Spirits

Erica Gelman

When Camilla came home she was tired; because she is always tired, because she is old and gets older with every passing day, because it is not a question of whether one is tired but how tired one is, because with all that old around you one cannot help but be tired, and full of it, and buried underneath it, like a rock or sedimentary bed or harsh mineral descending deeper and deeper into the crust.

 Camilla removed her shoes. Her last name is Sauvage, which sounds like savage or sausage, depending on what kind of person you are and how you are to interpret things like last names. In this latest year of her life, Camilla Sauvage has become increasingly interested in two things: television news and superstition, two very different types of magic, but magic nonetheless.

 With television news, Camilla kept up with the ever changing, ever aging world around her, perpetually dying and then being birthed again, a constant shift that is rapid and nonstopping and most of all, above all things, tiring. Camilla used to have an idea, when she worked in the hospital: When one dies they fall through a hole and they are transformed. Somewhere on the other side they are changed, metamorphosed, and pop out elsewhere in this world, reborn. But now, after some years at the hospice, Camilla was aware of something else entirely, and this was frightening; the thought that after death one still carries enough weight to come back to earth, to want to, to have to. Camilla hates the news, but watches it anyways, religiously because it is a religion, to listen and to know and be useless to do anything about what was happening in the world.

 With superstition and the occult, Camilla attempts to see further into the future. The news only promises the past and the present; with tarot cards—she owns two decks, both purchased within the past six months—she can see what is beyond, what no one has seen yet; or so she tells herself. The spread before her reads: TEMPERANCE, SUN IN REVERSE, HANGED MAN.

 The problem is this: She has received hanged man as the outcome for her past five readings. This has occurred with both decks regardless of how she shuffled. This is how she knows the tarot cards are true and work. This is also how she knows that she is doomed; the hanged man stands for stagnation. When Camilla first read this card she was relieved; it meant that she would not die yet, which was her main concern. When she next read it, she was relieved once again—all would be well with her children, they would stay just as they were, happy and healthy—but in the next readings she began to feel a sickness, a strange sense of dizziness and adrenaline that rise up inside of her. The Hanged Man said (resolute): It will all stay the same. All of it. There would be no change.

 And so: Camilla knew the future, but didn’t like it, and no matter how antsy she got, and willed herself for change, the final card—the outcome—read the exact same. This is what Camilla knew:

3) Camilla would not get a raise.

4) Camilla would not get better hours.

5) Mathew, Camilla’s least favorite patient, would not die soon either.

 And, about the earlier two readings:

2) All would be well with her children, they would stay just as they were, which is happy and healthy—and most importantly, away from her, and she would be just as she is, as she was; alone, with everything it entailed.

1) Camilla would not die (her fear branched out of her newly developed shortness of breath, long and restless sleep, too-fast heart), but also, simultaneously, would live life just as she was currently living it, which was the most frightful truth, most frightening divination, of all. It was hard living like she was, stagnant seemingly forever as the hanged man had put it five times, and if it was going to be like this forever, then she didn’t want to continue on. One lives because they hope for a better future, or maybe even a worse future. What human beings need, Camilla thought, remarking on all of her patients at the hospice, is change. Human growth and life is a series of changes. And Camilla, if the cards were to be believed—and she believed in them— would see none of it.

This is what Camilla was currently doing: Camilla was watching the evening news. On it, there were three rapes and two deaths, at least, so far—two shootings in the south side of the city. Also, in the Lincoln Park Zoo, there was either the disappearance, escape, or kidnapping of one Siberian Tiger, the largest tiger species on earth, currently. He had vanished, dissipated into thin air, seemingly out of the blue; nothing in the entire enclosure, the entire zoo, entire world had been touched or displaced even a particle except for him, this mighty beast, gone. His name was Ding, and Camilla had seen him five years ago when she had visited the zoo with her children, a little bonding activity that brought them all back to being young again, young and not so heavy, not so tired—though Camilla was just beginning to feel it like a small pressure against her shoulder blades. They had stopped by the enclosure and pressed their hands against the glass and Ding came close and pressed his nose back, and it was almost as if she was holding him; like the entire world was hinged upon this axiom, his snout and her hand and the glass as the little intersection point, a few inches in this direction and a few in that one, and her hand was what connected all of this together. Something inside her welled and broke and for a moment the world began to spin until her children looked at her, and the doctor later called it panic attack and anxiety disorder and high cholesterol, blood pressure, and since then there have only been phone calls and Christmas dinners.

