What Girls Learn

by Karin Cook

  By Friday, the shelf under the big bay window in her bedroom was lined with floral arrangements. It stopped me in my tracks when I noticed how many more had arrived in the last few days. Tall purple stalks. Little yellow blooms pinched to resemble faces. Green ferns and leaves. Mama identified the types of flowers in each arrangement as if she were quizzing herself. I sat listening to her, trying to learn their names. There were so many. There was so much to learn.

  “Iris, lily,” she called out, as if taking attendance, “rose, snapdragon, and …” she gasped, “look at the trumpet on that beautiful daffodil.”

  “Mama?” I asked.

  She turned her gaze from the windowsill. “What is it, sweetie?”

  “How will you know when I get my period?”

  She sighed dreamily and reached her hand out to mine. “Send me a note,” she said. “The mail has its own magic.”

  Later that day, I pulled a chair next to the bed and read her letters that had arrived from some of her old friends. There were stamps with illustrations of ferries, the faces of presidents and poets, an American flag. The post office dates were faint and hard to read. I did the math for each one, calculating how long the letter had taken to arrive. Some from Atlanta. One from Nick’s mother in Florida. Mostly, I read the letters to myself. They were written that way, not to her as much as about her. In the stack, was an invitation to her twentieth college reunion.

  “That sounds fun,” she said, suddenly alert, and then closed her eyes again.

  Mama took cat naps, as she called them, for most of the afternoon. Her eyes were swollen from the morphine and when she lifted her lids, the iris rolled back in her head. At one point, I helped her to the bathroom and she insisted that she go in alone. I leaned against the molding and peered in the crack.

  “I’ll call you when I’m ready,” she scolded, and then with a thin, desperate voice, “don’t go too far.”

  Later with Nick on one side and me on the other, we took Mama for a walk around the room. Elizabeth followed behind us, guiding the tubing from the oxygen machine around the furniture. Mama pulled frantically at her cord and I assured her over and over that we would not step on it. Her feet were barely scaling the ground, while Nick coaxed, “That’s wonderful, keep going.”

  Her breathing had become more like gasping, as dramatic as the pump inside the oxygen machine. She was asleep almost before we put her in the bed. When Nick left the room, Elizabeth and I adjusted her against the pillow, tugging at her body as if she were no longer in it. We thought that she should be sitting up higher than she was. I pulled so hard on her shoulder that I felt something give. Part of me may have wanted to hurt her just to see if she would notice. But she didn’t respond.

  After an hour, Nick came back to check on her. He touched her face with his hand, holding one finger against her breath. “Dear God,” he whispered. He pushed the clear plastic nose clip of the oxygen machine deeper into her nostrils, “Get your uncle.”

  I found Uncle Rand in his bedroom bent over his lap scribbling on looseleaf paper. He was deep in thought, writing nonstop. I’d only seen his blocky handwriting on kitchen counter instructions. It had never occurred to me that he had more to say. When he looked up from the page, I said, “Nick wants you.”

  He folded the paper in half, sealed the crease with his thumb, and slipped it under his pillow. Then, he stood up and hugged me to his chest. “This is the hardest thing that will ever happen …” he said, his breath against my scalp, “to any of us.” He pulled back and looked down at me, his mustache quivering slightly above his tightening lips. “I love you,” he said, “you just remember that.”

  I stepped away from his embrace, nodding as he strode off toward Mama’s room.

  The definition of coma in my dictionary did not prepare me for the fact that Mama would not regain consciousness. I waited next to her all night to have some kind of final exchange. I opened her hand and stuck one of mine inside, my other one squeezing them firmly together. I watched her chest move up and down and feared what the moment of quiet and rest would look and sound like. I brushed her wig for her and told her how beautiful she looked. With a tissue, I soaked up the saliva that was gathering in her mouth and put a little Vaseline on her dry lips. Everyone else had gone to bed. I was waiting with perfect patience, the way only I could wait, a waiting laced with hope.

