410 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes, 41 seconds

Things are starting to grow again. Her toenails. Her fingernails. There’s fuzz at the top of her head. She rubs it for good luck.

412 days, 7 hours, 5 minutes, 14 seconds

Stay out of the sun, they warn her, handing her the third bottle of pills. A piece of German chocolate cake for her (and she doesn’t usually like chocolate). She fainted when the Brownies went swimming at the lake. She dropped out of the Brownies. She dropped out of school. She bought a dozen sun hats, different shapes and sizes and colors. But there is no color.

414 days, 17 hours, 10 minutes, 59 seconds

Must acquit.

414 days, 17 hours, 29 minutes, 48 seconds

She imagines Dubyuh with convertible gloves like she just gave her husband. He uses the cashmere for jogging, slips on the outer leather shell when he meets heads of state. Easy to slide out of. That sounds right, doesn’t it? He’ll ask his Chief of Staff, if he can just remember…

414 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes, 31 seconds

It’s after midnight.

414 days, 23 hours, 7 minutes, 30 seconds

He offers to help her set up her pills for the coming week, always a grueling task. He’s trying to make this as pleasant a day as he can but she can’t.

415 days, 1 hours, 0 minutes, 13.4 seconds

She imagines a diabetic coma at the stroke of midnight on her birthday. Everything else has gone wrong today. She takes her 23rd bite of zeppole, a gift from the waiter, reminds her husband again that if she’s even on a ventilator, not a respirator, she wants off. Don’t let them sweet-talk him into her being as good as before. This is before. The waiter didn’t know it was her birthday. Almost her birthday. She takes another bite. A coma might feel pretty good right now, despite the flowers.

415 days, 4 hours, 58 minutes, 31 seconds

The first day of December, the day before her birthday, three days before Chanukah, 30 degrees out, he goes to visit a friend and comes home having lost one of the gloves she gave him for Chanukah years ago. While he’s away she reads an article about a website set up to unite gloves with their owners, but that’s only in Pittsburgh. For now. The flowers he sent her are delivered while he’s out, and she has to hobble down the stairs to receive them, then hobble back up, terrified of that final step, no one to hang onto.

416 days, 1 hours, 37 minutes, 43 seconds

Tonight the first of her birthday cakes. She forgets to wish.

419 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes, 8 seconds

It suddenly occurs to her that, less than a year from now, we’ll know who’ll become the next president. With any luck, the country will be in remission.

420 days, 11 hours, 57 minutes, 39.2 seconds

This is how low they’ve come: for the second night in a week, screaming at each other as they walk Columbus Avenue. A teenager walking in front of them even turned around, but she’s with her parents or grandparents, so that’s not really a teenager.

420 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes, 53 seconds

So he tells her now he went to the parade mainly because he wanted her to have a balloon, he wanted her to have a balloon from Macy’s. And the first balloon vendor he saw had a unicorn and he wasn’t sure he’d see other vendors so he bought the unicorn (which she didn’t discover until later) and the Dalmatian. He remembered the balloons being larger. But he wanted her to finally her a balloon from the Macy’s parade. Two balloons. He's completely forgotten he brought her back a balloon the one other time she remembers him going to the parade –a lion, she thinks, and a mermaid. One was for her, the other for their sick friend. Still sick. Dalmatians are rescue dogs.

424 days, 11 hours, 30 minutes, 36 seconds

He goes to the parade after all. Just for two or three bands. Comes home with a small Dalmatian balloon for her, which he places on top of the stuffed rabbit. He hates that rabbit.

Dalmatians are rescue dogs. Her father had a real Dalmatian. He was named Tuesday. Today is Thursday. Possibly he was blown up on Tuesday. Meanwhile, she seldom picks up the phone from her father anymore, but he talks to her husband for a few minutes each day just to check things are alright. When he remembers.

424 days, 11 hours, 33 minutes, 20 seconds

Do you know what year is this is ? Do you know who’s president?

425 days, 1 hours, 19 minutes, 21 seconds

No blow ups tonight, she supposes. No more tantrums.

On just 2 mg of the steroid every other day her face may lose its bloat. And even that will stop soon.

No more blow ups tonight. The night before Thanksgiving, when all the Macy’s balloons are gathering down by the museum. Twenty-two years ago, when they were first together, no one knew about these little outbursts. They could stay watching as long as it took to get Garfield’s tail straight. She bought gloves. The next year they bought hot coffee for one of the workers. But now the streets are mobbed, and they close them off to viewers early.

No blow ups tonight. He won’t be going to the parade tomorrow. He won’t end up in the ER. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. And she won’t either. She swears she won’t.

425 days, 1 hours, 33 minutes, 51 seconds

A nightmare last night where she couldn’t keep her medications straight. She had on all these little candy bracelets. Or most of them were candy. She couldn’t remember which was which. She woke with a migraine and never really got back to sleep.

She supposes that’s what happens when you just walk out of the emergency room not even bothering to take off the bracelet. She supposes that’s what happens when you stomp on the insulin vial. It takes all her energy.

432 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes, 39 seconds

Almost time for George to pardon two more turkeys.

432 days, 23 hours, 32 minutes, 10 seconds

It’s the thigh, not I, that will be her downfall. Downstairs, half asleep , he reads The Tin Drum. She no longer orders chicken in restaurants.

438 days, 10 hours, 55 minutes, 18 seconds

Even back then, he didn’t know what to say to her. But he used to mutter this click or cluck all the the time, shaking his head, turning away. It’s the same click she’s heard from her husband lately. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. And she, who never notices, notices.

438 days, 11 hours, 3 minutes, 55 seconds

In The Hotel New Hampshire, one of her favorite books and movies, Lilly is trying to grow. She even writes a bestseller about it. But in the end she kills herself, leaving a note behind that says “not tall enough.” She knows the feeling. At school on photo day she was always the last person in line. The last person to be weighed and measured in September. Her father talked about how when he graduated high school he and one other boy were the shortest in the class. The other guy went through a growth spurt, so it could still happen to her. She knew it wouldn’t. She knew the only growth would be inside her. What she didn’t expect was how much she’d come to fear it. This is what she thinks about at two in the morning, just before bed.