An idea occurs to me. “She didn’t know, did she? Does Mrs. McLaughlin know why you hired me? And that you were snooping around my house?”
“No! I wasn’t . . . She has no idea. Nobody knew, except for me. It was all me. And I never meant to invade your privacy. It was just a little exterior work. I thought that it must be difficult raising two children on your own. And I owe—Eddie meant a lot to me.” Louis takes his hands out of his pockets. They are huge and callused from years outside in all weather on building sites. “I needed to help.”
I raise my voice slightly, to make sure this man hears me. I can’t believe he is making me say this. “You don’t need to do anything. You don’t have to help us. You’re not responsible for my husband’s death.”
Louis’s face freezes for a second, then he turns his head away.
My calm is beginning to break apart. I feel myself splitting into large pieces, like a volcano exploding from deep within. I wanted it to be Eddie. I wanted, magically, impossibly, for my husband to be the one caring for my family. I know Louis meant well. But he watched my husband—my heart—die and then dragged his ill mother-in-law and the rest of his family with him into what remained of my life. Then Mrs. McLaughlin made me believe that I should open myself up again. That I should relax my grip on my children and my husband. And I let myself be changed by these people. It is too late to stop that. I have been changed.
I watch, as if from the other side of this big lawn, as I split open, all the different pieces of my self afloat in boiling lava. I don’t know what the answers are. Jessie is probably in her friend’s bedroom by now doing things I don’t allow her to do in her own room, like jump on the bed and listen to music too loud. Eddie is probably knee deep in an ice cream sundae at Dairy Queen because Betty has no sense of nutrition and reveres junk food as if it were a religion. I grasp for something to say. I talk to hear my own voice, to make sure I am still here.
“You don’t think you’re in love with me, do you?”
“No,” Louis says, looking pained. “I love my wife.”
I hug my cardigan to my chest. “Then, thank you.” The words are hard to say. They are powerful words. “I won’t quit, but you don’t need to help me anymore. I don’t want you near my house or my children unless I’m there. Okay? Do we have a deal?”
I look from his face down to my hands. I need to see the shape of my fingers and my wedding ring. The ring is a simple circle of gold Eddie put on my left hand in a church ten years ago, which I have taken off only during the late months of each of my pregnancies when my fingers swelled so badly that the ring no longer fit. I flex my fingers now. These are hands that mother, and hands that nurse. My hands have always been strong and capable. They have never let me down. They look unfamiliar to me now, though. There are new lines around the knuckles, and a rash of freckles I never noticed before.
“It’s a deal,” Louis says.
I remember standing beside Mrs. McLaughlin at the window in her room. She seemed to be mesmerized by something outside. I watched her and wondered if she were seeing my brothers and sisters, my childhood outside, tied to a massive oak tree. I wondered if she was right— that it was her job to set me free. I wondered, watching her old face pointed toward daylight, if I would know when that moment took place.
Perhaps being free feels like flying. Or, like I fear, it is the most terrifying thing that can happen to a person, because all of a sudden anything is possible. When my mother used to untie us at the end of an afternoon, my brothers and sisters and I would hesitate, staying close to the tree trunk for a long moment before bolting in every direction. We wanted badly to be untied, but there was safety in that rope looping us together, in that solid tree firmly rooted in our yard. We couldn’t lose one another or ourselves then, whether we were playing games or singing songs or just kicking at one another and the tree and the air. There was security in the noise of our thirteen separate voices hoarse from calling out and reminding the world we were still there, still waiting.
Louis has his eyes on my face, wanting me to make everything okay. I am wondering if this is how he looks at his wife—as if it is her responsibility to make miracles happen—and if this is why she is so rarely in the same room with Louis, when the front door of the house clatters open.
