by Paula Garner
“Did you . . . ?”
I nodded. “I tucked him in with some nice soft rags and said a little prayer for him.” I sat down next to him. “He’s at peace, Eli. And it’s better this way, that he passed suddenly, without a lot of suffering. He had a good, long life. You said so yourself.”
“Daisy’s going to miss him so much,” he said, looking at me imploringly, his eyes swollen and red. “How can I make him understand he’s gone?”
“He knows.” I petted Daisy’s head, another rush of tears filling my eyes. “Animals know things. He’ll miss him at first, but he’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
Even though I wasn’t sure I believed this, I knew I had to say it. Eli needed to hear it — whether or not he believed it, too.
I stayed by Eli’s side until he was calm. Somewhere around five, he finally fell asleep and I took Jay to be cremated.
The receptionist at the clinic remembered Jay. It was the same clinic Eli had brought Jay to when he was having breathing problems. She sent her condolences to Eli, then got up and gave me a hug, telling me I was a good friend. It made me tear up, because damn. People can be so fucking decent.
Oddly, they charged by the pound for cremation. Jay was cheap. I paid in cash.
As I drove back to my house, a yellow-peach haze glowed at the horizon. I was glad for the new day — it felt correct. In some small but important way, I had temporarily risen above my own muck to be there for Eli, who didn’t even think to thank me or hug me or anything. And he didn’t need to — I didn’t care. It didn’t escape me, despite all my angst about family, about finding family and having family and missing out on family, that this was a very real thing I had: friends I would drop everything for. Friends I’d take bullets for. Friends I’d handle dead rats for.
There is more than one kind of family.
My mom and I forged the kind of existence that only the conflation of familiarity and physical proximity make possible: the kind where you just can’t deal with your shit at every moment so you have an unwritten agreement to set it aside in order to proceed with the doings of life. Anyway, I needed my energy for my faltering academic career, my friends, and my hopes for Luke — and the Margolis family. I’d be seeing them again next weekend. Luke had said the time would pass quickly, and maybe for him it did, but for me, the combination of anxiety about Mima’s condition and longing to be with Luke resulted in days that crawled like years.
I thought through endless trajectories of the alternate universe. The one where I was a Jewish kid with a loving family and a brilliant, doting older brother. Maybe we would have been peas in a pod. Maybe he would have been protective with me about boys. Maybe — Jesus. Maybe I’d also play piano? The idea that I might have been knowledgeable about music, maybe even able to play an instrument, brought yet another stab of longing and regret.
But running through these other versions of reality also meant thinking about the impact on this reality — not knowing my own mother. Not having Gab or Leila or Eli. Not knowing a china pattern from a Chinet plate.
Would I have felt in the other reality as I do in this one? Like someone who didn’t quite belong, someone who always wished for something different? Maybe I would have obsessed about my “real mother” and the life I’d missed? That sounded about right, if I was honest. Maybe I was just a chronic malcontent. Nothing was ever enough.
And what about my mother’s fate? If she hadn’t gotten me back, would she ever have sobered up? In an alternate reality, she could be homeless, or even dead. Or she could have sobered up and, unencumbered by a child and the demands of single-parenting, she might be a celebrated, famous painter. The alternate realities were an endless mindfuck.
Winter was giving up the ghost. It was March now, and it felt every molecule of it. The last of the snow melted, revealing limp grass in sepia tones that would rally to verdant redemption in the coming weeks. Of course, in Chicago there were no guarantees; an icy or even snowy relapse remained a possibility far into spring. Still, the grass was dotted with purple clusters of crocuses, and the daffodils wouldn’t be too far behind. As far as I was concerned, we’d made it.
One rainy afternoon after school, I huddled under an umbrella and headed for Laroche’s. I wanted to check on Eli. He had taken bereavement leave from work after Jay died, but Madame V. was short on sympathy when she learned who — or what — the dearly departed was. His job, he felt, was hanging by a thread. Sometimes I worried he was, too.
