Twenty

by Debra Landwehr Engle

  * * *

  Rose would have been a wonderful big sister. After my last miscarriage—the one when she was two years old—Joe and I finally realized that Rose was more than enough, and we quit trying. But I gave thanks when Holly’s boys were born and the three of them could play. Holly and Phil hadn’t moved to Seattle yet, and they lived just twenty minutes away. So we got together whenever we could.

  I remember when Rose was eight years old and the boys were four and thirteen months. We all went to the State Fair to watch Mama judge the flower show. Actually we just made a brief appearance. No matter how much the kids loved Grandma, they could only sit still so long while she sorted out the best coreopsis and coneflowers. When they’d had enough, we moved on to the livestock barns.

  Rose shepherded the boys through the barns of goats and pigs as if she was their mom. She pushed Brent in his stroller and warned Mark when he stuck his hand in the pen with the giant boar. She sounded a lot like Mama, actually. “Now, Markie,” she’d say, “be careful. That boar is way bigger than you are, and you’re going to need those hands of yours to do great things when you grow up.”

  The boys clung to her. They’d do anything she said. One time when we were all at Mama’s for the day, she even talked them into sitting still and letting her put spiders on their noses. I can just imagine what she said to them.

  “It’ll tickle at first.” I’m sure she used her soothing voice, sounding like a master hypnotist. “But in a few seconds, you won’t even know it’s there.”

  When the boys walked into the kitchen with spiders crawling across their cheeks, Rose bragged about their courage, even though we all agreed it wasn’t a good idea. That’s how much confidence and trust she instilled in others. Lord only knows what she might have done with it.

  * * *

  I was admiring my kitchen artwork when the phone rang. It sounded muffled and faint. Probably in my purse, I thought, and went to retrieve it. I didn’t recognize the number, but when I said hello, there was no mistaking the voice.

  “Hi, Meg, how are you?”

  I sat still for a moment, trying to orient myself to the sound.

  “Joe,” I said. “I’m fine. This is a surprise.” I pulled out a chair and sat, staring at the swirls in front of me.

  “Did you get my card?”

  “I did, thank you. It was so nice of you to remember.” I scratched at a spot of dried paint on my shorts, then looked back at the wall of color, trying to ignore the same butterflies I’d felt when I saw him at Mama’s funeral.

  “This must be a tough time for you.”

  “I’m getting through it,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Good. Everything’s good. Say, I wanted to let you know, I’m coming to Iowa next week for a conference, and I’d like to get together and say hi.”

  He sounded casual, as though we did this all the time.

  I thought for a moment. “Sure,” I said, “it would be good to see you again. I’m headed to Seattle on Thursday, back on Sunday. Can we get together after that?”

  “Oh,” he said. “You’ll be seeing Holly?” He sounded concerned.

  “Of course,” I said. “Just thought it was time for a visit.”

  “Good,” he said. “You’ll have to tell her hi for me. How about Tuesday?”

  I looked at my calendar with the big red circle and the seven days I’ve marked off with red Xs. It’s so odd to be booking appointments this way.

  Day fifteen, I thought. “Sure, that would work. Want me to meet you in town?”

  “That sounds good,” he said. “I’ll give you a call when you get back to set up the details.”

  Perfect, I thought after I hung up. I’d made a list of the people I needed to connect with, and he was on it. How nice that the universe brought him to me. Life can be easy when you let it, I thought.

  * * *

  When I went back to painting, I tried to put thoughts of Joe and the future out of my mind. Who cares what the lab tests will show? I told myself.

  I got goofy, like I was punch-drunk, and danced while I painted. I made big swipes and curlicues in the air, humming to myself and hopping on one foot and then the other, splashing paint on the wall and then smoothing it in big arcs and spirals. I felt freer than I’ve felt in a long time, like when Holly and I used to dance to the West Side Story sound track when we were little.

