by Maria Flook
“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
“That’s just common sense,” Holly said. “These must be wise sayings from the Bible or something?”
“Sounds like fortune cookies from Wall of China Take-Out. Look at this.” Willis showed Holly the page.
Renate
Regatta
Ricotta
“That’s funny. She’s playing with her name.”
“It’s in here in lots of different handwriting.”
Holly said, “Her classmates called her these nicknames in her school days. They wrote it in her book and signed their signatures, see?”
“Renate, Regatta,” Willis tried it. “Ricotta. That’s cheese. I bet she didn’t like being called cheese.”
“But regatta means a boat race, doesn’t it?” Holly said.
“Well, that’s okay, then.” He kept thumbing through the little book, as if it might explain not only Rennie, but where he himself fit in. He found the nonsense rhyme he had known all along:
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in—
Willis stared at the page, letting the poem echo in his head. He saw himself. He saw Fritz. Holly too.
Holly looked over his shoulder and recited the next one.
Rennie is the name
single is your station
Lucky is the man
who makes the alteration
—Your sister-graduate,
Margaret Casey
Willis threw the little book on the table. He was thinking, That’s what it comes to. A small, cracked cowhide book of rhymes.
Nancy Brookens arrived at dusk. She looked back and forth between Rennie and Willis and learned the situation. She asked Willis how much morphine he was using for maintenance.
He told her.
“That’s a lot.” It was a professional assessment not a moral one. “Do you want your drugs more than your freedom from drugs?” she asked him.
It sounded like a rhetorical question, one of those public-service announcements on late-night television. Holly remembered an ad where they cracked an egg on a red-hot skillet. Nancy Brookens said, “This isn’t a good time to tackle it, but there’s never a good time. You’ll have to decide.” She patted his shoulder and Holly watched him stiffen.
The nurse went to Rennie’s bedside and took Rennie’s vital signs. She removed the little needle still taped to Rennie’s hand; a tiny drop of deep blood bloomed where the needle had been jerked loose. Nancy Brookens wiped it away with a tissue.
“An IV might keep her around a few more days, you don’t want a drip?”
Holly said, “I don’t think so. Do we?”
“No,” Willis said.
“That’s fine,” the nurse said in approval. “She’s okay, she has her surround, that’s all she needs.
“Her what?”
“Her care-giver surround, you and Willis. It’s better than a drip.” She wrapped Rennie’s arm in a cuff and took her pressure. Rennie’s blood pressure was perilously low and her heart rate was up. “Her heart’s making a last ditch effort against the poison tide.”
“Poison tide?” Holly asked. Nancy Brookens explained that Rennie was suffering from severe sepsis resulting from the advanced destruction of organ tissues. “There’s a lot of dead cell material circulating.” It was this final toxic assault that would bring on death.
Nancy Brookens recognized Holly’s bewildered expression and she put her hands on Holly’s shoulders and sat her down in a kitchen chair. “You are carrying a bit too much for one person.”
“Thank God you’re here.”
“I can’t stay long, then what? Look at yourself. You aren’t even aware of how this affects you.”
Holly followed Nancy Brookens’ eyes. She was staring at Holly’s crotch, where a cloud of bright blood had bloomed below the zipper of her jeans.
“Shit.” Holly sat down at the table with a burst of hurt laughter.
“See what I’m saying? You even forgot your time of the month. The first rule is: treat yourself like a queen or you can’t nurture your family members.”
Holly almost said, “These are not my family members. Remember? My father died two years ago, right after I called him ‘Worm.’ ” Nancy Brookens probably wouldn’t remember that particular detail, although Holly had confessed her story to the nurse when it had happened. How could Nancy Brookens keep track of everyone’s expired kin?
When Nancy stood up to leave, Holly accepted a tampon from her personal wallet, and the little basket of goodies from the hospice organization. Homemade brownies wrapped in tinfoil for the family members on vigil. Cans of strawberry Ensure for the patient. Aloe-vera hand lotion and a hairbrush with silky soft bristles, like the kind sold in baby layettes. Nancy Brookens handed her a new Grief Wheel in its cellophane sleeve.
“I have one of these Grief Wheels already.”
“Oh, it’s been revised since then.”
“It’s been revised?” Holly was incredulous. “How can they do that? I followed it to the letter the last time. Why did they have to change it?”
“Progress.” She handed Holly a hygiene aid in a plastic wrapper. It was a small, pink sphere, a serrated sponge on a lollipop stick. “You can brush her teeth with this,” Nancy Brookens said.
Holly recognized the unforgettable totem. She had used the same cellulose lolly to scrub her father’s gums with tender attention to the empty plateau where his bridgework had been removed.
“Watch your boyfriend, if he’s upset he might go overboard on his dosage. He needs to get into a program. I’m going to assign a bereavement coordinator for you and Willis, is that okay?”
“A what?”
“Aquidneck Hospice is offering you a bereavement coordinator to help during the next few weeks. It’s a wonderful service. I’ll put you on the calendar when I get back to the office.”
“I didn’t have a bereavement coordinator when my father passed away.”
