Saving the World

by Julia Alvarez

  Alma has not been able to pin Helen down on what the fight was about. Helen has been vague. Mickey was upset because he wants to take care of his mother himself, wants this whole team of busybody women to back off.

  “Families shouldn’t treat families.” Alma reminds Helen. Is this really what the fight was about? It sounds fishy. Alma is sure she heard Mickey asking for Helen’s help, not asking to take care of her. “Besides, Mickey hasn’t even been practicing as a nurse, has he?”

  Helen isn’t sure. She hasn’t kept up with the particulars of her son’s life. He still has some friends in the medical field. They get him jobs from time to time. One of these friends is a medical missionary. Another heads a lab where Mickey last worked. Helen is straying from the issue at hand. What does Mickey want? “He wants …” Helen waves her hand vaguely, gets weepy again. She won’t say. No doubt she will protect Mickey till the bitter end. He is her son, the boy who won the 4-H contest and who now needs her help. “Has anybody heard from him?” Helen asks. The plaintive upward tilt of the old woman’s face reminds Alma of being young, in love with someone who was going to break her heart.

  No one has seen or heard from Mickey. He hasn’t come back to the house since the day of the incident. Claudine with her local connections makes a bunch of phone calls and finds out from Mickey’s wife’s family that Hannah has left the treatment center. No law’s been broken as she was released into the custody of her husband. She had been doing very well, but the worry is that she might stop her medications and have another full-blown psychotic breakdown. And, yes, this Hannah is the very same woman who was making disturbing phone calls, claiming she had AIDS. She was tested at the center, and the results were negative. But she insists that she has an invisible strain of the disease, which won’t show up on any test. She has brought it to Vermont, to infect everyone she calls, an AIDS of conscience that will wake up this country as to how the rest of the world is dying for lack of a little of the too much we have here. Except for strategy, Alma thinks, this woman sounds like Tera. Except for the rage, Alma finds herself agreeing with what both women have to say.

  “Things are really crazy around here,” she tells Richard when he reaches her late one night. She feels gratified that he is calling her, missing her at bedtime. It’s her and only her he wants, why should she doubt this? She fills him in on the Mickey fight and the follow-up. Her AIDS caller was Mickey’s wife! “The very same woman, can you believe it?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard says. “I used to think Vermont was a safe place. Maybe you should come down here?”

  Is he serious? Has he read her mind? “Don’t think I haven’t been thinking about it.”

  “But it sounds like you’ve started on something new?”

  “Not really.” Alma has learned her lesson about stringing people along with the promise of a novel she hasn’t written. She has already told Richard about the call with Lavinia, with Veevee. Richard is all for waiting and offering Veevee whatever Alma ends up writing. Fifty grand is a lot of money.

  “How about that smallpox story you faxed me?”

  “It’s just an idea.” Who is she kidding? The story is already inside her, string in the labyrinth, as she makes her blind way out into that big-hearted life she wants to be living with him.

  “Well, any time you want to come down.”

  “I just want to be sure Helen’s going to be okay.” She had been doing so well after the Mickey incident. But she has taken a downturn again. The doctor says Helen should consider having hospice in the hospital. “Claudine and I were over there last night talking to her. I know she really doesn’t want to go, but she is saying yes, she doesn’t want to be a bother to all of us.”

  “My wife, Florence Nightingale.” Richard laughs, but Alma can tell he is only half joking.

  Florence Nightingale with the dark soul, full of self-doubt and mixed motives. But there are worse things to be in the world, Alma decides. Look at Mickey, making a dying woman’s last days miserable. The spark is gone from Helen’s eye. The party is called off. She is going to die as she has lived for the last few decades. Without her son.

  ALMA OFFERS TO SPEND Thanksgiving with Helen. Tera’s off to DC on a march with Paul and Richard is a world away. “We’re the two turkey orphans,” Alma teases Helen, who smiles weakly after the lapse of a second. That lapse reminds Alma of Mickey’s slow absorption of conversation, but in Helen’s case it is the slowing down of her brain. What was it the team called it? All systems are shutting down. The body is saving its energy for the things that must absolutely be working for life to go on. Soon those, too, will stop, and like the astronauts in their fragile capsule, Helen will go behind the moon. But she won’t be coming round again.

