A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl

by Jean Thompson

  “Tell her Bob Malloy said hello.”

  “What? Tell who?”

  But her mother made a sound that was not words, a long, alarming huuuuunhh, like a growl without enough air behind it, and her head strained against the pillow and Dorothy moved to the IV pole that held the morphine drip and said that if Grace wished, they could give her a little more.

  Grace said yes, they should do that, and she had to go get her father. She knocked on the guest room door and her father opened it. He looked soft-faced and sleepy. Grace said that he should come talk to Dorothy and he should do it now. He didn’t seem to understand her. He stood there blinking and scowling and Grace said, “Dad, please,” and then he stepped past her and went quickly down the hall.

  Michael was in the basement, where he went sometimes to get away. He was wearing headphones and Grace had to stand in front of him to get his attention. “You need to come see Mom,” she said once he took the headphones off. His face turned flat and blank and he got up to follow her.

  The sickroom had a smell that trapped you as soon as you walked in. In spite of all the efforts at hygiene and air fresheners, in spite of lilacs and candles and fans. The smell was of something stale, something burdened and heavy. The room was both personal and not so. The personal was being erased from it minute by minute. Death was impersonal. It pulled your loves and hates up by the roots. It rolled right over your likes and dislikes. It took as much as it could of history and memory. This was its moment. All else fell back before it. The husband, son, and daughter stood by, uncertain of what came next. Death said, I will show you what comes next.

  The dying woman had been further sedated. She lay on her side and every so often the aide stepped in to suction her mouth so as to avoid the aspiration of fluids, and the noises that came along with the mechanics of a failing body. The aide said this part of things could go on for some time, and she would stay as long as they wanted her to. She would step outside now to give them some privacy.

  Did the dying woman know they were there? They spoke as if she did. They held her hand and smoothed her hair. Did they want her to linger, or did they want a quick end? It didn’t matter what any of them wanted.

  The morning wore on. Grace left the room to call her uncle Mark. He had last visited a couple of weeks before, and now he said he wished he’d known, he could have been there right now, and Grace told him that none of them could have known, it was that sudden. She said she would call him again when everything was over, and her uncle told her to stay strong. Grace said nothing to that, although she didn’t feel strong. She felt as if some part of her had been severed. She felt as if she had been holding her breath for months.

  Michael was at the top of the stairs, looking down as Grace came up. He had been crying and he had tried to rub the crying away with his knuckles, like a child. He said, “I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “Don’t. You don’t have to.”

  “When I die I want to jump off a fucking bridge and get it over with.”

  “Great. You do that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not anything like I thought it would be.”

  “It’s nothing you can really practice for.”

  She gave him a sideways hug and they leaned into each other. Grace said, “If you don’t want to . . .”

  “No, I will. Wait a minute.”

  He turned and went into his bedroom, came back with his acoustic guitar. “Maybe I could . . .”

  “Sure. If it’s OK with Dad.”

  Michael made a wry, despairing face, meant to indicate how unlikely this was.

  Had anything changed? Maybe they were imagining that her face had lost some of its flesh, so that the architecture of the bones stood out. The aide had repositioned her so that she was closer to upright. Their father sat on the love seat at the end of the bed. The aide was in the adjoining bathroom, running water in the sink. She came back in with a washcloth she’d wrung out. She was wearing latex gloves and a rubber apron over her work smock. She said, “I thought I could put some lotion on her. If you want. That can be soothing.”

  They looked at each other, nobody knowing the right answer, and eventually came around to yes. The aide moved to the bedside and began undoing clothing, and they all hurried to leave the room.

  Out in the hallway, their father said, “What’s this?” Pointing to the guitar.

  “I thought I could play a little. Something she’d like.”

  “All right,” their father said after a moment. “Just not any of that hoodlum music.”

  When the aide called them back in, the lotion smell was still in the air. The aide gathered up the washcloth and towels she’d used and took them downstairs. Grace and Michael and their father arranged themselves around the bed. Michael cleared his throat. “Hi Mom. You always liked this song.”

