by Pamela Morsi
Max shook his head. “It’s hard to quit,” he said. “It was easier for me to get off the liquor than fags.”
Ellen was startled at his words.
“I didn’t know you’d had a drinking problem,” she said.
Max chuckled. “My drinking problem was that I was a stupid, blind drunk,” he said. “That was probably before you were even born. But a man doesn’t forget his past. Nor does a woman, I suppose.”
He and Wilma probably had more in common than she’d thought.
“Anyway, Jet will be here around three o’clock.”
Max nodded.
Ellen started to leave. She stopped abruptly in the doorway and took a sip of coffee and waited.
He looked up again.
“Max, what can you tell me about Edith Stanhope?”
“You should probably ask Yolanda,” he said. “I’m sure she’s more up on the local gossip than I am.”
Ellen shook her head. “All she knows is how Mrs. Stanhope is these days. Confused and delusional. What did she used to be like?”
“She’s one of the Grisham daughters,” Max said. “She was the ‘pretty one’ people said.”
“Mrs. Stanhope told me that you were in business with her husband,” Ellen said.
“I kept his books,” Max told her. “He was one of my very first customers. We were both starting out, new in business, new to business.”
“Mrs. Stanhope talks about him all the time,” she said. “He was the love of her life. I just wondered what kind of man he was.”
Max thought about that for a moment.
“What kind of man he was?” Max repeated. “Well, I’d say…I’d say mostly, he was nervous.”
“Nervous?”
Max nodded. “He was real edgy, couldn’t stand still for long. I think that’s why he hated the dairy business so much.”
“The dairy business?”
“Yes, his parents had run a dairy business,” Max said. “They left it to him when they died, but he was just a little bit too high-strung to work around cows, I suppose.”
Ellen shook her head. “It’s funny, I would never have got that impression from Mrs. Stanhope.”
“Probably because he wasn’t nervous around her,” Max said. “I remember seeing them together several times. He just lit up like a firefly when she was around. And she just gazed at him like he was the King of the Mountain.”
“So they were very much in love,” Ellen said.
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “And also very well suited. She was, I believe, mentally frail from childhood. Back then they thought any weakness of the mind ran in families and the Grishams already had a very eccentric aunt who eventually had to be sent away to a sanitarium.”
“Really?”
“I think a lot of people suspected that there were things that were not quite right with Edith early on,” Max told her. “But she seemed to get along well enough. She was smart and happy and cheerful.”
“She still is,” Ellen said.
Max nodded. “But there was something curious about her and when she met up with Stanhope, well they just seemed to fill in all the chinks in each other’s armor.”
“So they were a perfect match,” Ellen said.
“Most people thought so, except of course, Edith’s father,” he said. “The old man never liked Stanhope. Maybe he was so set against a marriage between she and Lyman because he worried about their tendencies getting passed on to another generation. Whatever it was, he treated Stanhope terrible. If being around Edith made the guy less nervous, being around her father made him more so.”
“Her father doesn’t sound like a very pleasant guy.”
“He wasn’t,” Max said. “And he just wouldn’t leave them alone. Nothing that Stanhope did was good enough, poor bastard.”
“Mrs. Stanhope told me that he killed himself.”
Max sighed heavily. “Yeah, one evening he closed up the store, just as usual, and then walked into the back room and hanged himself.”
“Because of his father-in-law or because he was nervous?” Ellen asked.
“Because his business had failed,” Max answered. “If you had been here then, I’d have put a Post-it note on his file and Yolanda would have made you call him. He was selling dry goods. There were big department stores opening uptown. Everybody wanted to shop there. It wasn’t his fault. It was a change in consumer demand. It happens. Businesses fail. People go bankrupt. It’s a fact of life. Some people have a hard time facing it.”
That was true, Ellen thought. And some people never faced it at all.
16
If a person is ill and in need of rest, the last place they’d ever want to be is a hospital. At least that was Wilma’s take on it. It seemed as if someone was in waking her up every few minutes. At approximately 3:00 a.m., they decided to move her from MICU into a semiprivate room. It was hours before they got her completely settled in. And when they finally did and Wilma had just fallen back to sleep, the inhalation therapist showed up for a predawn treatment, followed by morning vital signs before it was light, and ultimately breakfast a few moments before seven. Wilma was not sure what the day shift did all day, but the night workers were busy little bees.
Through everything, there was the pervasive and unanswerable desire for a cigarette. They were giving her a tranquilizer to take the edge off the cold turkey aspect of being cooped up in a nonsmoking room and she had a nicotine patch stuck to the back of her arm. Neither was a panacea for the edgy, nauseating, groggy-headed discomfort she was feeling.
She could breathe better. That was quite true. And she wasn’t experiencing as much hacking and mucus as she was accustomed to, but that did not in any way counter the abject misery of not having tobacco. Overall, she was weak as a kitten, but the need for nicotine seemed to give her strength. She had to get strong enough to get in a wheelchair. Once there, she would wheel herself out of Texas if that’s what it took to get a smoke.
