My Second Life Read Free Page A

window. She was younger, smiling, happy … She wore a navy dress with red stitching and red buttons and a shiny thick black belt. Her hair was tied back, but strands were hanging down in front of her ears and around her collar. She was pretty. She stood in a large front room. There were dark green sofas, and bookshelves, a fireplace … There was someone else in the room with her. A man. He was standing behind her and she was talking to him, telling him something. They were laughing. And she stepped forward and she closed the curtains. Her neat, slim waist was the last thing I saw through the final gap of the closing material in the window as she turned away from me and disappeared into the depths of the room. I didn’t want her to close the curtains. I could feel anger pulsing in my chest … She’d shut me out. Why had she shut me out?
    â€œAna?” Grillie’s voice broke through.
    I hung on to Grillie’s bed. I grasped the cold metal bar on the headboard until it hurt all the way up my arms. I couldn’t let myself be sick. Not here. Not now. I tried to swallow again and my mouth was wet, too wet. I could feel the rising lumps in my throat, the banging in my ears. I screwed up my eyes, and I opened my mouth wide to gulp some air, and as I did my shoulders sank down and I felt the banging in my body begin to slowly subside. I let go of the bed and looked down at Frances again. I couldn’t help myself looking.
    She was an old woman. She lay on her side sleeping. Her body now wider, heavier with age, her hair shorter, colorless, wiry, although it still settled on her neck like it used to. It was her. It was Frances. I knew her. It was actually her.
    â€œAna? Are you okay?” Grillie was shifting in her bed behind me. I could hear the sheets slipping around her as she moved.
    I looked at Grillie and I tried a smile.
    â€œShe doesn’t look well, does she?” Grillie said, motioning toward Frances with her head.
    â€œHave you talked to her?”
    â€œYes,” Grillie said. “She’s in a lot of pain.”
    â€œHas she had any visitors?” I whispered.
    Grillie shook her head. “No one.”
    I looked over my shoulder again. I wanted to make sure Frances was still asleep, that she couldn’t hear a word of what we were saying.
    â€œLost a husband to cancer, and then lost her daughter as well. The child drowned. She was only six years old.”
    I nodded. I didn’t feel like I could speak. I swallowed and my throat felt thick again, like it was swelling, but this time with tears. I didn’t know where to look so I walked away and took a chair from under the window. It gave me some time to breathe, and then I brought it over to sit next to Grillie on the other side of the bed.
    Guilt.
    All I could feel was guilt.
    It was uncoiling itself inside me.
    â€œShe told you that?” I whispered.
    â€œI only asked whether she had any children. I wondered if she was going to have any visitors. That woman across the hall, she’s got people coming in left, right, and center. It’s like a bloody bus station…”
    I nodded again.
    â€œâ€¦ She told me she had a daughter, and I jumped in and said how nice that was and that I had a daughter and a granddaughter, that you were both coming in later and what a blessing it was … And then she said she’d lost her child, her daughter. I felt terrible. I mean, how was I to know? Terrible. And then she told me very matter-of-factly that the girl had been drowned, when she was only six years old…”
    I took Grillie’s hand. “You couldn’t have known, Grillie.”
    â€œI know that, but I felt awful … and then the worst of it was I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Shut me right up, it did. Until I started gabbing to fill in the awkward silence. I ended up inviting her to bridge. I wish I hadn’t. So I’m glad to see you,