Graceland

by Lynne Hugo

  “Oh, Beth, come in.” I widen the door and then my arms for what I intended as a brief hug, but Beth clings to me. I’ve only met her on two or three occasions. I can smell hair spray and some other light scent, overlaying a faint sweaty odor. How exhausted she must be, how despairing. I need to remember I’m not the only mother suffering, but it is I who finally pull back a little and gesture at the roses. “Those are so beautiful. All of us have thought about Kevin so much, and you know, I hope, that we are praying for him. How are you—how is he today?” What a liar I am; he’s hardly a shadow in my mind. Scum-sucking bottom dweller: isn’t that what Brian used to call people he considered low? Of course my daughter has closed her eyes and turns her back to me. I am defensive and offensive at once, of course, beneath a suffocating quilt of hopelessness.

  Her eyes fill and my shame expands like a sponge soaking in her tears. “No change. I’m hoping you’ll let Claire come as soon as possible. Different voices, you know, maybe…” Beth says.

  “Actually, she’s asleep right now. Could I have her call…” I begin, but Claire’s voice comes, an arrow shooting down the hall at me.

  “I’m awake, please, come in Mrs. Ellis. I’m in here, in the living room,” she says, as if I wouldn’t show Beth the way.

  “Oh good, she’s up. I know she wanted to see you very much,” I say. “Let me take you to her.”

  Claire has worked herself to a sitting position and is hurriedly jamming some pillows behind herself. I quicken my pace to help her, but she says, “I’ve got it.” Then she slides herself over, making extra space by her on the couch, and opens her arms for Beth to come sit next to her, to hug and be hugged. The vibrant rose bouquet Beth sets on the coffee table mocks the pale, half-open bud I bought her. I stand awkwardly off to one side, watching.

  Politely, Claire does something she never would have before. “Mom, would you mind? Mrs. Ellis and I might like to talk in private.”

  “Of course,” I answer as naturally as if I weren’t being banished and humiliated. “I’ll bring you something to drink.”

  In the kitchen, I get out ice and tall glasses and meticulously make up some powdered iced-tea mix for them. I do everything as quietly as possible, trying to hear what they are saying, but their voices are low and exclude me.

  CHAPTER 23

  Madalaine sighs, a nonresponse. Sometimes Jennifer will drop a subject when Madalaine sighs, getting the message not to pursue it. No such luck now.

  “So can we, Mom?” Jennifer repeats the question, which is about going to see Claire.

  Madalaine sighs again, involuntarily this time, trying to gather and arrange the words that will keep this exchange short and definitive. They are eating an early supper at the kitchen table, another pasta casserole from someone at church. The freezer is dangerous to open, a ghetto of stacked foil-wrapped packages and Tupperware with people’s names neatly taped to the bottom, which means she’s got to use the stuff up within a reasonable amount of time so the dish can be returned with a little note of thanks in her precise backhand. Unnecessarily, Madalaine uses a knife to cut some of her salad to give herself another couple of seconds to think. The utensil scrapes on stone-ware, a sound hollow and grating at once.

  “I think not, honey.”

  “Why?” The inevitable question, complete with Jennifer’s whiny tone.

  “Because Mommy is having a hard time thinking about Claire right now.”

  “But she’s going to be okay, right, she’s not going, she’s not like…?”

  “No, she’s not like Brian, she’s not going to die. She’s on dialysis, that’s when you have to use some special solution to do the work of a kidney to clean your blood. She can live like that until they find a kidney that will work in her.”

  “Can she sit up and watch television or stuff like that?”

  “Sure she can. She’s just getting her strength back. Ellie told me that she may even be strong enough to go ahead and graduate with her class. She can’t have the real diploma until she takes her finals, but if the doctor says it’s okay, she may get to do the ceremony.”

  “So why can’t we go see her if she’s not going to die?”

  “I told you, I’m just having a hard time, I can’t. I get too upset.”