  As for her trip, Alma has gone back to the original plan. She’ll fly down for Christmas at her parents’ condo in Miami, where she’ll meet up with Richard. There she’ll present him with his Christmas gift: she will be joining him for the next three, four months. Surprise! She hopes it will be a surprise he wants. Every phone call, he mentions that he’s missing her lots, that she sure would be welcome if she decides to come, that he doesn’t want to pressure her. And these last few days, he has sounded downright forlorn. Holiday blues kicking in, no doubt. Since his divorce, the boys have always spent Thanksgiving with their father, Christmas with their mother. Even now that they are grown men, the “tradition” has continued, the two older boys driving up from the city with their current girlfriends, the tumbleweed Sam flying in from wherever he is currently living. But this year Richard will be eating his yucca and plantains and fried cheese all alone on a Dominican mountainside. Bienvenido is in the capital attending a workshop. Starr is back in Texas for a family wedding, staying on for Thanksgiving.

  Alma’s new plan makes a lot more sense all around. Richard will have had almost two months to get settled in, making the project his. And Alma will have three more weeks to be with Helen. It seems the mantle has fallen on her, maybe by default: Alma is the one Helen seems to want around as her energy is diminishing. “Read to me,” Helen will say. “Anything you want,” she answers when Alma asks what kind of book Helen would like. So Alma reads her what she is writing, the story of Balmis and Isabel and the orphan carriers and the wide Atlantic they have just finished crossing. Helen mostly dozes. But, like a child, if Alma stops for more than a few moments, Helen’s eyes open. “Is it already over?” she asks.

  EARLY THANKSGIVING AFTERNOON, on the way to Helen’s, Alma stops at Jerry’s Market for the jellied cranberry sauce Helen likes. Alma thought of making the sauce from scratch—can’t be that hard—but Helen insisted she really likes the canned brand. The truth is, Helen is unlikely to eat more than a tiny spoonful. She just is not hungry anymore and eating in general makes her feel sick. Stomach and intestines signing off. Roger. Next to go will be the synapses in her head, then the muscles of her heart. Alma finds herself torn, wanting Helen to hang on and then wanting Helen to die before the old woman suffers any more than she has to, before Alma leaves for four months, heartsick that she isn’t waiting until Helen is done with her dying before going on with her life.

  As Alma turns into the aisle where the woman at the cashier said she’d find the jellied cranberry sauce—there it is, only one brand, this is a mom-and-pop store, after all—she sees Mickey, coming up from the back of the store, swinging the red plastic grocery basket as if he’s on a picnic. By his side, an arm through his, is a tall, thin blonde woman who looks almost ethereal in the very paleness of her coloring. For a moment, Alma considers turning on her heels, pretending she hasn’t seen them. What can she say to Mickey? You’ve made your mom miserable? What good will that do? What if the prodigal son repents and decides to return to the fold? Can that be good for Helen?

  Mickey spots her and his face lights up. He murmurs something to the woman at his side, who turns to look at Alma. There is nothing for Alma to do but wait as they approach her.

  “Hey!” Mickey stops that one step
closer than Alma likes for people to stand talking to her. Hannah comes up beside him, smiling, a kind of free-floating smile, maybe medicated, maybe shy.

  “Hello, Mickey,” Alma says briskly. Should she tell him she’s on her way to have Thanksgiving with his dying mother? Don’t be mean, Alma cautions herself. This is Helen’s son. The boy on the refrigerator. But Alma is still too upset with Mickey to care if he was once that boy. All she knows is that he is now the man making Helen’s last days miserable.

  “Sorry about the other day,” Mickey says. He must have recognized her voice from the front hall. His penitence, if indeed it is penitence, surprises her. He has always seemed implacable in his oddness. Well, if he is sorry, it’s not Alma he should be apologizing to, but his mother.

  “Your mother is very sick,” she says. “She doesn’t have much longer to live.”

