Ka-Ching!

Urban Legend

63 Urban Legend My parents were in an escalator accident. A pileup. Fourteen people. My mother lost her hair and almost bled to death. My father’s heart went out of whack. They were rushed to an emergency room in Atlantic City. The doctors were having trouble finding enough tetanus for everyone hurt. It sounds like an urban legend, except it really happened. When I take the plane to New Jersey, it’s September 11, 2003. I’m almost the only passenger on Spirit Air. I’ve packed scarves, lots of scarves, to bring to my mother in the hospital. The scarves are the ones Nick’s mother wore before she got Alzheimer’s. What about this one? Nick says, holding up the black and pink flowers. Or this one? He holds up the yellow stripes. The purple and white checks. I sit next to a businessman who has a bad back, who had originally wanted to drive home in one of the company cars, but his job ran late and he’s lost his wedding ring and his wife isn’t happy. I tell him about the escalator accident, what I know so far, and I call it a freak accident and it occurs to me for the first time that’s what it is. The escalator accident, the escalating conflict in Iraq, fears escalate, escalating tensions. . . . I see the word escalate everywhere in the newspaper I hold in my lap. I insist that the hospital let my sister and me see our parents, even though it’s past visiting hours. My father says that he is fine, but the nurse points to the heart monitor where there are dangerous dips in the hills. He wants to see his wife two floors above him in a different ward. My mother is in a room with someone else from the same accident, a woman who says she was covered with my mother’s blood. My mother makes a dry-cleaning joke then squeezes her morphine drip. My sister and I don’t know what to do with ourselves when we leave the hospital at midnight, so we to go to the sinister smoky casino hotel. We get lost in a maze of mirrored hallways trying to find our room. All night long we hear the machines: ring, ping, clink, ka-ching. And an occasional siren. Speaking of legends: A few weeks later, taking care of my parents, I pray on the wooden floor inside my childhood bedroom. By now the moon is a bowl of cereal my parents are too weak to eat. I get on my knees, keep my back straight. I don’t cheat. duhamelKtext.indd 63 12/1/08 11:15:22 AM ...