by Webb, Peggy
I give him a brief rundown, and when he says he’s sorry, I know he means it because he really loves my mother.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Nothing,” I say, “but thank you anyway.”
He presses, trying to take charge, as usual. “She’s fine, I’m fine,” I assure him. “We’re all fine here.”
I’m in charge this time around, is what I’m really telling him, at least I’m trying to be, never-mind that I’m holding financial doom and here stands lost security.
But there’s more to life. There has to be. I’m not about to settle for humdrum until I find out about razzle-dazzle. I’m not going to sit on the bench while somebody else calls the shots just because he has dangling body parts.
Ignoring the glob of hair that detaches from Jefferson’s shivering coat and falls on my shoes, I slam into the house after Stanley leaves, whiz to the telephone and pick up the messages. No word from my new editor. She’s read it and hates it.
Creeping panic steals my ability to act, to pick up the phone and call Janice. In spite of closing my eyes and counting to ten, the thought keeps on coming, gathering steam, propelled by the writer’s greatest fear – never being published again.
I refuse to let it beat me. Instead, I’ll think of something to celebrate – life and me emerging from the safe cocoon of stultifying sameness. I go to Mama’s cabinet and pull out a bottle of Gabbiano pinot grigio, 2003. Not a very good year. A married year. The year Stanley and I went to Niagara Falls for a fatal reconciliation.
Well, I’ll fix that in a hurry. Two glasses and I won’t even remember that after he and I finally aired our feelings, we ended up swapping our room with its hopeful king-sized romping ground for one with two doubles so we could sleep in separate beds.
The second honeymoon might have worked if we wanted the same thing, but we don’t. He wants a wife who folds his socks, cooks his dinner and adheres to his routine – wake at six, sleep at ten and sex every other Saturday. I want fairy-tale romance and earth-moving sex, pink chiffon evenings and long, slow waltzes to the melted-butter voice of Andy Williams.
“Cheers,” I tell Jefferson.
There are times when talking to a dog can make you feel less lonely, but this is not one of them. I switch on WTUP-FM radio, and Rainman Jones says, “There is absolutely no let-up, folks. It’s pouring again and the streets are not where you want to be.”
Where I want to be is in my own place, a cozy little cottage with a sunny front yard just right for roses and a shaded back yard big enough for a dog and a little courtyard that invites the muse. At the rate I’m going I figure I’ll be able to afford that by the year 2035.
If I live that long.
And I certainly won’t if I head back to the hospital for allowable visiting hours driving on wet streets, drunk. I pour the rest of my wine down the sink, glare at my checkbook a while, and then give it a sharp slap.
I won’t cry. I won’t.
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Chapter Five
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“’I’m gonna love you, like nobody’s loved you, come rain or come shine.’ Looks like the rains are slacking and the clouds are beginning to break up, folks. But don’t get out your sunglasses just yet, ‘cause more of that nasty wet stuff is on the way. And that’s the latest weather report from WTUP-FM in misty, downtown Tup-eloooo.”
Rainman
“I didn’t know he could sing,” I tell Jean.
We’re back in the car, Jean in the passenger side with her knitting basket and blue blanket, bound and determined to spend another night at the hospital with Mama.
“He can’t. Turn it off. I’ve got enough on my mind without listening to Rainman’s palavering.”
I think his patter is kind of cute, and oddly comforting, too, but I don’t tell Jean. Instead I snap off the radio and maneuver through late afternoon traffic, commuters driving home after a hard day’s work.
I feel like an English muffin, split in two. Half of me wants to be racing down the hospital corridor with Jean so Mama won’t be alone. Daddy was alone when his truck fell through a bridge on the county road that crosses the farm, and he died in the rain-swollen river. Mama was in the kitchen making chicken potpie while Jean and I were in her bedroom flipping through movie magazines and trying to deal with raging teenage hormones. If it’s within my power, I’ll never let Mama face death alone.
But lord, the other half of me wants to be looking for a job. Something temporary that will tide me over until I’m once again a working writer. I picture myself driving to my new chef’s job in a white paper hat that says Burger King.
