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Kate always sent her mother a card on Valentine’s Day. She timed the mails from wherever she was so that the cards arrived on February 14th. Her parents had celebrated the day in some small fashion, and since her father’s death six years before, Kate made a gesture of compensatory remembrance. At first, she made the cards herself: collage and pressed grasses on construction paper sewn in fabric. Now she settled for art reproductions, glossy cards with blank insides. Kate wrote in them with colored inks, “You have always been my Valentine,” or simply “Hey, take care of yourself.” She might enclose a present as well, something small enough to fit into an envelope; a sachet, a perfumed soap, a funny tintype of a prune-faced man in a bowler hat.

This time, she forgot. Despite the garish displays of paper cupids and heart-shaped boxes in drugstore windows, she let the day nearly approach before remembering. It was too late to send anything in the mail. She called her mother long-distance at night when the rates were low.

“Mom? How are you?”

“It’s you! How are you?” Her mother’s voice grew suddenly brighter; Kate recognized a tone reserved for welcome company. Sometimes it took a while to warm up.

“I’m fine,” answered Kate. “What have you been doing?”

“Well, actually I was trying to sleep.”

“Sleep? You should be out setting the old hometown on fire.”

“The old hometown can burn up without me tonight.”

“Really? What’s going on?”

“I’m running in-service training sessions for the primary teachers.” Kate’s mother was a school superintendent. “They’re driving me batty. You’d think their brains were rubber.”

“They are,” Kate said. “Or you wouldn’t have to train them. Think of them as a salvation, they create a need for your job.”

“Some salvation. Besides, your logic is ridiculous. Just because someone needs training doesn’t mean they’re stupid.”

“I’m just kidding. But I’m stupid. I forgot to send you a Valentine’s card.”

“You did? That’s bad. I’m trained to receive one. They bring me luck.”

“You’re receiving a phone call instead,” Kate said. “Won’t that do?”

“Of course,” said her mother, “but this is costing you money. Tell me quick, how are you?”

“Oh, you know. Doctoral pursuits. Doing my student trip, grooving with the professors.”

“The professors? You’d better watch yourself.”

“It’s a joke, Mom, a joke. But what about you? Any men on the horizon?”

“No, not really. A married salesman or two asking me to dinner when they come through the office. Thank heavens I never let those things get started.”

“You should do what you want to,” Kate said.

“Sure,” said her mother. “And where would I be then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Venezuela.”

“They don’t even have plumbing in Venezuela.”

“Yes, but their sunsets are perfect, and the villages are full of dark passionate men in blousy shirts.”

“That’s your department, not mine.”

“Ha,” Kate said, “I wish it were my department. Sounds a lot more exciting than teaching undergraduates.”

Her mother laughed. “Be careful,” she said. “You’ll get what you want. End up sweeping a dirt floor with a squawling baby around your neck.”

“A dark baby,” Kate said, “to stir up the family blood.”

“Nothing would surprise me,” her mother said as the line went fuzzy. Her voice was submerged in static, then surfaced. “Listen,” she was saying. “Write to me. You seem so far away.”

They hung up and Kate sat watching the windows of the neighboring house. The curtains were transparent and flowered and none of them matched. Silhouettes of the window frames spread across them like single dark bars. Her mother’s curtains were all the same, white cotton hemmed with a ruffle, tiebacks blousing the cloth into identical shapes. From the street it looked as if the house was always in order.

Kate made a cup of strong Chinese tea, turned the lights off, and sat holding the warm cup in the dark. Her mother kept no real tea in the house, just packets of instant diabetic mixture that tasted of chemical sweetener and had a bitter aftertaste.

The packets sat on the shelf next to her mother’s miniature scales. The scales were white. Kate saw clearly the face of the metal dial on the front, its markings and trembling needle. Her mother weighed portions of food for meals: frozen broccoli, slices of plastic-wrapped Kraft cheese, careful chunks of roast beef. A dog-eared copy of The Diabetic Diet had remained propped against the salt shaker for the last two years.