Holly thought, I had to coordinate my own bereavement.
“This is something new,” Nancy Brookens said.
Holly watched the nurse drive away. She kept looking out the window, long enough for a seagull to land on the driveway right in front of the cottage. The gull had a trash fish. The fish was still slapping its tail as the bird began its feast; first it pecked out the soft bleb of the eye and from there it could tear the meat. She remembered the hunk of seal hide that had washed ashore, its gorgeous dapples.
Willis was curled up on the single bed in the corner, exhausted. Holly was impressed by the effort he was making for Rennie. All that night, Holly listened to the tandem struggles of Willis and Rennie. Rennie’s breathing was getting more and more erratic; sometimes she awoke from her dead zone unable to inhale, her lungs were full. Holly propped her up. Her breathing sounded rough, like someone sawing through a plank. Willis was using the morphine to get through it, and still he shivered violently or threw his shirt off in a wave of heat. For a period, in the early morning, they all slept.
At noon the following day, Rennie lifted up in her bed. She whispered Willis’s name. He went over to her and squeezed her hand. She told him, “Walk around the house. Look at the shingles. See what needs doing. Get the right count. Buy white cedar not red.”
“Sure, I will,” he said. “I told you I would.”
She patted his knuckles.
He didn’t like her coming back and forth; when she talked sense and referred to their family house, his ordeal was worse. It was painful to lose her when she was still handing him orders.
Holly’s boss, Joseph Salvatore, arrived at the door. His eyes looked dark and switchy, his whole face showed the concern and discomfo
rt of someone forced to use his authority. “You can’t be here,” he told Holly. She walked outside with him. He shook his head in two gentle movements, suggesting that he didn’t hold it against her but he believed she should know better. “This friend of yours in there—well, Munro Hopkins tells me he is in trouble.”
“Did that busybody call you?”
“He knows you work for me. This isn’t good for my business.”
“I know it looks bad,” she told him, “but his mother is dying. She’s almost passed on, can’t we wait?”
He told her, “Please, sweetheart, take them somewhere else.”
She lifted her chin to hide her hurt feelings. She didn’t understand why her old friend couldn’t see them through. She walked with her boss back to the office. She telephoned Jensen. He told her they could come over to Sycamore House if they didn’t mind the confusion and temporary furnishings. He and Sarojini were starting interior renovations and half the house was a shambles. He would rent them a room.
She thanked Jensen, ashamed of the relief which washed through her, head to foot, and over the wire. She hated to be indebted to her ex-husband and give Jensen the feel of it. When she told Willis where they were going, he stood up and told her, “Rennie’s not spending her last moments at that chicken ranch with your old Butane flame.”
“Well, we can’t stay here.”
Holly walked over to Rennie’s bed and picked up her hand. “Rennie? We have to play musical chairs again—Rennie?”
Rennie didn’t display a fleck of comprehension.
Willis walked over. “Holly’s not in charge. We don’t break camp, we’re not going anywhere.”
Rennie stared at the boarded window across the room.
Holly leaned over the pillow. Rennie’s eyes were wide open in an entirely different way, her pupils dime-size and flattened. Her mouth was slightly parted as if releasing a small puff of air, as if her last breath might have been a soap bubble with a pithy caption, but her last word was what? They hadn’t paid attention.
“Willis,” Holly whispered. “This is it.”
Holly realized that “This is it” was something pregnant women said when they suffered their first contractions. They had not heard a peep from Rennie, no death rattle, no final round of coughing. Rennie had slipped free without an addendum of wasteful emotion. Willis kneeled beside his stepmother. He lifted her hand. He leaned over her body and rested his forehead against Rennie’s. His tangled bangs swept her face. His goodbye to her could not have been more straight forward than that, face-to-face, brow-to-brow, an exchange of some wordless essence. It was as if a pneumatic substance lingered in the air until Willis reabsorbed it.
The two of them, faces joined, reminded Holly of those “kissing fish.” Holly was surprised to find herself thinking of such an oddball thing, “kissing fish,” fish who drift for hours eye-to-eye, in love or aggression, she couldn’t recall which.
Willis shifted and sat up. He watched the body for a long time. Holly sat next to him. She was aware of Joseph Salvatore walking back and forth in front of the cottage, waiting for them to leave, yet he was showing some consideration about it. She went outside and told him the news. They would be getting out of the shack. He looked immediately relieved and he asked her to forgive him. It was a simple matter of protecting the business. “Holly. What are you going to do?” he said. “You shouldn’t get yourself in these situations, with the wrong people.”
“Give us a little more time,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Willis washed Rennie’s face and hands with the moistened corner of a towel. Touching a lifeless face was an awakening. Life, its miracle element, was never clearly realized or taken into account until it was evacuated. Her flesh in its dull, impersonal frailty seemed almost an intrusion to his communion with Rennie’s disencumbered spirit.
“She needs some decent clothes,” he said.
Holly saw Rennie’s stained nightdress. “What funeral home are you using?”
Willis looked at her. His teeth were clacking in a new bout of convulsive arctic sensations. “I’m not using a mortuary. Christ, Holly, I’m taking her out myself.”
