The room was very quiet. The walls were a shell-pink and white Laura Ashley print, and there were matching curtains at the open window, moving slightly in the summer breeze. There was a single bed, a small bureau, and three chairs. Something about it seemed like a child’s room, or a place where you would be protected. The woman was sitting in one of the chairs, next to the window. Below her was an expanse of lush green lawn, trees, and four tennis courts, where people were playing. She was a pretty woman, but pale and inordinately still, her face drawn inward looking at secrets. Her hands were folded in her lap and she never turned her head to look out at the view. Then you saw that the window had bars.
There were two other women in the room; one her friend, the other her doctor. “Don’t you want to talk about it?” the doctor asked gently. No answer. “Do you remember anything at all?”
“What can we do?” the friend asked the doctor, looking frightened.
“I wish we could reach her,” the doctor said.
“She hasn’t said a word since she got here?”
“No.”
“Maybe she’d like to talk about something else. Would you? Anything?” Silence. “Do you think she hears us?”
The doctor sighed. There was a pad of lined paper in a clipboard on the dresser, and next to it was a pen. The doctor brought the paper and pen to the motionless woman and smiling encouragement put them on her lap. “Why don’t you try to write something?” she said. “You like to write.”
The woman looked down at the pad, but did nothing.
“Perhaps you’d like to be alone,” the doctor said. “I know it’s easier to write when other people aren’t around. We’ll come back later. Okay?”
“I love you,” her friend said in a sad little voice, and then they left the room.
The woman sat there for a long time looking at the pad of paper. Then she touched it, as if relating to something that grounded her. Her fingers closed around the pen. Finally, slowly, in a script so small and timid it was almost illegible, she began to write.
A long time ago men outlived their wives. The women had a dozen children, many of whom died young, and then the wives died in childbirth and were buried in the midst of tiny tombstones. The husbands married again.
The woman reread what she had written several times. Then in larger letters, at the top, she wrote the title: TINY TOMBSTONES.
When the doctor returned with the patient’s medication the page she had written had disappeared. She had hidden it. It didn’t matter. A first step had been taken to unravel the past.