Finally Free

by Lynne Gentry

  Momma slaps my hands away. “She did. I saw her. She must be punished.”

  “Sara, let’s go in and look for your bird, okay?” Winnie comes up the steps slowly. “I’ll help.”

  Momma raises two clenched fists. “Who are you?”

  “That’s Winnie,” I say. “Our mail lady.”

  “She smells like bird droppings. Did she take my bird?”

  “No, Momma. Winnie’s been helping me round up your chickens.”

  “I don’t have chickens. I hate chickens.” She wheels and runs inside. “Polygon!”

  Winnie and I exchange glances. “I’m sorry you had to see this, Win.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having to live this.”

  We kick off our muddy boots and step inside. Momma is cursing and running back and forth on the path she’s worn between the living room and dining room. Her robe flies like a cape behind her leaving every sagging body part subject to examination. Ira and Teeny shuffle after her. But she manages to dodge their attempts to snag her arms. Aria stands at the top of the stairs watching the circus, horror written all over her face. When she sees me come through the front door, she races down the stairs.

  “Mom, Nana’s gone crazy.”

  “I know, baby.” I cup her face. “It’s all right.”

  “Bojangles is in his cage. I tried to show her. Ira tried to show her. Teeny tried. But it’s like she can’t see the truth even when it’s right in front of her.” Aria grabs my hand. “Mom, I’m scared.”

  “Me too, but it’s going to okay.” I kiss her forehead. “Let’s try an experiment.”

  “Like what?”

  “Let’s see what happens if you play some Chopin.”

  “Right now?”

  “Ira says music calms her down.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “I know, baby, but I need you to trust me.”

  Aria nods and dashes to the piano. She stretches her fingers then begins to play.

  Momma continues frantically searching the house and screaming obscenities. After the first measure she stops running. By the second measure she has quit yelling. By the third measure she begins to inch toward the piano.

  A melancholy melody floats through the air and wraps us all in a blanket of calm. I ease toward my bedraggled mother. “Momma,” I dare to touch her elbow. “Want to sit?”

  She gives up an exhausted nod. “There.” She points to the piano bench where Aria’s sitting as her fingers dance over the keys.

  “Got room for Nana?” I whisper to Aria.

  She nods and continues playing without missing a note as she slides to the far end of the bench. “Play with me, Nana,” she encourages. “Please.”

  Momma lifts her hands to the keys. Her fingers move as if they were young and carefree once again. The melody flowing from her hands carries me away to the sultry summer nights our family trekked to the bluff to sit beneath a canopy of stars. Aria drops back, offering an underscored support of broken-chord, left-handed accompaniment. There are so many different layers of sound in this work, each requiring a variety of touches and Momma nails them all...perfectly and with the emotion and clarity of someone in their right mind.

  I don’t want the music to end, this moment of sanity to slip away. But it does. When the last note fades, the only dry eyes in the room belong to Momma.

  She lifts her hands from the keys, turns to Aria and says, “You’ve improved, but don’t think that gives you license to slack off.”

  None of us can restrain the laughter, the sheer joy of seeing this glimpse of her again. But our outbursts startle her. I can see her drawing into herself again, but right before she goes, she looks at Ira and says, “Martin, how could you lose our daughter?”

  Chapter 46

  CHARLOTTE

  Aria and I walk through the pasture, each of us holding onto one of Momma’s arms.

  “Maybe we should have put her on the tractor.” Aria gently guides her grandmother around a clump of bull thistle.

  “Loud noises really seem to terrify her.”

  We shuffle through the green grasses in silence. The cool spring breeze has given way to the heat of summer. Faded bluebonnets are beginning to seed the hillsides. In the distance, vultures hang in the sky, circling the banks of the river like they have all the time in the world. The dead are, after all, going nowhere. I know that any poor creature who’d succumbed to the extraordinarily difficult winter had not died in vain. His body had simply given in to its new purpose...to nourish the next cycle of life. But as I’ve watched my mother become a ghost of her former self these past few months, I must admit I’m pained by the inevitable reality all of us will eventually face.

