One-Sentence Story: Walking the Maze

Labyrinth by Hans Richter

Wallet, house key, cloth shopping bag, a sweater it might be chilly outside, that should be it, she is just going to take a short walk, but that call from her mother just now—the mammogram, the biopsy, yes, breast cancer, I would have told you earlier but I didn’t want you to worry—it is just a disease, she tells herself, so many women get it and survive, it doesn’t necessarily mean death—but this was coming, wasn’t it, something was coming eventually, we all have to die of something, we are all dying, some just slower than others, and breast cancer that’s not so bad, not so bad when you think of all the horrible ways there are to go: strokes that leave you crippled, Alzheimer’s that leaves you an empty shell of what you once were, diabetes with blindness and amputations, and this way there will be time for good-byes, reconciliation, forgiveness, but is that good, don’t most people want to go suddenly, not have to face death, not have to think about it, not have to wake in the dark pit of the night, trembling with fear—getting hit by a car, they say, death instantaneous, in my sleep, they say—and when she steps outside the front door, it is like she has a fever, with everything slightly wrong, the light too harsh, the colors too intense, the sidewalk slanting in the wrong direction (the innocent faces of blue forget-me-nots, gazing up at her, unblinking, with their tiny white eyes)—for it is the end of winter, bright caramel sunlight, almost spring, so one foot down, then the next, step, step, step, walk, walk (white freesias, their fragrance like sweet, sugary tea) and there’s that woman across the street, the one with two little girls, the stay-at-home Mom, that’s what she calls herself, I love being a stay-at-home Mom—she should go over, a friendly person, a good neighbor, that’s the kind of person she wants to be, isn’t it, say hello, maybe explain why she is at home in the middle of the day, middle of the week, between jobs she’ll say, left one job and looking for another, but she will not explain why there are no little girls with her, why there never were, no children at all, because she can hardly bear to think of it (white magnolia petals, their undersides tinged with red, have fluttered to the ground, leaving a drift on a ragged, un-mown lawn) so never mind, never mind—she had tried so hard, thermometers, staying in bed, charts, samples to the lab, sex in the morning then running to the doctor, fertility treatments, cold metal all up inside her, pinching, scraping, waiting, waiting, maybe this time, then, no again, blood, her period, until finally she was cut off because menopause came early, on top of everything (reaching onto the sidewalk, like just-born babies’ hands, are tender, new green leaves of miniature ivy), so early, and it was all over, no more chances, no more hope, she hasn’t had her period for a year now—if my mother dies, no, when my mother dies, I will be alone on this earth, like the last dinosaur foraging desperately for green leaves on a devastated planet (weeds blooming in a neglected yard, greeny yellow blossoms on long thin stems thrusting themselves insistently up through the middle of ragged juniper plant)—then at the end of the block, a neighborhood dog comes running up to her, a German Shepherd mix with a bandanna around its neck, the one that is always left out on its own all day, the one everyone’s been complaining about lately, he’s been in digging up their yards, they say, shitting on their lawns, frightening the children, he’ll get picked up if this keeps up, if he’s not run over by a car first (climbing jasmine, cascading over a fence; needle sharp, deep pink buds bursting into white star blossoms), but he is jumping up now to get her attention, tail wagging so broadly, eyes so full of hope, that she bends over to pat him firmly on his solid head, with a hollow, thumping sound, saying, “Oh, what a happy dog you are—yes, yes, you are so happy, yes you are,” and he is reaching out with his long red tongue to lick her face—but when she straightens up again, the dog takes off excitedly in a new direction, as if he knows exactly where he is going—so turn right, skim around the corner, traffic now, a busy thoroughfare, cars, cars, a bus, cars, a man on a bicycle, shiny shirt, shiny shorts, cars, and she is the only one on the sidewalk, the only one walking here on this weekday afternoon (wild California poppies the color of fall fruit: persimmons and tangerines), a walk she has taken so many times over the years, from her house down streets lined with pastel colored bungalows, marshmallow pink, creamy mint green, banana bubblegum yellow, just six blocks to a small cluster of local shops and a neighborhood cafe—and she imagines what comes next: waiting, mastectomy, lumpectomy, blood, pain, stitches, bandages, sedatives, night sweats, a cold, long