That Arab Spring
“How was the flight?”
“Good.”
She reaches out to take my hand, and I let her. “What’s going on over there? Sounds like a lot of unhappy people.”
“Yes, so it seems.”
Then, as if I don’t know anything about learning a lesson, I say yet again, “How are you feeling?”
She lets go of my hand, saying, “Just this,” motioning to the green tubing. “This helps a lot, you know. Should have thought of it sooner.”
We turn to the TV and watch the four women, who are now serious, talk.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“Some talk show. Do you want to hear it?”
“No.”
“I’ll turn it off.”
“No,” and she grabs my wrist as if turning it off is something else, something that has nothing to do with TV or talk shows. “No, leave it.”
We watch in silence as a guest is introduced, an actor who has a new movie; everything he says seems to be funny to the women sitting on the couch.
Wide awake now, she looks at me again, studying my face until, “But really, what’s going on over there?”
*
Yesterday she takes us back to West Texas. The three of us have moved our chairs closer to her bed because she has announced she has something to say, something to tell. We put down the newspaper, step away from the computer, say, “Good-bye, I’ll call you back.” Clearing her throat like she knows all about giving speeches, she starts with the day being rainy and cold and maybe even snowing, but never mind because more importantly she is running, and she is not sure why except that she is, and then she slips or stumbles on the path that runs from the creek to the cotton fields, and now she remembers why she is running: She wants to feels her new summer dress swish against her legs like a second skin. That’s what she says, “Like a second skin.” But suddenly, out of nowhere, there is a stone that hasn’t been there before because she would have seen it, big and grayblack in the middle of the dusty path, and by the time she sees it, it is too late. Her knees are the first to hit the ground, followed by her palms, and then, as if things almost always come in threes, the tip of her chin; her blue summer dress is now streaked with dust and one long line of red that is part clay, part blood. In the end, she is sitting on the path with bloodied knees and a red-pointed chin, the tears quietly slipping down her cheeks and into the sprawl of her dress. As she squirms to get up, she looks over into the middle of the road and sees a bluegreenred toad, pancake thin on the asphalt, its toady legs funhouse flat.
Pausing to look at us, big-eyed as if she is surprised to see we are still there, she looks through watery eyes before turning her head with green tubing to look out the window that is bright with February sunshine, saying, “What do you think of that?”
We nod and then look at one another, until my brother says, “That’s something.” Looking at her long shadowy body, no longer sure where sheet and blanket end and arms and legs begin, I look up at the clock on the wall to see what TV program is next.
*
On my third day, there is a murder. An elementary school janitor is angry, furious about something, his job, his wife, money, or maybe not, it doesn’t matter, because in the end he jumps in his pickup, drives home, grabs his pistol from the closet, and returns to the school to shoot the principal three times in the head. Nobody can understand it; they were the best of friends, even golfing buddies. The local murder makes headlines, pushing Egypt’s Arab Spring to page three. The school is closed for two days. Some students want it closed for three days, out of respect for the principal, and, besides, what’s the point of returning to school on a Friday?