Gristle

Gristle by David Madden She awoke that morning from a dream of him: in his black shirt, cream-colored coat and trousers, brim down pearl gray hat, and his shiny black shoes. Remembering him and what their love had been, she lay a little longer than usual before going down the hall to have her shower. But this was a long time fone and she so seldom really thought of im that by the time she had gotten out of the shower, taking a little longer with the frayed, rough towel, and drunk her coffee by the cold window, she was no longer thinking of him, though a vague feeling remained. She got to wondering how sne might afford a pair of pink lace cuffs for her old long-sleeved blouse. Just as she stepped out onto the rooming house porch, skirting around the morning paper that was spilled out at the door, she heard the crying of a baby and stopped. As she listened, she felt a hollowness open in her chest and the ache of an almost forgotten sadness made her weak. Many times before in the early hour as she walked down the sidewalk to the bus stop, she had heard babies crying but nothing had happened inside her. Yet now, somewhere in a remote region of her being, she briefly felt an impulse to turn back into the house, as if the baby were in there, and tend it, as though it were her own deserted child. Realizing that she had half-turned back toward the sooty screen door frightened and confused her. Looking down, she saw that she was standing on the newspaper , her low-heeled shoes pointing at the date: October 1, 1987. Twenty years ago, on this very day, when she was seventeen, she had given birth to his child-ten days after he had fallen from a steel girder a hundred feet to the ground. She walked down the steps and her heels crushed the frost on the cement walk. Six o'clock. The streets deserted, the porches, the windows still dark. The noise of her heels so shattered the chilly 26 silence that it seemed she, not the breeze, stirred and brought down the last brown leaves from the sycamore trees as she passed. Were people groaning out of bed to stare at her from behind their ghostly windows? Unmindful of spotting her white shoes, she stepped off the sidewalk to walk over the grass. But she still heard the baby faintly crying. "Hush your bellerin', child," she said softly, and got back on the walk and forced the chatter of her heels even louder. As she waited for the bus, she fought down the memories struggling to rise to consciousness. Yet it seemed that even if she stopped resisting and actually tried to see him, see herself with him, or see the baby as it had looked that morning twenty years ago before she signed the papers, she would't be able to. And that troubled her, but only vaguely, confusing her all the more. "Get hold of yourself , Mavis Beery!" Though the bus was late, she was not cold and annoyed as usual, not until she realized it was late, ten minutes. Then she concentrated on the fact of its tardiness and even threatened, in an imaginary conversation with the driver, to telephone the bus company as soon as she got to the laundry and report his derelection of duty. But when the bus arrived and plunged to a stop as springy and quiet as a hearse, she got on without a word. The fat woman-there had been no man driver on this route for years, she now remembered -watched her arrogantly as she fumbled for her two fifty cent pieces. Dropping down the chute, they made a loud sound. She sat beside the window on the long back seat. All the way to the laundry no one else sat in the rear, as if spurning her. When the door opened to discharge her, it made a sound like the first gasp of a baby's cry, startling her so that she hesitated before stepping down and the...