On my way there, I stopped in at Tina’s to say hello and discuss my summer schedule. She greeted me by wrapping me in a fur stole, one of her recent estate sale scores. She asked if I wanted to join her on a scouting venture sometime, which I answered unhesitatingly in the affirmative. Her happiness about my coming aboard warmed me.
I pulled open the door to the café with all my might and got in somewhat gracefully for once, despite also having an umbrella to contend with. “Hey,” I said to Eli as I approached the counter. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged as he unloaded a box of napkins.
“How’s Daisy?” I asked.
He looked up and his eyes reminded me of my father’s in the photos — waifish, lost. “I think he’s depressed. He sits and stares a lot, and every time I see him sleeping alone, it kills me. I hate leaving him. I wish I could bring him to work with me.”
“Oh, Eli.” I searched for words of comfort, but sanguine platitudes were not exactly my specialty lately.
The door dinged and a pair of forty-something women in yoga pants came in, jarring the quiet with loud laughter. I went to find a seat at the window.
I tried to think of something I could do to cheer Eli up. There was no replacement for a lost loved one — I knew that better than ever. But I suddenly realized there was maybe something I could do — something only Eli would appreciate and only I would know. I pulled out a pen and grabbed a napkin.
Jay Gatsby
Departed this world at age almost-four, aka at least 100 rattie years, Jay was a black-hooded fancy Dumbo rat who lived his whole life in Maplebrook, Illinois. He loved snacking and cuddling and staying in or near his cage. He was sweet and full of love and objectively better than most humans.
Jay is survived by his one-and-only life partner, Daisy, and his beloved person, Eli, who made Jay’s life happy and, well, gay.
In lieu of flowers, please sprinkle Cheerios around your local garbage dumpster.
As I finished, my phone dinged. It was an e-mail. From Luke.
Jules, sorry to do this, but this weekend isn’t going to be good for a visit after all. Mom’s having trouble breathing — she has a lot of fluid around her lungs that they have to keep draining. We’re bringing in hospice care so this can be handled at home. Looks like the end might be sooner than we thought.
Sorry for the change in plans. Will keep in touch. L.
I sat back, my hand pressed to my mouth. My God — was she about to die? Like, any week now? Any day? Would I never see her again?
I picked up my phone, wanting so badly to call him, to hear his voice, to connect with him, to tell him how much I cared. But he had e-mailed me — not called, not texted. Did he want space from me? Was I just an intrusion at this point? Sometimes I felt like I was on the inside, richly, warmly on the inside. Like I belonged. And then there were moments when it all fell away, and I felt like I was intruding. And it was unbearable.
But I couldn’t just ignore something like that. I texted him:
My heart is breaking. Please send Mima all my love — a whole lifetime of it. I wish I could be there for you. If you need me . . . I’m here.
I glanced up as Eli sat down across from me. I told him about Luke’s e-mail. “I was supposed to go see them this weekend,” I told him. “But now . . .” My eyes welled up.
“Jeez,” Eli said, looking kind of shaken. “Shit, that sucks.”
I pushed the napkin toward him. He glanced at it in confusion, picking it up. As I sniffled, I watched his face change. H
e chewed lightly at his lip ring, then glanced up at me. “You wrote an obituary? For Jay?”
I nodded.
“Fuck,” he whispered, turning his face away.
“Oh! Eli.” I reached across the table.
To my shock, he reached out for my hand and squeezed it. “That’s . . .” He glanced at the napkin again, and I swear his eyes went a bit misty. “That’s maybe the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
I hoped that was an exaggeration. “Eli? Do you remember your mother?”
He blinked, clearly caught off-guard, and sat back. “Yeah.”
“What do you remember about her?”
He shrugged. “A lot of things.”
“Good memories?” I asked hopefully.
