The Casino Sign My Mother Read
“I can see the little letters,” she said, from behind her hand. “I can see the little copyright letters at the bottom of the chart. The little tiny ones.”
Dr. Reed smiled. He has seen it a thousand times and he still smiled like it was the first.
“The second eye in two weeks,” he said, “and you’ll be driving to church at night again by Thanksgiving.”
She did not answer him. She was looking at me. One eye still filmed and one eye brand new, and she was looking at my face with the new one like she had not seen it clearly in a long time, which she had not.
“You’ve got your daddy’s chin,” she said. “I forgot you had his exact chin.”
She reached up and touched my face, one finger along my jaw, the way you check that a thing is real.
“And you’ve got lines now,” she said, soft. “Right here, by your eyes. You’ve been tired, baby. I couldn’t see that you’d been tired.” She let her hand drop. “I’ve been so busy not being a burden to you that I quit seeing you altogether. I’m sorry for that. I’m going to do better now that I can look at you.”
The twenty-ninth
The second eye went the same, smooth, fifteen minutes, the kaleidoscope, the shield, the long sleep.
The follow-up for the second eye was on a Thursday, down at the clinic that is a good fifty minutes south, closer to the land, closer to Tunica, out in that flat country where the turbine turns.
It was already going on five in the evening by the time Dr. Reed finished with her and pronounced her, in his words, “better than factory.” The fall dark was coming on early the way it does at the end of October. We came out of that clinic into a cold pink sky, and my mother stood in the parking lot in her good coat and turned her whole head slow, all the way around, looking.
“Everything’s got edges,” she said. “I forgot things had edges.”
I had planned the next part. I will admit that. I had planned it for two weeks and I had not told her where we were going.
“You hungry, Mama?”
“I could eat.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m taking you to dinner.”