Like a cooler, the room chilled its insides. The walls were creamy shorelines and the floor tiles were the color of mountains parched by drought. Many feet had curled themselves upward on borrowed slippers. To step in and out. The bed and the desk chair beheld them: a mother and her daughter. Together, they sat in tableau, performing steadiness.
“Are you excited for your trip?” The daughter asked. Like floss on teeth, the white string from her pants entangled itself around her fingers as she pulled and played.
“Yeah I guess.”
“Where are you all going, again?”
“Arizona.”
“Right! Sorry, I forgot. For the game. That’s so exciting.” A pause creeped and cowered like air through buildings too tall or indifferent to bend at the will of the wind. “You’ll have so much fun!” she said. The daughter found herself searching for the gaze of the routine eyes at the window. After their sixteenth or so visit into her boxed safety of seventy-two hours, she acclimated. Every fifteen minutes, the eyes became as important and invisible as minute hands marking moments, as breaths boasting life. But now, as she shifted between her mother and the windowed door, the eyes’ absence signaled the reluctance of time.
“I don’t think I’ll go.”
“What? No! You should go! I know how excited you both are to watch the game.” The daughter noticed her mother’s legs unravel from their bound and practiced stillness. “I think you’ll have so much fun. I’ll be fine!” The daughter strained.
The mother looked around at the room, then. At her daughter’s little signatures. On the top shelf sat socks tucked inside the other, a water bottle, and towels rolled obediently. Just below, two apple juices, a gift from the nurses who believed the recipient was closer to Here than There, framed the untouched platter of food. On the desk, she noticed a puzzle, a book, and some loose papers penciled with the thoughts of her healing girl. Somewhere, her daughter had learned to place, not drop. She unpacked herself and her items sat together like old friends.
The mother always tossed herself into drawers and underbeds, obscured by practicality and rushed by time. Like rush hour cars, her home squeezed and jolted; not quite there, just on its way. She crossed her legs again, seeming to forget how legs might sit at rest.
“I don’t think I should be there while you’re here.”
“Mamá, you planned this trip months ago. You have to go! It won’t help me anymore for you to wait at home than to be in Arizona.” She looked at her mother’s face as she spoke. She noticed then how it slumped. A mouth made limp like a body worn from treading; eager to float. She, too, had earned salvation. “I’m safe here. You should go.”
“I brought you some food.”
“Oh, thank you, Mamá,” the daughter said, opening the paper bag. “You know I love a humus bowl.”
“It’s from Carnival. I wasn’t sure if you were eating okay.”
“Oh! I am!” the daughter said, nodding over to the tray on the dresser. “I get food three times a day,” she said with a smile as beautiful and unsettling as a red leaf in June. The creases in her face crunched from strain, yellowed from the facade. “I’m working on a puzzle.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. It's a cat on a stack of books!” She had perfected this beguiling enchantment, like almost all things. But her years of excellence made her weary.
“That’s very you,” The women smiled at one another for a moment, and the act slipped off of the daughter like a wet woolen coat.
“Yeah, I thought so, too,” she whispered, “and I’ve made a lot of progress on the book with all the free time.”
“I’m happy to hear that, mi niña.” They sat in a looming quietude as the mother’s skin shivered. The daughter saw, in her mother’s eyes, the surface of water before a boil. The mother’s face was a lid holding its slow bubbles; stirring and tumbling. Her tears made cracks down glass cheeks. For years, the fallacy of her mother’s contentment came as misty silence. As a child, the silent fog drowned the daughter, but eventually she acquiesced to its ubiquity.
“Mamá, I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing you need to apologize for. Not in here.”
“No, but I am. I am sorry you have to see me like this. I am trying, really. I am.”
“I know, bebe. I’m sorry.” The wetness on her cheeks pressed down on her hard. The daughter knew that her mother had been gasping for air. Begging for breath. “I don’t know what I could’ve done differently.” The last word hung from itself like a tree worn from the brutality of its own leaves falling.
“I know, Mamá. I’m sorry.”
As the daughter bit the skin around her fingers, she let the tears land as they fell. Unlike her mother, she had learned to breathe underwater. In their silence, the machines outside murmured, the nurses’ chatter swelled, and doctor’s legs against scrubs whispered like violins. “I made a friend playing ping pong outside. His name is Alex. He’s been in for the same things before.” Her words flapped clumsily. “The same as me.” Sweeping movements, birdlike. “He knows my fear. He’s felt like this before. It helps to talk to him about it. I don’t ever feel like he’s judging me.”
“Hmmm.” Like a shot wing, her words were hunted out of the sky.
“I’m not beholden to him or his feelings. He understands me. The other people get it too. We help each other.” The daughter was limp yet alive. She knew her wounds would heal. It was then that the eyes showed up at the window and the mother knew it was her time to leave. Leafless and with nowhere to hide, they both stood up like trees trapped in January.
“Well, I guess I am going on this trip.”
“Oh good, I am so glad!” She said, feeling her springtime nearing. The daughter stepped away from the bed and reached out to her mother. “I love you, Mamá. I am doing everything I can.”
“I know. Te quiero tanto. Call me, if you can.” As she left, the mother grabbed food scraps from the desk and placed the one eye of the cat into the puzzle. “I wish I could help,” she said, adjusting herself inside her clothing and meeting the eyes at the window. “Thank you for letting me come by.”
“Of course, Mamá. I will be home soon.” She seemed to bloom.
“Yeah. Home.” Her mother turned, and the daughter watched as she walked down the cream-colored hallway outside the door, and the others did too.
“She’s real pretty,” one of them said.
“Yeah, she is.” The daughter walked back into her room, sat down on the chair at the desk, and placed the other eye into the cat’s face. She listened to the patter and tap. The mother’s footsteps were heard until they weren’t.