Full of Grace

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I went to bed with my head swirling in clouds of brown sugar and butter, curled up next to Michael’s back, more grateful and desperate for his love than I had ever been. The last thought I remember was wondering how I could feel so at peace that night when there was every reason for panic.

  In the morning, Michael was snoring but in a quiet way that was rhythmic and lovely. I slipped out of bed, showered and dressed. I made coffee and took him a mug. He was still snoozing, but he had turned over to my side of the bed and was holding my pillows in the crook of his arm. I put the coffee down on his bedside table and pulled the sheets quietly up and over his shoulder.

  As discreetly as I could, I was digging around in the closet for my sandals when I heard him mumble in a croaking voice, “What time is it?”

  “It’s only just eight. How do you feel?”

  “Fine. I think. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “There’s coffee there.”

  “Thanks.” He sat up on one elbow and reached for the mug. “You going down to Hilton Head?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be back by six, but if I stay over there’s dinner in the fridge.”

  “No cookies?”

  “There are plenty of cookies, little boy…What? Wait! Michael!”

  Michael hooked my thigh and pulled me back onto the bed. Then he climbed on top of me and held the sides of my face with his hands.

  “Tell your old man I’m gonna live forever and he’s not.” He had the biggest smirk on his face I had ever seen.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And tell him…tell him to be nice to Connie.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t drive like a lunatic. Only one of us can have a trauma at a time.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” Michael was staring at me like he was trying to tell me something else with his eyes. “What?”

  “Nothing. I love you. That’s all.”

  “I love you, too. Now get off of me before you start something I don’t have time for or I’ll never get there and back in one day!”

  “Say, ‘Michael Higgins is the best-looking hunk of burning love in the world and I am his personal property.’”

  I started to giggle. “Michael Higgins is the best-looking—”

  That was as far as I got. I didn’t get to Hilton Head until noon.

  “Ma?” Mom’s car was in the driveway, so I figured she was home. “Ma?”

  “I’m in here! Nonna’s room. Where were you? I thought you were coming earlier.”

  I went down the hall to my grandmother’s part of the house and there was my mother, up on a ladder, shuffling through the shoe boxes on the top shelves of Nonna’s closet.

  “The traffic was terrible,” I lied. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m looking for things Nonna wants—her pictures of Nonno, her number three crochet hook, her holy card of Saint Drugo or somebody, the patron saint of broken bones.”

  “Says her. Sounds illegal.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s easier to just do what she wants, you know?”

  “You would know that better than anybody. Come down. I’ll get up there.”

  “Fine, I’ll look for her baby blue bed jacket with the tissue pocket. And her navy terrycloth slippers with the wavy-ridged rubber bottoms. And her…Grace? Can I tell you something?” Mom climbed down and gave me a hug. “Your grandmother is finally seriously driving me crazy.”

  “So? This is news? What’s going on?”

  Mom sighed and shook her head. “Okay. First, it was that she couldn’t sleep. She said it was like being in a fishbowl. People came and went like it was Macy’s whenever they wanted to. She has no privacy, she says.”

  “Well, she’s probably not wrong about that.”

  “No, I’m sure she’s not, but, hello? She’s in a hospital, even though it’s not exactly a hospital…”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not exactly a nursing home either.”

  “Thank you! Okay, then she doesn’t like the sheets. She says they smell like bleach. In fact, she tells everyone who will listen that they smell like bleach.”

  “So you took her sheets down there and now you’re running a laundry service?”

  “You got it! And I don’t even mind that so much. I mean, it’s nicer to have your own sheets and quilt. And towels. I have no argument with that. But then it’s the food.”

  “She hates the food?”

  “What do you think? She says she’s starving to death. That she’s lost twenty pounds.”

  “Has she? I mean, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?”

  My mother made the sign of the cross and said, “God forgive me, Grace. Maybe she’s lost weight, but I can’t see it.”

  I came down from the ladder with a box of old photographs and holy cards. I spread everything on the bed. “But she’s got you bringing her all her meals? You’re catering?”

  “Italian bread with Fontina cheese and Nutella or honey and fresh fruit for breakfast with orange juice and coffee with half-and-half…”

  “She won’t even drink their orange juice?”

  “It has pulp and she hates pulp. And too much acid. You know that. Lunch? She’s gotta have soup with some kind of macaroni, with more bread or focaccia and a brownie or a cookie.”

  “I get the picture. Jeez. Will she eat on their dishes at least?”

  Mom looked at me and I knew the answer to that.

  “God, Mom. It’s a little much, don’t you think?”

  “Wait, you don’t know the whole story. So then she can’t sleep, right? So she’s up at all hours watching what’s going on with everybody and their coming and going and all that. And the cleaning girl comes in to wash the floors in the hall and then Nonna asks her to wash her floor. Well, she sees her dilute the cleaning solution. This girl doesn’t wash in the corners. She doesn’t wipe down the baseboards and, of course, the smell of the solution makes her stomach hurt worse than the orange juice.”

  I started laughing and I couldn’t stop. My poor mother, who was on the verge of tears, plopped herself on the bed next to me and began to laugh, too. Her voice was so rusty, so uncalibrated, that I knew she hadn’t thought anything was amusing in a very long time.

