Free The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer Page B

say to that, and luckily at that moment the food arrived. They smiled at their plates as if they read there a great fortune.
    It was only afterward, as Felix and I were waiting for taxis (Alan had already left, down the block), that I got up the nerve to say, “Alan seems wonderful.”
    Felix smiled warmly and said, “I thought you would like him.” The porter opened the taxi door and we stood there for a moment on the brink of speaking. Starlings or somethings were whirling overhead. A screech of tires, and a woman in a bright green shawl jumped back, shouting, causing a scene, but we did not look there. We looked at each other, lips open. How to say it? Phrases were whirling in our minds, like the starlings or swallows or somethings, possible ways to say it. I want you to know was one way to begin. Or: I understand everything . We looked at each other. The woman shouted, the cabbie shouted. “Felix . . .”
    “Later,” he said, and slipped into the cab. Slam, whistle from the doorman, and he was off again down Fifth Avenue. Of all the ridiculous things, tears came to my eyes and I turned away. He was alive here, carelessly, effortlessly alive, with all the petty troubles and worries that the living have. A wife, a child, a lover; such troubles. But there he went, again. And the feeling came, again. He did not know, not him or Nathan or little Fee, that my prolonged stay here had ended; the procedure was mere hours away. Today: the taxi leaving. Tomorrow: home. It was a little death, each time, I would come to feel. Less like a traveler than a mayfly, living for a day, a week, then gone. Reincarnated as myself, again, struggling at the screen door, again. Two procedures: over. Twenty-three to go.
    I SOON DISCOVERED how the procedure in this world differed from the others. I came home and found my son engaged in some Swedish game of Green’s, in which he was made to hide behind the sofa while she knitted on the couch. I was too much a novice mother to protest, and Green’s raised eyebrow (her knitting, like the weaving of a spider, never ceased) silenced me. Fee’s head popped up—a puppet show—and he rolled his eyes and grinned mechanically before running from his counting place and embracing my knees. “Momma, Mrs. Green told me a story about a ghost, a woman who used to live here, did you know about that? Did you know she darns socks in the hall at night? Can I stay up tonight and watch her, Momma? Can I?” Knit and purl went the old girl’s web, that eyebrow still on high, and who was I to argue? Perhaps the ghost she meant was just a shimmer of myself, slipping between the worlds in sleep.
    “Mommy needs a nap, darling. I’ll be out later to take you to the park.”
    “Not now! I’ve been inside all day!”
    “Just a little while. I need to change.”
    “Madam,” came Mrs. Green’s voice and I turned, my hat dangling from my hand. Her eyes seemed to be encoding something. What could it possibly be? “Perhaps you forgot,” she said gently. “The doctor is in the bedroom. He has been waiting, and the nurse is here as well.”
    “I see.” I stood there for a moment feeling the weight of my hat in my hand, the coarse weave of its cloth, the irritating little feathers that stroked my dress with an audible sound. My gaze went all over the room, like a bird in search of a window. Yet there was nothing to do but go into that bedroom, nothing to say but what I said. “Thank you, Mrs. Green.”
    I wondered what on earth she made of this madwoman walking the halls.
    They were there waiting for me, and their conversation broke off immediately as I entered the room with as much dignity as I could muster. Bald Dr. Cerletti smiled professionally as he nodded; he was in a navy suit and silver glasses, his demeanor somehow diminished from his contemporary self. “Mrs. Michelson, here you are.” He did not wear a doctor’s white coat, nor did the nurse (the same girl, her hair a different blond from a