by Beth Harden
I watch as two inmates are taken out by wheelchair. Several more roll by on stretchers. I’m helpless and unqualified to intervene in a medical emergency beyond extending reassurance to the other anxious prisoners who fear they will be next. I check the roster of names against the officer’s list.
“So all of these guys are down in Medical?” I ask Boozer. He scans the sheet.
“Yep. All but a few are still down there being treated. Three others were shipped out to U-Mass yesterday,” he answers. It’s hard enough to keep regular count, let alone try and tally up the missing and mobile.
“Which ones?” I ask. He scours his pad and points to the names.
“McCloud, Clemens and Willis,” announces the officer.
“Shit! They must be pretty critical then. Do we know what’s wrong?” I ask. It seems as if we are suddenly under the white-hot heat of a searing magnifying glass whose focal point is bearing down, focusing in on the very spot where I stand wishing I was invisible.
“Naw, but it’s not surprising given the crap they call food here. It’s not like the State dishes up prime rib. My guess is it’s from the rat shit in the kitchen. I’ve seen the little bastards running over the rubber mats and climbing into the dry goods.” He wasn’t lying. I’d seen plenty of rodents while slopping trays in there.
“So how does this all affect the facility shakedown?” I ask. Boozer shrugs and pulls out his crossword puzzle from the post log.
“We’ll stay on lockdown indefinitely until they figure this out. The warden is dismissing all non-essential personnel in case this shit is contagious. He doesn’t want staff in the blocks if they don’t have to be. I’d head on back and check with your supervisor. See what he wants you to do.”
“Hey. Bud. Thanks for the info. You take care, okay?” I say. He nods obligingly.
Back in the privacy of my office, I shut the door and dial up the Admitting Department at U-Mass Memorial Medical Center. After learning the nature of my call, the receptionist patches me up to the critical care unit. The call is answered quickly.
“This is Counselor Abrams. I am hoping to gain some information on my client, Mr. Terran Willis.”
The receptionist on duty sounds both harried and young, two flaws that work to my advantage.
“No need, Counselor. Just a minute. I’ll get the charge nurse on the line.” A montage of recorded messages starts up. The first is an offer to anyone over eighteen years of age who is interested in joining a clinical study for bipolar depression. The following informational ad is a new clinical trial available to women or men who suffer with metastatic breast cancer and the last, a cheery announcement for a new baby class aimed at soothing potentially territorial big brother or sister. The message repeats twice before a live person comes on the line.
“Attorney Abrams? This is Helen, the ICU Charge Nurse. Mr. Willis is with us in the Intensive Care Unit and has been since early Sunday morning. It is difficult to give you a conclusive report. He came in with heart failure and complete disorientation. Before we could get any information from him directly, it appears he had a cerebral event and lapsed into a comatose state. We are running batteries of tests but at the moment, his condition is considered quite critical and he must be maintained on the respirator. We are trying to reach next of kin.”
“Mr. Willis has no living or known family members that can be contacted,” I reply authoritatively. Her misinterpretation of my title plays nicely into my overall plan.
‘I’ll note that here in his chart,” she says. “May we forward you a Medical Release so you can provide us with some information that might be needed here?”
“Absolutely,” I answer and provide her with the fax number to the records office at work. “When he is more stable, I plan to come in to visit if I can be put on his list of permitted guests,” I suggest.
“Besides the officer that is posted here, there is no one else,” she replies.
“Thank you so much, Nurse Helen,” I reply reverently and hang up as softly as I can.
#
The hospital room is chilly and darkened except for a soft bulb over the sterile sink. Mom is resting comfortably with her head sunk back in a foam pillow, her mouth slightly agape, her thin hands crossed over her ribs. An alarm on the monitor is beeping, triggered by the angle of her wrist restraint which is cutting off the tubing. I reposition her arm flat at her side and retape the foam board that holds the arterial line steady at her wrist. As requested, the ICU resident orders the Dilaudid to be dialed back and slowly Mel rouses from her narcotic slumber. Eventually, she is alert enough to turn and regard the figure by her bedside.
“It’s me, Mom. Lissa. I’m here to take you home.”
Even on the verge of death, she has not forgotten the brilliant smudge of coral lipstick that is her signature style. Likely celibate Saint Peter himself will be forced to sneak a quick once-over as this striking woman passes by his gate. She pats the mattress weakly and I climb on board, stretching out at an awkward angle so we can continue to hold hands without causing any undue pressure on her riddled bones.
“Talk to me,” she says. It is the sweetest order I’ve ever been given. For five long hours, I re-tell the story of my not-so-triumphant life and for most of that time she listens, truly listens, absorbing in all of what she couldn’t stand still long enough to hear in health. At one point, she stops me with a raised hand.
‘You were never a disappointment to me, honey. Your father and I both were always proud of you. It took great courage to choose the occupation that you did even if it was hard for us to understand why. W were just so worried and afraid for you. It’s a parent’s job to try and protect their little ones and head off disaster. It felt like we failed at that. Your suffering was so painful for me to watch. I really tried my best to handle it.”
