Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)

by Lorna Landvik

  “THE X-RAYS don’t show any break, Mercedes,” says the ER doctor, who just yesterday in the hospital cafeteria had thanked her for steering him away from the chop suey special. “But she’s torn her rotator cuff. We stabilized her arm, and she can decide what sort of further treatment she wants when she gets home to Canada.”

  In the car, Sarah informs her daughter she wants to stay in a hotel.

  “Mum, no!” says Caroline. “We’ve got a nice bed all made up for you and—”

  “I will not stay in your house,” she says.

  From the back seat, Tina says, “I can stay at my mother’s house, Caroline.”

  “Better yet,” says Mercedes, “why don’t you stay with me, Sarah? I’ve got a spare bedroom, and I’m a nurse. I can take care of you if you need anything.”

  “HERE’S SOME TEA,” says Mercedes, setting a tray carefully on the lap of Sarah, who is perched up on the pillows of her guest-room bed, one arm in a sling.

  Sarah holds the mug under her nose for a long time, breathing in the rich peppermint-scented steam.

  “And these are churros. I was just about to serve them before . . . your accident.”

  “I’ll tell you right now,” says Sarah, setting down the mug. “My Christian values are very important to me.”

  Mercedes nods. Her hands are clasped at her waist, and she feels awkward, standing next to the bed in the small room. She has been at the bedside of hundreds—thousands—of patients, but in the hospital, not in this bright-turquoise room with the big framed Frida Kahlo print Tina gave her.

  Sarah takes a bite of a churro, and a dusting of cinnamon sugar settles on her lower lip.

  “Umm. Good.” She finishes eating the deep-fried cookie and takes a sip of tea. “Too bad it’s not my right arm in a sling.”

  After Mercedes smiles uncertainly, Sarah adds, “I’m right-handed, and if I were forced to eat with my left hand, maybe I'd lose a little weight.”

  “Lose a little weight? You are thin already!”

  “You’re a good nurse,” says Sarah. She gestures to the plate of cookies. “Have a cholo with me.”

  Mercedes can’t help but laugh. “Churro. Cholo is slang for a gangster.”

  A pink flush washes over Sarah’s face. “I’m so dumb,” she says quietly.

  “Ey—no. You should have heard all the words I messed up—still mess up in English!”

  Sarah sighs. “Will you sit with me for a while, Mercedes? Unless you were on your way to bed?”

  “It’s not even eleven yet,” says Mercedes. “And I am a night owl.”

  She returns with a cup of tea and a dinette chair and helps herself to a churro, and the two women sit companionably, sipping and nibbling, but when the last cookie is gone and Sarah dabs at her mouth with a napkin, Mercedes expects the mood to change, and it does.

  “I don’t know you well, Mercedes, but I know that you’re a nice and generous person. I can see you love your daughter very much but . . . but how can you support what she’s doing?”

  “You mean like loving someone like your daughter?”

  Sarah’s flush this time is darker. “Someone like my daughter? My daughter’s a wonderful person! Anyone would be lucky loving someone like Caroline!”

  Mercedes presses her lips together as Sarah glares at her, and then watches as Sarah’s eyes soften and a trace of a smile lifts her lips.

  “That was a trick, wasn’t it?”

  “I am not that clever.”

  “Like heck you aren’t,” says Sarah. Her smile broadens, but seconds later it flattens, and tears spill down her face.

  Mercedes takes the tray off Sarah’s lap, and because the small nightstand has only room for a lamp and her own tea cup, she sets it on the floor and takes the woman’s hands in her own.

  “I know this is a . . . well, a shock for you. And it is never nice to be shocked.”

  “I can’t believe it’s true!” Sarah wails. “It has to be a phase or something—my Caroline is not gay! In high school, in college, she had lots of boyfriends! Just look at her—she’s lovely!”

  Mercedes nods. “That she is. She is a lovely, lovely person, your Caroline.”