  I asked myself, “WWJRD—What would Joan Rivers do?” She’d say, “Gawd, after I die, I’ll never have to wear a bra again.” No more hot flashes and migraine headaches. No more belly fat or diarrhea or worrying about being a burden in my old age. No more shaving my legs—or not having enough hair to shave. No more cleaning the refrigerator, taking out the trash, paying bills, and worrying about rain.

  And no more death. The ultimate irony. Dying means the end of death. I don’t know for sure what it’s going to be like on the other side, but I’m pretty sure flowers aren’t going to wither and gasp in the heat. Kittens aren’t going to be carried away by coyotes in the middle of the night. People aren’t going to be bullying and murdering each other and plotting new, senseless ways to make other people suffer.

  “I will not miss this place,” I said over and over, like a mantra, as I painted. “I will not miss violence and ingrown toenails. I will not miss rude clerks at the grocery store and people who cut you off on the freeway. I will not miss famine and greed and hate. I will not miss crazy politicians and all of society’s stupid rules. I’m going to a better place, and I will not miss this.”

  Then I sank into a heap on the floor and cried, because I hadn’t convinced myself at all. No matter how much I try to ignore it, everything keeps getting more beautiful.

  DAY EIGHT

  I used to have dreams that I sold this acreage and moved into the city, into a little house in a marginal neighborhood. In the dream, I’d start to panic, wondering why I’d given up a home I loved so much and traded it for one I didn’t. The sense of panic in the dream felt so real—the finality of something I couldn’t undo. There was no going back, and the enormity of my regret knocked me flat.

  That’s how I feel. I never thought I’d have regrets when I took the pearls, even though I wasn’t certain. But taking them has woken me up. I feel like I’ve emerged from some darkness, like I’m on a train that’s nearing the end of the tunnel, and I want to get off the train and run out into the light before it crashes into the mountainside.

  When I brushed my teeth this morning, I looked in the mirror and saw that the mole over my lip was gone. Just like that. No fading away gradually, no shrinking into nothing. Just gone.

  I would have expected to rejoice for two reasons: First, I’ve always hated that thing. And second, it means the pearls are working. Isn’t this the proof I wanted?

  That’s why my reaction startled me.

  I was angry. All I’ve done the last few days is tell myself a bunch of lies about how happy I am to be going. Complete bull. I’ve been pretending, and on some level I’ve known it. I guess it wouldn’t have been a lie otherwise.

  This means the stuff is working. It means I have less than two weeks. It means I’m really leaving, and I’m not sure I’m ready after all.

  The mole is gone, and there’s no one I can tell, nothing anyone can do about it. Just like with Rose and my mom, there’s no fixing it. But I am, by God, not ready to accept it after all, and I’m so angry at myself, I walked out on the front porch and screamed. That’s the worst of it. I can’t blame it on anyone, not even on God. With Rose, I could blame Him. But this was completely my choice, my decision.

  I screamed and cried like I did days after Joe left—great, hacking sobs that rocked me back and forth.

  So here’s the honest truth: I’m scared to death.

  No pun intended.

  I’ve decided that if I have less than two weeks left, I’m going to experience life with as much joy as I can. And then it hit me: Maybe I could have lived this way without taking the pearls.

 
* * *

  I never got the little green pearls out of the back of the freezer for Mama because she went downhill quickly at the end, and I knew the pearls wouldn’t be necessary. For so long her physical health remained strong, but her mind kept shutting doors, and she’d often say, “I want to go home.”

  “But, Mama, you are home,” I’d say. It helped knowing she was in a place she loved, even if she wasn’t aware of it. “This is where you and Daddy lived your whole married life.”

  In her final year, she declined slowly and steadily. One thing after another. Neuropathy in her foot. Arthritis pain. Difficulty swallowing. A hard time sleeping. Getting more and more forgetful. Holly came out from Seattle for a week every couple of months to help, and we had some money for a home health aide to come when needed. But Mama didn’t want to go into a nursing home, and we didn’t want that for her, either.

  “I know how much pleasure she gets just sitting on the porch and looking out at the flowers,” I told Holly. “If we took that away from her, I don’t think she’d last another week.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t be better,” Holly said. “I mean, is it even humane for her to go through this?”

