in a chin-length bob, blue pantsuit freshly pressed, Jess purchased the same lunch every day: fish sticks, apple crisp and a pint of chocolate milk. Drawn to this stately woman of steady habits, Marina summoned the courage to start a conversation.
“You’re the only teacher who likes chocolate milk,” she’d said, handing Jess her lunch tray. “The rest of them buy Cokes from the vending machine.”
Jess smiled. “I never liked the taste of Coke.”
“Same,” she’d said. Soon they began taking afternoon walks and meeting at Joey’s Diner for breakfast on Saturdays. At first, they were shy with each other. Marina had dated only three other women, none for long. Jess used to live with a lady named Linda. When Marina pressed for details, Jess said Linda had issues. Linda was ancient history. That was all Marina cared to know. She loved the heady sensation of being courted by a woman who owned her own house, who pronounced Marina’s plump rump and belly paunch acceptable, who made her feel worthy.
Four months in, after a breakfast of blueberry flapjacks and cocoa, Marina and Jess found themselves lingering, not wanting to part. Christmas was a week away.
“Where do you go for the holidays?” Jess asked.
“I used to go to my sister’s. Way back when. Like before she got married.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say her husband had an attitude. He didn’t want me around.”
“Let me guess,” said Jess. “He couldn’t deal with your—red hair.”
Marina laughed. “Bingo.” The relief she felt at not needing to explain every insult incurred at the hands of family brought her near tears.
Face softened, lips pursed as if she too might cry, Jess took a deep breath. “I want you to come to my house.”
Marina blushed. “You mean for Christmas?”
Pushing their breakfast plates aside, Jess took both of Marina’s hands in hers. “Let’s do this,” she said. “Let’s be a couple.”
Marina looked down at her dinner plate, littered with chicken bones. Maybe they could still be a couple. Flush with a flicker of hope, Marina pointed her fork at the last piece of pie. “Can I have that?”
“We need to lose weight,” said Jess. “Mostly you. But me, too.”
“We can walk together on weekends,” said Marina, popping a chunk of pie crust in her mouth. “I’ll do extra miles when you’re at work.”
“You can’t walk by yourself,” said Jess, nudging the pie plate out of Marina’s reach.
“Why not?”
“With your balance issues?” Jess crooned. “You wouldn’t be safe.”
Maybe it was the absurdity of Jess lecturing her about safety. Or Jess’s condescension masquerading as concern. Or the “balance issue” nonsense. Whatever the reasons, Marina stiffened. Who was she kidding? Though she’d hoped their bond would grow even stronger when they got married, the opposite had happened. Jess turned overbearing, nasty. Marina grew nervous. Even during their good spells, Marina was plagued by dread that tiptoed, tiptoed, tiptoed around her then pounced, like a cat so stealthy she could almost forget it was there until its tiny teeth punctured her palm. Safe? She could barely remember what safe felt like. Marina jerked her chair back from the table. “You’ll have to clean up this mess,” she told Jess, motioning at the table. “I can’t get my cast wet.”
A week later, on a sunny September Monday, Jess woke Marina up early, blathering about a neurology consult she’d just scheduled for her at a clinic in Manhattan. Some doctor had a last-minute cancellation and could fit Marina in today. At nine. Jess would drive her. Jess had already called in sick.
Groaning, Marina pressed her memory foam pillow over her face. Jess never called in sick. Jess meant business.
Perching on the edge of the recliner, Jess lifted Marina’s left hand. “Your fingers are swollen,” she said. “Is the cast too tight?”
“My arm itches something crazy under this thing,” Marina snapped, throwing her pillow to the floor. “It’s torture.”
Jess raised her pointer finger above her head: wait. Disappearing into the bedroom, she returned with her pink hairdryer, held aloft like a trophy. “A trick I used with a student last year, when he broke his wrist,” she said, aiming a blast of cool air into the sliver of space between Marina’s arm and cast. As her itching began to ease, Marina began to melt, just a little. Closing her eyes, Marina made a purring sound.