  “Poor Helen,” the woman says. Her voice is surprisingly normal-sounding, not the ugly voice that called down curses on the other end of the line. But this must be Hannah. Who else could she be? Alma waits for Mickey to introduce his wife, but those civilities are beyond him. And, at this moment, beyond her.

  Mickey is watching Alma with that look that pulls her in, so that she feels trapped in his mind, a mind she doesn’t understand, so she can’t pick the lock, let herself out. She looks away, her eye caught by the two frozen turkey dinners in his basket. Jesus. The boy is back, the 4-H kid who will grow up to live a pitiful life.

  “Your mom’s very sad,” Alma says in a kindlier tone. “She needs to make peace with you so she can die in peace.” The team is going to kill her! How dare Alma take it upon herself to engineer a reconciliation between a dying woman too weak to get through a whole meal and her angry son? Dry tinder to his lit fuse! But Helen would never forgive Alma if she knew that Alma had a chance to bring her boy home and Alma didn’t do it.

  Mickey is still watching her, but his eyes, Helen’s eyes, glisten with tears. If Alma has been hard on him, it was only in telling him the truth he needs to hear.

  “We just called Helen.” Hannah nods to the front of the store, where an old rotary phone, not unlike Tera’s, is mounted on the wall, a little sign above it advising customers to limit themselves to short calls, please, no long distance. Homey touches abound throughout the store. There is a bulletin board with Polaroids of the latest newborns. Raffle tickets for sale to sponsor the local ball team. The place has a following. Today it is empty. But now and then someone hurries in. A convenience to our customers, Alma has heard the woman say about the store being open on Thanksgiving Day. “But there was no answer.”

  No answer? Alma’s heart quickens. “I just spoke to Helen about an hour ago.” Could something have happened since then? Helen had said that she was feeling better. It could be she is napping or didn’t get to the phone on time. That happens a lot. There is no jack in the bedroom, and though Claudine has loaned Helen a portable, Helen often knocks it over as she flails around trying to reach it. More than once, Alma has had to get down on all fours to retrieve it from under the bed or the chest of drawers by the door.

  “Well, I’m going over there right now,” Alma says, cranberry sauce can in hand. She’d better hurry, just in case. But, as she turns to go, it occurs to her that if Helen is dying this might be the last chance to see her son. She turns back. “You want to come?”

  She can tell from Hannah’s brightened look that this is precisely what she had in mind. It’s Mickey who seems unsure, scanning the shelves as if avoiding Alma’s gaze, for once. From what she’s seen, Alma would say that Hannah is a lot more with it than Mickey. But then Hannah’s probably still on her meds. And Helen is Mickey’s mother. So much easier to access equanimity toward someone else’s painful childhood.

  Mickey turns his eyes back on her. What he says surprises her. “I don’t have anything for her.”

  Of course, Alma thinks. That was always the pattern. Mickey came back with a gift, his peace offering. It could be he is speaking metaphorically, he has nothing left in his heart to give his mother, but Alma takes him at his word, his literal word. “Here,” she says, handing him the can of cranberry sauce. It’s not flatware from Thailand or a painted fan from Taiwan or a silver spoon from Ireland. “She said this was all she wanted for Thanksgiving. That and seeing you.” Since when did Alma earn the right to make a story out of other people’s lives?

  Mickey stares at the can in his hand for a long moment, then sets it in the basket. This must mean he is coming.

  “My name is Hannah,” the woman says, oddly introducing herself just as they are parting. She holds out a wan hand for Alma. “Mickey’s told me all about you.”

  For some reason, Alma doesn’t like the sound of this. What all is there for Mickey to tell about? A few driveway and hallway conversations. She could come back to Hannah with her own rejoinder. I’m one of the people you infected with your psychic AIDS. Don’t be mean, Alma reminds herself. This is Helen’s daughter-in-law. And they are all about to have Thanksgiving together. Thanks to Alma.

  LATER, THE SEQUENCE OF events will seem like a historic film clip of a moment gone awry, to be played over and over by the networks, the gunshot incredibly hitting the president in his motorcade, the airplanes impossibly flying into the towers.

