A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [20]
Howard was saying something about going to eat. I couldn’t make my way to the cafeteria, couldn’t sit down to eat banana cream pie while Lizzy battled to get well. I couldn’t, didn’t want to, and he was pulling me up, hardly waiting while I slipped on my flip flops. When we passed the broad open doors of the intensive care unit I faltered, broke away from Howard, had to stand and look. This was not something in my imagination. It was not one of the dreadful things I worried about, not an Uzi stickup or the sun glaring through the great big ozone hole. There, surrounding Lizzy’s bed, were all of Theresa’s prodigious Catholic family: sisters, brothers, mother and father, grandmothers, aunts and uncles, great-uncles and cousins. There were so many of them they were spilling out into the hall—they were at the hospital instead of making coleslaw and potato salad for the family picnic tomorrow. They were encircling the bed, holding hands, praying together. They were saying every single prayer, from the first Hail Mary to the last novena. Five out of eight of Theresa’s siblings could certifiably be excommunicated from the Church—she had told me elaborate stories about each of their sins. They had fornicated, blasphemed, committed adultery. And what had Theresa said about the Uncle’s secret illegitimate daughter? She was probably the one with the short skirt and the dangerous-looking platform sandals.
I should go straight to the relatives, I knew, and let them see me in my abundant shame and misery. I was going to get pushed down the chute into the white flames of hell and I would tell them right out that I deserved to burn and burn. I didn’t ordinarily censor my thoughts, but I would, from now on, blot out what was bullheaded and extreme. They were gathered around the bed of the child, chanting and praying, believing for the moment, committing themselves, just as I had, to eternal belief and purity of heart and mind, if only the one, the most important error could be rectified. No one beckoned. No one broke away from the circle to invite us into the room. Dan looked up and did not seem to recognize us.
We sat in the lounge for two more nights and two more days. Howard left only to milk, to return with a fresh, piquant smell on his tennis shoes. We closed our eyes at night, leaning against each other, listening to the world moving up and down the hall on wheels. The laundry baskets were on wheels, the scales, the I.V. poles, the respirators, the meal trays, the beds, the chairs, the dressers, the bedside tables. Nothing was rooted to the floor. The nurses seemed weightless, like birds, flying down the hall, their cushioned shoes barely touching the ground. They were as swift as they could be, considering the ringing bells and gravity and the time of night.
Other families came to wait out their calamities. We stood by as they formed their own communities within the space of the lounge. I sat at the end of the sofa watching Lizzy’s door. Periodically the obese woman rose up and asked for our attention. “Let us bow our heads,” she began.
Chapter Three
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WHEN I USED TO grieve for my mother, and later for my Aunt Kate, I told myself that although they were certainly as dead as they were ever going to be they were still mine, that they inhabited my interior world, which was at least as noisy and various as life itself. From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone. Memory still seems a gift to me and I hold tight to those few things that are forever gone and always a part of me, while the new life, the changing view, streams by. Theresa, I feel sure, has been able to achieve the healthy balance between cherishing what was and forging ahead. Howard has made the last several