Her lover came crashing into her mind, asking her what she wanted. From you? she’d asked Miles, confused. From life, he’d said. No one had ever asked her that and Claire had not known how to answer. He always wanted to know what she thought, and why. What she felt, and why. These questions made her feel off-kilter, like the world had tilted and she wasn’t certain how to regain her balance. How could she ever explain to anyone that although the sex was important—necessary, even—that it was the talking between them that mattered. It had never occurred to Claire until she met him that a man and a woman could be so similar, that a man might want to know her so well.
Miles had made her buoyant. Without him, she had deflated. She would find herself walking around the house, drinking glass after glass of water, needing to be filled up. She started to talk to herself, sharing her thoughts and feelings with the empty rooms. One day, frustrated, she’d pulled all of the fluffy bath towels from the linen closet and thrown them out in a frenzy, screaming as the mauve and aqua terrycloth fluttered around her. She wanted to go to the china cupboard and smash her wedding china, take the heavy crystal glasses and fling them at the walls. Break mirrors and tables and the French doors that led to the patio. All of these simple domestic things, so benign for so long, had become parts of a cage to Claire. They trapped her in that house, in that marriage.
Now that a man had listened to her, had seen her for who she was, Claire refused to be submerged again. But she had to. To walk away from Peter was to risk losing her home, her daughter—and thinking of her life without Kathy in it every day made Claire shake. If her mother-in-law hadn’t begun to die, Claire would have stuck with her plan and decided what to do. But now she just had to walk carefully across the large icy expanse of asphalt. She just had to go into that hospital and be Peter’s wife. At Dot’s, her lover and his wife were arriving. He was taking off his hat and handing it to Dot at the door. He had his hand on the small of his wife’s back.
If you want to feel ginger ale bubbles, Claire, drink a glass of ginger ale, her mother had told her.
Claire entered the revolving door and stepped into the hotel lobby. The air buzzed with excitement. Nurses and doctors, orderlies and candy stripers, visitors and staff, all moving toward the solarium to watch the inauguration. John F. Kennedy would step up to the podium. He would raise his hand and take the oath of office, with Jackie watching. With the world watching. And, Claire realized as she pressed the up button for the elevator, they were watching with hope. For the first time in a long time, people were allowing themselves to be hopeful again.
The elevator came. Claire stepped inside with a large group of people.
“This is our country’s finest hour,” a man with a buzz cut and square glasses said. He looked like he’d been crying.
“I wonder what Jackie will wear?” one of the nurses said.
Claire smiled at her. “I think pink,” she said. “She looks beautiful in pink.”
“She looks beautiful in everything,” an older woman with her hair in curlers said.
The elevator arrived at Claire’s floor, and she squeezed out.
Her mother had told her that it was hope that had let her believe in her future. Maybe this sense of hope surging through the country today would give Claire that same ability.
The nurses’ station was empty. The hallway too felt deserted. At the door to her mother-in-law’s room, Claire held up her knitting bag for Peter to see.
He got to his feet. “Just in time,” he said. “Everyone’s gone to the solarium already.”
It seemed wrong to leave all the patients, Claire thought. She glanced over at her mother-in-law. What if what Connie and the doctor had said was true? What if she died alone while they were upstairs watching the inauguration?
“Do you think it’s all right to leave her?” Claire asked Peter softly.
He was slipping his shoes back on, tying the laces.
“I do,” he said. “It’s not going to change anything one way or the other.”
Claire, who had been lingering in the doorway, came into the room. She took her mother-in-law’s hand in hers.
“We’re going to watch John Kennedy get inaugurated,” she said. “The entire country will be watching,” she added. That felt wrong, so she said, “I’ll tell you all about it when we get back.”
Behind her, Peter chuckled. “I bet she can’t wait.”
Claire let go of the old woman’s hand and turned to her husband. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t be that way.”
He frowned slightly. “That’s the way I am, Clairezy. You should know that by now.”
Peter took her arm and nudged her along.
They were almost out the door when it happened. A rustling of the bedclothes. The bed creaking. They stopped and looked back.
Peter’s mother was struggling to sit up, staring wildly at something neither of them could see.
“Mom?” Peter said, his face so full of surprise that he looked to Claire like a little boy.
The old woman turned toward his voice, that wild look still in her eyes.
“Mom,” Peter said.
His mother’s face relaxed. She almost smiled. She reached her arms out as if to hug him, her fingers reaching toward him and Peter hurrying to meet them.
Then she opened her mouth and said one word.
“David,” she said. “David.”
“Mom?” Peter said.
The old woman looked at her son without any sign of recognition.