Good-bye and Amen

by Beth Gutcheon

  Where was I?

  Anyway, I was working when Sam called me to tell me that his mother was in the hospital. Apparently she tried to kill herself. And I thought, really, How long, oh Lord? How long is this test going to take? It’s been one thing after another for months now. Just pile it on me, Lord, you want to see how much it takes to get me on my knees? Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

  Monica Faithful Sam called Leeway, looking for his sister. I had to tell him she’d gone back to New York suddenly, and I told him why and apologized to him too about the ashes, but he barely registered it. He said his aunt Lynn had called to say their mother is in the ICU. I think Aunt Lynn is the one who never married and makes hats. Sam was on a cell phone and it was hard to hear. He wasn’t even in Los Angeles, he was up in the Sierra on location. He couldn’t leave for a day, and when he could it was going to take him forever to get back to civilization and onto a plane to Boston. I told him to do whatever he had to do, and I’d find Sylvie. She wasn’t answering her cell, which I understood when I found it on the floor of my car the next morning. She must have lost it when Marlon drove her over to Union to catch the bus. I reached her at work in the evening.

  Sam had told me where Rachel was and I’d called for an update on her condition. She was still alive, but hadn’t regained consciousness. She must have made a very serious attempt. Naturally, Sylvie was stunned. I could hear the hubbub of the restaurant behind her but at first she didn’t say a word. I said that I assumed she’d want to go to Boston right away, and I said, “Do you want your father to go with you?” and she said, “That asshole?”

  I let it pass. But she shouldn’t have to do this alone. I said, “Shall I come?” and she said yes, which almost made me cry. I said, “Tonight?” And she was undone, she said no, she had to work her shift, then yes, then no again. I told her I’d be at the hospital by noon, and would wait for her in the waiting room. Of course I couldn’t go near Rachel myself, that would be too strange.

  Sylvia Faithful It was a terrible night at work. I kept forgetting things, I was really out of it. She is my mother. She is my mother. I wished she could learn to take care of herself so I didn’t have to worry about her all the damn time, but she is my mother. I thought how hard I’d been on her, and what if she really was doing the best she could?

  I got home about one and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. So I got back up and booked a ticket on the first Acela to Boston. I was able to sleep a little on the train, because it was in motion and because there was nothing else I could do, except be on my way. I barely had enough money for the taxi to the hospital, I’d forgotten to stop at a cash machine. My brain wasn’t working right. All I could think was, she couldn’t be dead. She had to be alive when I got there.

  Nika was in the waiting room of the ICU. She hugged me. She said Mommy was responding a little. She had squeezed the doctor’s fingers when he told her to.

  I went down to Mommy’s room, and they made me put on a gown and rubber gloves. Aunt Lynn was there, and my granma, who was crying. Aunt Lynn got up and kissed me, and whispered, “Finally.” The kiss that meant, What took you so long and where is your brother? Granma held Mommy’s hand and sniffled. Granma is so little that perched on that plastic chair, her feet didn’t touch the floor. Mommy had a tube in her nose and another stuck with a needle into the back of her hand and she looked waxy. Her hair was dirty and her fingernails were all ragged. That scared me almost the most. Mommy’s hands were always beautiful. Always.

  Aunt Lynn gave me her chair and left the room. I took Mommy’s hand and sat there. I started talking to her. I said, “Mommy, it’s Sylvie. I’m here. Sam’s on the way. You’re doing great. It’s going to be fine.” Then I’d say it over again. I said, “Mommy, squeeze my hand,” and I think she tried to. I said, “Mommy, it’s Sylvie. Say hello to me. Mommy, say ‘Sylvie,’” and I saw something, her eyelids moved, and she turned her head toward me a little. Then she slipped back and was deep under again.

  Aunt Lynn came back in and I said, “Lynn, she recognized my voice! She turned toward me!” And Lynn made a gesture that I should step out into the hall with her. She shut the door behind us and then she said, “Sylvie, who the hell is that woman in the waiting room?”

