How to Forget

by Kate Mulgrew

  In that moment, I was happy to have had the training of an actor and entered the room with the same inscrutable pleasantness I had exhibited when searching for an apartment in Manhattan. The woman, whose bearing had lost some of its importance as soon as we had entered the residential wing, stood to the side and watched our faces with the beady-eyed alertness of a crow.

  While Tom strolled into the bathroom, making small sounds of approval regarding the appliances attached to the shower, I studied the bedroom, turning slowly in place to illustrate to the woman that the economy of the space was unexpected, and that I was not to be hurried.

  The discipline required to conceal my reaction was considerable. This was a place utterly devoid of life, a place where old people came to count their days before dying, and in that counting was the drip, drip, drip of indifference, stripping them of any sense of self they may once have clung to. The clean, tidy bed where so many had lain, with its floral polyester bedspread and its two flattened pillows in faded pink cases, the requisite vase of plastic flowers on the round table beneath the window, through which one glimpsed other drab buildings, squatting in the distance, the beige recliner stained with the remnants of someone else’s coffee, the empty closet able to accommodate no more than those articles absolutely necessary for subsistence, the open door leading into the corridor.

  “I noticed that everyone keeps their bedroom door open. Is that choice, or protocol?” I asked, peering into the bathroom, where I met my brother’s frankly horrified expression, and quickly backed out.

  “Oh, we like our residents to feel free to visit each other. We encourage friendships here,” the woman explained, proudly. Every instinct in my body told me that at no time in its entire history had friendship blossomed in this arid, lifeless place.

  “Well, it’s quite impressive,” I said, buttoning my coat, “but, naturally, we’re going to have to give it serious consideration. There are six of us kids weighing in on this decision, and you know how that goes.”

  The woman’s expression told me that she knew only too well how that went and that, in her experience, it generally went south. Her self-regard was such that she would not demean herself by pandering, but when she asked for our personal contact information, my brother said, quite pragmatically, “We’re going to look at all of our options before making a decision. I’m sure you can understand that. She is, after all, our mother. We’ll call you when we know what we want to do.”

  As soon as we had passed through the front door into the sunshine, I started to cry and, turning to my brother, said, “You were brilliant.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because it’s unbearable to think of my mother in that place, unbearable to know that that’s where unwanted old people are shuffled off to. The whole thing was ghastly.”

  “You know what’s not ghastly?” my brother asked, flipping the car keys in the air and catching them deftly with his other hand.

  Brushing the tears from my cheeks, I studied him for a moment before answering.

  “A cheeseburger and a beer?”

  “Now you’re talking my lingo, hermana. Vámanos!”

  Biting into an oversize burger at the Ground Round, I observed my brother’s eating habits, which mirrored my own. We ate quickly, intensely, and with no apparent relish. The goal was to absorb as much fuel as possible in the least amount of time. Tom was slightly more fastidious than I and had the discipline to return his burger to the plate after each wolfish bite, whereas I allowed for no such leisure and consumed the entire burger without once putting it down.

  “That nursing home made you a little peckish, huh?” my brother asked, popping a French fry into his mouth.

  “Stress eating,” I replied.

  “You’ve been stress eating since you were two,” Tom declared.

  “My size four pants don’t feel it,” I said.

  “Six.”

  “Screw you.”

  We paused as the waitress gathered our plates.

  “Bom, what are we going to do?”

  We looked at each other, searching for an answer.

  “We could move her closer to town, so that in the event of an emergency a hospital would only be minutes away. Much less pressure on Lucy, easier for the family to visit Mom, more convenient when the time comes for, you know—”

  “Hospice,” I interjected.

  “Yeah. And gives us the time and space to sort out Derby Grange. It’s practical, all around.”

  “Practical, but sad. Dad would never have allowed such a thing,” I said, curious to see how this opinion would settle.