hospital corridor, the indifferent touch of an attendant, the stony voice of a doctor, percentages, waiting, phone calls, a flower arrangement, a short walk around the block the first time out, TV in the middle of the night, paperbacks, a casserole from a neighbor, magazines, crosswords, nausea, insomnia, a basket of fruit, waiting (small sprigs of spearmint, with soft, veiny leaves, sprouting up in the grass)— and remembers her mother’s voice, even with all that hanging over her, how much to carve away from her body, will she live or die, her mother had asked her how she was doing, how was she having quit her job so, maybe, recklessly, and didn’t she agree it wasn’t good sense leaving such a hard-earned career with nothing else lined up, couldn’t she talk to them about taking her back, and she had bit her lip to keep from sounding as irritated as she felt, so much more irritated than anything else, and that would be over when her mother died, she tries that on for size, that would all be over, that and everything else from the woman who knew her but didn’t know her, understood but didn’t understand (sleepy yellow daffodils, nodding, nodding, like little children falling asleep over their dinner), and there is that photo of her mother on the wall above her bed, holding her on her lap, her mother’s blonde curled up fifties hair, her mother’s open, happy smile, fresh and young, in that photo her mother is years younger than she is herself now (delicate, feathery sprigs of wild fennel with firm, juicy stems—licorice smell, licorice taste)—then a tiny, elderly Asian woman in a Chinese style padded jacket carrying groceries, stalks of celery and carrot greens sprouting from her plastic shopping bags, comes plodding down the sidewalk, slow and steady, she looks like an immigrant in that jacket, that haircut, fresh off the boat even, maybe she walks because she has to, doesn’t know how to drive, has never had a car, negotiating a unfamiliar terrain, the getting of dinner—and she herself walks still in a fever, why is this walk a strange, long walk, why is it taking so long to get there, she is just trying to get herself to the store and back, but the sidewalk is slipping under her feet, bulging and cracking where the roots of camphor trees that line the streets push their powerful, muscular roots up against the cement (an entire plastic chicken family—rooster, hen, and three little chicks—carefully set out in the middle of a tiny, just planted vegetable garden)— until finally, finally, the Italian deli, where she picks out fresh bread and fresh pasta, strong olives, spicy capers, and salty anchovies, for Pasta Puttanesca is what she suddenly craves, and when she enters the line, the man standing ahead of her turns to face her and says, “May I remove something from your hair?” and she replies “yes,” without thinking, and he is an ordinary looking white man, thin, with short, brown hair, wearing glasses, about her own age, reasonably attractive she would have to say, but not beautiful, no, and he reaches forward to pluck something tiny from the strands of her hair and then to display it her, a tiny green leaf, “Oh,” he says, smiling, “it looks like you must have brushed up against a tree,” and did he really think she’d mind or was it just an excuse to touch her, she wonders, and so she looks at his left hand and sees the gold band, the wedding ring, and smiles but says nothing—then, after it’s her turn to pay, she’s out of the store, standing on the sidewalk, trying to shake off the dizziness (miniature clusters of pale pink blossoms on a fruit tree, like bridal bouquets for dolls)—her mother, she thinks, will be looking back on her life now, unless she can’t let herself, and what will she see: wife, mother, a house to care for, meals to cook, her church, married to a man she had known since childhood, staying her whole life in the town where she grew up, a simple, familiar story, a woman’s place, but there would be more to it than that, of course, the alcoholism, the stillbirth, the middle of the night smoking cigarettes in the kitchen in her robe—if she were to write her mother’s life as a novel, how would it come out—and then she notices walking down the street a woman she has seen before in the neighborhood, a little person with beautiful blond hair—she is with her daughter and they are both eating ice cream cones, and they are about the same size, the woman and her child, and when they reach the corner, the woman stops to wipe some ice cream from her daughter’s face, tenderly, then checks the traffic before giving the okay to the child to cross the street, the woman walking heavily on her short, stocky legs, the girl skipping lightly beside her—and that’s it, that’s the whole story, but the point is: there will always be this, whatever happens she will always have this.

by Nina Zolotow

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