A Bittersweet Goodnight

by Linda C Wright

  In order to break the news gently to us once more, this time Mom sat us down on the sofa in the living room. Without a basement, the Three Stooges were a thing of the past. The one and only television resided in the living room. We had no escape.

  “I believe you children need to get to know June. I’ve invited her over for dinner on Saturday night.” Her voice quivered but she remained firm with her words.

  We stared blankly at her, our usual response to Mom’s announcements.

  “I’m picking her up at the Rapid Transit at 5:30 and bringing her back here for dinner,” Mom told us.

  Susan and Martha, both home from college for the summer, already knew about the dinner party. It was a familiar pattern in our household, the separation of the two college girls and the two younger innocents. My sisters knew everything before I did. Steve didn’t care; being the only boy he was oblivious to the politics of the women in the family. Even at eleven years old, I knew I didn’t want to be left behind. I hated being the last to know everything.

  Although I was only two years younger than Steve, I was eight years younger than Susan, the oldest. It’s a big gap when you’re in elementary school and your older sisters are in high school and headed to college. They had boyfriends. I still hated boys. They watched soap operas while I watched cartoons of Rocky and Bullwinkle. My sisters wore garter belts with nylon hose and hung their bras to dry in the bathroom. I wore white lacy anklets with black patent leather Mary Janes.

  It wasn’t until I was in college myself that Mom announced to me one day that I was an accident. With two girls and a boy already, the family was complete until I appeared. An oops, she called it. Mom, in her misguided effort to show love to her children, only distanced me more. Long before this announcement I’d been searching for the parental love and sibling connections that eluded me. This helped to explain why I felt left behind in the family dynamics.

  Mom gave us all strict instructions before she left, set the table, brush your teeth and put on a clean shirt. She and June would be back in a half an hour. My mother had never been much of a housekeeper. Straightening up the tiny living room and vacuuming the little bit of carpet took all of what little energy she had left. Inviting June had been her idea after all, and I’m sure the drive to the Rapid Transit was the longest ride of her life.

  To this day I wondered why June agreed to come. I never figured out why Mom wanted to put herself in that position. She cared about us in a way that she didn’t want her children to be afraid or feel uncomfortable around June. I understand that. Why my mother was the one to introduce us to our new stepmother and not my father is a mystery. June told me once, Dad didn’t want her to come to dinner that night but she thought it was the right thing to do.

  Steve and I took our usual places at the window. We waited. And watched.

  Our white Ford sedan came around the corner and pulled into our assigned parking spot right underneath our lookout.

  “They’re here,” I shouted.

  A small, petite woman opened the door on the passenger side closest to us and stepped out of the car. Her hair had been rolled, set and teased in a beauty parlor fashion. She wore a dark blue sheath dress with a string of white pearls. Clutching a small leather bag and wearing matching sling back pumps, her heels clicked on the sidewalk. She looked like she stepped right out of Vogue Magazine. Our own mother never dressed so stylishly.

  Mom looked fat and dowdy by comparison. My mother didn’t just look fat she was fat, as round as she was tall. As kids, her obesity was a constant source of embarrassment for us. All my friends had skinny moms. Seeing the discarded wife and the new wife side by side made my father’s choice all the more clear to me. As much as I wanted to believe love isn’t shallow and belongs in the heart, outward appearances are what first catches a person’s eye. Mom appeared old and worn out next to the fashionable and slender, June.

  Susan turned down music blaring from the small gray plastic radio we kept on the bookshelf, left on all day long as a way to squelch the silence that allowed our thoughts to dwell in how suddenly the boundaries of our lives had shrunk. The music of the sixties allowed my college aged sisters to dream of finding love and escaping our broken family. For me, blowing off some steam dancing the twist or the swim or the mashed potato helped me to forget I could no longer ride my bike down the big hill on Kersdale Road or scour the woods behind our house looking for wildflowers. My world had gotten significantly smaller.

  June stood in the doorway, while my mother did the introductions, oldest to youngest.

  “This is Susan and Martha. And Steve and Linda.”

  I lowered my chin to my chest, not sure if I wanted to make eye contact with her.

  “It’s nice to meet all of you. I’m glad Sallie invited me tonight,” June said.

  I don’t remember what we talked about or what we had for dinner that night. I do know the conversation never waned. It was still light out when Mom drove June back to the Rapid Transit, so she didn’t stay long and drag out what was most likely an exhausting night for her and my mother both.

  When I married Richard at age thirty-one and he was forty-four, I became a stepmother to a twenty year old, Pam. I never mothered her, she had one of her own and she was an adult. I only offered advice as best as I could and when it was asked for. One of the first lessons of marriage I learned was to never come between a father and his daughter. The daughter always wins. Never having been the jealous type, to this day I have a very friendly relationship with Joan, Richard’s first wife. I didn’t know it at the time, but I absorbed the nuances of stepmotherhood and the proper treatment of ex-wives around the dinner table that night.

  “Can you believe she came to meet us?” I asked my sisters after they left.

