They May Not Mean To, But They Do

38

Daniel pulled his mother’s suitcase out of the closet. The sting of mold came with it.

“Oh dear,” said Joy, sneezing.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad, Mom.”

“It’s a little like being in the country, though, that smell and the green. It makes me nostalgic.”

The suitcase had been a gift from Daniel and Coco ten years ago. He wondered if she’d ever used it.

“Why don’t you ever use this when we go Upstate?”

“Danny, honestly, it’s full of mold. How could I possibly use it to go anywhere?” She sat on the bed. “Well,” she said, “now that we see how the land lies, mold in the suitcase, very unhealthy, I’ll just have to stay put in New York. In my own apartment.”

Daniel took the suitcase down to the basement and left it by the garbage cans. That was on Saturday. On Sunday, he returned with a new suitcase. At first he’d gone to look for a cheap one in a crummy shop in Chinatown. He found a flimsy roller bag with zebra stripes for eighteen dollars and was about to buy it, thinking, It doesn’t have to last too long, she won’t be making too many more trips at her age, then immediately felt so guilty that he left the zebra stripes behind, took the train up to Bloomingdale’s, and got her an expensive roller bag in a respectable shade of blue with wheels that swiveled in all directions.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Joy said when he spun the bag in graceful circles to demonstrate.

“You can’t go to California with your stuff in garbage bags.”

“California is not for me, Danny. I’ve never been there and there’s a reason — it’s not for me.”

In the airport, Joy dropped her boarding pass, not on purpose, but she was not sorry to have lost it. The man pushing her wheelchair went back to look for it while Danny tapped his foot and forced a smile. She hated being a burden, but since she was, she wished people could shoulder her with more grace.

“I’m sorry to gum up the works,” she said.

Danny shrugged, not very gallantly. Could you shrug gallantly, she wondered.

People were rushing past her in every direction. Little children were outfitted like their parents, wearing miniature backpacks, pulling little suitcases. Too many people from too many places traveling to too many other places.

How would she bear it? Two months in L.A.

“When you come back, the kids will be out of school and we’ll all go Upstate,” Danny said.

She was weary and she had not even gotten into the airport proper, much less the plane. People wheeling luggage the size of coffins rumbled past her. She heard a sparrow chirping high above in the rafters. Poor little bird, lost in a vast edifice, trapped, just like me.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

Danny pretended not to hear her.

“I don’t belong here,” she said.

“No one belongs here. It’s an airport.”

The wheelchair man had reappeared, victorious, waving the boarding pass. “Okay then, Madame.” He spoke with a lilting Caribbean accent. He was almost as old as she was. Had his children made him leave his comfortable home and come to New York City because they were afraid he’d slip and fall?

“I’m supposed to age in place,” she said to Danny.

“It’s a vacation, Mom, in a warm place with people who love you.”

“I don’t really need a wheelchair,” she said to the wheelchair man, turning, twisting her neck so she could see him. “My children are overly cautious.”

“They love you,” the man said.

“I’m going to stay with my daughter. In California.” She did not mention Freddie. Perhaps that was wrong, but she could not come up with a way to explain Freddie, not on the spur of the moment to the wheelchair man.

“That’s beautiful,” said the man.

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Danny set off the beeping alarms as he went through security.

“Hips,” he said apologetically to the guard. “And knees.”

“I am free of prosthetics,” Joy said. “I am also free of most of my large bowel, my gallbladder, my uterus, ovaries, and appendix. I have my tonsils and most of my teeth. Check on your machine. You’ll see. Go ahead, check.”