Free Turn of Mind by Alice Laplante Page B

are precious things.
    I run my fingers across the hand I am holding. This is the hamate . This is the pisiform . The triquetrum , the lunate , the scaphoid , the capitate, trapezoid, trapezium . The metacarpal bones, the proximal phalanges , the distal phalanges . The sesamoids .
    You have a gentle touch. You were a good doctor, I suspect.
    Perhaps. But not necessarily a good daughter. When did you say it happened?
    More than twenty years ago. You’ve told me the stories.
    Did I mourn?
    I don’t know. I wasn’t around then. Perhaps. You’re not one to display much.
    I continue holding her hand, stroking the fingers with my own. The things that matter. The truths we hold on to until the end. These are things that make life as we know it possible, I used to say in my lectures, pointing to each phalange in turn. Treat them with the utmost reverence. Without them, we are nothing. Without them, we are hardly human.

    The beautiful one would leave by the back door as James came in the front. Duplicity. Making rounds with him and needing to be stern. He was so young. Reprimanding him for poorly executed sutures. But we saw the patient’s symptoms and functions improve after I reconstructed the traumatized joint , he argued once, almost whining. Not attractive in that context. No.
    The sullenness of the inexperienced, sulk of the injured. Why do you treat me this way? he would ask.
    Because I cannot show favoritism.
    Because people would notice?
    Because it compromises my reputation and the reputation of this hospital.
    If I’m so substandard, why put up with me?
    Because you are not substandard. Because you are beautiful.
    It did not last long. How could it? And people talked. But I would not have given up a millisecond of it. Still, the loss. To lose and to grieve and to be unable to confide that grief. It is a lonely place to reside.

    I stretch out my arm and feel nothing but bedclothes. The clock tells me it is 1:13 am, and James is still not home. The fact that I know where he is does not alleviate worry. It’s a dangerous world, and the hours between 1 am and 3 am are the most dangerous ones.
    Not just outside, in the city streets, but here, inside. Sometimes I get out of bed to go to the bathroom and relieve myself or to check the windows and doors, and I hear breathing. Rough and rasping. When there shouldn’t be anyone else in the house. Not the children, they are long gone. Not James, he has not come in from his wanderings.
    I seek the source of the noise, and it comes from one of the spare bedrooms. The door is open. I see a shape in the bed, large and bulky. Man or woman? Human or homunculus? At this hour, in these confused half-awake times, anything is possible.
    I breathe deeply to control the terror, close the door, and back away. I make it to the steps, run downstairs, nearly falling in my haste. I look for a safe place. The only room with a door is the bathroom. I lock myself in, sit down on the toilet, and try to calm myself. To have someone to clutch, to have my hand patted and be told, It’s just a dream. Or just a movie. For I cannot tell the difference anymore. But no one is here.
    Magdalena is out and about, leaving me alone in this house with an unknown thing. I wish suddenly for a dog, a bird, a fish, anything with a heartbeat. I adore cats, but we never got one, because I hated the thought of keeping one trapped indoors when its instinct would be to roam. The risks of letting one out in Chicago were too great.
    Did it bother me that first time James didn’t come home? The night of his original sin? Briefly. And then I found out the facts, and all the pain disappeared, replaced by anger.
    Not anger toward him, or at least nothing more than a slight flare-up that quickly burned itself out. No, anger directed inward. I never took myself for a dupe. I valued myself so highly that I assumed others did, too, especially those closest to me. James. The children, even during