Crazy in Love

by Luanne Rice

  “She loved having us all together—I think she nearly forgot Honora.”

  “Thank heavens Honora has decided to keep Pem at home,” Clare said. “It’s the right decision, but it means a lot of work for you and me.”

  “We’ll have to hire a full-time nurse, so someone is always available,” I said. “Then you and I will do the rest. We have to make sure Honora isn’t stressed.”

  “Exactly.”

  Hearing voices in the living room, we joined the men and Pem. Donald put in another CD; we did a little more dancing. Although it was nearly midnight, and the little boys were yawning constantly, no one wanted the evening to end. Even Pem joined in, dancing with each of us.

  “I think Georgie and Nick want a little time alone,” Clare said finally.

  “Let’s fly you to the airport tomorrow,” Donald suggested. “I think the plane’s free.”

  “That’d be great,” Nick said. “Georgie’s not supposed to drive, and I’ve been wondering how to break it to her that I don’t want her taking me to the airport.”

  The Mackens stood at the door, taking stock of their possessions, making sure they had everything they had come with. A thermos, some Sinatra CDs, the fluorescent Frisbee. The telephone rang. Everyone froze. Who could be calling at midnight? The room sounded hollow as the phone rang and rang. Finally Nick answered. He said a few words and the color drained from his face. We all knew before he spoke.

  “She just died,” he said.

  “WE HAVE TO GET to the hospital,” I said, and no one argued with me. My sister and her husband, my husband and I went mad, hustling Pem and the children, who understood nothing, into the car. “Hurry up!” I said to Pem, who blocked the kitchen door.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “To the hospital,” I said, and that word terrorized her into silence and submission.

  “It’s a mistake—it must be a mistake,” Clare said.

  We filled Honora’s station wagon, me and Nick in front, Pem and the small boys sleeping in back, Clare and Donald huddled together in the way back. Nick drove at breakneck speed. We wanted to confront Honora’s doctor, the night nurse, anyone in charge. We all hoped that we would arrive to discover they had revived her, that she would be sitting up in her bed, a damp cloth across her forehead, grinning broadly, saying, “Whew, that was a close call.”

  No one spoke during that ride except to tell Nick to go faster. “Come on,” Clare said, under her breath.

  “He’s going as fast as he can!” I cried, waking Casey, making him whimper.

  Once I turned to look at Pem. Her head drooped. From the front seat it looked like a soft white ball, bobbing in time with the road. No one had thought to explain things to her, or perhaps no one dared. Suddenly she wakened, stared out the window at the Niantic Shell station, a familiar point of reference, and dozed again.

  I imagined Nick pulling into the hospital parking lot, stopping at the emergency room entrance. I knew the shortest route to Honora’s room: we could tear past Admitting, up the doctors’ elevator, down the West Wing to room 514. We could be standing at Honora’s bedside in six minutes. We could scream at her doctor and maybe attack him, beat our breasts and wail, or, with the grace of God, we could hug Honora and scold her for scaring us. Nick slowed down for a red light, then sped through it. At the hospital zone’s yellow flashers, he wheeled into the parking lot, tires screeching. He stopped the car beneath the emergency room’s awning, amid ambulances awash in eerie sallow light. We stared at the open door where a police officer stood talking to a couple dressed in motorcycle leather.

  Our upturned faces were green from the hospital light; beyond the awning, across the parking lot, we could see the West Wing curving out from the main building. Nick took his foot off the brake, and the car slid forward. We stopped in a dark spot away from the entrance. All of us leaned and craned for a look at the window we thought was Honora’s. Yes, that was it, fourth from the end, up five flights. Even Pem gazed in its direction, noting the darkness, the peace, of the sleeping wing. Clare began to sob, and then Donald and Nick. I felt tears sliding down my own cheeks. I reached across the cold seat for Nick’s hand. When I turned to look at Pem, I saw Clare’s arms embracing her from behind. Pem’s eyes were wide and puzzled. I hated us for what we had done to her that night.

  “Where’s your mother?” Pem asked.

  My mother is dead, I thought, but said nothing.

  “Do you think we can see her?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, I want to,” I said. “They have to let us see her.”