  “But you said she’s not going to…”

  Madalaine sighs again. Nothing is easy. “It’s not that, honey, it’s that, well, maybe I feel like it’s a little bit her fault because her boyfriend…”

  “It’s not Claire’s fault. I don’t see how you can think that.”

  “Well, sweetheart, maybe I just get too jealous because she’ll be okay and Brian died, you know?”

  “But that’s not fair. It wasn’t Claire’s fault. She’s nice, Mom, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t…” Jennifer sputters indignation and Madalaine begins to regret her comparative honesty. She should have just said that Claire wasn’t allowed visitors. Actually, for all Madalaine knows, she’s not. Her informant is Ellie, and Presley would be more likely than Ellie to get a story straight.

  “I’m sorry, Jen. I really am. I’d just prefer we keep to ourselves right now.” Madalaine tries to look Jennifer in the eyes without shame and without letting her sense any weakness. Her daughter knows all too well how to work her over since Bill left. Used to be, Madalaine was the one who knew how to hold the line, but it’s gone slack, abandoned to lie on some forgotten deck while Madalaine tries to remain in her skin. “Can you try to understand?”

  Jennifer bangs her fork down on her plate, splattering a bit of sauce onto the place mat, already a week in need of washing. “You’re mean,” she says, and starts to push her chair back.

  “Hey, where are you going? Don’t talk to me like that. Finish your dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry. I’m going to my room.”

  “Can you finish your dinner? You need to eat your salad at least. Come on, princess.” Even Madalaine hears the wheedling that’s crept into her voice.

  “Don’t call me princess. I don’t want it. I want to go.” Jennifer’s eyes are glittering, and Madalaine realizes how little Jen has cried since that night at the hospital when she covered her face with her open palms and sobbed against them.

  “Honey, I’m sorry…” she begins, but Jen averts her face and leaves the table, heading through the kitchen toward the bedroom hallway.

  It’s been a bad day, another one. This morning, Madalaine picked up the roll of pictures she took on prom night. She’d dropped them off at the Rexall in town yesterday, somehow not expecting the next-day service that’s been standard for five years at least. But she’s not opened the envelope. She needs the pictures to be good, to show happiness on Brian’s unsuspecting face. They are the last news she will ever have of him. If she never opens them, there will always be something of him that can still be discovered.

  She is still sitting at the table in settling darkness, half-eaten food on dirty plates at Jennifer’s place and her own when Wayne comes in. Jennifer’s made no appearance or sound since their words earlier. The house feels empty even though Madalaine knows it’s not. All the will is leached out of her again; the will to get out of the chair and clear the table, the will to try to talk with Jennifer, the will to drag air into her lungs, the will to push it back out again.

  “Hey,” Wayne says after a moment of silence. He is standing just inside the house, the door shut behind him.

  “Hey yourself,” she says irritably. “What do you want?”

  “Nothin’,” he says.

  Madalaine knows exactly what he wants. Permission to cross the kitchen, go into the family room, turn on the television, doze in front of a couple of hours of inane crap, then use her bathroom for a while and sack out on the couch in the family room. She guesses he’s keeping his clothes in his truck; she rarely sees anything of his around the house. Who’s doing his laundry? What a weird bird he is. Really, he’s not bothering her, it’s just stupid, that’s all, stupid that he can go on not deciding anything.

/>   “What do you mean, nothing? Why are you standing there?”

  “Okay if I look at your television a while?”

  “And then?”

  “I’ll sleep on your couch if it’s okay.”

  Madalaine shrugs. “Look, it doesn’t bother me, but what are your plans?”

  “Sleep on the couch.” Wayne is obviously confused because he’s already said this.

  Can anyone alive really be this dumb? “You sound like Charles. I mean after tonight again. What are you going to do? Tomorrow or the next day, or the next? You know, you’ve got to do something.”

  Wayne shrugs, as if to say, How should I know, but what he says is, “Go to work.”