  “Dad was of sound mind, and he died very quickly,” my brother responded. “Mom doesn’t know where she is, or who she is. She won’t know the difference.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said, a little too defensively.

  My brother regarded me carefully. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he was growing tired of the unrelenting importance I attached to every aspect of my mother’s care and wanted to resolve the issue efficiently and with as little drama as possible. This dynamic defined our relationship and had served it well. We seldom disagreed and, despite distinct differences in personality, had always loved and trusted each other. In a sense, we had started out together, the first son and the first daughter, and this distinction at once set us apart and balanced us. Tribally, we shared equal power.

  “Bate, you know as well as I do that she’s not here anymore. Maybe we could find a small house somewhere close to the hospital, something affordable, and just make a quick and easy transition,” Tom suggested, his tone confidential.

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “You and I would split it, is what you mean. Keep the others out of it,” I said.

  “Exactly. I’ll take care of the down payment and whatever else is needed up-front and you and I can settle later on. Agreed?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Tom had always been generous, sometimes inordinately so. I often wondered if this was in reaction to our father’s penuriousness, a failing my brother had determined early in his life not to perpetuate. Sitting across from him, I couldn’t help but feel the sadness of time lost; it was impossible not to marvel at all we had known, the secrets and intimacies of a childhood defined by a place that we had loved but that could no longer protect us or our mother who, we knew with terrible certainty, would never have left of her own volition.

  Tom had changed remarkably little in fifty-two years. Trim, agile, light on his feet, he had features favoring the Kiernan side of the family. In this moment and in this light, he looked very much like our mother. I wondered if he was aware of that genetic inheritance, and if it pleased him.

  When the waitress came to the table, my brother and I rose in our seats and reached for the check at the same time.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Everyone detested the house on Devon Drive, and yet that is where we took her to die. Reason abandoned us at this time, and what prevailed was a sense of survival. Even now, I cannot remember the exact justification for this decision, other than that it seemed to resolve a number of conflicts among us. Derby Grange awaited ownership, and until that was determined the home in which my mother had lived for almost fifty years was, in effect, off-limits.

  Of course, there were any number of practical reasons applied to this solution, but in retrospect they seemed contrived and insubstantial. We wanted her near a hospital, in the event of an emergency. We did not want to risk an awful accident at home, in whatever form. We wanted all of the family close by.

  I can’t even recall if I was present when she was physically moved from Derby Grange to the tidy little house on a quiet, tree-lined street in town. So many memories have dissipated in the mind-blunting of that period, when every thought, every feeling, every action was born out of intense anxiety. In the removal of our mother from the place she had lived in and loved for fifty years, we were declaring her death imminent, and perhaps that is why, in my mind’s eye
, Derby Grange had been shuttered, the windows latched, the doors locked. Most likely, it was a sunny day in June when she was lifted from her bed, as inflexible as wood and yet as light as a feather, wrapped in blankets, her diaper fresh, her hair combed. Lifted up by two men, Sam and Javier, and carried carefully to the backseat of Sam’s SUV, where she was laid against cushions, her head propped up on pillows, her eyes staring straight ahead.

  As they drove down the sun-dappled driveway, under an archway of trees she would never see again, past the glen where feathers had been found and tucked in a sweater’s sleeve, where tiger lilies danced like orange beacons in the dusk, where children and grandchildren had shrieked with pleasure on the swing that Joe had fashioned out of two long planks of wood and anchored to the branches of the tall maple tree that shaded it, past the bonfire that, even in its dereliction, waited for the family to gather, for the flames to mesmerize, for the laughter and the singing she would never again hear, down, down the driveway my father had paved with Mulgrew Blacktop and, looking back, to the house itself, standing amid a copse of trees, its rooms lit with candlelight, tall windows beckoning, the brick and mortar of two hundred years, the births and the deaths of children, the paintings framed and hung on every wall, the ornate mirrors, the sage walls and the salmon ceiling of the dining room, the art studio, where everything was forgiven, the upstairs bedrooms and the floral wallpaper, the bed she had once shared with my father, the narrow back stairs and the hundreds of secrets they had known, the orchard with its crooked fruit, the grape arbor, where daughters married, the forgotten statue of St. Francis, through the stone gates, past the bee houses, down the gravel road, past the Breitbach farmhouse and the ramshackle red barn, past the rolling cornfields, the green valleys, onto the new road that would take her, for the last time, away.

