Say the Word

by Jeannine Garsee

  “Stop talking about me in the third person,” Fran barks. “I’m standing right here.”

  Dr. Felker raises a hand. “Please. For now, let’s just get out of the hall.”

  Dad prods me ahead of him as the doc leads the way. Fran and Arye follow anyway. Schmule, thankfully, is sound asleep on the sofa. I move his feet and ease myself down. Fran and Arye sit, too, but Dad remains standing so he can tower over us and intimidate everyone in the room.

  Now that he has a captive audience, Dr. Felker launches into an account of Mom’s condition. He uses the word “grave” three times and “critical” twice. Mom’s kidneys are shutting down. Her blood pressure is holding at 60/20. Heart rate in the thirties. An MRI revealed more bleeding in her brain. A repeat EEG showed “no significant brain activity.”

  In plain English, she’s gorked.

  “What I’m advising is that we discontinue the life support. Leaving her on,” he adds carefully, “will only postpone the inevitable.”

  Robot-like, Fran stares at her hands. “No”

  Dad whips an envelope out of his suit coat and hands it to Dr. Felker. “My wife made this out after the birth of our daughter. It states her wishes quite clearly. No extreme measures.”

  Dr. Felker scans the document as Fran studies her mangled fingernails. I guess Mom’s “wishes” must be pretty cut-and-dried, because all he says, after passing the paper back to Dad, is, “I’m very sorry.”

  Fran raises her eyes, glassy with rage. “People wake up from comas all the time. Hopeless cases. People who have been in comas for years! Don’t tell me there’s no hope. There’s always hope.”

  “People in persistent vegetative states, maybe,” the doctor admits. “It’s rare, but it happens. But they’re never the same, never normal. Regardless, this is different. Sonia’s not in a vegetative state. She’s braindead.”

  Somewhere along the line “Ms. Sorenson” turned into “Sonia” and, well, it hits me like a stray grenade. I realize I’m crying without making a sound, only tears dripping rapidly down my cheeks.

  “I don’t believe it,” Fran insists. “Penny would not have wanted this. She would’ve wanted a chance, goddamn it. You’re not even giving her a chance.”

  I try to stifle it, but the sob escapes me. Dad strides across the room and tows me to my feet. “My daughter’s upset,” he announces, as if nobody can tell. “Just give me the papers and I’ll sign them now. Then Shawna can go in and say good-bye to her mother.”

  “Can’t we at least wait for the rabbi?” Fran cries out.

  “What rabbi?”

  No one answers. It’s up to me to break the news. “Mom’s sort of . .. Jewish,” I whimper between hiccups.

  “She’s what?” Without waiting for a reply, he snaps, “That is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I’m not waiting for any rabbi.” He puts one arm around me and propels me toward the door, tossing over his shoulder, “Let’s get this over with.”

  Schmule twitches in his sleep as Fran’s howl cuts the air. Arye springs across the room, hugs her, and she sobs into his shirt. Seeing that, hearing her cry, makes me start crying harder, because what if she’s right? What if there is a chance Mom might wake up?

  I pull back. “Dad, wait!”

  Dad stops. His big shoulders droop. Then, slowly, he pulls me close. I rope my arms around his waist as he smothers me to his chest.

  “Shawna,” he says softly into my hair, “the doctor’s right. It’s better this way. It’s better for her. You have to trust me, okay?”

  I nod into his suit coat, praying he’s as right about this as he is about everything else. He squeezes me tightly for one long, warm moment. Then, linked together, we sidestep out of the room, leaving behind Fran’s broken wails.

  16

  Dry-eyed, rigid, I stare at the person who used to be my mom. No ventilator. No tube in her throat. No more IV bags dangling over-head. Yet she breathes on. A ragged intake of air. A gurgling expulsion. A full minute of silence before her chest heaves again.

  Earlier, after a brief, heated argument, Dad agreed to “allow” Fran, Arye, and Schmule to join the deathwatch. Schmule stares blankly at the bed, also measuring each breath. I think about the fact that Schmule’s known Mom his whole life, that she’d been his mom longer than she’d ever been mine.

