Passenger(62)

“I’m in the middle of dinner. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“You look like you could use a shower.”

“It was a long drive,” I say.

“Come on, then.” I follow her down the hall to a small bedroom. It is a bedroom replete with yellowed photographs that look burned at the corners, housed in pitted brass frames that appear too heavy for any nails to hold. Plush drapes in floral patterns match the bedspread. A cedar trunk rests at the foot of the bed and, across the room against the far wall, there is a dresser on which sits a beveled mirror.

There is a tiny, blue-tiled bathroom off the bedroom, and I follow this old woman to it.

“Here,” she says. “Have a shower. And you can lay your clothes out on the bed, if you want, and I’ll wash them.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“Doesn’t matter.” The woman seems disinterested.

“When will Madeline be back?”

“Should be soon,” says the old woman. “You know, Palmer, you shouldn’t be here.” Her eyes linger on me a moment longer before she turns and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

The bathroom is well-kept and clean. There are blue towels on the walls, pink rosettes stitched along the hem. The sink basin is white and spotless, not a single hair in the drain. The shower curtain is of a sheer fabric, also blue, also with matching rosettes, and I pull it aside to inspect the tub. A bar of soap in a dispenser is suction-cupped to the wall. The tub is shiny and looks like it has never been used.

I strip and fold my clothes on the toilet lid. Naked, I examine my scarecrow frame in the oval mirror above the sink. My eyes look like someone has boxed them shut. The jut of my jaw stretches my lips taut. I flex my arms and scrutinize the mechanics of my muscles, my joints, the knobby way various bones appear to protrude at odd angles. My chest is a washboard, my pelvis a concave seashell. My penis has shriveled to near nonexistence, having retreated into my abdomen. My knees are twin shells, calloused, cracked, and flaking with dried skin.

Hello, skeleton. Hello, concentration camp survivor. Hello, Auschwitz Jew.

I have been going at this a long time. There is no denying it. I feel weak enough to pass out.

Hello, ghost.

I shower beneath a stream of tepid water. I shower for maybe twenty minutes, a half hour. I have no concept of time. The water no longer feels good on my skin. Instead, it burns where the cold winter air has lacerated my flesh. It makes the rough patches soften then harden. Shuffling in the water of the tub, my feet look enormous; I can make out the bones and tendons with each flex of my toes, the toes themselves like narrow, broken bits of twig, the nails the color of turpentine, chipped and unhealthy.

There is no distinction between mental and physical depletion. You regress and regress and regress until you are nothing more than a mound of wet sand in an old woman’s shower…

When the water has gone cold, I shut it and towel off. I pull on my clothes with the surrender of someone sentenced to death. I try to urinate, but there is no fluid left in my body. I would not be surprised if my penis coughed up a cloud of dust.

I step out of the bathroom and into the bedroom to find a young woman sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me. She is slim, with small shoulders, drab-colored hair pulled behind her head in a lank ponytail, her face plain but with a firm, admirable jaw, her eyes lamentable and somber with regret.

“What are you doing here, Palmer?” she says.

“Madeline?”

She stands immediately, so slender the mattress hardly moves. She takes a step toward me. Almost in slow-motion: slaps me across the face. I see it coming from a mile away, yet I let it come. Because something tells me I deserve it.

“That’s for coming here.”

I do not move. I say nothing.

“You look like death. Why are you here?”

“I was hoping you could help me.”

“No.” Her eyes grow wet. She is struggling with some great thing that appears to be welling inside her. Both her hands press against her abdomen. “You promised you’d never come back here, Palmer. Please…”

“I needed to see you,” I say.

“You have to leave.”

“Please…”

“No,” she sobs. And the tears come.

Watching her, I feel an ounce of recollection dawn on me…but then realize that I am not recalling any memory of this particular woman but, rather, the woman I had followed around on Christmas Eve back at the art museum—the woman with the small child who told me she’d call the police if I didn’t stop following them. There is a striking resemblance here. Had I thought that woman from the museum was this women, was this Madeline Troy?

“No,” she goes on. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to look at you, Palmer. I can’t look at you. And you promised me—you promised me—”

“I don’t remember my promise. I don’t remember anything.”

“Are you trying to hurt me?”

“No.”

“Palmer, are you trying to hurt me? Do you want me to hurt? Because I hurt every single day. I don’t need you here to do it because I hurt every single day.”

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Leave,” she says, and turns her back toward me. Covering her face with her hands, I watch her reflection in the beveled mirror.