Owen's Daughter by Jo-Ann Mapson Page B

OK?
    Everything OK. No worries.
    OK , she signed back. But she didn’t believe him. How long can you stay?
    A week. OK?
    OK. She smiled back. Anything else?
    He shook his head no, then signed, I’ll text you my flight time. See you soon.
    She waved good-bye as he did to her. Click. Off. End of conversation. The computer screen saver returned to Gustave Baumann’s woodcut The Bishop’s Apricot Tree , one of her favorite New Mexico paintings.
    Margaret took Echo out for a nightly pee, and as usual, the dog sniffed every corner of Ellie’s garden, finally choosing her favorite spot, a patch of gravel alongside the house. Margaret patted Echo’s head, and once they were inside, she locked the back door. She ran a bath and soaked in the tub for an hour, reading a book touting a low-fat diet for multiple sclerosis patients. It was one of several that Dr. Silverhorse had suggested, and she’d picked them up at Collected Works bookstore, one of her favorite places to sip coffee and shop. The women who ran things, Mary and her mother, Dorothy, had such a wonderful eye for books and for the greeting cards and gifts they carried at holiday time.
    At first, the diet sounded austere and hard to follow. Margaret was used to eating pastries and the occasional steak, but those indulgences would have to go. Nothing was too much to give up if it gave her better quality of life. Dr. Silverhorse told her to read a couple of books, try out the diets, and if none of them helped, they’d discuss medication. Steroids were the most often prescribed drug. The side effects included mood swings, insomnia, weight gain, and lowered immune response. No, thanks, Margaret said to herself. I will make the diet work.
    With Peter coming to visit tomorrow, she’d have to do a big shopping at the market. Peter ate as if his stomach had no bottom. The good part, she told herself, was that now they’d both be eating vegetarian. Swank’s diet for MS said saturated fat was limited to 20 grams a day. She’d have to start reading labels and buying organic. The hardest thing would be finding the right moment to tell Peter about the diagnosis.
    She set the book on the sink and got out of the tub. Echo tried to lick the water off her legs as she always did. “You silly girl,” Margaret said as she dried herself off and put on her flannel Nick and Nora pajamas. She made most of her other clothes but splurged on these pajamas, which came out in new styles twice a year.
    While she brushed her teeth, she took a good, long look at her face, noting the wrinkles and spots from sun damage. People complained about getting old. She never would again. She wanted every day she could get, especially now that Glory would need her help. “Put a kind thought into your mind the minute you wake up,” her aunt Ellie used to say, “and send that little bit of cheer out to the first person you see. Good works, like good thoughts, improve life for people on both the giving and receiving ends.” As always, it hurt a little to think about Ellie, the closest thing to a mother she’d ever had. Mother was stern and standoffish, but Aunt Ellie gave great hugs and told bawdy jokes. A small part of Margaret had always wished Ellie were her mother, and she knew Nori felt the same way.
    Despite worrying about the impact MS would have on her life, and how to tell Peter, Margaret couldn’t keep her eyes open. She was emotionally spent from yesterday’s news. Echo waited, as she always did, for Margaret to start snoring, and then she climbed up on the bed, inching her way closer. For some time now, Margaret had faked snoring just to witness Echo’s approach. She put her arm around the dog and went to sleep.

Dolores
    Of all our senses, emotion and memory persist the strongest. Now imagine the parts of your brain that are never used. After the corporeal death of the body, those places come to life. How I am, and where I live, makes it easy to pass through years, to fix on certain