by Betsy Lerner
I had no idea what to make of it. Does Millie have a death wish? Does sheer desperation compel her to take a ride from my mother? Was she insulted? She seemed to think it was funny. More pressing: Should my mother still be driving? She’s commented once or twice that people are incredibly rude, constantly honking at her. This gives me pause: Why are they honking? Is she just going too slowly or perhaps taking one of her signature wide turns? At this stage, I know that losing one’s license is like losing one’s legs. It recommends the Whitney Center with its fleet of buses that take seniors to shopping, to downtown, to plays, doctor appointments, and New York! It all sounds great except it sucks after a lifetime of independence.
We make a date to visit the Whitney Center together. I want to see it for myself. We wait in the corridor for our guide. One wall is all glass, the other displays art from local artists and from the residents themselves. It has the air of an art show at a quaint town green, in other words vaguely depressing. The woman who greets us for our tour is everything you would imagine—warm, professional, knowledgeable. She’s wearing what looks like an Ann Taylor summer shift and beat-up pumps she doubtless keeps under her desk. After we introduce ourselves she says, “Shall we?” and we head off to a bank of elevators.
The first unit she is showing is called Ash. I know it’s named for the trees, but instead I see a cold pile of ashes the morning after a campfire and a cremation urn. (Whenever my mother tells me she wants to be buried, I threaten to cremate her and scatter the ashes outside of Saks Fifth Avenue. She tells me to knock it off.) They really should get a better marketing team. I would name the units after Connecticut’s famous figures: The Hale, The Twain, The Trumbull. Even Connecticut flowers would be nice: The Aster, the Daylily, or the Dogwood.
Once off the elevator we are led down a long hall with red carpeting. Redrum. Redrum. Inside Ash, I’m taken by surprise. It’s all new and clean, and bright. Nothing in the hall would lead you to believe that the units would be so inviting. I can see my mother here. It looks a lot like Bea’s and Rhoda’s condos. I pull at a vertical door in the kitchen, and it’s a pantry! My mother criticizes the design, saying that she wouldn’t be able to reach the high shelves. I remind her that she can’t reach the shelves at home either.
“Right,” she says and starts scavenging in her pocketbook for something.
The woman walks us through the apartment. Both bedrooms share a small patio. The bathroom is new and the shower wheelchair accessible. Pulls are mounted on every wall. My favorite feature is a walk-in closet with shelving and cubbies galore, storage for all my mother’s Ferragamos.
We learn that you can hire people to pack you up and then furnish your apartment.
“All you have to do is turn the key. They’ll even hang your pictures,” the woman says this too eagerly. Of course, I also know that this is a luxury, options like these for a small handful of people who can afford it. But it seems creepy walking into your life that someone else has organized, like a blind person learning the contours of a new room. I also know that I would be fortunate if someone hung up my pictures, furnished my linen closet, mounted a flat-screen TV, loaded a fridge with diet Half ’n Half Snapple, and organized a regular Bridge game for me when I’m old.
My mother keeps asking questions about costs and insurance and maintenance and bundled vs. unbundled services. She has pulled out the sheet of paper she was looking for: a page of notes so convoluted Alan Turing couldn’t crack them. She continues to take more notes while the woman betrays just the slightest whiff of impatience. She keeps telling my mother she has all the information on forms that she will give us at the end of the tour.
“I want to understand it in my head,” my mother says. I look at my mother’s paper, her familiar handwriting, graceful loops that drift into doodles when she gets bored. I know that no matter how hard she looks at this paper, it will never make sense, because moving here doesn’t make sense.
The woman tells us that the units are flying on account of the special, and with that comment she shifts from soft sell to medium. Then she shows us the facilities: There are three dining areas, one with full restaurant service, a pub, and a café. You get a swipe card with points and they are good at all of the restaurants. I tell my mother that it’s like college.
“Not my college.”
There is a spa and beauty parlor. A gym and pool. There is a library with wooden bookcases. And in some of the open seating areas I see newspapers with magnifiers, chessboards, and against one wall a black, shiny grand piano that looks as if it hasn’t been played in a long time. This big open room is empty save for one man sitting alone by a window. The whole thing feels like a funeral parlor to me. I ask the lady where everyone is, and she knocks out a list of activities like a director on a cruise ship.