  He tried a few chords, then picked out a melody. It took a few bars to recognize it. One of the old Simon and Garfunkel songs. “April Come She Will.” Sweet and sad, rising and falling.

  If the dying woman heard it, if there was still a living spirit inside the chamber of the body, she gave no sign. Perhaps the music was for those watching and waiting. The song ended and he began playing another with the same sort of lift and ache, and then another. It smoothed over the empty spaces in them. It unclenched the fists that had taken the place of their hearts.

  The music ended. The silence held for a moment and grew, like a drop of water about to fall. Then Grace said, “Did she . . .”

  The aide, Dorothy, came back inside and removed the oxygen tubing and turned the tank off. She unhooked the IV line but left the needle in place, taped to the blue bruised skin of the arm. She said that she would go downstairs and call the hospice, who would send the man who provided service at such times.

  She left them there. Grace and Michael held each other and cried and when they stopped, there was a terrible unquiet place where the crying had been. Grace’s father turned away from the bed. He walked out into the hallway and Grace followed him. He said, “Ahh, Jesus.” Grace put a hand on his arm. He felt loose and restless, ready to push her away. “Did you hear her say anything? Before she stopped talking?”

  “No.” She hadn’t meant to lie. But she didn’t want to tell her father that her mother had said another name, Bob Malloy, whoever that was, and anyway, who knew if it meant anything at all, when her mother had been deep in a morphine dream. “I hope she heard the music. I bet she did. I should call Uncle Mark now.”

  Her father nodded, as if he had been listening, though Grace didn’t think he had. He said, “I’m going to have a drink. Come have a drink with me.”

  “I don’t want a drink, Dad.”

  “Come on. This once.”

  First Grace went back into the bedroom. Michael was sitting in a chair next to the bed. “Did you want me to stay with you?” Grace asked, and her brother shook his head. She waited for him to say something, but he stayed silent. She was avoiding looking at what was now only a body on a bed, and not her mother.

  Her father had gone downstairs. Grace came into the living room to see the aide, Dorothy, gathering her coat and purse. Dorothy said, “They send one of the counselors along too, they should be here any minute. I’m so sorry. She had a good end, it was easy for her.”

  “Thank you for staying. You were wonderful. I don’t know how you can do this job.”

  “You don’t ever quite get used to it,” Dorothy said, and she and Grace hugged, and Grace opened the front door for her and watched her walk down the porch steps and out to her car. It was early afternoon, not quite two, and the bright day had turned windy.

  Her head felt like a sandbag, heavy and lopsided. There was a buzzing sensation behind her eyes. Her father was in the kitchen, filling two highball glasses with ice. He took the bourbon bottle from its place on the shelf and poured. Grace said, “I really don’t want any.”

  “I’m pouring yours light.
”

  He handed her a glass. The whiskey smell was so strong, it assaulted every part of her. It hollowed out her head and roiled her skin. Whiskey was a spirit, she remembered, a distilled spirit. If she drank it, that’s what she’d be doing. Taking a spirit into herself. Her father raised his glass.

  “To her. Your mother.”

  “Shouldn’t . . .” she began. She wanted to say, Shouldn’t Michael be here too? but Michael didn’t drink anymore. She took a small sip and recoiled. “Whew!”

  Her father drank, gave the glass a considering look, then drank again. “She’d want us to go on with our lives. She’d want us to keep moving forward.”

  “Yes.” She had a sensation of water rushing over her, roaring through her ears.

  “She was the best thing that ever happened to me. Your mother. She deserved better than me. Everybody said so.”

  “No Dad. That’s not true.” Was it? She wasn’t sure.

  “Her parents. Your grandma and grandpa. They always thought she could do better.”

  He was giving her a challenging look. Was it a question? Did he want an answer? Was there a right answer? “I didn’t know that,” Grace said.