  Monica Faithful Of course I knew it was odd for me to be there. But Sylvie would get no comfort from her aunt or her grandmother. It wasn’t a happy family. Rachel and the sisters fought a great deal and the mother didn’t help. They hated me for taking Norman away from Rachel, which I don’t think I did, but when they weren’t doing that, they were blaming Rachel for losing him. And they all were bitter about Sam and Sylvie’s summers at Leeway. There was plenty of reason on their side and plenty of blame for all, but what there wasn’t was comfort for Sam or Sylvie.

  I remember Sylvie saying that she had learned from us to put salt on her cantaloupe. I don’t know where that comes from, Mother did it, we always did it. It makes it taste sweeter. Sylvie did it without thinking at dinner at her grandmother’s one time, and her grandfather stopped everything to say, “Oh, look at Miss Fancy Pants, now it’s salt on the melon?” For the rest of the dinner it was, “Pass Miss Fancy Pants the salt. She’ll want it on her pie.”

  I’d never met any of them. Of course, I was deeply curious to see them. Sylvie and Sam are children of my house, and these were their family. The sad thing was, Rachel and I could have had a really interesting conversation about the one thing we absolutely have in common. It might have helped both of us. But she would never allow it, and I understand. To her I had to be the one who Took Her Life from her, and nothing else, just a cardboard figure for whom a special circle in Hell is waiting.

  I sat in the waiting room until early evening. Cell phones didn’t work inside the hospital, so I’d go outside to pick up messages and talk to Sam. He was in L.A., and would take the red-eye, be in Boston in the morning.

  Sylvia Faithful Mommy’s coma was lighter by evening. She was moving more. She squeezed Granma’s hand, but not Aunt Lynn’s. Lynn took my chair and started a campaign to make Mommy squeeze her hand too. I know Mommy could hear at least some of it, because a little furrow would come between her eyebrows for a moment. I was relieved when Granma said she had to use the little girls’ room. Lynn took her away, very solicitous. I suppose to show me how a good daughter acts. I who was to blame for all Mommy’s unhappiness. They must have gone down to get supper because I had almost an hour to myself with Mommy. I talked to her. I told her I loved her. I asked her to please come back, I asked her to forgive me if I’d hurt her. I cried. I tried to meditate but the door that so often opens for me was closed. I tried praying to Daddy’s god, but that phone was off the hook. I felt like a lamb with its head caught in barbed wire, and no shepherd anywhere. All the shepherds had left the building.

  When Granma and Lynn came back, I went out to the waiting room. Nika was doing sudokus. She said she’d reserved a room for us at the Ritz. I said, “Whoa, now I’m really a Miss Fancy Pants.” She said, “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

  Monica Faithful If you’re having an awful day, at least have it in style. They gave us a room with two king-sized beds overlooking the Common, and we both had baths, then ordered dinner from room service and ate in our big white hotel bathrobes. Then we got into our beds and watched a movie. Sylvie called the hospital before going to sleep. Her mother was resting quietly. I called Norman to say good night, and was relieved to hear he’d been checking with the hospital too. He wanted to talk to Sylvie but she shook her head. I said she was already asleep, which she mostly was.

  Norman will hit the roof when the bill comes. So be it.

  Sylvia Faithful I slept like the dead for about six hours, but woke up early. When I couldn’t get back to sleep, I got up and dressed in the bathroom, wrote Monica a note, and got a taxi back to the hospital.

  Mommy was alone. There are visiting hours in the ICU but no one pays much attention. And the doctor wanted us to talk to Mommy, to try to get her to
wake up. The nurses gowned and gloved me and I went in.

  Her arms were tied to the bedrails. I went back out to ask if that was necessary; they said she had pulled out her breathing tube in the night and tried to get the IV out too. They told me that was good news. When I went back in she was stirring and looked very unhappy, tugging with her wrists. I think something itched and she couldn’t scratch. It was horrible. I took her hand and sat; I started talking to her. I tried over and over to get her to open her eyes or say my name. She moved her head back and forth and scowled, but it wasn’t at me, it was the restraints. I decided to sing to her. She loved the movie High Society, so I sang “True Love,” and “What a Swell Party This Is.” She got quieter and I think she was listening. I was on the third verse when Sam walked in.

