The old clock on the dresser glowed 1:12, then 2:47, then 4:03. I lay listening to the house settle and to the occasional sweep of headlights moving across the ceiling when a car passed on the street. I thought about Sunday dinners that would not happen now, about my granddaughter’s loose tooth she’d been worrying all week with the tip of her tongue, about the small pink rain boots by their mudroom bench, about the drive I would not be making on Sunday afternoon. I thought about my hip surgery, about the practical fear of being laid up and alone, and then, beneath that, a different fear that had nothing to do with recovery and everything to do with usefulness.
In the morning I called my friend Beverly.
She lives three houses down in a white ranch with blue shutters and a mailbox wrapped every December in an enormous red ribbon she refuses to replace, though the color has been weathered to something closer to rust. We have known each other since our children were in the same third-grade class, back when the PTA sold sheet cakes in the school cafeteria and everyone still believed there would be time later for all the things that matter. Beverly picked up on the second ring and listened without interrupting, which is one of the things I love most about her. She has never confused listening with waiting for her turn to speak.
“They really said space,” she said when I finished. “That’s the word she used?”
“That’s the word.”
“Because you couldn’t lend money before a hip surgery.”
“Yes.”
There was a short silence on the line. I could hear a cabinet closing in her kitchen, then the whistle of her kettle starting up. Finally she said, “Come over right now. I’ve got that good hazelnut coffee you like, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”
I went.