Through the peephole I see a pot of anxious lilies held by the bellboy who is scared of birds (“Good morning,” he says, fearfully). I open the door, dig through my pockets for a dollar. “I’ll find my wallet.”
I pass in front of the hallway mirror and catch sight of my mussed hair and blurred face. My hair. My face.
The wallet slips my grasp and lands on the carpet. I test my arms and legs, enjoying the lightness. It’s as if I’ve been relieved of my skin and am a spirit. I reach, bend, lunge.
“Ma’am?” the bellboy says.
“Look at me!” I say, in tears. “I’m not my mother anymore!”
He references the hallway for escape but whether the employees of this hotel like it or not, all of this week’s enormous changes have occurred in front of them.
“What is your name?” I lean in, anticipating an important, serendipitous moniker.
“James,” he says.
“James.” I am disappointed. “I don’t know anyone named that.”
“Okay.” He wants to leave, a reasonable thought in an unreasonable hotel room. I pull a bill from my wallet.
“Do you go by Jim?” I say.
He pockets the bill. “Just James.”
The lilies are from Aunt Henshaw, who has a tendency to summarize whatever’s going on in unsurprising ways. The note: You are getting married soon. After James leaves I return to my sister on the phone. “Are you there?”
“Barely,” she says. “I fell asleep.”
“I’m myself again,” I say. “Me. My self.”
“Show me. Send a selfie.”
“I hate selfies.”
“See your way clear to making an exception this once.”
I take a picture and message it to her. She is quiet for so long I ask if she’s received it. “Seeing you. I forgot. You’re beautiful. You’re so,” she says, “brown. No one else looks like you.”
“Better than Mom, right?”
She doesn’t want to joke. “I’d show your picture to the doctors,” she says. “I’d tell them, as close to her as possible. Simone was the name of my friend who was killed.”
I make a noise, a protracted oh, as what feels like a million tiny birds I didn’t realize were sitting on my chest fly away.