But what are my credentials? Burger King won’t care a whit about an M.A. degree in fine arts, and I can’t see the likes of Woody’s and Gloster 205 lining up to employ a waitress who would never keep Stanley’s socks straight, let alone ribeye, medium rare versus sirloin, medium well.
I won’t think about that now. Instead I’ll marshal good thoughts, positive energy I can carry into Mama’s cubicle. In spite of the fact that none of my visions has come true in the last few months - my name splattered all over the New York Times List and me in the Plaza celebrating, sans clothes, with a George Clooney look-alike - I still believe in the power of the mind to manifest fabulous results.
Here’s what I’m picturing: Mama sitting up in her bed demanding a bath, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and her daughters. In that order.
Here’s what I get: Mama propped in bed in a faded gray hospital gown with a cup of chicken broth untouched on her dinner tray.
“They couldn’t kill me on the operating table, so now they’re trying to starve me to death,” she says, and Jean starts crying.
“Postoperative patients always get liquids,” I tell her. “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to know I don’t belong in this place. Tell the doctor to get me out of here. I haven’t slept a wink with all the commotion.”
“You’ve done nothing but sleep.”
“How would you know? I’ve been in here by myself.”
That’s what I get for contradicting Mama. If it weren’t for that wicked gleam in her eye, I might mistake her statement for self-pity. But that’s beneath her. She’s aiming for bigger impact - center stage as Drama Queen.
Jean stops crying long enough to ask Mama if there’s anything she can do to help.
“Yes” Mama says. “Tell me who’s called to see about me. I’m marking the ones who didn’t off my Christmas card list.”
The young intern who admitted her arrives in the middle of Mama’s plans for revenge, and while he’s checking her vital signs, she tells him she’s ready to go home.
“You’ll be here a while longer, Mrs. Lucas, but we’re moving you to a private room.”
“I don’t need a private room. All I need is a few antibiotics and some peace and quiet. Write me a prescription and send me home.”
“Now, now, dearie, you’re not the doctor here. I am.” He pats her hand as if she’s a sweet little old lady. Major mistake.
“I’m not senile, young man.” She dismisses him with her Queen Victoria look, and turns to me and Jean. “Bring my red gown with the feathers. If Hitler is going to hold me hostage, I’m not going to stay here with my backend hanging out.”
Mama’s back, is what I’m thinking, but in the hallway outside ICU, the doctor cuts my exultation short by telling us that she’s not out of the woods yet, that at her age and in her condition anything could go wrong.
“Don’t let her brave front fool you,” he says.
“That’s not a front,” I tell him. “That’s Mama.”
If I could bottle her spunk and sell it at Piggly Wiggly I’d be rich. I’d take her to the Swiss Alps where doctors have found a miracle cure for damaged hearts, and she’d move to a cute chalet beside a snow-capped mountain and live to be a hundred and eighty-five.
Jean stays at the hospital with her blue blanket and her cell phone, burning up the
air waves with good news to Walter, who’s making my sister smile in the way of a woman talking to a man who is the center of her universe.
The only man I talk to is Jefferson, who licks my feet the minute I let him out of the kennel. Which is not too shabby, if you stop to think about it. In fact, he’s the perfect man. Obedience trained. He comes when I call, sits when I tell him and never leaves the toilet seat up. Faithful and adoring. He follows me everywhere and sits at my feet salivating.
I ruffle his fur and scratch his ears. “You’re nice to have around. Do you know that, old guy?”
His loose skin stretches back in a canine smile, and his pink tongue lolls out, big as a dishcloth and twice as wet.
Such is life. Some people get telephone sex and I get doggie drool.
*
Over the next two weeks, my sister and I establish a routine: I take care of Mama’s dog, her house and her errands while Jean stays at the hospital taking care of Mama. In spite of the fact that Walter is still in Japan and I’m doing all the driving, this is an even swap. Jean selects a different colored blanket each day and a stack of magazines to read, and I deliver her to the hospital where she builds a nest in the private room’s one easy chair and reads about the marital misdoings of Tinsel Town’s stars between demands from Mama.