“Out where?”
“Out there,” he said.
She remembered the water the way it had looked when she stood outside with her boss. A tipping disc of shivering light, still quite aggravated from the passing storm. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“How long have you known me? When did I kid around?”
“Just a couple times, I guess. I sure loved it.”
She had made him smile despite the circumstances, despite their proximity to an actual corpse.
He told her, “Maybe you won’t like me when I’m a straight arrow. When I’m the real me. ‘Just a-hunk a-hunk of burning love.’ What then?” He looked at her.
She liked it when they were two minds with one thought.
They left Rennie alone in the cottage. Holly drove the Toyota to Easton Pond. Willis went into the weeds and came back dragging the Crouton. The dinghy was snagged and Holly got out of the car to help him.
“It has only one oar,” she told him.
“I know that,” he said.
They put the little boat on the roof of the Toyota and Willis tied it down with bungee cord.
Willis said, “Drive on over to the house. Rennie has an oar in the garage.”
“You think we should go to the house?”
“If they haven’t fussed with us yet, they aren’t planning an ambush.”
Holly obeyed his instructions. She parked at the duplex and Willis walked over to the tiny garage. She left the Toyota idling, even if it was a giveaway. She almost wanted someone to stop her. She didn’t want Willis taking that tiny boat out on the water, with a corpse.
She had no trouble getting inside the house, the door was unlocked. The last of the rainwater was still pooled on the vinyl flooring in the kitchen. Holly saw how it caught the western sunlight streaming in the fanlight. It was funny how refracted light could affect her—best of all, the Fresnel. Holly liked the fact that boats far out on the water saw the same lighthouse beacon she could watch from the safety of her kitchen. One metronomic measure of white light repeated for the lost, the same deaf swirl for those at shore.
Holly went through Rennie’s closet, sliding the hangers across and tugging the dresses off their dancing wire shoulders. She had been thinking of the temperature outside when she remembered that it didn’t matter to Rennie, the dress could be thin and flouncy, she wasn’t going to feel the bitter cold.
She picked out a floral midlength gown, something summery in a fine, silky fabric. She put the dress in an Almacs bag and went down to the car. She stopped at the mailbox and collected some letters before driving Willis and the Crouton back to Neptune’s.
There was a letter from Norfolk. Willis tore the letter down one side and blew into the envelope. He inserted his finger and pulled out the photograph of Wydette. A note told Willis that the picture had been found behind a box spring when a new recruit was setting up his bunk. Someone had been nice enough to send it on. Willis looked at the photograph of his young mother, younger than he was at that very minute. It didn’t have the force it once had. He flicked it onto the dashboard and Holly retrieved it. She looked at the exotic face. It was Willis through and through—ethereal, erotic, peppery.
Willis unloaded the boat from the roof of the car while Holly went into the shack with the dress. Holly didn’t wait for help and when Willis came in, Rennie was ready. The dress looked good; it had a high neckline with a ruffle collar. Willis stared at Rennie in her funeral outfit.
Willis told Holly, “That’s Wydette’s dress.”
“Are you sure? It was in Rennie’s closet.”
“That’s not Rennie’s dress.”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“I can’t bury her in that. Wydette’s dress,” he said. He looked utterly confused, as if he couldn’t make a moral deci
sion about it. He sat down holding his stomach.
She went over to him and tried to embrace him but he was too hunched over. Tears were streaming down his face, and she couldn’t tell the nature of those tears. It might have been acute intestinal cramps. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing to comfort him.
“Rennie looks okay, though, doesn’t she?” Holly said.
He looked down at the body in the gauzy dress. “What the hell,” he said. He shrugged. Holly admired his sudden show of strength.
“Wait a minute,” he told Holly. “Do you want that ring?”
“Her wedding band?”
“It’s her first one. She always wore it. What good is it now?”
“That little ring?”
“Well it’s not exactly an anniversary diamond.”
He tried to twist the gold band from Rennie’s wedding finger. It wouldn’t come off.
His small use of force was upsetting to them both.
“I can’t take Rennie’s wedding ring,” Holly told him sternly.
“That’s good, because she doesn’t want you to have it. I guess she belongs to Bill Hopkins after all these years. Maybe just her little finger belongs to me.”
He walked into the bathroom and closed the door. He opened the taps. The pipes screeched.
Willis wanted to row out two miles, as far as the channel, and release Rennie’s body. “I can’t have her drifting into First Beach again,” he said as he showed Holly the Sears tire chains he had brought from the garage. He coiled them on the kitchen linoleum at Neptune’s. The ugly automotive accessories gave Holly an uncomfortable feeling.
“You’re putting those things on her?”
“What am I going to do?” he said. “I have to.”
“I think you can throw ashes in the water, but don’t you have to get a permit, don’t you have to be a certain number of miles out at sea to release a corpse?”
“Well, I’m not going very far in that six-foot Winterport. It’s still choppy.”
“What about your friend, Carl Smith. Doesn’t he have a boat? Maybe he can take you out.”