‘Oh, Mom. You did. We all did.”
‘You have a real talent for inspiring others, Lissa. The world needs you, especially in that dark place. I will be happy knowing that you are where you belong. We only get one shot in this life. Or in your case, a second chance. Go make it matter.”
Mel’s words falter off after that and she closes her eyes and grows quiet. I keep talking hoping to revive her. While she doesn’t speak, her responses are appropriate, tears at the tragedies and luxurious sighs when the romance enters; when I tell her that I will be having dinner sometime very soon with Aaron. The final thirty minutes we are quietly clutching hands allowing an exchange of deeper truths to come by osmosis. I hold on hard, absorbing the dignified strength of a woman who kept her love at a distance though it was always there. She squeezes and relaxes her grip intermittently pumping out a Morse code of “I love you's that she could never quite bring to words. Stubborn we are, we women of Scots. Five minutes before her time, I kiss her profusely on the cheeks and tell her that I am taking my name back legally. I will finish out my time on earth as the baby daughter she christened forty-eight years prior in a snowstorm near Hamilton, New York. And as promised I, Lissa Cooke Braum, am there at the exact moment it comes for the angels of heaven to take her home.
#
There is something magically calming about picking through my mother’s dresser drawers, a reassurance that she had had another life besides dusting and dishes. But it was some time ago, this other happiness. Her powder puff had crumbled into the chalk and the orange clip-ones hadn’t been worn since their last public appearance in a family portrait, the six of us neatly arranged on a piano bench in front of Dad and Mom in her coral suit and swept-up hairdo. April 1974: Mel Cooke’s expiration date. After children, she refused to adorn herself. Any of the gifts my father gave her were pressed back into their tissue paper and stacked in the closet. A soft rosebud nightgown from Sleeper’s Department store and several velour slacks from the Calliope shop all carefully arranged in chronological order of rejection. Russ must have mistaken his wife for a larger woman. For years, he bought her size tens even though he knew better and she was forced to drag the pac
kages back the day after Christmas to collect a dozen credit slips. Then there was the problem with color, the magenta and teals that he fancied. She would sigh at the sight of them. Dad always told her she could pick out something she liked better, hoping in his heart she would say no. But the very next day, she’d be standing at the sink in a brown cardigan with new tags on. In the years she might have accepted his gift, he didn’t know her well enough to choose them. Later these arbitrary refusals got to be such a habit, she couldn’t stop.
I see the trend now. One side of her jewelry drawer was for the junk and the other relegated into compartments of precious pieces; past and present separated by a wall of wood. On the hutch in the dining room are soup tureens and a crystal punch bowl that traveled in a covered wagon from Alberta to Bozeman at the turn of the century. They were there locked in that mausoleum and preserved for posterity. What was set out on the table each night was a collection of bank china we each accumulated plate by plate for every deposit over twenty-five bucks. I suddenly realized that everything in her life was delineated. The wisdom she had could have dispensed during our growing years was kept hidden behind a mound of housework and soiled towels. She had been saving up the good stuff for some later day that never came.
In black velvet bag tucked at the back of her top drawer is a slender silver bracelet with a Lakota design on the band. Three oblong pieces of old turquoise set in steps that rise in graduated increments that resemble the peaks of the Teton Range. The name Lissa is inscribed in old Lucinda script on the inside; what was my grandmother’s name first and now mine. I slip the prized antique on my wrist. I will wear it for both; no, for all three of us. It is time to celebrate the strength of pioneer women who have persevered under avalanches of snow, icy silence and a flood of newly thawed courage.
#
The tiny post office shares half of its square footage with a bait worm shop. The odor of muck and tundra seeps into every parcel that is handed out over the dingy laminated counter. Even though the U.S. Postal Service finally granted permission for a mail route to be established down the dirt road to her farm, Mel still preferred to make the trek into town to collect her circulars and bills. It’s my job to finally close down the antiquated mail slot.
I spin the combination on the dial and pull the knob on the small hinged door. Several days’ worth of junk mail is crammed inside. A small envelope is nestled among the grocery flyers. On second glance, I’m surprised to see that it is addressed to me. I slit the envelope open with my car key. Folded neatly inside is a printer-generated copy of an article that appeared in the Boston Herald in June of 1988. The heading immediately sends electrifying signals through my nerve channels. Bright Girl Faces Dark Future. It is a piece of journalism I had banned from my reading list as soon as it came off the press. The chronicled account of my first crawl out of darkness was too brutal a tale to take in. This was one memoir I refuse to read and will incinerate as soon as I can strike a match. I stand near the out-of-town mail slot with the article shaking in my fingers. What cruel person would want to rub my face in this shitty ordeal all over again? And who on earth would be creepy enough to track my known whereabouts at a time like this? Whoever that person is has taken painstaking time to search my history under my former name and make the connection to my current alias. There are three photographs embedded in the text. The first snapshot is the crime scene record of a body down in a flood of blood; the second is a picture of Hughes by my bedrail in the wee hours of rehabilitation and the final one is my senior photo. In it, a glowing, animated seventeen-year-old girl perched on the apple sprayer and casting a just dare me to look to the world. It is Lissa Cooke Braum at her finest. I flip the two-sided piece over and discover a penned note at the conclusion. The page is rumpled and smeared. Whoever sent this has obviously read and reread its content.