The tour concludes and we wind up at the woman’s office decorated with high school photos of her handsome sons, a Garfield birthday card on the bulletin board next to some official papers, a large red button that says PANIC next to her computer, and other office bric-a-brac. Then the woman becomes more aggressive in her sales pitch. I figure she’s got us pegged for window-shoppers and is going for broke.
“The thing is,” she tells us, “a lot of people want to come here, only they wait too long and no longer qualify either financially or physically.” She tells us about her in-laws who could have had a place but they waited too long, and now when they’ve had falls she has had to scramble to get them into nursing homes with two-star ratings. Even though I suspect this is all part of a prefabricated pitch, I’ll admit it sort of scares me. And then she tells us that when people finally do come, they say they should have done it years ago!
“It’s a worry-free place where you can maintain your lifestyle for you and your children.” And scene.
The woman gives us the paperwork for the apartments she has shown us. My mother folds them into quarters and shoves them into her purse with a dismissive thank-you.
We sit there a bit stupefied. I feel the need to shake things up, fantasize about throwing her computer through the plate-glass window. Then I pull in close and ask one final question a little conspiratorially. “Is there hooking up here?”
“Excuse me?
“You know, hooking up?”
“You mean cable TV?”
She knows I’m not taking about Comcast.
“Do you mean romance? Yes, there are some romances that develop.”
“Okay,” I say, and get up.
I look over at my mother; she is thoroughly mortified, her head in her hand.
“Betsy,” she says as we leave the office, “you go too far.”
“Thank you,” I beam, as if it’s a compliment.
On the way out, my mother sees no fewer than seven or eight women whom she knows. All are widows except for one whose husband has Alzheimer’s. They are all tiny Jewish women in their summer whites, with white hair, and white sneakers. They could be chess pieces clustered on a board. They all rave about the center and urge my mother to come. Most important, they all play Bridge. My mother speaks their language and falls easily into pleasantries and little jokes. They hug one another and say they look terrific or how happy they are to see each other. It’s not hard to imagine my mother woven into this fabric.
The car is stifling. We open the windows, waiting to turn on the air conditioner. We don’t say anything. I look over at her and she is far away. All the ebullience of meeting her friends has drained.
Finally I say, “Would you like my opinion?”
“Yes,” she says. “I would.”
“I think it’s a nice option, especially knowing so many people, but you’re not ready yet.”
“Thank you,” she says and turns on the air.
Late June and the trees, once caterpillar green, have darkened into the color of dollars. Blockbuster movies dominate the big screens and farm stands are cropping up, soon to be bursting with fat tomatoes and piles of Connecticut corn. Arthur is in hospice now, and Bette an
d her family are keeping vigil. She must be terrified of losing him, uncertain of a future without him. Arthur was known for saying that the trick in life is never to take the last run, when the mountain is awash in incandescent blue and gold, when the lines and slopes are thinning out and it would be just a quick wait to get on the lift, when your body is spent but you yearn for one last run. This is the time to go home.
My mother calls on Sunday night, her voice rasping, she can’t play Bridge. A recurring respiratory issue is dogging her. She wants to know if I will fill in. How can we play with Bette suffering? “We play,” my mother says, “that’s what we do.” I hope knowing that the Bridge club is there waiting for her return is a comfort, though I’m also sure that Bridge is the last thing on Bette’s mind.
The game is at Rhoda’s. She has set her table on the deck and mentions that Bette above all loved eating on the deck. The view across the inlet is a landscape of industrial buildings to the right and mansions to the left. Motorboats congregate on the dock, their surfaces gleaming like white enamel. And a piece of driftwood or industrial steel juts out of the water like a broken Erector set.
Rhoda’s rolled out a whole new set of matching place mats, napkins, and napkin rings with a summery theme. She serves iced tea and coffee in tall glasses with silver stirrers that double as straws out of which one can only demurely sip. Jackie looks like royalty, daintily holding the straw while she sips.