Kate rubbed her forehead. Often at night she had headaches. Sometimes she wondered if there were an agent in her body, a secret in her blood making ready to work against her.

The phone blared repeatedly, careening into her sleep. Kate scrambled out of bed, naked and cold, stumbling, before she recognized the striped wallpaper of her bedroom and realized the phone was right there on the bedside table, as always. She picked up the receiver.

“Kate?” said her brother’s voice. “It’s Robert. Mom is in the hospital. They don’t know what’s wrong but she’s in for tests.”

“Tests? What’s happened? I just talked to her last night.”

“I’m not sure. She called the neighbors and they took her to the emergency room around dawn.” Robert’s voice still had that slight twang Kate knew was disappearing from her own. He would be calling from his insurance office, nine o’clock their time, in his thick glasses and wide, perfectly knotted tie. He was a member of the million-dollar club and his picture, tiny, the size of a postage stamp, appeared in the Mutual of Omaha magazine. His voice seemed small too over the distance. Kate felt heavy and dulled. She would never make much money, and recently she had begun wearing make-up again, waking in smeared mascara as she had in high school.

“Is Mom all right?” she managed now. “How serious is it?”

“They’re not sure,” Robert said. “Her doctor thinks it could have been any of several things, but they’re doing X rays.”

“Her doctor thinks? Doesn’t he know? Get her to someone else. There aren’t any doctors in that one-horse town.”

“I don’t know about that,” Robert said defensively. “Anyway, I can’t force her. You know how she is about money.”

“Money? She could have a stroke and drop dead while her doctor wonders what’s wrong.”

“Doesn’t matter. You know you can’t tell her what to do.”

“Could I call her somehow?”

“No, not yet. And don’t get her all worried. She’s been scared enough as it is. I’ll tell her what you said about getting another opinion, and I’ll call you back in a few hours when I have some news. Meanwhile, she’s all right, do you hear?”

The line went dead with a click and Kate walked to the bathroom to wash her face. She splashed her eyes and felt guilty about the Valentine’s card. Slogans danced in her head like reprimands. For A Special One. Dearest Mother. My Best Friend. Despite Robert, after breakfast she would call the hospital.

She sat a long time with her coffee, waiting for minutes to pass, considering how many meals she and her mother ate alone. Similar times of day, hundreds of miles apart. Women by themselves. The last person Kate had eaten breakfast with had been someone she’d met in a bar. He was passing through town. He liked his fried eggs gelatinized in the center, only slightly runny, and Kate had studiously looked away as he ate. The night before he’d looked down from above her as he finished and she still moved under him. “You’re still wanting,” he’d said. “That’s nice.” Mornings now, Kate saw her own face in the mirror and was glad she’d forgotten his name. When she looked at her reflection from the side, she saw a faint etching of lines beside her mouth. She hadn’t slept with anyone for five weeks, and the skin beneath her eyes had taken on a creamy darkness.

She reached for the phone but drew back. It seemed bad luck to ask for news, to push toward whatever was coming as though she had no respect for it.

Standing in the kitchen last summer, her mother had stirred gravy and argued with her.

“I’m thinking of your own good, not mine,” she’d said. “Think of what you put yourself through. And how can you feel right about it? You were born here, I don’t care what you say.” Her voice broke and she looked, perplexed, at the broth in the pan.

“But, hypothetically,” Kate continued, her own voice unaccountably shaking, “if I’m willing to endure whatever I have to, do you have a right to object? You’re my mother. You’re supposed to defend my choices.”

“You’ll have enough trouble without choosing more for yourself. Using birth control that’ll ruin your insides, moving from one place to another. I can’t defend your choices. I can’t even defend myself against you.” She wiped her eyes on a napkin.

“Why do you have to make me feel so guilty?” Kate said, fighting tears of frustration. “I’m not attacking you.”