“More?” Jess asked.
Marina nodded.
“We need to leave by seven-thirty,” Jess said, pointing the nozzle at another itchy spot. “I already emailed Dr. Seltzer a list of your symptoms.”
Jess often used her teacher-voice to make bad ideas sound good. Marina pushed the nozzle aside. “You did what?”
“He needs to have your medical history before he sees you.”
“But why can’t he just ask me?”
Jess flipped the hairdryer off. “Put on your nice slacks. And remember to bring your Medicare card.”
Marina’s face burned. Jess might as well have told her to put her arithmetic workbook away and get ready for recess. The instant she heard Jess start the shower, she crept into the bedroom, where Jess’ laptop sat open, Gmail up on the screen. Inbox. Nothing. Sent mail. Yes. Here. To Dr. Stephen Seltzer. Heart pounding, she scanned Jess’s message. Symptoms began two years ago—lost her balance when she lifted a heavy crate—dropped crate on her foot, resulting in three broken toes—uneven balance persisted after toes healed—stumbling observed during outdoor walks—fell at home three weeks ago, broke arm––couldn’t explain how she fell—worried about her—claims she’s fine, gets defensive when I raise concerns—don’t know how to help her—please advise.
Closing the laptop, Marina felt an eerie calm, as if she’d landed in the eye of a hurricane, where the wind went still, the clattering stopped, and she could, at last, dislodge the poppy seed of doubt. Her balance was fine. She fell because Jess shoved her. Jess was a liar, passing herself off as the saintly worried wife of a nutty woman who stumbled around breaking bones willy nilly. Because Jess talked like a smart person, because she dressed in fancy pantsuits, this doctor would believe her. This doctor would order expensive tests, trying to find a cause for a balance problem that didn’t exist, and the question of how Marina’s arm actually got broken would never be asked or answered. Jess was counting on her to keep her mouth shut, just like always. Jess was in for a shock. Marina was done lying to doctors about her injuries. She would tell this Doctor Seltzer everything. She had no idea if he would believe her, or if he could actually do anything to help. Regardless, Marina would force a reckoning with her wife.
When Jess emerged in a blue pantsuit, hair sprayed into a neat helmet, a sheen of perspiration on her usually dry forehead, Marina was waiting calmly by the door in her plaid Bermudas, backpack slung over her shoulder, Medicare card tucked in her pocket. With Jess in the driver’s seat, they headed towards the George Washington Bridge. Within ten minutes, traffic slowed to a crawl. Marina flipped on the radio. A newscaster reported traffic was backed up in Fort Lee. Two lanes at the main toll plaza for the Bridge were shut down. Major delays were predicted.
The line of cars ahead of them came to a complete stop. “For God’s sake,” said Marina, smacking her hand on the dashboard.
“This looks bad.” Jess shot her a quick look. “We might have to cancel.”
“Absolutely not!”
In silence, Jess adjusted her sunglasses. She fiddled with the air vent, adjusted the radio dial. “This is quite the occasion,” she said at last, her tone sarcastic. “All of a sudden you’re motivated to take care of your health.”
“This doctor did me a favor, fitting me in at the last minute,” Marina said. “The least I can do is show up.”
Jess gave a dismissive wave. “He did you a favor because I kept calling. I follow up. I persist.”
Marina turned her head. Smothering the laugh she felt rising in her chest took effort. Jess’s puffed-up importance sounded so ridiculous. Once composed, she looked back towards Jess. “Thanks, by the way. Calling in sick today, to drive me in? You didn’t have to do that.”
Jess nodded. “Let me tell you, my principal was not happy.”
Marina knew the rhythms of her wife’s anger. Jess was satisfied now. Calm lay ahead.
Helicopters began buzzing overhead. Radio news reports affirmed the gridlock was not easing. Though the morning was mild, Marina saw sweat beads rising on her wife’s brow.
“Heartburn again,” said Jess.
