A big green fly circles my head, looking for a spot I might have missed with repellent. I swat at it with the shovel. A hint of sweetness hangs in the humid air, and as long as the spray does its job, I’m good.
Mom looks down at her feet as cobblestones disappear beneath wild honeysuckle and kudzu. “Please be careful, Mom.” I would help her, but I’m loaded down like a pack mule. “I don’t want you to fall.” Lindsey took the morning off, and she has the SUV, but it wouldn’t matter if she’d left it. I couldn’t get Mom back to the house by myself, let alone navigate us to the ER. I’d have to call 911, and the EMTs would have to strap Mom to one of those orange boards and pack her out.
She waves away my concern and adjusts her comb. “You’ll have to remove the seats when you get out the funeral buggy.”
She means the surrey, the station wagon of its day. It’s long enough to carry a casket. That’s what she meant by it not going far, but I don’t think it’s even in good enough shape to leave the garage. “What’s wrong with a hearse?” I ask the obvious.
“Suttons use the funeral buggy.” She looks around at yellow wildflowers beneath bald cypress, and I get anxious that she’s not watching her feet. “Make sure the funeral folks polish my white coffin so it’s nice and shiny for my final journey,” she continues as we move closer to the mausoleums. “I sure will be something in that buggy.”
I know she’s describing what she wants, but I just can’t see putting her in a buggy that could throw a wheel and toss her out, white coffin and all. Out of self-preservation, I block out her talk of death and buggies and fill my head with happy clouds and friendly rocks.
The Sutton family graveyard is just as creepy as I remember it. Wispy curtains of Spanish moss drape the limbs of ancient cypress and live oak trees, falling like dull green witch’s hair across the tops of pocked-limestone headstones and granite mausoleums that used to give me nightmares of mummy-like hands sticking out from between the cracks.
The cemetery is surrounded by an ancient wrought-iron fence, and a weathered metal plaque hangs on the gate:
Sutton Hall Plantation Graveyard
In Loving Memory of Our Dearly Departed
Any Person Who Disturbs This Hallowed Earth
Shall Suffer the Wrath of Our Lord
1831
Undaunted by the dire warning, Mother pushes open the gate, and it gives the obligatory rusty metal screech. The scene inside looks like the setting of one of Lindsey’s horror movies. All it needs is a group of horny teenagers and a six-pack to set the stage.
I’m not convinced that Sutton Hall isn’t haunted, but I ignore my misgivings and follow Mom inside.
“This is so peaceful,” she says as we stop in front of the first family tomb. It’s cracked down the middle, and an angel leans precariously to the left. Time has eroded the face, and I can barely make out the engraving:
Sutton
John Hayward
Born May 1815
Died November 1866
Below is some scripty writing that is impossible to make out.
“This is my great-great-grandpere,” Mother says, but I think there might be one or two more greats in there. “He built Sutton Hall in 1830.” A slight breeze stirs tendrils of Spanish moss and picks up strands of her hair. She points at the engraving. “It says, ‘Beloved father, husband, and patriot. He will live on in our hearts.’ ”
Since I can’t make out all the letters, I’m fairly positive she can’t either. Incredibly, though, I bet that is exactly what it says.
“ ‘Helen Davis Sutton,’ ” she reads the epithet on the next tomb over. The stone is so pocked I can barely make out the date of her death, 1890, but it doesn’t stop Mom. “ ‘Niece of President Jefferson Davis. Beloved wife, mother, and daughter of the Confederacy. She is gone but never forgotten.’ ”
President? I look at Mom and wonder if it really said that at one time, or if she just straight made it up like she does answers to her game show questions.
We find my great-grandparents, and Mother stops to put her hand on the smooth white marble of George Bernard Sutton and Rose Oliver Sutton.
“Maw Maw Rose. I love and miss you, goodness knows.”
