Woman on the Edge of Time

She could never guess when Dolly would appear. A couple of times her niece promised she was coming and never showed up, and then without warning she sailed in, bright as a parakeet, sharply dressed in something new with her hair that gaudy red, her sunglasses on, her hands wet with the perspiration of speed. The staff encouraged Dolly to come because Connie talked to her. Dolly slipped her money but would not bring Nita. When she asked about Nita, Dolly’s answers were vague. “She’s doing all right, all right. Just fine.”

Nita’s birthday approached, the fifteenth of October. Connie begged Dolly to buy a present for her. Something preciosa. Pretty little slippers with bunnies, a soft animal with plush fur. Dolly promised, but Connie had no way to pin her down. The next time Dolly flashed in, she said Nita had had a lovely birthday. Mamá had given her a party with a cake with candles and ice cream. So Carmel still had Nita.

Connie’s tongue spoke before she could stop herself. “Dolly, it’s you who needs Nita. Sure, your mamá takes good care. But you need her with you. Without her, you don’t love yourself. You use yourself like a rag to wipe up the streets. You turn your body to money, and the money to the buzzing of death in your head.”

“I’m doing fine, Connie, real fine. Listen, Daddy and Adele say they’re coming to see you. How about that?”

“Sin duda. The day it rains money on Harlem.”

“Fíjate, I brought you some perfume. And here’s for you to get some coffee, a little something from the canteen.” Dolly kissed her cheek and pressed a wadded-up five into her palm. “Smell the perfume, it’s the real thing. Arpege cologne. Nice, huh? It came in a set with the perfume. Splash some on now. Nice? You smell like a rose. I kept the perfume, you couldn’t hold cm to it here, the staff would swipe it A john gave it to me. He has a drugstore in Teaneck, he says he’s the manager.”

“Dolly, you’re so thin. Do you eat at all?”

“You lost weight too. The both of us. With your hair done where I get mine, you’ll look ten years younger, Connie. I’ll treat you to it when you get out Very short hair is in. I make money hand over fist now, you’ll see. You like the Arpege? It’s good to be thin, it’s chic” She pronounced it “cheek.” “When you get out, you’ll be all better and you’ll get yourself a man in no time. But that wig is ratty! How come they give you such a stupid wig? I’ll get you a good one, human hair.”

“Dolly, don’t fuss about the wig. Please get me out of here! Let me come and visit you.”

“Okay, Connie, not to worry. You’ll look great I’ll send you to my hairdresser. It’s good you lost weight, and without taking pills even! But that wig, it makes you look like a jíbara! I’ll get you a better wig so you won’t be ashamed.” Dolly kissed her. “I had something to give you. What was it? Some perfume …”

Her arms where Dolly had splashed the cologne smelled like her old caseworker, Mrs. Polcari. One case unloaded. Maybe she had had a bit of a crush on Mrs. Polcari, at the same time that she resented her youth at the age they shared, her job, her money, her home, her children, her air of being gently but firmly at all times right. She felt sophisticated thinking so about her caseworker; Luciente’s influence. Maybe she had wanted to eat Mrs. Polcari with a long spoon, like an ice cream sundae, a pineapple sundae with whipped cream and a cherry. Back in her life before they had made her their monster.

Suppose they said she could trade lives? But who would want hers? Only somebody like Dr. Redding would buy her at auction, cheap by the dozen along with five thousand chimpanzees. Now she was a chimp who smelled of Arpege. Probably the cologne would be stolen. In spite of this being a locked ward, people went in and out all day—doctors and researchers besides the staff, orderlies and aides, volunteers who filtered through the whole hospital, students, graduate students, residents, interns, the chief resident, Argent’s assistant director of research, patients’ visitors, technicians, even a patient from another ward who flitted in to sputter quickly to Tina that she was dying of cancer but nobody would believe it.