Marina wished Jess would just take a Tums and shut up. Slipping her sketchpad out of her backpack, Marina waited for an image to grab her. The eyes came first: huge black pupils, furry brows. The nose looked feline, stubby. She felt Jess watching her.
“Looks like a lion,” said Jess.
“I don’t think so. A kitten, maybe.”
“You’re the artist. You should know.”
“My subjects reveal themselves gradually,” said Marina. “Sometimes they surprise me.”
Jess wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That’s crazy talk.”
Marina sketched in whiskers, enlarged the eyes. Ten minutes passed. Eleven. Twelve. Fifteen. Turning off the ignition, Jess cranked her window open halfway. Traffic remained at a standstill. Sixteen minutes. Thirty.
“My arm hurts,” Jess said.
Her arm hurts? Give me a freaking break, thought Marina.
“That lion. Something’s going to happen,” said Jess. “Something bad.”
“What are you talking about?” Marina looked up from her sketchpad. Jess’s eyes were glassy, her face pale. “What’s wrong?”
Jess closed her eyes. Marina shook her shoulder. “Tell me. What is it?”
“Lions and bears,” said Jess, head lolling to the left. “Berries. I like berries.”
Jess always sounded sensible, even when she was lying. Now she sounded like her brain had gone offline. Terrified, tossing her sketchbook aside, Marina leaned over Jess to crank the driver’s side car window all the way down. Jess lay still, silent, lips drained of color. Swabbing Jess’s damp face with her shirttail, waving her sketchbook like a fan, Marina tried to get her wife cooled off. The car began to fill with an acrid smell. Was it Jess? No. Marina sniffed her own armpit. The smell was emanating from her. Hands shaking, she tried to punch 911 into her phone. After three tries, she got through. The dispatcher sounded frantic, too. “We’ll do our best, honey,” she told Marina. “But we’ve got total gridlock. Our ambulances can’t get through.”
“I’m supposed to just sit here?” Marina wailed.
“Do you know CPR?”
“Yes, but I have a broken arm and this humongous cast so I can’t straighten my left arm or put any pressure on it and if—”
The dispatcher cut her off. “Okay, honey. Okay. I’ll find out if any of our EMTs are close enough to reach your vehicle on foot. See if anyone in a car near you knows CPR. They can do compressions. You do the breathing. Go!”
Marina hopped out of the car. Gesturing, crying, incoherent, she must have looked like a crazy person, because the old man in the first car wouldn’t even roll down his window. The next car held four whining kids and an aggravated mom who didn’t know CPR anyway. In car number three, two ladies who didn’t speak English offered her a bottle of water. The stench of tar rising up from the asphalt highway made Marina feel woozy. She needed to get back to Jess. Jess shouldn’t be alone. The dispatcher was still on the line when Marina flopped back in the car. “No luck,” she panted.
The phone crackled. “Okay, I have confirmation. EMTs coming on foot,” said the dispatcher. “ETA five minutes.”
Helicopters buzzing, radios in nearby cars blaring, heat inside the car suddenly stultifying, Marina leaned over Jess, started the ignition, rolled up the window and turned the air conditioning back on. Though she tried to pretend Jess was napping next to her, Jess’s flaccid face muscles, bluish lips, sweat-stained blue suit jacket, and disheveled hair left Marina feeling like she was looking at a discarded mannequin. Marina recalled a doctor on TV who claimed patients in comas could still hear and understand what people around them were saying. Maybe Jess was in a coma, listening. She better be listening, Marina thought. Listening hard. They didn’t have much time. Marina needed to have her reckoning.
“There’s nothing wrong with my balance,” Marina said, louder than she’d intended. “You shoved me, hard. I heard you grunt. You made me fall. For what? I never snooped in your file cabinet, not once.”
