My mother has beautiful skin, which she protected regularly but not slavishly. Human beings need to be protected, to enjoy being protected, especially when they are young, because they have a long period of dependency, and for some it is interminable. The past that can't be recovered or changed has already shaped and damaged the present, and how I arrange a chair, where I set it, in what relation to my reasonable desk, or what kind of couch I have that also won't protect me won't tell people what they need to know about me, to protect them from me, though people spend endless amounts of time thinking about their furniture and what it says about them, and how they will appear to themselves and others. No one need come to my apartment to see how I've arranged the furniture, to learn about my problems from the way I've placed objects, to learn what damage I've done and might do in the future, in which they will also live, unless someone murders them, they kill themselves, or they die of natural causes before their supposed time.
My father enjoyed himself, especially when he was playing cards with his friends, or dancing and swimming, and he was also charming, when he didn't glower, like the man who waited for the woman who gives me facials. I need a facial. I've been away from home for a long time, and my skin is very dry, but I don't put cream on it at night. I can't bring myself to apply cream at night, when no one would see me, though it would be good to do in my bedroom where it's very quiet, where not a sound can be heard except the heat rising in the pipes or the toilet flushing. But I'm the one who makes noise, who flushes the toilet most often, going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because I can't sleep, I'm afraid to dream, to surrender, and I have to piss frequently, which is a sign of age in a woman, and maybe a man, but I know less about men. My father never told me if he had to piss frequently as he grew older, though I watched him piss when I was four years old, fascinated by the stream of hot yellow-white urine that shot from his penis. But when years later, I told a friend about his urinating in front of me, she contended, her lips tight with horror, that I'd been abused, a word like "environment" whose use is pervasive and compromises my individuality of which I have less and less choice. My father had generously allowed his curious daughter the opportunity to see how a man pisses, when she wanted to know, because she was curious, I am still curious, and interested in the world and in penises, especially her father's; and when another person would instantly think that a girl had been abused by seeing her father's penis as he pissed, though that is what she wanted to see, I thought to myself, but did not say, the time we live in is a problem. My fearful father was not afraid of my seeing his penis, but he stopped letting me when I was a little older, which was too had, because I never had the chance to ask him how frequently he had to piss when he grew older, or before he died, since asking other men wouldn't be the same, because it was my father I wondered about, though I could've asked my brother, who disappeared from my life, who may be living on the streets of Cincinnati or Mexico City, but it wouldn't be the same.
My mother is very old, incontinent, and she doesn't remember that she had my dog and cat killed, though she often mentions the story she wrote about the family cat she loved but later had killed. It is laden with lovingly embroidered details about the antics of our remarkable cat, though she doesn't remember what I was like as a child, even before she had brain damage, except to say that I was fast at everything, that I rushed. I'm still rushing, because there's a lot to accomplish before death, which defeats accomplishment, and my mother often wants to know what I'm doing and why I'm away, not with her, though when I'm with her, she doesn't talk to me but watches television, with ardent attention. She doesn't know me, I don't know her, and each time she asks why I'm leaving or where I'm going, I tell her, but then she forgets. I tell her again and again, and then she says she misses and loves me, which she never said when I was young and she wasn't incontinent.
There is an assortment of tables in the dining room of the main or big house where I have breakfast, along with the others, if they are able to wake up, without effort or by having set their alarm clock, as I have, for breakfast, often the best or only edible meal of the day. Many arrive bedraggled by sleep, talkative, or muted, and some arrive hungry, even starving, with a zest for the day ahead that overwhelms, stymies, or exhausts me, and everyone usually can find something they like to eat, if they are on time and the kitchen is still open. Sometimes there is a table for vegetarians, if their number is great and the head cook has become aggrieved by the volume or multitude of demands, including that of commingling us. But it is only at dinner that the vegetarians, when their number has swelled, are seated separately; smokers and nonsmokers had been regularly segregated, but now the smoker is simply banished, forced to smoke out of doors in the cold or heat or in a lobby that is perpetually foul-smelling so that the smokers also don't want to be in it. There are many more kinds of separations that are not as significant as those of religion, race, ethnicity, class, and these newer, odder discriminations may subtly cover more profound insensitivities, like flounces on a bad design. In all there are nine tables, unless there is a problem, and our number varies, while rumors circulate like the residents.
Residents such as myself float from one to another, avoiding specific individuals, choosing a chair at the last minute, but others take the same position, table, and chair each meal, and if that seat is snagged by another, a new resident or a mischievous older resident, there are consequences. Some residents don't appear at breakfast, for instance, Gardner, or the Count, who is obsessed with time and antique timepieces; he never appears, as he sleeps during the day and wakes only for dinner, which serves as his breakfast. When I, nearly late this morning, rushed past the two young women into the kitchen, I didn't fail to notice that they were ensconced by themselves at a distant table near a window; that the young, clever, married man was at a table alone, reading the newspaper, which was his habit, because he doesn't want to speak to anyone during the first meal of his day, and no one dared speak to him, and that the rest of the group was settled around a third table and in various stages of eating. Everyone could have eggs for breakfast. But some wouldn't, since they refuse to eat what could become alive, an egg might become a chicken, but they could also, on different mornings, have a choice of oatmeal, fresh and canned fruit salad, dry cereal, pancakes, French toast, crepes, or whole wheat, rye and white toast with marmalade or grape jelly. There was coffee, with and without caffeine, tea, herbal and black, water, and orange juice, and, depending upon who was in charge of the kitchen, sometimes it was freshly squeezed juice, which was a treat residents appreciated, took for granted or didn't seem to notice, like the young married man, whose morning face was hidden behind a newspaper, and who, though often grumpy, liked all of the meals, adored his wife and his mother, and his occupation and obsession, ornithology. He writes prolifically about birds native to South and North America, and, while here, hopes to compile a comprehensive glossary of the local birds, particularly avid to discover rare ones, as he did in Mexico when he spotted the hard-to-see Pauraque, whose feathers and coloring match the ground to disguise it. His cheerful appetite sets him apart from many of the others, while his grumpiness, which may come from missing his home, since he receives many telephone calls from his wife and makes many to his mother, also distinguishes him. I'm not sure what I miss, I often think I miss nothing, that there is nothing to miss, and yet I'm aware that I do, since I am often missing to myself.