Ruth Deming

Before I got to first grade, I wrote a book, bound in string, my version of the Cinderella tale. Sitting on my bed and meticulously printing onto tan sheets of paper, I felt like I'd flown straight into the royal ballroom and landed right on the prince's lap. Could anything be more exhilarating?

I'm a receptacle. Things hurtle themselves at me -- Siamese cats, old boyfriends, nesting starlings -- aching to be shaped and reconfigured by my pen. I am innocent of what subject will be chosen for me next. My will is at rest, lollygagging until the next liaison between me, my unconscious and the universe. I could be called at any time. Two rules apply.

The product of this heavenly union is created to be given away.

The product of this heavenly union must be a stand-in for myself. It must speak with my tongue, dance with my feet and represent, in bold disquise, _moi_. A gypsy, alone beneath the banyan trees, peddling pages of tan paper, only for love.
 

When his sons went down to the hospital cafeteria, I climbed over the bedrails onto Horowitz's bed.

"How are you, sweetheart?" I whispered, laying my cheek next to his.

I was watching for signs of strain or anxiety, the way I pictured that married people do. Into my hands, I took Horowitz's giant hand and kneaded it, pumping what I could of my life and energy into his. I remembered my father's hands as he lay dying and how those hands looked so healthy, so new, even as everything inside him shifted toward death. What if these hands, too, were getting ready to leave me, getting ready to forever leave me behind?

We had figured out how to love. That came easy. Then we figured out to to quietly, without rancor, tolerate each other. Even in sickness.

Waiting and family. That's what sickness is about.

You sit in your sturdy chair, a chair you'd never find at home, peering out the thick, sealed up windows at the immense gray winter sky. I watch Horowitz's chest go up and down. Sometimes i wonder if I can see his beard growing. Or changing colors: the very, very black patches merging into the snowy white ones, soft as owl feathers.

I am terrible at waiting. Peter and Joel are sensational, content as if they were home playing pool. I squirmed in my chair. I missed my couch, my cordless phone and the tall glasses of cold water I pour from the fridge. I was always the first to leave. Was I disloyal? Did his sons love him more? Certainly they had known him longer than I had.

"Sweetheart," I said, "do you think it's possible for two people who never had children together to really belong to one another?"

He looked up at the soundless picture beaming from the TV.

"I dunno," he said, lifting an eyebrow.

- from The Glass Room