by Sarah Willis
I call Todd, but no one’s home. I leave a simple message. My mother tripped outside Wendy’s and hurt herself. We’re at the hospital. Don’t worry. I’ll call back later. I didn’t push her, I think, and then wonder why I even thought that.
It’s almost four o’clock by the time she gets moved into a room. She’s sleeping heavily—a combination of the medicine and the trauma. I pull up a chair and sit by her bed. This is so familiar, my sitting by her bed, and even though she’s hurt, I feel relief flood me—because I don’t have to do it all. There are doctors and nurses just down the hall. I sit in the chair, fold my hands in my lap, and breathe. I would say I’ve held my breath since she fell, but who would believe me?
Todd and Jazz find me, just as a nurse rouses my mother to make sure her sleep is not too deep. I let her do her job, even though I know I could rouse my mother easily. She mumbles something, and the nurse seems satisfied.
Todd’s still in his work clothes, still wearing the bandanna. There’s melon-colored paint on his hands and a smear on his forehead. Melon’s popular for bathrooms. Sometimes I can tell what room he painted just by the colors on his clothes. I stand up, kiss him, give Jazz a hug. She looks at her nana in the hospital bed and sits down in the chair I was sitting in. She puts her hand on my mother’s arm. “It’s okay, Nana,” she says, and my eyes well with tears. I am so blessed with this child, and I don’t know why.
“What happened?” Todd asks. His words are said so kindly that I understand that we are putting last night behind us. My mother’s fall has saved us, for now. I don’t know how to feel about this. I’m afraid to think about it. I didn’t push her. Not physically. Does that count?
I tell him about the walk to school, Wendy’s, how my mother shouted something at me and turned to walk away, that she tripped, about the boy who stopped to help. That her wrist is broken, her rib bruised.
“You walked to my school?” Jazz says, turning to look up at me. She has brown specks in her green eyes, just like my mother. “Why did you walk to my school?”
“It was a nice day,” I say.
“Were you checking on me or something?” Jazz asks.
“No, I just wanted to walk her to the school. Show it to her.”
“Who would want to see my school?”
I smile at Jazz, then notice she has on a skirt that’s way too short.
“You wore that to school?” I ask her.
She rolls her big green eyes with the brown speckles. “Yeah, and I’ve worn it plenty times before. You just noticing now?”
“I guess so,” I admit. “It’s too short.”
“Whatever.”
“Did you eat, Jen?” Todd asks.
“No.” It never occurred to me to eat. “Did you?”
He shakes his head no.
“Let’s go to the cafeteria. I’ll tell the nurse where we’ll be.” My mother’s sleeping soundly. I tell myself it will be fine if I go get something to eat.
In the cafeteria there’s the familiar clatter of silverware and chairs being moved. I’ve spent too much of my life in this building. I’ve had four different jobs here, slow steps up the secretarial ladder because I was a high school dropout. But I proved I could work hard, and have had my job in the Department of Emergency Medicine for five years now. They gave me family medical leave without blinking.
“This is where Nana came when she had her first stroke, and where you were born,” I tell Jazz.
“Yeah, Mom, I know.” She’s gotten two scoops of mashed potatoes and gravy, just that, for her dinner. I don’t nag her to get some protein and vegetables. Why bother? Will she really jump up and go get them? I doubt it. My fish and peas aren’t looking so good to me. I slide the plate to the side, rest my elbows on the table. Todd slides in beside me. He couldn’t decide between the meat loaf and the roast beef, and seems to have decided to get both, along with a double helping of mashed potatoes. They’re beginning to look pretty good to me.
“I’m telling Jazz about the time my mother had her first stroke. They brought her here. I still had the job in pediatrics. Jazz had to be around five. My mother was working downtown, and she had Betsy’s phone number in her purse, so someone called Betsy in Arizona, who called Peter in Colorado, who called me. We hadn’t spoken for a while.” I look at Jazz, thinking how my mother had stormed out of this very hospital when Jazz was born, just because I wouldn’t tell her the name of Jazz’s father. God, how stubborn we both were.
