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Show Woodworth/23 She buries her face in the grass. The same pond, the same willow tree, the same smell from the leaves that fall into the water, then wash up against the side of the pond and decompose. She cries, not knowing what else to do. When Marty comes back over the hill, her parents are both sitting on the patio. She sees them look up at her, but they don't wave, and neither does she. She watches the ground, wondering if there is a nest or a crouching animal under her sneakered footsteps. When she crosses onto the lawn, she watches her parents, gauging the atmosphere. They talk without movement, hands folded prayer-like around their cocktail glasses. Ned supports the glass on his lap, his legs crossed. He has changed his clothes, replacing his hospital attire with loud plaid pants and a yellow shirt with an alligator above his heart as if he is trying to remind Ruth of her old way of dressing. His gray hair looks darker from his shower, holds flat and tight to his head. Tennis and golf have tanned his face, so that he looks young and healthy. He watches t^arty coming across the field, and she watches him, knowing that he can't see well i"<_ad enough to see her expression. A shoe dangles from his foot. Words flow from his mouth, an undertone of ponderous Latin words and medical emergencies, of cardiac arrests on the table, or a new anestheologist, of a girl who has been his patient since she was six, who now has secondary syphilis, of a twenty-five year old boy who had asked him what was involved in a sex-change operation. Ruth stares at the hedge separating their land from the Grayson's, stirs her drink with her finger. |
