Shore Lights

by Barbara Bretton

  “This is Dr. Lipman from Good Samaritan Hospital. I’m calling to speak with”—the sound of rustling papers—“Aidan O’Malley.”

  “Speaking. How’s my grandmother?”

  “That’s why I’m calling, Mr. O’Malley. I’m afraid the news isn’t good.”

  While they were preparing Irene for an MRI, she had slipped unexpectedly into unconsciousness.

  “Are you saying she’s in a coma?”

  “‘Coma’ has certain connotations I’m not willing to embrace yet,” said Dr. Lipman. “At the moment she is unconscious and unresponsive, but her vital signs are rock solid.”

  “Sounds like a coma to me,” Aidan said.

  Silence from Dr. Lipman.

  “Is she going to stay at Good Sam or are you sending her back home to Shore View?”

  “That’s why I’m calling, Mr. O’Malley. You realize, I’m sure, that your grandmother signed a Living Will form some time back and is DNR.”

  “‘Do not resuscitate,’” Aidan said. “I know.”

  “Since she seems to be in good health in other ways and there is little we would be permitted to do to help her if she were not, I feel she should stay with us overnight and then, weather permitting, be returned to Shore View sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  Lipman said there was no indication whatsoever of any broken bones, but he would perform an MRI on Irene if Aidan insisted.

  “No,” said Aidan. “All I want is that you make sure she’s not in any pain.”

  “I assure you she isn’t,” the doctor said.

  “How would you know for sure?” Aidan persisted. “She’s unconscious.”

  Lipman went on about physiologic responses and what they represented, but Aidan was no longer listening.

  “How long do you think she’ll be unconscious?” he interrupted.

  Another long silence from the good doctor. “There is no way I can predict that for you, Mr. O’Malley. She may be coming out of it while we’re speaking or she may—”

  “Never come out of it.”

  “At her age, that’s a distinct possibility.”

  They were talking about the end of a person’s life and it sounded abstract and clinical. Devoid of anything resembling human emotion.

  Aidan hung up the phone and went into the storage room to grab what he needed to repair the window. No doubt about it: one strange mother of a day.

  KELLY WASN’T SURE why she burst into tears after supper when Aunt Claire told her about Grandma Irene. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know about the accident. Her father had called her on her cell phone during lunch and told her what had happened, about the fall and the trip to the hospital and the fact that she was now unconscious.

  “Grandma Irene is over one hundred years old,” he had reminded her gently. “We shouldn’t be surprised if—”

  “I know,” she had said, trying not to cry. “I’m prepared.”

  But she wasn’t prepared at all. The second Claire told her about Grandma Irene being unconscious, it was like all the sadness and fear she had contained inside her heart came flooding out and she couldn’t stop it. Good thing Billy Jr. was in the family room watching one of those crocodile-hunter shows he loved. His teasing would be more than she could handle.

  “I’m sorry,” she kept saying over and over again like a parrot. “I’m really, really sorry.” And then she would start blubbering all over again.

  Aunt Claire had never made any secret of how she felt about Grandma Irene. Claire hadn’t even allowed Grandma to attend Uncle Billy’s funeral, which had caused a big rift in what was left of the family. Kelly’s father was still in Intensive Care at the time and didn’t know what was going on, but the fighting and name-calling had been pretty awful. She didn’t think she would ever forget the sight of Claire, eyes nearly swollen shut from crying, as she stood on the church steps and refused to let the health-care aide wheel Irene into the chapel.

  “You didn’t give a rat’s ass about him when he was alive,” Claire had roared at the old woman, “and I’ll be damned if I let you pretend you care now that he’s dead!”

  But Claire wasn’t roaring at anyone right now. She placed her hand on Kelly’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze.

  “PMS,” Claire said with a nod of her head. “I recognize the signs.”

  Kelly managed a smile. “You think?”

  “Is your period due next week?”

  “Yeah, actually it is.”

  “And you’re weepy and tired and thinking about chocolate day and night?”

  She laughed. “Oh, definitely!”

