Every Single Minute

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She’s wearing those red canvas shoes. They’re in all the photographs. They’re there at the airport, while she’s being helped down the steps. They’re there in the Botanic Garden. At the Pergamon Museum. Also outside the opera house. They made her feel light on her feet. You know them, those flat canvas shoes with the white rubber soles and white rubber toe-caps and rough white stitching. Sneakers, people sometimes call them. Converse, if you prefer, with two rows of steel eyelets punched into the canvas for the laces, white laces. And two extra eyelets on each side for no other reason than to make them look more sporty, I suppose, more industrial maybe.

They’re there at the hotel, beside her bed. She’s sitting in her chair, ready to go out. She’s got white socks on, from some long-haul flight, I think, and I’m helping her on with the shoes, the red canvas shoes. I get the laces done up and help her onto her feet. I’ve double-parked the wheelchair next to her chair so I can swing her around, holding her by the elbows and letting her down slowly. I can hear her breathing.

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