“You’re not? Then who are you talking to?”

“Oh Mom, give me a break.”

“I’ve tried to give you more than that,” her mother said. “I know what your choices are saying to me.” She set the steaming gravy off the stove. “You may feel very differently later on. It’s just a shame I won’t be around to see it.”

“Oh? Where will you be?”

“Floating around on a fleecy cloud.”

Kate got up to set the table before she realized her mother had already done it.

The days went by. They’d gone shopping before Kate left. Standing at the cash register in an antique shop on Main Street, they bought each other pewter candle holders. “A souvenir,” her mother said. “A reminder to always be nice to yourself. If you live alone you should eat by candlelight.”

“Listen,” Kate said, “I eat in a heart-shaped tub with bubbles to my chin. I sleep on satin sheets and my mattress has a built-in massage engine. My overnight guests are impressed. You don’t have to tell me about the solitary pleasures.”

They laughed and touched hands.

“Well,” her mother said. “If you like yourself, I must have done something right.”

Robert didn’t phone until evening. His voice was fatigued and thin. “I’ve moved her to the university hospital,” he said. “They can’t deal with it at home.”

Kate waited, saying nothing. She concentrated on the toes of her shoes. They needed shining. You never take care of anything, her mother would say.

“She has a tumor in her head.” He said it firmly, as though Kate might challenge him.

“I’ll take a plane tomorrow morning,” Kate answered, “I’ll be there by noon.”

Robert exhaled. “Look,” he said, “don’t even come back here unless you can keep your mouth shut and do it my way.”

“Get to the point.”

“The point is they believe she has a malignancy and we’re not going to tell her. I almost didn’t tell you.” His voice faltered. “They’re going to operate but if they find what they’re expecting, they don’t think they can stop it.”

For a moment there was no sound except an oceanic vibration of distance on the wire. Even that sound grew still. Robert breathed. Kate could almost see him, in a booth at the hospital, staring straight ahead at the plastic instructions screwed to the narrow rectangular body of the telephone. It seemed to her that she was hurtling toward him.

“I’ll do it your way,” she said.

The hospital cafeteria was a large room full of orange Formica tables. Its southern wall was glass. Across the highway, Kate saw a small park modestly dotted with amusement rides and bordered by a narrow band of river. How odd, to build a children’s park across from a medical center. The sight was pleasant in a cruel way. The rolling lawn of the little park was perfectly, relentlessly green.

Robert sat down. Their mother was to have surgery in two days.

“After it’s over,” he said, “they’re not certain what will happen. The tumor is in a bad place. There may be some paralysis.”

“What kind of paralysis?” Kate said. She watched him twist the green-edged coffee cup around and around on its saucer.

“Facial. And maybe worse.”

“You’ve told her this?”

He didn’t answer.

“Robert, what is she going to think if she wakes up and—”

He leaned forward, grasping the cup and speaking through clenched teeth. “Don’t you think I thought of that?” He gripped the sides of the table and the cup rolled onto the carpeted floor with a dull thud. He seemed ready to throw the table after it, then grabbed Kate’s wrists and squeezed them hard.

“You didn’t drive her here,” he said. “She was so scared she couldn’t talk. How much do you want to hand her at once?”

Kate watched the cup sitting solidly on the nubby carpet.

“We’ve told her it’s benign,” Robert said, “that the surgery will cause complications, but she can learn back whatever is lost.”

Kate looked at him. “Is that true?”

“They hope so.”

“We’re lying to her, all of us, more and more.” Kate pulled her hands away and Robert touched her shoulder.

“What do you want to tell her, Kate? ‘You’re fifty-five and you’re done for’?”

She stiffened. “Why put her through the operation at all?”

He sat back and dropped his arms, lowering his head. “Because without it she’d be in bad pain. Soon.” They were silent, then he looked up. “And anyway,” he said softly, “we don’t know, do we? She may have a better chance than they think.”

