by Sarah Reith
“Mariana,” he called, demonstrating an uncanny ability to speak loudly without losing any of the softness from his soothing demeanor. “I’m very glad I got to meet you.”
Mariana smiled weakly at him. Her dentures were slipping. We could see her pink scalp gleaming through the sparse white hair. It reminded me of baby bird’s skin, before the feathers start to come through.
“I’ll be back next week. I hope to see you again.” He paused, waiting for the aroma of his own desires to evaporate before he went on. “But if you’re not here anymore,” he said, with such perfect clarity I think I would have understood him no matter what language he spoke, “that’s okay, too.”
Mariana continued to display her dentures and her bravery, as if she were about to embark on a rollicking adventure and could not wait to get started. She was a damned good liar.
RANDALL FROM HOSPICE never did see her again. By the time we cancelled his next visit, most of what would happen had happened and she was lying in a coma with the air whistling in and out of her lungs like a teakettle, whistling forlornly in a lonely, empty house. She was almost safe.
Mariana’s Journey Begins
I HAVE TO say that waiting for someone to die is more boring than anything else I have ever done in my life. It is more boring than memorizing lists of irregular verbs.
At the same time, death has a slow-moving urgency that cannot be conveyed. Neighbors and friends find it neither neighborly nor friendly. Dying, after all, is the height of anti-social behavior. Mariana is extremely ill, we said. You’re supposed to call anyone who might want to say goodbye, which sounds tragic and dramatic, but it’s not. It’s just making travel arrangements, a process that always involves some degree of miscommunication.
Oh, right, the friends and neighbors said, the way people agree with you when they wish you’d stop talking about weird sexual practices or corporate malfeasance. Death is like that. It has a built-in selfishness, a whiff of shit and decay that all the ailing beauties of literature and film cannot deny. She’s been down a long time, hasn’t she? they said. We felt like whiners, like people who detect a deep malfunction in the most minor inconvenience.
It doesn’t look like it’s going to be much longer, we tried. We could hear the puzzled living frowns on the other end of the line. Everyone in the valley of the mountains has a landline. Only death is reliable there. Only death can always reach you, no matter what the disposition of the mountains or the clouds. How much longer? the friends and neighbors persisted. It is the height of rudeness to drop an unscheduled death on people, especially as a national holiday is approaching. The Fourth of July is coming right up, they reminded us. We have a lot of people coming over. Are you sure about this?
There are those who know how to insist on reality when the opposite is so much more reasonable. But I have fallen down and I have fallen short. I couldn’t tell a dying woman she should eat her dinner, and I couldn’t tell her friends that everything would be okay. “Mariana has accepted what is happening to her,” I said quietly. “She’s at peace with it. If you would like to come and say goodbye, today would be a good time to do that.”
“IF I EAT,” Mariana said to me, “will I be late?”
I hesitated.
“Will I miss my appointment?” she insisted. “With . . . the guy?”
Fiona watched with shining eyes from the kitchen. There was a cutout in the wall between the rooms, so the person cooking could continue socializing with people in the main part of the house. Dishes could be passed back and forth, without the hostess being relegated to a position of servitude. It created an air of openness and diminished secrecy.
“You can eat whatever you want,” I said clearly. I felt like I was handing a syllabus for next semester’s swim class to someone who was drowning. “Would you like something to eat?” I asked, with the hypocritical gallantry of holding an unpassable door. “I could make you something easy to swallow.”
Fiona watched us both. Her eyes were almost invisible beneath her overgrown bangs.
Mariana began to pluck the comforter. She shook her head, and her hair streamed down around her shoulders. She looked like a woman driven mad by grief, mourning a fallen hero. “I don’t want to be late,” she murmured. She was deep inside the dark Teutonic woods, where madness and desire dance upon the grave of secular enlightenment. Someone told her something deadly there, and no one could know that she knew.
Fiona moved to the bedside as smoothly as if she’d been on wheels. “This is entirely up to you,” she said softly. She placed one reddened hand on Mariana’s chest, where the old, strong heart was beating hard beneath a vicious purple scar. “Is there anything you need me to write down for you? A message for someone special?”
The old woman’s hands relaxed. She lay back on her pillows and fastened her faded blue eyes on Fiona’s freckled face.
“Just . . .” she breathed. “Just tell them . . .” Her face began to gladden. “I don’t want a lot of crying and carrying on. My father said the same thing: no crying. So we all gathered . . . like-minded people, you understand . . . and we agreed: no crying. Just . . . raise a glass . . .” She sank further into the cushions.
If she’d had the barest shred of respect for literary or cinematic conventions, she would have slipped away right there. Fiona and I would have shed a few forbidden tears and stepped into the sunshine, just in time for Independence Day.
But life is utterly without propriety or pride. It is humiliating, how life goes on in spite of everything, like it has no sense of its own worth. Mariana sipped cold water with a cautious air, as if she were satisfying a religious duty. For a soft-lit time of indistinct hours or possibly days, she lay with a gentle smile on her ruined, hollow mouth, casting shiny eyes around her like the dusty objects of her life were a source of wonder and delight.
