She walked up the lane in her black Persian lamb coat. She wore black galoshes, open, buckles clacking with each measured step. It was May – no snow or rain – and warm. The worn brocade handbag in her hand held every thing that mattered to her.
When she reached the last house, she faced the veranda and stopped for a moment as she did every morning before entering. What she took in was more than the rose trellis, the ivied brick, and the leaded glass arch above the door. She saw so much. Here was her purpose. Within she was real and she was loved.
Years and years earlier, when she twenty-two, still just a girl, her husband, whose name she has since forgotten, brought her by streetcar to the main gate. He held her hand as they walked down the manicured avenue, past the lane, past white-trimmed brick buildings. He took papers from the vest pocket in which he always carried important things, and handed them to the doctor. The papers were unfolded and closely examined. Signatures were checked. Words were exchanged is if she were not sitting right there in the room with them.
Her husband left and she stayed.
A man in black trousers, black bowtie and white shirt walked her through corridors with floors so shiny even her leather-soled shoes squeaked in the cloistered silence. Closed doors were opened and closed again. The long empty ward was lined on each side with beds sealed in starched white linen. Late afternoon light swirled yellow in the motes casting narrow slanted bars across the room. She was shown her bed and the night stand beside. The lockless locker was to hang her things in. But all she had was a brocade handbag and the clothes she wore.
She sat down on the bed in her Persian lamb coat. She thought nothing. She felt nothing.
- Fall 2009