I had tried on three outfits before I settled on a long, gray linen dress in the shape of a column that I hoped forgave the extra pounds. I added a white cotton sweater and my gold watch. I even put on some makeup. Not much, just enough to cover the circles under my eyes, conceal the splotches on my chin. As I came in, Rhoda commented that I look nice, that I was wearing a dress. I realized that I have been scrutinized just as I have been scrutinizing them. Bea notices that my nails are done. (It’s true I got a manicure that morning and I picked the plum-colored polish for the name on the bottom of the bottle, “Just in Case.”)
Bea points out five cormorants that have come to sun themselves on the jagged branch sticking out of the water. They are all black with the exception of one that has a gray chest. They are enormous birds and are engaged in various states of self-cleaning. Bea sees a pair of binoculars and gets the birds into view, advertising their strange beauty. Then she hands them to me. I see five detectives in black coats, five nuns out for some sun, five handsome ushers at a wedding, and five pallbearers at a grave. We all comment on the cormorants. Rhoda tells us they come every summer and that there are always five. Her comment, informational and offhand, makes me well up. The ladies don’t see the symbolism: five old beautiful birds.
My partner is Bea and as always she is quick to point out when I make a mistake, and I make some doozies right off the bat. When I bid correctly, Bea gives me a slight nod, which I take as a huge pat on the head. After I settle down, I pretty much hold my own, which feels miraculous. Only twice does Bea point out that I failed to mention a strong secondary suit in the bidding. But she makes the hand both times. It’s not a national disaster. When I am dummy, I go back on the deck. Four birds remain. Twenty minutes later when I am dummy again, I check again: three.
Today, the clock moves slowly. I’m worried about Bette. I’m worried about my mom. When the game ends, I go out to the deck and take one last look. The cormorant with the gray chest is left standing alone on the branch. She has spread her enormous wings, as if opening a kimono. Rhoda comes out and tells me this is how they dry themselves. Yes, I can see that. I feel the sun warm my face. Rhoda also tilts her face to the late-afternoon sun. Without warning the great bird takes off, flapping its great wings just above the water’s surface in a straight line headed for another part of the cove. All five of the birds are now gone. I beg myself not to read too deeply into this tableau but it’s too late.
The next morning my mother calls to tell me that Arthur has died. She says he’s at peace now and we both know she doesn’t mean this. The end of suffering yes, but peace no. We are not sentimental about death. We don’t think we will be reunited with our loved ones or anything like that. I start to cry; my mother remains quiet. Six months ago Arthur was grocery shopping, he and Bette were going to movies, out to dinner and to the JCC, where he walked on the treadmill and kibitzed with the kibitzers. When he first got sick, Bette consoled herself and anyone who asked that at least it wasn’t life-threatening. All that unraveled in a matter of months.
My mother says it’s okay to stop by Bette’s; only when I do, there are no cars in the driveway. For a moment I think I’m in the wrong place or that this isn’t a good time to come. I had imagined a crowd. When I ring the bell, Bette comes to the door where she has greeted me so many times for our talks and for Bridge. She looks tiny, gray, and when I hug her I can feel every bone in her back and I fear I will crush her. She ushers me inside. Outside on the deck her two-year-old twin grandsons are filling plastic watering cans and watering the flowers. The water mostly goes all over the deck and their comic relief is a small miracle. Bette is happy Arthur lived to see them.
We pass a half hour with small talk mostly. How I filled in for Bridge, any inane thing I could think of to offset my nervousness. Bette’s daughter Amy is there and offers me a glass of wine. Bette’s son Jack entertains his two boys, throwing a ball high in the sky, which makes them squeal and run in circles like puppies. When I finally ask Bette how she is doing, she flinches, shrugs; I’m not sure which. Then she tells me that they had to make arrangements earlier in the day—Arthur would be cremated—until then she had kept it together. Upon leaving the crematorium, the director said to Bette, “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.”
It was something he probably said by rote, a gesture, and that was all. But it set Bette off, “Who are you to take care of my husband? I’ll take care of my husband.”
Later, she will confide that she doesn’t know what to do when people say “God bless,” or when they say they are praying for Arthur. She knows they are well meaning but she doesn’t know what God has to do with it. She wants to tell them to pray for themselves.