  My mother, by all accounts incapable of thought, had nevertheless fixed her gaze on the disappearing view of her house, and had not closed her eyes until the car turned onto the highway. Someone told me this, or perhaps I was there, sitting beside her in the back of the car. I must have been present when she was again lifted out of the car and this time carried a much shorter distance, up a common concrete walkway, through an unfamiliar front door, and into the bright living room where a bed had been made up for her, against the wall. This was a house without shadows, without mystery, without guile. It represented itself well; clean, new, well maintained, the kitchen a veritable homage to the baker who had once lived there. Gleaming surfaces, spotless carpets, air-conditioning—an unheard-of luxury growing up—at a low, constant hum. The thermostat confounded us because we had no way of measuring our mother’s comfort, and therefore this amenity became a source of irritation.

  As she was unfolded into her new bed, with all the attendant fussing, my mother’s eyes remained open. I hurried to sit beside her, to smooth the sheet over her chest, to adjust the pillow under her unyielding head. I wanted to observe the effects of this disruption and, seeing none, wondered why I was not appeased. The entire purpose behind this enterprise had been to bring peace to a family in turmoil, but that calm eluded me. What washed over me instead was shame.

  The furniture in the living room was moved to accommodate the six of us. This is where we would hold our final vigil and, unsurprisingly, each of us chose a place we marked as our own. Tom appropriated the couch, which rested against the length of the front wall. Jenny often joined him there, but she was just as likely to perch at the foot of our mother’s bed. Across the room, facing the bed, was an armchair, and this is where Joe sat, leaning forward, his arms planted on his knees. Laura claimed the ottoman next to Joe’s armchair, in front of the faux fireplace. Sam drew a chair from the kitchen table and placed it at the end of our mother’s bed, availing himself of the best possible view of her face. My position was beside the bed, in a small, upright chair next to the bed table, which held, on a single tray, all of the articles that would ease my mother’s discomfort: ice chips in a glass, a small carafe of water, a sponge, a washcloth, a box of Kleenex, a comb, a jar of expensive body cream, a tube of ChapStick. When I left my chair to go into the kitchen or use the bathroom, Lucy would slip into it, usually bearing a small plate of comfort foods with which to stimulate my mother’s appetite.

  My mother’s days and nights were passed in limbo. It was rare and wonderful when she opened her eyes, and then we would all gather around her, those eyes as compelling as the sun. Her gaze settled on nothing, the vacancy behind it unfathomable, the obliteration of the brain complete, and yet we sprang into action when her eyelids fluttered open, and an egg would be boiled in no time, flavored with butter and salt and gently brought to her lips, but she would not respond. Nevertheless, Lucy persevered, and the dropper was daily eased between my mother’s lips, the nutrient dispensed slowly into her mouth. Ice chips were folded in a thin dampened cloth, a glass of Ensure sat half full, a flexible straw resting inside it.

  One evening, toward the end of the first week in the house on Devon Drive, Lucy prepared a small dish of custard, which she brought to my mother’s bedside. I took the dish from her, placed a napkin under my mother’s chin, and waited. An hour passed and then, as if pulled from a deep sleep, my mother opened her eyes. Immediately, I spooned a tiny portion of the custard and brought it to her mouth. My mother did not look at me, she did not look at anyone, but to our amazement she suddenly parted her lips and then, in a gesture reminiscent of defiance, snapped her teeth together and shut her mouth, tight. Her intention was unmistakable. She would take no more nourishment.