 Camilla turned off the TV and began making her dinner. Her dinner, as it had been for the past year, was a chocolate flavored protein shake; to make it, she used a blender and 2% milk, mixed up the powder until it was one with the liquid, sliced up a banana and mixed it too, and then took the viscous fluid down like medicine, in silence, with no noise.

 It was a split second decision to pick up the phone. She dialed the number, held it to her ear, said, hello. Her daughter responded: Hey mom, how are you. How is work.

Work is work is work is work. Hard and heavy and the almost dead keep talking to the dead, and the dead talk back. This is not what she said but what she thought, and with tongue pressed hard against the cleft of her mouth, attempted to turn this magic into something more human, or perhaps what is human into something more magic. What Camilla attempted to do was make meaning out of observation, transcribe the shape of emotion, and grief.

“Mary misses her husband a lot, and she remembers him even though she’s got dementia. But only sometimes. Isn’t that interesting?”

Maia, Camilla’s daughter, said yes, that is interesting. Everything to Maia was interesting, and Camilla felt, feared, that such was communicated over in the same way Camilla spoke to her patients at the hospice, over speckled skin and feeble nature, except that Camilla would argue that she isn’t feeble, much like her father would, when he was diagnosed with early onset, lost all of his words, and tried to say them, anyways. A certain strength in that that only somehow left him weaker.

“Mary is getting sicker and sicker,” says Camilla. Mary was her favorite patient.

Camilla waited. Oh, said Maia. Camilla tried harder. “Mary speaks to him,” she said. “Or at least she thinks she does. Sometimes I come into her room and she’s half-into a conversation, looking at something that doesn’t exist, somewhere near the middle of the room.” As Camilla spoke, her hands absentmindedly made their way over to the stack of cards that she had placed on a shelf directly to the right of the landline, found them in between potted succulent, half-cracked sugar bowl, and framed photograph of husband, since divorced, since gone, since all those other things, you know you know you know. Since early morning, Camilla had been considering another tarot card reading, thought long and hard about it. When she had first bought her cards, from some eclectic store in Uptown, the large, intimidating, and very kind stubble-faced woman named Delilah who ran the store issued a warning, placing cards into cardboard box, and then cardboard into soft-papered bag, with the store-name on the front, thankyouverymuch for shopping with us. She said nonchalantly, “You know, these cards are supposed to have magic in them. The more you touch them, the more they lose their power.” She hitched the bag up by its handles with her big hands, let the contents—candle, a piece of quartz crystal, cards, matchsticks with black stems and blue heads like inverted flames—fall down to the bottom together, “Or so they say.” 

This was the first time Camilla had considered the thought that she was tampering with some otherworldly situation, the notion of power, of loss, swirled inside her and at once she was full to the brim with questions. 

“When the power leaves, where does it go?” Does Camilla herself, in touching it, collect all of it? Or does it just eddy around the house, leave through the fireplace, the chimney; reverse Santa Claus, into the cold?

“I don’t know,” confessed Delilah,  perhaps embarrassed. “Ariella just tells me you need a new deck every couple of years. But she knows a whole lot more about them than I do.”

 This is what Camilla did while on the phone, however: touch the cards, usurp a little bit of the occult from them, feel something emanate or come off of them like scent from a flower or light from a candle, or so attempt; in truth Camilla felt nothing, nothing different at all, might as well be touching a clothes hanger or a desk or a hung man. “One may go crazy like this,” thought Camilla, “assigning all these meanings and feelings and prepositions to things that may not have any at all.” 

