Palma

Laurie
Palma
Starbucks, September 26, 2007

I’m on the terrace, speaking to Seymour on the phone, when I hear my name called. Palma from downstairs is standing in the heat, looking up. I say I’ll be down in a minute. “What?” she says. She’s hard of hearing. She once showed me her hearing aide, asking if her TV was too loud. She hauls herself up a few stairs and stands panting, leaning on the railing. I get off the phone and lead her back down. “Come in, come in,” she says by her door. She wants to kiss me but she’s sweating. She’s just returned from marketing, a 10-minute walk. How old is she? She could be my grandmother, except that would make her 130. It’s the old world manner, the accent, although hers is Italian, not Polish. She’s younger than my mother. I forget who I am.

I sit at a table covered with oil cloth. Where do people get this stuff? An ironing board stands in the center of the large white room, a white blouse dangling from it on a hanger. She mentions it’s her daughter’s, as if to say: This is what I do. This is what I’m needed for. She wants to tell me the story of her life as if I am a lifeboat and she is drowning. “I will make a long story short,” she says several times, not wanting to make anything short, not wanting to tell a story.

On the table is a small glass vase filled with artificial roses, and in the vase is a viscous liquid meant to suggest water. She says the table, the chairs, and the couch are hers. The rest her daughter gave her, including an enormous wooden unit housing a gigantic TV and slots for wine. “I don't drink wine,” she says. She wants to give me her daughter's phone number. I write my number to give to her daughter, who has told her to do this.

On Saturday she is flying to New York, where she lived for 45 years. She stands in her white blouse and tan skirt, her light brown hair crumpled from the heat. She smooths it over and over, searching for expressions in English she knows. She likes saying “como se dice,” in order to hear her language. She says she doesn’t write well in English, has lived in this country all this time but doesn’t feel at home in the language. She had a house in Corona, Queens. Her eyes grow round and excited when she speaks of this house. “I love New York. New York is life. Here,” she shrugs, “I came to see what it was like. My daughter said to me, ‘Ma, the boys can't take care of you. Arizona is warm. It will be better for your health.’ So I tried it. I don't like it, but I decided to stay. I sold my house to one of my sons. I will be away from here one month or two months, you never know. People make plans, but you never know. I used the money to buy this place.”

She doesn’t need me to get her mail or pay her bills. Her daughter will do that. She needs me to sit. She offers a cold drink. I say I am going out soon, to meet Richard, am just stopping by. She smooths her hair and says she has an appointment to get it done on Friday. It must be in the salon near the market. She doesn't drive. She's a woman who walks everywhere, sho is used to walking. What can her life be by the side of a golf course in the middle of the heaving desert, near a daughter who says she will take care of her but who has a husband and a little girl, this daughter who told her to come to Arizona, but where has she come?