Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [134]
The rain diminished. The clouds burned off in castes and tiers. A hundred black-throated sparrows gathered in a tamarisk by the window, their birdsong like bells set swinging by a tacit, spirited wind. A service pole with crossbars looked like an ideogram inked against the lavender sky. The row of yuccas along the walkway mimed green porcupines with spiky quills lit by the ascending sun. A kestrel circled slow as the tip of a minute hand on a veiled clock.
She sat there peacefully, head resting against the back of the cushioned chair, with such a serene smile on her face that the young attendant thought only to place a comforter over her legs so she wouldn’t catch cold. Then, standing above the aged lady, she did something she hadn’t allowed herself to do since being accepted at the center as a volunteer. It wasn’t polite to stare at the infirm, and she’d been a model apprentice, sensitive to the patients and their need for privacy. But no one else happened to be in the room at that moment, and Mrs. McCarthy was, by all appearances, sound asleep. No harm could come of the innocent trespass of looking at her straight in the face. After all, she’d never seen someone this old up close.
“Mrs. McCarthy?” she whispered.
Yes, sleeping soundly.
The girl leaned in near enough to count her wintry eyelashes. She marveled at the ravaged skin, a watercolor version of a river delta painted pink on white paper, the fissures above her apricot mouth. Her delicate nose, the cartilage so thin that the sun afforded it a rose shade, the same color she’d seen in her own hand once when she cupped a flashlight against her palm in the dark to reveal her bones and veins. Eyes sunken, cheeks also. Terrifying, what the years do. The woman’s fragrance was soapy and musty at the same time, not unlike spring stink in the conifer meadows after the earth unfroze. Pushing away slowly and silently, the girl’s hands yielded the arms of the chair. Sometimes you just wish you could be a painter, she thought as she tiptoed from the room.
Later, she heard the news about Mrs. McCarthy. She cried, of course. Many at the convalescent center did. The woman had made quite an impression on them.
This time it was not Bonnie’s niece but rather Sarah Montoya who called her from the hospital to say, in a quiet voice, “No, the news isn’t good, I’m afraid.”
Telling the family of a death never got easier, Sarah reflected after hanging up. You offered the astringent words—Your father has died; Your mother passed away this morning; Yes, it’s about your sister, I’m afraid she took a turn during the night—and then your words came back to mock you. The news isn’t good. How obtuse, how off kilter.
Yet this wasn’t the moment for self-criticism. Getting in touch with Marcos, and through him with Ariel, became paramount. Mary drove Sarah back to Pajarito under an implausibly blue sky, the radiance of which Bonnie’s mother, Sarah’s charge, and Mary’s very brief acquaintance would have laughingly celebrated with a chalice of gin and a pull on her cracked clay pipe. Shalom, she’d have said. Adíos, Amen.
Ariel and Marcos returned to find Delfino making supper. The smell of cooking mingled with the desert perfume of his faithworthy patch of land, raising memories of Agnes here. After a simple meal under the stars, the three busied themselves with cleaning the casita by candlelight. The room sashayed with shadows and quivered whenever a taper flame was brushed by a sudden small breeze. Powdery dust filled the chamber, catching the light and monochromatizing the air. It made Ariel feel as if she were in some vintage movie. High Midnight, maybe.
“I’m beginning to feel like