This was Maia’s sentiment too. She didn’t care for Mary’s delusions (whether they were real or fake), or even for Camilla’s loneliness, for that matter; what she cared about was the work ethic, the fact that Camilla had enough food, and enough heat, and enough sleep. Baby out of the womb and the house reverses, the child builds the placenta brick by brick up, keeps the elders nourished and warm. This was always how Maia was, since she was young she knew her place in the world, knew to take care with cold rationality. Camilla didn’t like it, but she accepted the sentiment, and the donations, and the leftovers.  “I know it’s hard without dad,” Maia would say while holding a saran-wrapped bowl of white rice, referring to first the divorce, and then his death, car off the cliff, which Camilla had deep feelings about in all sorts of directions, considering his untimely demise featured a new wife (and former mistress) in the next seat; beautiful girl of eighteen, died too soon but perhaps—according to the vengeful cords of Camilla’s heart—right on time. 

Perhaps that is what prompted Maia’s maturity; when the father is gone, someone has to take his place. “Do you know what happens to children without fathers?”  Maia had almost yelled, half-whispered, fifteen years ago, referring to the marijuana and self-rolled cigarettes found in Jeremy’s room, his plummeting grades, detentions and suspensions, drinking tickets, haircut of his own design. “If he continues with all of this, he’s going to go to jail, don’t you understand?” 

Camilla understood, felt heavy and full and understood. This is what Maia saw and felt: Failure, and because she was well-to-do, or stubborn, or born already nine years instead of nine months, or Capricorn sun with Aries rising as Delilah would say, she took Camilla’s position, held Jeremy’s hand throughout school, said mom, what are you doing, mom, you have to do something…. 

This was Maia now: “Have you spoken to Jeremy? He’s doing fine, broke up with Lauren, and here we thought he was going to marry her. Isn’t that crazy? How do things like that happen? I guess that’s life for you. Anyways, are you hungry? Do you have enough food in your fridge? We have a ton of leftovers here that I can give you…” 

This was Camilla: “I am fine, I am good, I am sorry that happened to Jeremy. But maybe it is for the best.”

For the best, for the best, for the best. What does that mean anymore, anyways? Camilla shuffled the cards, felt nothing, not a thing, except for maybe tired, but that has been a common feeling for the past twenty years. 

“For the best? Maybe. I didn’t like her, but he was in love.” 

Camilla nodded, forgot that the physical and the verbal were on very different planes and then stuttered out a quick answer. With the anxious spasm of her hand, a card fell to the ground, hit the hard wood like it had something to say or something to escape from, face down. 

Bad knees. Camilla bent down to pick it up, came face to face with The Fool, and then promptly forgot everything Maia had ever said. This could have been Maia, now; “Do you ever care about anything but yourself?” This had certainly been Maia twenty years ago, maybe also nineteen, and eighteen too.

 Camilla had never been able to answer.

Assisted Living. When Camilla first began to work at the hospice, she was told it was all about transition, about guiding the individual from one life, to the next. Camilla wasn’t sure whether she believed in God or afterlife, so when she heard this explanation she only nodded her head and felt like something of a liar. Then, her trainer had taken out a sponge and they walked, slowly, to a resident’s room and Camilla was shown how to give a bath. Everything here had to be done with dignity, she was told. That’s the philosophy, that’s what people need, even when they’re awfully close to not being people anymore. 

Years later, and this is what Camilla was doing now. A quick, “How are you Mary,” before she plunged the sponge into one of two buckets and walked closer to the frail woman, packed towels underneath her body. It had a level of formality to it; it was important to make the patient feel comfortable , no matter what condition they were in. 

“Oh, I am good,” Said Mary. Her voice was faint, as if she had been sleeping. “Who are you?”

“That’s good. I’m Camilla.” Camilla wrung the sponge, once, out of habit. “I am going to wash you up now, ok?”

 There was no response. She began to unbutton Mary’s gown. 