And Mine, Too
DURING THE PERIOD of this initial vigil, my mother sent me a photograph. She sent it the way people used to send things, in a large manila envelope, so it looked like a college admissions packet or an invitation to a sweepstakes. My mother has always said that “virtual” is a little too much like “virtue” for a lady like herself. The implication is that certain incompetencies are key to a true understanding of the mysteries of physical love. Therefore, instead of making a few keystrokes so I could have the images instantly, she sent me physical photographs in a materially existing envelope, which took a week or two to arrive. My mother has a thorough understanding of the power of delayed gratification.
She had written the word PHOTOS!!! on the envelope, in large, imperious, fluorescent orange print. I would recognize that handwriting anywhere. The letters were slanted at angles so precise she could have used a ruler, though I know she didn’t. DO NOT BEND!!! the handmade italics continued. She had made little marks around them, like lines in a cartoon, indicating movement or a terrible stench. The rest of this extremely physical communication was covered with stickers and stamps and orders to forward until finally, in a hand I did not recognize, the address of Mariana’s Hof appeared.
I stood in the sun beside a stranger’s mailbox. The sweat poured off my face and smeared my mother’s hand. I fingered the corners of the hastily-licked stamp and thought, my mother has sent me a DNA sample. I’ll thank her for that in a letter, I decided. She loves an unexpected bodily reference.
“The mail is here,” I told Fiona, in the subdued tone she found most suitable for maintaining a calm atmosphere.
With Mariana disintegrating in a contentment that was almost amiable, I was developing an intricate consideration for Fiona’s well-being. It made me feel profound and nurturing. She was meditating several times a day, and I found I was grateful for her spiritual refreshment. When she emerged from her room, which she shared with a large, geometrical sculpture made of copper rods and artificial gemstones, she held herself as straight as all the heathen priestesses who ever marched into the flames. Her back, she said, was spasming every few seconds. It was all she cou
ld do to keep from crying out. I placed the mail on the partition between the living room and the kitchen, as carefully as if I were making an offering. I stepped away so courteously I might as well have bowed.
“Listen,” she said. I listened, although I had absolutely no desire to find out what she was about to say. “I think we should come in the side doors instead of always using that awful squeaking front door.”
I had the impression this was something she’d wanted to bring up for a long time.
“It’s much quieter, you know, and I feel it would be much less alarming. For Mariana. We’re very much on the same wavelength, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned to you several times.” She paused to favor me with a look of guarded reproach, in case I’d forgotten this vital piece of information. “And I think it’s very disruptive for her when people come crashing in using that big noisy wooden door.”
I felt a mask of immovable neutrality come down over my features.
“I’ll come in through the sliding glass door in my bedroom, and you can come in through the living room. I’ll leave it unlocked for you.” She regarded the dying woman with a look of grave compassion, as if she were assessing the effects of my brutal entrance and finding that this time, at least, I might not have damaged anything.
“That’s fine,” I assured her, in my most agreeable, soothing tone. It was slightly soporific to speak in such a soft monotone all the time.
“And,” she persisted, “that includes that awful door there between the sewing room where you’re staying and the rest of the house. You’ll have to go out the wheelchair door onto the veranda and then come back in through the sliding glass door when you want to come into the living room. If you need to go into the kitchen for any reason, you can knock on my door and then come through my bedroom—I don’t mind. I’ll let you in.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. My brain was rapidly generating reasons not to speak frankly to this woman I found so uncompelling and yet whose whims I followed without so much as a questioning squeak.
It seemed so inappropriate to intrude on someone else’s suffering with an objection about a door. I wasn’t suffering enough to have the right to complain about something so inconsequential. But Fiona had been in seclusion for months, watching a stranger die. She deserved a little consideration.
“And about the kitchen.” She sounded almost panicked now. It made me want to place a hand on her heart and speak to her softly. “I really want to focus on nutrition with you. I don’t think your nutrition is very good.”
I watched her, strangely unaffected by something any self-respecting adult would find incredibly offensive.
“I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you . . .” She was starting to sound very sure of herself. “But, well. I’ve really studied good nutrition. It’s something of a passion for me. It’s well, it’s really important for physical well-being, but also for emotional and, and . . . spiritual well-being, too, if you really want to know.”
Meanwhile, my unhelpful brain was churning out excuses like a paper shredder. She has been doing this twenty-four hours a day for longer than anyone else, it pointed out. She just needs to feel useful.
“I think it’s really important for everyone to be on the same wavelength,” Fiona was explaining anxiously. She doesn’t know how to communicate, my brain informed me, with great complacency. All she wants to do is help. “I think we really need to eat together. I mean eat the same thing. No pigging out on a bunch of carbs, okay? It really disrupts the natural thought process . . . so I’ve made some food for both of us.” With an almost embarrassed flourish, she indicated two matching plates.
“It’s just some fish,” she went on eagerly, “and a bit of organic salad. Something simple, really. It’s not some wacko vegetarian diet where you’re not allowed to eat anything that tastes good.” She smiled superciliously.
Quickly, I altered my impression so I saw uncertainty, and the desire to do something kind. I began to flatter myself for the subtlety of my perceptions.