  The long, cold days of winter bled into a spring filled with my mother’s bouts of vicious anger and terrible tantrums. While this phase of her disease has been difficult, it’s her newest phase of apathy that I can’t stand. No matter what we do, Momma sits and stares out the window. She won’t go to church. She won’t interact with Aria’s brain games. She no longer knows Ira and Teeny. She sleeps more than usual. She can’t follow the simple instructions I have taped to everything, simple things like CLOSE THE FRIDGE DOOR, FLUSH THE TOILET, and HOLD RAIL WHEN YOU STEP DOWN. The old stories she used to tell are locked inside of her, along with even short responses like yes or no.

  Sadly, my mother has even given up her beloved piano. According to everything I’ve read, hearing is the last thing to go. Many doctors, including Itty, contend that music is soothing. Aria and I take turns playing. Sometimes Ira and Teeny dance. But Momma remains lifeless in the recliner.

  But the worst, the hardest of all to take, is that she no longer speaks my name. I’d even settle for being confused with Caroline, if she would just speak the name of her children. It’s as if neither of us ever existed.

  This need to reconnect to her one more time is why I’ve enlisted Aria’s help to get Momma outside. Maybe if she breathes some fresh air, feels the sunshine on her face, and walks the land she loves, maybe then she’ll return to us.

  Every road I’ve taken on this journey has been paved with pain and pocked with guilt. Today’s plan will probably be no different, but I won’t know if I don’t try.

  Is the long goodbye this hard for other families? Do other caregivers worry that their loved one is lonely inside the little shell they’ve slipped into? Does she hurt? Is she hungry? Tired? Frightened? I ask her these things several times a day, but she can no longer tell me. On those rare occasions when she does look at me, it’s as if she’s begging me to make her suffering end.

  Several well-meaning people have suggested I put my mother in a nursing home. I’d tried pawning her off once. She was so miserable, she stole a car and escaped with Ira and Teeny. For now, sending her away is not an option. As long as I’m able to bathe her, feed her, and continue to do a decent job teaching my students, I will. But I fear the day is not far off when I may have to rethink this decision. Good decisions are not made in panic. I spend a great deal of time gathering information on the expected progression of this disease and the care facilities within driving distance. None of what I’ve learned is easy. What I wouldn’t give to have one more real conversation with my mother, to ask her advice.

  This time, I would listen.

  There are so many things I still want to say to Momma, but I’m not sure she’d understand the words. I want to thank her for all the hours we spent together at the piano, for all the pie crusts she helped me roll out, for her belief in me. But the most important thing I want to say I should have said twenty-five years ago. Losing her in the past hurt, losing her forever will tear me apart.

  I’m so grateful to have Ira and Teeny’s help. They give me a break every chance they get and because I trust them to never take their eyes off Momma, I’ve not had to miss many days of school. I’ve learned that people want to help if you’re not afraid to ask. Watching Ira and Teeny care for my mother, for Aria, and for me, has taught me that the unconditional love of fam
ily is far more than helpful and consoling...it’s so liberating.

  “Look, Nana.” Aria bends, plucks a pale bloom from the weeds, then holds it to Momma’s nose. “Bluebonnets.”

  Momma frowns and knocks the bluebonnet away from her nose.

  “Guess she can’t remember flowers,” I say. “Maybe we should take her back.”

  Momma grunts and leans toward the bluff, like a thirsty horse who’s smelled water and is now tugging against its traces.

  Aria wipes her hand on her shorts. “I think she wants to go to the river.”

  “I doubt she even knows there’s a river there anymore.”

  “What would it hurt if we let her see it?”

  “The bluff’s too dangerous, Ari.”

  “What’s she gonna do? Jump?”

  Momma used to dive with the best of them, but since Caroline’s death, she hadn’t been in the water either. “She might fall.”