  Pem, Eugene, and Casey sat very still, looking bewildered. “Come on, boys,” Donald said, with a look at Clare. “I’ll tell them,” he mouthed. Holding their hands, he led his sons across the parking lot to a stone bench. Streetlight filtered through the trees; we could hear Donald’s gentle voice telling about Honora.

  “Pem,” I said, turning in my seat to hold her hands. “It’s awful—Honora died.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked sharply.

  “Because the doctor called us. He said she died of a heart attack.”

  “Oh no. Oh dear Lord. God bless Honora and Damon,” Pem said. Tears slid down her wrinkled pink cheeks. Clare held her from behind. “You poor girls,” Pem said, reaching forward to touch my cheek. “You poor girls without a mother or father.”

  “We’re orphans.” Clare wept, and the realization hit me like an icy wind.

  “I’m going in,” I said. Nick opened his door; he walked around the car to open mine.

  “Pem and I will stay here,” Clare said. She was heaving herself over the backseat to sit beside Pem. I left them there, Clare’s arm around Pem’s thin shoulders.

  The walk between our car and Honora’s hospital room seemed endless and terrifying, yet I felt calmer as it went on. Nick held my hand. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “I know,” Nick said. He left me at the elevator bank while he spoke to the security guard. The guard nodded, allowed us to pass. We took the elevator to the fifth floor and walked straight to Honora’s room. The door was closed. We stood in the corridor for a second or two, and then I pushed it open.

  Honora’s bed was empty. The sheets had been taken away; the striped mattress was clean and bare. I walked to it. I put my hand on the spot where my mother had lain. That’s where her head had rested; that’s where she propped herself up on her elbows. I ran my hand over the mattress in search of indentations, but it was smooth.

  A nurse I had often seen before stood at the door. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Did she have pain?” Nick asked.

  “It was a massive heart attack,” the nurse said, and her expression left no doubt that there had been pain. “They’ve taken her body away. I’m sorry, but you can’t see her right now.”

  Her body. “That’s all right,” I said. I felt numb.

  The nurse left, and then I noticed the clippings. The newspaper clippings about the Swift Observatory were still taped to the wall. The ones Honora had been reading when she had her first heart attack. She had been so proud. Of me. I stared at them hanging over the bare bed, and the air moved. It was a gust so strong it might have been Honora’s ghost flying by. It knocked me down. I sat hard on the floor, and I whispered her name.

  I stared at the wheels of her bed, at the cuffs of Nick’s pants. His arms came around me. “Put your head down,” he was saying. “Take deep breaths.”

  “I’m not going to faint,” I said.

  “It’s the shock of seeing her bed empty,” he said.

  “We’re never going to see her again,” I said in the smallest voice possible. We stayed there for a long time, until we remembered the rest of the family waiting in the car. Then we walked out of Honora’s hospital room, closed the door behind us, and took the elevator down.

  16

  DRIVING HOME TO BLACK HALL I WAS thinking of Pem and Honora when Honora was a child. Every year they had trav
eled to Galway, to Granddamon’s family home in Clifden. They had looked west across the Atlantic, to the spot they imagined to be Bennison Point. Honora, and Pem in her lucid days, had told me how they had held hands and promised each other they would be home soon. They had stood on the rugged coast of Connemara, thinking of their house on its rock in Connecticut. While Granddamon had smoked a pipe with his father and walked the hills with his brothers, Pem and Honora had dangled their feet in the North Atlantic, consoling each other with tales of home.

  None of us would sleep that night. In Honora’s driveway Nick and Donald each lifted a drowsy child; Clare and I stood on either side of Pem, holding her elbows. She shuffled along the stone walk, head down. Clare and I exchanged tearful glances. Both of us choked, crossing the threshold, knowing Honora would never come home again. Donald took the boys to bed. We led Pem to the sofa.

  “Maybe I’ll get some brandy,” Nick said, heading toward the kitchen.

  “Where’s your mother?” Pem asked.

  “Pem,” I said, “don’t you remember?” She put her hands over her ears, and Clare held them, easing them down. Her eyes were screwed tight. How often will we have to do this? I wondered. How often will we have to tell her Honora died?

