by Lisa Samson
Mrs. Tolsen helped me. She said little, but patted the wet spot patiently, over and over, using the entire supply of brown tri-fold towels from the dispenser on the wall.
“I’ll go get your mom, Ivy.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Tolsen.”
She walked to the door, placed her gnarled hand on the push plate, then turned. “Darn that Eve.” Then she disappeared.
Mom and I were the last ones to leave that Sunday, the warm, summer air removing all traces of the event other than the bloodied panties at the bottom of the ladies’ room trash can.
8
I seem to remember some old movie, perhaps an adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, with people wailing and gnashing and clawing and committing all manner of sin, and Satan standing like an Egyptian captain, feet spread, hands on hips, with his head back and his mouth wide open in devilish laughter. He triumphs, souls writhe in torment, and all because of him … Him … HIM!
But these days, now that I gather in the years to my heart and have seen heartache as it ages, I think Satan laughs hardest at the quiet moments of humankind, those times when a person fails to recognize or receive the lavish grace and mercy sown his way. And there one sits at one’s kitchen table alone, silent wreckage all around, lives destroyed or at best limping along. And nowhere to go from here.
Yes, I’m convinced Satan’s laugh rings like a bell in the eerie quiet of destruction. He declares in smug satisfaction, “I have destroyed this person. I have taken the image of God within her and crushed it beneath my heel.”
He’ll have to stop laughing soon enough. Nobody wanders past redemption when God still loves us.
The alarm clock buzzes, and I quickly stifle its voice. Five thirty already. My column awaits. Rusty sleeps peacefully, and I let him slumber on. He’ll have the kids all day.
I slip on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, pull on some socks, and after setting the kettle to heat, I fire up Old Barbara.
Having self-absorbed siblings affords me the luxury of writing whatever I please in my column without fear they’ll ever pick up the paper and read it. Today, I’m talking about being there for your family. I’ll birth my frustration in print and feel much better before heading to the hospital. I’d hate for Mom’s radar to start bleeping, alerting her to the fact that something’s bothering me. At least not until she reads the back issues of the Lavalier, once recuperated.
The kettle screams, and I jump up, yanking it off the burner before it wakes up one of the kids. I don’t need Trixie bugging me right now. I really don’t. Love her. Love her better when she sleeps, her blankets swaddling her baby warmth, her cheeks blooming in the heat.
I’m awful.
I reconsider calling her by her full name, Bellatrix. Bellatrixes surely possess a more staid pattern of behavior. Bellatrixes never scream, “Wake up!” right in your ear at 6:00 a.m. Bellatrixes never remove all the laces on all their shoes and tie them end to end, then drag your favorite stuffed animal from childhood around the dirty yard. Bellatrixes go to bed early and wake up late. Bellatrixes play quietly with their dolls. Bellatrixes love vegetables.
Oh well, what can you do?
Oh, Trixie, Trixie. My baby. I do love you so. Maybe I need to pray more. For you. For me. For this broken little family.
Column number two comes as easy as microwavable macaroni and cheese. Mr. Moore’s wisdom, simple and profound, generates plenty of fodder.
I’m on a roll. You know what gets me? How people justify their sin with some made-up ideology. Take the feminists for example. They wanted to have sex with everybody, get great salaries, and squeeze out children before the biological clock wound down—in other words, do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, with whomever they wanted, and curse the rest of the world. But who could do that and justify it on their own? No. They needed a movement. “We’ll call it feminism. Yeah, yeah, yeah! And whenever anybody questions our actions, we can point to a higher authority than ourselves. We can get all high and mighty and act like this is all for the greater good. Stuff convention. Stuff the fact that someone else might suffer for our actions. We learned this in college so it must be right! Right?”
Feminist studies.