Kate put her hands on her face. Behind her closed eyes she saw a succession of blocks tumbling over.

They took the elevator up to the hospital room. They were alone and they stood close together. Above the door red numerals lit up, flashing. Behind the illuminated shapes droned an impersonal hum of machinery.

Then the doors opened with a sucking sound. Three nurses stood waiting with a lunch cart, identical covered trays stacked in tiers. There was a hot bland smell, like warm cardboard. One of the women caught the thick steel door with her arm and smiled. Kate looked quickly at their rubber-soled shoes. White polish, the kind that rubs off. And their legs seemed only white shapes, boneless and two-dimensional, stepping silently into the metal cage.

She looked smaller in the white bed. The chrome side rails were pulled up and she seemed powerless behind them, her dark hair pushed back from her face and her forearms delicate in the baggy hospital gown. Her eyes were different in some nearly imperceptible way; she held them wider, they were shiny with a veiled wetness. For a moment the room seemed empty of all else; there were only her eyes and the dark blossoms of the flowers on the table beside her. Red roses with pine. Everyone had sent the same thing.

Robert walked close to the bed with his hands clasped behind his back, as though afraid to touch. “Where did all the flowers come from?” he asked.

“From school, and the neighbors. And Katie.” She smiled.

“FTD,” Kate said. “Before I left home. I felt so bad for not being here all along.”

“That’s silly,” said their mother. “You can hardly sit at home and wait for some problem to arise.”

“Speaking of problems,” Robert said, “the doctor tells me you’re not eating. Do I have to urge you a little?” He sat down on the edge of the bed and shook the silverware from its paper sleeve.

Kate touched the plastic tray. “Jell-O and canned cream of chicken soup. Looks great. We should have brought you something.”

“They don’t want us to bring her anything,” Robert said. “This is a hospital. And I’m sure your comments make her lunch seem even more appetizing.”

“I’ll eat it!” said their mother in mock dismay. “Admit they sent you in here to stage a battle until I gave in.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “He’s right.”

Robert grinned. “Did you hear that? She says I’m right. I don’t believe it.” He pushed the tray closer to his mother’s chest and made a show of tucking a napkin under her chin.

“Of course you’re right, dear.” She smiled and gave Kate an obvious wink.

“Yeah,” Robert said, “I know you two. But seriously, you eat this. I have to go make some business calls from the motel room.”

Their mother frowned. “That motel must be costing you a fortune.”

“No, it’s reasonable,” he said. “Kate can stay for a week or two and I’ll drive back and forth from home. If you think this food is bad, you should see the meals in that motel restaurant.” He got up to go, flashing Kate a glance of collusion. “I’ll be back after supper.”

His footsteps echoed down the hallway. Kate and her mother looked wordlessly at each other, relieved. Kate looked away guiltily. Then her mother spoke, apologetic. “He’s so tired,” she said. “He’s been with me since yesterday.”

She looked at Kate, then into the air of the room. “I’m in a fix,” she said. “Except for when the pain comes, it’s all a show that goes on without me. I’m like an invalid, or a lunatic.”

Kate moved close and touched her mother’s arms. “That’s all right, we’re going to get you through it. Someone’s covering for you at work?”

“I had to take a leave of absence. It’s going to take a while afterward—”

“I know. But it’s the last thing to worry about, it can’t be helped.”

“Like spilt milk. Isn’t that what they say?”

“I don’t know what they say. But why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you know something was wrong?”

“Yes … bad headaches. Migraines, I thought, or the diabetes getting worse. I was afraid they’d start me on insulin.” She tightened the corner of her mouth. “Little did I know …”

They heard the shuffle of slippers. An old woman stood at the open door of the room, looking in confusedly. She seemed about to speak, then moved on.

“Oh,” said Kate’s mother in exasperation, “shut that door, please? They let these old women wander around like refugees.” She sat up, reaching for a robe. “And let’s get me out of this bed.”