  Dad didn’t stay; he said to “page” him if anything happened. After he left, the rabbi showed up—not a bearded old guy in a prayer shawl and yarmulke, but Fran’s aunt Rina who flew in from Cleveland Heights. When she prayed in Hebrew, she didn’t call my mom Penny, or even Sonia. She called her Shoshanna, Mom’s soon-to-be Hebrew name. At first I thought she’d said “Shawna,” which totally rattled me.

  One foot, purple and mottled, sticks out from under the sheet. Mom hates having her feet covered up in bed. So do I. I always hang mine off the edge. If I had the energy, I’d get up and uncover the other one.

  I lean my head back for a second, and that’s when it happens: Mom’s pale blue eyes flicker wide open. I blink, and watch her pull herself up by the metal side rail.

  She fluffs the sheet and says unconcernedly, “That father of yours still gets on my nerves!”

  17

  Mom nods at Fran, listless and unseeing. “Poor thing,” she says sadly. “And she’s worried about me?”

  No, no, no. This is so not happening.

  “Are you listening, Shawna?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  Nobody else hears me. Not Arye, who sits right beside me. Not the rabbi, quietly reading out loud. Not Schmule, resting his head on Fran’s shoulder.

  “He barges in, takes over, then he’s too chicken to watch me die.” A thoughtful pause. “Fran always said he was a royal prick. He thinks he knows everything. Everyone else is an idiot. How do you stand it, Shawna? Don’t you wish you could tell him off?”

  “He’s my dad,” I say faintly.

  “Ri-ight.” Her fingers follow the monitor wires attached to her chest. A Star of David on a silver chain rests against her throat, the same place she once wore a cross. “Are you shocked?”

  “Not really. You always did do . . . weird things.” With fingers as blotchy as her slender feet, Mom touches the six-pointed star. She smiles, and I blurt out, “Mom, are you happy?”

  “Very happy.”

  In one swift movement she yanks the monitor wires off and tosses them into the air. An alarm shrills as she throws back her head and sings out, “‘But careless gifts are seldom prized’”—the buzzing grows louder, and her fingers dance, Fosse-style, high over her head—”‘And mine were worthily despised’”—and louder and louder—

  —and I jerk my head up as the nurse slaps the monitor off for good.

  18

  Part of me wants to go back to the hotel with Dad, sleep in a strange, impersonal bed, and dream of nothing. The rest of me longs to return to Mom and Fran’s cozy, cluttered rooms—the same rooms my mother touched only two days ago. Maybe if I can touch her things, if I can smell her scent, it’ll give me a better chance to say good-bye to her.

  What saves me is that it’s after midnight. All my stuff is back at Mom and Fran’s, including the tampons I’ll probably need any minute now. I don’t say this outright, but Dad gets the hint.

  He taps his toe and fiddles with a cuff link. “Fine. But I’ll send a cab for you first thing in the morning. Don’t try to get one by yourself. This city is full of maniacs.” He pecks my forehead and I catch a whiff of his cologne. “Call me tonight.” This is a royal command, not a concerned request.

  Fran asks Rabbi Rina, “You’ll take care of everything? You’ll stay with her?” Rina, an older version of Fran right down to the limp gray hair and crinkly brown eyes, promises her she will, and the four of us cram into a cab in the crisp autumn night. Fran doesn’t speak to me the entire ride back. Does she blame me for this? I didn’t pull the plug! I had no say in it at all.

  I seethe silently, my breath fogging the cab window. Back at the browns
tone, I pull on my long purple nightshirt, brush my teeth, and crawl under the afghan on the saggy flowered sofa. After a quick call to reassure Dad I wasn’t abducted by a desperate pimp, I tap in LeeLee’s number and wake her up. “It’s me. It’s over. My mom died.”

  “Oh-my-GOD! Are you okay?”

  “I guess so. I’m at Fran’s right now.”

  “Does your dad know she died?”

  “Yeah, he’s already here.”

  “At the Frankfurter’s?”

  “No! At a hotel.”

  “So when will you be back?”

  “After the funeral, I guess. Look, I gotta go,” I add as I hear a toilet flush. “I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Thanks. And I’m so sorry, chica. I know you guys were kind of on the outs, but—”

  “I know. But she’s still my mom. Well, I mean . . .”

  “Yeah,” LeeLee agrees softly. “Okay, love ya! Call me tomorrow?”

  “I’ll try. Love ya back.”

