by Molly Giles
He lit a cigarette and looked over at Ida. He remembered the first time he’d seen her, walking down a city street in the sun, head up, back straight, legs moving to some quick dance beat only she could hear. And then that smile. A stunner. She’d taken his hand, light, weightless, a sure touch that touched him still. He bent down and kissed her cheek. When you’re ready to go on that journey, he thought, you let me know. Because you’re going in comfort. You’regoing first-class. Her breathing suddenly stopped and her whole body went still. He sat back, alert. Now?
He got up, creaking, stepped over the dog, and walked around to Ida’s side of the bed. There, as he’d been doing for weeks, he opened her nightstand, picked the silver mirror out of the drawer, held it to her lips, and examined it under the lamp. He heard her breath start up again and then he saw it, the white cloud of her life slowly lifting off his own pale reflection. He watched his face emerge, unadorned and all alone, then he slipped the mirror back into the drawer and padded into the bathroom.
Either rain or someone crying, Ida thought. Who would cry for me?
I would.
Oh no. Not you again. I thought Father Bliss—
You did? Really? I mean he’s a sweet man and good-looking in a simple way, Ida, but he’s not very effectual. You put your weight on a weak reed with that one.
Francis then. Francis!
Another hero. You know how Francis loves it when you hallucinate. How helpful he is. How warm. How sympathetic.
Kay then. Kay could get rid of you.
Kay couldn’t get rid of a snowball in hell.
Victor?
I hate to see you scraping the bottom of the barrel like this, Ida, I really do.
This is so unfair, to be stuck with you after all I’ve been through. Damn it anyway! I wish—
If wishes were horses—
They wouldn’t look like you! Big blue ugly thing. I can’t stand your peepee hanging down like that. Couldn’t you—whatever you’re supposed to do—sheathe it? And your breath! Your breath smells like …
—beggars would ride.
Death. It smells exactly like death. And I’d like to ride, yes. If beggars were choosers, which you were undoubtedly going to say next, you bet I’d like to ride. I’d like to dig some spurs into you, buster, and take off like the wind.
Good. That’s what I’m here for.
Really? I thought you were here to torture me.
Oh no. You’ve had enough torture.
That’s true. I have. I surely have.
So let’s go.
To Blue Horse Land?
Ida.
Why can’t I stay here? I like it here. Francis keeps talking about some “journey” I’m supposed to take. I don’t want to take any journey. All I want is to stop feeling so rotten and get my old life back again. Is that asking so much?
What do you think?
I think it’s a perfectly reasonable request. Clear and simple: just give me my life back.
Too late.
I’ll do everything better. I’ll hold my temper. I’ll bite my tongue. I won’t try to walk! You’ll see. I’ll be good.
Too late.
I haven’t learned French yet. I’ve never been to Crete.
Too—
Oh do shut up.
—late.
Well hell then. The hell with it. The absolute lousy hell with it. I give up. Tell me what to do.
Just reach up, here, put your arm around my neck and swing your legs over my back.
My arm is broken in case you’ve forgotten and I don’t have any legs.
That doesn’t matter anymore.
Maybe not to you. You’ve got four damn legs. What do you care? Oh listen, I’m tired. And the rain’s still coming down. I used to pretend it was applause, you know. For me. I was supposed to be a star.
You’re a star.
Right.
You are a star. You shine.
A three-dollar flashlight shines.
Not like you. You shine with beauty, you shine with heart, you shine with spirit.
I do?
You do. And everyone knows it. Everyone follows your light, and honors it, and envies it, and loves you for it. You shine with courage, Ida. You shine true. Now stop sulking and reach for me.
I can’t.
Of course you can. You’ve done it a hundred times. Every time things have been rough in your life you’ve reached for me, and every time I come you act like you’ve never seen me before. As if I weren’t part of you. Maybe not the best part, granted. Maybe Father Bliss got the best part. But I’m here now. I’m what you’ve got. So reach once more and let’s go.
It’s hard.
You like things to be hard.
I do not.
Reach, Ida. Are you reaching?