Look alive, girls! If you can’t be a woman by the seat of your pants, you can’t begin to claim the honors. That’s what makes us who we are, we feline wonders, who, when suddenly falling from the heights, can twist, turn, assume a proper vista of the situation, and land on our feet. We are the ultimate survivalists, the potentates of practicality. We’ve lived that “Just Do It” slogan since the garden. Let’s face it. As the original sinner, Eve was the one responsible for original sin, but Adam still takes the brunt, as in “In Adam all die.” In this, I do believe the soft spot God feels for women shows itself. After all, we may bear our children in pain, but we also feel the first movements of that tiny parcel of humanity inside of us. We nurture and protect the very beginning of life. Somehow God entrusts us with this very thing, the most important act of being human. I for one am grateful.
I say, “You go, girl!” and mean it with the fullness of my heart.
I click Save and whiz this column and the other two off to Tony. My feminist readers will e-mail flames, and I’ll love it. And now, with three in the bag, I’ll be free to care for Mom next week. Thank you, God, for this bit of grace.
Can’t wait to hear the phone call from Tony. I’d better start formulating my arguments right away.
I actually shower and dress before the crew awakens. As I try to cover up my dark circles, Rusty hums downstairs, and that telltale sputter awakens my nose to the aroma of the coffee. Now tea accompanies me through the wee hours just fine, but coffee is the great awakener. Something spiny and operatic swims inside it, something longing to bop you on the head and scream in your ear. I hurry through the rest of my “toilette,” as my grandmother called it, to steal a few moments with Rusty. I’ve thought about Mitch way too much even with my husband home. I need to bolster myself, to attack the problem at its source.
He sits at the kitchen table sipping from a mug emblazoned with the name of some small recording studio in Nashville, maybe, or Memphis, the type of place that lays down the tracks of a gospel barbershop quartet. The popularity they’ve been gaining in this day and age of hip-hop and technopop amazes me. Rusty, a true performer, plays the part well. But at home he’s so different, so placid and peaceful. I used to love that he saves that precious part of himself for us.
Keep talking him up, Ivy. Don’t meander down the stupid path.
A mug, a packet of sweetener, and a spoon rest on a paper towel in front of the coffee maker. I reach for the pot. “Get a good sleep, Rust?”
“Not bad. Probably better than you did after all that happened yesterday. You doing all right, hon?”
I fix my drink. “Yeah. Sent three columns to Tony this morning, so that’s off my chest. I’m going to toast an english muffin, then head on back to the hospital.”
“Just sit. I’ll get it for you.”
I pull out a chair, take a sip of coffee, and hold my head in my hands. “You know, Rust, I’m going to have to bring her home here to recuperate.”
“I figured as much. Hopefully she’ll be out in a few days, and I can help you with the hard part.”
“Brett’s place would be so much better, with that guest room on the main floor, a housekeeper three days a week. But if I so much as hint at it, she’ll blow up.”
“She’s having it really rough right now.” He shakes his head. “Not that it excuses her.”
Good boy.
“I know. I feel like I can’t ask anything of her. I’m sure she’s thinking, ‘Why me? Why now?’ as far as Mom’s concerned, even though it won’t really affect her one iota.”
Rusty leans down and kisses my cheek. “It’s a good thing Dorothy has you.” Rusty calls my mom Dorothy, like she’s more than just a mother-in-law, she’s a dear friend. Which is true. If Mom and I weren’t so close, I’d be jealous.
“Even if Brett did take her in, it wouldn’t be for long, and she’d never let the rest of us forget her largesse. I don’t want to be forever in her debt that way.”
“I’m sure your mother doesn’t want that either.”
True. But right now, I’m sure my mom has yet to think of it. I’m sure she’s awakened, felt the pain, and wondered when they’ll unstrap that ungodly foam triangle.
“Darn that Marcus. Why now?”
“Bad things come in threes.” Rusty sets the muffin in front of me. “Here you go, Ive. Eat up. You don’t know when your next meal will be today.”
“I hate hospital food.”
“Well, hon, you can always get around that.”
