Her Last Words

by Jo Barney

  Roger takes my hand, rubs the knuckle he knows aches most days.

  “The prognosis is that I will not recover, that I will lose everything, within a year or five years, or perhaps ten. This disease is not kind to its victim, nor to those who love her.”

  Jim’s chair scrapes against the floor as he pushes back, says, “Mom, everyone forgets things. God, I’m thirty-five and I forget lots of things, my own phone number.”

  Roger steps in. “Not the same, Jim.”

  “There has to be a medicine for this. They’ve been working on it for years.” Grant’s voice quavers. He is not crying yet.

  “Only a few experimental drugs to slow down the progress. Your mother is taking one of them.”

  Then they are silent, each seeking a place for his eyes to rest, give him time to absorb this news. I look at my three men, and know they love me, know I love them, know, especially, that I must not cause them any more pain than has been inflicted this evening.

  Then they stand, and my sons come to my side and they tell me that I am a great mother, a strong and unmovable rock in their lives, that nothing, even this, will change their love for me. “Nothing,” Grant repeats, choking on the words, reaching for a napkin to wipe his eyes. Jim takes my face in his hands. “I love you, Mom.” and he kisses me on the lips. I don’t remember either of my sons kissing me like that, the gesture so intimate it feels like giving birth. Then he straightens, befuddled perhaps, says, “Let’s relax. Watch a little TV.” Pull ourselves together he means. We wander into the living room, stunned, like survivors of a cataclysmic event.

  Later, no one is willing to say goodnight even though the television is drained of watchable programs. Roger suggests we play a game of Pitch. Grant objects, says he can never remember the rules.

  “Well, neither can I. We’ll be even,” I answer, and the first startled hah of laughter fills the air, followed by another. The game begins. We argue. We consult cheat sheets and at the end, I come in second, behind Jim. “Even a handicapped mother doesn’t make you ease off, does it, my son?” I say. Again, a gasp, then a recovery, another joke. “You made me what I am, Mom,” he answers. Grant is blinking, and it is time to end this.

  I kiss my sons, go to my bedroom. A lullaby of murmuring voices lulls me towards sleep. I wish Roger were beside me now. I would like to touch him, feel his warmth.

  The next day doesn’t begin well. At breakfast I find myself again searching for the name of my agent as I talk about my novel, almost finished, I think. For a minute, I cannot even remember its title. At each hesitation, Roger fills in the words, Harry Macken, Think on These Things, so quietly that only those in on the secret would notice. My sons notice.

  Boston. Heather, Jennie. I stand on the porch and wave them away in their taxis. Their faces look back to me, tell me that they are worried, afraid, sad for me and anxious to get on with their lives.

  Roger settles himself next to me on the porch rocker.

  “I’m glad you organized this clandestine sleepover. I guess it had to be done, and I couldn’t have done it without you.” I lean against his shoulder, let my hand wander.

  Roger laughs and leads me indoors. Afterwards, I go to my desk and open my journal, pick up my pen, inscribe words I hope tell the truth.

  We spend the next week going over the first rough chapters of Think on These Things. “I have become your amanuensis,” he says. The word is stuck somewhere in a brain cell. A slave to a writer. I glance over my glasses at him. He grins back. “It’s not a bad job,” he says.

  The novel will be four stories, each telling the life of a woman approaching seventy. “Older than crones,” one of them says. “But wise, right?” another asks. They know each other intimately even though their lives intersect only occasionally. None of the stories is finished yet.

  “Got a ways to go,” Roger says.

  * * *

  Each evening, after our work time, he mixes us a drink, his scotch, mine vodka. “Sun over the yardarm,“ he says, as if that explains this new routine.

  “What is a yardarm?” I ask, confused. “And why are we celebrating it?”

  He hesitates, eyes me. “Are you worried about me?” he asks.

  Yes, I want to answer, but this may not be as true as it was a few weeks ago. A memory blooms, my mother, in her eighties, after the death of her friend. “I can’t cry anymore,” she says. “All my juices have dried up.” Dried up. That’s how I’m beginning of feel. An essential spring is going dry. “A little,” I say. ”Let’s have another small drink.”

  An email arrives from my editor. “We’re waiting impatiently,” it reads. “What are you working on? We hope it’s the last page!”

  I am working on remembering who you are, I would like to answer. Instead, Roger sends a noncommittal reply. Taking a break, he types. Will be in touch soon.

  Another good day arrives. I wake up feeling almost whole. “Roger.” I say after breakfast, picking up a pencil, wanting to get started, “what will we eat at the beach house?” We decide that each woman will make one meal, either a lunch or a dinner. Roger will plan the menu, buy the food. He will write out the directions for the meal I will cook. Just in case. On this good day, I don’t think directions will be necessary.

  When we’ve finished our lists, we pour fresh coffee, talk. And I get out my college yearbook and point to the Gamma Psi photo. Black and white grins beam under poufy hair, eager glints in wide eyes. I want him to know these sorority sisters, these friends who will visit at our beach house.

  “That’s the housemother Mrs.— I don’t remember. Her one gift to us all was to teach us how to iron the sheets we were about to lie between as we all marched off to marriage.”