  Wincing as she removes her hands from Mercedes’s, Sarah sniffs, wipes her eyes with her hand, and says, “I don’t know what your religious background is—I assume it’s Catholic, because most of you Mexicans are Catholic, right? And let me know if I’ve gotten this wrong, but isn’t it true that the Catholic Church denounces homosexual relationships?”

  Even though it’s a medical impossibility, Mercedes feels her blood begin to boil. First of all, Tina long ago schooled her in the word assume—“Mama, it makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’!” and second, don’t get her started on the Catholic Church’s—with so many church’s—problems with human sexuality.

  With a mouthful of tea, Mercedes swallows down the words she wants to say, and after placing her cup on the nightstand, she levels at Sarah the kind of gaze a disappointed corner-store owner might give to a repeat teenaged shoplifter.

  “Sarah, yes, I was raised Catholic, like ‘most’—or at least, many Mexicans. And I know millions of people are . . . fortified by that faith, but for me, no. That is not to say I do not believe in God or goodness or love or understanding, but anyone, any padre or priest or pastor who tells me my daughter is wrong to love—love, not hate!—whom she loves . . .” Mercedes shakes her head. “I have no time for that.”

  “But Mercedes, it’s wrong! It’s wrong and it’s a sin!”

  Mercedes has folded her hands in her lap, and she studies them now. Her fingers are squat, and she keeps her nails short and unpolished, but she loves her hands, cherishes them, for their strength and capability. They have stroked the fevered brow of countless patients, tucked in blankets, shaken thermometers, and searched for good veins; and for those she’s loved, especially Manny and Christina, she’s used them the way a conductor uses a baton, to conduct the tempo and tenor of their lives. She presses her hands together now, squeezes the impulse that makes one hand want to shoot out and slap this mujer loca.

  “My husband and I,” she says, in a slow and measured voice, “we knew for a long time that Tina was ‘different,’ that she might like girls more than boys. And I admit, we were scared and worried. Life is not easy for those who are different. But I think life is even harder for those who are different but cannot be their different selves.” A long moment passes, and Mercedes adds, “¿Comprendes?”

  More tears meander down Sarah’s face. Most of the iridescent-blue eye shadow she had so carefully applied that morning is long gone, except for a smudge that inexplicably sits high above her eyebrow like a shiny bruise. She had given up on mascara—a beauty consultant at Hudson’s Bay department store told her women of her age didn’t need it as long as they had a good eyeliner—but her eyeliner and lipstick had worn off hours earlier. Without her makeup her face looks both older and younger.

  “I don’t know what to do, Mercedes. I love Caroline.”

  Mercedes breathes in deep, her chest puffing up.

  “I know, Sarah. I love my Tina too.”

  “This is just going to kill Jerry. And Blake—that’s Caroline’s brother—he’s always looked up to his sister! And my sisters! Penny’s already a grandmother, and Barbara’s planning a big wedding for her daughter—what am I supposed to tell them?” Her voice raises in a wail. “That my own daughter will never be getting married and the only way she’ll ever have kids is with the help of a turkey baster?”

  Mercedes almost blurts out a laugh, but the anger that rises up at the same time stifles it.

  “Sarah, calm down.”

  “And God!” wails Sarah. “Surely God is going to punish her!”

  Again, Mercedes’s blood does the biologically impossible and heats up, but she takes a deep breath, a breath that fills her lungs to capacity. She wants to be kind and understanding—it’s her nature to be kind and understanding—but she is tired of the woman’s i
gnorant and mean-spirited whining.

  “I think I hear my kitty,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”

  In the living room, her calico cat, Pancho, is perched on the wide arm of the sofa, regarding Mercedes with his usual implacable and slightly bored look. He had made no noise—he’s too regal to make noise—but Mercedes thought it better to make up an excuse for her departure than tell Sarah the truth, that if she stayed in that room one more second, she might do something she’d later regret.

  She sits down and scratches the cat behind the ears, muttering all the while about the crazy woman who’s taken up residence in her guest room. “I know it’s hard for her,” she whispers as Pancho turns his head, uninterested in any secrets, “but she makes it so much harder!”

