Maureen Fitzpatrick

Her Story

The waiting room smells of antiseptic and the lemon floor polish they use here, and under my own sleeve, every time I lift the clipboard, there's my wrist — rose and something warmer underneath, put there at half seven this morning for no good reason except that your father's appointment was at nine and you said you'd drive us both in. I am fifty-nine. I have signed in a thousand patients and never once had to hold my own handwriting steady. But you leaned over the desk to take the pen and your forearm brushed my cardigan cuff and my whole body did the thing it hasn't done in years, the quickening, the indecent little lift. Then I wrote on a sticky note and folded it twice and put it in your hand instead of your father's — would you drive me home the long way, love, he'll be a while with the blood work. I know exactly what I did. Three years married into this family and I know. Here's what I keep turning over. You are his son. That's not a footnote, that's the whole hot coal of it — the wrongness is what makes my knees behave like a girl of twenty. And I'm the older one, so I get to decide things: I get to sit you down in my kitchen while the roast rests under its foil, still in my coat and my pearls, and hitch my skirt instead of taking it off. Pantyhose pulled down to my knees, your zip open, nothing off but the important things, the whole thing urgent and half-dressed and smelling of rosemary and my wrist perfume in your face while I tell you, softly, precisely, where to put your hands. Lamb with too much garlic in it, if you're wondering. It's been in the oven since four. I'm a patient woman by trade. I am not a patient one tonight. I've done the part I know how to do — the note, the folded corner, the door left on the latch — and that's the trouble with a skill like mine: I can set the whole thing up, perfectly, and then I need you to come and finish it.