by Peggy Webb
Jean heads toward the kitchen with Carl and I march off toward the master bedroom, a soldier following the general’s orders. When I reach the doorway, I come to a screeching halt.
Lillian is wearing a leopard-print bodysuit and leotard that bag at the seat, and she’s panting as she tries to follow the moves of the exercise instructor on TV. Richard Simmons. An old tape we found at the flea market and Carl converted to a CD.
“Good lord, Lillian. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t say another word, Maggie.” She wipes her face with a towel and sinks onto her chaise. I’m not sure she’ll ever be able to get back up.
“Oh, Lillian.” I sink down beside and reach for her hand.
“I know. It’s insane.” She leans over, fighting for air, and I race to get a wet cloth for her face. Her eyes are too bright when she looks at me. “Still, I feel like I have to do something. You know?”
“I understand. Really, I do.” I head toward her chest of drawers, search till I find what I want then head to Lillian’s bathroom to stuff myself into one of her bodysuits and leotards, orange, the exact color of a pumpkin, which is what I resemble when I return to the bedroom. I’m afraid I’m going to split every seam.
“Whenever you’re ready, Lillian.” She nods, and I help her back up then keep my arm around her waist as Richard Simmons yells at us to squat.
Jean walks in, takes one look then rummages for her own borrowed work-out gear in hot pink. Three sizes larger than Lillian, she hangs out all over the clothes. All three of us pretend not to notice.
She lines up and hooks her arm around Lillian from the other side. On the TV screen, Richard Simmons is putting women through impossible gyrations and urges us to do the same thing.
“Who does he think we are?” Jean says. “I ought to kick his butt.”
“Well, Jean,” Lillian drawls, “if you’re planning to kick butt, you’d better lift those feet a little higher. At the rate you’re going, you’d do well to kick shins.”
“Maybe I’ll just take a wet noddle and give him forty lashes.”
“Or introduce him to the business end of a baseball bat.” Lillian enters Jean’s fantasy with gusto.
It feels so wonderful to hear Lillian laughing again that I stop worrying I’ll split the seams of her leotard and Dick will never divorce me and I’ll never have a house of my own and oh, most horrible of all, I’ll lose Lillian when I’m not paying attention.
“Work those buns! “ Richard Simmons yells at us.
“It’s not my buns I’m worried about,” I say. “It’s these bags under my eyes.”
“You should try my cure,” Jean says.
“What is it?” Lillian asks.
“Preparation H.”
Lillian guffaws and this turns into a coughing spell. In spite of Richard Simmons’ badgering, we all sink onto the floor so she can recover her breath.
“Don’t scoff. If it can shrink one place, why can’t it shrink the other?” Jean stretches her eyes into almond shapes with the tips of her fingers. “Besides, have you ever seen hemorrhoids on these peepers?”
We all giggle, but I notice that Lillian sounds weak. Jean notices, too, for she pulls Lillian into a full-out bear hug. “I’ve had enough for the day, sweet pea. What about you?”
“Enough.”
“Oh, good. What I really want to do is tell you about this wonderful old house Bill found for Maggie and this fabulous carpenter who can fix it up.”
Lillian simply lights up. “Tell me,” she says, and I’d bite off my tongue before I’d ask Jean to stop talking about Super Matt, who, to hear her tell it, can do everything but play the national anthem on the trombone while he turns cartwheels.
After Jean finishes talking, even I’m beginning to believe the mystery house is the next best thing to Buckingham Palace and this Matt Whoever He Is has royalty in his lineage.
“Oh, Maggie. This sounds absolutely perfect for you. When you get it, we’ll have a porch party!” Lillian eyes and face look feverish, and I am petrified she’ll never live to see another day, let alone a house I haven’t even bought.
“Yes, we will!” Jean glares at me as if I would dare destroy this dream of Lillian’s. “Won’t we, Maggie?”
“Absolutely. The divorce hearing is in two weeks, and we’ll have a porch party even if I have to steal somebody’s porch to do it.”
