Not long after, there was a terrible storm, washing debris onto the walkways, knocking down branches, cutting off our power for a few hours in the middle of the night. I worried about my animals-had they found shelter? Were they cold? I worried so much, I started scratching the skin on my arms raw, and the staff had to settle me down. The following day, the animals were right back in their regular spots, hopping about, begging for food. It made me realize how much tougher animals are than humans. Kind of pathetic, really.
Since then, the people here have helped me understand why I do these kinds of things for animals, why the tug I feel inside is so powerful. I could have swerved, you see. There was time, a few, fat seconds, where I could have gripped the wheel and wrenched it to the right. I remember, all too painfully, the heaviness of the deer’s body, the deafening thunk of impact. I will never forget that moment, or the moments that came after.
Maybe it isn’t true-maybe there was no time to react. But since then, I’ve lived my life as though there was. So I wanted to write you to tell you that I understand, I think, what you were going through a while back. The way you felt about the military, about the bombing. How you connected it to other things. I know what it feels like to watch something happen and wish, going forward, that you could do something, anything, to change at least your world, the people around you, to keep everything close to you safe. But you don’t have to live that way, as you’ve made no fatal mistakes. You’ve done nothing wrong. I hope you realize that.
And maybe you don’t feel that way anymore, anyway-your life seems so different, richer, at least from what Summer has said. I hope that’s the case. I hope that one day, my life will be different and richer, too, but from this vantage point, sitting here in this little room, it’s so hard to know.
11
I sat in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. It was a new dentist in Lower Manhattan; I’d switched from my old one in Brooklyn when he moved his practice to New Jersey. The office walls were painted lavender, and there were the typical array of Life magazines on the coffee tables. A glossy poster across from me asked, What Are Molar Sealants? Another crowed, Let’s Talk Gingivitis! The ceiling fan rattled around, its cords swinging. When I came in, the receptionist announced that the air conditioner was broken. She was very defensive, as if someone had tried to blame her for not knowing how to fix air conditioners. The room felt thick and close. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside and only June.
The door to the back opened, and an assistant in a green smock looked around. ‘Summer Davis?’
A few fluffy, expectant seconds passed. I knew I should stand up, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure why.
‘Summer Davis?’ the girl called again. She looked at her clipboard, then at the receptionist. ‘Is Summer here?’
The receptionist swiveled the phone receiver away from her mouth and surveyed the waiting room. ‘I could’ve sworn,’ she said. I picked at a nonexistent stain on my jeans.
The assistant tugged at her scrub shirt. Down the hall, the dentist turned on the suction device. I heard a tube sucking up someone’s saliva. Then, the drill.
‘All right,’ the assistant said, pausing to look at what must have been a roster behind the door. ‘How about Marion Campbell, then? Marion, are you here?’
And Marion, an older woman whose glasses hung on a hot-pink, charm-riddled chain, stood up gratefully. When the door closed behind them, I considered telling the receptionist that I was Summer Davis, and had been all along. Just to see the look on her face. Instead, I asked her for the key code to the bathroom, which was in the office building’s hall. She wrote it down on a Post-it and handed it to me wordlessly, her eyes shifting back and forth, as if it were something very dear and private.
In the bathroom, I pulled out the cell phone my father had bought for me for emergencies and called the dentist’s office. ‘This is Summer Davis,’ I said, my voice sounding churchly and impressive in the echoing tiled room. I told the receptionist I was doing lab work and couldn’t make my cleaning. The receptionist’s voice, just a few walls away, sounded weary but unbothered. ‘How about Wednesday?’ she said. I thought for a moment-my father’s procedure was tomorrow, Tuesday. It was almost impossible to think of something as mundane as a dentist’s appointment happening the day after that, but I told her to pencil me in anyway.
When I hung up, I stared at myself in the spotty mirror, trying to focus on both pupils at the same time. But that was the thing-I couldn’t do it. I had to concentrate on one pupil or the other. ‘This is Summer Davis,’ I said to the mirror. But for one brief, beguiling second, it had been sort of nice not to be.