  Even in my pre-teen mind, I understood my father didn’t like my mother any more and June was the other woman that had seduced him into marriage. Dinner had been pleasant enough but I still wasn’t sure what to think about her. She wasn’t what I would call pretty. She had a wide nose with big nostrils, thin lips covered in thick red lipstick and poufy golden hair. Mom wasn’t pretty either, and she never learned how to style her own hair or apply makeup tastefully to enhance what little she had. It must have been a thin figure versus a chubby one, makeup versus none and teased hair versus no hairdo that attracted my father. I couldn’t see any other differences between them.

  “No. I can’t,” Susan answered with the usual firm tone in her voice.

  “What are we supposed to call her?” I asked.

  Stepmother sounded so cruel and Cinderella-ish. June didn’t seem mean or demanding to me, but what was she? Was she my parent? No, I had two of those and neither had stopped their parenting ways as limited and inconsistent as it was. Was she my friend? No, Georgia was my friend at school. I couldn’t conceive of the notion that anyone over the age of twelve would be my friend.

  “I don’t know. She never said,” Susan answered. “Let’s just try ‘June’ and if she doesn’t like it, too bad.”

  My parents had taught us to respect adults. I didn’t call any of my friends’ parents by their first names, only Mr. Mitchell or Mrs. Adams. Calling my stepmother June went against everything I ever learned. If my older sister said to call her by her first name, then that’s what I would do but I feared it would get me into trouble. So there June remained, in some kind of childhood limbo, not mother, not friend, not wicked step mother. And there she would stay, at least for the time being.

  “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” - Will Rogers

  Chapter Six

  I crumpled the paper in my fist and tossed it across the room. The past few months had been rough since June turned ninety-one and I wanted to believe the hard part was over now she was safely settled in her room at the assisted living home. My reaction to the amendment to her will however, told me that wasn’t to be. Afte
r Dad died, June lived on her own until well into her nineties, a fact I should be grateful for. Overall she lived a happy and healthy life until all hell broke loose and I ended up sitting smack dab in the middle of the fire.

  A long list of circumstances led me here but for my sisters, one they didn’t have any knowledge of. I couldn’t shake it out of my head. Our frame of reference would always be different, me on one side and everyone else on the other with June trapped in the middle. The memory that divided us played out like a movie.

  Two days before June’s ninety-first birthday, I receive a frantic call from Susan while out riding my bicycle around the neighborhood. I learned to carry my phone with me for times like this. Calls came in at all hours, always jostling my mind and setting me on edge not knowing who was on the other end wanting some kind of help I had no idea how to give.

  “Edible Arrangements tried to make a delivery to June and she told them to go away. She wouldn’t let them in,” Susan said, her voice loud, her words quivering.

  My hunt for answers on the best way to care for June was going nowhere. I spent each morning making calls to home care services and senior service organizations. Each call yielded more confusion. I called June every day and she seemed to be stable during our conversations. I realize now however, the dementia lizard fooled me once again.

  “Let me call 911. I’ll call you back later and let you know what I find out,” I said.

  What I didn’t tell my sisters and brother was June had threatened to kill herself a few weeks before. I made the two and half hour drive to see her, made sure she knew when I would arrive and her plan was for me to find her dead. Only I knocked on her door before she tied the plastic bag over her head. I didn’t want to explain and listen to any of them gush over how horrible that must have been for me. I know it and it hurt me. They wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help, nor would they offer.

  None of them can possibly understand how I feel. Why June chose to put me through that continues to gnaw at my being. I’m a coward, leaving her alone, running out on her. I should have gotten help right then and there but instead I walked out. Here she is pulling the same stunt again; only Susan thinks June is singling out Susan and her birthday gift.

  “I spoke to Rosemary and she already called the paramedics,” Susan said.

  “Pray Susan, they find something wrong with her and take her to the hospital. It’s the only hope to get her out of that place,” I said.

  I called the Delray Beach Police Department and was told the paramedics had been dispatched to June’s apartment. The operator took down my number and would have them contact me.

  I waited. After what seemed like hours, the phone rang.

  “Hello, this is Brian Miller from Delray Beach Fire Rescue. We’re here with June.”

  “Is she OK?” I asked.

  “We can’t take her to the hospital. Her vital signs are normal,” he said.

  My lungs suddenly emptied themselves of all air. “Is there any way you can get her out of there? She’s so darn hard headed,” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, no. But I don’t think she should be living alone.” He began to laugh. “She just lit up a cigarette.”

  I chuckled too. “That’s June.”

  “The air conditioning is working fine. She had it turned off. It was about 90 degrees in here but it’s starting to cool down,” he said.

  I immediately knew what June was up to. She turned off the air-conditioning on purpose. Not wanting to celebrate another birthday she thought up another hair brained idea, this time to cook herself to death. Ashamed of myself for not doing anything the first time she threatened suicide, again I believed June when she promised to cooperate with me. My guilt in what my sister and June’s neighbors might think of me crowded out my ability to properly care for her.

  The paramedic handed the phone to Rosemary. She’s crazy with worry, then to Darlene, another neighbor who lived down the hall, who demanded I do something about her now.

  I replied using what’s become my standard line.

