Diary

August 2

THERE’S A LITTLE TUG between Misty’s legs, a little pull deep inside her when Tabbi snaps the bag off the end of Misty’s catheter and takes it down the hall to the bathroom. She empties the bag into the toilet and washes it. Tabbi brings it back and snaps it onto the long plastic tube.

She does all this so Misty can keep working in the pitch dark. Her eyes taped. Blind.

There’s just the feel of warm sunshine from the window. The moment the paintbrush stops, Misty says, “This is done.”

And Tabbi slips the drawing off the easel and clips on a new sheet of paper. She takes the pencil when it looks dull and gives Misty a sharp one. She holds out a tray of pastel crayons, and Misty feels them blind, greasy piano keys of color, and picks one.

Just for the record, every color Misty picks, every mark she makes, is perfect because she’s stopped caring.

For breakfast, Paulette brings up a room service tray, and Tabbi cuts everything into single bites. While Misty works, Tabbi puts the fork into her mother’s mouth. With the tape over her face, Misty can only open her mouth so far. Just wide enough to suck her paintbrush into a sharp point. To poison herself. Still working, Misty doesn’t taste. Misty doesn’t smell. After a few bites of breakfast, she’s had enough.

Except for the scratch of the pencil on paper, the room is quiet. Outside, five floors down, the ocean waves hiss and burst.

For lunch, Paulette brings up more food Misty doesn’t eat. Already the leg cast feels loose from all the weight she’s lost. Too much solid food would mean a trip to the toilet. It would mean a break in her work. Almost no white is left on the cast, Tabbi has covered it with so many flowers and birds. The fabric of her smock is stiff with slopped paint. Stiff and sticking to her arms and breasts. Her hands are crusted with dried paint. Poisoned.

Her shoulders ache and pop, and her wrist grinds inside. Her fingers are numb around a charcoal pencil. Her neck spasms, cramping up along each side of her spine. Her neck feels the way Peter’s neck looks, arched back and touching his butt. Her wrists feel the way Peter’s look, twisted and knotted.

Her eyes taped shut, her face is relaxed so it won’t fight the two strips of masking tape that run from her forehead down across each eye, down her cheeks to her jaw, then down to her neck. The tape keeps the orbicularis oculi muscle around her eye, the zygomatic major at the corner of her mouth, it keeps all her facial muscles relaxed. With the tape, Misty can open her lips just a sliver. She can only talk in a whisper.

Tabbi puts a drinking straw in her mouth and Misty sucks some water. Tabbi’s voice says, “No matter what happens, Granmy says you have to keep doing your art.”

Tabbi wipes around her mother’s mouth, saying, “I need to go pretty soon.” She says, “Please don’t stop, no matter how much you miss me.” She says, “Do you promise?”

And still working, Misty whispers, “Yes.”

“No matter how long I’m gone?” Tabbi says.

And Misty whispers, “I promise.”