  Brian used to call it going ballistic when she did it: raise her voice and let her irritation bounce from wall to wall. “For God’s sake, Wayne, do you know what a wumpf bird is? It’s a hairy-feathered wingless bird that flies in ever-decreasing concentric circles until, wumpf, it flies up its own ass. That’s you, Wayne. You’re driving me insane. I don’t care what you do, just do something. See, you’re not like me. There’re things you can do.”

  Wayne is still trying to figure out the wumpf bird. He’s distracted by Madalaine having said the word ass.

  Madalaine says, “Oh, come here. Sit down. Have you eaten? I can stick some of this casserole in the microwave for you.” She gestures at Jennifer’s chair, and pulls Jennifer’s plate back from the edge.

  “I ate at McDonald’s.”

  “Another gourmet meal, huh?”

  “It was all right.”

  Madalaine is roused enough to stand up anyway and pivot two or three times to put the dirty dishes over on the kitchen counter. She flips on the light over the sink, opens the refrigerator and pours two glasses of iced tea from the pitcher. Then, though, she thinks better of it, pours the tea back in, and when she replaces the pitcher, takes two beers from the refrigerator. She puts one at Jennifer’s place and points at it. “Sit,” she orders.

  Wayne apparently can’t help staring as Madalaine takes a sip from her can, and then another. She sits back down, her chair back from the table and at an angle now.

  “It’s no big deal, Wayne,” she says, something like defiance in her tone. “I can drink a beer if I want.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I guess.” And sits.

  “Look. You can’t go on like this…like Casper the Ghost, gliding in and out of McDonald’s, my couch and your truck. It’s just not a workable plan, it’s too…you’ve got to…”

  Wayne looks miserable. “You said it wasn’t bothering you.”

  “That’s not the point. You need to do something about Lydia…and Claire, for that matter. What do you think Claire thinks? I mean, have you talked to her?”

  “Whatever Lydie told her.”

  “Don’t you think you should tell her something? You know, nothing’s changed, Wayne. For God’s sake, you raised her, you’re the only father she knows. None of this is news to you, you said that yourself, so nothing’s changed. This isn’t between you and Claire, it’s between you and Lydia.” Madalaine is surprising herself, and what she’s saying seems inconsistent with what she said to Jennifer until she remembers that she has an entirely separate reason for her feelings about Claire. Really, it’s just all too much to keep straight, and she’s suddenly exhausted by even trying. She takes another drink, and then just sits, slouched in the chair. Neither of them say anything and they do not look at each other. When Madalaine’s can is two-thirds empty, she’s gathered enough effort into one place to get up and walk toward her bedroom.

  Wayne finishes his beer, and then finishes Madalaine’s. He gets up and goes out into the twilight through the same door he came in.

  CHAPTER 24

  I am convinced that John has refused permission to Dr. Douglas to release his test results to me. There’s not a reason on the planet that she couldn’t have just told me on the phone, instead of my sitting here in her waiting room with John for her to tell us in person, and the two of us together. I’m in no position to argue with him, so, of course, I just agreed to meet him here at ten o’clock, as he said.

  Several plants stand in corners looking extraordinarily healthy and one hangs from the ceiling nearing the one, large window, trailing greenery like it expects to go on forever. Gert, Ellie’s hairdresser, would definitely call these flourishing vines and leaves a sign, and I even remind myself that the Norfolk pine could also be called an evergreen. That’s got to be as good a category as any could be. When my horoscope says something good in the morning paper, I suck hope through it like it’s a straw stuck into lemonade. This morning, though, it said, “A new moon in your birth sign means new beginnings. But first there are still loose ends that need to be tied up on the work or money fronts. Don’t let anyone persuade you that you are anything other than capable, competent and entirely committed to the cause.” I like the first sentence, but what do I do with the rest? I toy with the idea that I can just cross out whatever doesn’t apply, and I’m sitting here working that idea around to see if that’s a fair use, when a nurse opens a door and says, “Mrs. Merrill? You and…you can come in now.” She suppressed a double take when she looked up from her clipboard and had to modify the sentence she had ready in her mouth. As I’m walking ahead of John, I touch the leaf of a beautiful schefflera for luck and discover it’s silk. I immediately think that’s bad, that beautiful things die here and they’ve replaced real plants with artificial ones to fool people into thinking that anything will come out all right.

