“I twisted my leg, I guess,” I say, hoping she’ll just move on to breakfast. I’m famished. “I’m starving, Marleen, I’ll have my breakfast in bed today.”
“Why is your hair wet? Are you running a fever?”
It’s an innocent question, really, but I hear a tinge of prying within the words. The wet towel, it must have been the wet towel.
Marleen rests the back of her hand on my forehead.
“What’s happened to your face? Are you bleeding?”
“A nosebleed. Please don’t make such a spectacle of yourself.”
I’m surprised that my voice is steady and scolding, that I’m pulling this off with so much confidence.
“There’s blood in the foyer.” Her eyes dart about the room as if to look for further evidence of what I have gotten myself into.
Marleen is frazzled and I feel sorry for her. Why can’t I just tell her? Why can’t she be my ally? Should I . . . No, I catch myself. I heard her talk to Edward. She locks doors and snoops, and kind she may be, but safe she’s not. I can’t tell her the truth. My very own despicable self is illuminated in the eyes of this very worried woman. Guilt? Just for a second, but the feeling passes. She’s not friend but foe.
“Mrs. Pryor—”
“Breakfast,” I insist. “Really, Marleen, I didn’t fall, I’m fine, and it’s just a swollen ankle. Bring me a bag of peas or whatever it is people put on such a thing.”
“You need to have someone look at your ankle. It doesn’t look good. Is it your hip? Is that why you fell?”
“Tea and toast would be great.” I ignore her question and rip the duvet from her hand and cover myself.
“I’ll make an appointment with the doctor right now. Have an X-ray, something might be broken.”
“Okay, sure.”
This entire exchange has me thinking about lies. And confessions. And that I must read Penelope’s letters again. I’m already confusing facts in my mind. I panic. Where did I leave them? I turn and there they are, on the side table. Crinkled and wet, smeared with blood from my brow.
I get up and when I put weight on my ankle, I cringe. A sharp pain reminds me that I have done damage beyond just a sprain. I keep the foot suspended as I reach over to grab the letters. At first I don’t know what to do with them, but the best place to keep them is the bathroom, the only place Marleen won’t see me read them and question me. And I can keep an eye on them from my bed. It’s a miracle she didn’t see them just now.
Footsteps sound and I shove them under my pillow. Marleen packs my ankle in ice and when she tells me to sit up so she can fluff the pillows, I panic. The bloody towel—I have brushed my hair over my brow but it’s only a matter of time until she notices the cut—is under my pillow. So are the letters.
“Not right now, Marleen. I need some rest.”
I lower my head on the pillow. That’s when she sees my brow. Of course she sees my brow.
“You fell, didn’t you?”
“I would like to take a shower after I eat.” I sit up and the ice pack tumbles to the ground. “And privacy. That’s all I need.”
“Mrs. Pryor, if you fell while you were alone—”
“Just for once in your life, live in the real world, Marleen. Do you think I’m blind? That I don’t know what’s going on? Who do you take me for?” My voice is sharp now, I’m done playing games. “I can walk. See.” I get out of bed and suck it up. I take a couple of steps and manage to contain the pain. When I feel as if the ankle is giving out on me, I put all my weight on the other foot. “I want breakfast after my shower. Run along.”
Marleen turns and leaves the room. I limp back to the bed and grab the letters and the bloody towel. I sift through the drawers in the bathroom and find a small white plastic bag. I put the letters and the bloody towel in the bag, fold it in half, and stuff it under the bin liner.
I step into the shower. I’m in shreds, body and mind. Unable to reach for the soap, I stand there, allowing the cold water to hit my face, washing the blood off my forehead. By the time the water turns warm, the day replays like a stack of photographs I’m flipping through.
I hobble back to the bedroom, where I find breakfast sitting on the side table. While I eat, I eavesdrop. Marleen attempts to schedule appointments with various doctors over the phone. They are booked for today and tomorrow, but the day after there’s an opening with Dr. Jacobson.
Famished, I am famished. I want to ask for more food but Marleen is already suspicious. She tinkers around the house, cabinets open and close, the pipes hum and I doze off. I don’t mean to, it just happens. When I open my eyes, Marleen is gone.
Alone with myself, I can’t make head or tails of anything. I think about the therapist who told Penelope to write down what she couldn’t say out loud. I had debated with the therapist over the phone but his argument was you can’t go back on the written truth, it’s a confession you can hold yourself to.
My very own motivations become less and less clear to me with every passing minute. Nothing short of a detailed account will do, something along the lines of Before I leave, I want to tell you . . . That day, I purge feverishly. I write it all down, everything. Page after page after page. I catch myself wanting to stop but I carry on. My hand shakes, but still I go on. Before I leave I want to tell you about my daughter, Penelope. I want to tell you about a boy named Gabriel. A woman named Rachel. A little girl with fork marks in her arm.
Between my account and Penelope’s ramblings, I’ve come to a conclusion. I carry on through the next day and the next night. Once it’s been written down, I can’t revisit it, not because I don’t want to but because I have decided to hold myself to a higher standard.
The second night, I add the pictures from the photo albums. They seem to paint a much clearer picture than words. It’s more so for myself than for anyone else. At the end of the third day, I stop. But there’s one more thing I need to write down.
* * *
• • •
I had felt myself slipping for a while. It began slowly, when I no longer knew how to drive. Does one unlearn how to drive a car? I don’t know.
Yes, I do. I do know.
Like a flashcard, a memory pops up: I’m driving and the road is a tape measure about to snap back into its case. A moment of panic. Slowing to a crawl, cars honking and drivers gesturing, pulling over and gasping for air while the wipers went full speed and the lights flashed and the open door’s ding ding ding left me breathless, the edges of my vision ruffled as a passing car blew gravel at me and the world around me had a reddish hue.