  Nick arrived the next morning with two glasses of fresh-squeezed juice. Seeing those glasses on a tray, striated orange and grapefruit, cheery with ice, I fell into believing that she might survive another day. Nick handed me one. It felt cool and heavy in my hand. I brought an ice cube from the froth into my mouth and held it against my gums. I looked at Mama and then back at Nick to see if there had been a change in the night that I might not have been able to see. He stared out the window and took a long sip from his glass.

  “It’s like you’ve given up on her,” I said.

  He turned his glass in front of him, watching the pulp stick to the side. “I’ve never given up on your mama,” he said, “not from the moment I met her. Not even when she refused to marry me right away. First, because she wanted to do the best by you girls. And then because of the cancer. I waited because I couldn’t do anything else. Because I knew I had to have her in my life.”

  “Don’t talk about her like she’s gone,” I said.

  “She is gone,” he practically shouted. His anger startled me. Then, he softened. “Look, honey, she’s gone.”

  Her breathing was imperceptible when I brought my eyes back to her. For a second I imagined she was between breaths. But a minute passed and her chest did not rise. She was still. I ran to get Elizabeth, pulling her out from her covers and dragging her back without a word. I had stopped watching for only that moment. I had missed saying good-bye.

  HOME ECONOMICS

  I watched, barefoot, from the outdoor staircase as a police car pulled into the driveway and two officers strode up the front yard, their hard shoes clicking on the slate path. Officer Denehey lowered the volume on his walkie-talkie before entering the house. I wasn’t used to the glare of morning sun, the way it reflected off the windshields in the lot, how the glinting chrome made the cars look new. Before long, vapors would start to rise off the hot, black pavement, and the lifting sun would expose the grit and grease of TransAlt. The early shift of drivers stood in a tight clump looking unsure as to whether they should approach the house or continue on with their day. When the medical examiner arrived, the drivers dispersed, turning toward the garage and offering some privacy.

  Elizabeth and I snuck down to the pantry and eavesdropped on the kitchen conversation. The medical examiner was speaking in a low, respectful voice explaining the funereal options to Nick. Uncle Rand stood over the stove boiling water for instant coffee. He measured the powder into a green ceramic mug and stirred absently with a teaspoon. When Lainey arrived, she hugged Uncle Rand, rubbing his back gently and cupping one hand around the nape of his neck. One of the drivers must have called her before she left that morning. She was dressed in a navy linen suit, ready for anything we might need. Her hair was brushed high off her face, and pulled back in a clip. After the hug, she stood back and looked around.

  “Where are the girls?” she asked.

  “Upstairs,” he said.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she touched his elbow. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nick doesn’t want to have a service. It was everything I could do to get him to agree to have the deacon come by.” Uncle Rand picked up the mug and raised it to his mouth, the steam curling around his moustache as he blew on the top. He set the coffee down without taking a sip and turned to Lainey, “I think we need to change her clothes.”

  She nodded and said, “I can do that.”

  They waited for the medical examiner and officers to finish their reports and then disappeared into Mama’s room. After a few minutes, Lainey walked back through the kitchen, clutching an armful of hanging garments and discover
ed us crouched behind the pantry door. She hugged us both, offering sorry after so sorry in a singsong voice.

  “Come upstairs,” she said, after a moment, “I need your help with something.”

  Lainey thought it might make us feel better to help pick out an outfit for Mama, but Elizabeth and I couldn’t seem to agree on anything. I thought Mama should wear something free-spirited such as her polka-dot sundress, but Elizabeth wanted her to look more formal and selected a blouse and skirt set. Neither of us wanted to sacrifice those items that most reminded us of her. Her clothes smelled like a mix of her perfumes—sandalwood and gardenia—dulled by the staleness of her closet. I hadn’t seen most of those clothes for months. We finally agreed on a polished denim dress that she had never much liked, but looked beautiful in. Lainey wet her thumb and rubbed at a toothpaste stain on the bodice.