  I search the faded faces, find Joan’s. “She was so…California. Cool. And lovely. She’s still like that. This is Lou. I always thought she would end up a poet. I can remember her chain-smoking, reciting Beowulf at one in the morning. Her black hair is pure white now, has been for years.” I trace a finger down the names at the side of the page. “Here’s Jackie. She was one of our bad girls. And very funny. She’s still funny.”

  “And this is me. By my prissy hair cut, I seem to be a goody two-shoes, right down to my Peter Pan collar, but I had another, not so sweet, side.”

  “You still do. That other side is what makes you a keen observer of human foibles, a writer.” Roger says. “And a lover,” he adds with a brush of his lips on my forehead. “What will happen when you get together next week?”

  “I think we’ll find out we are still the young women we were in these pictures. Deep inside.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Friday Evening: Overwash

  Madge

  “So now you know.” Madge takes the folder from Joan. “Thank you for your lovely voice. Much easier on the ears than mine will be when I’m finally finished this evening.” She is glad someone else has taken her place for a while, but she mustn’t be distracted. She has much more to do. “I want you to help me with the end of my story, not only mine, but yours also.” Her friends glance at one another. Unease makes them recross legs, raise empty glasses.

  “It’s okay, it really is.” She wants to hold each of them, feel warm breasts and arms against hers, for just a moment or two. Instead she makes her mouth firm and fingers the sheets of paper in her lap that will guide her through the next step in her plan.

  “In the past two years, once I knew I was never going to recover, I’ve been thinking about our stories. Not like the silly one with us in the rocking chairs getting our thighs massaged by young studs, although the idea continues to be intriguing. Instead, I’ve been experimenting with your lives, as I have known them, attempting to understand what truth is, exactly. I’ve come to the belief, and, I’m sorry, I have to look at my notes, words flying out now like midnight bats.”

  Madge likes that image; she must have used it before, artifacts rising to the surface. “I believe that truth is found in the threads of love that wind through each of
our days, but not necessarily in the stories that contain these days.

  “When you read your stories, don’t be dismayed that I’ve dug into your pasts, into your dreams, re-arranged things to my own liking, like a child kneeling into the moist sand on a sunny day. The words you’ve given me, precious light-filled beach agates, support the slippery, unstable walls I’ve patted into sand castles. Quickly, before the tide comes in and wipes out our creations, help me finish this project. We need turrets, moats, flags, a sentinel to point towards what will come next, a moment to cheer what we have done.”

  Madge has not intended to be so obtuse. She has written this part without Roger’s editing, unlike the four stories in Think on These Things. She feels her mouth go dry. Her friends averted their eyes, aren’t looking at her. She has gotten off track. It is time to read the next sentences in her lap.

  “You’re asking us to help you, with the stories, with your story.” Joan, as usual, is getting it, despite the castles.

  Madge nods a thank you. She needs Joan, will continue to need her until this is finished. She touches the papers in front of her. She looks at the three solemn women who await her next words, realizes she will not use her notes, will not use a metaphor to soften her request.

  “I am not going to be able to finish your stories. You’ll have to do that yourselves.” She sets the file on the table at her side. “And I want my story to end with my death. I want to die, quickly and without anguish to my family and to you. I will not follow Jerry’s lead and allow myself to be found with a confessional note and a cortege of guilt-stricken family and friends, some of whom wield whips to their conscience-bent backs to this day. Nor will I remain alive to torture my loved ones as I lose myself and them cell by cell.”

  “Shit.” Jackie, her eyes wide with dismay, shifts, glares at Madge. “Are you thinking we’ll hold a pillow over your head until you stop kicking?”

  “You aren’t asking us to murder you, are you?” Joan asks, her voice quiet.

  Madge is sorry to see that Lou is crying, that Jackie is angry. She understands her friends might be saddened at first by her request. She herself is finished with sadness and anger and denial, and she shakes her head. Death holds no threat anymore, an open door to whatever comes next, but her friends see that door as closed, locked by fear. They haven’t come close enough to it yet. “I’m just asking you to lie a little, for a few days.”

  “Why?”

  “Why you? Or why?” She has the answers to both questions.

  “I can understand asking friends to lie when it’s important. But why?” Joan leans toward Madge as if the answer might slip by without her catching it.

  Madge hesitates, picks up the file, finds her words, words she wrote on a good day and is glad she saved for this moment. “I want my sons to mourn me because they have lost a mother, not because she killed herself, and they weren’t there to help. I want Roger to mourn because he has lost a partner and not because he allowed me to try one more time to be on my own and should have known what I would do.”

  The cold ghost of Jerry passes through her, forces her to pause, take a breath, gather herself. “And, money plays a part in this decision,” she continues, turning a page. The difficult next words were loosed. “Roger is the beneficiary of my insurance policy, a large sum, the premiums covered by my publisher. I can never repay him for the years he has devoted himself to me, my writing. I can give him a comfortable life after I’ve gone. But he cannot be involved in any way in my death. I have convinced him to take this time to visit his ailing mother in Nebraska for a few days. Since the policy has a suicide clause, it also can’t look as if I’ve done myself in. That is where you come in.”