But it was going to be a while before she could get there.
The day dragged on in minute by minute boredom. Her roommate, who had perked up considerably in the hours since her arrival, was a woman with a planned life. She planned to watch the TV tabloids until her soaps came on. Apparently, she was also a little hard of hearing, so the baby-sitter’s confession of having seduced grandpa’s gay boyfriend reverberated around the room at high decibels.
When the telephone rang at 10:00 a.m., she felt as if she’d already been in the hospital a week. It was Ellen.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said.
“No danger of that,” Wilma told her. “This place is busier than a one-legged man at a butt kicking.”
“Is the doctor there? Who’s that talking?”
“It’s the television,” Wilma replied. “I hope if my doctor has decided after forty years that he’s really bi-sexual, at least he won’t tell me about it.”
Ellen laughed. “I’m sure he won’t,” she said. “He seems like a stodgy, conservative family man.”
“Those are the kind you have to watch out for,” Wilma assured her.
“I’m going to try to get over there after work,” Ellen said. “I have Jet and they won’t let her upstairs, so I don’t know exactly how I’ll manage. But I will.”
“I have no doubt of that,” Wilma said. “You’ve done everything you ever set out to do and more.”
Lunch arrived before 11:30, simultaneously with another inhalation treatment. She dutifully took the medicine into her lungs before settling down to cold baked chicken and half-congealed gravy.
The afternoon was equally leisurely. She managed to nap through most of two hours of soap operas. But she was wide-awake when the roommate switched to a telenovella on a Spanish language channel. Wilma had lived in Texas long enough to have picked up a spattering of the language—enough to get the gist of what was going on, without having to be bothered with any of the esoteric detail.
She was just getting interested in the
action when Dr. Reberdi showed up. He appeared to be in a bit of a hurry, but he was a man with an agenda.
“You have to quit, Wilma,” he said. “Your lungs can’t take any more of it. You have to give up cigarettes and you have to give them up for good.”
“I’m thinking about it,” she lied.
He didn’t believe her. “There’s no wiggle room here,” he said. “No need for game playing. You either quit or you die, that’s the truth and it’s all I can tell you.”
He listened to her heart and lungs. He and the nurse helped her sit on the side of the bed, ostensibly to see if she was going to faint. She didn’t. Wilma dangled her legs as she attempted to maintain as much modesty as a backless hospital gown allowed.
“How soon can I get out of here?” she asked him.
“Tomorrow maybe,” he said.
“My great-granddaughter is coming to see me this afternoon,” Wilma told him. “She’s three and they won’t let her upstairs. Do you think these gals could get me in one of those wheelchairs and get me out to the patio or something so I can see her.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. He obviously had not been born yesterday.
“You can get up in a wheelchair and they can wheel you to a window where you can wave to her,” he said. “You’re wearing that nicotine patch, it ought to take care of any physical withdrawal symptoms that you’re having. I want you to be smoke free while we’re medicating you and trying to get you back on your feet.”
Wilma felt like the girl in The Exorcist. She wanted to roll her head backward and spew vomit on him. Unfortunately, she couldn’t.
After he left she clung steadfastly to her resentment.
When she was out of his control, she would do exactly what she wanted, she reminded herself. If she wanted to smoke a hundred cigarettes a day, it was none of his damned business. It was her life and she’d live it exactly as she pleased. No starchy, cob-up-his-butt M.D. would be telling her how she could or could not live her life.
Interspersed with the tirade was the sure and certain knowledge that the doctor wasn’t lying to her. Smoking was going to equal death. Initially she reacted with bravado. She would look death straight in the face and spit in his eye! But, of course, death was far too illusive to come at her straight on like that.
Calmly she rationalized that she’d lived a fun life if not a long one. She’d lived to see her children take up their own lives and even long enough to see her granddaughter become a mother herself. That was far longer than many people were allowed. She ought to be quite willing to die. She wasn’t.
Ellen and Amber needed her. Jet needed her. But it was more than just being needed. She had things she still wanted to do. Wilma thought about her conversations with Max. What had he told her? She needed to figure out a way to use her knowledge. And she said that it was too late.
“That’s what people think when they’re in their forties,” he’d told her. “By the time you’re our age, you understand that it’s only too late when you’re dead.”
Truly, she didn’t want to die yet. She wanted to live and do more things, new things. She wanted to have a long road of life still in front of her.
But she couldn’t envision a life without smoking. It was so much a part of who she was, how she lived, her expressions, her mannerisms. It was captured in thousands of fading photographs always with a cigarette in hand. It was tied forever in memories of a million ashtrays. Smoking had been the introduction to every morning’s cup of coffee and the finale of every act of sex she’d ever enjoyed.
There was no way she could give that up. It would be worse than dying, it would have been as if she had never lived.
With the help of one of the nurses, she got out of bed and took a few steps around the room. It nearly exhausted Wilma completely, but she knew she had to build up her stamina before they’d let her go home.
As the afternoon moved on from Rosie to Oprah to the local news, Wilma tried hard to recover her strength. She took another inhalation treatment. She sat up on the side of the bed and willed herself not to faint.