  The nurse shows us back to Dr. Douglas’s office, the official one with the big wooden desk, framed diplomas and prints on the wall. There’s a small aquarium and the four tropical fish within it all look healthy, their amber and yellow strips and wide filmy tails vigorous and busy. I take that as a good sign to cancel out the silk plant, and dare a look at John.

  He’s in a charcoal business suit with a striped shirt—muted red, green, blue and gray stripes on a white background—and wears a tie that has the exact colors of the shirt in them like a miracle. I know he’s been trying to get me to look at him, and now, when I do, he holds his hand out wanting me to put mine in it. When I do, more than half because I don’t want to offend him, it’s my left hand and my slim white-gold wedding band and matching engagement ring get briefly covered by his thumb. I have to shut Wayne out of my mind. If John is a match, no matter what Claire or Wayne says now, I’ll know I was right, I did the right thing. Last night Wayne still had his ring on, but I know him too well to think that means anything. It wouldn’t occur to him to take it off, no matter what his intentions. He just wouldn’t think of it one way or another.

  I, on the other hand, have so many thoughts they’re aerobic, each jumping around to different, private music. Such chaos, though I cling to one central notion: Claire. Claire. Claire. Claire.

  As I hear footsteps approach, I pull my hand from John’s and set it alone in my lap. I tried to fix myself up today, not for John’s sake, but so I’d look as if it weren’t the sort of day on which I’d receive bad news. I smooth my cotton skirt and resettle my hands, as if I were calm.

  “Hi, Lydia. Mr. Rutledge, nice to see you again…” Dr. Douglas smiles her professional greeting but doesn’t look directly at me or John as she lifts a manila file and sits behind her desk. She’s a middle-aged woman, pretty but naturally so, not one who appears to spend hours of her time on it. Dark-blondish straight hair falls from an off-center part and curves under her jawbone. Now she tucks one side of it behind an ear and puts on a pair of glasses to read a computer printout that’s in the folder. She knows it by heart, I’m sure. She’s stalling a little, sorting words into some order that she thinks won’t make me suicidal. She’s wrong.

  “Mr. Rutledge, have you thought about discussing this with Lydia yourself?”

  What does she mean? Does John already know? I look at him, but he is fixed on the doctor’s face.

  “No, I’d prefer you just tell us your findings, as w
e discussed.”

  Dr. Douglas gives a little shake of her head and a tiny, almost imperceptible shrug. “Lydia,” she says, now looking at me and ignoring him. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Mr. Rutledge is not a potential donor for Claire. I can only imagine what a blow this is to you, but I don’t want you—or Claire—to be too discouraged….” She goes on about tissue matching and typing, antigens, the odds of finding a cadaver donor, and the like. She reminds me that people can live indefinitely on dialysis, as long as they’re scrupulous about their diet and hygiene, avoid peritonitis, watch their blood pressure, fluid intake…I’m not really listening anymore.

  “There has to be some mistake, doesn’t there? I thought parents were always the best match? Can’t you run the tests again?”

  Dr. Douglas studies the open folder, though I know she just doesn’t want to look at me. She blows a little puff of hair up onto her face, as if the room were extraordinarily hot. I’m clutching my own arms now to suppress shivering. “Yes, well, that’s usually the case,” she says carefully. “Sometimes, there are other factors, like the antibodies you have, or hereditary ones….” Dr. Douglas finally glances up, but at John, and there’s the slightest hint of a raised pitch as her answer trails off, like a little hill leading toward a question. But, of course, neither of us have an answer.