  That comment surprised me. I thought about what Dr. Edelman said when he gave me the bottle of pearls. It eased my mind, thinking Holly would probably agree with me if I ever decided to use them. I would have told her about it if things had ever gotten to that stage. But since they didn’t, I couldn’t see the point of having that conversation. Knowing that a white bottle with the number 20 on it sat in the back of the freezer gave me comfort yet haunted me at the same time.

  Then one day Mama tried to get out of bed and fell and hurt her hip, and after that she was never the same. In those final days, I found great comfort in sitting with her. I couldn’t wait to leave the shop; walk through the kitchen door; thank Sarah, the home aide; and sit with Mama, often in silence. People who are actively dying have given up trying and doing and are just being, and there’s so much peace in it. No resistance. Just letting time ebb and flow over you like a shell on the sand, gently being washed out to sea.

  On her last day, I tried to give her morphine to keep up with the pain, the way the hospice nurse showed me, but it just wasn’t enough. I could see the end coming, though, and there was no need—or enough time—for the pearls. She tossed and turned as though she couldn’t get comfortable. I called Holly and cried with her on the phone. Holly and her family had visited a month before, saying their good-byes before they left. But she kept me company on the phone that day.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, Mama settled down. Her drawn face looked smooth and peaceful. She turned her head, reached out and held my hand, and looked right in my eyes. “I think I’ll go to sleep now,” she said, just as clear as could be.

  I went to the kitchen just for a minute to get a glass of water. As I filled my glass, the ice made a tinkling sound just like her laugh when I was little. Then I felt nothing but stillness. “Mama,” I said out loud. When I got back to her room, she was gone.

  After she died, I stroked her feet, tied up her hair in a bun, and sat with her. I had the same sacred moment I’d experienced with Rose. The same sense of leaving, of unreasonable joy as the veil lifted for an instant and I could feel the world that welcomed my daughter, and now my mother, with open arms.

  I missed that world, I realized. It felt like a place I longed for without even knowing it.

  The next day, I sat on the sofa with Mama’s afghan wrapped around me, and I felt her near me.

  “I’m so sorry, Mama,” I said. “I know you were in pain yesterday. I didn’t know what to do to make it better.”

  “Don’t give it a moment’s thought,” I heard her say. “You gave me everything I needed. No one could have done more.”

  * * *

  I’ve started paying attention to every ache and pain. A twitch just below my eye. Muscle cramp in my foot. Feeling slightly nauseous or dizzy. I wonder if it’s the pearls. Maybe I’m being punished for taking them. Or punishing myself for it. I know I’ve been crucifying myself ever since Rose died and Joe left.

  I tried to talk myself down from my panic. Anyone could die at any moment. I could fall off the ladder and lie here by myself for days before Holly would send the police to find me. Or I could cut myself on the barbed wire fence and get lockjaw and die a slow and miserable death.

  I tried to make light of the pearls. Will I wake up tomorrow and have a goatee? Maybe I could hurt myself enough that I’d need to go to the emergency room, and the doctors could give me something that would interrupt the action of the pearls and change the course of events. But I’m still not sure if I want the course of events changed.

  Apparently I’m still searching for something and I don’t know what. But I know if I’m going to find it, I’d better do it soon.

  * * *

  People say that memories of disaster are like a blur, but I experienced the opposite. Every moment of Rose’s accident was seared into my brain in such great detail that, even now, thinking about it, my senses are fully engaged. Like the first time Joe kissed me or when Rose slid out of me with one heave of pain and ferocity. She was determined to come out whether I was ready or not.

  That’s how she did everything, with purpose and clarity. She was ten when she fell off Romeo, so she never reached that adolescent stage when girls’ memory of who they are floats away in a sea of hormones and teen musicals. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like for Rose. Would she have lost herself? I would have done everything I could to help her retain her tenaciousness, her ability to size up people and claim her territory without offense. That capacity to comment on and guide people at the same time, while being genuine and holding her own ground.

