Connie thinks about what they can take with them. She heads into thebedroom and pulls out the single tote bag she has, then reaches into her dresser and pulls out all her clothes: two soft black turtlenecks; a chunky blue knit vest; two pairs of trousers, both gray; a week’s worth of socks and underwear. She packs the bag until it is nearly overflowing, and only then does she take a moment to sit on the bed, breathing rapidly, staring at the mess of clothes she has left on the floor. The room never looks like this. Connie has always kept a tidy home, even when they had almost nothing. To her, it had always meant the possibility of better things, that even if they lived in a tiny, old apartment, she could control the beauty of it, could make it theirs.
But perhaps it was always an illusion, something trapping them here. Somehow, when she looks at the mess on the floor, she feels a sense of relief. It is a sign that things are happening. It helps her feel like leaving is possible.
But will Sam go? Is this it for them here?
Connie came because of a whisper of a dream, and now she’ll go back because of fear. Is that the right reason, after all she’s been through? She sits and stares and wonders whether she’s ready to give this all up, and in the middle of thinking that, she realizes with a start that you can’t give up something you never had.
She looks out her window to see the power lines arching across the night sky, the black silhouettes of skinny palm trees, and is surprised by the sharpness of the ache in her chest. She closes her eyes. How badly she had wanted to make it work here. How much she’ll miss this city, in spite of everything. But now that the possibility of returning home—can she still call it that? Home?—has become very real, she finds herself looking forward to the sight of an old land on the other side of the ocean. They’ll go to the countryside, the towns by the rivers. Does it still look like how she remembers it? Do the streets still swarm with bicycles? Do willows still hang over the water? In the darkness, she dreams of silk gourds hanging heavily from tangles of ivy, sunflowers turning their giant heads toward the sun, rich black dirt beneath her slippers, markets in narrow streets, paths along the stream. It’s summer, the cicadas are roaring, the water in the air sticks to her skin. There is hardly the sight of a city in the distance at all, only open blue skies. She lets herself dream of a land she doesn’t yet know is long gone.
What if she had just stayed? What if that had been the dream? But that’s the problem, isn’t it—you can’t know what the future would have been. All you can do is make your best guess.
She pictures Sam, little again, holding her hand as they make their way down a river path in an alternate reality.Look at the cicada shells, how they cling to the bark.She pictures Sam looking up at her with that smile she once had, all beauty and love and wonder, that said Mama, I trust you, you are the most perfect person in the world.
How little she had appreciated her then. How much she aches for her now. She has a lifetime of regrets for how she has failed her daughter. But sometimes, you get an opportunity to right past wrongs.
Maybe, maybe this is her chance to try again.
Thursday:
Some improvement after a poor night. Held down clear broth, no solids. Complained of painful, crawling sensation under his skin.
Temperature remains elevated at 103.6°F.
Rec: lower magnesium content, different transmutation needed for adding organics.
Notes: Batch 22AB effects on subject,
journals of Diamond Taylor, 1984