  “Oh yes. Especially her father. He’d call every so often and quiz her. Was I treating her right? Behaving myself?”

  Again, the challenging look. Grace tried to sort through what she was hearing, and her own whiskey-addled brain. She was so tired.

  Her father said, “Aren’t you drinking? We’re supposed to be drinking together.”

  “I don’t want anymore, Dad. It’s not sitting right with me.”

  “Oh Gracie girl, don’t leave me all alone.”

  “I’m not, Dad. I’m just really, really tired.”

  He was weeping suddenly, and holding her around her waist and pulling her close to him so that her face was too near to his, and she tried to turn hers away, and his weeping was awful, awful, as was his poisoned breath and his hands on her, and even as she struggled, the doorbell rang. It was the hospice service, coming to do what had to be done.

  * * *

  Late that same night, Grace woke to sounds of rushing, unquiet wind. Still half-asleep; why was she outside? She opened her eyes. Lightning flickered at the windows. The thunder sounded low and far away, like a chord played on an organ. Closer by, inside, a racket as of something come loose, and the wind knocking and pushing against her door, trying to get in.

  Frightened, she jumped up, listened at the door, then went out into the hallway. In the room where her mother had died, the windows had been thrown open and the curtains belled in and out and twisted into ropes. “Michael?”

  He sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, which had been stripped down to its mattress. “I’ll close them in a minute. I didn’t want her to be stuck in here.”

  * * *

  The funeral had been foreseen, if not really planned. Uncle Mark and his family flew in, and there was talk of what Laura would have wanted. Pictures, flowers, music. None of the family had actually attended the Presbyterian church for years, although they were nominal members. Had her mother been religious, in any recognizable sense, ever talked about Jesus or sin? No, none of them had. It would have felt false and wrong to have a preacher they didn’t even know unwrap some prayers for the occasion. The funeral home had reception rooms that would do, even if the furniture was in an elderly style that no doubt matched up with the age of most of the deceased.

  There were things to be done and decided. A different kind of energy took over. Neighbors brought more food: chicken divan, manicotti, angel food cake, Crock-Pot chili. Some of the old photographs were put in frames. Her mother looking young and younger, with straight, dark hair and a serious expression. One of both her parents, taken outside on a summer day, both of them with their hands shading their eyes, grinning into the camera and the future. One of her mother with Grace as a toddler, Michael a baby, their mother’s face so absolutely happy, it hurt to see it.

  Flowers to order. Tulips and daffodils and lilies. Grace could have cut lilacs for bouquets, they were blooming everywhere now, but she had come to hate the smell of them.

  Her father picked out the casket, had arranged for cremation. He made it his business not to flinch from doing so. He was made of sterner stuff. Etc. They would have a closed casket, thank God. Grace got the creeps at funerals where they displayed the honoree. Her mother had not been treated kindly by cancer. She would be allowed this one last vanity, that of remaining unseen.

  Uncle Mark and Aunt Brenda and the kids stayed at a hotel with an indoor swimming pool and a piano player in the cocktail lounge. There was the usual hubbub that went along with one of their visits. The kids wanted Mexican food, was there a good Mexican restaurant? Brenda had a case of hives, probably from the detergent they used on the hotel sheets, and she needed Benadryl. Grace was kept busy directing traffic and making phone calls. There was a printed program for the service. A guest book. A slide show that would run on a laptop set up at a back table. What should she wear? Not black, she decided. One of her spring dresses that didn’t look too hippieish. Something her mother might have approved of. Why was that important now? Maybe it was stupid, but it did.

  What kind of service would it be, would anyone speak? No one seemed anxious to do so. Perhaps just some music. Did Michael wish to play? He said he did not. He said he wasn’t even sure he wanted to go. Grace told him he didn’t have to want to. Maybe none of them wanted to, but they would.

  “I’m worried about him,” Grace told her uncle Mark. “About Dad too, sure, but . . .”