“Was she glad you came at least?” Todd asks.
I shrug. “She was in intensive care with oxygen and a drip, attached to a heart monitor. I don’t think she knew I was even there. Peter and Betsy came into town the next morning. They thought I should stay at her place with her after she got out, but I told them if she needed help, she had to stay with me. I thought you needed to sleep in your own bed,” I tell Jazz.
Jazz gives me that warning look. She used to wet her bed, and she doesn’t want me to add that part. Why does she even think I would? “You know what?” I say, picking up my fork and helping myself to some of Todd’s mashed potatoes. “Right before Peter went back to Colorado, he told me something funny. He said Mother said that the first thing she remembered after the stroke was opening her eyes and seeing an angel by her bed, come to take her away. When she figured out it was just me, she was so relieved she was ecstatic. I wasn’t an angel, but she was glad.” I laugh. “She was glad I wasn’t an angel. Things work out funny, sometimes.”
Chapter Eighteen
On the seventh floor of the hospital Rose drifts in and out of consciousness. She’s unsure of what has happened to her. She aches all over. Oh, yes. She’s had a stroke. Jennifer was just here. She must have gone to get the car, to take her home. No, not home yet. She has to stay with Jennifer first. Just for a few weeks.
Rose fumes as Jennifer drives them to her apartment. Her thigh is killing her where they took out a vein to replace a clogged carotenoid artery in her neck. They say it clogged because of smoking cigarettes, but she doesn’t believe that. They just want her to quit because that’s the thing to say these days. She would kill for a cigarette right now, but knows her daughter would have a hissy fit.
“I’m going back to work, you know that,” Rose says. “I won’t be dependent on anyone. I’m a damned good secretary, and they’ll want me back.”
Jennifer nods. “I know, Mother, you told me. I perfectly agree.”
Well, that’s a first. This stroke must have scared Jennifer, too.
They pull into a parking lot next to a small brick apartment building. She’ll be a captive in this place for three weeks. Peter moved to Colorado; otherwise she would have stayed with him.
It takes forever to get up to the third floor, and she’s near to tears by the time Jennifer says, “Welcome to my humble abode.” They step into her daughter’s apartment.
The first thing that strikes Rose is that it reminds her of the apartment she and Michael lived in when she found out she was pregnant with Peter. Her legs get weak and she wobbles. Michael.
“Let’s get you sitting down,” Jennifer says, helping her over to a gray, tightly upholstered couch, very forties, very much like the couch they had when Rose was a child. The years wave hello from the couch, from the shape of the room. Rose’s legs collapse beneath her as she tries to sit down, and she lands with a painful thud. “Ow!”
“I’m sorry,” Jennifer says. “I’m sorry it’s so many floors up. Are you okay?”
“Fine. Where’s your baby?” She only sees Jennifer and the baby at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“Jazz, Mother. Her name is Jazz. And she’s not a baby, she’s five, almost six. Harriet has her, so I could pick you up at the hospital. Can I get you something?’
“A gin and tonic.”
“I don’t drink,” Jennifer says. Rose hates the way her daughter says that. She’s sick to death of being judged by her own daughter—who has a child out of wedlock and is living in an old brick apartment building
on the third floor.
“Well, something wet, then,” she says. “How about a Coke?”
“I don’t keep pop. It’s not good for Jazz.”
“Jesus, Jennifer, what the hell do you have, then?”
“Orange juice, apple juice, and papaya juice. And milk and water.”
“Oh, hell. Apple juice. Are you a vegetarian, too?”
“Sure am,” Jennifer says with a nod. Then, “Just kidding. I’m making you pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner.”
Thank God for small favors, Rose thinks, then corrects herself. She’s not thanking God for diddly-squat. She’s still ashamed that she thought she saw an angel. Jennifer leaves the room, and a cat comes around the corner, an adorable black and white. “Hi, sweetie, what’s your name?”
“That’s Terra, Mother,” Jennifer says, handing her a glass. The apple juice reminds her of the hospital, but at least it’s cold.