  She returns to the bedroom, where Sarah is propped against the headboard, her eyes closed. Mercedes is relieved, thinking semiconsciousness is the best thing for her (and for everybody), but as she bends to pick up the tea tray on the floor, Sarah says, “I’m not asleep.”

  In silent but emphatic Spanish, Mercedes swears to herself.

  “I just feel so . . . lost,” Sarah says, her voice high and thin. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Of all the good and learned professors and doctors and nurses who taught Mercedes her profession, her favorite all-time teacher was her community college speech teacher, who sometimes had her students debate each other just by asking questions. Her common refrain was “You can learn things you didn’t even know you were asking about.”

  “What do you think you should do?” Mercedes asks, sitting down.

  Sarah stares straight ahead and waits so long to answer that Mercedes stifles two yawns.

  “I think I should do the right thing,” says Sarah finally. “I want to do the right thing.”

  “What do you think the right thing is?”

  Sarah sighs. “There are lots of right things, although the right thing for my church might not be the right thing for my daughter.”

  “What do you think the right thing for Caroline is?”

  Sarah’s head tips to one side, as if its weight is suddenly too heavy for her neck.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Mercedes hears Sarah’s deep inhale, her deep exhale.

  “What she would want,” she says, and her voice is hurried and tinged with petulance, “is that I ‘accept her for who she is’ and give her my undying support.”

  Now Mercedes takes a full breath and sighs.

  “Don’t you think that’s something a child should have from a parent?”

  “Of course!” says Sarah. “But not when they’re . . . they’re engaged in a lifestyle that is morally corrupt!”

  “I will tell you this,” says Mercedes, who is through asking questions. “There are many things that are morally corrupt. I for one think war is morally corrupt. I think killing and hurting others and not taking care of each another is morally corrupt.” Her accent gets heavier; it always does when she’s excited or agitated. “I could go on and on about all the things that are morally corrupt, but I will say only one more thing: I think it is morally corrupt for a mother to punish a child because that child loves. Loves someone who loves her back. Your Caroline and my Christina have a beautiful and full relationship. God makes all kinds of people, Sarah, and I don’t think He—or She!—made a mistake making our daughters!”

  Her throat is clogging up with anger and sadness, and she can barely get the last words out of her mouth, and when they are out, she doesn’t leap out of her chair, but close to, and she strides the few steps it takes to get to the door, which she closes behind her, not slamming, but not unduly concerned of any noise it may make when it shuts.

  17

  November 6, 1980

  Well, apparently Edith’s gone and died. I usually leave the television reviews to our esteemed arts and entertainment editor, but watching the first episode of Archie Bunker’s Place left me so bereft and out of sorts, I thought, How can I not write about this?

  Millie Siefert didn’t have a television set, and she wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Before she moved into a nursing home in Minneapolis, she lived on my block, and over the years gave me counsel on when to plant tomatoes, the difference between a blue moon and a harvest moon, and what’s best for the complexion (she swears by Noxzema). She got her entertainment from the radio, which she tells me, “is better than television because you get to make up the pictures in your mind.”

  You probably saw her belated obituary in the paper last week; she was ninety-six and had never been married, because, as she told me, “I don’t have time for that foolishness.” She would have said the same thing if she’d heard me mourning a made-up television character.

  Millie was born in 1884! She lived through two world wars; she was allowed to vote for the first time at the age of thirty-six; she saw the beginnings of air travel and a man walk on the moon. (She told me she did go to her brother’s to watch Neil Armstrong on television because “it was just too unbelievable. My mind couldn’t conjure the pictures.”)

  I think I was upset by Edith’s demise because it happened “off air”—a new television season begins, and we’re told Edith’s gone. This viewer felt bereft; we weren’t allowed to properly say goodbye to such a beloved character.

