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At about 7:00 p.m. Carter, awoke, entered his mother's room, looking dazed and asking several times, "What's going on?" (102) After a short conversation in which Mrs. Vanderbilt's attempts were to soothe and orient her son, Carter took off, running up the stairs to his bedroom. His mother arrived swiftly behind him. She found him sitting on the low wall of the terrace, one foot on the floor, the other on the wall. Another short conversation ensued, attempts on the part of his mother to get him away from the wall. He stopped her concerned approach with arm held in a military gesture for "stop!." He wondered, "Will I ever feel again?" (103) He stood, "with a terrible, rigid tenseness, staring past her, past the river as if he didn't see them." (103) Mrs. Vanderbilt suggested calling his new therapist but couldn't remember the number. Carter shouted out the number, then said, "Fuck you!" He stared down, as if mesmerized by the scene fourteen stories below. A helicopter passed overhead. Carter looked up, then back at his mother. He reached his hand out longingly to her. Then he moved "deftly as an athlete, over the wall, holding on to the edge as if it were a practice bar gym, holding firmly and confidently, then he let go." (pp. 104-105)
A Mother's Story by Gloria Vanderbilt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, 144pp
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