They sat near the window while she finished eating. Bars of moted yellow banded the floor of the room. The light held a tinge of spring which seemed painful because it might vanish. They heard the rattle of the meal cart outside the closed door, and the clunk-slide of patients with aluminum walkers. Kate’s mother sighed and pushed away the half-empty soup bowl.

“They’ll be here after me any minute. More tests. I just want to stay with you.” Her face was warm and smooth in the slanted light, lines in her skin delicate, unreal; as though a face behind her face was now apparent after many years. She sat looking at Kate and smiled.

“One day when you were about four you were dragging a broom around the kitchen. I asked what you were doing and you told me that when you got old you were going to be an angel and sweep the rotten rain off the clouds.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I said that when you were old I was sure God would see to it.” Her mother laughed. “I’m glad you weren’t such a smart aleck then,” she said. “You would have told me my view of God was paternalistic.”

“Ah yes,” sighed Kate. “God, that famous dude. Here I am, getting old, facing unemployment, alone, and where is He?”

“You’re not alone,” her mother said, “I’m right here.”

Kate didn’t answer. She sat motionless and felt her heart begin to open like a box with a hinged lid. The fullness had no edges.

Her mother stood. She rubbed her hands slowly, twisting her wedding rings. “My hands are so dry in the winter,” she said softly, “I brought some hand cream with me but I can’t find it anywhere, my suitcase is so jumbled. Thank heavens spring is early this year … They told me that little park over there doesn’t usually open till the end of March …”

She’s helping me, thought Kate, I’m not supposed to let her down.

“…  but they’re already running it on weekends. Even past dusk. We’ll see the lights tonight. You can’t see the shapes this far away, just the motion …”

A nurse came in with a wheelchair. Kate’s mother pulled a wry face. “This wheelchair is a bit much,” she said.

“We don’t want to tire you out,” said the nurse.

The chair took her weight quietly. At the door she put out her hand to stop, turned, and said anxiously, “Kate, see if you can find that hand cream?”

It was the blue suitcase from years ago, still almost new. She’d brought things she never used for everyday; a cashmere sweater, lace slips, silk underpants wrapped in tissue. Folded beneath was a stack of postmarked envelopes, slightly ragged, tied with twine. Kate opened one and realized that all the cards were there, beginning with the first of the marriage. There were a few photographs of her and Robert, baby pictures almost indistinguishable from each other, and then Kate’s homemade Valentines, fastened together with rubber bands. Kate stared. What will I do with these things? She wanted air; she needed to breathe. She walked to the window and put the bundled papers on the sill. She’d raised the glass and pushed back the screen when suddenly her mother’s clock radio went off with a flat buzz. Kate moved to switch it off and brushed the cards with her arm. Envelopes shifted and slid, scattering on the floor of the room. A few snapshots wafted silently out the window. They dipped and turned, twirling. Kate didn’t try to reach them. They seemed only scraps, buoyant and yellowed, blown away, the faces small as pennies. Somewhere far-off there were sirens, almost musical, drawn out and carefully approaching.

The nurse came in with evening medication. Kate’s mother lay in bed. “I hope this is strong enough,” she said. “Last night I couldn’t sleep at all. So many sounds in a hospital …”

“You’ll sleep tonight,” the nurse assured her.

Kate winked at her mother. “That’s right,” she said, “I’ll help you out if I have to.”

They stayed up for an hour, watching the moving lights outside and the stationary glows of houses across the distant river. The halls grew darker, were lit with night-lights, and the hospital dimmed. Kate waited. Her mother’s eyes fluttered and finally she slept. Her breathing was low and regular.

Kate didn’t move. Robert had said he’d be back; where was he? She felt a sunken anger and shook her head. She’d been on the point of telling her mother everything. The secrets were a travesty. What if there were things her mother wanted done, people she needed to see? Kate wanted to wake her before these hours passed in the dark and confess that she had lied. Between them, through the tension, there had always been a trusted clarity. Now it was twisted. Kate sat leaning forward, nearly touching the hospital bed.

