Bit by bit, the activity in the house settled, like a party coming to an end. Rory and Chelsea made their quiet good-byes at Phoebe’s bedside and took Mary Martha home with them. Mary Martha was still clutching Phoebe’s needlepoint; Chelsea had assured Rebecca she knew how to do it and would teach Mary Martha. Meanwhile, Mike and Dougherty had two beers and a few cigarettes on the back porch, and then Dougherty gave Rebecca a surprisingly sweet hug and went back to the Tenderloin to feed his guys dinner.
Anita stayed until late afternoon, making sure everything was in place and working, but in the end she gave them her cell phone number and began gathering her things to leave too. At the prospect of losing her professional presence, Rebecca finally felt her first real sense of the weight of what they had taken on and the first touch of panic. She said, embarrassed by the plaintive note, “Aren’t you going to stay?”
Anita hesitated and glanced at Mike, who shrugged: cleared to tell the truth. She turned back to Rebecca and said gently, “There’s really nothing I can do for her at this point that you can’t do better yourselves.”
Rebecca nodded. She realized that she had expected more of a hubbub, an atmosphere of crisis, extraordinary measures at the ready, skilled medical people working at the limits of their capacity. But of course that was not it. The doctors had said Phoebe might have hours or days, but they all agreed little could be done except to make her comfortable. She had brought her mother home to die. There was really not that much to it.
While Mike saw Anita out, Rebecca went back to Phoebe’s side, sat down, and took her mother’s hand. The late afternoon sun streaming through the window was warm on the wood floor, with dust motes floating lazily through the beam. The candle Chelsea had brought flickered quietly on the far dresser, burned down almost to the border between the top, light purple, layer, and the second, red, one. Apparently Chelsea’s grandmother had died before the end of the lavender, and the delicate scent suffused the room.
Phoebe’s nails were a wreck, Rebecca noted idly; they had been meaning to get them done for a while. The high, ruffled collar of the old-fashioned nightgown made Phoebe look like a child; the frozen unresponsiveness of her face made her seem like a stranger; and all the lines of her life, etched more deeply now with her face slumping, made her seem ancient, inscrutable, and sadly spent. It was hard to find the mother she knew anywhere amid it all, and Rebecca felt a second wave of terror. She really didn’t think that she could handle this.
She rode past it, and when the fear had settled into something that felt manageable again, she rose, went into the bathroom, and returned in a moment with her manicure set. It was something to do at least, Rebecca thought, as she took out the emery board and gently began to work on her mother’s limp left hand. Phoebe had always been a stickler for basic maintenance.
Mike returned just as she finished the glossy underlayer of enamel and began to apply the first touches of soft pink polish. He smiled when he saw what she was doing. Rebecca had expected something formal from him, somehow, some acknowledgment of the moment’s weight, but all he said was, “That’s a great color for her.” Then he took his place without ceremony in the chair on the other side of the bed, and she had never loved him more, her husband and partner, her lover and her friend, waiting as she was for her mother to die.
The pain turned to music, and the music softened into warm rain, so gentle that once you were wet you couldn’t feel it as something different than what you were. And the thirsty flowers opened and their scent became the sky. The work was done, and what there had been to give was given. The rain was time and it fell and fell, so softly and tenderly that it hit nothing, even memory, and the falling was a music without an up or down, its sound still looking for a place to touch. And this was love, and this, and what was next, the place it fell to touch, was love. And there was no next but this, and this was love, and love again, and there was no next but this but love and there was no next.
None of it was what she had expected, in the end. It was really very simple. There was only Phoebe’s face, and all their love, and the window growing brighter with the sunset and then dark. The room settled into a silence so complete that all you could hear was the occasional click of the IV pump and the faint, stressed rhythm of Phoebe’s breath. Rebecca took her mother’s hand and held it to her lips, waiting for fear and grief, for pain and the searing consciousness of loss, but there was only Phoebe’s face and all their love, and the silence deepened, until it seemed you could hear the candle, burning quietly as the lavender faded into hydrangea; and finally, as the sound of Phoebe’s breathing ceased and her hand began to cool against Rebecca’s lips, the hydrangea into white lilac.