  Sam Faithful “This pink champagne, so good for the brain…” I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Mom looked really awful and she was handcuffed to the bed. After I hugged Sylvie I leaned over Mom and kissed her and said, “Mom, it’s Sam. I’m here.” She turned her head to me immediately and got one eye partly open. Sylvie sat down and burst into tears.

  Monica Faithful That was the breakthrough moment. She was responding, coming out of it. The doctors had been worried about how long she had been out, afraid about brain damage.

  I’d heard Sylvie close the door on her way out, and had gotten up and followed to the hospital as soon as I could. I saw Sam for a minute as he came in. Sylvie came to the waiting room to tell me what had happened, that she had responded to Sam.

  Lynn and a man with a potbelly and a yarmulke started into the waiting room toward Sylvie; then they saw me, and Lynn grunted and grabbed his elbow and dragged him back out. “Uncle Len,” said Sylvie. Rachel’s retired brother, up from Florida. It was time for me to go.

  I asked her if she would be all right. She said, yes, now that Sam was there. They would stay with their grandmother and Aunt Lynn, and if that was too hard, she had a credit card of Norman’s and could go to a motel. She said they’d be all right, and she promised to call. Since she had her cell phone back, I went out and bought her a charger for it, and brought it to the hospital before I left.

  The whole way back to Maine I kept thinking of how many times Sylvie had been the glue that held the family together. The night Edie told us she was dropping out of college, she brought Sylvie with her. Sylvie’s a rock. She trusted and actually loved my terrifying mother, which was such a good thing in poor Sydney’s life. And what do I do? I forget to call her when we decided to scatter the f-ing ashes. Whether she could have gotten there or not, I could have called her.

  You’re never too old to keep failing your children, are you? Why weren’t we told this was a life sentence?

  Jimmy Moss Monica only stayed long enough to pack the car when she got back from Boston. Eleanor gave the last family dinner when all three of us would be together, and that was a welcome diversion from the rolling Charlesie crisis. Nika left the next morning to drive home, and Joss moved us all into the front bedrooms, which pleased her. Regis immediately fell down the front stairs and broke a front tooth. He swore someone had pushed him, though he’d been alone up there. It wasn’t the ghost of Uncle George; he smokes cigars and flushes the toilets, but he never does anything to children. Mother, is that you?

  Eleanor Applegate I was disgusted with Charlesie. He was supposed to write two papers this summer and read Moby-Dick, and he hadn’t done any of it. Ever since he and Mutt won the Retired Skippers’ Race, he’s been running with the Dodge grandchildren, out till all hours and having parties on the club bathing beach that keep the neighbors up half the night. And which, after all, is private property, for members only. He thinks he’s made new friends; I think they’re using him and it’s an excuse for all of them to drink all night. Jimmy reminded me that when he was that age, Papa sent him to Denmark for a summer to work on a pig farm. He recommended it. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.

  Josslyn Moss I was finally able to give the kind of party I like in my own house, for our friends, without all the old china and the octogenarians. They’re not that much older than me, but Jimmy’s sisters are really another generation. At our party we had crab rolls on paper plates, and hot dogs for the kids, and a contest for spitting watermelon seeds and a blanket toss on the lawn, and everyone went home by nine o’clock. The kids loved it. I loved it.

  Jimmy Moss Being under the same roof with my sisters, especially at Leeway—nothing else means home in quite the same way. I was sorry Nika had left. The lower meadow was full of fireflies, and the meteor showers had begun. I believe we saw the northern lights there a couple of times when we were little, but I don’t trust my memory. Nika would know. I’d love for the kids to see them, if it’s not a false memory altogether.

