The days went by like the weather in a constant back-and-forth. It got cold, then warmed up overnight. Once, a lot of snow fell in the space of a few hours, but it all melted away within a day or two. Gillian no longer felt bored. Some mornings she didn’t even get the newspaper out of the mailbox. She spent a lot of time thinking about Matthias and their former life together, but she still couldn’t deal with the fact of his death. Grief came quickly and unexpectedly, a sudden stab of pain that made her reel.
For days she had worn the same pajamas, she didn’t wash or shower, and she lived entirely on junk food. She watched her body change as she put on weight and developed spots on her back and her chin. For the first time in years she was aware of her body odor.
One sunny day she thought she would go for a trip. The late-afternoon light was as golden as it was in autumn. She rode the elevator down to the basement and followed the passage into the underground garage. She kept stopping to listen, but she couldn’t hear anyone. Her dark green Mini stood where it always stood. She drove to a wood on the edge of the city and parked near a recycling station. A man was coming out of the wood toward the parking lot with his dog. Gillian crouched down and waited. The man opened the door of his car, which stood a couple of spots away from hers, and the dog jumped in. When he had driven away, and there was no one else around, she climbed out and set off. The path led along the edge of the wood. In its interior there were still a few scraps of leftover snow. After a while, Gillian saw a couple approaching with Nordic walking sticks. They were perhaps two hundred yards away. She stopped and looked around. Behind her was a woman pushing a stroller. The underbrush beside the path was fairly dense and difficult to penetrate. She kept her arms up to shield her face, branches scratched her hands. Thereafter it got easier. The ground was thickly covered with dense leaf mulch that gave underfoot. Gillian heard voices, and then she saw through the underbrush that the couple and the woman with the stroller passed each other. She waited a moment longer and then plunged deeper into the wood. The light fell diagonally, making long shadows. Sometimes Gillian stopped and contemplated the silver bark of a tree that looked like the hide of an animal, or a piece of tree root that was worn smooth by the elements. She laid her hand on the cool wood, feeling tiny unevennesses. The terrain became flatter. It was already starting to get dark, from the nearby zoo she heard animal cries. When she got back to the parking lot it was dark and the streetlights were on.
The following morning Gillian awoke early. It was still dark. She had no sense of her body, only when she moved did a shape gradually come to her. She turned her head to the side, felt her cheek brush against the soft pillowcase, then a leg under the duvet, her other leg, numb, the sole of her foot, the chilly floor, a slight feeling of dizziness. She passed through the rooms as though the apartment were her body, a big prone body, too heavy to pick itself up.
After her first cup of coffee she slowly came around, and under the shower her body knitted itself together to what it was. She vaguely remembered the time she was still growing. Her hips widened, her breasts deepened. It was like one long inhale, a picking herself up. Now she exhaled, for a long time she had done nothing but exhale, sometimes she had the sense of not having any more air in her and still having to go on exhaling.
Every other day or so, Gillian had to go to her doctor to get her dressings changed. In the waiting room, the other patients avoided her eyes. When the doctor said the wounds were healing well, it sounded to her like mockery. After the dressing had been changed, she often went for a drive around the city. Behind the wheel she felt invisible, only waiting at a light sometimes she noticed the driver of a car in the next lane eyeing her and quickly looking away when she turned. She was drawn to empty spaces, drove to the industrial park on the edge of the city, parked her car at the soccer stadium. There was no one around, only a couple of building machines parked on the gravel. Around the perimeter was a tall wire fence, the gate stood open. She walked in, climbed a wide flight of steps. The stadium was much bigger than it seemed from outside. The stands were empty, tiers of colored seats, blue, orange, gray, and green. She stood there for a while, looking down at the playing surface and trying to imagine the scene when there was a game on and the stands were full of spectators. Another time, she drove up to the top floor of a multistory parking garage. The morning had been dry, but it started raining again at midday. The walls of the garage were cement, with wide spaces through which a powerful wind blew. Gillian got out and made her way among the handful of parked cars. She spun on her own axis, made wide sidesteps as in fencing classes at drama school, leaps forward and back. She occupied the space, as their speech tutor had taught them to do, put out the flat of her hand as though to push the walls away. She accompanied this with long, drawn-out hissing. She felt excited, she didn’t even know why. The space seemed to be too big, it afforded no resistance. In little pattering steps she ran to one of the openings and looked out at the industrial buildings, at the multilane highways packed with traffic bordered by trimmed poplars, at the mountain away in the distance, dimly visible through the downpour. She felt cold.
When she returned to her Mini, she saw a man sitting in one of the parked cars. He sat there motionless. Their eyes met, and Gillian wondered if he had been watching her entire performance.
The day before the second operation, a Sunday, Gillian visited her parents. She hadn’t seen her mother since the accident. When her mother opened the door and saw her, she turned aside and started crying. Her father stepped up and with an expression of annoyance pushed her mother out of the way.
Come on in, he said.
Her mother said lunch was almost ready, and she disappeared back into the kitchen. Gillian followed her.
The sounds of silverware on the plates seemed so deafeningly loud that Gillian could hardly hear what her parents were saying. The two aged faces contorted themselves to ugly grimaces as they chewed their food, Gillian looked down at her plate, broke up her food in small pieces, which she swallowed, almost without chewing them.
Aren’t you hungry at all?
What’s that?
You’re hardly eating anything.
I’m not hungry. Gillian put down her knife and fork and stood up. I’ll be back in a minute.
As she was shutting the bathroom door behind her, she saw her father get up to refill his plate.
She sat on the toilet and waited. It was cold in the house, she was shivering. Her father kept the thermostat way down, her mother had whispered to her in the kitchen. Her father hadn’t finished eating, but her mother had already started to clear the table. They had their coffee in the living room. Her father read the newspaper, her mother was sitting next to Gillian in such a way that she couldn’t look at her. Gillian looked at her mother’s hands as she poured coffee, passed her a cup, took one herself, wizened hands too brown for the early season, with age spots and half a dozen rings on her fingers. As a young woman, her mother had been beautiful. Gillian wondered how she coped with the loss of her beauty, and if it was easier when it happened gradually and not just like that. She had read somewhere that most people had a completely false self-image, thinking of themselves as slimmer, younger, and more attractive than they really were. Perhaps to herself her mother was still the beautiful young woman in her wedding picture that stood on the sideboard. Certainly, she still looked after herself, but the futility of her efforts only made her decline sadder.