England

One day, a walk.

I discovered the jewelry shop on a small, winding street in Miltham, a mile or so up the road from the rehab hospital where Ann was installed. A series of strokes had spit her out as a large, angry doll. Members of Richard’s family were grouped around her bed with its pulleys and wheels, and Ann was staring out sullenly or burbling something no one but Richard’s brother Cam could understand.

I had been with the family for five days. I said to Richard, “I’m going for a walk.” He shot me the look that meant, oy vey. I walked down a road past sheep that looked up with faces I couldn’t read. What a relief. I plucked a tuft of wool from a fence and smelled the lanolin. What a great smell. What a great reason to be alive. In time I arrived at a market town with streets and shops and strangers. In the market town was a jewelry store.

Ann was 61 and weighed more than fourteen stone. Three months ago, she and Cam had been at home when she strung together a chain of mismatched words and was then unable to walk. He called an ambulance. Ann was released from the hospital the next day. The following week she had a second stroke and was released again, only later that day to suffer a third, nearly fatal stroke. Cam was a social worker and was friendly with the hospital staff. He didn’t complain about her care.

I liked Ann. I hardly knew her. She was kind, and I saw her kindness as a small rebellion against her husband’s habit of testing people. Once, at their house, as the brothers were talking in the rhythm of a Ping-Pong match, Ann shot me a look, as if she wanted to ask me a question or slip her arm through mine. I may have imagined it. I saw marriage as a wrong turn. You come to the end of something, and at the corner go left instead of straight ahead, and there you are. Where? The one time I married, I was nineteen, and I hated every minute of it. Not the person I was married to, just the fact of being married. It was like having a chipped tooth and not bothering to get it fixed, and everyone could see. To this day, I don’t know why I got married. It wasn’t as if anyone put a gun to my head. Ann didn’t ask me anything that afternoon. People said she was shy.

In the hospital, her eyes followed Richard and me when we entered her room. Otherwise, she was still. The day I walked to Miltham, she was in a wheelchair, wearing a blue cotton shirt and cropped tan pants with an elastic waistband. Her sandals were fastened with Velcro straps. Her toenails had been clipped. The big toenails were thick and yellow. Did they concern her? Did toenails slip through the net of brain damage, or did they rattle around in there like loose screws? She couldn’t swallow. Every so often, she coughed up strings of saliva Cam dabbed with towels he kept in a plastic bag hooked on her chair.

He said, “Ann says, ‘Hello.’ Ann is happy to see you, aren’t you, Ann?” She grunted, her lips tight, as if she was working out a math problem or a route of escape. She could nod and point and every so often thread together two or three words. Cam said, “Ann, do you remember Laurie?” Ann moved her head in my direction. Sunlight glinted off the railing of her bed.

Later that day, when Richard and I were alone, I said, “Are you going to ask Cam what he thinks about Ann’s care?” He said, “No. I think he’d feel criticized.” We were in Cam’s back garden. It was quiet except for birdsong. The house was at the end of a road that emptied into an open field. In the Arizona desert, where we were living at the time, I felt at the edge of an emptied mind. Richard said, “Even if Cam has doubts, he wouldn’t want to live in your world. In America, the rich get everything, and the poor get nothing. Here, it’s Benthamite. Everyone is treated, and that sometimes means the care isn’t so good. People believe in the national health service, including me.” He leaned forward and smiled. “Of course with type-1 diabetes, I’d be dead by now if I’d stayed.”

Ann was fed through a tube. Cam said she could taste the food when she burped. Today’s flavor was vanilla caramel. He leaned toward her and said, “You like that, don’t you, Ann?”

Richard’s sister Nicky arrived with her husband and son. Ann’s leg began to vibrate, and Cam tried to relax it with his hand. There was a low coffee table in front of Ann’s chair. Cam looked around, as if beginning a show, and threw a ball onto the table. It bounced, and Ann darted out a hand and caught it—a cat getting a fly with its paw. Otherwise, she didn’t move, and she didn’t react to having caught the ball. Cam said, “Well done, Ann.” Nicky drew her hands to her chest and said, “Oh my, very good, Ann.”

Next, Cam set a board before Ann with wooden letters from a Scrabble game and began composing a sentence, hoping Ann would respond with a message of her own. At the sight of the board, Ann burst into tears, and I could see she was somewhere, even if it was a place she would never be able to leave.

There was a photo album in the room. Several pictures were of a tall, slender woman in a miniskirt with shapely legs and a wide-brimmed hat. She wasn’t smiling as she rushed along, her hair falling past her shoulders. It was Ann on her wedding day, and she looked like a runaway bride, moving toward something or away from something. Cam had long hair and wore pointy, black boots. In one shot, he’s a few paces ahead of his bride-to-be, and he looks like a rocker in a local band with aspirations and a surly attitude. The image had the grainy feel of newsprint. The caption might have read: “They don’t know the power of their beauty.”