It is Meggy, her voice jumbled with necessity, her long arm waving in our direction. “We need help. Come on!” she says, and then disappears back inside. There is a moment’s pause while Louis and I stare at Meggy, then at the space where she used to be. Then I am running toward the house. Meggy’s voice, with that familiar life or death urgency that has threaded its way through my professional career, shimmers in my ears. The hot air seems to part before me, allowing me to run faster than I ever thought possible. I have left Mrs. McLaughlin for too long. I have momentarily lost sight of my duty. I am in danger of letting everyone down, but still, with the August afternoon buzzing around and through me, I know that it is within my power to make it right. I run like I have watched my daughter Jessie run: my body weightless, my focus absolute. Aware only of the pumping of my arms, the complete efficiency of my body and the fact that with each step my feet barely touch the ground.
CATHARINE
I watch Lila slink into the room behind that nice boy who came to visit me in the hospital. Neither of them looks happy. When I scan the room, that is the case across the board. My daughters and daughter-in-law and little Mary are busy writing dates and times and other numbers on the white scraps of paper Kelly handed out. They are bent over and serious.
But there is something else in the room as well, something besides serious. I can’t put my finger on what it is. It has to do with the way Gracie has her hands wrapped around her stomach, and the way Lila is looking at Weber, and the way Kelly is racing around, her cheeks flushed. There is something going on between these women that I don’t know about. I am no longer up to date on my grandchildren’s lives. They are living at a distance from me for the first time since I can remember. I realize this all at once, watching their faces. How could I have let this happen?
“Do you need help with that?” Noreen says into my ear.
I look down at my blank white sheet. “No,” I say. “I just think this is stupid.”
Heads rise up. I notice that several of my daughters have gray hairs mixed with brown.
I agree, I hear a voice say, from across the room. I follow the sound with my eyes and see my mother sitting on the couch next to Theresa. She is wearing white gloves and the same gray dress with a belted waist that she wore the day that I fell. I have not seen her since then. I am not happy to see her now. I am still angry with her for turning on my television and luring nosy Nurse Stronk into the room.
But the sight of her is also a disappointment, because I have been hoping that the next parent to visit me would be my father. I have been missing him lately. My father was always so clear and organized. Lately I have been dipping in and out of confusion, and I want to look into my father’s blue eyes. I want for his clarity. He always made me feel calm and purposeful. My mother just confuses me further.
If I ignore her, she might go away. I turn toward Weber and say, “It’s so nice to see you again. Come sit here by me.”
He smiles and Lila smiles, too. She trails two steps behind, and when he sits down on the ottoman beside my chair, she stands beside him in the spot Noreen vacated when she went outside to see her children. I would like to meet Noreen’s children, after hearing so much about them. In a few minutes perhaps I will slip outside and do just that.
“I met you in the street,” Kelly says to Weber, a confused look on her face.
Lila says, “This is my . . . boyfriend, Weber.”
“You don’t know your daughter’s boyfriend?” Meggy says.
“I ran into him outside the barbershop.”
Gracie leans forward sharply in her chair, almost knocking Grayson’s hand off her shoulder. “Outside of the barbershop?”
“Yes,” Kelly says. She looks as if
she’s spun from confusion to something much worse, something more uncomfortable.
“What were you doing at the barbershop, Mom?” Gracie’s strange voice seems to immobilize Kelly. I watch the mother and daughter face each other. This is torturous, because I don’t know who, or how, to help. I have never known Gracie to speak up like this. For her, this is the equivalent of a direct attack.
At first it doesn’t seem as if Kelly is going to respond. The entire room waits. “It’s no longer relevant,” Kelly says, and turns to Weber. “Can I take the present from you? We have a pile of them on the table.”
Weber hands over the wrapped present he has been holding on his lap. Kelly walks the box with great purpose over to the dining-room table. I can almost see a line of anger, of something, run across the room between Kelly and Gracie. Between my oldest living daughter and her oldest daughter. The line lengthens, and crackles with electricity with each step Kelly takes.
“What is going on here?” I say. “For heaven’s sake, can’t we even show a little politeness to a guest?”