I take a big bite of the muffin for his benefit. He slathered on so much butter it literally drips down my chin and onto my clean T-shirt, the last clean T-shirt in my drawer.
Drat! Can’t even one little thing be easy today, Lord? Well, maybe I can count that as the third bad thing.
Rusty sits down. “I have an idea. Why don’t I go in for an hour or two this morning? Then you can come in around ten, and I’ll take Trixie to the bowling alley. She’s first up on the Daddy Date List.”
“Bowling?”
“She’s talked about nothing else since I got home.”
Wow, that was a quick answer to prayer.
He points to the phone book atop the fridge. “I’ll call the medical supply company and get a bed delivered.”
“Thanks, Rust.”
He needs to be home here with us. He’s better at this stuff than I am. Lord, make him stay. Make him want to stay.
Mom sits up in the bed drinking a cup of tea. “Hello, dear!”
“Hi Mom.”
“I’m so glad Rusty came. I was hoping I didn’t have to eat breakfast by myself.”
The tray still rests on the cart.
“Some breakfast.”
“I know. I’m not on solids yet. Beef broth for breakfast. Whoever heard the like? And did it need salt. But they put me on the high-blood-pressure diet. I have high blood pressure. I never knew.”
“Well, it’s a good thing they’ve caught it.”
“I suppose. But truthfully, ignorance would have suited me just fine.”
“Maybe it’s just due to the surgery. They would have caught it well before now.” I scrape up a chair. “Well, you ate good.”
“Rusty convinced me of the need.”
“You’ll need all the strength you can get for rehab.”
“Ugh. They tell me I’ll be out of here in four days, five tops.”
“Good.”
“Although I don’t know how I’ll make it up the steps to my apartment.”
“You won’t have to. Rusty’s setting up the dining room for you. We’re going to bring in a bed, and you’ll be all set.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.” I wave my hand, hoping the words nonchalant and Ivy intersect flawlessly. “Piece of cake.”
Piece of cake, my foot. Trixie will be all over her.
She sighs. “Well, that’s one load off my mind.”
“Good.” I really mean that.
My father is a jerk. Mom put up with so much of Harry’s abuse, she doesn’t deserve to suffer through this without the support of at least one of us.
She pushes the tray farther from her. “I can help Lyra with her sewing. I’ve been wanting to sit down with her and do that for a long time now. There’s just never been a good time.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of that. And since Lyra’s out of school for the summer, I’m sure she’ll be glad for it. Rusty’ll be there the first week you’re home too. He’ll look after things while I’m at the restaurant.”
“Oh, Brian came by early this morning. I was so glad to see him.”
Figures he arrived first.
“Good. He says he doesn’t need me around today, so I’ll be here all day.”
My family abides by a set of screwy regulations. When somebody is in the hospital, it’s of paramount importance that someone blood-related attend the bedside almost twenty-four hours a day. When my grandmother went in for heart surgery, Mom and Grandpop took turns at the vigil. I’d run in from my classes at Towson State around suppertime and sit with her while they had a bite down at the cafeteria. Heaven forbid they’d take an extra thirty minutes and head out for some decent food at a real restaurant, and not our restaurant either. I hope someday I don’t end up in the hospital for long. The nonstop visitation would drive me crazy.
She sips the weak tea. “Ugh. This is horrible. I’d love a good cup of coffee.”
“I’ll call Brian and tell him to bring you one when he comes in after the lunch rush.”
“Don’t bother. He said he’s got appointments this afternoon and tonight, which is why he came in so early.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking.
“I’ll call Rusty. He can bring a decent cup by later on his way back from the bowling alley.” Good old Rusty.
“Thanks, dear.”
Rusty says fine. He’ll drop off some Starbucks on his way to Persy’s game.
“Oh man. I forgot about the game. I am so sorry.”
“No prob, hon.”
I hang up the phone.
“I’m going to meet Rusty down in the lobby a little later.”
“Thank you, dear. I’m sure Brian would have come if he’d been able to.”
