Nona was convinced the van was an answer to her prayer for Mama’s trapped essence to come out. “I’ve had this vision,” Nona told Lindsey the day they brought Mama home from the Care Center. “Your Mama’s trapped in an ugly bottle. And the spirit inside is beautiful, full of swirling rainbow colors. We’ve just got to get the cork out.”
But for the next year Lindsey’s mother couldn’t go anywhere unless Nona called Dial-A-Ride, which came late or didn’t come at all. And Mama refused to talk to anybody but Lindsey and Nona—not even the nurses who circled in and out of the house in their white coats and soft shoes like figures on a carousel. “I hate my voice now,” she told Lindsey. She wouldn’t listen to the taped police interview during Marcus’s trial and she made Nona throw out all her karaoke CDs. Lindsey had loved when her mother sang karaoke, the mic in one hand and a beer in the other. Her hair hung to her waist and had pink and blue streaks running through it. Sometimes she stopped singing mid-song, with the words still scrolling up through the screen; she closed her eyes and moved her hips to the music. She taught Lindsey to swear and let her do it in the car, in the apartment, anytime she wanted, as long as Nona wasn’t around.
But Nona said, “You’re ruining that child.” She said it right in front of Lindsey. “Dyeing her hair, leaving her alone with Marcus. There comes a time”—she was on her knees, cleaning the tub in the small bathroom Lindsey shared with her mother in their old apartment—“when the generational cycle has got to be broken.”
Lindsey had liked Marcus—he played Xbox with her and drew fake tattoos on her kneecaps. But Nona had been right about him. And she was convinced she was right about the van’s being the answer to her prayer for the uncorking. It would begin today, she’d said at breakfast, pointing her fork toward some invisible evidence behind and to the right of Lindsey’s head. At the pool party. The other parents, the compassionate parents who’d helped raise the money for the van and for Lindsey’s tuition, would ask questions; they would all want to talk to her, hear her story. She would be forced out of her shell. “No one can ignore that toxic green wheelchair,” Nona had said.
But that wasn’t really the color, Lindsey thought now, looking at Mama’s chair resting half on and half off a rectangular slab of flagstone. It was more of a mint green.
“The mountain’s so close,” Mama said, her body listing sideways. “I want to see.” Nona took off Mama’s hat so she could get a better look at Camelback. Lindsey looked too; the red rock mountain she’d seen only from a distance when they took the freeway to school now loomed, rugged and bare. It was all scrub brush and creosote, not the pale fur Lindsey had once imagined would cover the peak in soft tufts.
“There’s the Praying Monk,” Lindsey said, pointing to the rock formation that looked like a hooded figure kneeling to face the camel. Mama once told her the legend—how the monk was the first Spanish missionary to arrive in Phoenix. How he and his camel (and here she explained that, of course, there hadn’t been camels in Arizona, it was just a story they made up because of the shape of the mountain) traveled for days through the desert until they ran out of water. Still they walked, until the camel fell to its knees. And the monk, dying of thirst himself, did the only thing he could—he bowed down in front of his camel and prayed for a miracle. And God heard, but even He couldn’t make water spring from desert rocks. Instead, out of mercy, He turned them both into stone, to save them and put an end to their suffering.
The Seylers’ backyard was bigger than any yard Lindsey had seen. They followed the path past a tennis court and a two-story Victorian playhouse and into a grassy courtyard with a fountain made of sculptured fish. And then Lindsey could see, from the way Nona stopped abruptly in front of the fountain, that something was wrong.
The swimming pool was not on ground level. It was up a flight of marble stairs—six steps, a landing, then six more. The kids and parents were all up there. Mr. Seyler was grilling; kids were lining up at the diving board.
“Lindsey.” Nona’s voice was sharp. “Take the vegetables up there.” Lindsey took the tray from her mother’s lap, trying not to look at her face or at the hands, but focusing on her mother’s tank top. i’m in it for the parking, the shirt said. Mama was braless; her breasts lay in flattened heaps beneath the ribbed fabric. Lindsey turned and ran up the stairs.