Dum-dum, Ida said. Can’t you even tell?
Kay woke to the sound of rain and the smell of coffee. Francis had made one cup for himself and was sitting at the dining room table working the crossword puzzle. “Your mother won’t wake up,” he said. He stubbed his cigarette out into an overflowing ashtray and lit another without looking up from the paper. He was dressed for the office and his raincoat was folded neatly over his lap. “She won’t go to sleep and she won’t wake up.”
“Oh-oh.” Kay slipped two aspirins between her lips, went into the kitchen, and swallowed them down with water from the tap. A few drops spattered on the front of her sweater, the black one with the scooped neck, the one she’d chosen to wear for Charles Lichtman today. She brushed at the spots, feeling the material catch and pull against her shaking hands. “Do you think she’s in a coma?”
“Something,” Francis said. “Go take a look.”
Kay tiptoed into the bedroom. Ida was even tinier today than she had been last night, a white infant bundle topped with gold curls propped up on the pillows. Her breathing was loud and rapid and two raised veins crossed back and forth in her forehead like two swords in a duel. One is good, Kay thought childishly. One is bad. If the good one wins Mom will get through this and recover. If the bad one wins she won’t. She bent over, clasped Ida’s hand and brought it to her lips. Ida moaned. Oh God, Kay thought, is that the broken arm? She dropped the hand quickly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She backed out of the room.
“Did you call the doctor?”
Francis put down his pen and stared straight ahead. “Jim Deeds is in Barbados.”
Kay followed his gaze to the garden outside the window. The rain was pelting the crocuses pushing up in the planter tubs. The dwarf orange trees had blown over. The outside lights were on for some reason and the swimming pool rippled in swift burnished wavelets.
“We’ve got to have a doctor up here. I’m sure he left someone on call.”
Francis nodded, stood, and moved toward the phone.
“And Victor should know,” Kay added. “And Father Bliss.”
Francis lifted the receiver and dialed the hospital. Kay heard his light relaxed rumble, the graceful false laugh. Looking down, she saw the crossword puzzle open on the table. British composer, she read, blank blank L blank U S. “Delius,” she wrote. Francis’s goldpen was warm and solid in her hand. She put it down. “Are you hungry? Shall I make you some breakfast?”
“I don’t know,” Francis said. “Just had some yesterday.”
Same old jokes. Kay rose to go into the kitchen when a sudden spitting noise came from Ida’s room. She caught her breath and glanced at Francis. He looked pale, his face alert as a boy’s above his striped oxford shirt and bow tie. Something about his expression struck her as she hurried in to Ida’s side but she forgot it when she saw her mother. Ida’s head had fallen to one side and a thick grey putty was pouring out of her mouth. Moving quickly, Kay staunched it with Kleenex from the box by the bed so Ida could breathe. When the flow slowed she pressed another tissue to her mother’s lips, wiping them clean. Then she laid her cheek to the cross pulsing in and out on Ida’s forehead. It kicked with stubborn life. Good. The phone rang
from the nightstand and Francis, behind her, picked it up.
“Neal,” he said. “We’re having a hell of a time up here. Kay can tell you about it.”
“I’ll take it in the kitchen.” Don’t let her die while I’m gone, Kay prayed, handing the Kleenex to Francis and hurrying to the other phone. “Neal,” she said, sinking against the kitchen wall. “I’m glad you called. Mother’s bad. This might be the day.” There was silence on the line.
“You knew this was going to happen,” Neal said.
“But that doesn’t help when it does happen.” She straightened, easing her shoulders. Strange, she thought. I can almost feel my hackles rise. Whatever hackles are, I have them with Neal. “Do you have any sympathy or help to offer? Or are you just going to be an ass?”
“Do you have to call me names?”
“What’s going on with us?”
“I don’t know. What is? You tell me.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you. We’re fighting but we don’t have time to pay attention to it. This is what I need you to do right now: GiveNicky a lunch and a dollar for the field trip. His class is supposed to go on a whale watch today unless they’re rained out. Then I want you to call Mrs. Holland and tell her I can’t come to work. Tell her someone’s coming in for an art book and it’s under my desk in the left-hand shelf; she’ll find it.”
