by Webb, Peggy
What I ought to do is call Shelia. It’s unlike her to take so long on one of my proposals, and it’s certainly not like me to dither around with my hands tied while my career hangs in the balance. I blame this strange malaise on the divorce. It wasn’t messy or recriminatory or protracted; Stanley and I are far too civilized for that. But no matter how strongly you believe that you must make a change, wrenching yourself out of the safety of a familiar way of life is akin to pulling up anchor of a ship and setting sail over unfamiliar waters without a compass.
A nurse in crepe-soled shoes wheels Mama into the cubicle, and Jean and I move to either side of the gurney to hold her hands. With a huge bandage swathing her forehead and bruises on her arms where they drew blood, she looks pale and extremely fragile, not like the woman who could take Hannibal’s place and single-handedly march an army with African war elephants across the Rhone River and over the Alps.
“The head gash is not serious, but she has a perforated ulcer,” the intern tells us. For the first time I notice his name tag – Jake Cramer. ”A part of the aging process is that the body’s organs become leaking, rusty pipes. Anything can go wrong. We’re going to have to do emergency surgery.”
“You can talk to me,” Mama says. “I’m not dead yet.”
Dr. Cramer chuckles and pats her hand. “Mrs. Lucas, my major concern is not the surgery itself but the complications that could arise because of your heart.”
“I’m not that old.”
“No, you’re in remarkably fine shape, but your heart is beginning to wear out in ways your pacemaker won’t help. Right now, it’s only pumping at thirty-three percent capacity.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“Congestive heart failure.”
His news sucks the wind out of Jean and me, but while she sinks into a chair and begins to cry without sound, I remain upright. Somebody has to.
Dr. Cramer explains what this previously undiagnosed condition means, a gradual failure of the body’s life pump, a heart that could wear out in one to seven years, and oxygen starved body parts that give up bit by bit. Mama’s lips tighten into a thin line, a certain sign that she’s not going to roll over and play dead.
“Mrs. Lucas, the bottom line is that if we don’t operate, this ruptured appendix will kill you, but if we do, the surgery might also kill you.”
“Wheel me out and cut me open. Everybody has to die of something.”
I squeeze her hand and hang on, reluctant to let her go. Fighting back tears I tell her, “Mama, I love you.”
“Maggie…” Mama’s never been one to wallow in sentiment, but her eyes are watery so I brace myself for an amazing turnaround, a sort of death-bed confession of undying affection. “Jefferson will get nervous and lose all his hair if he has to sleep by himself. If I live through this and find him bald, I’m going to kill you.”
So much for maudlin sentimentality. As the orderly races down the hall behind the gurney bearing Mama toward possible death, the little girl in me cries because she didn’t wrap her arms around me and cling, but the rest of me braces up - which is exactly what Mama intended.
“Let’s find the waiting room,” I tell Jean.
The awful thing about waiting in hospitals is that they are so huge you’re scared to leave your room and grab a bite to eat because it takes fifteen minutes to get from anywhere to the cafeteria, and that’s if you don’t get lost. In spite of the fact that I’m the official driver for this family, my sense of direction is not much better than Mama’s. She stopped driving two years ago when she left her glasses at home, mistook Horton Grimes’ garden for the road to Burger King and ended up mowing down a row of cabbages and three rows of corn before he could stop her.
Two other people are in the surgery waiting room, a rawboned young man with straw-colored hair holding the hand of a girl in pink hair ribbons and a pink maternity top. She looks like she ought to be playing dolls. They’re bending toward each other whispering. I want to pat them both on the head and say everything’s going to be all right.
I want to pat myself on the head and say the same thing.
“Maggie, I’m starving.” Jean leans toward me and whispers, too, as if a normal voice might disturb a sleeping monster in this room that would rain disaster over our heads. “There’s a vending machine down the hall,” she adds. “Do you have any change?”
The machine offers an array of chips plus crackers spread with peanut butter and cheese which would provide a bit more sustenance than Snicker’s bars and M & M’s, but I go straight for the chocolate. After losing eight quarters, I draw back and give the machine a good kick. My reward is the blessed thud of candy hitting the tray.
I trot back into the room with my loot and hand Jean a Snickers. We tear into our candy then lean our heads against the wall with our eyes closed and our jaws working.
Suddenly Jean bolts upright. “Oh, lord, today’s your birthday! I’ve got you a present.”
“What is it?” I can’t abide surprises. I’ve always been the kind of person who wants to know exactly what’s going on and what to expect. When Jean and I were children, I would search the closets until I found our Christmas presents, then sneak back when Mama wasn’t looking and carefully tear back a corner of the wrappings in order to see what I was getting. I didn’t rip into Jean’s though. She loves to guess.
“Well, if you must know it’s a tee shirt with spangled printing on the front that says fifty and foxy.”
“I’m not fifty. Why didn’t you get one that said forty?
“They were out of the forties. Anyhow it’s the foxy part that counts.”
“You’ve got that right!”
My sweatpants are covered with grass strains, the knee sports a hole from the battle with the lantana and brambles are tangled in my mussed red hair.
Jean looks at me and we start laughing so hard we end up leaning against each other crying.
