Free A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee Page A

somehow everything was the better for it. I didn’t wish to go further in the conversation, nor did she, and if there was one true thing that we shared during our relations, it was that neither of us, for better or worse, had much stomach for these engagements, for taking certain issues to the necessary lengths. We rather floated the deep waters, just barely treading, although now I see how my friend Mary Burns held onto things more gravely than I, certain notions staying with her longer, more tightly clasped, so that in the end we were much farther apart in our feelings than I had ever imagined.
    Sunny finally came out the patio doors, dressed in a resplendent swath of white. She and Mary Burns had decided on the outfit together the weekend before, on a shopping junket down to the city. It was a very handsome choice. The dress came just up to her darkly suntanned shoulders, the delicate material clinging to her torso but not so tightly as to be indecent, the handsome drape conveying only the suggestion of the young woman beneath. But the young woman was certainly there, too, the near adultness of her, and the sight of that shape made me realize why she had asked me to remain at home. It wasn’t at all what Sunny had said in the store, about people liking me too much, or (as I had imagined it) her jealousy of Mary Burns, or even what was ventured of how I treated her, whichwas probably true enough. It was her bodily presence, the sheer, becoming whiteness of her limbs and skin and face and eyes. She was beautiful, yes. Exceptionally so. But it was also the other character of her beauty, its dark and willful visage, and with it, the growing measure of independence she would exercise over her world and over me, that she had hoped to keep hidden a little longer.

4
    THE CANDY STRIPER , Veronica, finds me unusually good-natured. Almost everything I say makes her grin, and her full, ruddy face beams and blushes whenever she comes into my room with her cart. Most of the candy stripe girls are outgoing and talkative and even a little waywardly brash, which is naturally why they do the work. But Veronica, shyish and sweet, healthfully ample, with a shockingly full head of tight chestnut-brown curls, is the sort of girl you would wish upon all good people who have mourned the demise of that cardinal generosity of youth.
    Veronica, of course, has little care for such things. She is unfretting, unsevere. She understands how to hearten a patient with a wide smile. And now, after two days and nights, she finds me familiar and trustworthy, enough so not to bother to knock on the always open door. She wheels her cart inside the room and then up beside the bed railing, and greets me with cheer.
    “Were you able to sleep at all last night, Franklin?” she says, automatically fanning out the selection of magazines and books atopthe cart. We are clearly on a first-name basis. She carries the usual periodicals, creased magazines of home and health and lifestyle, but the books are mostly crime novels and stories of the strange and the occult, all of which soft-spoken Veronica, it seems, has chosen for her selections. “The nurse said you were out of bed a lot, walking the halls.”
    “I was sure Dolly didn’t see me,” I tell her. “It looked like she was the one who was getting all the sleep.”
    “That’s her job,” Veronica says, and then adds, in a dramatic, mischievous tone: “She’s the nurse of the night.”
    “Very true,” I reply, wishing, all of a sudden, that I could change out of my hospital gown and accompany Veronica on her rounds. I say, “It appears she is also the nurse of jelly doughnuts. And perhaps of pastry and pie.”
    “Yes,” Veronica cries, almost gleeful with the gossip. “I thought I saw cherry filling on her shoes. I didn’t say anything, but I was half afraid it was blood!”
    “How do we know it wasn’t?” I say, knowing what it takes to goad her. “That she’d simply forgotten to hide a