There is another murmur from the women in the room. “Sorry . . . nice to meet you, Weber . . . Would you like an iced tea? Didn’t know Lila had a boyfriend . . . Full of surprises.”
So, these are your children, my mother says. I cannot be sure from across the room, but I think there are tears in her eyes.
These are my daughters, I say, wishing that they would behave more appropriately. Didn’t I tell them from the time they were young: Be on your best behavior while at a party? I remind my mother that I also have three sons. Johnny, Pat, and Ryan.
My mother nods. Ryan is the crippled boy who almost died in the fire. The one who reminds you of me.
I cannot answer this. I concentrate on Gracie. The baby is coming so soon. It will be any day now. I don’t have long to wait.
“Mother,” Kelly says. “Everyone has filled out their slips of paper. We’re waiting on you.”
“I want to know what we win if we’re right about the size and due date,” Meggy says. “I hope you put up some decent money for the pot.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a gag gift.” Kelly sounds tired. “Are you done, Mother?”
“That’s bogus,” Meggy says.
I hope that my mother doesn’t notice Meggy and Kelly’s endless bickering. I know I shouldn’t care, but I want her to think well of my children. What I have made is in this room. This is my life’s work. This is what I have left and this is what I will leave behind.
“Gram doesn’t have to play the game if she doesn’t want to,” Gracie says. “Let her do what she wants, Mom.”
“It’s your party,” Kelly says. “I just thought it would be fun. I’m sorry if it was wrong to try to create some fun.”
“Are you angry at me?” Gracie says to Kelly. Grayson’s hand has not left Gracie’s shoulder since she sat down, but he seems speechless. I reflect that the women in our family often render the men quiet. Especially since my husband died. All balance is lost.
Beside my chair I hear Weber whisper to Lila, “Is your family always like this?”
I cannot hear her answer. I hope she is shaking her head. I hope that she tells him that we are not like this. That when Patrick was alive nothing like this would have happened. There was order to our family then, and small children running around filling the rooms with laughter. It is only in the past few years, when perhaps I was not as firm as I should have been, that things have come to this. I hope Lila tells Weber that when the baby comes, when the laughter of children fills our rooms again, everything will settle down. This family will be whole and we will find our way back to solid ground.
Something in Kelly’s face crumples. “No,” she says. “I was saying good-bye when you saw me this afternoon, all right? I was trying to say good-bye.”
“Outside the barbershop?” Theresa asks politely, trying to clear things up for everyone.
“All right,” Gracie says. “All right. Don’t cry.”
Kelly gives a single sob, which she masks as a cough into her cupped hands.
I wait for Meggy or Lila to jump in and attack Kelly for trying to conduct a private conversation in front of everyone. But neither of them says a word. Lila is standing so close to Weber, she might as well be touching him, and Meggy has found a seat on the arm of the couch beside my mother. Both women appear almost sedate.
“Gracie,” Angel says in a bright voice. “What do you think the sex is going to be? Do you have a feeling either way?”
“I keep picturing a girl,” Gracie says. “I saw her once.”
I am pleased that no one in the room laughs or even smiles at this.
What used to annoy me now gives me pleasure. I am glad that my children listened when Patrick told them stories about leprechauns and lovelorn boys and people who knew hunger and want. He told those stories instead of ones about his own poor childhood. He rarely mentioned his parents, or his brother. But I think for him—and I am understanding this now, too late—everything, all of his experiences, his disappointments, and his faith, was in the stories he told. Our children heard Patrick’s stories and absorbed them. Perhaps, I think, looking around the room, these gray-streaked versions of my children have even had their own visions from time to time. Perhaps they have lives and hearts I don’t know about. The idea gives me hope.