  Claire cut them each a humongous slice of chocolate cake with thick dark chocolate frosting. “Coffee, tea, or milk?”

  “Milk,” Kelly said. “Definitely milk with chocolate cake.”

  “Smart girl.”

  Claire placed the container down on the kitchen table, then pulled two clean glasses from the dishwasher.

  “So,” she said in that fake kind of cheerful voice parents liked to use when they were about to nail you to the wall, “I saw you and Seth the other afternoon.”

  Kelly, whose mouth was filled with cake, shrugged. Please, God, one bolt of lightning . . . a small earthquake . . . anything!

  “It was around two-ish. I was on the corner waiting for Billy Jr.’s school bus.” Claire took a bite of cake and chewed it quickly. “You were in his brother’s Honda.”

  Oh, great. She loved her aunt, but really. Why couldn’t Claire worry about her own kids and leave her alone?

  “We had to take some pictures out at the lake for the yearbook.”

  “Before school ended.”

  “They canceled last period.”

  “I didn’t know you were a photographer.”

  “Yes, you did,” Kelly said. If there wasn’t eight feet of snow out there, she would jump into the Tercel and take her chances. “Remember you gave me Uncle Billy’s old Pentax.”

  Claire looked down at her hands for a second. Kelly hated sometimes even mentioning Billy’s name because it seemed to hurt Claire so much to remember.

  “Your father already asked you about this, didn’t he?”

  Kelly nodded. “He said you told him that you saw us.”

  “I’m not trying to pry into your life, Kel, but I’ve seen what happens when a girl makes mistakes. I don’t want what happened to Kathleen to happen to you.”

  “I don’t do drugs, Aunt Claire.” And I don’t sleep around. There’s only Seth.

  “I know you don’t and I never said you did. It’s just that it’s so easy for a girl—what I’m trying to say is all it takes is one mistake, one tiny little slip, and your whole life is changed forever.”

  Kelly counted to three before she spoke, the way Grandma Laura had taught her when she was a little girl. “I’m going to Columbia in the fall,” she said. “Nothing can change that.”

  “Life can change all of your plans,” Claire said. “You have to be careful.”

  Kelly felt the noose around her neck drawing tighter. Did Claire actually suspect something or was this just that freaky maternal radar system at work?

  “I’m always careful,” she said. “You know that.”

  “I hope so, honey.” Claire finished off the last of her slice of cake. “You have a wonderful future ahead of you. I’d hate to see you lose out.”

  “I won’t lose out,” she said in a confident tone of voice. Much more confident than she was actually feeling. “You’ll see.”

  “I hope so.” Claire sounded dubious, but it was clear she wanted to believe Kelly was right.

  “I will,” Kelly promised. “You can count on it.”

  Claire’s face lit up with a gigantic smile.

  “Here,” she said. “Have another piece of cake.”

  GINA AND THE kids left at a little after five. Rose and Lucy invited them to stay for supper, but Gina said if they didn’t hit the road that second, the Candlelight would have more overnight guests than they had
bargained on. Kisses all around and they were gone.

  “What are the paying guests up to?” Maddy asked as Lucy poured coffee for her and Rose. “They’re awfully quiet in there, aren’t they?”

  “They’re napping,” Lucy said.

  “Poor dears.” Rose drizzled a tiny bit of sugar into her cup. “It won’t be long before you and I are dozing our afternoons away in front of the fire, too, Lucia.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Lucy said with a devilish smile. “They’re napping . . . upstairs.”

  Maddy sighed as she put cake plates and cups into the dishwasher. “Whatever it is about this place, you ought to bottle it and sell it on the open market. A quartet of octogenarians has a better love life than I do!”

  Her mother and aunt laughed with her. She had been around long enough to appreciate the difference.

  “You know the old expression,” Lucy said. “If you can’t do, then teach.”

  “I know an even older expression,” Rose said dryly, “but Maddy’s still too young.”

  Maddy closed the dishwasher door with her hip. “Speaking of quiet, where’s Hannah?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I haven’t seen her since Gina left.”