  “We’ll hang on to her,” Aria argues.

  “No, Ari.”

  “Mom, the last time Nana talked she was telling me about the day she and Pop skinny dipped in the river. I know she doesn’t remember us anymore, but maybe she can remember when she and Pops were young. When she was in love.”

  “You’re right, as usual,” I concede. “She was happy there long before she wasn’t.” I tighten my grip on Momma’s elbow. Against my better judgment, I say, “Let’s give it a shot.”

  We take it easy on the climb. Momma doesn’t stumble on the rocks. It’s as if she knows this path as well as she used to know a keyboard or her multiplication tables. If this place remains in her memory, perhaps somewhere, deep inside of her, I’m still there.

  By the time we reach the flat outcropping beneath the live oak tree, all three of us are winded. We stop at the wrought-iron fence Momma had built around the graves of my sister and father. Green shoots poke through the dead weeds reminding me that despite my best efforts to keep up with everything, some things, like tending our family’s graveyard, continue to fall through the cracks.

  “Want to sit on the bench a moment, Momma?”

  She stares at the headstones. Silent and blank-faced. Does she even know what this place is? Or is she imagining how her name will look inscribed upon a slab of granite? I study her a little closer, hoping she’ll give me a clue as to what’s going on inside her head. A lone tear trickles down her cheek. Tears sting my own eyes. She may not know who is buried here, but she knows she loved them.

  I make a mental note to record this moment in the journal Itty gave me.

  “Journaling can be comforting for people going through difficult circumstances,” he’d said when he handed me the beautiful red leather book one night after band practice.

  Yes, I play with the band.

  Another good reason to never say never, a lesson you think I would have learned when I said I’d never return to Texas. Or changed my major from education to pre-law. Or signed my final divorce decree. Or sent for the two senior citizens I’ve grown to love like family and can’t bear to part with. Or forgave my mother and myself for the way we poorly handled our grief.

  And yet, here I am. Once again doing exactly what I said I never would...playing with a praise band on Sundays.

  The music gives me great peace, but it’s worshipping with my new friends that carries me through these dark days. Winnie says my involvement with the band has taken a load off her. “Being your only friend nearly put me under,” she teases on the nights I’m not too exhausted to sit on the porch and share a glass of wine now that the weather has warmed. “If you’d only agree to have dinner with that gem of a doctor, then Bo and I could finally quit worrying about you.”

  Sometimes I use the journal Itty gave me to sort my feelings for him. Maybe I should start a different journal for the impossible task of untangling him from his care of my mother. The two of them are emotionally tied and have been since Itty was in her third-grade class. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder if those big, gentle hands that have so lovingly cared for Momma could also care for me.

  For now, I must learn to be content to use those very private pages to vent my frustrations, cry my tears, and remind myself that I won’t have Momma forever. This is not the time to sort out the pros and cons of Benjamin Ellis. Nor is it the time to make the same, grief-laden mistake that I’d made with James McCandless.

  Momma drops my hand and takes off for the bluff at a full-speed run.

  “Nana!” Aria springs into action much faster than me. “Stop!”

  “Momma!” I scramble to catch up, but in my snake boots I’m clumsy and slow.

  By the time I reach them, Aria’s struggling to maintain her hold on Momma’s wrist. “Nana, no.”

  “Momma,” I ease close, working to regain calm in my body language and voice. “That’s close enough.” I offer my hand. “Grab hold of me, please.”

  She shakes her head and lunges forward.

  “Mom, what should we do?” Aria’s boots drag across the limestone as she tugs against the supernatural strength Momma suddenly seems to possess.

  “Let me go,” Momma says. Plain. Clear. Determined.

  The first words she’s spoken in three months and I understand her plea for freedom perfectly.

  My insides tremble in fear. “You’ll get your boots wet.”

  She lifts one booted foot. “Let. Me. Go.”