  Alma will replay these Thanksgiving moments over and over, trying to register that indeed unfortunate things do happen on a balmy November day with the sky slightly overcast, too warm for children to be skating on the pond at the edge of the woods. She is wearing only a sweater, and as she drives by on her way to Helen’s she notices the opened windows in the houses along the road. It must be downright hot inside with all the baking going on.

  The pickup pulls in beside her car, but Alma is already at the door knocking, not expecting Helen to answer, wondering if to go in first and alert her. She waves to Mickey and Hannah, then enters the house, calling out in the old way, “Helen, it’s me!” No answer. She hurries toward the bedroom, trying to stay calm, an apprehensive sense growing in her gut, because already Alma knows what she will see, although she will want to rewind to the very moment and look at it in disbelief, Helen unconscious on the floor, maybe en route to the phone, who knows, but still alive, still breathing, which is why Alma cries out, “Helen! Helen!” as if she can bring Helen back if only she calls out loud enough.

  Mickey is suddenly beside her, no lapsing synapses now, springing into action—the Marine under fire—taking a pulse, checking Helen’s vital signs, calling to Hannah to bring him something from his pickup, in the glove compartment, a first-aid kit, his nurse bag, Alma can’t be sure, because meanwhile she is crawling around, searching for the portable, which she finds right where it should be, by Helen’s bedside. She steps out in the hall to call 911 for an ambulance, suspecting Mickey might not approve and not caring to ask him either.

  And here is another moment to rewind and look at, this moment with the hysterical sound of the sirens coming closer, stopping at their very driveway, and Mickey looking up startled from the bed where he has carried his mother, “Did you call an ambulance?” as if there were something so very wrong in calling for help when someone has collapsed!

  Then the huge bangs at the door, and Alma transfixed, all of her focused on that syringe in Mickey’s hand, wondering, What the hell is Mickey about to inject Helen with? And maybe it’s because both Hannah, standing on the other side, and Mickey, sitting on this side of the bed, are glaring at the offending portable in her hand that Alma gets the idea, which is too trigger-quick a response to be a full-blown idea, of hurling the phone at Mickey and knocking the syringe out of his hand, and then as he cries out, racing down the hall, flinging the door open, grabbing the paramedics by the arms, screaming, “Please, please, help, he’s trying to kill her!”

  The two men look around, alarmed. “Who? What?”

  But Alma doesn’t answer because already she is running back down the hall, the two men behind her, into the bedroom, where they find Mickey on his knees pic
king up the broken pieces of whatever the phone knocked out of his hands, dabbing at the floor with the towel he had used to wipe Helen’s face.

  “What is wrong with you?” Mickey stumbles to his feet and comes toward her, as the two paramedics, animal instinct kicking in, lunge toward the other male in the room. They each grab Mickey by an arm. Meanwhile, a third man, the driver, has hurried in and is calling the police on his cell phone, as Alma sobs out that Mickey was about to give his mother an injection when he isn’t her doctor. And everyone sort of calming down when she says so and looking at her, as if to say, Is that all?

  “He’s not her doctor,” she repeats, sobbing. “They’ve been estranged. He shouldn’t be treating her.” Each accusation less vehement than the one before, because Alma is already asking herself if she hasn’t overreacted after all.

  What exonerates her: the commotion that ensues when the paramedics try to approach the bed and Mickey plants himself before them, refusing to let them get near his mother. One of the paramedics—the one who keeps advising everyone to stay calm—tries to go around him, but Mickey swings, and so the guy backs off, and Hannah starts to scream, and the paramedic guy holds up both hands and says, “Hey, buddy, we’re just trying to help out. Let’s take it easy, okay?”

  Then there are more sirens as the sheriff, who lives only a mile away—his cruiser always parked front end out in his driveway giving Alma a scare when she is speeding home the back way—pulls in, followed by his deputy, and the men all start trying to talk to Mickey, who takes a few more swings and manages only to hit the sheriff, who brings Mickey down with him, the deputy diving on top, securing Mickey, handcuffing him, leading him out the door to the cruiser, the sheriff following, massaging his bruised jaw.