  Rose thought for a second. “I think I saw her heading down the hallway a few minutes ago.”

  “Please don’t tell me she was heading for the office,” Maddy pleaded.

  “Actually I think that’s exactly where she was going.”

  Maddy was out of there in a flash. She sprinted down the hallway, praying she wouldn’t be too late. If only she had taken that extra second to stow the samovar back in Rose’s closet. What kind of idiot mother would think a shopping bag stuffed under her desk was any kind of hiding place for a Christmas present? You would think she had no experience being a kid. When she was Hannah’s age, she would have thrown herself into a Dumpster if she thought that was where Rose had hidden the latest Barbie. Her childhood Decembers were a blur of Advent calendars, Christmas carols, and a systematic search of every closet, drawer, cubbyhole, and cupboard within reach.

  She burst into the office on a wave of crazed maternal holiday adrenaline only to find her offspring curled up with Priscilla on the window seat. They were watching the snow swirl down from the night sky, drifting into soft pillows against the deck railing out back. With the porch lights on, the snow dazzled like falling diamonds.

  Maddy cast a quick look under the desk and almost wept with relief. The shopping bag was still under there, and it didn’t look as if it had been disturbed. She wanted to fling herself on the bag as if it were a live hand grenade, covering it with her body so Hannah wouldn’t find the samovar. Of course, there was just the slightest chance that such behavior might pique her daughter’s curiosity, so she opted for the casual, more nonchalant approach.

  Priscilla yipped happily when she saw Maddy, and Maddy couldn’t help but grin at the wriggling puppy who leaped from Hannah’s arms and pranced her way.

  “You brushed her!” Maddy said as she scooped up Priscilla and sat down next to Hannah on the window seat. “Look how pretty she looks!”

  Hannah nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off the shimmering snow.

  “You even fixed her ribbon.”

  Hannah nodded again.

  She placed Priscilla down on the floor, much to the poodle’s indignation.

  “Time to wash your hands for supper,” Maddy said, standing up. “Why don’t you go take care of that and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  “Already did it,” Hannah said, holding her hands up in front of her.

  “Oh, no,” Maddy said, laughing. “You were up to your elbows in puppy dog. Off to the bathroom with you, young lady.”

  “You were up to your elbows, too,” Hannah said.

  “And I’m going to wash my hands, too.” Maddy stole another glance at the shopping bag tucked in the kneehole of her desk. “I just want to do one thing first.”

  “I can help.”

  What on earth was going on here? The way Hannah was acting, you would think the 9-by-12-foot office was an offshoot of Disney World.

  “Wash your hands,” Maddy repeated. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen before Grandma Rose serves your favorite steak soup.”

  “I don’t like that soup.”

  “Sure you do. Remember how Grandma Rose served it in your very own little loaf of bread?”

  “It’s stupid soup,” Hannah said.

  “Well, let’s keep that our secret, Hannah, because Grandma Rose and Aunt Lucy worked very hard to make it for us, and we don’t want to make them feel bad.”

  Hannah didn’t look particularly thrilled, and, maybe it was Maddy’s nerves, but it seemed her daughter cast a longing glance toward the general area of the desk.

  “Scoot,” she said as Priscilla wove between her ankles. “Last one there is a rotten egg.”

  Hannah finally left the room, but her entire demeanor screamed that she was only doing it because she was four and Maddy was thirty-two.

  The second Hannah disappeared down the hall, Maddy leaped on the shopping bag and yanked it from its hiding place. She had maybe three or four minutes to race the samovar upstairs to the safety of Rose’s closet before the best Christmas secret of all time was ruined. She tiptoed past the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar, then took the back steps two at a time. Why on earth did they have to have hallways the length of your average bowling alley? Whatever happened to the cramped and crowded Victorian houses Steve and Norm liked to prowl around in on This Old House?