We continue on, making our way past rows of single and large family mausoleums, all inscribed with different names and dates, but each heavily adorned with angel statues. Live oaks have uprooted the ground, tilting stone crosses and knocking several angels off their pedestals. The bright morning sun shines down on white vaults and bounces off marble mausoleums entombing generations of Sutton relatives, and I am surprised by the genuine feeling that settles in my soul. As creepy as I find this fenced-off plot of earth, it holds the remains of one family. My family.
“Isn’t that sad?” Mom asks as she points to tombs of red brick, crumbling past the point of identification.
It’s a rhetorical question, but I answer anyway. “Yes.” Some of the markers indicate a long life, while others memorialize infants or young men taken in wars dating as far back as 1843. Whole families were taken by floods, smallpox, cholera.
“That must be Jasper.” Mom heads to a shiny new vault a few rows away.
I walk with her to a spot where the earth looks more recently disturbed. My bucket starts to weigh on me, and I switch hands with a clank.
“Remember when you dressed like a vampire?”
I wonder what sparked the random memory. “I was always a vampire for Halloween because of my widow’s peak.” Most of Mom’s memories are connected, in one way or another, to the men revolving in and out of our lives at that time. I wait for an old-boyfriend connection, but it doesn’t come.
Mom looks up at my forehead. “Oh yeah.”
We make it to the grave where a wreath of long-dead flowers is staked in the ground. The black marble stone simply bears Jasper’s name and the dates of his birth and death.
“Here lies Jasper Sutton, he loved his bird but hated mutton.”
I look at Mom with her lavender lips and laugh. It’s been so long since I’ve heard Mom make up little rhymes, I’ve forgotten that she used to do it all the time. You could say she was the OG rapper of her time.
She smiles at me. “Does it say that?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She points to the gravestone next to Jasper. “Who is that?”
“Jedediah Sutton.”
“Jasper’s twin.” Mom looks over her shoulder before she whispers, “Those boys were gay as a box of sprinkles.”
Which explains why the uncles never married or had children.
“But we don’t talk about that.”
“It’s not a crime to be gay.” Not like marrying a first cousin.
“Who’s that?” Mom points to another ledger stone.
I scrunch up my eyes and read, “ ‘Donald Aiken.’ Died in 1922.”
She cocks her head in contemplation. “Here lies Donny Aiken. He said he was sick, but folks thought he was fakin’.”
I laugh and join in. “It says, ‘Here lies Donny Aiken, he hated peas but loved his bacon.’ ”
Mom winces. “That wasn’t any good.”
So much for joining in.
“Momma’s over there.” She points to the far corner of the cemetery, where the Spanish moss is thickest.
I was a sophomore in college when my grandmother died. She passed during finals week, and I didn’t attend her funeral. I know I should have felt bad about that, but I didn’t really. Truthfully, I felt bad for not feeling bad.
Whenever we visited Grandmother Lily in Tennessee, she always acted so happy to see us. She’d hug me up in her perfumed linen and lace and gush, “Awwww, cher baby.” It sounded so beautiful in my ear, but I was only Grandmother’s dear baby on her own schedule. For an hour or two, I’d be the center of her attention, and she’d shower me with love and praise. Then it was like she was ruled by a kitchen timer that only she could hear; when it rang, she was done. No more kisses and hugs or storybooks. Just, “You run al
ong, cher, go.” I felt like a doll she put up on a shelf. Forgotten until she took me down again. As a kid, I was confused and hurt. I wondered what I’d done wrong. I wanted her to care about me. As a teenager, I stopped caring.
No doubt Grandmother’s push-and-pull impacted Mom’s life and shaped who she is. It explains Mom’s relationships with everyone in her life—especially me.
I stop next to a bench dedicated to Suzanna “Sugie Bee” Verot and rock back as if I’ve been slammed with a big bag of duh. Mom’s also ruled by a timer that only she can hear.
In my sociology class in college, I wrote a paper on Mom and determined that her male attention-seeking and hypersexuality, as demonstrated by her ability to fall in and out of love seemingly on a whim, was due to severe daddy issues. I’d thought I had her all figured out, but I didn’t. At least not fully. Mom falls in and out of love not necessarily on a whim, but according to a capricious timer that only she can hear. When it rings, she’s done.
