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The Woman in the Snapshot part 3 Returning home from Santa Fe after a week spent defending a client, Paul, wondering why the drapes are drawn at two in the afternoon, opens his door to chaos. Clothes are where they've been dropped, plants stand wilting in their pots. Hershey wrappers and empty Pepsis are scattered everywhere. It is a scene from the past, from the days when opium and sweets were the main of Mary's diet. He calls out: "Hey Babe, where yuh at?" "Here, Paul, here," a childlike voice responds. He cannot localize the voice, can barely recognize it. "Where?" "Over here," Mary says, emerging from a corner wrapped in an Afghan. Her golden hair is a wild Bankiva rooster’s bluff, her eyelids are swollen, her pupils are constricted despite the gloom of the room. Paul carries her to his great chair and sets her in his lap, curled in fetal compaction. He is shocked at her lightness. She shivers though the room is hot, drops the Afghan, and cries, "Oh Paul, it’s so horrible! She’s still comatose ... jerking around, moaning those awful reptilian moans ... and the stench of her skin sticks in my lungs and won't go away! Paul, Paul, I wish she would die! I wish I could die for her! Oh, hold me, I'm so cold." Hours later, Mary wakes up feeling sick. She asks Paul to get her some codeine. He goes to the medicine cabinet, flushes the codeine down the toilet and brings her the empty bottle. He says, "I want you to stay home for a day or two. Maybe even go in to your office. It's time to let Mrs. Co go." "My God, Paul," Mary replies, "I can’t. I put her there! Listening to music with me is all she's got!" "Mary, you're doing it again. Just like in L.A. Twenty years ago your mother hung herself, and it took you fifteen to stop blaming yourself. Now you're starting over, different tune, same dance … blaming yourself for Mrs. Co's terrible break. Life deals people terrible breaks. It's not your fault. Really. You just think it is. You had a lapse … we all have those. The rest is fate." "Yeah, well, that’s what Dr. Harley says, too. But neither one of you gets it because it wasn’t you! Mrs. Co is where she is for one reason only -- because I was fucking off! I don't know how, but I was ... I'm the one who took the mother of two darling boys and made her into a stinking mummy with drifting eyes who's just going to rot and shake and moan until she dies." Two weeks later Mrs. Co is still in a coma, unimproved overall, though some of her bandages have been removed. Water is slowly filling her lungs. Mary paints Mrs. Co's bedsores with gentian violet. It doesn't heal them, but it keeps them from stinking so much and seems to slow their spread. Mary rarely sleeps now, often walks when she does. An early-commuting neighbor brings her home at five a.m., dazed and unsure of where she is. Paul covers their pool. Mary grows gaunt, eating only when the sweet-craves hit and then usually throwing up. People study her at stoplights and wonder. Another young beauty being eaten alive by cancer? Probably yes, they guess. Probably breast. Looks too young for the other kinds. They wonder if she has children. At two in the morning Paul begs Mary to come with him to Colorado to start over. They'll have the child they've always wanted -- adopt one if need be. He'll do anything. Anything at all. But Mary hears Paul's words as distant sounds stripped of meaning by time and space. Her eyes are starting to drift toward a dark and hopeless place. At dawn Mary slips out of bed, being careful not to wake Paul. She arrives at the hospital at the change of shift. The night nurses are checking beds before leaving, the day shift is just arriving. The nursing station is unstaffed. Mary takes a key from a hook beneath the nurse's desk, opens a refrigerator, and removes some objects. She relocks the refrigerator, and returns the key to its hook. She puts a bottle of gentian violet and some cotton swabs on a tray and steps into the hall. The head nurse passes her, nods hello, and goes back to her station. At Mrs. Co's room Mary places the tray on Mrs. Co’s bedside table. She takes a CD from her purse, puts it in the player, and checks that it plays through both sets of earphones. The day nurse arrives, takes Mrs. Co's vitals, measures her urinary volume, records her observations, waves at Mary, and leaves. Minutes later, Mary takes two syringes and vials from the bedside cabinet, attaches hypodermic needles to the syringes, pierces the vials, injects saline, and watches the white crystals dissolve. She draws the fluid into the syringes, slips onto the cot alongside Mrs. Co, fits them both with headphones, and starts the CD. She slides a needle into Mrs. Co's IV tubing, the other into a vein of her own, and pushes both plungers at once. Their heads are aligned, their eyes are drifting about a single line. Banners and flags and ribbons of many hues flood Mary's mind with color. She and Mrs. Co lie side by side on silken pillows atop a bamboo platform. They are being carried by four bearded men with triple pointed hats who march behind a processional band. The music is light, strangely light, Mary thinks, for a funeral march, but she likes it, and is pleased that Mrs. Co likes it too. The procession stops at the top of a hill and Mary and Mrs. Co sit up to view the valley below. A stream, running silver on green, splits and rejoins to surround a carmine castle. Horns sound in welcome as the castle gates swing open, and Mrs. Co, the lovely woman in the snapshot, smiles at Mary and says, "Welcome, my sister, to the Pure Land." The End |
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Copyright© 2000, 2008 by George Simone or Monte Fowler All rights reserved. |
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