It is early spring, and the big, empty sky is gray. There are no hills, and small black dots are cows. At the grocery store, real farmers with overalls and hats buy food just like everybody else.
Janet washes Louise’s clothes: pajama pants and old T-shirts from Tom and Michael’s drawers. Michael, in his senior year of high school now, is hardly ever around. He brought a friend over a few weeks ago, and Louise had stayed in her room the whole night, shouting at Janet when she knocked on the door. Tom is away at college, a two-hour drive away. He says he will visit soon. Janet’s boyfriend lives even farther, and has a new grandbaby. So mostly it is just Janet and Louise.
Janet stacks the dishes in the dishwasher. There is not much else for her to do.
•
Janet decides: Enough of this. She takes Louise to a physical therapist. No one has told her to do this, but it seems logical enough. Louise can tolerate being in a car now. The gym is a white, cinderblock building off the town’s main street. Weights, blocks, and bands sit in bins. The physical therapist looks like a college kid, but he says he is married with three children. Janet explains Louise’s situation, and the physical therapist says maybe he can help.
He has Louise step up a set of wooden stairs built into the wall, then down. He has her curl weights, touch her toes, do squats against the wall. Janet is hopeful. She has always had confidence in athletics and sweat. She used to run half marathons and do aerobics, and now works out on the elliptical machine in her basement every day after work. She always pushed her children to do sports growing up because she thought it would make them grow into fit, disciplined adults. She didn’t want them to be lazy.
The physical therapist stands a few feet away and watches a baseball game on TV.
When the session is over the physical therapist gives them a laminated packet of illustrated exercises. The first three are noted to especially help patients with a rotator cuff injury. Janet and Louise look at one another. A rotator cuff injury?
In the parking lot, a group of boys in basketball shorts glance at Louise, then quickly look away. There was a time when boys like that would have made something out of Louise.
They don’t bother going back.