by Sue Miller
Now, turning off the expressway and beginning the slow weave through the little South Shore towns, she feels the same sense of dread she felt sitting in Cameron’s car as they approached the nursing home on that earlier visit. Why can’t she forgive her? Maybe in part, she thinks, because her mother’s way of getting old, this retreat into alcoholic senility, is only the exaggeration of that earlier retreat into depression or despair or whatever it was that denied responsibility or the importance of her connection to Lottie and Cameron. Can this be it? That it seems, really, more of the same, and that Lottie simply can’t allow herself to have sympathy for it? She is frowning, her jaw is tense as she drives along. She’s aware again of the dim ache in her tooth. He’s made this filling too big, she thinks.
It’s just after eleven when she finally pulls into the lot outside the home and parks. The place is low-slung, brick, built, perhaps, in the late fifties. It reminds Lottie of a school, and she isn’t sure for a moment why this is; but then she notices the cutouts of flower baskets taped to the windows of the wing she’s headed for. They’re identical in shape but decorated differently, with Magic Markers and glued-on glitter – like the uninspired art projects schoolchildren are forced to create to decorate their classroom windows seasonally. She has a picture of her mother then, bent intently as a kindergartner over her cutout, and she feels, momentarily, more pity for this imagined person than she was able to muster for her in the flesh on her earlier visit.
There’s no one at the nursing station, so Lottie makes her way down the wheelchair-wide hallway to her mother’s room, thinking she’ll wait there for her and Cam to get back. The linoleum gleams. You can see in it the wide arcs of the buffing machine, you can smell the wax, mingled with other, sweetish odors. Glancing into the open doorways as she moves down the hall, sometimes seeing an old lady staring blankly back at her, or two of them sitting in silence watching television, Lottie remembers that her mother has a roommate too; and when she turns into her mother’s room and sees the slumped figure in the chair by the window, she’s so prepared for this roommate that it takes her several seconds to recognize her mother. The old woman is asleep, her head dropped forward, chin on chest. The back of her neck is painfully, vulnerably presented, and her knobbed, veiny hands clutch the wooden arms of the plastic-covered chair. There’s no one else in the room.
Lottie goes in and sits on the bed. The TV set is on, a soap opera with the volume turned much too loud. A woman whose flesh is nearly orange is pleading to keep her baby over an ominous and swelling organ chord. Just as she fades out, Lottie reaches over and turns the set off. She looks back at her mother. Now that the television is off, she can hear the labored push of her breathing. She’s thin, gray, dead-looking.
Lottie doesn’t know whether her mother was ever a pretty woman. In the few photographs Cam has of her parents, and in others Lottie had seen of her mother as a young woman, she’s attractive in a stocky, sexy way. But in Lottie’s memories she is so inert, so phlegmatic except for her rage, that her appearance simply doesn’t count. Asked to describe her then, Lottie would fumble. And in fact, asked what her mother was like, Lottie would be able to list only habits – she chewed Doublemint gum and smoked Chesterfields and kept spare packs of each in the top left-hand kitchen drawer. She drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. She collected glass and china figurines. She gave herself home permanents every few months, and after she’d had one, she smelled peculiar for a week or more. There was absolute regularity to her days. She did the wash, for instance, on Mondays. Other days were fixed for shopping with her wheeled cart, for cleaning house. When the children were young, even the meals were predictable: tuna casserole on Wednesdays, chicken pot pies on Saturday night, and so on. By the time they were teenagers, she didn’t cook anymore, and Lottie and Cameron fixed what they wanted from what was in the freezer. That’s what Lottie knows for sure. There are dim memories of her, happier, when Lottie’s father was at home. And of a few fights that Lottie realized only later – actually, Cam told her – were about money, about the embezzlement scheme that went haywire. She can’t imagine what her mother ever thought, except that she didn’t like disruption; or what she looked like when she was younger, except that she was short and had, even in Lottie’s earliest memory, gray hair.