No wonder, my poor dear. No words will suffice. And no more worries, my sweet girl. I will show you how crazy I am about you. Always, James.
I can’t help myself. Unfettered joy leaps through my being. I can’t wait to see what true love looks like.
#
Dale and I ride together in silence. I don’t expect anything different. He’s a man that’s been suffering on the inside so long that any emotion that is trapped inside his formidable frame is caught and calcified before it can find release. At the front of the promenade, a massive granite ledge drops down to sea level. It’s a bit of a tricky descent down through a patch of angry raspberries and knotted bramble before the trail levels off. Of course Mom would never choose the easiest route knowing that a little hardship makes the reward that much more precious. Several cars are already lined up along the sandy shoulder of Point Road with their tires dipping dangerously close to the slope. Dale throws his old F-150 into park and we make our way down the incline to where the small band of brothers stands with hands folded and heads bowed. They’ve always lived on blind faith, all of them short-sighted believers who would fail to pick up their heads to see a miracle if and when it ever actually arrives. God incarnate could be walking among us and they’d miss his appearance because they are too all-consumed with the idea of prayer to look up for its answer. And in a way, he is.
Aaron stands at the fringe of the small clearing shaded by the feathery tamarack branches that have thinned from too much salt and lichen. A shaft of sun cuts a diagonal across the crest of his silver-flecked hair runs down the dark dress shirt and grey slacks and strikes gold on the toes of his Timberland boots. Like the dove of peace descending on God’s disciple, he is blessed with the best light heaven has to offer streaking down through a mixed bag of clouds and pre-autumn mist. It’s been decades since we laid eyes on one another. That first glance is tentative, cautious, the kind of look that peels away age-progression in reverse, searching to find the familiar young person that went missing years before. And in that stunned moment of recognition he knows he’s found the love of his life that was buried alive and is still breathing. Beyond that, the chances of her survival are unclear. I look away and focus on the cremation urn perched on a square stand in front of us. This piece of furniture is actually the old card table with padded top on which we played Russian Solitaire and Gin Rummy, covered by a fine linen bedspread. Underneath the crocheted throw are blotches of model airplane paint and turpentine stains. The leg on the far right has been bent since the day Seth kicked the whole set-up over during a game of Stratego when his flag was captured by a lucky scout. The mess of red generals, blue soldiers and time bombs was scattered to the winds. Game over; battle lost. The crook in the table leg rusted into a permanent angle. Too much weight or commotion could be guaranteed to buckle it under. I hope the ashes are scattered by loving hands rather than a rogue wind.
After a few long moments of silence, Dale carries the funeral vase down the stone steps in the ledge rock. Summer bathers and local kids alike use this natural trail get access to the flattest skimming rocks in all of New England. I kick off my wedge sandals, lift the hem of my dress with one hand while I scoot on my rump and use my free hand as a brace against the rock formation. A tidal pool has formed in the lava fissure. I hesitate, trying to gauge the jump down. Seaweed and barnacles are unpredictable factors in the physics.
“May I?” The male voice comes from just behind my right shoulder. Startled, I turn my head only slightly for fear I will pitch off my perch. I know who it is anyway. Aaron does not wait for a reply. Instead he jumps down easily onto to the dry beach and turn with arms outstretched. I hesitate. Suddenly my equilibrium seems to tilt the horizon at a peculiar angle.
‘”Go ahead. It’s fine,’ he urges. For some reason, my pulse seems to be pounding in my throat and my legs are suddenly skittish underneath me.
“C’mon,” Aaron says gently. “You know you can trust me.” Trust me. Those ill-fated words of deceit. I teeter with indecision. He loves me…he loves me not. Finally I tip forward and allow myself to drop into his grasp which is solid and steady as he lowers me down. I smile in gratitu
de. The rest of the men folk follow and together as a group we wade down to the water line where the highest roll of surf has just broken and retreated. Dale opens the container and gently shakes a helping of powder and bone fragments into our waiting hands. So this is it, the recipe of a life poured out; the dust of Adam passed through our fingers into the transparent sea. I watch the small clots of ash coalesce and then dissipate into sediment on the ocean floor. Without doubt, this is where my mother most loved to be, creasing rapid strokes in the frigid water and then huddled on her towel eating her peanut butter crackers and sipping grape juice. Her own holy communion. There’s a long moment of silence during which no one cries or sniffles. The six Braum children stand like the stoics they were raised to be, chins up, heels dug in, determined not to disappoint. Mom would have been pleased at how well we’ve managed her passing. After another five minutes or so, my brothers wrap arms of solidarity around one another and agree to head back to the house for a supper of crab casserole and chowder.