Hail Mary by Nicola Rendell

Author:Nicola Rendell [Rendell, Nicola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-11-25T18:30:00+00:00

Mrs. Friedlander lies on a yoga mat on the floor. She is the frailest, sweetest little person I’ve ever met. Like a tiny injured bird. She says she’s 80, but I’m almost sure she’s older. She’s wearing old purple sweatpants, the kind you used to be able to buy at Mervin’s and Target. She’s wearing thick tube socks, doubled up, and an oversized sweatshirt that has Dorothy Zbornak of the Golden Girls silkscreened on the front, larger than life, with the caption-bubble: DON’T MAKE ME CALL SHADY PINES!

As usual, Golden Girls is also playing on TV. She has an almost preternatural sense for finding reruns. I’ve seen her sort of tune in to the ether, hovering her old gnarled fingers over the remote, like a state fair gypsy with a crystal ball. And then she’ll say something like “Lifetime!” or “Hallmark!” and punch in the channel number.

“You seem a little sad today, sweetie,” says Mrs. Friedlander. I carefully help her bend her knee toward her body. Before I started working with her, she’d hobbled around under a dowager’s hump so bad it was painful to see. But now, she’s nimble and healthy and able to almost touch her toes, which she’ll do for pretty much any visitor who comes by.

“I’m okay.” I sniffle. “Really.”

“Don’t kid a kidder!” she scoffs. And on TV, Blanche swoops into the living room wearing lots of floaty fabric and saying, “How to do I look?”

“What’s troubling you?” she asks me as we move to her other leg.

For as long as I have worked for Healing Therapies, I have made it a strict rule to never ever talk about my personal life with patients. It’s not that it isn’t allowed; it is. Lord knows Dr. Curtis relays his stories about Vietnam to every single patient who even passes by our client list. I’ve tried to tell him that reliving the minute details of the fall of Saigon might not be exactly what our patients are hoping to hear, but it’s okay. That’s his thing. For me, though, life and work have stayed separate.

Until Jimmy.

Until today.

“I met someone, Mrs. Friedlander.” I glance up at the rows and rows of pictures on her mantle of her and her husband together from before she became a young widow.

“Why, congratulations!”

I rub my nose on my sleeve. “I have a bad feeling about it. I think he’s bad news.”

She does some deep breathing as I stretch her leg. “My Harold was a bit of a bad boy,” she says in a far-off way. “Kept his cigarettes in his shirt sleeve like James Dean.” And then she smiles and smiles. “Bad boys aren’t bad forever. Men can change, honey. I promise. You never met a man so nice as my Harold. He said I was the one that tamed him. Like a wild beast.”

And she’s lost again, smiling and staring off at the memories that surround her every day, everywhere.

Now Dorothy is on the screen, talking to Stan. He’s showing her his new toupee.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.