She didn’t know her words would come out so harsh. What sort of monster was she, yelling at this body crumpled beside her? She couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t want to stop. “You dropped that box of books on my foot on purpose. You looked me right in the eyes when you did it, like you were warning me or something.” Marina heard herself shouting again. “We’d only been married a week. One week! You acted like I made a big deal over nothing. Three broken toes wasn’t nothing.”
Shouting released some of the pressure inside her, like lifting just the edge of a flip top on a soda can. Wiping a strand of saliva off Jess’s chin, she noticed a brown spot on her wife’s right temple. How had she never noticed this spot before? She wished she knew what Jess was thinking, or if she was thinking at all. “I stole money from your purse sometimes, I guess to make you mad.” Marina felt her throat tighten. “Because you made me mad. You made me feel ashamed of myself.”
Marina began to weep. She’d lived with shame long before she met Jess. She couldn’t blame Jess for everything; she had to be fair. “Remember when you took me to your uncle’s funeral? You introduced me as your wife. You could’ve just told everybody I was a friend. No one would have known the difference. But you put your arm around me and said ‘this is Marina, my wife Marina . . . ’ Like you were proud to be with me.” Marina wiped her eyes. “You said I was yours.”
What was that pounding? Two men, black shirts, stethoscopes. Bursting into the car, the EMTs moved Marina out of their way, pounced on Jess’s body, and went to work. Marina couldn’t watch. Within minutes, an ambulance plowed through and took Jess away.
Battling tangled traffic, Marina followed by car.
Bursting into the emergency room, she expected to be whisked to Jess’s bedside.
Instead, a nurse let her to a room with stained-glass windows and three rows of folding chairs.
The nurse made Marina sit down. She took Marina’s hand.
Jess was gone.
A month after the funeral, Marina still cried daily, sometimes just for a minute, like when she discovered one of Jess’s fuzzy blue slippers under the couch, and sometimes for a long while, like when she found a happy anniversary card, still blank inside, with “Marina” inscribed on the envelope in Jess’s slanted handwriting. She wanted her wife back. Marina knew CPR; like all cafeteria workers, she had to get certified every two years. She could have done the compressions, along with the breathing—if only she hadn’t had that cast on her arm.
When she could summon the energy, Marina sifted through statements from Jess’s retirement account. She met with an attorney about transferring the house deed from Jess’s name to hers. Jess’s pantsuits needed to be hauled to Goodwill. That, she couldn’t do. Not yet. She liked the scent of lavender that still clung to Jess’s clothes. She focused on easier tasks, like picking up a new memory foam pillow—something soft, with more give. The bedroom walls needed painting. She chose a color: Blue Oasis.
She found solace in drawing. Her most recent sketch was of a portrait of herself as young girl, with shy half-smile. She titled the drawing “Reeny.”
Occasionally, she got phone calls from Green Meadow co-workers, each sorry for her loss, each in a hurry to hang up. When her phone buzzed one afternoon with an unfamiliar caller ID number, Marina let the call go to voice mail. Minutes later, another buzz; same number. She picked up. A woman identified herself as a case manager at Elder Care Services, calling to schedule a home safety check.
Marina felt a flash of fear. “But my doctor made that referral two months ago.”
“Sorry you’ve had to wait so long,” the woman said. “Our wait list is ridiculous.”
“But I don’t have my cast anymore. I’m in a sling now.”
The woman persisted. No matter that her cast was off. Assessing home safety was important for all seniors. Elder Services could help her install safety features. Grab bars, for example.
Marina cut her off. “I’m good now. But thank you.”
As quickly as it had appeared, her fear dissolved. In its place was something effervescent and tingly, something she couldn’t put a name to, something that made her feel guilty and giddy. The house was quiet. Being alone in the quiet was easier now. From the refrigerator, she removed a jug of milk and the can of Hershey’s syrup. Jess had bought that can, opened it, poured from it, maybe even stuck her finger inside for an extra lick. Marina needed a spoon to scrape syrup out of the can into her glass. Though the can was almost empty, she didn’t want to throw it out—not yet, not while there was still some sweetness left at the bottom.