Chapter Thirteen
But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof;
neither is it found in the land of the living.
JOB 28:12–13
The sand at Ocean Beach was warm for once in an unimpeded summer sun, and the rare onshore breeze was blessedly mild. Many of the mourners had arrived dressed in cautious sweatshirts and jackets, a nod to the vagaries of the Bay Area’s climate, but as the miracle of the weather persisted, everyone stripped down to shorts and T-shirts and even the occasional bathing suit. The surf was up from a storm somewhere out in the Pacific, and the surfers in the crowd, including Rory, bobbed on the sparkling water beyond the breakers in a stolid line of patient silhouettes, like an honor guard in wet suits. No one had really planned the food, and they’d been troubled by the prospect of an unrelieved avalanche of potato chips, but there was a loaves-and-fishes thing happening, with rickety card tables sagging with potato salad and casseroles and three-bean salads and all manner of unidentifiable greenery, and half a dozen barbecue grills filling the air with the smell of everything from hamburgers and hot dogs to chicken, teriyaki tofu, and grilled stuffed peppers. It was way too much food, indeed, a mad amount of food, and they’d already made arrangements to take the leftovers to St. Luke’s Mission. There were also dozens of teeming coolers, kegs, and wine of every description and provenance, but that seemed less miraculous: there had never been any doubt this crowd would have the alcohol covered.
Sitting on a blanket, listening to the reggae band play “One Love” and watching Mary Martha and Mike filling big red balloons with helium and tying them to people’s wrists, Rebecca could only shake her head in astonishment. She’d been inclined all along to write off Phoebe’s preposterous notion of a come-as-you-are, BYOB, potluck funeral as a side effect of dementia. She had humored her mother, and Mike, when they had talked about it like gleeful coconspirators, but she had figured that when the time came they would all have been sobered sufficiently by the reality of death to just have a basic wake like her father’s, a dim room full of people wearing dark clothes, powering somberly through the litany of the rosary and exchanging condolences in hushed voices; and then a good grim funeral mass with some priest who’d never known Phoebe trying to pretend that the eventual resurrection of the dead could be any comfort at all. But it was obvious to Rebecca now that her mother’s sense of social felicity had been unerring as always. The people who would have come to a wake and funeral mass were all on the East Coast and had sent flowers, or were dead themselves. Phoebe’s West Coast friends, the exotic fruit of her unruly widowhood, would celebrate her passing to the music of a different drummer, with a reggae beat.
People kept stopping by the blanket to tell her their favorite Phoebe stories. It was amazing what death set loose, as if a flock of birds, scattered invisibly through a grove of trees, had been startled into the air all at once in a flurry of winged moments: acts of secret mercy and philanthropy, wit and wildness, friendship and wisdom, flushed from every direction to darken the sky in a sudden coherence. Rebecca hadn’t stopped crying for more than five minutes at a time since she’d gotten here. But it seemed like that was part of her job today.
A Frisbee hit the sand beside he
r, followed a moment later by Bruiser, Bonnie’s German shepherd, in an explosion of sand, and then by Rory’s Labrador, Bruno. Both dogs had red balloons tied to their collars, which only complicated the mayhem. The two dogs scuffled briefly, sand flying everywhere, before Bruiser got a good grip on the Frisbee and took off with Bruno on his heels.
Bonnie, out of breath, arrived just as the dogs moved on and Rebecca began brushing herself off.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Bob’s a little wild today.”
“No problem,” Rebecca said.
“Are you okay?”
“Dehydrated from crying. But basically fine.”
Bonnie paused, trying to gauge her actual condition, then said, apparently deciding to roll with it, “You want me to grab you a beer? Keep up your fluid intake?”