  Sam came up for Labor Day weekend. His mother was out of the hospital. He taught Virgil to play cribbage and we all went to the fair. Looking for Charlotte and Wilbur in the livestock barn. Sam left, driving a car across country for Rufus Maitland, and taking our puppy home. Joss and I had a September sail by ourselves. You get up one morning and there’s a certain kind of edge to the chill, and it’s fall. September is the most beautiful month of the year in Dundee. The bay was suddenly empty, the breeze was light and the air was pink and gold on the water.

  Someone wrote to me when our parents died that no one ever tells you there’s something good about being an orphan. That you own yourself in the universe in a new way. It’s true. And I looked at the silent universe that afternoon, ghosting along the empty water toward home, and I absolutely loved the world.

  Monica Faithful The house was a mess when I got to Sweetwater. The cleaning lady was on vacation and it didn’t look to me as if Norman had emptied a wastebasket or run a wash all month. He was out of clean socks but he thought if he wore dirty ones inside out that took care of it. He said he’d made a good start on a new book, something about Christ riding the subway, but from what I was hearing he’d been up at the club playing golf with Clark Vogelsang six days out of seven. It took me three days of solid work to put the house back in order, not including getting the disposal fixed (one of my grandmother’s sterling egg spoons was in it).

  Norman Faithful Well of course I spent some time with Clark Vogelsang. His wife is off at the dry-out bin and he’s lonely and upset. In counseling you see it can be devastating to a marriage when one spouse gives up an addiction. The addiction is like a person in the marriage. When it leaves, many times people like what’s left less than they liked the addiction. I was trying to talk him through it, get him ready to support Beccy when she gets home.

  Monica Faithful I went to school one day to prepare my classroom and guess what. There had been a flood over the summer from the boys’ bathroom on the second floor. No one discovered it for days, so the ceiling in my supply closet fell in. It wrecked all the materials that I’d made and collected for twenty years. I came home that night and said to Norman, “Do not tell me that this is really an opportunity. Just frigging do not.” And he didn’t. But he didn’t say much else either.

  The next day I was down at the five-and-ten buying construction paper and rolls of felt, when there bearing down on me was Lindsay Tautsch. She asked if I had a minute. Did I look like I had a minute?

  She hung around waiting for me to finish my shopping, then we went next door to the Café Express. She bought us some ghastly coffee things with butterscotch sauce and whipped cream. I must not have heard what she said when she asked me if I wanted one. We sat on stools in the window like Betty and Veronica at the Sweet Shoppe, and she told me that she didn’t want me to be blindsided. By what? said I.

  Well, she said, in that faux-mournful voice of hers, there was reason to believe that things were not quite right in the church’s financials. There were questions about the rector’s discretionary fund.

  I had no idea what to say. I thought she was just trying to poison every well that Norman drank from. She said yes, she knew I’d be distressed. She said th
at a member of the vestry, an accountant, had had a look at the books while Norman was in Maine. (Not hard to guess who that was.) He’d been wanting to do that for a while, she crooned, because it’s a bad sign when someone who keeps the books for an organization never takes a vacation. It often means there’s something there he doesn’t want anyone else to see.

  Or that he’s a profoundly dedicated servant of the institution in question, I said. She took my hand, and said, “Let’s pray together.”

  Margaret Sector I’d had my own little visit from young Lindsay Tautsch in July. She was all dressed up in her priest collar and high heels and a skirt too tight for her size, in spite of the fact it was summer and everyone else in town was in shorts. She wanted to tell me that Norman had “control” issues. Honestly, I hate this jargon that the young talk. So he’s bossy. Well, I pointed out, he’s the boss. Her point was that Mrs. Cherry, the church secretary, isn’t up to her standards. I will grant that the bulletin the week before Easter announced “Plam Sunday.” But I didn’t like her bringing it to me. I may not be Norman’s biggest fan, but I do believe in proper channels. And I happen to think he was entirely right to stand by Mrs. Cherry. She’s been a good and loyal servant for many years, and it won’t kill us to have a typo or two in the bulletin.