Chapter 23: Edith Walks

We got to the rehab center in twenty minutes, and Calvin drove the whole way with both hands on the wheel.

Gwen met us in the lobby in her scrubs, with her car keys still in her fist.

"I was on my lunch," she said. "The nurse called me first. Don't be mad."

"I'm not mad."

"She said she'd do it when you got here, and not before."

The therapy room was long and bright, with a pair of parallel bars down the middle.

My mother stood between them in her blue cardigan, with her right hand on one bar and a therapist's hand under her left elbow.

Her hair was damp at the temples.

"There she is," Edith said. "Took you long enough."

"Mom."

"Hush. Stand over there." She pointed with her chin to the far end of the bars. "Ten feet. Not a step closer."

I went where she told me, and Gwen and Calvin stayed by the door.

The therapist let go.

For a moment my mother stood by herself, swaying a little, with her jaw set.

She had worked in a school office for thirty-one years, and she had once told a visiting superintendent to wipe his feet.

She looked down at her left foot.

She moved it.

It dragged on the floor, and then it landed, and she shifted her weight onto it with her teeth clenched.

"One," she said.

Her right foot followed.

"Two."

"Mom, you don't have to..."

"I said hush."

The third step was short, and the fourth was crooked, and on the fifth her left knee buckled.

I took a step toward her, and she put her good hand up flat.

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