I shift the heavy bucket back to the other hand and catch up with Mom. I understand her more than I did just a few moments ago, and I certainly understand that she’s a better mother than Lily.
“You’ll need to tell Earl about my passing.”
“You might outlive him.”
“A lot of people will want to know. We have to make a list.”
I agree, but I’m all too happy when the subject turns to songs she learned as a child and she belts out, “In 1814 we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.” I push a swag of moss aside with my shovel and join in the choir, our voices rising up past the high branches.
“That was fun. Your voice is almost as good as mine.”
“Thank you, Mom.” That wasn’t exactly a compliment, but I’ll take it. Not only do I have a better understanding of her, but I feel a deeper connection with her, too.
We stop in front of the four graves in the corner, the Sutton outcasts, all of whom are women. I’m fairly certain there are some Sutton men buried around here who deserve a plot in this corner of the cemetery, if for nothing else than for the numerous paintings of their horses and dogs I’ve found in the attic.
I drop the bucket and shovel in front of a white marble vault with a life-size weeping angel on top.
Lillian Elizabeth Sutton Jackson
Born into This World 1921
Beautiful Daughter, Wife
Beloved Mother, Grandmother
Taken Too Soon
Too soon? She was almost ninety.
She points to the ground and sighs. “This needs to be cleaned up.”
“Grandmother’s last name was Cooper for over forty years. A lot longer than Jackson.”
“We can’t have Stepdaddy’s name on Momma’s tomb. It wouldn’t be right.” She grabs the wreath from my elbow and places it on the angel’s foot. “Lily married a Jackson, then a Gaudet; one wore an army uniform, the other a green beret.”
What? “Pawpaw Bob was a Green Beret?”
“No, but he made gator gumbo.”
That logic hurts my head, so I reach for the shovel and attempt to remove a clump of grass. Grandmother’s vault is one of the showiest in the cemetery, let alone in this corner of sinners. Grandmother was never brash or loud and probably would have been a little embarrassed by the over-the-top angel. I understand why Mother wanted her to have one, though.
“I want to be buried here.” She points to the locked door of the vault. “With Momma.”
Even though I’d rather talk about anything but Mom’s burial, it’s part of the reason she insisted we come here. I put my boot heel into the effort and shovel a clump. “Do you want me to add another weeping angel?”
“No.”
Surprising.
“I want my angel gazing up, with her wings wide like she’s flying.…” There she is. A frown wrinkles her brows, and she points to the sky. We’ve probably been away from the house for an hour, and I’m sure she’s getting tired and needs lunch and medication.
“Do you want to go back?”
“Why?”
Because sweat is collecting beneath the wire in my bra and the bayou smells swampy back here. My feet feel gross and the trees are buzzing with cicadas.
“I want my angel to look like she’s flying to heaven.”
I move to a different patch of weeds and dig in with the shovel. “Anything else?”
“Yes, she has to have really long hair like me.”
The patch is determined to win, but I dig the shovel deep and jump on it with both boots. I grunt a little and ask, “You want to be remembered as an angel?”
“No one will believe that,” she scoffs.
“True.” She’s divorced five men and broken the hearts of countless others.
“I want a simple engraving like Momma.”
Somehow, I doubt that. “What do you want it to say?”
“I don’t know.”
Even though I’m “not any good” with rhymes, I try to think one up. Something pretty that will make her smile. I start with, “Patricia Lynn Jackson…” (Since her fifth divorce, from Buzzy Doyle, she legally changed back to her maiden name, Jackson.) I rack my brain, and the only rhyme I can think up is flaxen, but her hair has always been dark like mine. “Patricia Lynn Jackson,” I try again, “her friends called her Patty… she was always pretty and seldom bratty.”
She tips her head back and laughs, and my heart is happy. “Remember when you stuck your tongue out at one of your teachers and I had to come get you from school?”