“I’ve put some nuts and parmesan cheese in the salad. Also organic,” she explained.
We made our way to the table on the veranda, beneath the gentle wisteria.
“So we’ve got plen-tee of protein,” she exulted.
People come to California from all over the world to lecture the native-born on how to eat organic vegetables. It’s just because she’s British, I sympathized, as I placed my napkin on my lap, just like Fiona.
“Well, I think it’s good for us to spend some time together. I’ll be happy to eat with you.” I took up a forkful of salad and brought it to my lying mouth. Where did I learn how to be tactful? I marveled.
“Mmm. Those cranberries!” Fiona exclaimed.
I was beginning to get the impression that it was a top priority for her not to respond to anything I said, ever.
“I forgot to tell you about the cranberries,” she told me, like she’d neglected to mention an especially important proviso in a contract we’d both signed. “They’re organic, too. I’m really . . .” she gave a thin, wry smile, like she was about to reveal a loveable quirk about herself, “well, I’m really into eating organic. I don’t know if you know that about me. But I think these cranberries.” She held one up to the light on the end of her fork. “I think they really give a bit of tang to the salad. Don’t you?”
I nodded. It’s easy to look neutral when you’re eating. You have to move your face when you chew, so no one suspects you of having a facial expression that might be the result of an opinion.
“Do you know,” she began, after a few moments in which the wisteria was gentle and a few distant firecrackers went off prematurely. I wondered what would happen if I put my fork down and said, “No, Fiona. Obviously, I don’t know anything.” It’s what I would have done to my mother. But I didn’t feel sorry for my mother. I wasn’t half afraid of her. My mother, for all that might have been wrong with her, was not insane. I began to eat rapidly, making little yummy noises of appreciation in hopes of ending the meal as quickly as possible.
Fiona sat back in her chair and surveyed the distant hills, with the satisfied smile of a woman who has found the one thing everyone wants. “I want to share something with you,” she said with gentle urgency, turning her eyes away from the hills with grave, composed regret. There was always someone needing her, that look seemed to say; something preventing her meditation from achieving the fullness of its potential. “You know, this is really important to me. I think you should know this about me, since, well, since we’ll be living in the same house for however long this takes.”
I am always apprehensive when people announce that they are about to share, like they have declared themselves the MC’s of the heart’s most cherished possessions. All I wanted to do at that moment was curl up on my disgusting mattress, with its unspeakable vintage stains, and read my mother’s letter. Caitlin’s letters reminded me of my favorite children’s books. They were tender and wise and deeply funny. Once, she wrote a riveting page and a half about how she went to the store, saw a dog with a funny look on its face, and got a run in her stocking. I was almost moved to tears. I didn’t need to be sitting here having a discursive heart-to-heart with Fiona Jones and her dead fish and her fucking organic cranberries. I thought regretfully about the high-fructose peanut butter I could be eating directly from the jar while pondering trivial events in the life of someone I fought with constantly.
But Fiona was settling back in her chair, ready to exact payment for the meal she’d provided with such thoughtful generosity. And here’s a thing I will never understand: I did find it thoughtful. I did find it generous that she’d shared this simple meal with me, in spite of the fact that her presentation resembled a particularly unpleasant form of discipline.
Did I really see through her so clearly, even then? I remember distinctly that I did; and I trust my memory, because it doesn’t do me any credit. You never see people in the witness stand saying, “Yes, Your Honor. Of course I knew th
at!” People will swear under oath that they are too stupid to live before they’ll admit they knew better and went along anyway.
I remember my father warning me that the weakest people are the most dangerous, because they are the most unpredictable. I remember, too, that my greatest weakness that summer was simply that I was strong, and that I was ashamed of my strength. Every breath I took, every concession I made, every excuse I invented, was part of an elaborate apology for the fact that I was not debilitated the way Fiona was.
I never felt like having a good cry. It didn’t horrify me that soon, a human being with a history and a consciousness all her own would simply cease to exist. It barely horrified me that all I wanted was for this woman’s life to be over so I could finally get some sleep. When Mariana screamed in the darkest part of the night, I staggered to her bedside and said mechanically, “there, there. There, there.” I was fully aware of the fact that this was not a comfort to a soul in mortal dread. I just didn’t have it in me anymore to give a shit. The warm, tender feelings of connection that tormented Fiona were not available to me. What tormented me was the revelation that I was not authentically compassionate. I was refreshed by YouTube videos of drunk comedians insulting hecklers. I wanted to lie around reading mystery novels and eating Nutella right out of the jar. I was definitely missing out on the majesty of this experience. Fiona removed the napkin from her lap. She laid it on the table next to her plate. She was graceful and careless now, like we’d just concluded a quiet enjoyment and were ready to move on to cognac and billiards.
“I don’t think I’ve shared very much about my history with you,” she began. She had the serious, apprehensive air of someone who finds herself at a point where it would be an act of pure selfishness not to share what she knows. “About my . . . journey, I guess you could call it.” She chuckled a little ruefully. “And really it is a real journey, too: I mean, a physical journey, because I am in fact an immigrant. I don’t know . . . have you ever been to England?”
