Recalculating (6 page)

Brenda’s hands are gentle as she eases me up and off the bed and over to the chair in the corner—a flea-market find, upholstered in pink toile, the chair where I sat when I nursed my girls, when I read my books, when I wrote my reports. As I watch, she deftly strips the sheets off the bed, shakes the pillows free of their creased cases, and gives each one a brisk whack over her knee before settling it back on the bed. Dust fills the room, motes dancing in the beams of light that stream in through the dirt-filmed windows I’d been planning to have cleaned.

I huddle in my nightgown, shoulders hunched, knees pulled up to my chest. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

Brenda looks at me kindly. “I am being of service,” she says. Which means she’s sober again, in some kind of program, or maybe she’s just read a book. She carries her armful of soiled linen out of the bedroom and comes back with a fresh set. When she struggles to get the fitted sheet to stay put, I get up off the chair and help her. Then she goes to the bathroom and turns on the shower. “Come on,” she says, and I pull my nightgown off over my head and stand under the water. I tilt my head to feel the warmth beating down on my cheeks, my chin, my eyelids. Tears mix with the water and wash down the drain. When I was a little girl, my mom would give me baths when I’d come home from the hospital, with Steri-Strips covering my stitches. She would wash my hair, then rinse it, pouring warm water from a plastic pitcher in a gentle, carefully directed stream. She would wipe the thick, braided line of pink scar tissue that ran down the center of my chest. My beautiful girl, she would say. My beautiful, beautiful girl.

My sheets are silky and cool as pond water, but I don’t lie down. I prop myself up against the headboard and rasp out the question that I’ve heard hundreds of times from dozens of clients. “What do I do now?”

Brenda gives a rueful smile. “You start again,” she tells me. “Just like the rest of us.”