Marcus, keeping her voice light because she’s already been flighty today about the woman and her toddler so hysteria now is impermissible, and then she knows, she knows right away and without any doubt. The blood is his and he’s gone.
S HE’S HEARD IT SAID that everyone’s blood is the same color. An insistent moral position: we are all as one underneath. But it’s not true—or perhaps it’s that once spilled, the hue varieswidely based on whether the day is humid, balmy, overcast. On whether the blood splatters on concrete, dirt, gravel, or grass.
She makes lists in her mind. Pastel rose and watery. Vivid as a police warning light. Eggplant-purple.
The blood that comes from Marcus’s head is the color of raspberries, and sticky.
“I HAVE TO FILE ,” Caddie pleads. “It’s a story. Even if anybody’s . . . hurt. Especially then.”
No, no, dear . The voice comes from a great distance as a lady with pewter hair and creamy uniform reaches for Caddie’s arm, mops it with a cotton ball.
Caddie feels a sting. “What’s in that syringe?” She puts her head back against the pillow, overcome by a desire to close her eyes. Then she tries to sit up, realizing at last that this is a nurse, and a nurse should know something. Caddie has to interview her. “Can you tell me the precise nature of the wounds—”
The nurse’s head wobbles. You can’t get up yet. Please.
“How—” Caddie breaks off for a second. “How exactly are you listing their conditions?”
Lie still, dear. Try to relax. The doctor will be here soon. The pewter-and-cream lady, still out of focus, removes the needle and swabs Caddie’s arm again.
“I don’t want to relax. I want to file.”
She feels her arm being patted. It’s all over.
The nurse’s words echo. Overoveroverover.
. . .
T HERE’S GRANDMA Jos, sleeves rolled above the bulbs of her elbows, chopping onions for chicken soup, her eyes oozing and her face rigid with loss.
Grandma Jos, kneeling to pray in the dusky church—one slow knee, then the other—her expression now flaccid with a resignation Caddie hates.
Grandma Jos, counting and recounting the cookie-jar money for that yellow dress with the lacy collar that Caddie can wear to the school dance, because Grandma Jos says she must look presentable now that she’s “nearly of age.” And though Caddie is embarrassed by the old-fashioned concept, and even more by frilly dresses, she loves this one because it’s starchy in that new-clothes way that the church hand-me-downs never are, and without even the tiniest of stains.
Grandma Jos, coming down the street in time to see Caddie, already bandaged on one elbow, jumping her rusted bicycle over a makeshift wooden ramp. A growl— Girl! —softened quickly to her public voice. Why does it always have to be dangerous to be fun?
No. Grandma Jos is not here. Caddie is not a child. She has to pull herself from this fog.
S HE WAKES UP ALONE in a room devoid of color. Why do they do that in hospitals, as if bland and passionless were comforting? Her left upper arm is sore and taped up; she’s tethered toan IV. She remembers a flight from Lebanon, vaguely. She gets up, pulling the contraption along with her, her hand rigid on the cold metal. Someone has left a newspaper on a table. The Cyprus Mail. So she’s in Nicosia. She flips rapidly through the pages until she finds it: Award-winning British freelance photo-journalist, 41, killed in a . . . She skims to the bottom, where she sees her own name: Catherine Blair, 32 . . . In between her name and his, the words blur.
What makes her think, then, of that Walt Whitman poem she had to memorize and recite during a sixth grade assembly? But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red . What remote melodrama; no one would publish it today, and still school-children have to learn it. “Whitman,” Caddie says aloud. She grips the newspaper and snickers.
Somehow, through none of her own doing, the laughter shifts
S HE’S HEARD IT SAID that everyone’s blood is the same color. An insistent moral position: we are all as one underneath. But it’s not true—or perhaps it’s that once spilled, the hue varieswidely based on whether the day is humid, balmy, overcast. On whether the blood splatters on concrete, dirt, gravel, or grass.
She makes lists in her mind. Pastel rose and watery. Vivid as a police warning light. Eggplant-purple.
The blood that comes from Marcus’s head is the color of raspberries, and sticky.
“I HAVE TO FILE ,” Caddie pleads. “It’s a story. Even if anybody’s . . . hurt. Especially then.”
No, no, dear . The voice comes from a great distance as a lady with pewter hair and creamy uniform reaches for Caddie’s arm, mops it with a cotton ball.
Caddie feels a sting. “What’s in that syringe?” She puts her head back against the pillow, overcome by a desire to close her eyes. Then she tries to sit up, realizing at last that this is a nurse, and a nurse should know something. Caddie has to interview her. “Can you tell me the precise nature of the wounds—”
The nurse’s head wobbles. You can’t get up yet. Please.
“How—” Caddie breaks off for a second. “How exactly are you listing their conditions?”
Lie still, dear. Try to relax. The doctor will be here soon. The pewter-and-cream lady, still out of focus, removes the needle and swabs Caddie’s arm again.
“I don’t want to relax. I want to file.”
She feels her arm being patted. It’s all over.
The nurse’s words echo. Overoveroverover.
. . .
T HERE’S GRANDMA Jos, sleeves rolled above the bulbs of her elbows, chopping onions for chicken soup, her eyes oozing and her face rigid with loss.
Grandma Jos, kneeling to pray in the dusky church—one slow knee, then the other—her expression now flaccid with a resignation Caddie hates.
Grandma Jos, counting and recounting the cookie-jar money for that yellow dress with the lacy collar that Caddie can wear to the school dance, because Grandma Jos says she must look presentable now that she’s “nearly of age.” And though Caddie is embarrassed by the old-fashioned concept, and even more by frilly dresses, she loves this one because it’s starchy in that new-clothes way that the church hand-me-downs never are, and without even the tiniest of stains.
Grandma Jos, coming down the street in time to see Caddie, already bandaged on one elbow, jumping her rusted bicycle over a makeshift wooden ramp. A growl— Girl! —softened quickly to her public voice. Why does it always have to be dangerous to be fun?
No. Grandma Jos is not here. Caddie is not a child. She has to pull herself from this fog.
S HE WAKES UP ALONE in a room devoid of color. Why do they do that in hospitals, as if bland and passionless were comforting? Her left upper arm is sore and taped up; she’s tethered toan IV. She remembers a flight from Lebanon, vaguely. She gets up, pulling the contraption along with her, her hand rigid on the cold metal. Someone has left a newspaper on a table. The Cyprus Mail. So she’s in Nicosia. She flips rapidly through the pages until she finds it: Award-winning British freelance photo-journalist, 41, killed in a . . . She skims to the bottom, where she sees her own name: Catherine Blair, 32 . . . In between her name and his, the words blur.
What makes her think, then, of that Walt Whitman poem she had to memorize and recite during a sixth grade assembly? But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red . What remote melodrama; no one would publish it today, and still school-children have to learn it. “Whitman,” Caddie says aloud. She grips the newspaper and snickers.
Somehow, through none of her own doing, the laughter shifts
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