  “Find the scarf,” Elizabeth said, starting to cry again, “the rust one she always wears …”

  Lainey put her arms around her and then reached out for me, her long fuchsia nails scraping my shoulder. I didn’t want any part of her comfort. Nothing would make me feel better.

  Uncle Rand and Nick climbed the stairs and joined us, sitting down next to each other on the edge of my bed. They looked like two men on a bus who were relieved to get a seat, but disappointed by the company. They had been arguing all morning about a service and had finally come to a compromise. They’d probably said things that they now regretted and were trying to present a united front. My room felt suddenly small. Elizabeth and I sat down on the floor to listen.

  Uncle Rand spoke first, his voice weak and strained. “The deacon should be here within the hour. He’s just going to say a few words, something comforting.”

  “That’s important,” Lainey said, more to herself. She seemed to know what to do. She asked for Mama’s address book and offered to make the necessary calls from the dispatching phone in the TransAlt office. “What about an obituary for the paper?” she asked.

  I could tell that Nick wasn’t really listening to her. All the muscles in his face were slack, making him almost unrecognizable. He slouched forward. “Whatever you think,” he said absently.

  “People will want to know how they can pay their respects,” Lainey said, looking back and forth between Nick and Uncle Rand, unsure who to direct this opinion toward. There didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. Nick was distant, locked inside himself, everything washing over him, nothing entering. Lainey looked at us, worried, then turned to confide in Uncle Rand. She leaned toward him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s just that without a funeral people don’t have any way to express their feelings,” she said gently. “Most people will be in shock.”

  The word shock echoed in my ears. I looked at the stunned, ashy faces around me. Uncle Rand looked especially gaunt, his whole face pale and unshaven.

  “There won’t be a funeral,” Nick said.

  Lainey started to object and then thought better of it. She walked off, trailing Mama’s dresses over her shoulder.

  By the time the deacon arrived, Mama was laid out neatly on top of the flowered comforter with her arms bent across her stomach. There was a pair of low heels sticking out from the hem of her denim dress. Her legs were bare. Someone had placed a Band-Aid over the lump on her neck. She looked like the Red Cross resuscitation doll from CPR class at school—only older and without hair.

  The deacon remembered that we were not particularly religious, but offered to read a passage from the Gospel of John. All I could hear was that it was something about the light shining in the darkness. Elizabeth listened with her eyes closed. After he spoke, each of us was allotted some alone time with Mama’s body. I knew that the time was meant for conversation and prayer. Instead, I filled my five minutes with a nagging curiosity about what would happen after they took her away. Would they remove her clothes? Her shoes? I wished that she had opted for burial rather than cremation.

  When Nick knocked on the door, signaling the end of my time, I became immediately nauseated. Everything I’d never told Mama—all my secrets, all my worries, the forbidden things I’d overheard that last year—all rushed up on me like regret. I leaned over her face and kissed the tip of her nose. She smelled like ocean. Her skin was cool as shells. I rested my head on her chest and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

  Nick touched my back lightly. “Come on,” he said “it’s time.”

  Elizabeth had to be carried out of the room. Uncle Rand held her like a rescuer would, her weight cradled limply between his two extended arms. Her face was strained, her lips blue and skinny. I followed them up the stairs to my room where he deposited Elizabeth safely on my bed and stepped in front of the window, blocking my view of the empty stretcher waiting by the back steps.

  “Don’t you girls look out there,” he said and pulled a blanket off the bed to cover the windows. “You don’t want that car to be the last thing you see.” He was stiff and awkward in his dark suit; it was the first time I had ever seen him in a tie.

  After the funeral parlor had taken Mama’s body away in a long, dark station wagon, Lainey came up with sandwiches and soda on a tray. She tugged the blanket and let it fall in a heap on the floor. She sat down between us on the bed and encouraged us to eat. I took my plate and set it on the floor. I couldn’t imagine eating anything, ever again. Elizabeth picked up a potato chip and put it down. She squeezed a pickle between her thumb and forefinger. Mama had never trusted anything with that long a shelf life. Elizabeth put her plate down next to mine and reached out for my hand. I let her hold it, but only for a minute before lifting the covers and snaking underneath.