  “How about yourself,” her uncle said. “Who gets to worry about you?”

  “I’m OK.” They were sitting in the hotel’s cocktail lounge. Mercifully, it was too early for the piano player, who went in for medleys of show tunes. Grace was drinking cranberry juice and her uncle a beer. “I mean I will be OK, I’ll get through it.” She didn’t want to try and explain the complicated territory between mothers and daughters, how she and her mother had veered toward and away from each other through the years, how Grace had measured herself against her mother and always took off running in the other direction. “But the two of them, my dad and Michael, and Michael especially, she did so much for them. Propped them up, calmed them down. Made them feel better about themselves.”

  She stopped talking, aware that she might be saying too much of the truth. She began again. “I was thinking. Maybe we could have a memorial later. Something more like a celebration. A big potluck? She’d like that. Or a tree planting in one of the parks . . .”

  “That’s a nice idea. Let a little time pass, give everybody a chance to catch their breaths and gather their thoughts.”

  “A tree planting or even a garden. A place people could visit. You can give money to the park district and they set it up, a dedication. You remember her talking? She didn’t think she’d have anything like that. Like, she wasn’t important enough.”

  It wasn’t missing her mother that made her cry, not always, but the sadness of her mother’s life. Her mother who had always seemed to be apologizing for herself, worrying about everything and everyone else. And now, how would they manage without her?

  Her uncle handed her a cocktail napkin. “Here you go.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Crying’s stupid. It doesn’t help anything.”

  “You don’t have to be so tough, Grace.”

  She blew her nose. “Good, because I’m not.”

  “I like the idea of the garden. Let’s work on that one. See what your dad and Michael think.”

  “All right.” As if the two of them would agree on anything.

  The bartender came by to ask if they wanted another drink. Both Grace and her uncle said no, roused themselves, and smiled wanly at each other. Mark looked at his phone. “Uh-oh. I am summoned.”

  Grace said that she had better get back also. The service was tomorrow and there was still a lot to be done. They stood,
and Grace led the way out to the lobby. “Uncle Mark? Do you know anybody named Bob Malloy?”

  “Bob . . . oh yeah, from high school. I used to run track with Bob. Haven’t seen him for a hundred years. How come?”

  “Nothing. Just a name that came up. So many people talking . . .” Weren’t your last words supposed to mean something? Wasn’t your life supposed to mean something?

  “Yeah. So, tomorrow. It’ll be good. We’ll make sure it is.”

  * * *

  Everything came together as it was supposed to, the pictures, the flowers, the mix of music Michael had put together. Old songs, ones their mother liked to sing along to. Hippie anthems, power ballads, pop songs that weren’t inappropriately upbeat. “You did a good job,” Grace told her brother. “We need real music, not some stupid hymns played on an organ.”

  “I wish nobody else was coming.”

  She knew what he meant. The funeral was for other people. Their mother had been all theirs.

  They had arrived early to set things up. Their father had dropped them off, saying he would go get Mark and Brenda and the kids. And probably down a couple of quick drinks in the bar, though Grace didn’t care about that, as long as he didn’t fall to pieces in some awful way, and even if he did, she guessed people would make allowances. The funeral director greeted them. He was all sad smiles. The room had thick carpet that turned their footsteps soft. The handsome coffin was a rental, as was customary for cremations. There were some things Grace would have been all right not knowing. It sat at the front of the room on a small stage. A spray of lilies and roses was arranged on its polished lid. It was shockingly large. It made you think of pianos and armoires. A row of polished handles glinted along its side.

  Grace and Michael contemplated it from a distance. “It’s not really her,” Michael said.

  “No,” Grace agreed. She touched his shoulder. “You look nice.” He’d shaved and made some effort with combing his hair. He wore a tan sports jacket he must have hauled out from the back of his closet and had cleaned. A deep blue shirt and a soft knit tie and dress pants. Sometimes Grace forgot how handsome he could make himself.