Free Virgin Territory by James Lecesne Page B

described how she had worked the vendor to get the best price out of him, and she could rememberexactly how many pesetas, drachmas, yen, or francs she paid for each plate. I keep a close eye on Marie just in case she decides to do something crazy, like toss them one by one around the room.
    “These mine?” she asks without turning to look at me.
    I feel a sharp twinge somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. Actually, I think it might be happening somewhere deeper down, like in my gut. I realize that she can’t remember all those trips she’d taken with Granddad to foreign places. I feel sick, as though the floor’s just been taken away, and I am falling, down, down, down.
    “You remember these plates,” I tell Marie. “You collected them.”
    She has to remember. She has to think back. If Marie forgets the plates, then it’s just a matter of time before she forgets everything else, like me, for instance. “Those plates meant the world to you.”
    “Have I been to Spain?” she asks, looking at me with the quizzical stare of a lost child.
    “You went with Granddad. You visited the Alhambra and sent me a postcard from Madrid. You brought me back a bullfighter’s cape.”
    She snaps her head back to get a better look at me. She’s lost the thread, but I’m right there to set her straight.
    “You’re not a bullfighter, are you?”
    “Don’t be silly, Gram,” I say as I give her a quick squeeze so she can feel the real me. “It’s me. Dylan.”
    “Right,” she says, getting it together. Then she pauses and pulls in close, lowers her voice, and adds, “And the only bull you’ve ever known is
bullshit!”
    We both laugh.
    I steer Marie toward the carpeted steps, and she begins the climb.
    “Hold up, you two,” Doug calls from down below. “I got a question about this friend of yours. Ma, can you hear me?”
    Marie pauses on the stairs and directs her gaze upward, as though she’s heard Doug’s voice coming from above instead of from below.
    “Can it wait till tomorrow?” I ask Doug.
    “It’s okay,” Marie says to me quietly. She steadies herself by taking hold of the banister with one hand, and then, with the other, she grabs my arm. She seems to know what’s coming.
    “I just telephoned over to Crestview,” he begins. “They told me you had no visitors yesterday. No one signed you out. Did you just walk out of there by yourself?”
    “Yes,” she says, and her face brightens just a bit, as though she now remembers yesterday. “I just walked like Jesus over the water. I was like a miracle.”
    “But how did you get over to the golf course?”
    “I drove,” she says. “That’s right. I wanted to see what was going on at the golf course. I saw it on the news. So I got in my car and drove over there.”
    I can tell that Doug doesn’t have the heart to break the newsto her that she no longer can drive. He had her license taken away three years ago because he said it wasn’t safe anymore for her to get behind the wheel. And he was right. She was always forgetting where she lived, and eventually Doug got tired of having to look for her along some highway and then making arrangements to have her Ford Escort towed back to the house. Then there was the incident with the dry cleaner; Doug had to pay a lot of money to replace their plate-glass window after Marie’s Escort backed into it. When she was moved into
the place
, Doug decided that there would be no going anywhere for Marie, not unless someone was with her.
    I’m standing on the stairs looking down at Doug and hoping that he won’t force Marie to experience the loss of her Ford Escort all over again. Once was plenty.
    “Get some sleep,” Doug says as he retreats into the living room.

    The next morning, I’m stumbling around the kitchen, throwing open cupboards and drawers, feeling my way toward the cereal and the milk that I call my breakfast. I see a guy, a stranger, sitting quietly at the kitchen counter; he’s pouring over some