He glanced out the window, fingering the line of little rings along his ear, and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he said softly, “All of them.”
I went into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet, and cried.
My mom and I ordered pizza that night and ate on the sofa in front of the TV.
She flipped the channel to House Hunters, where a young couple was looking for a starter home close to the wife’s parents in Savannah. “I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you,” my mom said, licking sauce off her thumb. “We’re house hunting, too. Well, apartment hunting.”
“What?” I stared at her, confused. “He’s selling the house?”
She nodded, setting her plate down and brushing off her hands. “He’s tired of waiting on the market. He just wants out.”
I blinked, stunned. “When do we have to leave?”
“May first. He’s buying out the rest of our lease, though, which goes until September first. With our security deposit, that will be almost six thousand dollars.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, we’ll need it. Rent in this area has gone up a lot over the years.”
“Well, we could probably get by with less space in the future,” I said. “Since I mostly won’t be at home from this point forward.”
Mom blinked, as if she’d forgotten or maybe hadn’t fully processed the upcoming changes in our lives. “Have you heard back from everywhere you applied?”
All three places? At about fifty bucks a pop, I wasn’t applying to a dozen schools like most people I knew. I nodded. “Accepted at all three: Beloit, Augustana, U of I.”
She smiled. “That’s my girl.”
I tried to smile back, but conflicting feelings rose up in me at her words. Warmth at her pride and proprietary expression. But also, discomfort at how new and foreign they felt. I wished we had arrived at a point like this long before now.
“Hey,” she said, “aren’t you seeing the family again this weekend? I could drive you, if you want. I was thinking . . . I could show you the houses where your father and I grew up, and the high school, and maybe the diner we liked to go to, and . . .” She shrugged. “If you’re interested.”
My mixed feelings continued to do battle inside me, but something swelled in my chest at the realization that she was trying to right some wrongs. “I would’ve loved to,” I told her. “But I’m not going to Milwaukee this weekend.”
“Why not? Did something happen?”
“I think she’s . . .” I wound my fingers together. “I think she’s dying.”
She looked stricken. “Jesus. That poor family.”
I nodded, and we were quiet for a moment.
“We should still do it — go to your old neighborhood,” I said, surprising us both. “I’d really like to.”
She smiled tentatively. “You would?”
I nodded. “I want to see where you and . . . Ethan grew up.” I stumbled over what to call him. The yearning to say “Dad” was an unbearable ache deep inside me.
“I haven’t been there in years.” She took a breath. “I wonder if I’ll even recognize it.”
“It was yellow when we lived in it.” My mom shifted into Park and peered out the window at a small two-story house, slate gray with white trim, 1950, plus or minus, I’d guess. I tried to imagine it twenty years earlier.
“It’s cute,” I said. “Has it changed much?”
“Someone fixed it up.” She squinted and lowered the visor to block the sun.
It was the kind of piercingly clear and bright March morning that makes promises you aren’t convinced it can deliver — a morning temperature in the upper thirties giving way to a sixty-degree afternoon seems unlikely, but if Chicago-area weather ever had a rule book, it threw it out eons ago.
“How long did you live here?” I asked. In the front yard, near the street, stood an ancient-looking willow tree with a gnarly trunk. Its naked branches hung like strands of wheat-colored hair in the morning light.
“We moved in when Mom was pregnant with Dawn. I was five, just about to start school.”
Dawn. A four-letter word. I knew my mom had lost a sister, but it was not a subject she’d ever wanted to talk about. Until this morning, anyway. On the drive up, she told me about growing up in Milwaukee and about how her dad ran off after her sister died. Another grandparent who might still be out there, might still be alive. She wasn’t sure. But given her feelings about him, I wasn’t going to push. If the things she said about him were true, then I didn’t want to know him anyway.
“That was my bedroom.” She pointed toward the left side of the house, upstairs. “I used to sneak out my window and shimmy down that tree on the side.”
“To see Ethan?”