“What happened to that other one you had? Orange, right?” She remembers Jennifer telling her about an orange cat.
“She got out of the apartment and got hit by a car. It was awful.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose says. She shudders at the thought of hitting a cat.
“Do you have a cat now?” Jennifer asks.
“No. I haven’t had one since last year, when Lovely died.”
“You had that cat for so long. How old was she?”
“Eighteen years old. I’m thinking about getting another one when I get back home. Here, Terra, here pretty kitty.”
“At least you use the cat’s name,” Jennifer says.
“Excuse me?”
“You know what I mean. Just try and be nice to my daughter, will you? She’s old enough to understand if someone doesn’t like her.”
Rose is about to say something, can feel it in her mouth like spit, but she stops herself. She feels her anger shift, throw her off balance with the idea that Jennifer is right. The stroke has changed the way she thinks—she’s quite aware of it. Some things don’t seem so important anymore, like holding grudges. Other things seem more important. “I will be nice to her. When will she get home?”
“Not for a few more hours.”
“Then, I’ll take a nap now, if that’s all right.”
Jennifer insists Rose sleep in her room. She falls asleep quickly. She dreams that her wrist is broken. No, I had a stroke, she tells her sleeping self. Right?
“I remember when Nana stayed with us,” Jazz says. All around us people eat, chat, laugh. It feels comforting.
“Out of nowhere there was this weird lady who could hardly move, who sat on our couch all day. I didn’t know who she was. When Mom said Uncle Peter was her brother, or Aunt Betsy was her sister, I thought she was making it up. I thought brothers and sisters were only kids. When Nana stayed with us, I thought that was her name. Nana. My mom called her Mother, but I didn’t get it that Mom and Mother were the same thing.” Jazz looks at me. “The way you said Mother sounded so formal, it didn’t sound anything like the way I said Mom.”
I nod. I know exactly what she means.
“I stayed in my room a lot, peeking out around the corner to see if the Nana lady was still there. One day Nana told me to bring over a deck of cards. She taught me how to play War. I bet I could recognize Nana just by her hands. Her ring finger is as long as her middle finger.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Todd says. I try to remember if I’ve ever noticed that, but I haven’t.
“Oh!” Jazz says, smiling. “I remember you made her walk around the apartment for exercise. You stuck cartoons on the walls, so it wouldn’t be so boring!”
“Gahan Wilson,” I say. “I always liked his cartoons. They were so sick.”
“And you set the table with a tablecloth, then we kept doing that for a while after she left, ’cause I liked it. It made me feel important.”
“So, it worked out okay?” Todd asks. “Her staying with you?”
I nod. “Yeah. It did. Her stroke was the best thing that happened to us. I guess there’s a Gahan Wilson cartoon in there somewhere.”
“But we didn’t see her a whole lot after she left,” Jazz tells Todd. “We went to the museums a few times and had pizza at her house once, but then she moved away, and when she came back, she was different.”
“Because of the Alzheimer’s,” I say, trying to explain my mother. But we didn’t know it was Alzheimer’s for a long time. We just thought it was her.
Today’s her last morning at Jennifer’s apartment. The din of street sounds hasn’t started yet. At first Rose couldn’t get used to so much clatter and activity—her own home is on a street without much traffic—but now Rose lies in bed, waiting for the world to wake up around her. She’s gotten used to living here, enjoyed it even.
The feeling of familiarity that washed over her that first day has grown stronger. Living with Jennifer has brought Michael back to her. Jennifer’s so much like her father. Sensitive and bull-headed, self-confident and a hard worker. Michael would have been proud of her. He loved the kids so much. She was too busy taking care of them, making sure one of them didn’t touch the hot stove while another one didn’t run into the street. She remembers Jennifer six, Peter five, Betsy four, she wishing she could just tie them together with a rope and keep them in one place. She’s seen those halter things that some parents use now, like leashes, and she understands very well those mothers who choose to use them.
