“Grace? Grace?”
I could barely speak. I took several sips of the wine I had poured and tried to compose myself. I knew I sounded horribly desperate and miserable. I couldn’t help that either. “He’s dying, Mom. He’s dying. He’s the only man I ever loved and I’m going to lose him. You all don’t understand how much this is completely tearing me apart.” My voice was a whisper then. “I feel like I’m dying, too. I am.”
“Grace, baby, I am so sorry. What’s the matter with him? What can I do?”
“Nobody can do anything. He’s having surgery tomorrow morning. I checked him into MUSC today. Mom, he has a brain tumor and the survival odds are about zero. He’s got about a year, even with radiation and chemo.”
“Oh, dear heavenly Mother! Grace! He’s so young!”
“And you know? I keep trying to bolster his spirits and give him hope and be strong for him, but like tonight I had to ask him for his aunt’s phone number and his cousin’s, too…I don’t even know his next of kin…I don’t know his next of kin. All I know is that I’m not it!”
“Oh, honey, this is no time to worry about being married. It really isn’t.”
I refilled my glass and thought about that for a moment and then I said, “Look, Mom. That’s not even the point. There’s just a lot about me that isn’t working as little Gracie Russo anymore. That’s just how it is, Mom.”
“I know, honey. I see that.”
“I’m tired of having to leave Michael every holiday. I run down there to try to help you with Nonna and to please everyone and then what? Does anyone appreciate the fact that I am leaving Michael out because his ancestors are from Ireland? No, they do not.”
“Grace? I don’t want to fight with you about that. You obviously have a lot on your mind and I would be upset, too, if I were in your shoes. Listen, honey, we have a prayer group at church that prays continuously for the sick. I would be happy to add Michael’s name—”
“What is all this bull about prayer? Why is everyone offering to pray for Michael? Do you really think it would make a difference? I mean, it’s so stupid! It’s just naive! Why don’t we fund stem-cell research and let them find a cure for all these horrible diseases?”
“First of all, prayer is not bull, Grace. And second, the Holy Father says—”
I hung up.
I had reached a new personal low. I had hung up on my mother. To my surprise and relief, she didn’t call back.
After the worst night of almost no sleep and that same horrible nightmare torturing me when I did sleep, I went down to the hospital before it was even daylight. I looked in Michael’s room and he was sound asleep. I knew they would be getting him up soon. He already had an IV and I suspected they had given him some pre-op sedative. Sure enough, minutes later the door swung open and a nurse and two orderlies came in with a gurney to move him.
“Good morning, Dr. Higgins,” the nurse said. “Are you ready to take a ride?”
I stood up as Michael stirred with the transfer from bed to gurney. I leaned over and gave him a kiss on his forehead.
“I’ll be right here, baby,” I said. “I’ll wait. Love you.”
He nodded and opened his eyes for a second. Then he smiled at me. I was so glad I was there. Even though I knew he probably wouldn’t remember seeing me, I was just glad that I had arrived in time. The nurse directed me to the waiting area and said that as soon as Michael was in recovery his doctor would come to tell me how he had fared during his surgery. I was so overtired and the waiting area was already crowded, so there was no place to curl up. Nonetheless, I must have nodded off because a while later, I felt someone shaking my shoulder. I looked up into the face of my mother.
“I brought you a carton of orange juice with low acid and no pulp,” she said. “And a sausage biscuit.”
“Thanks,” I said. I opened the Burger King bag and pulled all the food out. “What are you doing here?” Obviously, she was there to be with me, but I was surprised to see her.
“What do you think I’m doing here? I came to be with my daughter in her hour of need. That’s what I’m doing here.”
I looked at her face, and even though we had extremely different politics and views on most everything, I thought that her coming was just about the sweetest thing she had done for me in many years.
“Thanks, Mom. I mean it.”
“You’re welcome. Now tell me everything the doctors have told you.”
It all came pouring out, the illness, the prognosis, Bomze’s gift of the time off to help him plan the little trip to Mexico, but most of all, I told her about our general terror. Mom listened with intense focus, occasionally shaking her head and taking my hand in hers. Her eyes were misty and I thought she might break down and cry, too. In the end, she put her arms around me and hugged me. She rubbed my back in circles and suddenly I remembered that she used to do that when I was a little girl and came running to her crying over one thing or another.
“So he has to have chemotherapy and radiation?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Well, it sucks because it will probably be worse to deal with than the operation.”
“He might lose his hair.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“And it might make him sterile, Grace, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah. We talked about it. He’s frozen some sperm so that if we ever change our minds about children and marriage and all that, there will be something saved.”
My mother lifted her chin and she inhaled profoundly with surprise. “Frozen sperm? You’re not talking about…I mean, you aren’t considering artificial insemination, are you?”
“Yeah, I am. Why? Is the Church opposed to that, too?” I could feel my anger rise.
“You know they are. It’s unnatural.”