My husband has been in my dreams lately. He is holding my little girl on his lap, or hugging the twins against his shirtfront. He looks very uncomfortable sitting on the small couch in my room at the assisted-living center. The little girl tries to wiggle off his lap and run to me, but Patrick won’t let go. He holds on to her arms until I can see the pressure of his thumbs against her skin, until she cries out. Gentle, I say, please be gentle. Her face is too pink, as if she is preparing for the fever that is to come and take her away from Patrick and me for good. I think that perhaps Patrick feels the heat of her skin and that is why he is holding so fast. He doesn’t want to let her go.
“Are you all right, Gram?” Lila asks.
“Of course,” I say, and hand over my white slip of paper to Kelly.
“Do you have to be so difficult, Mother?” Kelly says. “You didn’t write anything down.”
I feel the hot touch of my feverish girl. Patrick is forcing her on me, making me see that I couldn’t change what happened, that no matter what, she was still going to die. I push her away, I push him away. I push the truth away while at the same time feeling it settle into my skin like the finest, the most inescapable dust. I breathe it into my lungs. I am covered with it.
“I’m an old woman,” I say, “leave me alone.”
Kelly gives me a hard look over the bowl she has filled with everyone’s guesses for the baby.
“You’re not old,” Theresa says.
“Gram,” Mary says, her first words in at least a half hour.
Now you’ve upset them, my mother says, from beside Theresa.
She is right. My children and grandchildren are looking at me with expressions of discomfort on their faces. But they know I am old. They know I won’t be with them forever. How can this hurt them?
People don’t like to hear the truth, Mother says. It’s unkind.
But they need to be strong, I say. Stronger than this, anyway. How will they ever find happiness, ever move forward in their lives, if they aren’t strong enough to hear that their mother is old? I scan the faces in the room. How can they need me this much? My baby daughter cries now from a room in the back of the house, and Patrick walks past me holding the twins. I want to make my way out of this room. I want to breathe in the hot summer air. I want to leave them all behind, but at the same time I know that I can’t move.
“Would you like more iced tea?” Lila says.
“I think she’s getting tired,” I hear Angel say in a hushed voice. “Where’s that nurse?”
“I’m going to open the gift you brought the baby first, Gram,” Gracie says.
I can feel my grandchildre
n and children wanting, vying for my attention like a pull on my sleeve. There is laughter outside the window, and I know that if I cross the room, I will see the Ballen children tied to a massive oak tree in the center of the yard. I glance beside me, to make sure that Noreen is still there, grown, safe, and free. But she’s disappeared. Lila is in her place. I forget where Noreen’s gone, although I know she told me. It will come to me in a minute.
“You sure you’re okay?” Lila asks.
My mother says, Why are they all so careful of you, Catharine? They seem frightened of you. What did you do to them over the years? She shakes her head. I should have been allowed to see my grandchildren when they were small. You thought you could control everything, and make happy endings all on your own. You taught your children that that was what was expected of them. How could you do that? They thought they had to make their own lives right with no help or good luck or charity, and that if anything went wrong, it was their own fault. Look at all the guilty faces in this room. For heaven’s sakes. They all think they’ve failed you, and just plain failed life.
I wanted to teach my children to be strong. I wanted them to take care of themselves. I didn’t want them to hurt. I didn’t want them to die.
She says, You didn’t want them to act crazy like me.
I feel weak deep inside of my body. Did everything have to get so clear, so honest, at the end of my life? Now, when there is nothing I can do about it? Now, when it’s too late?
It’s never too late, my mother says. She has one hand on Theresa’s shoulder and the other is stroking Meggy’s knee. I got the chance to see my grandchildren, didn’t I? Anything is possible.
I remember who I’m talking to. I should not be listening to my mother. I shouldn’t let what she says matter. I say, You used to have conversations with dead people in our hotel suite. You hid in the hall closet during thunderstorms. You behaved so inappropriately that Father couldn’t bring you to business dinners.
You’re the one behaving inappropriately, my mother says. You’ve been looking forward to this party all week. You had a hard time falling asleep last night because you were so excited. You should be talking to Gracie and your daughters right now, not to me. Take care of them.
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