  “Don’t you remember what happened?” I asked. My grandmother opened her eyes slowly, with caution, as though she feared seeing something perilous. They were bright and blue, and their sharpness shocked me.

  “I remember,” she said. I hugged her, and Clare wrapped her arms around us both.

  Nick pried us apart, settled me in a chair. He handed me a glass of brandy. “I can’t drink this. I’m pregnant,” I said.

  “Just a sip,” he said.

  I obliged because I thought I needed medicine. Pem downed her glass, then reached for mine. Before I could stop her she had swallowed it. “Let her,” Clare said, watching me lurch. “We all need a good anesthetic.”

  Donald came into the room. “They want to see you,” he said to Clare.

  “Oh, I’ve dreaded telling them about death,” Clare said.

  “You don’t really have to. They just want to see that you’re all right,” Donald said. He sprawled on the floor, his head on a big pillow. Nick passed him a glass.

  “How did—” I began.

  “They took it fine. I told them Honora had gone to heaven, that they would see her there someday. They can’t understand that she won’t be coming home from the hospital, but they accept it. Isn’t that weird? Just because I’m their father, they believe me when I tell them something as bizarre as that.”

  “I know. Who can believe Honora won’t be coming back here?” Nick asked. The room was full of her: her plaid blanket, the radio to which she listened daily for weather forecasts, the pictures she had hung, the rug she had hooked while pregnant with Clare. Pem held her head in one hand. Honora’s spot on the sofa was vacant, and I stared at it, trying to conjure my mother. I saw her fingers curling elegantly around the brandy snifter; she was sitting on her feet to keep them warm. She was smiling her square smile, delighted we all were still in her living room at two in the morning. Only Pem troubled her. I saw that smile disappear when she looked across the sofa at Pem.

  “They are such troupers,” Clare said, rejoining us, shaking her head. “They just said, ‘You must be sad, Mommy.’ ” The braveness of her boys made her strong. She sat beside Donald on the floor, her spine straight, her eyes dry.

  “What about . . . a funeral?” Donald asked.

  In one swift motion Pem unfolded herself, grabbed Donald’s glass, and downed his brandy.

  “Pem!” we all said, but she had already withdrawn, head in hand, eyes closed.

  “Mother would want lovely music,” Clare said. “She loves a lot of horns.”

  “She loves ‘Ave Maria’ when it’s sung well,” I said.

  “She loves music in general,” Nick said. “Did she ever play an instrument?”

  “She took flute lessons when she was a little girl,” I said. “Didn’t she, Clare?”

  Clare nodded, sniffling. “What do you do to plan a funeral? How do we let everyone know?”

  “Well, we’ll have to call a few people,” Nick said. “And there will have to be a notice in the paper.”

  “Honora would want a wonderful obituary,” I said, my throat so tight it hurt. “She loved being written about.”

  “I volunteer to write it,” Donald said. “That is, unless you girls—”

  “No, you write it,” I said, touched that he would want to.

  “Put in a lot about the family,” Clare said. “About how much she loved us. Everyone thinks of her as a scientist and an actress, but you know—she spent all her time thinking about the family. Bossing us around and—loving us.”

  “Telling us what to do and how to feel,” I said. “Honora: she always knew best. God, I can’t believe this.” I knew I was going to vomit. I rose, unsteadily, and walked toward the bathroom. Nick came to my side. Without speaking we left the room. The bathroom tile felt cold beneath my bare feet, and Nick held my hair while I was sick. Then he handed me a glass of water.

  “I can’t stand it,” I said. “I can’t believe Honora just died.”

  “Let’s go to bed,” he said.

  “I’m not tired. I wish I was unconscious. I’d take a sleeping pill except—”

  “The baby,” Nick said, nodding. “I’m going to call your doctor and ask if it’s okay.”

  “Nick, it’s two in the morning.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I looked at him, tall and dark and tired; I stared into his black eyes and beyond, at his back reflected in the bathroom mirror. Then I remembered London and his big tender offer. “London,” I said, horrified. “You have to leave for London tonight.”

  Nick laughed. His eyes softened, and suddenly he looked as relaxed as a man on a picnic. “Of course I’m not going back to London tonight,” he said.