According to my sister, these come every fifteen seconds. “If she’s not threatening to kill the physical therapist, she’s demanding juice and water,” says Jean as I drive her home on a Friday night. “If I drank as much as she does, I’d pee the Pacific.”
“Measure popping up to get Mama a drink against keeping a nervous dog happy. If Jefferson keeps losing hair I’ll have enough to stuff a La-Z-Boy recliner.”
“What are you going to do about him when Mama comes home?”
“I’m thinking of gorilla glue and wig.” I’m whizzing down Main Street, and when the Skylofts come into view, I ask Jean if she minds stopping while I grab a few clean clothes.
But my frazzled appearance is nothing compared to my frazzled nerves. Although I sit far into the night with hopeful pen and paper, nothing is happening. In my present state I couldn’t write the copy on the back of a cereal box, let alone a saleable novel. If I were Virginia Woolf, I’d load my pockets with rocks, go down to the same creek that claimed my daddy and jump in.
Newton Cramer waylays us outside my door. “I saw you out here. I’ve been watching for you.”
One of the many advantages of living in a small Southern town is that a neighbor can watch your apartment through the peephole in his door and, for the most part, you can tell him thank you instead of calling the law.
Sometimes it’s the small kindnesses that keep us going. Sometimes it’s this sort of unselfish caring that makes it possible to put one foot in front of the other, to keep moving forward no matter what.
I thank him then go inside and sink onto my sofa. Jean plops beside me and leans her head against the back cushions, her hair fuzzed up like dandelions and her eyes sporting dark circles. The two of us make quite a pair - two middle-aged women who ought to be sitting in easy chairs with a glass of champagne in our hands and Somebody Special rubbing our feet, getting ready for an evening of succulent shrimp in real butter and lazy caresses between crisp white sheets. Instead we’re exhausted from running on adrenaline, frazzled from worry and itching for somebody to blame.
“Maggie, what you need is somebody nice.”
“Your husband worships you, Jean. All I got was a little lip service.”
“Boy, I could use some of that. I’ll be glad when Walter comes home.”
“You’re awful.”
I punch her arm and she punches me back. This little horseplay feels good, normal, and I’m thinking that if Jean and I let this part of ourselves go, this child-like joy and abandon, we’ll be letting the best part of Mama disappear.
She’s never been one to sacrifice humor to mind-numbing, body-killing routine, no matter what the circumstances.
The summer ten years ago when Aunt Mary Quana watched Uncle Larry fight his last battle with Alzheimer’s, we all went to Atlanta to lend moral support – Mama and Jean in the backseat nursing a cooler of fried chicken, potato salad and double fudge brownie pie, and me in the front seat driving. While Jean and I cooked and cleaned and kept in telephone touch with our spouses, Mama stayed cooped up in the bedroom with Aunt Mary Quana trying to talk her through the final stages of Uncle Larry’s long goodbye.
For days Jean and I heard nothing but Mama’s voice and Aunt Mary Quana’s sobbing. Then one morning we woke up to the sound of belly laughter. Mama was sitting in her sister’s room wearing a red bulbous nose, a pink fright wig and the Mexican sombrero Uncle Larry bought in Tijuana, just sitting there talking about the weather as if she were wearing a linen suit and pearls instead of clown garb. She wore her costume for three days, even to the Olive Garden the evening I drove her and Aunt Mary Quana out for dinner.
The next day, Mama was back in normal clothes, but she’d done what she set out to do - give her sister the catharsis of laughter and the boost she needed to hold Uncle Larry’s hand at the end in sweet, serene farewell.
Now I turn to my sister and say, “Let’s go to the movies. A comedy. Something to make us laugh.”
“When Mama gets out of the hospital?”
“Yes, but before that, too. Then we can tell Mama about it, give her something to laugh about.”
“Well…okay.” Jean tears up and I go into the bathroom for a clean tissue. “I’m not going to cry,” she says.
I don’t say, yes, you are; I just walk away knowing she will, knowing that tears release her in the same way laughter does Mama.