  “Don’t tell me she made you wash her floor!”

  “Augh! There I was, on my hands and knees, under her bed scrubbing her floor, and in comes Miss Marianne and her fancy-schmantzy mother all dressed up in St. John, straight from the gift shop with a teddy bear and balloons.”

  “Did you just about die?” Clearly Connie’s affection for my probable future sister-in-law had diminished.

  “Yeah, but…oh, my God, you’re gonna love this, she tells them to ‘shut uppa you mout,’ for God’s sake—her words, I swear—because she’s watching General Hospital!”

  “Did Marianne see you down there on the floor?”

  “I don’t know because they got very insulted and stomped right out! They were only there two seconds.”

  “Oh, my God. I love it. Go, Nonna! She’s a pisser, boy, isn’t she?”

  Mom and I were lying side by side while Mom continued to recount her story to the ceiling. “Wait! You haven’t heard the best. She called 911.”

  “What? Why?”

  “She said she wanted to go home and they wouldn’t let her, so she called the police.”

  “Please don’t tell me this. What did the hospital-slash-rehab-slash-not-a-nursing-home-but-a-facility do?”

  “They put ten milligrams of Xanax in her pill cup and told her it was an anti-inflammatory.”

  “They should’ve done that from day one.”

  “Right?”

  “So what does Dad say about you doing all this?”

  “Al? Oh, honey!” Mom slapped my thigh, sat up and looked at me. “Honey? He thinks it’s great preparation for when I have to take care of him!”

  I groaned, rolled over and buried my face in Nonna’s decorative sham that was only for show.

  “And n
ow it’s time to take her dinner down to the facility.”

  “Let’s poison her.”

  Mom laughed so hard I thought she might fall off the bed. “Bad girl! Bad, bad girl!” She spanked my backside about five times, but all her little slaps were in good humor.

  “Come on! It’s a good idea! We could take the cookies I made and brush them with rat poison!”

  My poor mother! She looked worn out, too.

  We packed the cardboard box with disposable plastic containers filled with each course, a setting of flatware, a bottle of Pellegrino that was actually filled with seltzer, a place mat and clean dish towel and a glass.

  “I keep a salt-and-pepper shaker down there,” she said.

  “Good call.”

  “And they have a microwave I can use.”

  “God forbid dinner’s not quite the right temperature.”

  “Fresh! Get in the car.”

  “I’m blocking you, so let’s take my car.” Backing out of the driveway, I noticed that the walkway was finished. “The walkway looks good, Ma.”

  “Don’t get me started…”

  At “the facility” we walked down the hall to Nonna’s room fully prepared to meet the dragon. We passed the nurses’ station and Nurse Divine was there.

  “Hi,” I said. “How’s it going?” I knew at a glance that Nonna had infuriated her more than once. As I looked over at her she rolled her eyes and then winked at me.

  “My secret weapon is in your grandmother’s room,” she said.

  Imagine our surprise when we found a handsome older man in the zone of Nonna’s age standing at the foot of her bed. His left arm was in a sling and they were having a lively and pleasant conversation.

  “Come in! Come in!” Nonna said as if she were the ambassador of goodwill for the entire state of South Carolina. “Come meet my new friend, George Zabrowski!”

  She introduced us and then he spoke.

  “I was just saying to Mrs. Todero that as soon as she’s really up to walking, I would be so honored to have her as my canasta partner over at the senior center. There’s a whole group of us and we have a game going every afternoon.”

  “Isn’t that a wonderful idea?” Nonna said.

  I began unpacking the dinner and watched the dynamic between Nonna and Mr. Zabrowski as this visit unfolded. Nonna was flirting with him!

  “I brought your bed jacket, Mom,” my mother said.

  “Oh, you can take that home,” Nonna said. “I am making some big progress. That thing’s for old people!”

  “And your slippers, too…”

  “Who cares about slippers? I’m going to be needing some good sneakers, I think.”

  “That’s the spirit, Mrs. Todero,” George Zabrowski said, and swung his good arm through the air in a salute of sorts.

  “And maybe a velvet running suit—navy blue or burgundy?” Nonna said.

  “Ah! Velvet! My late wife, Maria? She loved velvet. It’s so soft to the touch, like a fabric made for royalty,” he said, looking a little sad.

  “But aren’t you Polish? Your wife, she was…?”

  “She was from Italy,” he said. “And a very devout Catholic.”

  “Ahhhhh!” Nonna said.

  “I think we can go, Ma,” I said in a whisper. “It’s not like she even knows we’re here.”

  We stepped out into the hall with the plastic containers to warm them in the microwave.

  “What’s going on? Grace? What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is that Nonna just began her rehab, Ma. And she’s hot for George.”

  My mother’s face had the strangest expression. It was as though an enormous magnet from the ether appeared and pulled the weight of the world from her entire body. The weight rose into the air like a flotilla of helium balloons, each one popping with delightful musical sounds, and all of Mom’s troubles with Nonna were never to be seen again.

  “My God!” my mother said under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful?”