  But you’ll miss your moment of glory, I thought. Jean will get all the credit. How will this affect your chances at the firm? But all I could do was rest my cheek against his chest and cry with relief.

  “Did you really think I would leave you now?” he whispered. “I loved Honora too. Can you imagine I would just go back to work?”

  A commotion jolted us apart. Breaking glass and a loud bang sounded in the living room. We ran toward it, discovered Donald and Clare pulling Pem off the floor.

  “She was reaching for Nick’s glass,” Clare explained. I leaned close to Pem, and she weaved, regarding me with liquid eyes.

  “She’s drunk,” Donald said, sounding apologetic.

  Donald and Nick hoisted Pem into their arms, carried her up to her bedroom.

  “Up the golden stairs,” Pem said.

  They left me and Clare to get her undressed. She sprawled across the bed. Clare struggled to pull the dress over Pem’s head while I untied her shoes. Her feet smelled damp. Clare made no progress. We reached under her dress to grab her arms, trying to pull them out of the sleeves.

  “Let her sleep in her clothes,” Clare suggested.

  “We can’t,” I said. “I let her sleep in her dress once before, and she woke up confused, thinking it was daytime and she was just taking an afternoon nap. She refused to let me get back to sleep.”

  “Georgie, she’s dead drunk. She’ll sleep till noon.”

  “We have to get her into her nightgown.”

  “Oh, God,” Clare said.

  I’m not sure why it was so important that Pem was properly clad that night. Maybe I wanted her to have dignity on the night my mother died. Maybe dressing Pem, like driving to the hospital, gave form to chaos. It comforted me to wrestle with my grandmother, knowing that if I could free her arms, I could pull the dress over her head. We shook her like a rag doll.

  Finally she was naked. “Jesus,” Clare said softly, gazing at Pem’s stringy body, the way I had when I had come upon Honora bathing her. I pulled a pink flannel nightgown from the top drawer. Wh
ile I was sliding it over her head, Pem opened her eyes. She looked happy to see me.

  “Hi, Pem,” I said.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace!” she exclaimed.

  “Want to say your prayers?” I asked.

  “Hail, Mary!” she said again.

  “She thinks you’re the Virgin Mary,” Clare said softly, stupified.

  “Holy Virgin, have mercy on my soul,” Pem said.

  “It’s me—it’s Georgie,” I said.

  Pem’s eyes burned with fierce joy. She gripped my hand tightly. “Have mercy on me and all us sinners,” she said.

  Thinking it would be cruel to do otherwise, I sat beside her on her bed. The lamplight was dim and pink. “Sleep tight, my child,” I said.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” she said, staring at me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It has been four weeks since my last confession, these are my sins,” she said. “I lied, I stole, I took the name of the Lord in vain.”

  “Georgie,” Clare said nervously, uncomfortable with me hearing our grandmother’s confession. But I was riveted in my role.

  “I absolve you of your sins, my child,” I said.

  “Thank you, Mary,” Pem said, closing her eyes. “Take care of Honora, who has gone to heaven.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  THE FUNERAL WAS IN the white chapel where Nick and I, Clare and Donald, and Honora and my father had been married. Standing in the middle of Black Hall, surrounded by waves of golden marsh grass, the chapel gleamed in the sun. We filed into the cool, dark chapel and we sat in the front row. Nick and Donald along with some of our neighbors carried in her coffin, plain oak. She’s in there, I thought. I never did see my mother dead; she hadn’t liked the idea of wakes. The priest, Father Clarke, walked to the altar. He looked past our family, beyond the congregation, out the open doors in the back of the church. I imagined he was speaking directly to the Holy Spirit, bypassing the rest of us. Pem stared at the coffin. Once I looked over my shoulder and saw that the church was packed. There were Dr. Orion, Dr. Metcalf, Dr. Hawkins, and others from Woods Hole, directors of the TV stations in New Bedford and New Haven, some Bennison cousins from Providence, the sons and daughters of the great-aunts and -uncles, clusters of young people I didn’t know. Fans of Weather Woman? The obituary Donald had written had appeared in newspapers all around the country.