“Linds!” Madeline’s blue goggles peered over the edge of the pool. “Come swim with us!”
Lindsey thought she might raise her own palms in gratitude. She would go back and kiss each marble step. Mama would have to stay down in the courtyard, corked in her bottle.
Inside the pool house, a ceiling fan blew air-conditioned currents around the room. Lindsey tried not to think about her mother, down there in the sun. Her skin would blister if she was out for too long; her body couldn’t regulate temperature anymore.
“Hi, honey,” said a lady with glasses and freckled skin. “Just set those anywhere. You must be Valerie’s daughter?” Lindsey nodded. “I’m Mrs. Seyler. Was your mother able to make it?”
“She’s down with my grandma.”
“Oh my God,” said Mrs. Seyler, slapping a hand to her forehead. “The steps—I forgot.”
Lindsey set the vegetable tray on a table and went outside. The pool was dark blue with pearly-pink swordfish tiled into the steps. Fountains ran down into the deep end from the Jacuzzi; kids were jumping off the ledge in between. Lindsey took off her cover-up and dipped a foot in. She should just jump. But she noticed Mrs. Seyler talking to Mr. Seyler, who set down his spatula and took off his big silver glove. And now they were going down the stairs, down to where Mama and Nona were hunched in the thin shade of a mesquite tree.
“Lindsey, come on!” Madeline’s face floated beneath her. “Jump!”
Lindsey hesitated, then plugged her nose and stepped off the edge. She sank fast and hard; it was easy to sit on the bottom. She stayed there for as long as she could, watching tiny bubbles float to the surface. It was warm underwater—too warm—and the chlorine stung her eyes. But it was quiet and she was hidden. She sat until her chest burned for air. This is what it feels like to suffocate. This is what it’s like.
She pushed off and shot to the surface.
Madeline, Keri Johnson, and a boy she didn’t recognize were hanging on to the edge of the pool. “Geez,” said the boy. “How’d you hold your breath that long?”
Lindsey grabbed onto the side next to Madeline.
“Hey, Lindsey,” Keri said, swimming around to Lindsey’s other side. “It’s cool we’re in class together again. Mrs. Collins gives out Funny Bucks if you do extra-credit stuff.”
“What’s Funny Bucks?” Lindsey asked. Last year Keri had whispered things about Lindsey’s mama to some of the other girls: She does drugs. Had a fight with her boyfriend.
“It’s fake money,” Keri said. “You get to buy candy at the end of the year.”
The boy grabbed a yellow foam noodle off the deck and tucked it under his arms. He floated around in front of Lindsey and raised his goggles. “You’re that girl with the mom who got shot in the neck.” He swam closer. His eyes were huge, surrounded by dented red circles. “Did an ambulance come and get her?”
“Helicopter.”
“Cooool. Did it just, like, land in your backyard?”
“It was an apartment.”
“Leave her alone, Brendan,” Madeline said.
Brendan started to push the surface with his palm, making ripples and waves, never taking his eyes off Lindsey. “Did you see her, after? I mean, when she was, you know. All bloody?” Madeline and Keri hung from the side, goggles fixed on Lindsey’s face.
“I was asleep.”
“But didn’t you, like, hear it?”
Lindsey didn’t answer.
“So can her wheelchair stand up?” Brendan asked. “I saw this guy at the store once, he just pushed
a button and he could get stuff off the top shelf.”
“She can’t get stuff off a shelf,” Lindsey said. “She’s a quadriplegic.”
“Want to go off the diving board?” Madeline said.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Keri was now on her side. They swam to the ladder in the deep end and climbed out. Keri had on the two-piece swimsuit Lindsey had wanted at Old Navy, with a palm tree and setting sun and the word Malibu on the butt. Nona made her buy a one-piece. It was plain blue and the only cute thing about it was a row of rainbow-colored beads strung onto the left shoulder tie.
“Hey, Keri—what’s your dad doing down there?” Madeline was leaning over the marble rail, pointing down into the courtyard. Keri’s father was standing with Mr. Seyler next to Mama’s wheelchair. Other dads were down there too—they were talking with Mr. Seyler and gesturing. Lindsey saw her mother’s cowboy hat bob.