Now, too, slumped in the chair, she has a quality of anonymity — smaller than she ever was, her hair recently, tightly permed in rigid, silvery blue waves whose artificial elegance makes her seem, simply, unworthy. She’s wearing pilled synthetic slacks and a loose sweater. Her unpressed yellow blouse has stains down the front. The skin of her face is coarse and flushed, netted with spidery red lines from years of drinking. She wears no makeup, of course. Her feet, curled neatly under the chair, are encased in the odd, slipper-like shoes many of the residents wear. Easier to get them on, Lottie supposes, than shoes that fit tightly or lace up.
Lottie reaches over and touches one of her mother’s hands. The skin is surprisingly smooth, soft to Lottie’s touch. Experimentally, she strokes it.
‘Mother,’ she says.
Her mother moans and swings her head up. Her mouth stays open. Lottie sees that her tongue is curled near the front of her mouth like a foreign object — a large, flesh-pink lozenge.
‘Mother, it’s Charlotte.’ she says.
Her mother’s mouth closes. She smacks her lips and swallows. She blinks, and then her eyes unveil themselves, pale and lifeless. ‘It’s Charlotte,’ she repeats without focusing.
‘Yes, it’s me, Mother.’
The old woman looks at her with no sign of recognition, and then her eyes slip away.
Lottie touches her hand again, grips it. ‘Mother, I’ve come about Cameron.’
There’s no answer, no sign that the question has registered.
‘Mother, did Cam visit you today?’
‘Cam,’ she croaks. She frowns at Lottie.
‘Yes.’
After a long pause, she says, ‘Cam is … my son.’
‘I know. Was he here? Earlier? Was Cam here?’
She shifts in the chair, sits up a little straighter. ‘Of course he was,’ she says with sudden irritable energy.
‘He visited you?’
‘Yes. I said so,’ she wails. Her head bobs for a few seconds, and then she turns her face away and says, ‘Now don’t keep at me.’
Lottie feels a sudden embarrassment. She looks at the empty doorway, as though she might at any second be caught here, be asked to leave. Somewhere down the hall there’s the rattle of dishes.
Suddenly her mother speaks, contempt thick in her voice. ‘He comes to visit me. Not you. No one comes to visit you.’
A bloom of confusion makes Lottie momentarily speechless. Then she tries to remember Cam’s example, his ability to revise what the old woman says. What can she make of it, this remark? Finally she says, ‘I know I haven’t come to visit enough, and I’m sorry—’
‘Well, that’s the way,’ her mother interrupts. ‘I try and try, but I can’t do everything. There’s only so much …’ She trails off.
‘I know,’ Lottie says after a minute. ‘I haven’t tried enough. And I’m sorry, Mother.’
The old woman’s head swings toward her. She squints at Lottie, then her eyes open wide. ‘You’re not my mother,’ she says finally, with some indignation.
‘No,’ Lottie answers. ‘I’m Charlotte.’
There’s no response. After a few seconds, her mother looks away. She slides her feet forward on the shining linoleum, and then, as though she likes the sound, she slides them again, and again.
Lottie takes a deep breath and starts once more. She keeps her voice mild and pleasant. ‘Mother, did Cam say where he was going? Did Cameron tell you …’ How to put it? ‘Did Cameron … was he going home when he said goodbye?’
‘Home,’ she echoes. Her eyes wander to the open doorway.
‘Yes. Did Cam … was Cameron on his way home?’
‘You’re not allowed to go home,’ her mother s
ays. ‘You never are. It’s not like that, but it could be.’
‘No, Mother, I meant Cameron.’ This is hopeless.
‘Cameron takes me in his car. Not you.’
‘I know, Mother. I came in my own car.’
‘You don’t have a car.’
Absurdly, Lottie feels irritated. ‘Yes, I do, Mother. I have a car.’ I do too.
She looks sharply at Lottie, suddenly. ‘Do you have a car?’ she asks.
‘Yes. I drove here too. Just like Cam.’
‘Are you going home?’ There’s a startling access of energy in her voice, her face. Her eyes seem a deeper blue.
Lottie leans away from her mother. ‘I was asking about Cam, Mother,’ she says.
She looks blank.
‘Cameron is gone. He left, right?’ Oh, good, Lottie. Left, right: what’s she going to make of that?
‘I asked him to take me,’ she says, suddenly querulous. After a moment she says, ‘Are you going home?’
‘I don’t know, Mother. I’m trying to find Cameron.’
