Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin (38 page)

It is the Jamaican nurse who opens the door for her again. His face is broad and relaxed. He wears short dreadlocks.
—Oh, hi.
—Is there anyone else here?
—Excuse me? he says.
—Just wondering if there’s anybody else home.
—Her nephew’s in the other room. He’s napping.
—How long has he been here?
—Tom? He spent the night. He’s been here a few days. He’s been having people over.
There is a momentary standoff as if the nurse is trying to figure out just exactly why she has returned, what she wants, how long she’ll stay. He keeps his hand around the doorframe, but then he leans forward and whispers conspiratorially: He brought a couple of real estate people to his parties, y’know.
Jaslyn smiles, shakes her head: it doesn’t matter, she will not allow it to matter.
—Do you think I can see her?
—Be my guest. You know she had a stroke, right?
—Yes.
She stops in the hallway.
—Did she get my card? I sent a big goofy card.
—Oh, that’s yours? says the nurse. That one’s funny. I like that one.
He sweeps his hand along the corridor, points her down toward the room. She moves through the half- dark, as if pushing back a veil. She stops, turns the glass handle on the bedroom door. It clicks. The door swings. She feels as if she is stepping off a ledge. The room looks dark and heavy, a thick tenor to it. A tiny triangle of light where the curtains don’t quite meet.
She stands a moment to let her eyes adjust. Jaslyn wants to part the dark, open the curtains, crack the window, but Claire is asleep, eyelids closed. She pulls up a chair by the bed, beside a saline drip. The drip is not attached. There is a glass on the bedside table. And a straw. And a pencil. And a newspaper. And her card among many other cards. She peers in the dark.
Get well soon, you funny old bird.
She is not sure now whether it is humorous at all; perhaps she should have bought something cute and demure. You never know. You cannot know.
The rise and fall of Claire’s chest. The body a thin failure now. The shrunken breasts, the deep lids, the striated neck, the intricate articulation. Her life painted on her, receding on her. A brief flutter of her eyelids. Jaslyn leans close. A waft of stale air. An eyelid flutter once more. The eyes open and stare. In the dark, their whites. Claire opens her eyes, wider still, does not smile or say a word.
A pull on the sheets. Jaslyn looks down as Claire moves her left hand. The fingers go up and down as if playing a piano. The yellow rufflework of age. The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.
A clock sounds.
Little else to distract attention from the evening, just a clock, in a time not too distant from the present time, yet a time not too distant from the past, the unaccountable unfolding of consequence into tomorrow’s time, the simple things, the grain of bedwood alive in light, the slight argument of dark still left in the old woman’s hair, the ray of moisture on the plastic lifebag, the curl of the braided flower petal, the chipped edge of a photo frame, the rim of a mug, the mark of a stray tea line along its edge, a crossword puzzle sitting unfinished, the yellow of a pencil dangling over the edge of the table, one end sharpened, the eraser in midair. Fragments of a human order. Jaslyn turns the pencil around to safety, then rises, rounds the far end of the bed, toward the window. Her hands on the windowsill. She parts the curtains a little more, opens the triangle, lifts the window frame minutely, feels the curl of breeze on her skin: the ash, the dust, the light now pressing the dark out of things. We stumble on, now, we drain the light from the dark, to make it last. She lifts the window higher. Sounds outside, growing clearer in the silence, traffic at first, machine hum, cranework, playgrounds, children, the tree branches down on the avenue slapping each other around.
The curtain falls back but still a corridor of brightness has opened up on the carpet. Jaslyn steps to the bed again, takes off her shoes, drops them. Claire parts her lips ever so slightly. Not a word, but a difference in her breathing, a measured grace.
We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
Quietly, Jaslyn perches on the edge of the bed and then extends her feet, moves her legs across slowly so as not to disturb the mattress. She fixes a pillow, leans, picks a hair out of Claire’s mouth.
Jaslyn thinks again of an apricot—she does not know why, but that’s what she thinks, the skin of it, the savor, the sweetness.
The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.
She lies on the bed beside Claire, above the sheets. The faint tang of the old woman’s breath on the air. The clock. The fan. The breeze.
The world spinning.

The title of this book comes from the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem “Locksley Hall.” That in turn was heavily influenced by the “Mu’allaqat,” or the “Suspended Poems,” seven long Arabic poems written in the sixth century. Tennyson’s poem mentions “pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales,” and the “Mu’allaqat” asks, “Is there any hope that this desolation can bring me solace?” Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

this particular story owes enormous thanks to many—the police officers who drove me around the city; the doctors who patiently answered my questions; the computer technicians who guided me through the labyrinth; and all of those who helped me during the writing and editing process. The fact of the matter is that there are many hands tapping the writer’s keyboard. I fear I will forget some names but I’m deeply grateful to the following for all of their support and help: Jay Gold, Roger Hawke, Maria Venegas, John McCormack, Ed Conlon, Joseph Lennon, Justin Dolly, Mario Mola, Dr. James Marion, Terry Cooper, Cenelia Arroyave, Paul Auster, Kathy O’Donnell, Thomas Kelly, Elaina Ganim, Alexandra Pringle, Jennifer Hershey, Millicent Bennett, Giorgio Gonella, Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfant, and all at the Wylie Agency, Caroline Ast and everyone at Belfond in Paris. Thanks to Philip Gourevitch and all at
The Paris Review.
For my students and colleagues at Hunter College, especially Peter Carey and Nathan Englander. And in the end nobody deserves more thanks than Allison, Isabella, John Michael, and Christian.

Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels
Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness,
and
Songdogs,
as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has been published in thirty languages. He has been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was the inaugural winner of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of
Esquire
’s “Best and Brightest,” and his short film
Everything in This Country Must
was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to
The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly,
and
The Paris Review,
he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.