“My mom can’t get up the stairs,” Lindsey said.
“Do you still want to dive with us?”
“I’m just going to get a tube,” Lindsey said. She headed toward a blow-up ring near the shallow end; when the girls weren’t looking, she grabbed her towel and ran down the steps.
“. . . God’s mighty arms,” she heard Nona say when she reached the mesquite tree. “His people do for the weak what they can’t do for themselves.” Lindsey came up and took Nona’s hand, and Nona leaned down and whispered, “Didn’t I tell you? It starts today!” From where she stood Lindsey couldn’t see her mother’s face; her head was bowed beneath her hat.
“I think four of us,” Mr. Seyler said, “two to a side, should do it. Let’s give it a try.”
They lifted. Nona hid her eyes, but Lindsey watched, motionless. She knew the wheelchair was heavy—three hundred pounds, with Mama in it. But they got it up off the grass, a good two feet. She could see the muscles ripple in Mr. Seyler’s back, faces turning red, veins popping. When they set her back down Mama’s body shimmied with the impact.
“All right, let’s push her to the staircase.”
“Let me go on ahead,” Nona said. “I can’t bear to watch.” She put a hand on Mama’s shoulder. “Jesus, lift this child up. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong.” Lindsey watched her hurry away across the grass, light as air, lovely, her Keds flashing white beneath her long skirt.
Lindsey stayed next to the chair as the men pushed it toward the stairs. “Mama?” she whispered. “Are you sure this is safe? What if they drop you?”
“Yeah, might break my neck, wind up paralyzed,” Mama whispered back. She paused to breathe. “Go up with Nona.”
Lindsey stayed where she was. Who else would catch Mama if she fell? She watched the men lift, watched the chair tilt with every step, the round bag of urine in its black zippered case swinging like a pendulum. The dads set Mama down on the landing and rolled their shoulders. On the second flight, a front wheel bumped one of the steps. The jolt knocked Mama’s cowboy hat off, leaving the roots of her hair exposed, dark and flecked with dandruff.
When they reached the top, a few people applauded. The men smiled at one another, shaking out their arms. Madeline’s dad patted Mama’s lower arm while Lindsey trudged up the steps, stopping to pick up the hat. “Let’s get you into the shade, hon,” Nona said. “Let’s get your water bottle refilled. We can’t have a dry throat today.” Nona put Mama’s hand on the control stick so she could drive, then led the way.
“Wait,” Lindsey said, following them. “She needs her hat.”
Everybody started filing through the pool house, loading plates with food: hot dogs, hamburgers; salads topped with candied walnuts, dried currants, strawberries, and feta cheese. A row of “Fat-Free!” and “Light!” and “No Oil!” salad dressings, pot stickers, fruit trays, risotto, deviled eggs sprinkled with parsley, organic blue corn chips, homemade guacamole. Nona’s carrot-and-celery tray with its plastic tub of Hidden Valley ranch dip sat untouched.
When Lindsey came out of the pool house, she saw that Nona had parked Mama under a covered portico at the far end of the pool and surrounded her with a circle of chairs. The chairs were empty.
Lindsey felt her cheeks grow hot. It was one thing to ignore Mama when she was down in the courtyard; it was another thing to ignore her now. She found Nona sitting with a group of women in jeweled flip-flops and Capri pants. “The first time I truly identified with Mary the mother of Christ,” Nona was saying, “was looking at those crumpled hands. It was like I wanted to throw my mantle over my face and go hide in a cave. Now where did that vision come from?” The women listened politely, placing small forkfuls of salad in their mouths. Among these women Nona looked even younger. She could have been one of them, mother of a fourth-grader.
Lindsey tugged on Nona’s sleeve. “No one is sitting with Mama.”
Nona wrapped her arm around Lindsey’s waist and pulled her close. She went on talking, plate balanced on her lap. “I asked the doctor that day,” she said, “‘Doctor, is she going to be this way for the rest of her life?’ and the doctor said”—Nona paused, looking around the circle—“he said, ‘Yes. And for the rest of yours.’”
