Chapter 1
The chandelier threw its light straight down onto the marble and back up again. I could see every candle reflected in the polish, a perfect double of the crystals above me, and in that same shine I could see the two pairs of hands locked onto my chair. The blonde woman in the gold gown had both hands on the back of my wheelchair behind me, her knuckles tight, and across from her the young maid in the black dress with the white bow at her back was leaning over the handles on the other side, not letting go. I was caught between them, my own hands wrapped around my dark wooden cane in my lap, and the house I had lived in for thirty years suddenly felt like a place I did not know.
It should have been a quiet night after the dinner. My son had paid for the new chandelier himself. The wax was still warm, the floor still smelled like polish, and there I was, seventy-eight years old, unable to move my own wheels an inch because two younger women were holding them fixed to the floor.
My name is Eleanor, I was seventy-eight that night in my own foyer.
The sound came before I could see him. He was at the top of the grand curved staircase, his black double-breasted suit with the gold buttons catching the cool blue light. I heard his shoes hit the white marble steps hard as he came down.
"Give me that cane. Stay away from her. You're finished. I'll throw you out myself."
The words were not soft. The blonde woman said them and she did not look at me when she said them. She was looking at the maid, and her grip on my chair tightened so the whole frame shuddered. I felt the vibration up through my hips. My cane slipped a half inch in my hands and she reached for it, her fingers brushing the dark wood. I pulled it back against my chest. My breath caught and would not come out smooth. My eyes were already full. I could taste the tears before they fell.
Then he was closer, halfway down the curve of the staircase, his mouth open, his hand out as if he could reach me from twenty feet away.
"Mother, mother, mother, tell me what happened."
His voice cracked on the last word. He was not looking at the chandelier or the marble or his wife's gold dress. He was looking only at my face. I tried to breathe. The cool air under the chandelier moved across my cheeks. I could hear my own breathing, too fast, and the small creak of my chair's brakes that neither woman had released. The maid's hands were still on the handles but she had stopped pushing. She was simply holding, protecting the chair from being jerked backward.
The blonde woman did not answer him. She kept one hand on my chair and one hand stretched toward my cane. The maid said nothing at first either, and then she looked at my son as he came down the last steps, and her shoulders rose once.
I wanted to speak. I had held the cane so long my fingers ached. It was not just a cane. It was how I stood from this chair, how I locked the wheels myself, how I said I was still the one who decided when I moved. If she took it I would have to ask to go anywhere. I knew that. I had known it for months but I had not said it out loud.
May you like
He was three steps from the bottom now. The light from the chandelier made a bright pattern on the floor between us. The blonde woman's grip had not loosened. The maid had not stepped away. And I did the only thing I could do without letting go of the dark wood in my lap.
I lifted my right hand, the one that was not holding the cane, and I pointed forward straight toward him. My mouth opened. My eyes were wide and wet and I could not blink the tears away. I held that pointing, my arm trembling just a little, waiting for him to reach me, waiting for the words to finally come out before either of them could move my chair again.