“Is that all?”
“No. Yes. Tell me you love me.”
“Oh babe.”
“Joke. Listen. My mother’s dying. There’s stuff coming out of her mouth and the thing is, she was fine last night. We watched My Fair Lady, she sang, she made sense, she even ate a little when I fed her.”
“What did you feed her?”
“Applesauce and strawberry yo-----No. Neal. I’m sure it was not the yogurt. You’re not going to tell me the yogurt put her in a coma.”
“It’s a known fact, Kay, that dairy—”
“Is Nicky there?”
“I’m just telling you.”
“I’d really like to talk to Nicky now.”
“Hi, Mom.” Nicky’s clear enunciation, so welcome. “I’m sorry about Grandmère. Daddy says she’s sick. Are you all right? It’s really storming down here! We might have a flood. Daddy’s got candles and the flashlight on the table in case our electricity goes out. He says if the creek gets really high we can fish in the living room!”
“Your dad said that?” So he could be kind and playful. He could make a joke. Just not with her. She set the phone down and returned to the bedroom. Francis was hunched in the wheelchair staring into Ida’s face.
“I don’t like this frown,” he said. “She’s struggling too hard. Tell you what. We’re going to give her a little help-me-out. Why don’t you go get the Stuff.”
“Did the doctor—?” Kay began, but Francis waved his finger at her.
“The doctors have done enough damage.”
She stared at him a second, then went into the kitchen. She found the beaker of medication on the refrigerator shelf, brought it back, and watched as Francis poured the drug into the demitasse and picked up a silver spoon left on the nightstand.
“You might want to close the door,” he said.
“Why?”
He looked at her and Kay edged the bedroom door shut. He was right. Someone might come in. Someone might see them. But see them doing what? Coco looked up from the floor, eyes black and bright. Kay’s head throbbed, her face felt hot. She watched Francis, hoping he would say something to her, explain what they were doing. What were they doing? She was doing what she was told—she was obeying her father. It felt good to obey him, to stand beside him like this, to be his assistant. She fixed her eyes on his hands as he filled the silver spoon to the brim, bent over Ida, and tried to insert it between her lips. Ida’s lips would not part. Kay leaned closer and touched Ida’s ear with her breath. “Open,” she said, in the singsong nursery voice she had used the night before when she fed her. “Open wide. That’s good. Now close.”
A single large clear tear pooled at the corner of Ida’s eye but her lips relaxed and Francis slipped the spoon in.
“Now swallow,” Kay said. “Swallow it down.”
The tear jelled and trembled. Ida’s throat contracted and some of the medication went down. Francis pulled the spoon out, refilled it from the cup. “Oh no,” Kay said. “That’s too much.” Francis looked at her, stony. “Open,” Kay stammered. “Now close. Now swallow.”
When the cup was empty Francis handed it to her, and Kay took it with the beaker and spoon back to the kitchen. Her pulse was beating as fast as the rain on the flagstones outside. The grains of undissolved aspirin still burned in her throat and she felt a dizzy, distanced panic, as if she had stepped on a moving raft without asking first where it was going. We just gave her a help-me-out,she thought, something extra to ease the pain. If it’s too much she’ll throw it up. She put the beaker back in the refrigerator, washed the cup and spoon, dried them, and put them away. She heard Coco’s sharp bark and looked out the kitchen window to see Victor’s car pull into the driveway a length before Father Bliss’s white Cadillac. If only she hadn’t cried, Kay thought. She pressed her fists to her own eyes but they were wide open and dry.
Ida’s tears formed and reformed all morning. Not even Father Bliss could stop them. He stayed with Ida in the closed bedroom while Victor and Stacy prayed at the dining room table and Francis worked on his crossword. Kay stood at the window looking out at the rain and smoking until she could stand her uselessness no longer, then she opened the refrigerator door, blinked blindly past the beaker, and pulled out two blackened bananas and an egg. In the cupboard she found flour, bran, oil. She began to stir a muffin batter together.
