Lucy by the Sea (Amgash, #4)(52)

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And lying next to William, who was asleep—his slow, steady breathing told me this—and feeling the same degree of humiliation I had felt in that classroom, I thought: I understand those people who went to the Capitol and smashed the windows.



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I got up quietly and went downstairs. And I kept thinking about this. I thought: For one hour that day outside of Chicago, I had felt my childhood humiliation so deeply again. And what if I had continued to feel that my entire life, what if all the jobs I had taken in my life were not enough to really make a living, what if I felt looked down upon all the time by the wealthier people in this country, who made fun of my religion and my guns. I did not have religion and I did not have guns, but I suddenly felt that I saw what these people were feeling; they were like my sister, Vicky, and I understood them. They had been made to feel poorly about themselves, they were looked at with disdain, and they could no longer stand it.

I sat for a long time on the couch in the dark; there was a half moon that shone over the ocean. And then I thought, No, those were Nazis and racists at the Capitol. And so my understanding—my imagining of the breaking of the windows—stopped there.



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?

A few weeks after this I saw Charlene Bibber in the grocery store. “Charlene!” I said, and she said, “Hi, Lucy.” I thought she had gained weight; her eyes looked smaller in her face.

“How have you been?” I asked her, and she only shrugged. “Do you want to walk? It’s cold, but let’s walk,” I said, and she hesitated and then she said, “Okay.”

So we met that Friday by the river and we sat on one of the granite slabs that we used to sit on, and she asked me, “Are you still losing your mind?” And I said, Probably. She said she was definitely losing her mind, and I asked her how she knew.

Charlene glanced up at a tree branch, and said, “Oh, look at that.” I looked up and there were two black birds on a bare branch, and one of the birds was sticking its beak all around the other bird’s head, and then down the other bird’s back. Charlene said, “Oh, look, Lucy—he loves her. He’s taking care of her.” She dropped her eyes to look at me then and said, “I know a little bit about birds because Olive Kitteridge loves birds so much, and one of the things I learned is that they do take care of each other.” She looked up again and said, “He’s probably getting little bugs off her or something, to keep her wings clean. I read about that online.” She looked at me again, and her eyes shone with an almost-happiness, it seemed to me.

Then another black bird flew over to them from a different tree, and that bird stayed with them for a few minutes before flying back to its own tree. “Uncle Harry just checking on them,” Charlene said.

“That’s funny,” I said.

We watched the birds a while longer, it was an overcast day and their blackness was striking against the gray leafless branch they were on, and behind that the sky was a lighter gray.

Charlene sighed then, and she said, “I’m not going to work at the food pantry anymore.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well.” She tugged her coat closer to her and said, “When the vaccines come out—and they’re coming—I’m not going to get one, and so I won’t be able to work there.”

“They told you that?”

“Yup.” Charlene picked at one eye with a gloved hand.

I almost said, Why won’t you get a vaccine? But I did not say that, and she did not tell me why.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and she said, “Thanks.”

We sat there in the quiet, and then she said, “Well, let’s get walking.”





Seven


i


In the middle of January, William received an email saying that he was eligible for the first shot of his vaccine. It named the time and place: 5:30 p.m. at the hospital in town, one week from then. He was eligible because he was over seventy.

I drove so that he could look at his iPad for directions. It was dark, and one of our car’s front lights was not working. William told me to put the lights on high because that way they both worked. So I did that, but every so often a car coming toward us would flash its lights at me and I felt terrible, I have always been frightened of doing something wrong, of being inconsiderate; it is a real fear I have.

We got to the hospital, and there was a huge sign that said to drive around to the back, and so we did and then William went in. I waited in the semi-darkness and watched as people went in and out. Some people looked youngish, the way they walked, they were in shape for seventy years or older. Others walked in carefully, many were alone, and I saw a few couples drive up and sit in their cars. In the light of the streetlamps above I could see them fiddling with the papers they had to fill out—as William had had to—and the vulnerability of these people moved me.



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—

William texted that he had had the shot but had to wait ten minutes. And then he came out and we drove home with our bright lights on, and a few people flashed their lights at me, and, again, I felt terrible about that. But William had had his shot. In three weeks he was to go back.