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old-fashioned bedpan at the last Christmas party, a plaque with a mannequin’s hand on it to celebrate Connie’s special way of “touching” people, a dizzyingly expensive bottle of champagne, and a round-trip airplane ticket to any destination in the United States.
    Connie stayed up until 2 A.M . following the party. She was alone and bravely hanging on to the edge of her new list-driven life as she set the champagne bottle in the refrigerator, placed her new photograph on the dresser she hoped to sell sometime very soon, opened up the back door and threw her old nursing shoes against the tree by the garage, and slipped the airplane voucher into the back of her list of dreams book.
    Then she wrote.
    She took out a piece of paper, jotted down her numbers for the next day, the real first day of her new life, and fell asleep thinking that tomorrow she could do whatever in the hell she wanted to do.
    Or not do.

3. Get rid of SHIT. Start with the garage.
    5. Stop setting the alarm clock.
    11. Watch all the movies you have clipped out of the review section for the past—what?—thirty years.
    13. A span of time to indulge myself in any damn thing I want. Eat. Drink. Be merry time. Turn off the phones. Maybe lie about what I’m doing. Minutes. Seconds. Hours. Days.
    C onnie Franklin Nixon wakes at 9:57 A.M . and wonders what the bright light is that’s shining in her eyes. When she realizes it is the late-morning sun, she rises up out of bed as if someone is lifting her towards the ceiling with a very fast crane.
    “Shit,” she says, jumping straight up. “I’m late.”
    And then she begins her well-practiced “Get Ready for Work Dance.” She lunges for her watch, looks desperately for her schedule book which is not where it usually is, and rotates her head in a circle to crack her neck into place.
    It is only when she turns and sees the small pile of papers beside her pillow that she remembers it is the day after her retirement party. Connie sits back down on her bed with a sigh the size of her entire right lung, reads each one of the three pieces of paper she wrote on seconds before she fell asleep, starts laughing, and slips them inside the pocket of the baggy t-shirt that someone else might call a nightgown. Before she passes through the doorway she turns on her CD player for company, for encouragement, for inspiration, and just in case.
    “My God, I picked a mess of easy stuff to start with,” she says, stuffing her feet into her pink slippers that look like half-dead and dyed kitty-kats and wandering into the kitchen.
    The day—what is left of it for a woman who often rises at 4 A.M . and who has worked every shift and been at work every hour of the day for most of her adult life—is such a gift, such a glorious span of time, that Connie almost starts to cry.
    Almost.
    Connie remembers the champagne and kisses her own hand because she also has orange juice in the refrigerator. Brilliant move, Connie, absolutely brilliant.
    Connie Franklin Nixon, the retired nurse, the retired administrator—for 90 days, anyway—is feeling celebratory, light, and bold, even before her morning mimosa. She fills up the largest glass she can find and parades through her house.
    Finally the singing walls are resting. There are no men crawling around with sagging tool belts and smiling ass moons. There are so many damn empty rooms, diminishing signs of life, a house in retreat, that Connie ponders turning the CD player on high when she cranks it on. Time, then—maybe past time—to pass on the reins of this once lively dwelling to someone who can change its face, set a new heart inside of its kitchen, guard its parameters with a different set of rules.
    When Connie looks out the back window she sees that her old nursing clogs are lying next to the tree like wounded soldiers waiting for an airlift. She decides to leave them there. It looks as if someone has climbed the tree and dropped the shoes from the first branch. It surely