Woman on the Edge of Time

Miss Moynihan was going to use the second room, with the ten‑track machine on her today. Connie was so used to the routine by now she sat docile as at a beauty parlor while Miss Moynihan combed apart what little hair she had and marked her targets, used the jelly and the tape to glue the electrodes on, then slapped a gauze pad over. The wires led off to the chart on a machine near her head as she lay down and Miss Moynihan slid a rolled‑up towel under her neck. Then Miss Moynihan turned the lights very dim. She had a patter she used that was supposed to relax the patients. “Now, here we go today. You’re an old hand at this by now. Just relax. But don’t you go to sleep on me. Just relax and get a little beauty rest … .”

Miss Moynihan sat outside the cubicle at the machine, whose ten pens scribbled away as the accordion piles of paper raced out from the face covered with dials. Miss Moynihan spoke in a carefully flat tone to her. “Close your eyes … . Open your mouth slightly … . Open your eyes … .” As the pens rushed on, she wrote obscure notations that always made Connie terribly suspicious.

She had her favorite fantasy as she lay there. Miss Moynihan would be called away. She would be called to the phone. A family emergency. Did she have a family? Yes, patient gossip had it that her mother was dead, her father worked for the subway, her older brother was a building inspector, and her younger brother was still in school … . “Try not to move your eyes so much or I’ll have to tape them. Relax. Open your mouth again slightly and keep it that way.”

Miss Moynihan would be called to the phone and she would sit up at once, pull the electrodes off, and quietly walk past the two desks in the outer room, where sometimes a woman sat and sometimes no one at all, turn right, and bolt down the stairway at the end of the hall. She could see herself doing that again and again … . “Try to relax, Mrs. Ramos. Just let yourself go. Relax.”

She would walk south to Harlem through the beautiful clean rain. Miss Moynihan’s father could not stand Acker, the patients said. Romeo and Juliet A doomed romance. Miss Moynihan had beautiful soft gray eyes, in which everything seemed to dissolve. She bustled about, efficient, hard, bouncy, but in her eyes chaos swirled. Connie decided Miss Moynihan was hoping to get pregnant. With so many beds in a hospital, it must be easy for them to make love … . Miss Moynihan tapped on the machine, hard taps, as if she could read her mind. They tapped that way sometimes. She never understood why. Did Miss Moynihan think she was falling asleep? Suppose she suddenly went over to Mattapoisett–what would Miss Moynihan’s machine show? Was Luciente dead? Why did she never feel her anymore?

It was the week before Thanksgiving. Captain Cream had had the final operation and sat about with a bandage on his head. He had to be dressed and he ate so slowly he drove Tony wild. He ate almost as much as Alice. Connie had the feeling, watching him, that he would go on eating all day at the same maddeningly slow rate as long as they stuck food in front of him. He would go on doing whatever he was started doing. If he was taken to the toilet, he would sit there until somebody remembered to fetch him off. Alice slumped in the lounge, withdrawn and creepy. Orville, with an implant, made jokes no one else found funny and giggled all day. Alvin called them the three stooges, but he did not seem to find that funny himself. Alvin was scheduled for surgery the next Monday, along with Miss Green. He would have been done already, but Dr. Redding had won his invitation to Dr. Argent’s hunting lodge, and took off a long weekend.

Connie worked at being a model patient. She did jigsaw puzzles, she watched television, she entered all conversations, she asked advice and agreed, she kept her wig straight on her itchy scalp and tended it like a prize poodle. She volunteered and volunteered. She was ward housewife. Next time she asked she got permission easily to call her brother.

The line was longer, everyone with the same problem, whining, begging, trying to charm. Only one thought fizzled through the whole spacy line. When she got to the phone, the damn number was busy. By the time she got back near the head again, it was lights out.

The next night, after an hour and ten minute wait, she got through. “Lewis, it’s me, Connie, again. I was just wondering about Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah, maybe Christmas. How’re you doing?”

“The doctor says I’m better–did you talk to him? What’s wrong with Thanksgiving? Christmas is so far away.” By Christmas she’d be operated on. “Remember, I was going to help Adele cook and clean and get ready for your party? Please. Lewis, please!”

“You’ve never proved much of a worker, Connie. There’s a lot of work to do. We’d probably do better having the cleaning woman put in an extra day.”