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After that, I fell. Time became as elastic as rubber for me. Pot and ’ludes dulled my mind and stripped me of my ability to care about anything. I spent the next six years in communes and on painted-up school buses and hitchhiking by the side of the road. Mostly I was too high to even know where I was. I made it to San Francisco. The epicenter. Sex. Drugs. Rock ’n’ roll. Jimi at the Fillmore. Joan and Bob at the Avalon. I don’t remember anything much … until one day in 1970, when I looked out the van’s dirty window on the way to a peace rally and saw the Space Needle.
I didn’t even know we’d left California. I yelled out, Wait! My kid lives near here.
When we parked in front of my mother’s house, I knew I shouldn’t get out of the car. You were better off without me, but I was too high to care.
I stumbled out of the van and pot smoke tumbled out with me, circling me, protecting me. I went up to the front door and knocked hard. Then I tried to stand still. The effort was such a failure that I couldn’t help laughing. I was so stoned, I—
September 3, 2010
6:15 P. M.
Beeeeep …
The noise sliced through Dorothy’s memories, brought her back to the present. She’d been so deep in her story that it took her a moment to clear her head. An alarm was sounding.
She lurched to her feet.
“Help!” she screamed. “Someone get in here! Please. I think her heart is stopping. Please! Now! Someone save my daughter!”
* * *
The brightness around me is gorgeous; like lying inside of a star. Beside me, I hear Katie breathing. Lavender scents the night air. “She’s there … here,” I say, awed, by the very idea that my mother would come to see me.
I am listening to her voice, trying to make sense of her words. There’s something about a picture, and a word—querida—that doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense, actually. It’s sounds and pauses jumbled together. A voice that is both forgotten and etched into my very soul.
Then I hear something else. A noise that doesn’t belong in this beautiful place. A beep.
No, a drone. An airplane high in the sky … or a mosquito buzzing by my ear.
I hear a scuffing sound. People walking on thick-soled shoes. A door clicking shut.
But there is no door. Is there?
Maybe.
An alarm goes off, blaring.
“Katie?”
I look sideways and see that I am alone. I shiver with an unexpected cold. What’s wrong? Something is changing …
I concentrate hard, will myself to see where I really am—I know I’m in that hospital room, hooked up to life support. A grid engraves itself into existence above me. Acoustical tiles. A white ceiling, pocked with gray pinholes. Rough. Like a pumice stone or old concrete.
And suddenly I’m back in my body. I’m in a narrow bed, with metal railings that undulate like eels, flashing silver as they move. I see my mother beside me. She is screaming something about her daughter—me—and then she is stumbling away. Nurses and doctors rush in and push her aside.
The machines go silent all at once and look expectantly at me, their anthropomorphic forms straightening. They whisper among themselves, but I can’t make out their words. A green line moves across a black, square face, smiling and frowning, beeping. Beside me, something whooshes and thunks.
Pain explodes in my chest, coming so fast I don’t even have time to yell for Kate.
Then the green line goes flat.
Twenty-three
September 3, 2010
6:26 P. M.
“She’s dead. Why are we still here?”