Everyone, including Bette, would say Arthur took care of her, lived for her, and that she was the center of his life. He spent a lifetime not complaining about a job he never liked or wanted. The only thing he kept from their fabric store is a glass-fronted case with brightly covered spools of thread in lockstep like a row of soldiers. That was Arthur, in lockstep with dutiful men of his generation. Bette’s children worry about how she will manage on her own. Amy is the closest in Hartford. Davi, her middle daughter, lives in Paris. Her son, who lives out of town, is riddled with worry, wonders how she will make it through the winter, as if Woodbridge were Siberia and she had only a keep of apples to last her through the snows.
Sometimes a spouse will die shortly after losing a lifelong companion. It’s known as broken heart syndrome and in some ways it has the same romantic appeal as when young lovers die together like Romeo and Juliet. Only most people outlive their spouses by more than five years and longer. Still, these stories, rare as they actually are, appeal to us. We want to believe that love can remain so strong that a person can’t go on living without the other.
“Sixty years is a long time,” Bette says when I leave. “How much more can you ask for?”
CHAPTER 20
The Bridge Ladies
The minute I see my mother in the parking lot, I regret the entire outfit I’ve concocted to wear for Arthur’s memorial service. It’s a black cotton dress that I cinch at the waist with a worn brown leather belt that in my mind’s eye has a quasi–Ralph Lauren look. Only the fabric has attracted every thread and microbe of lint in the state of Connecticut and glows as if under a black light. The dress wanted a small heel, not the ballet flats that I’ve been wearing since last summer. Even my teenager suggested I change my shoes.
A week after Arthur died, the first named hurricane of the year touched down in North Carolina with hundred-miles-
per-hour winds, with cyclone warnings and families evacuating along the coast. Cruelly or perhaps providentially, it was named Arthur. By the time it reached New England the storm was at its tail end: flash flooding, road closings, and power outages. Again, I tell myself not to read too much into it, and again it’s impossible not to.
It’s been a few weeks since Arthur died and it was unclear where Bette would hold a service—she and Arthur quit the synagogue years ago. She settled on our old country club, another landmark from my childhood that hasn’t changed down to the hooks on the valet’s pegboard where keys hang in clusters.
My mother and I kiss on the cheek. As usual, we are a study in opposites. She is wearing too much makeup, me not any. Her black patent leather Ferragamo handbag is the size of a kidney-shaped swimming pool; mine is as small as a kidney bean. Her hair is colored and fluffed into shape, mine is still wet and hanging limply. I know this also makes her crazy. How could you go out with a wet head? And while we’re at it: Don’t you want to color those grays? Only now, here, she won’t say anything about how I look. We have come a long way, my mother and I.
Only then, she can’t help herself and reaches out to pull a few of the more obvious threads from the dress. I don’t want her de-linting me, or touching me for that matter, but I let it go. Nor do I insult her Eileen Fisher green cotton separates, which could easily double as surgeon’s scrubs. This is supreme progress on both of our parts. Has proximity made friends of us? If we have learned anything I would say it is this, the first cardinal rule most of our mothers taught us: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
At thirteen, at twenty-one, all through my thirties and forties, everything my mother said felt like a steel plate hurtling toward my head. Now, not so much. After three years with Anne, I felt ready to move on. When I told her I was ready to stop therapy, she nodded in agreement. She didn’t suggest that I still had issues to work through, or make me feel insecure about my decision. Every shrink I’d ever seen tried to get me to stay, sometimes dragging out sessions for months. Still, it was hard to leave Anne and our weekly sessions, imagine someone else taking my place, my hour, sitting across from Anne looking to her for answers. Good luck with that. I’d like to think that she would miss me, and my fascinating life. Oh, how I admired her! Loved her! She never budged, never coddled or condescended. I didn’t have to do anything, fix anything, or entertain anyone. There was no epiphany exploding like a chrysanthemum in a night sky of fireworks, no golden fields of barley. I didn’t have to love myself first or embrace the journey I was on, which astonishingly led me to a 14-plex with my octogenarian mother on my arm. Unlike every other therapeutic relationship I’d ever been in, she actually helped me accomplish what I hoped to accomplish: she helped me care for my mother and by extension myself.