“Look, Mom, if you wanted to come to Charleston to make me feel better, this isn’t making me feel better at all! Should I never have children because a bunch of old men in dresses have some hypothetical problem with a science they don’t even understand?”
“The Holy Father says—”
“Who cares what he says? Thousands of people have children with help from a lab. It’s not a sin! What is the matter with you? It’s like you don’t have your own mind—you just do what everyone tells you to do and—”
With that, my mother stood up from the sofa and said, “I’m leaving, Grace. I hope Michael comes through his surgery fine and that your science can heal him of something no one has ever survived. If I were you? At this point I’d try to find my faith and beg God for mercy.”
My face was buried in my hands and I didn’t even look up when I said, “Just go, Mom. Just go.” But when I did look up, she was way down the hall, walking out on me.
There went my mother, I thought, who spent her life parroting her mother, her husband and her pope. What a miserable way to be, I thought. It was worse than being Victorian. It was worse than anything because it kept us from being what we should have been to each other.
I wept and wept, for my mother, for myself and then for Michael’s mother. What was the universal demon that kept too many of us apart from the one woman we needed most? How could I ever hope to be a good mother with the lukewarm mother I had? I knew I had a smart mouth. I knew I wasn’t the perfect daughter. But why in the world couldn’t she bend just long enough to listen? Why couldn’t she walk me through an issue without a ceremony? Oh, I was so wrung out. I wished Regina had been with me. It was the longest day I had ever lived.
Finally, after waiting for what seemed like eons, I went to the nurses’ station. I was told Michael had just been returned to his room and was resting comfortably. The surgeon never came to reassure me and tell me what he had found, but the nurse said that Michael had done very well.
“He’s young,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. Too young to die.
After I was convinced he was stable, I went home for a while. When I opened the refrigerator
door there were four Mason jars of my mother’s homemade chicken soup and four jars of her marinara sauce. On my table was her most loved chocolate coconut cake in her ancient Tupper-ware cake carrier. She had used the extra key to bring food to me. It was what she knew how to do. Bring food. She couldn’t put herself in my shoes. She couldn’t consider my feelings about the Church and prayer and Ireland and all the complete nonsense I tolerated from them. But she had left her bed very early that morning to arrive when she did and she had probably been cooking long into the night. I was so confused and so upset, I didn’t care.
I sank into one of our dining chairs, opened the cake carrier and put my guilty finger into the icing. It was just as delicious as it always was.
I wanted to call Regina and get some sympathy, but I was too tired to dial the phone and I didn’t have the energy required to relive it all. Besides, I would have had to hear Regina tell me that I didn’t accept advice or criticism well. She would say, What do you expect from your mother? To go back on what she’s believed all these years? It’s how she’s wired, Grace. If she agrees with you then her whole paradigm is screwed up.
Oh, Connie? Why? Why are you so rigid? Especially today of all days? She hopes my science can take care of this?
And had my father called? No. My stupid brother Nicky? No. His twit? Thankfully, no.
I ate some more icing, but with less relish. I felt extremely bad about losing my temper with Mom, but it would be a while before I called her to apologize. She was just wrong. They were all just wrong.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LET’S NOT FIGHT
It was October when I finally called Mom to apologize. We had spoken many times during the weeks. But I was so busy with Michael and taking him back and forth to the radiation oncologist and she was so busy with Nonna that we had somehow never gotten around to the apology part of the apology. I just wanted the air officially cleared.
“I always told you children, there are enough people out in the world to fight with. You don’t need to fight with your family.”
“You’re right, Ma, you’re right.”
“I know this is a very stressful time for you. I asked around and I know pretty much what you are facing. Worse than that, I know what Michael is facing and therefore what you are facing—”
“Just imagine if it was Dad.”
“I can’t.”
“I love Michael like you love Dad.”
There was silence and then a tiny voice from my mom said, “We have to have a moment together, you and I. We have to have a moment to talk. And when I tell you what I…I will tell you, Grace, what I have never told anyone. And when I tell you these things, maybe I will seem like someone who makes more sense to you, not like someone who is a doormat.”
“Okay. Anyway, I’m sorry, Mom. I really am.” What was she talking about?
“Let’s not speak of it ever again. I know how you love me because I know how I love you. And if you tell me you love Michael with so much passion, you have to know that a mother’s love is that passion times fifty or more times a number that doesn’t even have a number. I can forgive you almost anything, Grace.”
“Jesus, Mom. Let’s not be so dramatic, okay? I mean…”
To my surprise, she ignored that, but she was quiet for a moment and then she said, “May I just point something out?”
“Sure…”
“For someone who claims not to believe in God or the Church, you sure do bring up their names an awful lot, Grace. I mean that in the nicest possible way, sweetheart…”
“Right.”
“Anyway, we are all praying for Michael, Grace, whether or not you believe in the power of prayer.”
“It’s not that I believe in prayer or that I don’t, Mom. It’s just not about that at all.”