Lillian’s laughter brings on another coughing spell. “I think I’ll lie down a while now,” she says, and we help her into her bed, tuck the sheet under her chin then sit on either side of her.
“My guardian angels,” she says, and Jean guffaws.
“If I’m an angel, the world is in trouble.”
“Aw, Jean, I see your crooked halo,” Lillian drawls, and that’s when I know I can leave and not worry all night that she’ll be dead before morning.
I think talking is wearing her out. I lean over to kiss her forehead.
“We have to be going, Lillian. Is there anything we can do before we leave?”
“Send Carl in here. I think I can tell him, now.”
I don’t even want to think about what her news will do to him, to both of them. Jean and I get back into our clothes then relay her message to Carl on the way out.
It’s already getting dark and I search for stars, hoping I’ll see a cosmic message in the sky.
“I don’t want to leave her,” Jean says.
“I don’t either. But we can’t hog all her time.” The time she has left, is what I’m thinking, the time she needs to spend with her husband and her girls.
“Let’s go to a movie.”
“Something sad so we can cry.”
“Exactly.” Jean calls Bill on her iPhone, and, God love his kind heart, he doesn’t make a single protest.
We head to the mall to find a tearjerker, then go inside to console ourselves with buttered popcorn and bawl without feeling guilty that we’re not being strong for Lillian.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The first thing I do when I wake up is call Jean.
“Maggie! Is anything wrong? Oh my God, is it Lillian?”
“No, it’s not Lillian.” I pray I’m right. I believe Carl would have called Jean and me immediately, and I didn’t want to call Lillian this early in case she’s sleeping. “You remember that tooth I chipped last night? I did more damage than I thought. I’ve got to go to the dentist.”
“Good grief! You scared me half to death.”
“That’s why I’m calling, so you won’t stroke out when you get to school and I’m not there.”
“At this rate, I’ll never get there. You scared me so bad I smeared mascara all over my eyelid.”
“It’s fixable, Jean.”
We both get quiet, thinking of what we can’t fix.
o0o
My dentist is a jovial man who enters a room whistling and who lets his chocolate Lab into his office, probably in defiance of all sorts of health regulations. Nicholas McNair is his name, but nobody ever calls him Dr. McNair. Because of his pot belly and his hearty way of laughing, his younger patients call him St. Nick.
Some of his older patients do, too. If you can’t pay your bill Nicholas McNair says he’s been dying for some of that corn you’ve got in your garden, and why don’t you just bring a sack of that to his office and he’ll call it even.
“Did you take your antibiotics, Maggie?”
He always asks questions when his hands are in my mouth, and all I can do is nod. After all these months of fending for myself, this attention feels good. Somebody taking care of me. Even this little bit.
I miss going home to somebody who will say, Maggie, you look tired; why don’t you put your feet up and let me worry about supper. Not that Dick ever said that to me. Not by a long shot. But I know that’s how a relationship should be, and if I ever have another one, it’s going to be like that.
“You look good, Maggie.” Nick’s hands are out of my mouth now. “And so do your teeth.” He
chuckles to show that he’s made a joke instead of a pass. Not that I would ever expect a pass from Nick. His wife is one of those women everybody adores, including her husband.
“Except for this one little old chip here. How’d you do that, Maggie?”
“Popcorn. I can’t watch a movie without a big bag of popcorn, with lots of butter.”
“Me, too. The more butter the better.” He pats his belly. “Tell you what I’m going to do about that little chip, Maggie.”
I know he’s going to say a porcelain cap.
“Well darn. There goes my new fur coat,” I say. “Not to mention that big pink Cadillac I’ve had my eye on.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, young ‘un. I’m not going to do a thing to your tooth, except this.” He takes a little strip of something that always makes me think of sandpaper, and begins smoothing the sharp edge of my tooth.
“There now. Just a little imperfection that adds character.” He pats my shoulder then gives me a hand out of the chair. I’ve been sitting there so long I wobble.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“A little woozy.”
