sleep. Slow rise and fall of comforter, one side up when the other’s down;
it reverses; and again; indefinitely. Dipped, but not lurching. Their story
will be a different one.
Is this what happiness looks like?
Yes, there it is: Amber’s hand resting lightly on Lydia’s shoulder,
moving with her breath.
Roger is not here to see this. I could be gone, too. But here I am.
Here I am with the dark circles already under my eyes, the Christmas
weight of everything: tree, work, presents. Present, that’s me. That’s me.
Tomorrow the girls will wake up, slow-like. They will slit open the
box in the hall, the one left behind. They will pull out Roger’s meticulous
creations. They will arrange them carefully under the snap-bent branches
of our Christmas tree. I will watch them—heads lowered, arms reaching.
What else can I do?
I back out of the room and close the door as softly as I can.
We never went skiing again, Roger and me. I broke my leg that trip,
top-notch visibility be damned. It was our first time on that mountain,
rookies. Roger, too. For all the careful preparation, he led me down a
mismarked black diamond and we ended up in a heap at its bottom. His
goggles had fallen off midway so that his brown eyes stared back at me,
uncovered and alarmed. The last thing I remember before blacking out is
looking him square before vomiting into his lap from the pain of it.
The scar on my knee puckers still, and the bone creaks like a
hinge when the weather changes. I feel it now as I walk back toward
where I’ve come: the ridged skin, that angry line. I pause in front of the
bathroom, body doubled, tracing it. My skin sags more than it used
to; I’m getting those flabby underarms that hang down, the ones little
kids like to punch. I’m afraid they’ll turn out like Linda’s. The veins in
my leg bulge in scraggly rivers, shooting off into white, fatty oceans. It’s
exhausting, watching it happen. Like another science experiment, gone
terribly wrong: HUGE WOMAN BURSTS APART AT THE VEINS,
SUFFOCATES IN PUDDLE OF OWN BLOOD. On Christmas, no
less. Or near enough to make it funny, tragic—both.
The bathroom door stands ajar and I push it open, thinking
about those bath beads. The special lavender ones. I still keep a small
bundle of them on the back of the toilet, in a little Amish wicker basket.
The linoleum is cool and welcome on my feet when I step in. I heft the
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