So maybe some very impossible requests are being granted.
Perhaps. Yes. And I’ve been thinking. What you said about how one keeps going.
Yes?
A dear friend of mine just died.
Yes, I heard. I’m sorry.
And amid the grief and the anger, I found myself feeling gratitude— gratitude that it wasn’t me. So at some level I still see death as something to be put off. It’s not that I don’t think about it—and I won’t say that on bad days I don’t plan for when things are a lot worse. But I’m not ready yet.
Well, that’s a good thing! Sarah reached over and gave me a hug before gathering her things together. I waved good-bye from the front door, then closed it, and sat down to examine my present. What a delightful prize. It will get the place of honor in the living room, on the mantel, next to the icon.
Really, I feel utterly blessed today.
No, it’s not yet time. Not yet.
We’re in front of the television, which seems to be our habit in the evening. This program is easy to follow. I don’t need to try to hold anything in my head for too long. A game show, where a motley congregation of contestants possesses a seemingly unlimited knowledge of trivia.
The blond woman loves it. She says things like He’s my favorite and I can’t believe she didn’t make it to the next round. I am having trouble concentrating. I try to do what a new sign in the kitchen commands me: Live in the moment. I have to. There is no other way for me, not anymore. But a young man wearing excessive eyeliner is jumping up and down after demonstrating his superior knowledge of the mating habits of penguins. Do I really want to be in this moment? I get up to leave the room just as the phone rings. I turn back and pick it up.
Mom, it’s Fiona.
Who?
Fiona. Your daughter. Can I speak to Magdalena? The nice lady who lives with you?
I hand over the receiver, but I don’t leave the room. Conversations are being had about me. Decisions being made.
The blond woman says little but agrees to whatever the person on the phone says. Yes. Okay. Sure. Yes, we’ll be there. She hangs up.
And what was that all about? Where will we be?
I am glad to have something to hold on to. Delighted to be able to raise my voice and release this tension.
Calm down, Jennifer. It’s no big deal. The police have some more questions. They’ve asked you to come back to the station tomorrow. Fiona will be there. And your lawyer—remember her?
Why would I need to talk to the police?
About Amanda.
What’s Amanda done wrong?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The reverse. The police are trying to find out who killed her.
Lots of people would like to.
The blond woman gives a little snort of laughter. Yes. That’s what I told them. And then wished I hadn’t, because they started asking me a lot of questions.
Now a young woman with implausibly red hair is stumped over a question related to seventies pop music. The TV audience is going wild.
Why would you say that? What do you know about Amanda?
I’ve been here eight months. That’s given me plenty of chances to observe.
Like what?
She always treated you with respect. Deference, even. Even when you were at your dottiest. She never talked down. Always spoke to you as though you were her equal. Or superior. And for the most part, you rose to the occasion. No episodes around her.
That all sounds commendable. What’s there not to like?
It had its reverse side. She didn’t cut you any slack. She’d grow impatient at answering the same questions over and over, and simply stopped answering after a while. Once I heard her say, That was all long ago and far away, in a tone of voice that meant the subject was closed.
You make it sound cruel.
Well, for you a lot of things have been reopened. Old questions, old wounds, old joys and sorrows. It’s like going into the basement and finding all the old boxes of stuff you’d meant to give to Goodwill open and overflowing. Things you thought you’d put away for good. Now you have to go through everything again. And again. Like yesterday. You wanted me to run to the drugstore to get you some tampons. You said it was an emergency.
Perhaps it was.
Jennifer, you’re sixty-five years old.
Oh. Yes.
Anyway, Amanda did or said something that distressed you enormously shortly before she died.
What was that?
I don’t know. I was in the den. I heard raised voices. By the time I got to the living room, it was over. At least the shouting was. But something had happened between the two of you that was still unresolved. Amanda was half out the door. She said one thing before she left.
I will not hesitate for one moment, she said. You were extremely agitated. That evening you had one of your episodes. I had to take you into the ER. You wouldn’t take your Valium. They had to inject you with something to calm you down.
I don’t remember any of this.
I know you don’t. The next morning you wanted to go over to Amanda’s—to catch up, you said, because you hadn’t seen her in a while. I pretended to call her, hung up, and told you she wasn’t home.
And I fell for it?
You did. And it turned out that the previous afternoon was the last time we saw her. She was still alive—they were able to trace her steps around town, to a meeting, to the store. But the next day she stopped taking in her Tribunes, and about a week after that Mrs. Barnes checked on her and found the body.
Did you explain all this to the police?
Yes, many times.
Why do they want to see me, then? I won’t be able to tell them anything.
They’re still trying. Ever since they got your scalpel handle and blades. Your lawyer says they’re hoping that if they ask enough, and in enough different ways, they’ll get a different response.
Didn’t someone once say that that is the embodiment of madness? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different effect?