  “Wouldn’t what be wonderful?”

  “If he could get her up and moving!” Mom put the container in the microwave, closed the door, set the time and temperature and hit the start button.

  “He probably will. Watch them start dating.”

  The sounds of the microwave’s fan whirred while we considered the possibilities of Nonna in a romantic relationship.

  “Not happening,” Mom said.

  “Why not?”

  “She’d never betray Nonno.”

  “Nonno’s dead.”

  “That’s what you think. Doesn’t she talk to him every day since he went?”

  “So she says. Listen, knowing her, if she thinks she can swing getting something going with old Mr. Zabrowski in there, she’ll announce that Nonno came to her and said it was a good idea.”

  The microwave’s alarm rang. It was time to feed the beast.

  “I don’t know,” Mom said. “We’ll see.”

  Nonna thanked us profusely and basically told us we could leave and go home whenever we felt like it.

  “No need to stick around here!” she said brightly. “My friend can help me if I need anything.”

  “Are you sure, Mom?”

  She ignored my mother. “Isn’t my granddaughter beautiful? Her name is Maria Graziana—it means—”

  “Mary Grace! Hail Mary! Full of grace!” George said. “What a beautiful name for a beautiful young woman!”

  He was quite the charmer.

  “Now go on home, Connie, and feed your family! I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  We drove home, both of us in a little bitty state of geriatric-romance shock.

  “I’ve never even considered my mother being with another man,” Mom said.

  “Whatever ‘being with’ at that age would possibly mean.”

  Mom reached over and lightly slapped my arm.

  “Bad!” she said. “You certainly do have a smart mouth today!”

  “Nah, not really. I’m just trying to make you laugh, that’s all.”

  “It is pretty funny, though, isn’t it? Wait till I tell your father.”

  “Yeah. But listen, Ma, what’s not funny is Nonna making you her slave and Dad thinking it’s okay to run you ragged. That is not okay.”

  She was quiet for a minute and then the sighing began. For the rest of the ride neither of us spoke. We pulled into the driveway and she got out.

  “Your father’s home. And Nicky’s here. Can you stay? I could use the help tonight.”

  My cell phone started binging that I had a message. “Sure,” I said. I had not heard it ring, but there was probably no signal in “the facility.”

  I looked at the number of the missed call. It was Michael. Mom was already on the way inside and I dialed him back.

  “Michael? Hey. It’s me. What’s going on?”

  “It’s cancer, Grace. I have cancer in my brain.”

  I could feel everything drain out of me and I thought I was going to faint. “No. That can’t be, Michael. It’s got to be a mistake.”

  “It’s no mistake. My buddy Larry has a friend in the lab and he found out and called me. He’s coming over. We’re gonna drink tequila until we puke.”

  “We’ll go see another doctor, Michael. There’s this guy at Duke. I know about him—”

  “Hey, I just wanted to tell you. That’s all. There will be plenty of time to get second opinions and all that. And it’s caught early and, well, it sucks, right?”

  Michael went on for a few minutes and then he asked me when I was coming home.

  “Oh, God. Mom asked me to stay tonight, Michael. She’s really exhausted. But I can drive back after dinner. In fact, I will—”

  “No, I don’t want you on that two-lane road in the dark. And you don’t need to see me get as knee-walking drunk as I intend to be. So come home in the morning. I love you, Grace.”

  “Oh, Michael! I love you so much! Please! Don’t worry too much
. Whatever this is, we will just get rid of it, Michael. I swear we will.” I started to cry and struggled for him not to hear me.

  “It’s okay, baby.” He choked up, too, and I knew we were rushing to hang up to avoid a complete meltdown. “I’ll see you tomorrow and we will plan a battle, okay? Don’t forget to tell Big Al what I told you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We hung up and I thought, Well, now I know for sure what I already knew on some gut level. I was going to lose Michael. And I was going to lose him alone because no one else cared. I felt a rush of panic and heartbreak coming up from my heart like a freight train and I had to hold it back. I had to.

  It was time to go on the stage of my parents’ life and so I blew my nose. I couldn’t let them know. I put on a little lip gloss. I wouldn’t discuss it that night. I would keep it to myself until I knew what we were really dealing with. How big and gnarly was this enemy? It might be ridiculous for me to go into a full-scale panic and wail all over my parents. That’s right, I told myself, get a grip.

  I went in through the garage. I could hear Marianne’s voice before I saw her, and I don’t have to tell you that I was in no mood for her. Or Nicky. I decided it would be a quiet night for Grace. I would let them talk about their stupid insignificant lives and I would just help Mom get dinner on the table, do the dishes, sweep the floor and go to my old room and sob into my pillows all night.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Hi, Daddy!” I said, and hoped I sounded like the entire future of my world hadn’t just crashed.

  “Princess! Come give your old man a kiss!”

  I hugged him, and without thinking, I hung on to him for a split second longer than usual. But Big Al’s radar was on cue. It was enough for him to hold me away from him and examine my face. But before he could say, “Is everything okay?” and before I could respond, “Sure, everything’s fine,” Marianne opened up her mouth and threw me just the hunk of bait I was looking for.