‘I’m trying too. I’m trying and trying. But you can only do so much. There’s only so much, and they won’t let you out. It could be, but it isn’t. You see how they won’t. They lock the doors. So how can I in the first place? But if you’ve got a car, you could give me a ride.’
‘Where would you like to go, Mother?’
‘I’m going home.’
‘But this is your home now.’
‘I’m not talking about this,’ she says angrily. She starts to struggle up. ‘If you’ve got a car, you’d better take me.’
Lottie rises quickly. ‘Mother, no. Listen, Mother. I’m staying here,’ she says. Before her mother can fully stand, Lottie puts her hands on the old woman’s bony shoulders. She pushes gently and feels a few second’s resistance; but then her mother seems to give up. She collapses back down, her head wavers on her stalky neck, her hands fall into her lap in resigned prayerful curves.
Lotties is murmuring to her, bending over her, stroking her mother’s arm, the soft smooth flesh of her hands. ‘It’s all right, Mother. I’m staying with you. Lunch is in a few minutes. I’m not going anywhere, Mother.’ She feels abruptly deeply ashamed, and somehow moved.
Her mother is staring up at Lottie. Her eyes are blazing with sudden furious life. ‘You don’t know who you’re talking to.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Lottie says gently.
‘You do not.’
‘Yes, I do. You’re my mother. And I’m Charlotte.’
There’s another pause. Then the old woman says, craftily, ‘I have a Charlotte.’
Lottie sits down again, she bends toward her mother, brings her face close. ‘I’m Charlotte. I’m your Charlotte, Mother.’
‘Not you.’ She pulls her hand out from under Lottie’s and swipes at the air between them, as though Lottie were an irritation, an insect bothering her. ‘I mean another Charlotte. That’s just it. I need to talk to my Charlotte.’
‘You can talk to me. I’m Charlotte.’
‘No, no no. You are not … you haven’t got the right … Charlotte, for me.’ Her mother’s breath is short for a minute; Lottie can hear it surging in her nostrils. She sees that her mother has a little beard, five or six long white whiskers that curve under her chin. ‘I am trying, but you just have not got the right, Charlotte.’ Her voice is rising in a muted wail, and Lottie is terrified she’ll begin to cry. ‘I am trying and trying. I am trying and trying.’
‘Mother, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.’ She pats and strokes her mother’s hand, and the woman seems to relax back in the chair a little. ‘Mother,’ Lottie says gently, ‘would you like to talk to Charlotte?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can talk to her for you, Mother. I know Charlotte. What would you like me to say to Charlotte when I see her?’
‘You know where Charlotte is?’
‘Yes. I can take a message for you to Charlotte. I can write a message down for you.’ Lottie reaches into her bag, find a scrap of paper with a partial list on it. She keeps fumbling. At the bottom, under a lot of junk, is a pen. ‘I can write a message, if you tell me what you would like to say. Tell me.’
‘Tell you.’
‘Yes, I’ll write it down.’ Lottie holds up the paper, the pen. ‘And I’ll give it to Charlotte. What would you like to say?’
Her mother looks at her, her mouth open as though she’d forgotten how to make words happen for the moment.
Lottie prompts, ‘You could begin: “Dear Charlotte …” ’
Her mother sighs with great effort. Finally she says softly, ‘Dear Charlotte …’
Unexpectedly, the tears spring to Lottie’s eyes. She and her mother sit together in silence for a minute. Lottie looks up from the blurred paper. Her mother’s face is blank. Lottie speaks, gently. ‘I wrote that, Mother,’ she says. ‘I wrote, “Dear Charlotte.” What comes next?’ She leans forward, supplicant. ‘What would you like to say?’ What does she imagine? That she can somehow call up a message truly meant for her, as she is today? Not that, surely. But some vague sense of possibility, of hope.
‘Dear Charlotte,’ the old woman repeats hesitantly. ‘Dear Charlotte, I am writing to you … so you can give it to the one, the one who’s Charlotte.’ There’s a long silence. Lottie is writing slowly. ‘That I had a Charlotte. But they will not let you. And I am trying. And I am trying …’
Lottie looks up.