Well, sometimes you do remember things. Surprise us all. Like the other day. Out of the blue, you asked me about my elbow—the one I landed on when I tripped on the sidewalk. That had happened a few days earlier, but you were very clear, remembered that you had examined me and determined nothing was broken or torn. One of the perks of working for a doctor—good thing, too, because my insurance is so lousy.
I don’t recall. Things come and go. For example, what is your name?
Magdalena. Look—it’s written right here. On this poster.
How long have you been here?
You hired me almost exactly eight months ago. Last October. Just before Halloween.
I love Halloween.
I know. It was the most fun I’d had since my kids were small. You insisted that we both dress up. Witches. The only dignified costume for crones, you said. You decorated the house spectacularly. You bought the kind of candy that kids fight over and won’t trade. And you insisted on opening the door yourself and making a fuss over the costumes. You really surprised me. The first of many surprises.
Yes, Halloween excites me. That whole time of year, autumn, I find exhilarating. A passionate season. The others are so bland. In the fall, you see opportunities for change. Real change. Possibilities present themselves. None of the renewal and redemption clichés of spring. No. Something darker and more primal and more important than that.
You paced that night until three AM. You certainly were excited. But not in a bad way. It was the first time I saw you do that. Back and forth, all night. I fell asleep in my chair in the living room. You ended up on the couch. Both of us still in our witch costumes.
I always liked dressing up. Giving out the candy. Assuming my proper guise for a night.
Yes, your costume suited you. The white pancake makeup contrasting with the dark-ringed eyes, the long gray-black wig flowing over your shoulders. The fake mole to the right of your mouth drawing attentio
n to those high cheekbones. A peculiar sort of Sleeping Beauty, but nevertheless a beauty. You opened your eyes to find me studying you. Wicked debauchery, you whispered.
Mark’s in a good mood. It doesn’t make this mother’s heart glad. It makes it suspicious. The euphoria. The fast-talking wit. The notable appreciation of the inferior egg salad sandwich Magdalena presented as our lunch. His inability to recognize that the living room curtains are the same shade of glorious red they’ve always been. His wanting a heart-to-heart.
How are you, Mom?
How much do you want? I ask.
He doesn’t hesitate. As much as you can give me.
Is it that bad?
Worse.
You’re being direct for once. Is it because you’re high?
Possibly. I find you hard to take under any other condition.
You’ll have to ask your sister.
What?
I don’t even have a checkbook anymore. Even when I want one. Fiona takes care of everything.
But certainly you can write one check.
I don’t have even one to write. Fiona was very thorough.
But you wrote me a check six months ago.
Yes. I found an old checkbook in my bureau. And as soon as it cleared, Fiona went through all my drawers and confiscated it.
The bitch.
A chip off the old block.
You said it.
He taps his fingers on the table in an almost recognizable rhythm. Dahdah-dah day-day-dah dah-DAH-dah-dahdah.
You’re sharp today.
Yes.
Interesting how it comes and goes.
Interesting isn’t the word I’d use.
We are in the den because the cleaners are here, and they’ve chased us out of the living room and the kitchen, our usual haunts, and we can hear the approaching roar of the vacuum, the rattle of mops and pails as they work their way toward this final room.
I’m curious. Will you even remember this conversation tomorrow? Mark is standing by the television, idly clicking through James’s DVD collection of classic movies. There wasn’t a noir film that James didn’t know by heart.
I may. I may not. It all depends, I say. I watch as Mark pulls out Du rififichez les hommes, rejects it in favor of White Heat.
So I shouldn’t say anything I might regret? He flips open the plastic case, takes out the silver disk, places his finger in the center hole, and spins it around.
It depends on the source of regret. Would you regret it because it was a cruel or otherwise despicable thing to say, or because I would remember you saying it? I ask.
Probably the former. I tend not to have regrets unless there are repercussions. He smiles at this, puts down the DVD on top of the television, and takes a seat opposite me. His jitters seem to be subsiding. How about you? he asks. Any regrets? Although his tone is derisive, I get the feeling he really wants to know.
I was the opposite, I say. I never let the possibility of repercussions influence any decisions I made.
What about your medical decisions? Weren’t you concerned that decisions you made could have certain effects? Like, for instance . . . death? His dark face is exaggeratedly solemn. He is waiting to catch me out in something. I won’t let him.
Those are outcomes. Outcomes are different from repercussions.
I would have thought they were synonyms, he says.
There are nuances, I say. I am warming to the discussion. Anything is better than another endless chat about nothing over tea with Magdalena. A repercussion has the nuance of being punishing, I say. An outcome is simply a result. You do something, and you have an outcome. An output for an input.
And were you always pleased with the . . . outputs . . . of your actions?
I was not pleased with the outcomes of some of my surgeries, certainly —a small percentage, but nevertheless they existed. But I made the best decisions under the circumstances. Those were not mistakes. They were decisions that had outcomes.
Mark is silent for a moment. You’re on top of your game, certainly, he says. No one could pull a sly one on you today.
That actually makes me smile. He sounds about ten, just having been caught smoking cigarettes with Jimmy Petersen behind the Jewel.
