“The wind?”
She opens her trunk, takes out a white flag and holds it up. The flag is instantly billowing. “It’s windier than you think, and when you add a new building you could end up creating a wind tunnel: the Venturi Effect—in certain configurations, the wind speed increases.”
“I never heard of that.”
She puts the flag back in her trunk.
“What else you got in there?” he says, peering in.
Shovel, gallon of water, long green garden hose, ladder, rope, rubber gloves, knee pads. She is always climbing, swinging, getting on top, going under.
She bends to sift through the soil. “This looks sandy. Sandy soil has a liquefaction factor,” she says. “In an earthquake it’s not the ‘this’ that gets you,” she says, moving her arm from side to side. “It’s the ‘this.’” She pumps her hand up and down. “A lot of it has to do with what kind of soil is down below.”
The man scoops up some dirt. “Is that a good thing?”
“It’s a good thing you know about it and can plan accordingly. It’s all about what rock you’re on.”
“I appreciate your insight.” He shakes her hand. His handshake is firm. “Thank you.”
All day the building collapse haunts her, she keeps seeing the sticky guy sweeping sweaty strands of hair across his scalp, patting them down. He is slimy, slithering, slipping in and out of lies. She has the sensation of great weight, of something falling on her, crushing her. She feels out of breath but she keeps moving to keep herself from feeling trapped.
She stops for lunch at the health food store. The boy behind the counter sings a song he’s just written. “I’m here now,” he says. “But it’s just temporary.” Everyone is something else, everyone wants something more.
She is back at the office. People bring her samples of materials, combinations of things. They want to know what goes with what. What brings success, power? What juxtapositions spell trouble? What do you think of titanium? Curved surfaces? How much does a building really need to breathe? They want to know how she knows what she knows. “Did you study Feng Shui?”
The temperature creeps up—the air is still, like the steady baking heat of an oven, unrelenting, broken only by the shadow of a cloud passing over.
In the afternoon, she visits her mother. The doors of the nursing home open automatically; a cool disinfectant smell pours out. Vacuum sealed, frozen in time. There is an easel by the main desk: GOOD AFTERNOON. THE YEAR IS 2002. TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, MAY 16TH. THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS SUNNY AND BRIGHT. Her mother’s unit is behind a locked door. There is a sign on the wall: “Look as you are leaving, make sure no one follows you.”
Her mother doesn’t know her anymore. It happened over the course of a year. The first time she pretended it was a mistake—of course you know me, she said. And her mother seemed to catch herself, but then it happened again, it happened more, and then sometimes she knew her, sometimes she didn’t—and then she didn’t.
Every day, she visits. She brings her camera, she takes a picture. It is her way of dealing with the devastation, the rug pulled out from under.
“Hello,” she says, walking into the room.
“Hello,” her mother repeats, a parrot, echoing.
“How are you today?”
“How are you today?”
“I’m good,” she sits at the edge of her mother’s bed, unfastening her mother’s long braids, brushing her hair.
“Remind me,” her mother says. “Who are you?”
“I’m your daughter.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because I remember you,” she says.
“From before?” her mother asks.
She nods.
“My sock is itching,” her mother says, rubbing the tag around her ankle. All the residents are tagged—an alarm goes off if they wander out—the tag leg is alternated, but it remains an irritant.
“What can we do?” the nurse says. “We don’t want to lose anyone, do we?”
She rubs lotion on her mother’s leg. She puts a chestnut in her mother’s pocket just as she once saw her mother do to her grandmother—to ward off backaches. She puts an orange she picked this morning on the nightstand, resting on a bed of clover. Protection, luck, vision.
She takes her mother for a walk in the wandering garden, an inconspicuous circle, you always end where you begin—it guarantees no one gets lost.
“Let me take your picture,” she says, posing her mother by some flowering vines. “You look very pretty.”
“You look very pretty,” her mother says.