She’d already picked at her somewhat bland and boring supper when Ellen arrived, rushing in as if she’d run all the way from the south side office.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” she said. “I’ve had Jet with me at the office since three and everything just took longer to get done. How are you? You look better.”
Wilma nodded. “I think the greatest danger in this place is death by boredom.”
Ellen smiled. “That means you’re improving,” she said. “If you’re really sick, you hardly notice the place.”
Wilma couldn’t argue with that.
“Where is Jet now?” she asked.
“She’s in a little hallway reception area around the corner,” Ellen answered. “I couldn’t leave her downstairs in the waiting room. There are just too many people coming in and out.”
Wilma agreed.
Ellen pulled up a chair and seated herself next to her mother’s bedside. At first she was merely chatty and entertaining. Telling Wilma about her day at work, especially about the novelty of having her granddaughter at the office. Especially delightful was a story about Max being a little grouchy about having a child underfoot then discovering the two of them at his desk. He was teaching her how to make stick people from 0’s, L’s and directional slashes on his old Underwood typewriter.
Ellen was watching her carefully as she told this story, so Wilma was certain that she was suspicious, but she deliberately kept her expression bland enough to reveal nothing.
Ellen questioned her about the doctor’s visit. Wilma’s answers skirted the lecture she’d received and dealt only with her imminent release.
“So if you can’t get off from work to come get me,” Wilma said. “Maybe you could call Brent, I’m sure he’ll do it.”
Ellen nodded. “We may have to call him,” she agreed. “Though I think we’re currently trying to avoid taking his help.”
That surprised Wilma. “Why?” she asked.
Ellen shook her head. “I’m not sure. Amber didn’t go into detail, but apparently the two of them had some kind of argument.”
Wilma snorted and shook her head. “Those two are in a spat all the time,” she said. “Nothing new about that.”
Ellen looked thoughtful. “Maybe there is,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’s blasted her for her latest plan.”
“What plan?”
“Well, she told me that she was moving out,” Ellen said. “She and some girlfriend she parties with want to get an apartment. I figured that nothing would come of it. It’s just too hard to raise a child on your own. She’s got a much better deal with us to help her.”
Wilma nodded.
“Last night she told me that she’s still planning to move out,” Ellen said. “And she’s leaving Jet with us.”
“What?”
“Her friend has a child, too. They are just going to go on with their lives and leave the kids to the grandmas. It must be the latest in cool mom chic.”
Wilma looked closely at Ellen. Her daughter appeared to be saddened by this turn of events, but resigned to it. Had Ellen become so inured to things going wrong that she no longer knew how to rail against them?
Wilma had not.
“That is not good,” she said firmly. “Don’t let it happen.”
“I’m not letting it happen,” Ellen said. “It’s happening whether I like it or not.”
“No, it won’t happen unless you allow it to,” Wilma said.
“You must think I have a lot more control than I do,” Ellen said.
“When it comes to this, you’re in complete control.”
Ellen shook her head. “Amber’s not a little girl anymore,” she told her mother. “I can’t tell her what to do. She comes, she goes, she does what she wants. She hasn’t listened to anything I’ve said for years.”
“Because you haven’t had that much to say.”
“They are not your pieces,” Wilma said.
“There are grandparents all over this country raising their kids because the parents can’t or won’t,” Ellen said.
“True,” she agreed. “And if Amber were emotionally unstable, in a dangerous relationship or addicted to drugs, I wouldn’t wait for her to give us the baby— I’d help you take her away. But Amber has none of those problems.”
“She certainly has something wrong with her thinking if she’s willing to do this.”
“She’s just young,” Wilma said. “She’s young and shortsighted, the way we all are at that age. And she’s not doing her duty by her daughter because you’ve made it far too easy for her not to bother.”
“Me? Oh, this is my fault now.”
Wilma sat up in bed a little too fast and felt faint. She managed to get past it. She had something important to say.
“I never tell you how to handle your daughter,” she said. “Not just because I know you wouldn’t like it. But because I know that you are a better mother to Amber than I ever was to you.”
Ellen didn’t even try to disagree with her.
“I never was all that good at parenting,” Wilma continued. “But, I can see this one thing clearly. If Amber doesn’t take responsibility for her own child, she will never be able to take responsibility for her own life.”
“How can I make her do that?”
“You’re going to have to tell her ‘no’,” Wilma said. “You’re going to have to remind her that she chose to bring Jet into the world. That’s a life-changing experience. It’s too late to go back.”
“I’m not sure she can even understand that,” Ellen said.
Wilma had more confidence. “I had you when I was her age and I was easily as silly and selfish as she is. The difference was that I didn’t have anyone I could hand you off to. For better or worse, you were mine all the time. Maybe I didn’t do the best job, but you and your brother grew up all right. And despite all, I think you know that I love you. Amber wants to be the driving force in Jet’s life, but it’s just a lot easier to let you do the driving. If you refuse to do it, she’ll be forced to manage on her own.”