The young couple sitting across from us moves two chairs down to get out of the path of the two wild and crazy women.
I send them a little smile to show we haven’t entirely lost our minds. I want to straighten the young woman’s pink hair ribbon that has gone lopsided, brush the lank blonde hair out of the young man’s eyes and say, Listen, when you get older you’ll understand. You’ll realize that it’s what’s inside that matters - the tough, resilient fiber that wouldn’t let Mama fold under news of a failing heart, the faith that gave Jean enough strength to boost me over the windowsill, the courage that kept me driving when all I wanted to do was sit in a corner and weep.
I have more to celebrate than a birthday.
*
The announcement over the intercom gut-punches Jean and me: Code blue! Code blue!
I stiffen and squeeze my purse till the sides cave in. That’s the way I always take bad news - with a tightened-up body that hides the way my insides turn to glass and explode into little shards that rip at my heart.
Jean, however, is a different story. Her entire body goes into overdrive, and the rest of her Snickers bar flies into the air while she jumps out of her chair to start pacing. “Ohmigod, Maggie, it’s Mama, I just know it’s Mama.”
“We don’t know that, Jean. Sit down and try to relax.”
“The surgery’s killed her. What are we going to do?”
The first thing I have to do is get her back into her seat before she stampedes the big-eyed couple. I jump up, grab hold of her and half-drag her back to the chair. “Calm down, Jean. What we’re not going to do is alarm the entire county.”
I’m stroking her shoulders while I talk, and finally I feel the tension easing out of her. “Okay, now?” She nods, then huddles into a little ball, which means it’s safe for me to retrieve the sticky wad of chocolate that landed in the doorway.
I bend down with the intention of scooping it up quickly and tossing it into the garbage can, but the candy’s stuck to the floor. The way my luck is running today, I’ll probably have to get the nail file out of my pu
rse to scrape it up, and while I’m getting the file somebody will come along, trip over the sticky mess and sue me.
“Excuse me.”
Oh, even worse.
The deep male voice is the kind that usually matches a drop-dead gorgeous hunk, and naturally I’m still upside down, the best part of me facing the floor and the worst part facing the voice. I creak slowly upward trying to act as if the hips I’d had saluting the breeze still fit into size six slacks.
“Are you with the Lucas family?”
I wish I could say no. I wish I could say, “We officially had our name changed last year. You have the wrong people.”
But what I wish most of all is to have Mama standing by my side saying, “Don’t just stand there, young man. Spit it out. I can take it.”
Jean’s crying again and so am I, but my sorrow is trapped inside where the tears don’t show. Outside I’m a woman with straight back and upright chin, patting my sister’s arm and saying, “Hush, Jean. We’ll survive this, too.”
______________
Chapter Two
______________
Don’t expect the sunshine anytime soon. This bad weather has set in for a while. There are smashups on Main and Church. Are you paying attention out there, drivers? The body count’s rising, and I don’t want it on my conscience.
Joseph “Rainman” Jones
The wheels of my Jeep swish against the pavement, whispering prayers of thanksgiving, Mama’s not dead, Mama’s not dead. She’s in intensive care, though, hooked up to life support that is doing the work of her worn-out body until she catches on and jerks out the tubes and needles and yells, “Get me out of this place.”
During the brief visitation allowed family, Jean and I stood on either side of her bed while I urged, “Come on, Mama. You can do it. You can beat this thing.”
Her heart stopped during surgery, but the doctors got it started again. “Before there was brain damage,” the delicious-looking surgeon who’d had a close-up and personal view of my oversized backside had told us.
Alas, he’s married. I always look at the ring finger. You never know.
Anyhow, I hope he’s right. I can’t imagine Mama without her sharp mind. I can’t imagine life without Mama’s pointed comments and razor-edged observations. But these are things I don’t tell Jean as I drive down Gloster Street looking for a place to eat.
Both of us are starving. It’s two p.m., and we’ve missed both breakfast and lunch. Not that it will hurt us. Jean calls the twenty-five pounds she needs to shed ten, and I call my excess “a little fluff.”
“How about Lolly’s Health Food Café?” I suggest. “We could get salads.”
“Salads, my foot. I need comfort food. Butter and French sauces made with real cream and desserts loaded with nuts and ice cream and fudge topping.”
“Sounds great. Mama pulled through. Let’s celebrate,” I say, and then I address Rainman via the radio. “You can predict storms all you want; I’m not letting you rain on my parade.”
“For Pete’s sake, Maggie! Turn Rainman off. He’s getting on my nerves.”
I pull into Ruby Tuesday’s and we sprint toward the restaurant without slickers and umbrellas, shivering in an unusually cold rain that came out of the blue. April in Mississippi is like that, sometimes sending the bite of winter through our bones. Mother Nature loves to take Southerners by surprise, shake us out of the complacent notion that summer is just on the heels of iris and azaleas, forsythia and verbena.
Inside, Jean and I order everything on the menu that’s fattening.
“When life is shitty be good to yourself,” Jean says. “That’s my motto.”
The butter I spread on hot rolls thaws my ice-cold feet, the steak smothered in onions, mushrooms and cheese warms my heart, and the double-fudge brownie with cherries and whipped cream reaches out and wraps its arms around me.