  She flicked on the switch, flooding Rose’s room with soft pink light. The huge closet was set between the bedroom itself and the small dressing room Rose had had installed when she remade Grandma Fay’s boardinghouse into the Candlelight. Every aspect of the room was breath-takingly lovely, but Maddy didn’t have time to waste admiring the antique quilt on the quilt stand or the four-poster bed or the smell of Chanel No. 5 that wafted from the closet the second she opened the door.

  She even tried not to notice the fact that her mother’s closet showed a greater sense of organization than Maddy’s entire life, but it wasn’t easy. She would have had to rent a backhoe to shovel through her own closet to make room for the shopping bag. All she had to do in Rose’s closet was gently move aside a long silk robe hanging from a padded hanger and slide the bag into—

  “Mommy, why are you in Grandma’s closet?”

  Busted.

  Chapter Twenty

  “TELL ME YOU’RE joking, Madelyn,” Rose whispered as they stacked the guests’ dirty dishes near the pantry. “She didn’t!”

  “She did,” Maddy said. “There I was with my butt sticking out of the closet, and she’s there watching from the doorway. I swear I almost needed CPR.”

  “Did she see the—”

  “Shh!” Maddy hissed. “Don’t say it! Don’t even think it!”

  “But did she—”

  “No—thank God a million times—she didn’t. But it was close.”

  “Where did you put it?”

  “Same place it was before, hidden by that gorgeous teal silk robe.”

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  “Scrumptious. A present?”

  Rose laughed. “You can put your eyeballs back in your head, miss. A present from me to me.”

  Maddy hesitated, then decided what the heck. “Nobody tall and handsome on the horizon?”

  Rose shook her head. “Not unless he shows up at the Candlelight with an AmEx in one hand and a reservation in the other.”

  A wave of sadness washed over Maddy. When had those random strands of silver, impervious to Clairol, first appeared in her mother’s impeccably coiffed hair? Were they new arrivals or was Maddy simply looking at her for the first time? Rose was a beautiful woman but she wasn’t immortal. There were lines at the outer corners of her eyes, a faint downward pulling of her mouth. Small things when taken separately, but together they sent a faint chill up Maddy’s spine. Her mother
was growing old, and to Maddy it seemed that it happened overnight.

  “She’s wonderful with her.” Rose inclined her head toward the kitchen where Lucy and Hannah were finishing their supper. The sound of Lucy’s robust laugh made both women smile.

  “She would have been a wonderful mother,” Maddy said, leaning against the doorjamb. “It’s a shame things didn’t work out that way for her.”

  Rose adjusted the ties on her apron while she watched her sister and granddaughter playfully vie for a piece of buttered homemade rye bread. “Life doesn’t always work out the way we’d like it to.”

  “Especially if you’re a DiFalco,” Maddy said. “Just once I’d like to see a DiFalco woman waltz off with Mr. Right.”

  “Oh, we’ve found our share of Mr. Rights,” Rose said. “We just can’t seem to figure out how to hold on to them.”

  “You’ve all done pretty well without a long-term liaison,” Maddy said. “Maybe being alone isn’t such a bad thing.”

  Rose said nothing, which, of course, spoke volumes. Was it possible her mother longed for more than she had? Before tonight Maddy wouldn’t have believed it could be true, but standing there in the warm pantry with the snow and wind beating against the house and the ocean roaring beyond the windows, anything seemed possible. Maybe it was an illusion, this feeling of closeness Maddy was experiencing, but she wished it never had to end.

  “Are you lonely?” She had never asked her mother a question like that. It would never have occurred to her that Rose would allow herself to feel lonely.

  Rose looked at her. “Sometimes.”

  “Do you ever wish—”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to ask my question.”

  “I didn’t need to. I know what it was.”

  “Daddy.”

  Rose nodded. “Like I said, sometimes.”

  Maddy’s heart seemed to expand, crowding her lungs until she could barely draw in a full breath.

  “Look how beautiful Hannah looks,” Rose said after a moment.

  “I wish I could make things perfect for her,” Maddy whispered. “I wish I could make it all better.”

  “We all wish that, honey,” said Rose. “Every single one of us, starting with Eve.”