‘I am trying and trying. You can only do so much.’ The sense of strain is gone from her mother’s voice. She’s found the familiar track again. ‘You see how it is. I try, but they won’t let you do a thing. It’s not like that, but when Cameron comes, he should take me home. They just don’t help you here, they just don’t try.’
Lottie lets the pen lie on her lap. She looks for a long time at her mother. ‘I wish I could help you, Mother,’ she says finally.
‘I want my Charlotte,’ the old woman says expressionlessly, not looking at her.
‘I know,’ Lottie says. She has an impulse to touch her mother again, but she doesn’t. She feels intimately chastised by all this. She is, after all, a stranger, isn’t she? with no such rights. ‘I know,’ she says again.
And they sit that way, silently, until the nurse comes to get her mother for lunch. The old woman’s eyes have closed again, her head has jerked and dropped. Lottie has watched her draw away into sleep, has thought about leaving but somehow hasn’t. She’s sat in the little square room with the two beds, the two chairs, and listened to the puff and mutter of her mother’s dogged, regular breathing.
Now she follows the nurse’s aide and her shuffling mother down the hall. The nurse’s aide, a teenager, holds her mother’s hand comfortably, as though they were schoolgirl friends. She calls her ‘Ella’ and tells her the menu slowly and in great detail. She is so thorough that Lottie thinks of her as a kind of parody of a pretentious waiter explaining the day’s preparations in some snazzy restaurant. Her mother gives no indication of hearing her, but she moves along without protest.
When Lottie says goodbye, the nurse’s aide smiles and says a loud, seemingly corporate goodbye back, but Lottie’s mother says nothing. She doesn’t look at Lottie either.
It isn’t until Lottie steps outside and the damp air brings her the odor of the sea, of grass, that she realizes how heavy the smells of Lysol and wax, of floral air perfume, in the home were. Walking back to the car, she is most aware of simple relief: to be out here, in this mild air, not that; to be free, to be free of her mother. Not to be the one who will visit her again next Saturday and the Saturday after that. Never, she thinks. Never again.
And then she is overwhelmed by a sense of loss that includes her father too, the few treasured images she has of him, the thought that she might, one day, have understood from her mother, from Cam, something about who he was. Her face tightens, she breathe slowly until she’s in control of herself. Okay? Okay.
And then the question: Where to?
Home again, home again, she supposes. Such as it is.
Her pretend home. Her mother’s real one.
The pretend Charlotte, the fake, goes to the real home. She smiles grimly and starts the car. ‘The real Lottie goes to her pretend home,’ she says. She drives on the narrow, curving roads, pondering the layers of confusion of real and imaginary. And what about being the unrecognized Charlotte taking dictation for an imaginary Charlotte whom she can’t imagine; from a mother she knows is her own mother, but who has lost her motherness – if she ever had it – when she lost the ability to know ‘Charlotte’? Who is her mother anymore? As Cam asked in a different way, she thinks, when he asked what there was to forgive anymore.
It makes Lottie think of Jack, of course, of Jack and Evelyn. The question of who she was when she wasn’t his old Evelyn anymore, but was still there, still alive, and needed him and wanted his love and attention. Did he love Evelyn then? Or someone else? And if this Evelyn loved Jack, without being able really to know a Jack anymore, who was it that she loved? Who was it that made her cry out in joy – that Evelyn with cropped dark hair, drunkenly tilted in her wheelchair – when ‘Jack’ came home each night?
And who is it that Jack loves now that that Evelyn is dead? Not her, surely, but perhaps some ancient Evelyn who contains a long-ago Jack too? The way her mother’s idea of ‘Charlotte’ contains everything lost to her: home, herself, memories of her husband, Cameron, Lottie — maybe even the happy thought of booze, the little jelly jars, the sticky circles they left everywhere.
What becomes of love when it stretches this way, to hold so much loss?
When Lottie held her mother, touched her, she felt for a few seconds what it might be like to love her as she is, she pitied her so. As she drives along, thinking of this, she feels she understands, perhaps, fractionally, what Jack talked about when he said he learned by holding Evelyn, by touching her, how to love her again in a different way. Lottie thinks perhaps she could be that kind of person too — it seems possible to her momentarily that she could learn to love that way, to reshape herself and her feelings.