“Okay. What’s it about?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think God gets involved, because if there was a God who listened to your prayers and could change the outcome of things, we never would have had concentration camps or terrible hurricanes or any number of all the horrible diseases. I think prayer is a coping mechanism. It makes people feel better to think there’s a God on their side.”
“Grace, Grace, Grace. When did you get so cynical? Did you ever stop to think how much worse diseases and catastrophes and wars could be without prayer?”
“Well, I guess everything is point of view, right? Anyway, Michael is tolerating the radiation and chemo extremely well. Although he’s lost his hair and a little weight. He’s back at work, part-time. His youth is certainly helping, and the fact that he was in excellent shape when this whole party got started.”
“So his doctors are satisfied with his progress?”
“Yeah. You would think that brain surgery would have you locked up in intensive care for months. But it is a superfast recovery, at least to get back on your feet anyway.”
“He’s not complaining? No headaches?”
“Nope. He feels better now than he did before the surgery. And he’s asking for another chocolate coconut cake.”
I could hear the pleasure in Mom’s voice. “Tell him I’ll bring him one the next time I come to Charleston.”
“I will. So? How’s Nonna?”
“How’s Nonna? Hoo, boy! Well, she’s using a walker, but she’s getting around better than ever. The good news is that she spends almost every day over at the senior center playing canasta and crocheting. She’s with this fellow George constantly. The bad news is that I have to cook everything. She’s given up cooking for love. And she’s on the South Beach Diet.”
“Please! Seriously?”
“I’m telling you the truth! At least she’s happy. She’s losing weight like nobody’s business and she thinks she’s in love. I caught them kissing. That was pretty embarrassing, let me tell you.”
“Ew! I think there’s a little bit of vomit in my throat.”
“Right? Mine, too. She says she saw Nonno and he was happy for her to have a gentleman friend. Anyway, that’s the story with Nonna.”
“Gross. Well, I’d love to come down and see y’all, but I’m taking care of Michael, his mother—to the extent that anyone can—and I’m still working on that trip to Mexico for January.”
Mom knew that Bomze had given me time to be with Michael and to plan a Mexican trip. But she didn’t know I was taking a group of devoted Marian Catholics to see the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. If she and Nonna knew that, they would have been on the plane with me. That was the last thing I needed.
With that I realized that I almost forgot I had to be at St. Mary’s rectory at three o’clock. It was two-thirty and I didn’t want to be late for my first appointment with a freaking priest.
“How is Michael’s poor mother?”
“Pitiful. Honest to God, Mom…I mean, honestly. Alzheimer’s has got to be the most unfair illness there is. I mean, really. You live your whole life as a dignified woman and in your final years you’re reduced to this mindless, skeletal shadow of who you used to be. I’ve been out in Summerville with Michael like three times this month, because Michael’s still not driving and it’s terrible. Man, if that was you, I’d cry my eyes out. I really would.”
“Thank heavens we don’t have that in our family.”
“I think if I found out I had it, I’d drink the Kool-Aid. Seriously.”
“Don’t say that! Suicide is a very serious—”
“I’m kidding, Mom!”
“Oh. Okay then, give Michael our best.”
“I will, Mom. Thanks.”
Well! That was a change in the parental attitude. We had arrived at a place of pleasantries. Not bad. I’d take it.
We hung up and I scooped up all my papers and rushed over to St. Mary’s Church. If I had been a good Catholic, St. Mary’s is where I would have been attending Mass on Sundays. I wasn’t.
I rang the polished brass doorbell, and in a few minutes, a housekeeper answered.
“Hi! I’m Grace Russo from Bomze Platinum T
ravel. I have an appointment with Father John at three.”
“Please come in,” she said. I followed her into a room that looked like an office and a library. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
She left, closing the tall doors behind her. The ceilings of the first floor of the rectory had to be twenty feet high, with crown moldings trimmed in a Greek key motif. The walls were lined with bookcases filled with old leather volumes of every description. And the oversize oak desk looked to be at least a hundred years old. There was a framed picture on a side table of a Franciscan priest with Pope John Paul II and another of the same priest with Desmond Tutu.
“I was a much younger man then.”
I turned to face the priest of the photographs and found the kindest face I thought I had ever seen. In fact, it was startling. I had expected him to be larger and more ecclesiastical and threatening or something. But he was wearing simple black cotton trousers, a short-sleeved black shirt and, of course, a small Roman collar.
“Please, let’s sit down. Martha is bringing us some iced tea.” Rather than sit behind his desk, he sat opposite me in one of two chairs in front of his desk. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet the face behind the voice.”
“Thank you, Father. It’s nice to meet you, too.” I handed him my business card. “What a beautiful rectory this is, and I know St. Mary’s is supposed to be beautiful, too.”
I saw him knit his eyebrows and glance at my card. I could almost hear what he thought. What? Russo? She’s Italian and not a Catholic?
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