Chapter 6
He didn't ask if he could push me. He just put both hands on the handles of my chair and turned me away from the center of the foyer.
The crystal chandelier was still throwing that warm, broken pattern across the marble, and for a second my wheels caught the light as we moved. I could feel the cool blue from the entrance doors behind us and the warmer light from above fighting on my hands where they rested on my cane. I held it tight across my lap. I wasn't going to let it go again.
My son pushed me past the bottom of the grand curved staircase. I didn't look up at it. I hadn't looked up at it in months except to watch other people use it. The white balustrade shone like it had been polished that afternoon. I could hear his breathing a little hard from running down those steps, and the soft sound of his dress shoes on the marble, and then the quieter sound of the blonde woman's heels following us.
"Michael, you don't need to do that," she said. Her voice was thinner now, not shouting. "Let me."
He didn't answer. He just kept pushing me toward the hallway that led to my rooms on the ground floor. That hall was supposed to be my straight line. No steps. No curve. Just a flat run from the foyer to my door.
We reached the threshold and stopped cold.
There was a little bump there, maybe an inch high, where the marble met the wood flooring of the hall. For a year after I started using the chair, there had been a dark rubber ramp there. It was nothing fancy. The man from the medical supply store had put it down and told my son it would keep my front casters from catching.
It was gone.
My front wheels hit that lip and jammed. My body tipped forward just enough that I had to brace my cane against my knees to steady myself. My son tried to push harder and the chair shuddered but didn't get over it.
"What happened to the ramp?" he asked. He wasn't asking the air. He was asking her.
I remembered exactly when it disappeared. It was last Tuesday morning. I'd been sitting in that same hallway, waiting for my coffee, when two men in work shirts came in carrying a long, low table with a marble top. The blonde woman was standing there in her workout clothes directing them. She told me they were refreshing the entry for the gala season. She said the ramp looked institutional and that the designer had a better solution coming. She said it would only be a few days. I didn't say anything at the time. I just watched them lift the rubber piece, carry it out toward the garage, and slide that heavy console table against the wall half-blocking the doorway.
I'd told myself it was renovation. It sounded reasonable when she said it.
"The threshold ramp," my son said again. His hands were still on my chair. "Mom's ramp. Where is it?"
"The designer removed it," she said from behind us. I could hear her smoothing that gold gown with her hands. "It's this terrible black rubber thing, Michael. It ruined the sight line from the foyer. He said we needed to keep the hallway clear and elegant. He ordered a custom brass transition that hasn't come in yet."
She said it so easily. Like she'd rehearsed it.
My son looked down at me, then at the doorway. That console table she'd had them bring in was still there, a heavy thing with mirrored legs. It had been pushed out just far enough that the hallway entrance was narrowed by almost a foot. My chair could still fit, but you had to angle it just right, and you certainly couldn't get over that lip without a bump and a hard shove. Someone walking could slip right past without noticing. Someone in a chair couldn't.
"An interior designer decided my mom can't get to her bedroom?" he said. His voice was quiet and flat.
"It's temporary," she said. "It's just for the photos. The foundation tour comes next week."
I felt my hands tighten on my cane. I didn't want to cry again. I just wanted to get to my room under my own wheels.
My son let go of one handle, stepped around to the front of my chair, and crouched so his eyes were level with mine. "You okay to hold still for a second, Mom?"
I nodded. My throat was dry. I said, "I'm okay."
He stood, walked to that console table, and put his shoulder against it. It was heavier than it looked. He had to push twice to get it to slide across the wood, scraping lightly, until it was flat against the far wall where it had been before last week. The hallway opened up.
Then he came back, went behind me again, tipped my chair back just a little to lift the front casters, and bumped us up and over that inch of wood. It took effort. I felt the jolt all the way up my spine.
May you like
We rolled into the hall. The light changed immediately, less chandelier glitter, more soft lamps. My door was at the end, closed. He pushed me the whole length without anyone else touching the handles, his hands steady.
When we reached it, he turned the knob and pushed it open with his foot, and wheeled me over the flat sill into my ground-floor bedroom suite. The room was dark except for the lamp I'd left on, and it was mine.