  “Darlene, I appreciate all you and Joe did for her over the years. I’m working with an agency to send in an aide to help her. It’s been difficult to find someone because of her smoking.” I exhaled. “Please know I’m trying my best and someone will be with her in the next couple of days.”

  I told a little white lie. All the home care agencies I’d contacted over the past few weeks refused to work at the frantic pace I felt necessary. I had no clue when I could get someone to assist with June’s care. I had five more agencies on my list to call.

  “I’m not going to be responsible if anything happens to her,” she replied.

  “No one is asking you to be, Darlene. Thank you for all your help,” I answered.

  Next the paramedic gave the phone to June.

  “Linda. Why is everyone making such a fuss? I hate it,” she whined.

  “Leave the air conditioning on. It’s hot outside in the summer,” I said knowing she paid no attention to my instructions.

  “OK. I’ll do what you tell me. Just let me stay home,” her voice hitched.

  “Behave yourself, June and then you can stay put.” I spoke as if she were ten years old.

  “I’ll be good. I promise,” she said.

  June had to convince Rosemary and Darlene, not me. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I was going to believe any such a promise ever again. That’s the promise I made to myself after I hung up the phone.

  June’s stubbornness had always been one of her most prominent traits. These days she dug her heels in even deeper than I’d ever seen her do in the past. The mind trying to overcompensate for what the body could no longer control started the battle neither could win. I struggled with knowing when she knew what was going on and when she didn’t. I believed she knew precisely the reactions her deliberately planned yet skewed actions could elicit from me, which was an integral part of her overall strategy. She’d been the one in control all her life and even though her mind was failing, the muscle memory of being in charge remained fully in place.

  In the deep recesses of my mind, June was still the same June I talked and laughed with over a drink. When she assured me she ate dinner last night, I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? God played a cruel trick on all of us. I trusted her but deep down in the dark trenches of her mind she knew I was the one she had to deceive in order to get what she wanted. That’s how dementia works only I couldn’t find any information about this cruel subtlety spelled out in any Google search. So I too, remained in the dark.

  I never abandoned my moral code since respecting my elders was ingrained in my being from an early age. Knowing little about how to deal with an elderly person with dementia, I didn’t know I needed to find a new way to communicate with her. The usual “Hi June, how are you doing?” would no longer generate a truthful answer.

  ***

  My self imposed pity party over, I gathered up a pile of newspapers on the floor, grabbed the full garbage bag and headed down the hall to the trash chute. One job done, one hundred thousand more to go. I packed up the unused Life Alert necklace and alarm box and set it outside the front door for pickup. Mentally exhausted already, I wrestled with my choices for the next task. I wanted to choose one I could do without crying or feeling weak at the knees.

  I’d better get busy and find the box of family papers. It’s the only thing on this list I don’t know where or what it is and it was the only thing I would take home. None of June’s pretty things belonged to me now even though I needed only one fancy knickknack to remember her by. I dreaded how I might react when I found the box, and I feared I might find some deep dark secret inside. If June could no longer speak truthfully to me, had she been lying to me about something else over the years and I’d been totally unaware? I wondered.

  June paid her bills at a small desk under the window in the spar
e bedroom. Unlike my father, who’d been know to write out a check for the electric bill within minutes of opening the mailbox, June organized her bills in date order in a letter rack. A book of stamps was kept handy in the corner of the drawer, and two pens were stored in a cracked coffee mug on the windowsill.

  I chose to see what useful information the desk might hold, and was instantly sorry I had. As if a tornado had landed in the tiny workspace, papers lay every which way like they’d been dumped out of a garbage can instead of being placed in the wastebasket and taken down the hall to the incinerator. The wood top of the desk wasn’t visible, nor was the checkbook or the mug of pens. I slowly backed myself out of the room returning to the relative safety of the living room.

  So much for choosing something that wouldn’t make me cry. Initially I involved myself in her life because Dad wanted me to, but today I was here with compassion and loyalty. I wanted to be someone June could count on too. I retrieved the crumpled list I’d thrown in the corner and read the remainder of the names on it.

  Surrounded by her life, a life we shared in so many ways for so many years, she wanted me to pack it all up and send it off. Of course I knew my two sisters and my brother, but I never met anyone else whose name she wrote on the list except for her goddaughter, Kathy.

  June had one sister, Marion, who passed away in her sixties of pancreatic cancer. She died shortly before my Valentine’s Day wedding in 1987 and in typical blushing bride fashion; I panicked a little, wondering if my father would get back from the funeral in time to walk me down the aisle. He insisted on driving from Florida to Pennsylvania in January, snow or no snow.

  Robin, Larry, Jim and Peter were Marion’s children. While I knew their names, I never met them. The list clearly stated what belonged to them, including her father’s telegraph machine he used while working for the railroad and the miniature wooden shoes he brought back from Europe after his service in World War I.

  I never knew why, but for some reason the two sets of children were never invited to mix. Not a drop of June’s blood flows through my veins yet I’m the chosen one. The blood relatives are nowhere to be found in her time of need. I turned off her phone when I turned the new one on at the assisted living. The number changed. June insisted she spoke to all of them often. Let’s see how long it takes for one of them to contact me when they hear the disconnection message from the phone company.