The Girls He Adored

11

After supper (Buff Orpingtons, in addition to having gorgeous plumage and being superior winter layers, are also first-rate table birds, white-skinned, plump-breasted, and juicy), the woman retires to the myrtlewood rocker in the parlor with her sewing basket and works by the western window until the light fades.

The piece the woman is working on tonight is nearly completed. Thirty to forty thousand separate reddish blond strands, each knotted into a transparent micro-mesh foundation by hand, using a tiny needle curved like a fishhook. But the hands that fed the golden chickens, gathered the eggs, and caressed the Rottweilers that morning are little more than skin grafts over bone-she can only tie a few hundred strands a night before her fingers start to cramp.

Still, her surgeons would be pleasantly surprised to learn that those hands are able to manage such delicate work at all. Although the interosseous muscles of the palm retained enough of their gripping strength to wield a knife (or an ice pick), it had taken hours of reconstructive surgery to repair the intrinsic lumbricates to the point where the thumb and first three fingertips of each hand could meet, much less grasp a tiny needle.

But pain aside, the woman enjoys the work. It's relaxing, contemplative, even meditative. And there's more creativity involved than one might think-not only must the strands be sorted by length, but color gradations must be matched and blended to create the all-important natural look.

In addition, the work keeps the woman's mind off her problems. The boy has been away nearly five weeks. Even the trip to Texas last year to obtain the raw material for the piece she's sewing tonight took less than a month. And if something's happened to him? If he never returns? What then of this life they've carved out for themselves, isolated on a ridgetop, no neighbors, no telephone, far from rude stares and pitying-or horrified-glances? She knows she can't survive up here alone. She also knows that while she is wealthy enough to hire attendants or retire to a first-class nursing home, there's probably not enough money in the world to procure all the services the boy provides, not for a woman in her condition.

And of course there are other complications, thinks the woman. The drying shed, for one.

The drying shed! “Drat,” she says aloud-she's forgotten all about it. No harm done, though-missing a day here or there is no big hoo-ha, she tells herself, plucking another red-gold strand from her sewing basket and holding it up to the fading light. But it slips from her aching fingers and slithers back into the basket like a snake charmer's cobra in reverse. Time to call it a night.

A steep, narrow staircase leads to her second-story bedroom. She undresses, rehangs the green gown-she has two green dresses and two black, which she wears in rotation and washes by hand. The mask comes off last, in the bathroom; there are no mirrors in the bathroom. She washes it in the sink and hangs it on the towel rack to dry, then brushes her teeth by feel. That goes quickly-it's easy to brush your teeth when your lips have been burned away to the gum line. No bath tonight-nobody to bathe for. She splashes warm water under her arms and between her legs, then slips on a gossamer silk nightdress. She can only bear the touch of silk against her skin-her scar tissue, rather.

So the sheets and the comforter on her double bed are silk as well. She sits on the edge of the bed and from the night-table drawer removes a small ampoule of pharmaceutical morphine sulfate she had taken out of the refrigerator that morning. She raises her right leg until her heel is on the bed, hikes her nightdress up over her raised knee and lets it fall until her leg is bared, then jabs the needle into the back of the right thigh- good skin and plenty of meat there. It's a two-handed operation: one skeletal hand holds the ampoule, the other presses the plunger.

There's not much of a rush-the drug takes hold slowly when injected intramuscularly. She dabs away a dot of blood from her thigh with a cotton ball before pulling her nightie back down. Then, with a pleasurable sigh, she switches off the bedside lamp, slips into bed, and pulls the silken covers up to her chin. She's gotten through another day without him, but it hasn't been easy-she misses him the way she misses her own breasts.