Meanwhile, Mary was staring at the ceiling, mouth open. It was easy to get the impression that she was deep in thought, but Camilla had long since discerned that it was the haze of senescence, what the doctors called Lewy Body Dementia. When Mary was first admitted to the hospice, about 50 days ago, she was lucid about 40 percent of the day, but, the passage of time, Camilla observed, is never merciful. It never goes backwards, only marches forwards, and Mary was thrust deeper and deeper into herself, open-mouthed and forgetful. She was progressively disappearing, sublimating; the other nurses and aids needed to help her drink water, eat applesauce, as she had, simply, plainly, failed to remember how to do so. When she was wheeled out to play bingo (once every week or two) they had to move the pieces for her while she stared straight out, and (more and more as days went on) shook. Sometimes, Mary cried—wails so deep and enduring and with no apparent reason that the other patients in the hall would remark upon it in and claim it interfered with their sleep, that she would appear in their dreams, wild-haired and passionate in her despair, and destroy anything tender that could have possibly been imagined. Hearing the noise, Camilla could only think of Jeremy when he was a baby, the kind of wail reminiscent of a sadness without words, juvenile in its supreme helplessness. 

The bedpan was full.  

Gloved hands, Camilla made note of the contents, disposed of the waste, replaced the pan, made plans to clean Mary extra-well. She moved the two buckets of water closer, rubbed her hands. “I’m here,” she thought, “to assist the living.” Camilla looked downwards. Mary was stiff and frail and skinny, and suddenly Camilla’s bones began to hurt and she was filled with the sudden and strange need to sit down for a little, put her head into her hands.

 “How’s John?” Camilla asked. 

Mary didn’t answer for a very long time. Her lips moved, and for a moment Camilla felt terrible, was suddenly worried that Mary was cognizant of how unclean she was, how naked and delicate, of how little she was being helped. 

“John is here.” 

Within the first week of her training, Camilla had been told about the dying and the dead. “It’s either hallucination or séance,” the trainer said. “You can usually see it in the ones with dementia or Alzheimer's or brain cancer. But whatever it is, it makes them feel better. Happens sometime right before they’re about to die.” The trainer had paused. “It’s always a loved one. I imagine it is comforting.”

 Comfort. Camilla felt self-conscious. She got up at once and filled the sponge with soap-water once more, wrung it, began with the folds of Mary’s neck. Mary looked straight up, then somewhere to the side, the middle of the room.

 “Right there,” she said.

 The room felt neither colder nor warmer. Light came in from the window, and particles of dust danced in the beam. Hallucination, then. Camilla thought of her tarot cards. There were things that she could accept, and things that were harder to. Of course it was comforting, to be able to pretend like something like that exists. Love like perfume, wind in the trees. We can pretend all we want, and try very hard, but none of it really means anything, does it?

 Camilla wasn’t sure.

 “Well, how is he?”

 Mary’s mouth was moving. As Camilla moved the sponge lower, in gentle circles, the woman below her began to spasm. Her eyes closed.

 Camilla looked around the room, found it exactly the same as it had always been. She continued to clean.

Camilla was tired. She blended banana and protein shake and stood with her back against wall and TV news blaring and closed her eyes and swallowed harshly.

On the countertop by the phone, she had left The Fool. It looked up at her flatly. She was afraid to hold it. After investing so much into stagnancy, she was suddenly wary of anything that resembled difference, turned it over and over again in her hands, decided it must simply be a fluke.

 According to the booklet that came with the cards (and all that she found on the internet), The Fool represented potential. Number 0. The picture on the card was of a man, head up high, one foot off a cliff. The assumption is that the rest of him would soon follow suit,  or at least would, if he wasn’t immortalized exactly as that. If this did mean something, what did it mean? The chance that out of anything you would pull this exact card, feel this exact way, do this exact thing. Of course it was random. But what is divine fate if not random? What is significance if not different?

Camilla found it hard to not think about Mary. Mary and John, Mary and what she thought was John. Love that defies death and disease. The spotty impermanence of memory.

Camilla sat down in her kitchen, straight on the floor as if she was a four-year-old again. However within moments she was aware of the red digital clock on her stove, of 11:43 PM, and remembered her age and everything that came with it. She had the impulse to lean backwards and feel the coolness of the tile against her back, and almost fought it.

The phone was ringing. Camilla burst upwards with a jolt, her lungs filled with air (to the extent that they could—she had been a smoker for about a year after her husband’s divorce and then another 3 after his death) and deflated—she almost fell back down, hit her knee against a counter, grabbed for the landline and breathed deep into the mouthpiece.

“Hello?”

“Mom, it’s me.”

Camilla was never sure what to say. She waited, panting, feeling like some sort of animal.

“Mom?”

“Yes, how are you?” Formalities. Dignity.

“I’m good. Listen, it’s about Jeremy.”

Jeremy. When Camilla thought about Jeremy, she truthfully imagined a little boy, not a thirty-something year old who probably had a house. Camilla thought again. He did have a house, didn’t he? Or a condo? Something like that.

“What about Jeremy?”

“I think he relapsed again. He hasn’t answered any of my texts for three days. I’m really worried. He hasn’t said anything to you, has he? Have you seen anything on the news?”

Camilla craned her head and looked at the TV. There had been three shootings already. A celebrity was pregnant. A high-speed chase on the Dan Ryan.

“I haven’t seen anything about heroin on the TV. Not yet, at least.” Camilla closed her eyes and attempted to imagine what her son would look like now. Brown hair, balding. Last time she had seen him, he had been extraordinarily thin, would sit folded into himself like a bird or crumpled paper. The question of whether he had gained weight or not, for a moment, haunted her, and she wasn’t exactly sure why.

 “Why do you refuse to call him? Do you not care?”

The issue was that Jeremy refused to speak to Camilla as well. After the relapse, Camilla began to lock her own doors. Keep what was left of her valuables and medicine in one large safe. Jeremy took offense to that; would come late at night and rattle the door and swear like some sort of clumsy, angry ghost. Eventually, he stopped coming. Maia said he went to rehab again. By this time, Camilla had grown tired, lost the ability to look up phone numbers and speak to ghosts.

When Camilla remembered Jeremy, she thought of a young boy who needed training wheels until he was 8, slept with a nightlight, was afraid to knock down his own Lego towers. This new man was a stranger. After the second rehab (suboxone, Maia said, and lots of therapy), the stranger called every day for about 1 week straight, and then stopped. Camilla had been unable to pick up the phone; it wasn’t that she felt bad, it was that she somehow found herself feeling nothing at all.

 “He doesn’t need me,” said Camilla. “He doesn’t want to speak to me either.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Maia said. Camilla wasn’t sure what that meant. There was the brief clip of silence. Camilla brushed the face of The Fool with her index finger, placed the card by the photograph of her husband. He had been close with Jeremy. He was the one that taught him how to ride a bike (“The key,” he had said, “Is to not be afraid of falling”) and how to fall asleep at night when it was really hard. He had taught Camilla, too—warm milk and a spoonful of honey. You had to stand in the kitchen, away from the bed and the thing that is sleep, and think about things besides desperation.

Camilla really loved him, but years later and she didn’t know what that meant. It wasn’t a question of emptiness or fullness but perhaps fulfillment. And yet, it was he who desired an escape fantasy; the other woman was not a woman but a girl, as old as their own kids. Maybe she had been too selfish.

For years she asked herself what she had done wrong. There had to be something. The idea of fault was comforting to her—the idea that perhaps things could have been different if she had fucked him more often or stayed two inches to the left during this argument or that one. Camilla had thought and thought but couldn’t quite figure it out.

Camilla comes in early on Tuesdays. The difference between a hospice and a hospital is that here, one focuses not on cure but on comfort. It is the end of the road, hard stop. And the philosophy is that death should occur with dignity.

Camilla thought about the death of her husband. Head over heels off a cliff. How did that even happen? He never was the best driver, but something about how it ended was especially terrible, even ironic. It made her stomach churn; they had pulled their bodies up from the lake and Camilla was called to identify them. Drenched and cradled into each other, they appeared small, delicate. She had felt like a mother all over again. There was nothing dignified about it. 

Camilla retrieved two buckets, some towels, a sponge, and a bedpan from the closet and made her way over to Mary’s room.  

“Hello,” said Mary. And then she turned back around and continued on with her conversation. 

Camilla watched her, half-tired and half-intrigued. She knew all about dementia, especially this type; her father had had it, descended deep within himself at the age of 70 and began to hear voices and respond to them, spend long stretches of without sleep and then after that, long stretches of time completely under. In her psychology class in college, Camilla learned about hallucinations, about how the brain simply was incapable of recognizing its own creations. It was almost selfish, she remembered thinking. At the end of his life, he had forgotten all about her. She had to feed him with a spoon. 

“Hello Mary,” Camilla paused for a second. “Is it John?”  

“It is John,” said Mary. “We are talking about getting the horses ready.” 

“Horses?” But Mary was 103 years old, and it wasn’t impossible that she had horses when she was younger. And dementia was perhaps the most fundamental regression. One time, she even spoke to Camilla as if she was a young girl, told her about destitution in the only way a little girl could — about how the only toy she had was one dirty plush rabbit, which she loved very much, actually, as much as a little girl could.  

“Stay safe,” said Camilla. “I fell off of one of those once.” 

Mary wasn’t listening. Her attention was elsewhere, pinpointed on someone else.. “I’m very worried. I feel as if I haven’t done enough.” 

Mary was surprisingly lucid, Camilla thought. A conversation like this used to only be an occasional thing, but now Mary was almost entirely gone, glassy-eyed, swept up into nothingness, plaque and tangle.  

When Camilla was younger, she had wanted to be a neuroscientist; she read all about the brain, the dying of cells, the comings and goings of life and of the most scientific aspect of humanity, all concentrated within this mass of cells, of tissue, of system. Her father, an English professor, had found it amusing. 

“Well,” said Camilla, truthfully, “It would be sad to see you go.” 

Mary nodded. “Do you hear that, John?” 

Camilla was suddenly very curious. “What are you talking about?” 

Mary remained on the receiving end of a different conversation. Slowly, she closed her eyes. Embarrassed, Camilla waited for what must have been a minute and then took her buckets, moved closer.

Camilla couldn’t sleep. Her chest tightened, and she tried to imagine it was just fear. Her doctor had told her that it was anxiety, the kind of badness that comes with menopause and life stress, reassured her with the promise of benzodiazepines, but Camilla was filled with doubt. She was approaching old age, and her bones hurt and her breath inside of her lungs felt like something cold and rude. She knew that with every passing day she was getting closer to her father, and this sleeplessness was part of it; she found herself, also, forgetting small aspects of day-to-day life, and it scared her. On one particularly bad night, she once forgot to add the banana to her protein shake. It wasn’t until the next day that she had remembered, and then imagined herself being fed applesauce with a spoon, licking her lips like a child, helpless, somewhere on the fine line between cognizant and senseless.  

Camilla ripped the blankets off and padded to the kitchen, slipperless, barefoot. She wanted to feel the cold of the tile against her feet, even if it would leave them dirty. She poured herself a glass of milk, and then placed it in the microwave for 15 seconds, added a spoonful of honey and spun it around, imagined it melting, stared out into the greater world, blankly. Through the open window, she saw the moon, and the reflection of the light hovered like a phantom against the photograph of her ex-husband and, next to it, The Fool. She felt herself to be wholly and completely alone, but not alone enough. 

Suddenly, from the bathroom, Camilla heard something of a wail, well-situated between two or three softer moans. Camilla walked, slowly, full of fear and something else, which she couldn’t quite name. 

It never occurred for her to turn on the lights. Through the mirror, despite the darkness, she saw the unmistakable form of her husband’s mistress, weeping over the edge of the toilet.  

I guess I am senile, thought Camilla, early onset and still aware enough to see it. And that too, means that I really am dying, she thought. The Hanged Man had lied; either that, or The Fool had shattered everything before it. Her teeth began to chatter. She began to shake. 

The girl didn’t look at her. She was more absorbed within her own sadness to turn around and acknowledge the real living human looking down at her.  

“Is this a dream?” whispered Camilla. “I really hope it’s a dream.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” said the mistress. She seemed real enough. Her hands were blue. She had a bracelet similar to the one that Maia used to wear around her left wrist. On her right hand, she had a small stick-and-poke tattoo of what must have been a heart.  

“Do you know where you are? Do you know who you are to me?” 

“My name,” she was sniffling, “is Ava.” Like an angel, Camilla thought for one soft moment. And then she was suddenly filled with rage. 

“A lot of stuff happened to me here,” said Ava.  

Camilla didn’t want to ask what. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I am dead.”

Camilla didn’t know what to do or say.  

“You know, the theory is that when you see a dead person, you’re going to die soon.”  

“I believe that,” Ava said. Her head perked up, suddenly. “I saw my mother before I died.” 

But it’s always supposed to be someone you love, Camilla thought. And I don’t love you. 

“Do you know what you did?” 

The girl sobbed, nodded her head, sobbed harder. “I was in love,” said Ava. “I wanted to follow him down to the ends of the earth.” 

Well, thought Camilla, that’s exactly what happened. The girl was crying harder and harder. To Camilla, it all looked like one sick joke. She steadied herself against the sink, closed her eyes, took a deep breath. When she opened them again, Ava was gone.

“It’s very hard,” said Mary.

 Camilla approached slowly. The sleeplessness left her feeling un-whole. She forgot to eat breakfast this morning, instead spent a good 50 minutes staring at her shoes, exhausted. It was getting harder, she realized. She couldn’t stop thinking of what had happened years ago, had half, almost-dreams of falling off a cliff and finding herself, splayed out and helpless, at the bottom.

“There’s a lot here,” said Mary. “Yesterday, we had Greek yogurt.” 

The patients did have Greek yogurt yesterday, Camilla thought. Mary didn’t even remember Camilla, but she remembered the taste of Greek yogurt.

 Camilla moved the buckets closer. “I want to be able to taste Greek yogurt for the rest of my life,” said Mary. “Do you remember when we used to buy so much of it, we had no room in the fridge for anything else?” 

Camilla felt like she was walking into something profoundly intimate. She steadied herself on a nearby wall, thought about dignity. Mary paid no mind. She nodded, twice. Camilla began to pack the towels, soap up the sponges. She stood over Mary’s body, began to scrub, softly, over the woman’s fingertips.  

“How does that feel?” Camilla asked. 

Mary did not reply.

 “Mary?” Camilla came closer. The woman’s mouth was propped open, as if she was about to snore, but no sound came out, the airflow suspended like the freezeframe in a movie. Camilla watched carefully, and then dropped her sponges, shook slightly, a spasm. Without much hesitation Mary had died, became merely a body.

Camilla didn’t want to eat or shower. She fell into bed, work clothes still on, and felt sadness press against her upper back.  She furrowed her brows. Sleep didn’t come to her. She kicked her legs up, dejected, threw herself into as many positions as possible. She gave herself whiplash. Her bones ached. She couldn’t breathe.  

On her back, Camilla spent a few good minutes thinking about Maia. She should call, soon. Talk about Mary’s death. She practiced describing it: “She spoke to her husband about Greek yogurt and then, satisfied, left her body.” Camilla knew she couldn’t possibly say this, would instead say “Mary died,” and then wait for the lukewarm response on the other end of the line, but she thought about it as if she would, repeated the sentence a couple times over.

She almost reached for the phone, but it was close to 1 am. She sighed, despondent, and went to the kitchen to write a quick note, stick it on the landline.

 She had forgotten her robe. It was cold. Camilla thought about how she would tell her daughter that she was senile and hallucinating. She felt it was important; one should know in advance before they are to be all on their own.  

Camilla began to write the note. “Mary died. She spoke about Greek yogurt as if it was the most important thing in the world. We take a lot for granted, don’t we?” And then—“I’m getting old and must be dying,” it said. “I must be. I imagined Charlie’s mistress into life. She came up out of the toilet and cried.” Camilla thought for a bit, hesitated, crossed it out.

“I have begun to check my own pulse three times a day,” Camilla wrote. “Morning, Midday, Night.” Now utterly frightening to Camilla was the thought that she was senile and the thought that she was healthy. She checked her pulse now, one finger to the neck, her eyes fluttering closed, momentarily. She always ended up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, an average American. As she did this, somewhere in the distance, the wail of a fire truck began to pass by, and its sound was like a banshee,  remorseful and loud. 

 “I don’t think I really came out of the toilet,” said a voice.

 Camilla opened her mouth in shock. Her pen clattered to the ground. Behind her was Ava. Camilla had to sit down on one of the rickety chairs behind her. It squeaked under her weight. 