There’s a lot to be said for Jean’s theory. I think I’ll subscribe to it. At least for today. At least for my birthday.
Jean had asked the waitress to put a candle on my double-fudge brownie. “Blow out the candle and make a wish, Maggie.”
I grab her hand and say, “Wish with me, too, Jean. That makes it more powerful.”
We close our eyes and imagine Mama sitting up in her narrow hospital bed demanding to know what she’s doing hooked up to all that junk and why her daughters aren’t there dancing attendance.
“I’m spending the night in the intensive care waiting room,” Jean says, as if she’s reading my thoughts.
“The nurses said they’d call if there was any change.”
“I don’t care what they said. That’s not the way Victoria Lucas’s family does things. I’m staying.”
The Lucas stubborn streak runs a mile wide through this family. I’m not fixing to try to argue with Jean, in spite of the fact that I’m the one driving her around.
Sometimes being the only driver (except Walter, of course, who is hardly ever home) gets complicated. Take today, for instance. Between Jean’s determination to stay at the hospital and Mama’s directive to prevent Jefferson from having a panic attack and going bald, I must now race back to Mooreville to get Jean’s blanket and pillow, stop briefly to feed Jefferson in his kennel, return Jean to the hospital, then drive to my apartment to fetch my own pajamas and toothbrush before I drive back to the farm so I can keep Mama’s nervous dog happy.
It’s not the kind of spend-the-night party I’d imagined for my birthday.
*
By the time I finally get back to my apartment, it’s dark. The fifteen marble stairs leading to my second-floor apartment feel like a hundred and fifteen. Aching in bones I never knew I had, I mutter, “I might as well live in my car.” I could keep my toiletries and pillow in the backseat and get a hot plate that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I could name the Jeep something cute like Rover and teach it to come when I whistle.
“Well, hello there, gorgeous! Where have you been all my life?”
Oh, lord, it’s Newton Cramer, my landlord and across-the-hall neighbor, leering at me from the top of the steps. He says the same thing every time he sees me, and then he giggles as if he’s just thought of the world’s most clever come-on. If Newton weren’t as old as God, I’d take offense.
Instead I take pity. There he stands in slacks so big they’d fall off if he didn’t wear red suspenders – or yellow, depending on his mood – and wingtip shoes that date back to the days before indoor plumbing.
“How are you, Newton?”
“Fine as cat’s hair and fit as a fiddle.”
“Well, don’t take any wooden nickels.”
Using hackneyed phrases is a snap for me because I taught high school English for ten years and spent most of that time trying to get my students not to use them. My comeback makes Newton slap his knee with delight.
If Stanley had been that easy to please, we’d still be married. But my husband, a CPA, was a stickler for perfection. He kept tallies on everything – the number of times I bought chuck when he wanted Boston butt, the number of times I forgot dental appointments (even when I forgot them on purpose), the number of times I put the toilet paper on so that it rolled under instead of over, which is the way he considered correct.
Now, nobody tells me what to do except Mama, and that’s not out of any desire to turn me into her concept of the perfect woman but out of her innate ability to dictate. Mama always stands her ground and rules every bit of the ground she stands on. With her gone, even temporarily, I feel as if I’m treading quicksand.
Ordinarily I’d pause on the steps long enough to chat with Newton, whose daughter lives in Trenton, New Jersey, and only calls on his birthday and the major holidays. But today is turning into the longest day of my life, and I need some time to hoist myself out of quicksand before I take on a neurotic dog that can’t hold onto his hair in a crisis.
My apartment seems emptier than usual. Pristine. Not a throw pillow out of place, not a book or a magazine scattered ab
out, not even a dust ball under the sofa. And certainly no cat hair and dog dander. No pets allowed in this building. No messy barking and mewing and racing down the fire escape to the back alley for a midnight potty break.
It looks as if nobody lives here, and maybe nobody does. Maybe the spontaneous Maggie Dufrane I once was vanished after I left my husband, who’d forgotten how to hug, and my six-year-old Cocker spaniel, who knew about everything but wasn’t allowed in my getaway cocoon. Maybe my ghost took up residence inside apartment six of the Skylofts in downtown Tupelo, Mississippi.
Right now Jean is curled into a fuzzy blue blanket in a corner of the intensive care waiting room talking to Walter, and he’s reaching across continents to take her worries and put them on his own broad shoulders. She’s crying - I know this without seeing, because she always does – and he’s calling her sweetie and baby while she feels cherished and protected and not quite so afraid.
I think I read somewhere that people who are in a stable, loving relationship live longer than singles who struggle along taking care of every little thing including faucets that start dripping at midnight when you’ve finally conquered insomnia and toilets that overflow just as you race toward the door, already late for church.
If what I read is true, then Jean will live to be a hundred and ten and I’ll die next Tuesday.
Maybe if I call Stanley for a little sympathy - which he will most certainly give because he loves Mama - I’ll prolong my life till a week from Friday. But somehow that’s like admitting defeat. A call to my ex-spouse when I’m feeling vulnerable is almost like saying, “I can’t make it without you.”