“Standing up suddenly does that sometimes.”
I’m still woozy when I get back to my apartment and I decide to curl up in my easy chair with a good book after I take the final dose of antibiotic.
I never make it to the chair.
o0o
Severe allergic reaction is what the doctor called it, and here I am flat of my back in a hospital gown that exposes my backside, staring at four walls painted putrid green and wondering how in the world I can take care of things. I have always taken care of things - the children, my husband, the house, the houseplants. Now I can’t even take care of myself. I’m hooked up to IV’s and heart monitors and equipment with names I don’t know, and I can’t lift my arms without knocking something over, let alone go to the bathroom.
The court date is looming. Monday I have lunchroom duty at school and a math test to give, and on Tuesday, a field outing to supervise. Wednesday we start practicing for our April extravaganza, a play that distills the entire history of Mississippi into thirty minutes of songs and pageantry.
Conventional wisdom has it that most of the things we worry about never happen. What I’ve worried about is being helpless, and now I am and I don’t know who to blame. Myself, mostly, for not being more aware of my own body’s reaction to the antibiotic. Blueberries break me out in hives and seafood swells me up like a toad and cough syrup with codeine puts me into orbit, so why didn’t I ask questions? Why didn’t I exercise more caution?
Jean and Lillian catapult through the door and race to either side of my bed where they take up guard like a couple of white-faced avenging angels. Jean, I expected, but certainly not Lillian. Yesterday she looked at death’s door. Today she looks like a model for Fit and Healthy.
“Good lord, Lillian. You shouldn’t have come. What if you catch something here?”
“I’m not made of glass, Maggie.”
I start to protest again, then don’t. It’s wonderful to have Jean and Lillian standing by. Even I need an occasional fawning over.
I had to crawl to the phone to dial 911, was strapped to a stretcher and lifted down the long flight of marble stairs, carted to the hospital wearing an oxygen mask in an ambulance with siren blaring full blast, then worked over by a team of doctors whose names I didn’t even know.
I think all that deserves a little fawning. That’s why I had the nurses call Jean.
“You scared me half to death,” Jean says.
“She drove like a maniac coming here.” Lillian’s color is heightened by drama, I hope. “Good grief, Maggie, the emergency room!”
“I know. I’m so mad I could spit nails, if I could spit. My mouth is dry as a bone. Jean, will you hand me a sip of water?”
“I’m closer.” Lillian grabs the water and I see how much she wants to be the way she used to be. “Are you sure water is all right?” I nod, and she holds the straw to my lips.
“The doctor who prescribed that stuff for you ought to be horsewhipped.” Jean looks ready to do the job. “They can kill you with medicine.”
“She didn’t know I’d react like this. Neither did I.”
“Well, still. . . “ Jean drags a straight-backed chair close to the bed and sits with her feet propped on the bed railing. “My feet are killing me.”
“Your students getting you down?” I ask.
“No. New shoes. I’m going to have to break down and buy a bigger size. I think feet get bigger as you grow older. Not that I’m growing older. I’m just repeating what people say.”
“Where’s the doctor?” Lillian says. “Why isn’t she in here taking care of you?”
“I’m okay. I can go home as soon as I stabilize.” I say this with greater assurance than I feel.
“When?” This from Jean.
“Tomorrow, probably.”
“Did anybody call Beth and Lydia?” Jean asks. I shake my head, no and Jean starts toward the pay phone in the hallway to call my daughters. I let her. I have no intention of being a martyr.
Jean’s at the doorway when I stop her.
“Call Dick, too.”
She doesn’t have to say, Are you out of your mind? Her face says it for her.
“Look, maybe if he and I just talked, we could settle this thing out of court and be done with it.” Maybe this unexpected visit to the ER is not a disaster, but an opportunity.
o0o
I don’t want to go to sleep; I’m afraid I’ll miss something - the way the clouds move across the moon, the way the wind sounds like a woman calling softly to her lover, the way a single star can take your breath away.