“Mom—”
Oh, never mind. Let her think he hung the moon for now. She’ll see his stripes in two weeks, three tops.
The phone rings at 5:00 a.m.
“Hey sis.”
“Bri?”
“I can’t get to the market this morning.”
“Why? Are you okay?”
“I’m on my way home right now. I’ll tell you about it later. I really need some sleep.”
“Are you coming in for lunch?”
“I already called Matty. He’ll run the kitchen.”
“Are you hung over?”
“…”
“Okay, I’ll take care of things.”
“You’re a peach.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
A verifiable peach.
No sense trying to get back to sleep with my blood churning and curdling this way. Rusty’s whistle-snore warbles away, so I claim the wee hours for myself. Oh, God, give me strength. Make me a morning person. Please, please.
I’ve prayed this at least once a week for the past fourteen years. So far God has only given me the same answer He gave Paul regarding his thorn in the flesh.
I fix my cup of tea and settle in at the computer. I should work on a new column; Tony hated the antifeminist one, and I failed to convince him of its merits. But boy, did that feel good to write! I think I’ll write about the insignificance of an organized pantry in the grand scheme of living. I’m going to write about the messy things of life, like love and family and watching your children become their own persons who will make many mistakes. One error they shouldn’t make, however, is thinking they’re better people if their pantries are organized or they can actually make it through a year of Bible Study Fellowship or a Beth Moore book.
I’ve never made it through either one of those, and the Lord knows I’ve tried. I want desperately to be one of those people God ushers gently aside for a time of rejuvenation and growth. But so far I’m still careening to the right on the Snow Emergency Route of faith. I don’t just lean on the everlasting arms, I weigh them down. I wonder why God isn’t sick of me yet, and for every situation I handle with grace, two bovine scenarios precede it. For every word seasoned with salt, four are covered in crushed aspirin.
So maybe this column will sit well with Tony. I hope so. He’s such a gentleman, but I know that two blathering columns in a row might raise even his temperature a bit. And I’ll ruin what little Christian testimony I have with him. God, I hope he doesn’t think all Christians are like me.
Harry wasn’t all bad. He didn’t mind taking
us to the movies. He loved movies. I think he secretly longed to play meaty parts on stage and screen. I can easily picture him as a great actor, especially in roles containing a large measure of feigned contrition. He proclaimed Sunday afternoons “our time.” He’d pop popcorn on top of the stove, drizzle on the melted butter, shake on the salt, and sit with us watching channel 67’s movie lineup. Movies like Play Misty for Me or The Chalk Garden. And you have to love those old actress names like Piper and Greer.
Bellatrix? Perseus? Lyra? What were we thinking?
He’d call up the steps, “Come on, gang! The movie’s starting!” A trilling undercurrent in his voice twanged like a Jew’s harp and betrayed his thought: if he didn’t put in his time with us then, when he enjoyed it too, he might end up doing something horrible, like taking us to our swim meets or, heaven forbid, church.
Every Sunday morning Mom readied us all, and we slipped out early for Sunday school before my father woke up. At eight years old I got miffed at him for not attending with us. Would that have been so hard? It would have meant so much to Mom. But Mom, in her typical Mom fashion, said, “Pray for him, Ivy. He needs the Lord.”
He still needs the Lord. All these years later, all these prayers later, Harry still repeats the same mistakes, and he still needs the Lord.
This fact alone keeps me from pulling the plug on him. I feel terrible about that, as if my relationship with him is transactional, a mere sales pitch for a close walk with almighty God and a one-way ticket to heaven. But it is what it is. And if tolerating my dad is only obedience to my heavenly Father, so be it. I see no other choice I am capable of carrying out.
Do I love him?
In the sense of “love your neighbor as yourself,” yes, I love him. But do I love him as a daughter? Well, I take a pulse on that every so often, and today I’d have to say no. See, I called him and told him about Mom’s accident, and he only said, “Tell her to cheer up and get well soon!”