  Again, Millie would have mustered a sniff of contempt and pity for my reaction, but it’s Millie’s death that had caused my overreaction to Edith’s. She was as independent a woman as I’d ever known, and lived in her house down at the end of my street until last year, when a niece moved her into a senior citizens’ home down in the Twin Cities. Millie did not want to go, claiming she could still do just about everything but drive, and who needed to drive when there was “such a thing as passenger seats!” I’d take her to the FoodKing every Monday evening, and it was always fun to slowly cruise the supermarket aisle with her, both of our hands on the shopping cart handle, and listen to her complaints, which had a habit of turning into jokes.

  “Oh, that’s too high!” she’d say when I’d quote a price stamped on the bottom of a can of peas. “Especially for vegetables that taste like baby mush! Of course baby mush is the only kind of food you can eat when you’ve got bad choppers. By the by, don’t ever shop for dentures at the Goodwill!”

  It turns out Millie died two months ago.

  Last weekend, I was planning to spend an artsy weekend in Minneapolis, seeing a play at the Guthrie, visiting the Walker, and the Art Institute, and I called Millie’s “home,” wondering if I could take her out for lunch in between all my “cul-chah.” The person answering the phone, after a brief moment and sounds of paper shuffling, said, “Millie Seifert died September second. In her sleep.”

  Why this is unsettling to me, why the character of Edith’s death was unsettling is that it just seems like an unraveling thread that no one cared to knot. So that those of us who cared would know it was done. Over. That the double knot had been tied.

  P.S. There wasn’t a sweet tooth in Millie’s mouth (not even when she got dentures!), but she was partial to these cookies, which I’ve renamed in her honor.

  MILLIE’S NO-NONSENSE MACAROONS

  1⅓ cups sweetened shredded coconut

  ⅓ cup sugar

  2 T flour

  ⅛ t salt

  2 large egg whites

  ½ t vanilla or almond extract (your choice)

  Mix together the coconut, sugar, flour, and salt in small bowl. Add the egg whites and vanilla (or almond) extract, and mix well. Scoop out teaspoonfuls, and drop onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 325 degrees for 18–20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on wire rack.

  “HEY, GRANDMA. HEY, GRANDPA,” says Susan, settling herself in front of her grandparents’ shared tombstone.

  It’s a muggy evening, and she smells of the mosquito repellant she’s sure is less toxic to those miserable flits of biting creatures than it is to her future neurological health (she doesn’t doubt that o
ne day she’ll publish something like “Alzheimer’s and Chemicals” or “Dementia and Overuse of Furniture Polish”). But the skeeters have been relentless this overlong season, and she has scratched ’til they bled too many bites and now has coated herself with a thick spray of insect poison, willing to risk the death of a few hundred thousand brain cells so she can sit on the grass, at dusk (she might as well be wearing a sign that reads, “Bite me”) and talk without constantly slapping herself.

  She has felt off-center, no, off-kilter, which is much worse. She feels she hasn’t lost her balance so much as tumbled down a hill she didn’t even know she was on.

  Uncapping the thermos she’s brought, she raises it and says, “To you, Grandma.” She takes a long sip, and her jaw bone tingles from the sweetness. Her grandmother wasn’t much of a drinker, but when she did imbibe, she was partial to pineapple daiquiris. Susan had made a blender full using her grandmother’s recipe, which along with canned pineapple in syrup, called for a spoonful of brown sugar.

  “I’m wondering,” she says and looks around, conscious of her voice’s volume, but there is no one else paying respects to dearly departed. She takes another long swallow. “What I’m wondering is, did you ever know? Did you ever know that your husband—that would be you, Grandpa—that your husband cheated on you with Haze Evans?”

  Her back straight, she sits on her plaid blanket, sipping her tropical drink out of a plaid thermos, looking—if the tombstones had been erased out of the picture—like a picnicker in a Town & Country ad.

  “And if you knew, did you do anything?”

  Susan was too rational a person to think she’d hear an answer, but she was open to signs: an owl hooting, or the wind stirring through the nearby weeping willow, tossing its leaves the way a young girl tosses her hair, but there were no chatty raptors or whispering trees, and the evening was still as a Red Cross shelter during a P.A. announcement.

  “And Grandpa,” she says finally. “How could you? You loved Grandma. Everyone loved Grandma.”