Coco followed her as she moved around the kitchen, her cold nose bumping into the back of her knees. “Go bark at someone,” Kay suggested, and Coco promptly began barking at her, the yips so insistent that Kay finally had to stop and scratch her hard frizzy head until she calmed down. When Father Bliss came out of Ida’s room he asked for a glass of water and Kay watched him sip it, wondering what he would say if she told him her sins, if she confessed then and there that she had overdosed her mother.
Silent, she poured the muffin batter into a tin. Father Bliss patted his lips. “Nuts?” he asked.
“I looked,” Kay answered, “but all I could find were cocktail peanuts.”
“Those wouldn’t work,” Father Bliss agreed and Kay, comforted, said, “No.” The priest left, pausing to talk to Francis outside under the overhang; Francis was standing there watching the rain, drinking Scotch. The two men laughed. Then Father Bliss walked out to his car and Francis came back in, poured himself another Scotch, picked up a book, and settled down in the recliner.
Kay put the muffins into the oven and slipped back into Ida’s room. She hoped Ida would open her eyes and ask for something, anything, Kay would get her anything. But Ida was still unconscious and the tears were still coming. A hospice nurse arrived, read from a chart, and gave her some morphine. A technician drove up with an oxygen tank that was somehow defective and left to get another one. Howard Bernard dropped off a casserole he’d made himself, the Forrests phoned, a florist delivered a huge bunch of white roses from Glo, a young Indian doctor in a turban appeared in the driveway in the pouring rain on foot, stayed a minute, and disappeared again.
And still Ida cried. Her tears were like nothing Kay had ever seen before, they were like tears from a fairy tale, mermaid eggs, each one perfectly oval, clear, gelatinous, and as she knelt by her mother’s bed dabbing each one up with a tissue, another one formed. I could stay here forever, Kay thought. This could be my job. This could be the one job I am meant to do and can do well. She bent her head praying she could continue to do this job well forever. I still haven’t said what I wanted to say, she thought. I still haven’t said, Thank you. I still haven’t said, I love you, really love you. Oh Mother! I really love you! But before she could lean close and frame the words out loud Ida gave a loud ga
sp and her mouth hissed open like a fighting cat’s, pale lips tight over small sharp teeth. The technician stopped fiddling with the new oxygen machine and he and the nurse hurried to the bed.
“Get everyone in here,” they said.
They all stood at the far end of Ida’s bed. Stacy swayed, humming to herself, holding one of Victor’s hands and one of Kay’s. Neal was somehow there—when had he arrived?—holding the other. Neal’s touch was warm and solid, and Kay was glad for its human weight, but when she glanced up and saw Neal’s eyes still averted she frowned and fought the pull to sink against his shoulder. She looked at Francis. He was standing apart, his hands folded, his eyes on Ida. We could not, Kay told herself, have given Mom too much; we would never do such a thing; we gave her just enough to help with the pain; not enough to even do that, for look at her: still crying, still in pain. Ida’s breathing was terrible, loud and harsh as a stalled car. “Brain stem breathing,” the hospice nurse explained. “It should end soon.”
But it didn’t. Breath after breath: it hurt to hear it. Mom’s still fighting this, Kay thought. Mom’s still suffering, and we’re still standing around, like we always have, doing nothing. She is dying right in front of us and we’re letting her, and she’s dragging it out. Milking the moment. Everyone wants to get this over with, Kay thought, but her.
She dropped her eyes, paralyzed with love and pity and a stone-hard intense irritation. Let go, she thought. Give up. Just die. She swallowed hard, the smell of scorched sugar suddenly making her eyes sting. The muffins! She released Neal’s and Stacy’s hands and backed on tiptoe out of the bedroom. The kitchen swirled with charcoal-colored fumes and as she pulled the blackened tin out with a tea towel, burning her wrist, the smoke alarm over the door went off and Coco began to howl. Before Kay could climb up on the footstool to dismantle the alarm she heard the nurse call her name from the bedroom and, clutching the screwdriver, she hurried back in.