  The sheet of paper in front of her had reflected that day’s afternoon sun, the pen had moved across it snail-like, left the tracks leading to this moment. Madge smiles. Yes, a good day.

  “Shit.”

  “Jackie, stop it.” Lou lifts her head, wipes away a lock of white hair falling across her wet eyes. “I’m so sorry you’re sick, Madge. I can’t imagine you dying, now or later. I can’t imagine…” She swallows, lies back against the chair, her voice a shudder, “helping you die.”

  “Perhaps not. If you can’t, I’ll find some other way to leave.” Madge folds the papers, needs to add one lingering thought. “I will not allow myself to descend into a mewling caricature of myself being spoon-fed by an overworked stranger and visited by people who tell me they are my sons. I will not.”

  Suddenly, she is very tired. She’s done all she can, has come to the end of the lines of words on the script in her lap. With her friends’ help, tomorrow morning she will go through a door, walking stick in hand, mussel bag tied to her waist, and head towards whatever is next. She can’t think of what she will do if they say no. She stretches her legs, closes her eyes. She hears the others get up, the shushing of parkas being slipped on.

  “We’re going for a walk. We’ll be back.” Joan touches Madge’s cheek as she passes behind her. Her hand said yes.

  After the door clicks shut, Madge gets up and reaches for the walking stick lying on the mantel. This tough branch of oak has guided her through many miles, along magnificent trails. She and it have one more mile to go, the last mile. She rubs her fingers over its leather grip, tells it, “Only a few more hours, friend.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Friday Evening: Whirlpool

  Jackie

  The three women leave Madge and walk for a mile or so without speaking. The tide is coming in and at first, they concentrate on finding footing on smooth rocks being lapped by wavelets. Then Lou stops and looks out into the gray, unfolding ocean and says, “I’m in.”

  Jackie can’t believe it. “What?”

  And Lou repeats herself, not looking at them, calling into the muffled roar. “Dammit! I’m in. I owe it to her.” Then she covers her eyes with her hands and sways, her knees sinking.

  Joan steps to her side. “Good.” The two of them wrap nylon-clad arms around each other and bury their faces in each other’s collars.

  Jackie doesn’t get it. Why in? What did they owe Madge? They were friends, of course, but friends don’t kill each other, did they? They might stand by a friend in trouble, sympathize, rub a little almond oil on the sore spots, so to speak, but…It was the almond oil thought that made her hesitate for a moment. Then she knew. “I can’t help someone to die,” she says as she pushes through the cobweb of doubt that for a moment had clouded her resolve. “It isn’t right, you know. Not right.” Her argument has nothing to do with Xavier’s religious view of suicide. It is about the way life just is. Life begins and it ends without our control. That is the way it has always been. “What if Madge was your sister or mother? Would you be able to do it, whatever the ‘it’ is?”

  Joan and Lou loosen their holds on each other and turn towards Jackie, their cheeks red with cold and tears. Lou’s lips barely move as she whispers, “I have no sister. My mother died as she wished, in the arms of her God. Madge is a friend asking for help. I want to help her.”

  “My God, isn’t there another way to help? Like making her see that being surrounded by people who love her is the best way to go? For everyone? Or couldn’t she do Death with Dignity or something, like I’ve read about? Xavier calls it playing God, but Madge doesn’t have any religious reason for not asking her doctor to help, does she?”

  Joan shakes her head, looks away. “Doesn’t work that way. You need a deadline, a diagnosis of imminent death to schedule your death like that. Madge could live for years.”

  Jackie blinks against the sudden sting in her eyes, and she understands she is not talking only about Madge. She was also talking about a stolen man with no deadline, an empty room, a ragged wound where she had once felt his love as she had changed his diapers, as he said thank you, Mother. She walks away from the two women, against the wind, her shoes sinking into the wet sand, filling with icy ocean. No, everyone has deadlines, she thinks. We just don’t know when the
y are. What if everybody messed with the plan, played God like Xavier said, changed the plan, then what?

  When Jackie gets back to the beach house an hour later, the others are talking softly, and they stop as she pours herself a glass of wine and sits down in a chair by the fireplace. The only sound in the house is the dim rumble of the ocean outside. She gives the pile of cooling coals at her feet a prod with the toe of her shoe as she says, “I think I should leave.” She wonders if they can hear her voice, the words caught like small sharp rocks in her throat. She brings the wine glass to her mouth, swallows against the pile up. “I can’t help you, Madge.”

  When she manages to raise her eyes, she sees that Madge is smiling. “It’s okay. You’ve already had your share of death and dying.” She puts down her book and hands Jackie a folder from several stacked on the table in front of her. “Do take this with you. It’s a gift, my story about you.”

  Jackie looks at Joan and Lou at that moment, and a surge of anger stops her breath. Hasn’t it always been this way? Purposefully left out of conversations between the two of them? Like she somehow won’t get the picture, anyway, whatever that picture was? Like she doesn’t matter. Even in the solarium. She had provided laughs, but when things got serious, they whispered, left her abandoned in the smoky drifts of their cigarettes.