  Lainey sighed and stacked the food neatly on the tray. “I understand,” she said, “I’ll just leave it right over here where you can nibble on it if you get hungry.”

  She lingered by my bed and looked at the photographs of Mama that were tacked to my corkboard. In one, an enlargement from the wedding, Mama’s eyes are cast sideways, her lips parted mid-word. In another, from when Elizabeth and I were toddlers, we are all three in the tub. Mama is hiding her breasts with one arm and swatting away the camera with the other. Elizabeth is holding a bottle of conditioner as if it is a doll. I am busy working the faucet.

  Lainey leaned over the bed to look at the photo more closely. “Who took this one?” she asked, looking first at Elizabeth and then at me.

  I didn’t know. I realized that I would never know. Who was there to ask? Elizabeth shrugged, useless. Lainey sat down on the bed and pulled my head into her chest. “I’m so sorry,” she said, rocking me gently in her arms. I pressed my face hard against her to keep from crying. Her jacket smelled inky, like dry cleaning.

  After I sat up, dizzy and disheveled, Lainey asked me if I might like to write the notice for the paper.

  She can’t be gone, I thought. How could she have left me like this—with strangers?

  “I don’t think I can,” I said.

  She put her hand on my arm. “It might help you,” she said.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Elizabeth asked.

  “You can do it together,” she said and stood up, “just put down everything you can think of. I’ll proofread it.” She pulled the door closed and headed back downstairs.

  Elizabeth curled up on my bed, crossing her bare feet, one around the other like mating doves. I went to Uncle Rand’s room, slipped four clean sheets of paper from the pack on his nightstand and borrowed a pencil. I sat down at my desk to work and stared at the blank page. I had listened closely to Mama my whole life, but now I couldn’t remember anything. Words escaped me, so I turned to math, counting backward to figure out the year she was born and forward to approximate when she had graduated from high school. She was forty-two years old.

  I stole adjectives from some of the letters that her friends had sent in the days before she died. Devoted mother. Loving sister. Loyal friend. I suddenly realized how much I didn’t know. What was the name of her sorority in college? How had she met our r
eal father? I didn’t even know what jobs she had held before she had children. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked.

  When I read the list aloud to Elizabeth, she said that she remembered something about Mama working in a hospital.

  “I thought it was real estate,” I said. “Didn’t she want to design houses?”

  “She did?” Elizabeth asked.

  I used up all the paper making drafts and returned to Uncle Rand’s room for one final, clean sheet. As I reached for it, I remembered the note he’d been writing and tipped his pillow to look. After a moment of deliberating, holding the folded page up to the light and putting it down again, I lifted the top half and settled my eyes on the even temper of his handwriting. As I read, I felt the exhilaration of discovering a secret.

  Lainey—

  I will always remember our time together. I am grateful

  you were in my life. I am not very good on paper. I hope you

  will understand when I tell you that I can’t stay. Not with

  Frances gone …

  I brought the unfinished letter to Elizabeth and sat down next to her on the bed. She read it over and over, held it up to her nose to smell and then handed it back to me. We sat close to each other, the loss settling quietly around us, until I heard Uncle Rand climb the stairs. Elizabeth panicked, threw herself down on the pillow, and pretended to be asleep. I sat upright, the letter open in my hand, and waited. The air was so thick, I could scarcely breathe.

  As soon as Uncle Rand appeared in my doorway, I spoke up.

  “You knew she was dying,” I said, “that’s why you came. You knew but you never said a thing. And now you’re just going to leave.”

  “She asked me to come,” he said, “but I swear I didn’t know it would end like this. I’ll be here for another week or two,” he lowered his voice, “then I have to go.”

  Elizabeth stirred and asked, “Where?”