  In the small living room, everyone was still. It was as if we’d seen a ghost, the last remnant of a mother who had, however reflexively, asserted her will. In that moment, no one breathed, because whereas we had anticipated any eventuality—choking, resistance, physical struggle—we had not anticipated our mother’s small, primitive act of defiance. In much the same way my father had looked steadily into my eyes and said, I don’t fear death, but I don’t welcome it, either, my mother had made a decision, the finality of which stunned us with its clarity. In that moment, I knew my parents to be of the same stripe, and suddenly understood the bedrock of their bond, and why they had endured.

  These were two people who despised illness but were not afraid to face death, and what lay beyond it. They would meet God—or oblivion—philosophically. Had I been able to accommodate my mother’s wish to end her life in the early months of her diagnosis, she would have thanked me, kissed me good-bye and, having locked the door behind me, taken the pills without hesitation. So it was with my father, who refused to extend his life unnaturally. Theirs was a spartan courage, and that is what they had recognized in one another, and what they had admired.

  Leaning in, I put my lips to my mother’s ear and whispered, “I understand, darling.” I longed to stay there, longed to rest my head on my mother’s breast, but there were other siblings with the same longing, and now there would not be much time.

  I rose and, looking at my brothers and sisters, said, “I’m going to call my husband, and then I’m going to make dinner. Let’s have some wine.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The waiting had begun. I asked my husband to come, and one day he walked through the front door on Devon Drive, his thin, worn garment bag slung over his broad shoulder, his kind face drawn with pity. After greeting Sam and Jenny, Tim went directly to my mother’s bedside, knelt on the carpet before her and, putting his hand over hers, said, “Thank you for being my great friend, Joan.” When he stood, I motioned to him to join me in the front bedroom, which I had requisitioned. As soon as the door had closed, he dropped his garment bag and took me in his arms. I buried my head in his shoulder and wept. My husband’s presence offered a reprieve, the first I’d had in many days, and we lay down on the bed, no more than a foot apart, facing each other. In a strained whisper, I divulged everything that had been repressed for days, every gnawing anxiety, every poorly concealed irritation, every unexpected sadness and, as always, he listened attent
ively, stroking my cheek.

  “And my mother was the one who insisted that you and I meet in Ireland. She knew, didn’t she?” I asked, muffling my sobs with the pillow.

  “I don’t know if she had an intuition about us, but I sure as hell know that she loved you,” my husband replied, pulling me into the crook of his arm.

  Like a child, I nestled into him, breathing deeply as I lay against his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath the fabric of his crisp white shirt.

  “How do you know?” I entreated, softly, listening with one ear to the beating of his heart.

  Tim chuckled. He would indulge me, this time, because he knew I was depleted, and he understood that I needed reassurance and that it had to come from someone I trusted unconditionally.

  “Before I met you, if we were at a dinner party with Jean Smith in New York, or visiting Jean at the Residence in Dublin, and someone asked your mother about her family, she’d say that she had a daughter who was a successful and very accomplished stage actress.”

  “Not a television actress?” I asked, tilting my head back to look into his eyes.

  “No, ‘an accomplished stage actress’ is what she’d say.”

  “With pride?” I whispered, tracing his eyebrow with my finger.

  “Of course. Your mother was nothing if not a snob. And, as we both know,” my husband said, turning me on my side and spooning me in anticipation of a nap, “the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.”

  Tim’s presence steadied me, but genuine comfort was beyond my reach. I was in a constant state of hypervigilance, at times barely able to conceal my agitation. All of my nervous energy was applied to the preparation of meals for those of us holding vigil, to the daily grind of considerations no longer significant, the sponge bathing of my mother’s rigid body, the ice chips hourly placed between her unyielding lips, the purposeless grooming, the pointless changing of the linens, the ceaseless activity we wove like a chrysalis around our mother’s still form.