Though I insisted they both go home, Lillian and Jean are sleeping on cots the nurse brought in, wrapped in blankets against the chill, and I am in my hospital bed with two pillows propped under my head and my right foot stuck out of the covers.
I once heard a television evangelist describe God’s grace as a gift to sinners, but I know it’s more. God’s grace is friends who can navigate the terrain of your heart without a map.
Lillian and Jean disguised their grace by turning the entire episode into a pajama party.
“I’m glad you thought of this, Maggie,” Lillian said. “Nancy and Emily are driving me crazy. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to get away.”
“Me, too,” Jean said. “But next time, why don’t you pick someplace like Tahiti, Maggie?”
Now, she’s flat on her back with her arm flung across her face, snoring, and Lillian is rolled onto her side hugging one knee to her chest.
I couldn’t hug my knee if I wanted to. Age robs you of being limber. Shouldn’t life be on a give and take basis? For everything that’s taken, something is given.
I drift asleep trying to think up compensations.
“Mom?”
The door cracks open, and Lydia stands in the slash of light. I glance behind her, but nobody steps out of the shadows. No one else calls my name.
Beth didn’t come with her.
She calls me again, her voice shaky, and I open my arms. She races across the room and puts her head on my shoulder.
Here, I think. Here is one of the compensations.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dick never called while I was in the hospital. No big surprise. He wouldn’t want to risk running into Jean. She’d take out his liver.
And I don’t call after I get home because Lydia stays for four days, and I don’t want her to add Daddy didn’t return Mom’s calls to her list of grievances against Dick.
Lydia’s packing her backpack now, glancing at me as anxiously as if I’m a nest of eggs about to hatch.
“Mom, are you sure you’ll be all right without me?”
“Of course. It was just an allergic reaction, Lydia.”
“Yes, but what if it happens again?’
“It won’t. I won’t be taking those antibiotics anymore.”
“But maybe there’ll
be some different ones, and they’ll do the same thing. Or even worse.”
“And maybe pigs will fly.”
Lydia gives me the look grownups give rowdy children, and then we both crack up.
“Ok, then. I guess we’d better hurry or I’ll miss my plane.”
“I guess we had.”
The airport is only fifteen minutes away, and I give her a last hug outside the terminal. I start to say, Tell Beth I love her, but then I change my mind. How would Beth know it’s true? And why should I put Lydia in the middle of our misunderstanding?
On the drive back to my apartment, I wonder if I’m in the middle of a misunderstanding with my daughter or if we’re having a full-scale break-up. I don’t think I could bear it.
The minute I get home, I call Dick. Miraculously, he answers.
“Dick?” Does my voice show my surprise? Does it show that I’m utterly exhausted by this protracted divorce? “How are you?”
He doesn’t say anything, and for a moment I think I’ve lost connection. But then I hear his TV.
“Let’s end this now, with dignity,” I tell him.
For a while I hear him breathing hard, and then he hangs up. I stand there staring at the telephone as if it has transported me back to one of the arguments where I’m always wrong and he’s always accusing me of being a different woman from the one he married.
I should hope so. He married a pregnant teen who wouldn’t say boo to her shadow. Now I’m a woman with a degree, a job I love and a bunch of opinions he hates. Who knows what I’ll be tomorrow? I might even be a woman with a house, a sex life and a Harley.
o0o
A week later I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom trying to decide what to wear to the court room. How do you dress to end a marriage? In red to celebrate your future? In black to mourn what you’ve lost? In blue to show serenity and acceptance? In white for hope?
Certainly not the way I’m dressed now, in a shapeless dress that looked cute on the hanger but makes me look like the Titanic. Furthermore, it’s pouring rain outside; I don’t know where my umbrella is, and my pantyhose have sprung a run. I wonder if I have time to change hose, decide not, then race to the bathroom to contain the damage with clear fingernail polish.