Rebecca held up her drink, indicating that she was fine. Bonnie did a double take at the Diet Coke, and then gave her a sly grin.
“Okay,” she said. “Either you’re on the wagon, orrrr…”
“You have a dirty mind, young lady,” Rebecca said. “I’m just counting calories. I’ve been eating nothing but Good Samaritan casseroles for a week.”
“Grief is fattening,” Bonnie conceded. “I gained ten pounds when my grandmother died.”
“Bonnie!” Bob called. “You still playing?”
“You go ahead,” Bonnie hollered back. “I’m going to hang here for a while.” She sat down beside Rebecca on the blanket. “What a bash, huh?”
“Mom always drew an interesting crowd.”
“It’s so weird that she’s not here. I keep expecting to see her, pouring the wine or something. Serving those little things she used to make—”
“The tea sandwiches?”
“Yeah. Horseradish salmon cream and asparagus.”
“Chicken salad with cream cheese and pecans.”
“And those ones with the sun-dried tomatoes and bacon. On that silver tray.”
“Phoebe was the only woman I ever knew who could say arugula and havarti in the same sentence without smirking,” Rebecca said.
“Arugula with a straight face,” Bonnie agreed. “Now that’s a legacy.”
Chelsea approached them just then, carrying Stu-J and three red balloons, and sat down on Rebecca’s right.
“What an awesome party,” she said. “Phoebe would have loved this.”
“I wouldn’t have bet a dime it would come off right,” Rebecca said.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m missing the tea sandwiches,” Rebecca said. “But basically okay.” She bent toward Stu-J. “Arugula, kiddo! Arugula! Arugula!”
“Wuhbehg!”
“Havarti! Havarti, Stu-J!”
“Wuhbehg!”
“You guys have got to see this,” Chelsea said. She lifted Stu-J and set him upright on the sand in front of them, held him briefly under the arms, then let him go. He wobbled for an instant, with a slightly alarmed look on his face, then settled into his stance and gave them his grin.
“Oh, my God,” Bonnie said. “He’s upright! Stu-J, you’re a biped!”
“Bed,” Stu-J seconded proudly.
“He’s got Rory’s sense of balance,” Rebecca said. “He’ll be hanging five in no time.”
“Rory actually wants to get him a little surfboard,” Chelsea said, and, as Stu-J lost it and plopped back on his diapered butt, “I wish Phoebe could have seen this.”
“And his first step, and his high school graduation,” Rebecca agreed. She thought she might cry again, but she reached out and set Stu-J upright again instead, then sipped her Diet Coke. She actually was pregnant, she was pretty sure, the stick had turned pink twice, but she didn’t really see how she could tell Bonnie or Chelsea before she figured out how in the world she was going to tell Mike.
There were only so many ways you could say how much Phoebe would have loved the party, and after several more of them Bonnie and Chelsea settled into an earnest discussion of prenatal development and the pros and cons of midwives. Mary Martha finally determined that everyone had enough red balloons, and she ran off to play with Bob and the dogs. The band took a short break and then began playing a series of songs that people had written especially for Phoebe. Rebecca cried at the first two, but the series threatened to go on and she was relieved when Mike finally worked his way over to the blanket, assessed her condition at a glance, and suggested that they take a walk. She was pretty much cried out by now, and her head felt like it might explode from all the caffeine and grief. She hadn’t foreseen how grueling it would be to act as the emotional lightning rod for all of Phoebe’s friends.
They walked toward the rocks at the end of the beach, holding hands. They had just cleared the main body of the party when they spotted the policeman coming toward them from the boardwalk.
“Shit,” Rebecca said. “Now it turns into a real Phoebe party.”
“It will be okay,” Mike said. “We’ll throw ourselves on the mercy of the human being inside the uniform.”
“You are a truly naive man, darling. You can smell the dope from here.”
“Maybe the wind will shift.”
“Is there a problem, officer?” Rebecca said as the man reached them. He was maybe thirty, clean-cut and earnest. His name tag read PERKINS, and he looked genuinely unhappy about his job, but not unhappy enough.