  “Is she trying to kill herself?” Terror swims in Aria’s eyes.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Call Ira,” Aria begs. “Tell him to bring the tractor.”

  I shake my head. “Take off her boots.”

  “No!”

  “Do it.”

  Aria glares at me like I’m crazy, but she obeys without voicing the million questions that must be running through her mind. She squats and gently pulls off her grandmother’s rubber boots. “There, Nana.”

  Momma looks at her yellowed toe nails and then lifts her chin and smiles. She holds out her hand to me. “Let’s swim, Martin.”

  My father’s name rolls off her tongue with the same delight as if he’d just come up behind her in the kitchen and grabbed her around the waist and kissed her neck.

  I glance over the edge, at the water swirling below. This river has no memory of all it has taken from me...the hours and hours of enjoyment...the bond of a tight-knit family...my peace. I haven’t jumped from this ledge since I dove in to save my daughter, and I wouldn’t have jumped the day Aria fell in, if I hadn’t been scared to death of losing another person I loved. I have no intention of jumping again. Ever.

  “More fun?” Momma’s eyes are clear. I can’t be certain she knows who she’s asking, but she knows full-well what she’s asking.

  She’s asking me to let my fear go. To enjoy this river. To enjoy life. To live again. Fearless and free.

  I kick off my boots and take her hand. “We can do this together. Right, Momma?”

  She nods.

  “Wait for me.” Aria sheds her boots in record time and flanks Momma on the other side.

  Hand in hand, three generations of Slocum women stand on the edge of letting go of everything that has kept us apart.

  “Sweet Moses!” Momma’s joyous shout echoes in the canyon.

  “Sweet Moses!” Aria and I crow at the top of our lungs.

  In tandem, holding tight to each other, the three of us leap.

  Feet first, we plunge into the crystal water. The water washes over us, sucking us to the limestone bottom. Momma’s grip tightens on my hand. I search for her face. Her lips are stretched in a tight smile. If it weren’t for the gray hair fanning around head, I’d swear she’s suddenly ten years younger. She closes her eyes as if she’s allowing the water to remove everything that’s weighed her down. Our feet touch the bottom at the same time and her eyes pop open. With a nod to me and then to Aria, she pushes with a leg strength I did not know she possessed. All three of us shoot toward the light.

  When we break the surface, Momma throws back
her head and laughs. “Oh, Charlotte Ann. Let’s do that again.”

  TO MY READERS:

  Thank you for coming along for the Slocum women’s bumpy ride to unconditional love. I hope their story has given you the courage to tackle the hurdles in your relationships. If you somehow missed the first book in this series (FLYING FOSSILS) you can pop over to your favorite digital retailer and pick it up.

  Remember reviews help an author so much. When readers take the time to leave an honest review, it causes the digital book fairies to give this book the love and attention it needs to be seen and read by others. Please share your love of this story and leave a review on the retailer site where you purchased this book. Thank you.

  If you don’t want to miss my next book, sign up for my newsletter. I promise not to blow up your inbox. You’ll only hear from me when I have a special treat, insider tip, or a new book to offer you. Here’s the link you’ll need to receive your first free gift just for signing up: www.lynnegentry.com

  EXTRA BONUS FOR MY READERS

  Have you met my other Texas family?

  Leona Harper’s family lives in West Texas. Readers report laughing until they cry as they zip through this heartwarming 4-book series similar to Jan Karon’s Mitford series. You can start with WALKING SHOES and read your way through the next three books. If you sign up for my newsletter at the end of WALKING SHOES, I’ll gift you ACT 1 of the audio performances of this story. I spent several years traveling the country with this one-woman show. At the end of each succeeding book in the Mt. Hope series, you can collect the next audio act. Collect all three audio acts and share in the laughter with audiences around the country.

  Other Books by Lynne Gentry

  Walking Shoes

  Shoes to Fill

  Dancing Shoes

  Baby Shoes

  Ghost Heart

  Flying Fossils

  Here’s a peek at WALKING SHOES: