passersby.
The beggar woman carried the stick for weeks and months. It did not fill her pockets with coins, or put an eiderdown on her cot, or crowd her larder with sweetmeats and fruit. So, finally, telling herself that she was not a cripple, she stopped walking with the stick. Hating to look at it, she took it outside her hut and left it leaning against the rough boards.
In a later season there came a restoring rain after an extended drought. Dust was washed from the oaks and cedars, pools filled, street gutters ran with the sound of mountain streams. The dry wash flooded. Fields, lately despaired of, turned green.
After the last shower, the beggar woman walked out of her house and saw the stick. At the top, leaves were pushing out of the wood. Buds were beginning to swell along its length. She left it against the wall but examined it every day. When flowers came, she started to carry the stick again.
Amazed by this phenomenon, the townspeople approached her with alms, the baker gave her bread, the weaver a robe patterned in royal colors, blue, scarlet, gold. Her stick blossomed in perpetual springtime, lilacs crowding lilies, violets edging primroses.
One summer morning, not long after sunrise, the beggar woman went once more to the house of the magician. She knocked, and he answered.
“Look at my stick,” said the beggar woman.
“Yes,” said the magician.
2
Carnations
She reaches through her invisible shield and takes lamb chops from the freezer and a bag of fresh spinach from the lettuce drawer.
She once read an article about a baby born without resistance to even the mildest threat of infection. A speck of dust, a draft, a breath, could kill the child. He lived with his sterilized blocks and balls in a plastic tent. The gloved hands of doctors, nurses, and his mother entered through hidden openings in the transparent walls to examine, feed, clean, and hold him, aseptically. He was fourteen months old when the account was written.
Ann Randall lives in such a protective bubble, but not alone. She lives with herself. They no longer speak. She can’t remember being shut away. Life, like a subway train, simply began to recede, taking the people she knew out of earshot. Either they have stopped listening or she has forgotten the words. In the case of Elliot, her husband, she is out of sight and sound. His eyes focus behind her and his voice is directed to one side. His arms do not reach through the unseen walls.
Now she hurriedly unwraps the chops and puts them in a pan to thaw. She runs cold water in the sink to cover the spinach. She picks up her bag and car keys in the hall, latches the door behind her, and runs down the steps. She will be late for the hairdresser. The image of Joseph, courteously containing his annoyance, rises before her. She has the last afternoon appointment. He will have to stay until six.
Backing out of the garage, she finds no reason or excuse for the delay. She has had either too much or not enough time.
In spite of the hour, she stops next to the mailbox, which is half buried in shrubbery near the sidewalk, and opens it without leaving the car. She puts a few envelopes and a magazine on the front seat. There are two bills, an announcement of a sale, a letter to Elliot from his brother, and a message to occupant. And one more envelope, unstamped. A large printed word, PRIVATE, has been cut out of some publication and pasted on. Below it is the smaller word “Mrs.” She imagines that a neighbor’s child has left it for her. With her foot on the brake, she opens it and takes out a single sheet of paper folded once.
your husband has been cheating on you
how do you like that you holy snob
why don’t you give it to him you know where
a friend
All the words were clipped from newspapers or magazines except “cheating” and “snob,” which have been printed by hand, in black ink.
The plastic bubble explodes. Part of Ann shifts gears and directs the car toward the freeway. The