mary cunningham

by Roger D'Agostin

does not remember.  I try to remind her.  Remember the police.  You had fallen in my driveway.  Barefoot. 

I don’t tell her she was yelling help.  Please.  Someone.  Her voice like a stranded kitten but maybe that’s because I couldn’t stop thinking of Catherine Genovese.  Everyone my age has heard the story of Kitty Genovese. 

I dialed 911 after the third help.  When I spoke to the operator I said I hear the voice but I can’t see anyone.  It sounds like a woman.  Then I spotted her in my driveway, crumpled, scratching at the blacktop.  I thought of my neighbor who snapped his ankle one icy evening bringing out his garbage and the blood pooled in his freezing footprints.  He snarled, get me my cigarettes, at his poor, crying wife who made the mistake of reassuring him the ambulance was coming. 

Mary Cunningham was more gracious.

She thanked me when I helped her to her feet, and explained she needed to go to the other store, not the one on Lloyd Lane.  I sat her on the porch.  She was sweating. 

“Rest for a few minutes.”

“We really need milk.  We’re completely out.”

“Just rest.  A few minutes.”

“We really need milk.”

Finally, the police arrived. 

Mary Cunningham has one daughter, one daughter who’s an alcoholic and at times, the less cognizant of the two.  On that night, however, when the police walked her home (she only lived six houses down from me), she was only slightly drunk.  But that hasn’t been the case for the past month.

So Mary Cunningham has been shopping for milk every night.  I meet her in my driveway at four.  I show her the half-gallon, tell her to touch the sweat on the carton.  “I’ll carry it back to your house for you.  I know the quickest way.” Still, she checks the bag and asks if we should go back and get another half-gallon. 

The last two weeks of August were good.  Her grasp on my bicep was gentle.  But on the first night of autumn, Mary covered her ears and complained about the crickets.  Her nails left marks in my arm.  

I know.

She’s not ready for when the ground becomes a terrible, frozen, white mess, unmanageable in slippers no matter how close the store. 

Photo of Roger D’Agostin

BIO: Roger D'Agostin is a writer living in Connecticut.  His most recent work has appeared in The Dunes Review, The Bookends Review, and Assignment Literary Magazine.