Suddenly her mother sat bolt upright, her eyes open and her face transfixed. She looked blindly toward Kate but seemed to see nothing. “Who are you?” she whispered. Kate stood, at first unable to move. The woman in the bed opened and closed her mouth several times, as though she were gasping. Then she said loudly, “Stop moving the table. Stop it this instant!” Her eyes were wide with fright and her body was vibrating.

Kate reached her. “Mama, wake up, you’re dreaming.” Her mother jerked, flinging her arms out. Kate held her tightly.

“I can hear the wheels,” she moaned.

“No, no,” Kate said. “You’re here with me.”

“It’s not so?”

“No,” Kate said. “It’s not so.”

She went limp. Kate felt for her pulse and found it rapid, then regular. She sat rocking her mother. In a few minutes she lay her back on the pillows and smoothed the damp hair at her temples, smoothed the sheets of the bed. Later she slept fitfully in a chair, waking repeatedly to assure herself that her mother was breathing.

Near dawn she got up, exhausted, and left the room to walk in the corridor. In front of the window at the end of the hallway she saw a man slumped on a couch; the man slowly stood and wavered before her like a specter. It was Robert.

“Kate?” he said.

Years ago he had flunked out of a small junior college and their mother sat in her bedroom rocker, crying hard for over an hour while Kate tried in vain to comfort her. Kate went to the university the next fall, so anxious that she studied frantically, outlining whole textbooks in yellow ink. She sat in the front rows of large classrooms to take voluminous notes, writing quickly in her thick notebook. Robert had gone home, held a job in a plant that manufactured business forms and worked his way through the hometown college. By that time their father was dead, and Robert became, always and forever, the man of the house.

“Robert,” Kate said, “I’ll stay. Go home.”

After breakfast they sat waiting for Robert, who had called and said he’d arrive soon. Kate’s fatigue had given way to an intense awareness of every sound, every gesture. How would they get through the day? Her mother had awakened from the drugged sleep still groggy, unable to eat. The meal was sent away untouched and she watched the window as though she feared the walls of the room.

“I’m glad your father isn’t here to see this,” she said. There was a silence and Kate opened her mouth to speak. “I mean,” said her mother quickly, “I’m going to look horrible for a few weeks, with my head all shaved.” She pulled an afghan up around her lap and straightened the magazines on the table beside her chair.

“Mom,” Kate said, “your hair will grow back.”

Her mother pulled the afghan closer. “I’ve been thinking of your father,” she said. “It’s not that I’d have wanted him to suffer. But if he had to die, sometimes I wish he’d done it more gently. That heart attack, so finished; never a warning. I wish I’d had some time to nurse him. In a way, it’s a chance to settle things.”

“Did things need settling?”

“They always do, don’t they?” She sat looking out the window, then said softly, “I wonder where I’m headed.”

“You’re not headed anywhere,” Kate said. “I want you right here to see me settle down into normal American womanhood.”

Her mother smiled reassuringly. “Where are my grandchildren?” she said. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

“You stick around,” said Kate, “and I promise to start working on it.” She moved her chair closer, so that their knees were touching and they could both see out the window. Below them cars moved on the highway and the Ferris wheel in the little park was turning.

“I remember when you were one of the little girls in the parade at the county fair. You weren’t even in school yet; you were beautiful in that white organdy dress and pinafore. You wore those shiny black patent shoes and a crown of real apple blossoms. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “That long parade. They told me not to move and I sat so still my legs went to sleep. When they lifted me off the float I couldn’t stand up. They put me under a tree to wait for you, and you came, in a full white skirt and white sandals, your hair tied back in a red scarf. I can see you yet.”

Her mother laughed. “Sounds like a pretty exaggerated picture.”

Kate nodded. “I was little. You were big.”

“You loved the county fair. You were wild about the carnivals.” They looked down at the little park. “Magic, isn’t it?” her mother said.