“I hate to be a party pooper, but I’m afraid those dogs running around are in violation of the leash law.”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t realize.”
“Probably the six-inch letters on the sign aren’t big enough,” Perkins agreed. “Do you all have a permit for that band?”
“You need a permit?”
“And I don’t know how to tell you this, ma’am, but I suspect that there is alcohol being consumed here.”
“It’s a funeral,” Rebecca said, deciding to try Mike’s approach.
The policeman laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“No, really. Well, a memorial service. For my mother.”
Perkins gave her a sharp glance and realized she was serious. He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. I truly am. But—”
“Could we offer you a bribe of some sort?” Mike said.
The cop looked at him coldly. Mike met his eyes with his usual air of saintly mildness, and the whole thing hung for a long moment on the man’s sense of humor.
Finally Perkins shook his head.
“What was your mother’s name?” he asked Rebecca.
“Phoebe. Phoebe Marie Martin.”
“I lost my mom last year,” Perkins said. “I have a border collie, I happen to like reggae, and I’ve been known to imbibe the occasional beer. But I’m going to come back here in half an hour, and if I can still smell marijuana from the boardwalk, I’m going to come down here and kick ass and take names. Fair enough?”
“More than fair,” Rebecca said. “Thank you, Officer.”
“God bless your mother,” Perkins said. “She was obviously very much loved. May she rest in peace.”
He turned and walked back up toward his car. They watched until he was gone, and then Rebecca looked at Mike and said, “Did you learn that in the monastery, about trying to bribe policemen, or is that just something you picked up since you started teaching Sunday school?”
“I’m just glad he didn’t go for it,” Mike said. “I’ve only got five bucks.”
They paused to relay the policeman’s ultimatum, and a perceptible ripple ran through the crowd as those so inclined hastened to get in their last tokes. Rebecca hoped Perkins didn’t come back early, or half the crowd at her mother’s funeral would end up in jail.
She and Mike walked on, leaving the party behind for the second time and managing this time to get clear. It was amazing how quickly it got quiet as you moved away. No doubt that was partly because the band was taking a hasty break to join the general last-minute run on the available intoxicants. But there was also the deep and simple comfort of Mike�
�s undemanding silence, the sense that words were not necessary between them at this point, and the sudden and fresh realization of the healing expanse of sand, sky, and sea, beyond the hothouse emotions of the memorial scene. It was a relief to Rebecca to finally be somewhere where the next thing said to her would not necessarily require her to cry.
They threaded their way through the beginning of the rocks at the base of the Cliff House, until they found a flat spot on a big boulder in the sun that felt private. From here, Phoebe’s memorial celebration looked like a convention of red balloons.
“It reminds me of our wedding,” Rebecca said. “Sitting on the rock by that hut of yours.”
“Me too.”
“Is that weird?”
“Completely,” Mike said. “But no weirder than anything else, really.”
“That was the last party Phoebe planned.”
“That one was a bit much too, as I recall.”
Rebecca laughed. That was her man. “I was actually afraid you were going to bolt, that day.”
“No way. I was a goner.”
“That’s what Phoebe said, then.”
“She always had my number,” Mike said. “It helped that you brought the champagne, though.”
They were silent for a time, holding hands. The tide was still coming in, and the first wave touched the base of the rock on which they sat. Rebecca thought of the brand-new boulder on the beach near Kilauea in Hawaii, its molten stone just hardening, turning the waves to steam until it cooled. She had thought that new rock was like their marriage then, an incandescent, still-forming gift from the incomprehensible fire at the heart of the earth; and, like their marriage, this rock they sat on now had long since cooled to surface temperature and found its basic shape. But it was lovely, to be able to sit here like this in the sun. You couldn’t do that on fresh-dripped lava.
Mike said, “I couldn’t help but notice that you’re drinking Coke today.”
The Monk Upstairs Page 19