Rose misses her past. She wants to travel again. The idea creeps in and tugs at her. She doesn’t really want to go home, go back to work. She wants to see new places, and old ones.
She could do this. She’s saved enough money, and if she rents out her house . . . Yes, she’s sure she can do this. She has a mind for money. Funny, she didn’t know that until Michael died. She’s made some good investments, and her house is almost paid for. And her old friend Betsy is still living in Florida. Maybe she’ll want to travel with her for a while. That would be fun
A door slams somewhere, and a bus squeals to a halt. Rose gets out of bed, puts on the silly satin robe Peter bought her, and tiptoes out of her room. Jennifer sleeps with her door open, on the mattress with Jasmine. Rose watches her daughter and granddaughter sleep, knowing she will miss them.
She and Jennifer have never brought up all that mess, so long ago. They pretend it never happened, which is for the best.
Quietly walking about the apartment, Rose touches some of the odds and ends that Jennifer collects: little porcelain children which are really vases, Christmas ornaments hung from strings in the window even though it’s March, green Depression glass cups and saucers. Picking up one of the vases, the glaze thin and perfect, she wonders about the life of this woman who goes to house sales, who supports her child all by herself, who likes little vases. Rose doesn’t know her very well, but at least now, finally, she has laid to rest the image she has had of her daughter for all these years; that teenage girl with so much anger and bad will. She grew up, and became a mother. And Rose knows how hard that can be.
She puts the vase back on the shelf. She’ll look for such things, in her travels, to send back to Jennifer. Rose imagines herself traveling all over America, going into thrift shops and to outside markets where people sell the things they no longer need. She has so many dishes and linens. Maybe she’ll box them up, sell them. Why not? Life is short. It is time to do what she wants.
Rose rents out her house, and against the protests of all her children, she packs up and drives off. For the next seven years she travels all over America, visiting the places where she and Michael lived, finding new places she wishes they had seen together. The small park in San Antonio, Texas, is still there, although the playground is now covered with interlocking rubber mats and the jungle gym and slide are one big contraption of bright plastic. Kid-safe stuff. Was allowing her children to climb up metal jungle gyms really so dangerous?
She stays with her daughter Betsy and her family for six weeks each year, and for a month in the wi
nter with Peter and his family. She loves travel guides. There’s a great pleasure in the planning; where to go, where to stay, what to see, how to get there, how much she can spend. She keeps notebooks of different colors—one for finances, one for postcards, one for the places she has seen, one for the places she still wants to go.
Sometimes, in quaint, floral-wallpapered rooming houses, Rose pretends Michael’s still alive, that he’s just at work. Sometimes she’s lonely. Sometimes she’s the most lonely when she stays with her children.
Still, she’s satisfied with her life now. She’s found new interests. Birds, for one. She buys binoculars and a bird book and keeps a list of all the birds she sees. The two bald eagles in Wyoming, flying high above the pines, that was a moment she will never forget. And there was a flock of cedar waxwing that descended on the very tree she sat quietly beneath on the edge of a lake in Wisconsin. Those glorious birds, all about her, brought her a peace, and comfort in her self, in her aloneness, that contented her for a long time. Yet, she meets people easily. At the Grand Canyon, standing a good deal back from the edge of the cliff, she and another woman joke about what sissies they are. The woman, Holly, is taking a year off from her job as a social worker to travel the country in a small RV. Rose stores her car at a gas station and travels with Holly for the next few months, then takes a bus back to her car. In Montana she meets a Native American woman, Rain Tree, who makes jewelry and sells it at a roadside stand, and after chatting for an hour about everything under the sun, Rain Tree says she’s looking for a roommate, and Rose moves in. She finds a job as a temp in a real-estate office, where she works for the next seven months, making enough money to keep her traveling.
She is no longer the girl she used to be, or the wife, or the mother, or the widow, or the secretary. Oddly, she feels as if she is finally just herself. Sometimes driving down a road she has never been on, she finds she’s grinning so hard her mouth aches. She’ll roll down the window and hold her hand out, just to feel the wind against her skin.