There was the brief period of silence. They watched each other. Camilla scratched her arms.

 “Why are you here?”

 “Something pulled me here,” said Ava.

 “Now out of all other times?”

 She didn’t respond and Camilla almost blushed, unsure what else to say.

 “Why did he choose you?” Camilla asked.

 Ava didn’t reply for a minute. “Why do we do anything? I made my own decisions. I take my own consequences.”

 Something twisted inside Camilla. I must really be crazy, she thought. The complete and utter fool.

 “Do you know what is happening to Jeremy?” and then, in the words of Maia— “Do you know what happens to boys without fathers?”

 “No,” said Ava. “I don’t.” Camilla wondered whether this young girl even knew who Jeremy was. They must be the same age now, Camilla thought. She blinked a few times, watched the vision disappear and reappear in front of her, like an image on a static TV set, fringes, iconic memory. 

 “You’re not real,” Camilla said. “I’m just old and senile and losing it.”

 “Maybe,” said Ava. It looked like she herself was not sure.

 Camilla felt herself running away.

She shuttered herself off in her room and hoped not a single being, alive or dead, could see her. It was almost like she was young again, and she was falling asleep on the living room couch, half-drunk and half-nostalgic for something she hadn’t, at the time, tasted yet; dinner almost served, vivid images of love and beauty at the backs of her eyes, time moving like toothpaste, and arms spread out, and she was swimming through it. And then, she cried and cried, felt her soul get loose, like a tooth or fall leaf, and the world spun for what seemed like eternity. The phone may have been ringing. Camilla did not pick it up. She fell asleep.

When it was morning, out of habit, Camilla turned on the kitchen TV. She filled herself: two protein shakes and then an apple. And then, toast. Butter. Another apple.

Camilla put her head in her hands and wanted to cry, but found herself unable. And light streamed in through the window and it was a normal Sunday and,  on the news,  the world moved on. Only one shooting today. One rape. A feature on a boy losing his lucky gloves and then finding them again. A celebrity’s sister was pregnant, too. Another shooting. A grieving mother. A senator is arrested for fraud. A seat opens up. A child molester is sentenced to prison. The missing tiger in Lincoln Park Zoo was found, had been hiding in the enclosure the entire time. Why hadn’t anyone looked there first? Who would have thought.

What else is one to do? The Lincoln Park Zoo is free.

The path to the zoo is gravel. It reminded her of years ago, when she had gone with her children, and the presence of hope and good feeling was still something that could be conjured up easily, like magic. She remembered buying ice cream at a local stand, and lemon-flavored shaved ice for the kids. They weren’t quite so young, then; were firmly in the throes of middle and high school, even, but Camilla had accepted the responsibility of parent more willingly than perhaps any other time in her life. She parked the car. She bought the ice cream and the gift shop items. She laughed at jokes. She told stories.  

It was off the gravel path that Camilla saw the telephone booth.

There are almost no more telephone booths in the world. This must have been the last one. Slowly, one by one the world loses of all of its symbols—or, at the very least, all of its tangible ones.

Camilla, then, felt herself inside one of the world’s last great relics, last breath of the past, felt herself as if stepping inside the hollow of a fresh dinosaur footprint, or something equally ridiculous. Thought to herself, how many people have kissed in here? How many fervent phone calls? Receptions of monumental news?  Of course, most calls were possibly that of the mundane, regular day to day life, but even then, most conversations were about love:  a wife telling her husband that she has just warmed up the soup, will heat up the chicken next; a grandmother telling her grandchild she is going to be sending 20 dollars over, before hanging up the line.

Camilla thought for a couple of seconds, wringing her hands as if she was pulling water out of a sponge. It was only in the faint moment—the barest absence of thought, impulsive space between two cognitions, as sometimes exist, a train just about ready to begin motion—that she picked up the receiver, inserted two coins.

Fear hit her almost immediately.

Camilla was tense for a moment. She may have been shaking a little, but she didn’t know. A streak of light entered through the window and she stood within it, looking outwards, surrounded by ever-moving dust.

“Hello Jeremy,” she said.