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Show Motherlunge a novel 114 17. More On Ugliness Clinical studies prove that sleeplessness clouds ethical decision-making. Do I sleep well? Am I tired? My moral compass is a pinwheel. 1 In those days in the big city, Pavia's next-door neighbor Calvin-tan and flamboyant at forty-eight, a former Southerner surprised one day (by his mother, Tookie) in his teens having sex with the (male) gardener, forced to leave his home and inheritance carrying nothing but a seersucker suit and a tapestry of cranes highstepping among Medieval reeds-took care of a Haitian woman who lived down the street from us. She was dying of AIDS. Three times a week, Calvin brought the woman dinner. He washed her sheets and bleached them, ironed them. He chatted with her in French and rubbed lotion on her feet. He brought her flowers from his front garden-or else he bought them at the comer florists-and put them in a vase on a chair next to her bed. Pavia introduced me to Calvin on the street one day. He was wearing white slacks, pulling a picnic basket out of the trunk of his vintage roadster. He was on his way to the Haitian woman's house. "Her name is Fleur," he told Pavia and me. "Isn't that a pretty name?" Calvin was movie-star handsome, tall and broad-shouldered; his polite attention to me almost hurt. I opened my mouth and said the food looked nice; he was nice to bring it. |