“Maybe we could go see it,” said Kate. “I’ll ask the doctor.”

They walked across a pedestrian footbridge spanning the highway. Kate had bundled her mother into a winter coat and gloves despite the sunny weather. The day was sharp, nearly still, holding its bright air like illusion. Kate tasted the brittle water of her breath, felt for the cool handrail and thin steel of the webbed fencing. Cars moved steadily under the bridge. Beyond a muted roar of motors the park spread green and wooded, its limits clearly visible.

Kate’s mother had combed her hair and put on lipstick. Her mouth was defined and brilliant; she linked arms with Kate like an escort. “I was afraid they’d tell us no,” she said. “I was ready to run away!”

“I promised I wouldn’t let you. And we only have ten minutes, long enough for the Ferris wheel.” Kate grinned.

“I haven’t ridden one in years. I wonder if I still know how.”

“Of course you do. Ferris wheels are genetic knowledge.”

“All right, whatever you say.” She smiled. “We’ll just hold on.”

They drew closer and walked quickly through the sounds of the highway. When they reached the grass it was ankle-high and thick, longer and more ragged than it appeared from a distance. The Ferris wheel sat squarely near a grove of swaying elms, squat and laboring, taller than trees. Its neon lights still burned, pale in the sun, spiraling from inside like an imagined bloom. The naked elms surrounded it, their topmost branches tapping. Steel ribs of the machine were graceful and slightly rusted, squeaking faintly above a tinkling music. Only a few people were riding.

“Looks a little rickety,” Kate said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said her mother.

Kate tried to buy tickets but the ride was free. The old man running the motor wore an engineer’s cap and patched overalls. He stopped the wheel and led them on a short ramp to an open car. It dipped gently, padded with black cushions. An orderly and his children rode in the car above. Kate saw their dangling feet, the girls’ dusty sandals and gray socks beside their father’s shoes and the hem of his white pants. The youngest one swung her feet absently, so it seemed the breeze blew her legs like fabric hung on a line.

Kate looked at her mother. “Are you ready for the big sky?” They laughed. Beyond them the river moved lazily. Houses on the opposite bank seemed empty, but a few row-boats bobbed at the docks. The surface of the water lapped and reflected clouds, and as Kate watched, searching for a definition of line, the Ferris wheel jerked into motion. The car rocked. They looked into the distance and Kate caught her mother’s hand as they ascended.

Far away the hospital rose up white and glistening, its windows catching the glint of the sun. Directly below, the park was nearly deserted. There were a few cars in the parking lot and several dogs chasing each other across the grass. Two or three lone women held children on the teeter-totters and a wind was coming up. The forlorn swings moved on their chains. Kate had a vision of the park at night, totally empty, wind weaving heavily through the trees and children’s playthings like a great black fish about to surface. She felt a chill on her arms. The light had gone darker, quietly, like a minor chord.

“Mom,” Kate said, “it’s going to storm.” Her own voice seemed distant, the sound strained through layers of screen or gauze.

“No,” said her mother, “it’s going to pass over.” She moved her hand to Kate’s knee and touched the cloth of her daughter’s skirt.

Kate gripped the metal bar at their waists and looked straight ahead. They were rising again and she felt she would scream. She tried to breathe rhythmically, steadily. She felt the immense weight of the air as they moved through it.

They came almost to the top and stopped. The little car swayed back and forth.

“You’re sick, aren’t you,” her mother said.

Kate shook her head. Below them the grass seemed to glitter coldly, like a sea. Kate sat wordless, feeling the touch of her mother’s hand. The hand moved away and Kate felt the absence of the warmth.

They looked at each other levelly.

“I know all about it,” her mother said, “I know what you haven’t told me.”

The sky circled around them, a sure gray movement. Kate swallowed calmly and let their gaze grow endless. She saw herself in her mother’s wide brown eyes and felt she was falling slowly into them.