Her mouth curved into a wistful smile. “Yeah.”
“Did you guys really love each other?”
She looked surprised by the question. “Oh, yeah,” she said emphatically. She reached out and touched a lock of my long hair, identical to hers. “Oh my God, yes. So much.”
I hadn’t realized it mattered to me, but the fierce rush of warmth that ran through me suggested it did. My eyes stung.
“I should have told you that. I’m sorry. Yes. We loved each other a lot.” Her face creased with emotion. “Fuck,” she whispered, sitting back in her seat. She took a moment to compose herself, then glanced at me. “Ready to go see his house?”
I nodded.
She started chewing on her thumbnail. “We won’t be able to park this close. I don’t know if his parents still live there, and I’m not prepared to run into them.”
I nodded again, to show her I was okay with this. I was more than okay, to be honest; I could only imagine how hard it was for her to be here, to remember whatever it was she was remembering. She’d spent my whole life trying to forget all of this, and now she was sharing it with me. That was huge.
She glanced at me. “Does he know you’re here?”
I didn’t have to ask whom she meant. I turned and looked out my window. “Well, I messaged him. Told him we’d be up this way.”
When he didn’t respond with the question I felt my message raised, I sent another explaining the trip. In return, there was only radio silence.
I had hoped he’d ask me to stop by while I was in town — hoped Mima would be okay enough that it was possible. Barring that, I’d hoped he’d at least want to know about all these developments in my life. A few weeks ago, we were so close — or at least it felt that way. Now it was starting to feel like a dream.
I pulled out my phone and typed another message before I could talk myself out of it.
Just wanted to let you know that Mom and I arrived in Milwaukee.
I struggled with what to say next. Hope everyone’s well was a clear nope. I love you would be idiotic. I finally settled on Sending love to you all.
When my mom slowed the car, I glanced up. My nerves were jangling, but not nearly as bad as hers. She drove with one hand on her stomach, the other trembling on the wheel.
“That one,” she said, pointing up the street to the right.
I stared out my window, taking in the house, the property. It looked like, well, a grandmother’s house. It was a Cape Cod style, and there w
ere window boxes filled with spruce branches and pine cones. Maybe their scenery changed with the seasons.
A tidy, white-fenced yard was filled with sturdy shade trees and magnolias. A wide, arched arbor led to the backyard, its wood barren now, apart from a weave of twigs, but I imagined it was covered over with vines and blossoms in the summer. This was not the setting I imagined for that pierced, punk-looking teenager. Could it be that all this 1950s white-bread sentiment was what he was rebelling against?
“Oh, God.” My mom took a shaky breath. “The porch swing is still there.” She pointed. “That’s where we had our first kiss.”
I squinted, trying to see it better. Most of the red paint had peeled off, revealing weathered, pale wood underneath. I tried to imagine my mom at my age, kissing the wild boy in the picture.
“My heart is pounding,” she said, laying her hand on her chest.
I turned and laid a comforting hand on her arm. And that’s when my phone dinged. It was Luke.
Jules, can you come? Mom wants to see you, and she wants you to bring your mom. If you could be here within an hour, that would be best. It will need to be a short visit.
“Oh my God,” I murmured.
“What is it?”
I turned the phone toward her.
She read it and sat back. “Oh, Jesus. I don’t know, Jules. I’ll take you, but . . . I don’t think I . . .”
“You have to. She’s dying. She wants to see you.”
She shook her head.
“Mom.” I waited until she met my gaze. “Don’t you owe her that much?”
Luke opened the door with his usual friendliness and warmth, but he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I wished I could pull him aside somewhere private and just hold him. Instead, we had a brief hug, and then he shook my mom’s trembling hand.
She was a mess. Watching her drive over, I almost wished she smoked or something. She could have used a cigarette. I could have used a cigarette, just watching her nerves play out through her shaky hands, her shallow breaths, her blinking, darting eyes.