I gather clean clothes and some gardening shoes because Mama’s flower beds are getting grassy, and I want to weed before she comes home so she can enjoy her gardens. She loves flowers, loves puttering around in the dirt, making things grow. If she gets out soon we can plant roses together.
Next I go into my office to get two books - one on Native American legends because there’s a strain of Cherokee blood in my veins calling to its ancestors, and another titled Soul Mates because…
Don’t ask me why. It certainly has nothing to do with Stanley. I think it has to do with the kind of unflappable optimism that lets women come back from one crushed dream after another still full of hope, their wings dragging and dusty and frazzled but intact - folded and tucked under until they grow strong enough to fly again.
The light on my answering machine is blinking. I go to the door and call to Jean, “I’m going to check messages. I’ll just be a minute.”
“Okay. Take your time.”
I close the door, sit in my swivel chair, punch a button and hear the electronic voice of my machine. “You have six messages.”
The first five are from friends checking on Mama, three of mine and two of hers. “Congratulations,” I say to the quavery recorded voices of Laura Kate Lindsey and Annie Maycomb. “You’ve just made Mama’s A-list.”
There’s still no word from Janice Whitten, who obviously hates cats and doesn’t know fried catfish and hush puppies from Robert E. Lee.
Okay, this is my career. With Shelia, I just picked up the phone and called. So why am I standing here as if I have no control?
I dial Janice’s direct number.
“You must have read my mind,” she says. “I was just getting ready to call you.”
She has the hint of magnolias in her voice, and when I ask her if she’s Southern, she says, “I came to New York right out of Loyola. After six months in a small law firm, I realized I was in the wrong business, so I took the lowest job on the totem pole here and worked my way up.”
Pecan pralines and café au lait in the French Quarter, Cajun boiled shrimp and paddle-wheelers on the Mississippi, oaks dripping with Spanish moss and harmonicas playing gut-punching blues. Janice Whitten knows them all. I promise myself I’ll never make another judgment without knowing the facts first.
She tells me all
the things she loved about my proposal, the richly dawn characters, the strong sense of place, even the plot.
“But this one doesn’t have that special spark that made me fall in love with your early books. I’m sorry.”
I see my dream cottage, my dream dog, my dream rave reviews recede into the mists. My wobbly legs won’t hold me, and I sit down while Janice tells me she’ll send a letter with suggestions.
“Maggie! What’s wrong?”
Jean’s in the doorway wearing streaked mascara and sisterly concern. I jump like somebody electrocuted.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I didn’t sneak. You didn’t hear me, that’s all.”
I recap the conversation with Janice, and Jean leans her face against my hair and says, “Go ahead and cry, Maggie. It’ll do you good.”
“I’m not fixing to cry.” I blink. Hard. And then I jump up and slap the answering machine. “I just wanted her to buy the manuscript, not have sex with it.”
I stomp and storm around my office, releasing shock and disbelief and fear through the soles of my feet. Writers write, don’t they? They should have contracts and deadlines and readers who love them, shouldn’t they?
If I’m not a writer, who am I?
I want to scream, but who would I scream at - certainly not Janice Whitten, who turned out to be a really nice person, and definitely not my sister who’s silently swiveling in my chair.
Mama would know what to say. She’d turn this tragedy into a small setback with one pithy statement.
But Jean’s not Mama. She’s soft and big-hearted and needy. When I run out of steam and lean my flushed face against the cool windowpane, she says, “You’ll think of something, Maggie. You always do.”
That was when Mama was at the helm of this family leading the cheers or cracking the bullwhip, whatever she deemed necessary. Right now, I can’t think of anything except crawling back into my Jeep and driving.
At least I can do that. Shoot, as many miles as I’ve traveled hauling Jean and Mama, I excel at chauffeuring. I’m the world’s expert, the only woman I know who can make fifteen trips a day between my apartment and Mama’s farm – fourteen of them unnecessary – and still have a life. If you call birthday’s alone on the fire escape and having to plan your own surprise parties a life.