  She went with me the day I took Qasim to high school. Our church sponsored his family from Sudan, and Rose and I introduced him to his first day of school. Before the security officer would let us in, he asked for Qasim’s ID, then he waved us through. Rose was just nine, but she recognized injustice when she saw it, and the officer’s suspicion of black people caught her attention.

  She stopped in front of the security officer, looked him in the eye, and said, “Why didn’t you ask for our IDs?”

  The officer didn’t answer.

  * * *

  So here’s what happened the day Rose had her accident.

  It was June 25, and we’d come out to Mama’s about two thirty in the afternoon. The daylilies and gaillardia were in bloom, the thermometer read 83 degrees, and the world seemed about as perfect as it could be. Joe was at work, I’d taken the afternoon off, and Rose and I stopped for ice cream on the way to Mama’s and took her a chocolate milk shake.

  I helped Rose saddle up Romeo like always, feeling the soft leather and rubbing Romeo’s nose while he swatted flies with his tail. Rose wasn’t an accomplished rider, but she’d been on Romeo since she turned six. His gentle nature and her levelheadedness made a good combination. In fact, Rose just rode around the pasture, never at a very fast clip, and Romeo patiently ambled along. I usually went back inside and helped Mama with some sewing, or we baked and caught up while the two of them had their outing.

  This day we were baking a coconut cake when we heard Romeo snort and whinny, and then heard Rose scream. We’d just turned off the Mixmaster—otherwise we might have missed it. We ran outside and saw Romeo in the pasture, rearing up on his hind legs. We couldn’t see Rose, and I knew what that meant.

  As we ran toward Romeo, I kept expecting to see Rose pick herself up from the ground and brush herself off, take Romeo’s reins, and stroke his nose. But Romeo stopped rearing and put his nose to the ground, so we knew exactly where to find her.

  It was the perfect storm of unlikely possibilities. A snake at just the right place to spook the horse. A rock in the exact spot to crack her skull when her head hit the ground. Road construction on the highway that delayed the ambulance by several minutes.

  Rose regained conscio
usness at the hospital and lingered for almost twenty-eight hours. But by seven o’clock that next night she was gone. Three days later, she was buried, the house was empty, and our life as we knew it was over.

  * * *

  Let me say something else about Rose. She was not a perfect child. When she was five, she took all the eggs out of their cartons and hid them in her closet so she could make cardboard caterpillars out of the boxes. When she was six and on a quest for candy, she sneaked Cricket into the grocery store, where he knocked over a display of cereal and then peed from all the commotion. When she was seven, she got into a fistfight with a boy in her class over an ice cream cone.

  The time she got into the greatest trouble, she was eight years old and corrected her teacher, who misspelled Pleistocene in a unit about the Ice Age. Rose came home and complained to us. We were sympathetic but reminded her that she needed to show respect to her teacher.

  Rose wasn’t convinced and, instead of apologizing to Mrs. Conrad, told her that she wouldn’t correct her again. She didn’t seem upset when we grounded her for that.

  But that’s what I loved about her. Her ability to stand up for herself, to follow her imagination and her convictions.

  She didn’t see the colored lights as I did—at least she never said so. Not until the night she died.

  Joe and I sat next to her bed, listening to the rhythmic sound of her breathing and heartbeat, amplified by the tubes and monitors. She’d talked to us earlier in the day but had been unconscious for two hours. Suddenly she stirred slightly, opened her eyes, and smiled.

  We jumped up from our chairs and leaned over her, looking for some sign of hope.

  But she didn’t see us. She was looking at something beyond us, something only she could see. “They’re beautiful,” she said.

  I recognized the softness and wonder in her eyes. I’d had that same look when I saw the swirls for the first time, all those years ago, not long before Daddy died.

  I turned my head in the direction of her vision, wishing I could see what our little girl saw. It took just a moment, hardly a wisp of time. But when I turned back to look in my daughter’s eyes, she was gone.