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knows what bones I’d been gnawing in my sleep.
    Then I stepped into the shower, holding on to the grip bar Myra’s bullied me into, careful not to drop the soap: I’m apprehensive of slipping. Still, the body must be hosed down, to get the smell of nocturnal darknessoff the skin. I suspect myself of having an odour I myself can no longer detect—a stink of stale flesh and clouded, aging pee.
    Dried, lotioned and powdered, sprayed like mildew, I was in some sense of the word restored. Only there was still the sensation of weightlessness, or rather of being about to step off a cliff. Each time I put a foot out I set it down provisionally, as if the floor might give way underneath me. Nothing but surface tension holding me in place.
    Getting my clothes on helped. I am not at my best without scaffolding. (Yet what has become of my real clothes? Surely these shapeless pastels and orthopedic shoes belong on someone else. But they’re mine; worse, they suit me now.)
    Next came the stairs. I have a horror of tumbling down them—of breaking my neck, lying sprawled with undergarments on display, then melting into a festering puddle before anyone thinks of coming to find me. It would be such an ungainly way to die. I tackled each step at a time, hugging the banister; then along the hall to the kitchen, the fingers of my left hand brushing the wall like a cat’s whiskers. (I can still see, mostly. I can still walk.Be thankful for small mercies, Reenie would say.Why should we be? said Laura.Why are they so small? )
    I didn’t want any breakfast. I drank a glass of water, and passed the time in fidgeting. At half past nine Walter came by to collect me. “Hot enough for you?” he said, his standard opening. In winter it’scold enough. Wet anddry are for spring and fall.
    “How are you today, Walter?” I asked him, as I always do.
    “Keeping out of mischief,” he said, as he always does.
    “That’s the best that can be expected for any of us,” I said. He gave his version of a smile—a thin crack in his face, like mud drying—opened the car door for me, and installed me in the passenger seat. “Big day today, eh?” he said. “Buckle up, or I might get arrested.” He saidbuckle up as if it was a joke; he’s old enough to remember earlier, more carefree days. He’d have been the kind of youth to drive with one elbow out the window, a hand on his girlfriend’s knee. Astounding to reflect that this girlfriend was in fact Myra.
    He eased the car delicately away from the curb and we moved off in silence. He’s a large man, Walter—square-edged, like a plinth, with a neck that is not so much a neck as an extra shoulder; he exudes a not unpleasant scent of worn leather boots and gasoline. From his checked shirt and baseball cap I gathered he wasn’t planning to attend the graduation ceremony. He doesn’t read books, which makes both of us more comfortable: as far as he’s concerned Laura is my sister and it’s a shame she’s dead, and that’s all.
    I should have married someone like Walter. Good with his hands.
    No: I shouldn’t have married anyone. That would have saved a lot of trouble.
    Walter stopped the car in front of the high school. It’s postwar modern, fifty years old but still new to me: I can’t get used to the flatness, the blandness. It looks like a packing crate. Young people and their parents were rippling over the sidewalk and the lawn and in through the front doors, their clothes in every summer colour. Myra was waiting for us, yoo-hooing from the steps, in a white dress covered with huge red roses. Women with such big bums should not wear large floral prints. There’s something to be said for girdles, not that I’d wish them back. She’d had her hair done, all tight grey cooked-looking curls like an English barrister’s wig.
    “You’re late,” she said to Walter.
    “Nope, I’m not,” said Walter. “If I am, everyone else is early, is all. No reason she should have to sit around