In the jewelry store, I was looking for a ring. It was always in my mind, a deco ring with a central diamond and four smaller diamonds on either side. A ring that had belonged to my mother and had been promised to me, except it was stolen from her hospital room before she died. The store was about to close. It was a town where shops closed at five, a small English town with an elegant jewelry store.

I spotted a ring in the fading light. Did I notice the diamond had a flaw, a crooked streak below the surface? Did the saleswoman point this out? She was slender and pretty in a chic, navy suit. A white streak in her hair waved back from her temple. I slipped the ring on my finger, a gleaming, gold Edwardian ring with markings inside the band, a gold band with an old mine diamond in the center and two small sapphires on either side. I slipped it on and off my hand a dozen times, turning it this way and that and looking at myself in a mirror. Whose ring is this? Could I snap out a paw and just take it?

I left the jewelry store and went to the café where I’d agreed to meet the others. They were there when I arrived, and I took a seat between Richard and Cam. They asked where I’d been, and I said I’d walked around. The ring was in a box in my bag, in a black box that fit inside my black heart.

Cam ordered a teacake and crinkled his eyes at the waitress. She wore dangling, silver earrings that peeked out of her dark hair. When she leaned forward, you could see her cleavage in the V of her vest. You could see Ann on her wedding day, a little rock-and-roll, a little punk. Cam nodded cheerfully when she delivered the cake. He was missing a tooth. Would he replace it in his new life? He buttered the teacake, whispering to me, “You can’t have a bite.”

A man wakes up as he has for 64 years, and he greets his wife with cool lips on a round cheek. They speak about the weather and groceries they need, and he pours her a cup of tea and places a soft bread roll on a plate and removes butter from the fridge. After breakfast, she gets ready to drive to the market. She’s wearing trousers and a jacket, and she can’t speak. He sees a window open and a bird fly out. The bird is her mind, and she’s not coming back. He feels set free, and he hates himself. He feels alone, and he misses his wife.

At the café, Cam said he was looking forward to Ann’s return home. He had renovated the house for her wheelchair. They would sleep apart, and he would listen for her coughs through a baby monitor. Aides would help him wash and dress her in the morning and put her to bed at night. He had bought a new washing machine to keep up with the laundry. Ann was doubly incontinent. I wished someone would say to him, “Go ahead and cry, Cam, or shout your head off, or shut your eyes and sleep for a month.” I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my place. Cam said, “She’s strong. She could live another four or five years.”

She didn’t live another four or five years. She lived another thirteen years in exactly this state.

After leaving the café, Richard and I returned to Nicky’s house, where we were staying, and I showed him the ring. We were on the bed. He said, “Why did you buy it?” I said, “It was an impulse.” He said, “You never buy on impulse.” I said, “I buy everything on impulse.” He said, “What I’m saying is, why did you wander off and buy yourself a big fat present when Ann may be dying?” I said, “I don’t know.” I didn’t know any more about why I’d bought the ring than I knew why I’d married at nineteen. Maybe I’d done both for the same reasons.

Richard said, “You left me.” I said, “I know.” I wasn’t sorry. He said, “People here stay together as a family. That’s what families do.” I took his hand. The ring glittered in the light of the bedside lamp. I didn’t want to be part of a family in this way. I didn’t want us to be married. I said, “Maybe you’re wondering what you’re doing with someone who could buy an expensive ring in the middle of a medical crisis.” He said, “I’m not. I’m perfectly aware of who you are.”

I held out the ring and said, “Do you think it’s pretty?” He took off his glasses and squinted, turning my hand. He said, “There’s a flaw in the diamond, look, a little crack.” He scratched at it with his nail, and for a moment I thought he could damage it. I looked at the ring, and I could see the flaw, too, although the diamond still sparkled in its antique setting.

I said, “But do you like the design?” In the store, I’d pretended I was spending dollars instead of pounds. I said, “Do you think it’s worth the money?” He said, “I don’t know it’s worth.” I said, “I keep thinking about my mother’s ring.” He said, “I wish you would let it go. It was just a ring.” And then it was hard to catch my breath. I had a sensation of falling through space, and I wondered if that was how Ann felt all the time.