  Homesick, I punch Fran’s extra pillow into a suitable lump, the lines of Mom’s poem racing through my mind. I know it had been a dream, a hallucination, and yet it had seemed so real! Her flickering fingers, her glowing face. All of her alive and real enough for me to reach out and touch.

  I drag the pillow over my head, tired of thinking, tired of feeling. And already tired of missing my mom.

  19

  Starved by morning, I devour a bagel and cream cheese, then feel highly guilty for enjoying it so much. Mom’s been dead for twelve hours. How dare I think about food?

  Fran, who has barely said a word to me, flies across the kitchen when the telephone rings. I drift out to the living room, where I find Schmule glued to an anime cartoon involving flying dragons and large-breasted women. “Where’s your brother?”

  Schmule’s head bobs under the afghan. “I dunno.”

  “WHAT?” Fran screams from the kitchen. “Whose idea was this?”

  Schmule throws off the afghan, eyes bright pools of alarm. Now what?

  “No fucking way! I will not—allow—it!” Fran listens intently, her spine growing more rigid by the second. “No, you do not have my permission to release the b-body . . . What? Bullshit! I’m calling my lawyer right now.” The receiver slams and then she punches more numbers. “Seymour? Fran. You will not believe what that man’s pulling now!”

  Something tells me that “that man” is my father.

  Schmule scrambles up and heads for the door. “I’m gonna find my brother.”

  I catch his arm. “Wait! You need a coat.”

  “I got a hoodie on,” he protests.

  “You need shoes, too, unless you want to catch pneumonia and di—” I bite my lip.

  Unfazed, he informs me, “Pneumonia’s a virus, duh. You don’t get it from being cold. And only, like, one in forty-four hundred people even die from it, anyway.”

  Can you believe this kid?

  Arye’s crouched outside on the stoop, sipping coffee. “Mom’s on the phone,” Schmule announces, flipping a leg over the rail, “yelling at somebody named Seymour.” He slides all the way down, landing in his bare feet on the sidewalk.

  Arye lifts his eyebrows. “That’s Mom’s lawyer. What’s she yelling about?”

  I shrug. Schmule busies himself at the curb, poking damp brown leaves with a stick. When I sit down next to Arye, he scooches another step up. At five foot ten, I’m two or three inches taller. Guys have a complex about that. I’m sure Arye’s no exception.

  The prolonged silence gnaws at my nerves. “So, do you like living in New York?”

  “So, do you always have this compulsion to involve others in mindless chitchat?”

  “Why don’t you like me?” I demand, surprising myself.

  “Who says I don’t like you?” I scoff openly, and Arye adds, “You don’t know me and I don’t know you. Right? So let’s leave it at that.”

  I can’t. “Why are you treating me like the enemy? It’s my mom who died. And it’s your mom who asked me to come in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Dismissing this, Arye yells over to Schmule, “Put your hood up, goofball!”

  “Hoods are for nerds!” Schmule retorts without looking back.

  “Hoods are for people,” I say, “who don’t want to get sick. Cold lowers your resistance and makes you susceptible to bacteria.”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Schmule drops the stick in the gutter. “What are you, a freakin’ doctor?”

  Before I can inform him of my life’s plan, not that he cares, Fran appears at the door. She says icily, “Shawna, get your things together. Your cab will be here in ten minutes.”

  “You talked to my dad?”

  She slams the door without answering. Arye hops down to the sidewalk to drag Schmule out of the gutter, and pushes us both inside. “Mom. What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Fran explodes. “And Shawna, I’m sorry, I know this has nothing to do with you—but I’ve never met a bigger son of a bitch in my life!”

  Schmule tucks his hands into his armpits. “Who?”

  “My dad,” I say. Gee, Fran. Tell me something I don’t know.

  “Dr. Gallagher,” Fran rages to the boys, as if I’m not here in the same room, “wants to have Penny’s funeral in Cleveland.”

  Arye shoots me that familiar look of blame. “Can he do that?”

  “He’s already done it. As soon as they finish the autopsy he’s shipping her right out.”

  I clear my throat. “They’re doing an autopsy?”

  “Yes. Your father insisted,” she adds sarcastically.

  Not that I’m on their side, okay? But Dad’s barely spoken to Mom in years. How can he insist on anything? More important, why?