“Bless your heart,” said Mrs. Seyler. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.”
“Nona,” Lindsey said. “Mama is alone.”
Nona gave her a squeeze. “Why don’t you go sit with her,” she said. “I’ll be over in a minute.” She picked up her fork and Lindsey saw Nona’s hand was shaking. When she tried to take a bite of her salad, she knocked the plate off her lap.
Nona hardly ever left the house. Now she was the one coming uncorked.
“Let me get that,” one of the mothers said.
“It’s fine,” Nona said, bending over to pick up the plate; when she sat up her eyes were wet.
Mrs. Seyler looked at Lindsey. “That’s a cute swimsuit,” she said. “I like the beads.”
“I’ll tell you what, though,” Nona said. “I’ll take Valerie this way over the way she was before. The drugs and alcohol, boys, constant parties. Thank God Lindsey was asleep when Marcus—”
“Nona,” Lindsey said. She stepped away from the circle. “Let’s go sit with Mama now.”
Nona stood up. “There’s that verse,” she said, setting her plate on the chair, “and it’s the truth: ‘Better to lose an eye than to have the whole body thrown into Hell.’”
Lindsey couldn’t stand it any longer. “That’s bullshit!” She heard her own voice explode above her head somewhere. “It’s not her eye, it’s her whole fucking body!”
Nona covered her mouth with her hand.
The mothers looked down at their plates; some of them looked away. Mrs. Seyler stood and tried to put an arm around Lindsey, but she ran before anyone could touch her. She ran past the pool, past Madeline and Keri. She ran past Brendan and some other boys who sat on their towels eating. She ran to the portico, to the empty chairs, to Mama. She loved her, loved her desperately; she would sit with her, facing her, her back to the party, to the world. She would hold Mama’s crumpled hands, she would kiss them, she didn’t care who saw. They would sit there together, the two of them, with only the blue sky and clouds drifting overhead. They would sit there until God had mercy and turned them both to stone.
Georgia the Whole Time
Dying, I tell Neil, is like driving south up a mountain.
“58 South,” I say as we start the ascent on the way home from the clinic in Chattanooga. “We’re going south and driving up.”
“Sandwich walks into a bar,” Neil says. His hands open and close around the steering wheel.
But the metaphor is too good to let go. “Like me. Uphill climb, body heading south all the while.”
“And the bartender says, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t serve food here.’”
Thirty seconds later Neil says, “And by the way. You’re
not going to die.” His timing is off—it sounds like the punch line.
We moved from Phoenix to Lookout Mountain, Georgia, eight months ago, so Neil could teach economics at Westminster College. You can see the tower on the north end of Carter Hall from anywhere on the mountain. Most people think the tower is some kind of theological statement: aspiration toward God, beacon-on-the-hill. But back during Prohibition, Carter Hall was a luxury hotel and speakeasy. The tower was built to keep a lookout for the authorities.
Unless there’s a truck in front of you, it takes seven minutes to drive up from Chattanooga to the top of Lookout. When you cross the Tennessee/Georgia line, the trees open up so you can see the view beyond the rusted guardrail. welcome—we’re glad georgia’s on your mind, the sign says. But Georgia isn’t on my mind. What’s on my mind is the cliff on my left and the sheer limestone wall on my right.
At the top is the town of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Turn right, drive four blocks, and you’re in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Two states, one town. Population, just over five thousand. The two-state thing was a selling point with the kids. “You can trick-or-treat in Georgia and Tennessee,” we told them.
Some houses span the border. In these cases, state of residence depends on the master bedroom: if it’s in Georgia, then you live in Georgia, even if the rest of the house is in Tennessee. The story goes that one man spent a year converting his garage into a master suite because he wanted to live in Tennessee, where there’s no state income tax. After he’d changed his address and moved his furniture, he found his property taxes had doubled.
It doesn’t matter which side you choose, our realtor said. It all evens out.
Our realtor also said the master bedroom rule isn’t accurate in the scientific sense, since statistics show that, assuming an average life span, when you die you will have spent only a third of your time asleep. State of residence, he said, should depend on the room with the television.
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