A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton Page A

thick and bristly, like a Brillo pad. “I don’t—” I could hardly stand the feel of what was my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “I don’t know.”
    He pulled me hard against his chest. That was comforting. Being held so firmly you couldn’t injure anything. I could imagine spending the rest of my numbered days on the hospital sofa. The second time I had crashed the car into the stone planter by the garage he had said in his owner-of-the-manor voice, “Alice, you’re going to have to tell me what happened.” He was waiting. It was his nature to move, to work, to produce. He was going to wait for me for a while. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said after a minute. “It happened so fast, while Emma was in the bathroom.” I realized, as the words came past my teeth, that I had edited out the time I had spent in the basement and upstairs. “Where are Emma and Claire?” I asked. “How are they?”
    “I called Nellie,” Howard said.
    His face was like a Cro-Magnon’s. He was all crags, and he had shaggy eyebrows, a looming forehead; he would have looked wonderful in a cave painting. He would have been a Cro-Magnon celebrity, on the cover of Cro-Magnon People , the most handsome, nearly modern man of the year. His eyes were set too close together. It made a person feel crosseyed just to look into them. Howard’s mother, Nellie, had come from St. Paul, Minnesota, eight hours away. She had come because it was a real emergency. I rested in the thought of how repulsive I found Reverend Joseph Nabor. I pictured him calling his mother when he got home and telling her what a job he had done helping the sick, the bereaved, and the criminal, when he himself could hardly breathe.
    Howard was saying something about going to eat. I couldn’t make my way to the cafeteria, couldn’t sit down to eat banana cream pie while Lizzy battled to get well. I couldn’t, didn’t want to, and he was pulling meup, hardly waiting while I slipped on my flip flops. When we passed the broad open doors of the intensive care unit I faltered, broke away from Howard, had to stand and look. This was not something in my imagination. It was not one of the dreadful things I worried about, not an Uzi stickup or the sun glaring through the great big ozone hole. There, surrounding Lizzy’s bed, were all of Theresa’s prodigious Catholic family: sisters, brothers, mother and father, grandmothers, aunts and uncles, great-uncles and cousins. There were so many of them they were spilling out into the hall—they were at the hospital instead of making coleslaw and potato salad for the family picnic tomorrow. They were encircling the bed, holding hands, praying together. They were saying every single prayer, from the first Hail Mary to the last novena. Five out of eight of Theresa’s siblings could certifiably be excommunicated from the Church—she had told me elaborate stories about each of their sins. They had fornicated, blasphemed, committed adultery. And what had Theresa said about the Uncle’s secret illegitimate daughter? She was probably the one with the short skirt and the dangerous-looking platform sandals.
    I should go straight to the relatives, I knew, and let them see me in my abundant shame and misery. I was going to get pushed down the chute into the white flames of hell and I would tell them right out that I deserved to burn and burn. I didn’t ordinarily censor my thoughts, but I would, from now on, blot out what was bullheaded and extreme. They were gathered around the bed of the child, chanting and praying, believing for the moment, committing themselves, just as I had, to eternal belief and purity of heart and mind, if only the one, the most important error could be rectified. No one beckoned. No one broke away from the circle to invite us into the room. Dan looked up and did not seem to recognize us.
    We sat in the lounge for two more nights and two more days. Howard left only to milk, to return with a fresh,