View From a Kite by Maureen Hull

would stick somewhere inside. Finally, a sudden two-pound gain. They let me up for an hour a day. The exercise, I told them, makes me hungry. Now I’m a porky one hundred and one pounds, fat enough not to blow away in the outside world. I scarf down pancakes until an explosion is imminent. If you’ve gained weight during a weekend home, they put it down on your chart with a green asterisk and the next month Dr. Robichaud is much more inclined to let you out again.
    After breakfast, I lie on the porch swing while Edith does up the dishes.
    â€œLet me do those,” I’d said, but she’d chased me away with the dishtowel. “Get out in the sun,” she’d said, so here I am, sorting through the pile of junk mail that has arrived for me in the past month. A record club is threatening to take my firstborn. Another one wants to give me five thousand free tapes for one dollar each plus shipping and handling. The spring Eaton’s catalogue is about to expire, still in its plastic bag. It seems pink and lime green are in. If I had to pick a season to live in pyjamas, this was a good one.
    Aunt Edith brings me out the ubiquitous cup of tea, and bundles me up in a purple, green, royal blue, and mauve afghan. I match the lilacs.
    â€œWhat’s this?” I wave a business card that has fallen out of the paper pile. Edith looks perplexed, reads the card, turns it over.
    â€œA man,” she says. “A salesman. He’s gone.”
    It doesn’t look like the business card of a salesman. He’s some kind of rep for a magazine Susan and Clara and I used to read at the check-out counter and make fun of:
    ALIEN BABY EATS PARENTS
    SIX-YEAR-OLD BOY GIVES BIRTH TO GRANDMOTHER
    107-YEAR-OLD MAN MARRIES 20-YEAR-OLD BRIDE; TRUE LOVE AT LAST
    â€œWhat did he want?” I ask her.
    Her face clouds, brightens, clouds. She surfaces somewhere a few decades back. Time is a river to Aunt Edith, and she is a fish. She rises and falls with invisible currents.
    â€œHe wanted to speak to Robert. I told him Robert was away in town.”
    â€œAre you sure that’s what he said?”
    â€œHe had the wrong house. He wanted to speak to my niece. I told him my niece was a baby.” She stares at me, confused. Rises higher in the river, recognizes me, and blinks.
    â€œDo you want some tea, dear?’
    â€œNo thanks, Aunt Edith,” I say, and she goes indoors. I pick the card up from where she has dropped it. Melvin Holyoke is his name. I put him in the discard pile.
    At ten o’clock, Elizabeth drives up to collect Edith. She is taking her to the dentist.
    â€œDon’t you move from this porch,” she says. “We’ll be back in time for lunch, and we’re bringing you a big pizza from Nick’s.” She beams; she re-tucks my afghan.
    â€œI promise,” I say, and wave them off. I’ve every intention of staying right where I am, but half an hour later there’s all that tea and coffee and orange juice to unload. When I come back downstairs there’s a man standing in the back porch.
    â€œGood morning.” He smiles, confidingly, as if we’ve been up to something together. “The door was open, I hope you don’t mind. Melvin Holyoke’s the name, I left my card with your aunt, Miss…MacIntyre? Gwen, is it?”
    By now he’s oozed into the kitchen, he has put his hat down on the table and pulled himself out a chair.
    â€œMind if I take a seat?” He hands me a second card. He lowers his backside onto the crocheted cushion that eases Edith’s bad hip when she sits down to eat, and pulls up the knees of his polyester-blend pants so they won’t stretch out of shape over his bent knees. I stand with my back to the wood stove, pick up a cup of lukewarm tea (Edith’s, I think) from a trivet and sip from it to steady my hand.
    â€œWe would like to do an exclusive interview with you—with pictures, of course—to