Once when we visited her in the hospital, the brothers left her room, and I stayed with her. Her hands were by her sides, and I took one in my hand, and she pressed back a little. I rubbed a finger over her fingers in a secret way, and it reminded me of squeezing my mother’s hand as a child, squeezing in little pulse beats as we crossed the street. Ann coughed and spat up saliva, and I couldn’t find a towel in Cam’s bag. I got some Kleenex from my backpack and wiped her face and neck. My fingers got wet. I let them dry in the air, and there we were, travelers who meet on a train or in a hotel and strike up a conversation until the afternoon has become night.

                                                                         

*************************

Three years later, on another visit to England, Ann was no better and no worse. She was living at home with Cam, and his steadfastness, or holding pattern, or whatever you wanted to call it gave off a kind of light. If a person is there, it’s clear. If you are with a vegetable, that is obvious, too. Ann occupied a third space. Her eyes followed you as she sat in her chair. How did you determine who was inside? Maybe she wasn’t Ann, but she was someone.

Richard tried to like the ring, but each time I wore it he mentioned the flaw. Back in the States, we were separated for a few weeks, and I was visiting friends in upstate New York when I entered another jewelry store. Behind a little Victorian desk sat a slender sylph with light brown hair and the palest skin I had ever seen. I felt I could see through her and that she could see through me, and I wanted the moment to freeze so I would learn nothing that would divert the delight flowing through me. I was wearing the ring. She took my hand and said, “That’s lovely.” I said, “The diamond is flawed.”

She asked if she could look at it through her glass. I took it off, and she inspected it and said, “Old mine diamonds of this sort are rare. The setting is beautiful, and the gold and sapphires are very good.” I asked if she could sell it for me. She said she could. I told her what I had paid, and she smiled and said, “I can get three times that amount.” I liked that she knew about jewelry and that I didn’t have to know what she knew as long as I trusted her. I told her how I had come to buy the ring and how I had come to feel regret about it. She said, “The ring has had a life before you, and it will have another life after you. It will stay with me for a while, and then we will send it on its way.”

And that is what happened, and the sylph and I became friends, and when I think of the ring I see her hazel eyes, and I remember asking her how she decided to study gems and value old things, and instead of answering she said, “People come into my shop all the time and they look in the cases, but you looked at me.” I said, “You looked like someone who could break a spell.”

The Next Zoom Conversation on Writing Craft is on Saturday MARCH 23 from 3 to 4 EST.

The Zoom gatherings have been great fun, and a smart and lively community of writers and readers has formed. Please jump in! Each time, Richard and I focus on several specific craft and form elements in creative writing, and everyone who signs up is invited to send ahead a specific question about their writing practice and projects. One topic we’re considering for the next session is: How to write about painful circumstances without saying “ouch,” so the reader isn’t asked directly to extend sympathy or other emotions to the narrator. How can pain become a subject rather than an emotional re-enactment, and what does the reader gain?

To RSVP for the next Zoom, you’ll need to become a paid subscriber at either the monthly or annual rate, if you are not, and you’ll need to email me at: lauriestone@substack.com. I will confirm your place on the list in an email. If you don’t receive an email from me, it means I haven’t received your RSVP, and you’ll need to message me on Substack or elsewhere. Substack emails sometimes go missing. Links to the Zooms go out a few days before the event.

The next writing workshop with a limit of 8 people is on Saturday APRIL 20 from 3 to 5:30 EST.

Last weekend, Richard and I launched the first two Zoom writing workshops, and they were extremely warm and free. These are small Zoom gatherings, where we begin with a discussion of several concrete writing approaches. Next, we all write together in real time to a set of surprise prompts. We reassemble to read our pieces in slam fashion, and then everyone offers supportive feedback to the others. Together, as a group, we create a one-time, collaborative performance! Each writer produces a new piece to advance further, and together we make something larger and more mysterious than the sum of the parts.

The fee for a workshop is $50 to be paid by Venmo, Zelle, or by check. To come to a workshop, you DON’T have to be a paid subscriber to the stack. To RSVP for the April 20 workshop, please email me at: lauriestone@substack.com. Again, please make sure you receive a confirmation email from me to be sure I received yours. You don’t have to pay at that point. I’ll let you know when payment is due.

For prompty people!

Here are some prompts to play with. These are for your enjoyment. Please don’t post your experiments in comments here. You are welcome to post them in the CHAT function on Substack!

Write about a time you or a character allowed yourself to be swept away into someone else's plan or enthusiasm.

What about a time when a physical sensation in your body made you feel connected to another person.

Write about a moment when you understood you were in a culture that was "foreign."

Visual prompt in this photo by Vivian Maier.

.

There are three buttons at the bottom of every post: “like,” “share,” and “comment.” Your involvement attracts subscribers! And I love your comments on the craft and content of the pieces.

I deeply appreciate everything your engagement has given me.