  “I spoke to my attorney. He’s hoping to get an injunction. But your father, apparently, already made the arrangements.”

  Spinning on one heel, too furious to go on, Fran starts banging crap around the kitchen, filling a kettle for hot water, ripping mugs from the cupboards. Don’t mix ’em up, Fran, I silently warn. Unless God doesn’t care if you screw up under duress.

  She stops to grip the edge of the counter. “Your mother has a will,” she says hoarsely. “It’s never been updated. Your father’s the executor. And he’s listed everywhere as her next of kin.” Her whole body sags. I pray she doesn’t end up on the floor. “Oh, God, I begged her, begged her, begged her to change that will! I can’t believe it. I just—can’t—believe—this!”

  I can. It’s so typical of Mom. Once, in first grade, after I was out with the chicken pox, Mom sent me back to school without a doctor’s note. My teacher freaked out over one leftover spot, so they forced me to sit in the office till Julie came back to pick me up. Later, of course, I had to hear about it from Mom: What do you need a doctor’s note for? Are they idiots? Can’t they tell by looking at you you’re not contagious? God, I hate bureaucracy!

  Yes, Mom hated bureaucracy. No doctor’s excuse? No biggie. But leaving Dad’s name on her will because she couldn’t get around to it? Not making sure Fran could be in charge if anything happened to her?

  No wonder Mom didn’t take me to the hospital that night. Forget the gallery. She just dreaded the paperwork.

  Arye asks uncomfortably, “What—what kind of funeral will it be?”

  Fran rests an elbow on the counter and mumbles into her hand, “I think you know.”

  Silence. I get it: no Jewish funeral for Penny/Shoshanna, who, unsurprisingly, never got around to converting.

  Nobody speaks as I gather up my things and move toward the door. Unnecessarily, I offer, “I’ll wait outside.”

  I turn the knob with a shaky hand and let myself out, thankful that these people, all of them, are so out of my life.

  20

  LeeLee, true friend that she is, cuts school on Monday. She watches dubiously as I lace my vintage Frye boots up to my knees. “You’re not seriously wearing those.”

  “Why not? You gave t
hem to me.” One of her better thrift shop finds.

  “Because you’re Shawna Gallagher? Because your old man will kill you if you show up looking like some punk-rock bag lady in thirty-year-old boots?”

  I smile. My face hurts from the effort.

  Dad’s not happy about me taking my own car to the funeral; he thought I’d “prefer” to ride in some ghastly limousine. How they plan to stuff Poppy into a limo, I have no idea. And I honestly can’t deal with Aunt Colleen right now.

  In the car I ask LeeLee, “What are you hiding in there?” She’s been very secretive about the contents of her bulging hobo bag.

  “You’ll see.”

  I drive a white, five-year-old, moderately geeky Camry. I say only “moderately” geeky because it’s a convertible, and loaded. We reach the church and crawl into a space at the end of the lot. LeeLee, at last, reveals her surprise: two unlabeled bottles of red wine. “Are you nuts? You want me to breathe booze on Father Bernacki?” To say nothing of my relatives.

  “Have a swig. You deserve it. Anyway, it’s sangria. Homemade! Hardly any booze at all.”

  I look out one side of the car, then the other, and glance out the back to be safe. No cops in sight. Hopefully the police force has more pressing things to do than patrol church parking lots in search of underage drinkers. I take a couple of sweet, fruity swallows and then hand the bottle back. “Thanks.”

  After a few healthy swigs of her own, LeeLee twists the cork back in place. She shoves both bottles under the seat, ignoring my protests about the open booze bottle laws. “We’ll drink it later. You’re not gonna be driving around with it, okay? Trust me.”

  “Okay. But if it leaks, you’re dead.”

  Inside the church, Aunt Colleen hugs me viciously. I nearly slice open a lip when my face hits her lacquered red hair. “Oh, Shawna. What a perfect nightmare!” she declares with a glance of revulsion at my battered boots, making me wonder if she means Mom, or what I’m wearing on my feet.

  I unwind myself from her tentacles with a polite murmur, then scan the crowd for familiar faces. Mr. and Mrs. Connolly are here, but no Susan. And, sadly, no Devon, either. Other than Danielle and Melanie, who hug me before slinking self-consciously to a back pew, it seems only LeeLee bothered to take the day off from school.