October 31, 2009

The nurse yesterday was pale and overweight, hair pulled into a bun, scrub shirt falling around her like a tent. She turned you so that you were laying along the width of the examining table and folded your legs (from the knees down) over the edge of the table. With her stomach she held your legs firmly in place while her hands busied themselves over the vials and the needles. Your father and I bent over your screaming red face and tried to calm you. The circular beige bandages cover almost half of your thigh.

Then Amy placed you belly down on the table and you pushed yourself over onto your back. Amy startled backward a little, surprised and then laughing. "You're not supposed to be that strong yet!" she told you.

The sky is gray today but not uniformly gray. The clouds are bands of gray and between them lighter patches of white let a gauzed version of the sun through.

Carol laid on her back on the couch this morning with you on her chest. She pushed her glasses down to the tip of her nose and peered over them at you. You shook your head back and forth, rooting into her blouse. Alvin bought "Millions of Cats" for you at the bookshop where he works. He sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, and talked about the memoir he is writing about Yugoslavia.

Here at Blue Monday I am reading David Foster Wallace's essay "Ticket to the Fair," making notes about declarative sentences and how to be funny without being condescending. Out the window in front of me a black lamppost sans hanging flower basket, a tree with half of its green leaves still shivering, the haunch of a dun colored brick building, and on the haunch three windows (two dark, one lit) and bricks where a fourth window should be. What room lives there, behind those bricks? I am late and should be home already. Sometimes it's hard to go.