Why? I ask. Did you hope to?
He doesn’t answer, instead changing the subject.
Did Amanda talk to you?
About what? Oh. Did you hit her up, too?
Well, I’d gotten a nice check from you. It would have been tasteless to approach you again so soon.
And what did she say?
So, she didn’t tell you? Odd. I would have thought that was the first thing she’d do.
No. She liked to keep her own counsel. So what did she say?
She laughed at me. Told me to stuff it up my nose.
That sounds like Amanda.
It was infuriating. I could have killed her. Mark fidgets in his chair. Oh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.
Said what?
You know. He looks at me. Or maybe you don’t. Never mind.
We sit in silence for a moment. When Mark speaks again, his voice is again one of a small boy.
You haven’t asked how I’m doing, he says. How my work is, how my love life is.
I get to my feet. The cleaning crew is coming closer, they’ll be here in a few minutes and we’ll have to move. I am glad. I am annoyed with the conversation.
I assumed that if you had something to tell me, you would, I say. You’re not a child anymore. Use your words.
Mark stands up, too, and unexpectedly he is laughing. I should have known you wouldn’t fall for that, he says. But it was worth a try.
I’ve never been susceptible to emotional blackmail before, I say. And despite my diseased brain, I have no intention of becoming so now.
Well, let me use my words, as you suggest, and give you a synopsis of my current affairs, Mark says. Tall, dark, handsome twenty-nine-year-old lawyer, with a bit of a substance-abuse problem, looking for love and money in what are apparently all the wrong places. His voice is mocking, but there is a slight sag to his shoulders. I notice his clothes are hanging loosely on his frame, that his jacket cuffs reach too far down over his wrists and that his belt is cinched tight to keep his trousers around his too-slender waist.
I find myself reaching out, and almost touch his right cheek, when he flinches, pulls away.
I like you more the other way, he says. It suits you better. He gestures to the cleaners, who are at the threshold to the den, waiting for permission to enter. Thus ends another visit to dear old Mom’s, he says, adding, as he leaves the room, and to use another ironically appropriate expression, let’s forget this conversation ever took place.
From my notebook. December 15, 2008. Amanda’s name written on top of the page.
Jennifer:
Today we decided to walk to our favorite Middle Eastern take-out place on Lincoln, the one with the sublime hummus, then over to the park for a picnic. Yes, it was that warm! I made you wear your gloves and a hat, because you are still struggling with that cough. Magdalena fussed a bit, but we overruled her. You were clearly itching to get out.
You kept saying how you wished James and Peter could come along. I was unclear at first about why you thought they were missing, and it turned out you attributed their absence to that old man-excuse—work. No matter that Peter had retired more than a decade ago, and James would have retired last year if he’d lived.
Funny how at the end of life things accelerate at a pace beyond our ability to process them. I kept waking up at six to prep for class for three years after I retired. I still can’t believe I haven’t been in a classroom for a dozen years, haven’t had to face a tearful twelve-year-old or an angry parent for that long. It seems like just yesterday. How we used to mock our parents and grandparents for using that phrase. And for you it doesn’t seem like yesterday, but today. Now.
Anyway, we bought our hummus and baba ghanoush and walked slowly over to the
park. We found an empty bench near the zoo. A glorious day. The park bursting with joggers, babies, and dogs.
One ambitious young father had an infant strapped to his back, a dog leash wound around his belt, and was helping his four-year-old fly a kite. You were not as conscious of your state as I’ve seen you on other occasions. You didn’t seem to grasp that you were impaired. Interesting how that self-knowledge comes and goes. But you were operating at a high-enough level for it not to be a problem that day.
Perhaps for that reason, you wanted to dwell in the past. I had an inkling—just an inkling—of how it must feel when you asked, Do I use this? and held up a plastic spoon with the plastic container of tabbouleh.
We talked about Peter and James, nothing much, did our usual complaining about their foibles. What women do when they’re bored and have nothing to say really but like the sound of their voices responding to each other. First me, then you, then me again. As satisfying as a good tennis volley.
For once I didn’t set you right. I usually won’t indulge you—it’s the thing I really argue with Fiona about—but I had to keep correcting myself when I slipped into past tense. Yes, James was a bit of a dandy. No, Peter wasn’t that hard to live with.
One moment was out of step with the rest of the lazy good feeling of the day. At some point one of the animals in the zoo let out a cry. I don’t know what it was—an elephant? A big cat? It was really more of a mournful wail, over quickly, but you got upset.
Give that child back her blanket! you yelled loudly, startling everyone around us.
You certainly startled me, and I dropped my soft drink and soaked my pants. You seemed to have forgotten your outburst as soon as it was out of your mouth. I was reminded of what Magdalena says about how you can change so suddenly. It’s not something I had ever seen before. You are either in a slightly better or slightly worse state.
I know there have been what everyone refers to as episodes. I tell Magdalena and Fiona to call me when they need help. So far they haven’t. I think there’s some sense of possessiveness, some rivalry there.
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