Yes, and I probably looked like Mom in her Shirley Temple dress. “You were mad, but when I told you she said I was a poor thing from a broken home, you took me to McDonald’s for lunch as consolation.”
She sits on the granite slab supporting Grandmother’s vault. “You’re a good daughter.”
She hasn’t said that since the first day that we arrived at Sutton Hall.
“I’ve had a good life.” She gazes off into the distance like she does when she starts to sink further into her Alzheimer’s. But it’s only morning, and she’s usually good until at least four.
“You’re tired. Let me take you back to the house.”
“I’ve had a good life,” she repeats. “I want to die soon.”
“What?”
“You have to help me end my life.”
The shovel falls from my grasp. “What?”
“If you love me, you’ll help me die.”
I sink to the granite slab beside her. “No.” This isn’t the first time she’s mentioned killing herself. Shortly after she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she talked about Washington State’s Death with Dignity Act, but she didn’t meet the requirements for medical assistance to end her own life. Namely, she wasn’t six months from dying of a terminal illness. I’d forgotten all about that. I thought she had, too.
She looks into my eyes, her expression as clear as it was that first night in Seattle when she said, “I know it’s a lot to ask.”
My face goes numb. She’s serious. I open my mouth, but I can’t form words. I should have known she was buttering me up for a reason. All that happy reminiscing and “you’re a good daughter” were because she wanted something.
And I fell for it. Again.
“I told you I want to be buried next to Momma.”
“Yeah.” In disbelief, I wave my hand in the air. “Sometime in the future, and you never mentioned anything about me killing you!”
She shrugs and adjusts her hat. “I don’t want to suffer and wear a bib. It’s a horrible way to go.”
I agree, but I’m not going to kill her.
“I help others with my passionate nature, but I can’t help myself.”
“Oh my God, stop with the passionate nature.”
“Don’t curse. That’s why you have to help me.”
“No, Mom. I can’t.” This is absurd. It doesn’t feel real, but I know it is.
“Think of it as a mercy killing.”
&nbs
p; I cross one leg over the other and fold my arms over my chest. “That’s still killing.”
“Call it a merciful slumber.”
In this alternate universe, Mother not only asks me to do the impossible, but she also puts me in a terrible situation. “What’s your timeline for this?”
“I don’t know.”
In this alternate universe, Mother not only asks me to do the impossible, but she also puts me in a hopeless situation. I slap at some kind of green insect on my arm. She’s serious, and I’m pissed. “Could you guess?”
“Soon,” she answers, and doesn’t seem to notice my sarcasm. “Before I forget.”
There are those words again, but they won’t make me give in to Mom’s wishes this time. No way they’re powerful enough to make me kill my mom. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I don’t want to blow up, and I attempt to reason with her even though I know it’s impossible. “Think about what you’re saying.”
“I’ve been thinking about it since that first day.”
“What if I asked you to kill me? You wouldn’t do it.” I try to reason.
“Yes, I would.”
I suck in a breath. “You’d kill me?”
“It’s not killing if you want to die.”
Oh, that’s all. I point out the obvious consequence. “I’ll go to prison for murder.”
“Oh.” Her brows draw together. “I didn’t think of that.”
Of course not.
“I can’t do it by myself.” Tears well up in her eyes. “I’ll forget.”
Exactly. I brought Mother to Louisiana so we could laugh and have fun for as long as possible and create a few final memories together. Helping her die is not a memory I want to create for myself.
She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I guess it’s okay that you don’t want to get me the pills.”
“Thank you.” My shoulders drop with relief.
“All you gotta do is remind me,” she says as if it’s the perfect compromise.
“And just how often should I remind you?” Mom can still figure out how to shop online, but I don’t think she has the ability to research drug-assisted suicide and shop for the right pills. Even if she managed it somehow, there is no way I’m going to remind my mother to take her life. “Once a week?”
How Lulu Lost Her Mind Page 15
