Thirty-Four
Mary
Ten cool things:
•She was a widow at 17.
•She was Queen of Scotland and Queen consort of France.
•She was Catholic, her country had turned Protestant, and she was like, whatevs, let’s agree to disagree. (That was cool of her, but also her downfall.)
•Her second husband plotted with a bunch of folks and they murdered Mary’s friend, right in front of her, during a dinner party.
•Then someone murdered her second husband. First his murderers tried with an explosion, but he was actually found dead, smothered in the garden. Who did it was a mystery, but many people suspected a man named Bothwell.
•Next, Bothwell abducted Mary, took her back to his castle, and probably raped her. Then he married her. (Nobody liked this.)
•Mary and Bothwell had to battle a bunch of Lords, but lost. Bothwell was given safe passage. (Because he was a guy? Probably.) Mary was taken to Edinburgh where crowds called her an adulteress and a murderer.
•She was imprisoned. Miscarried twins. Forced to abdicate her throne to her one-year-old son, James (by her second husband.)
•She escaped and fled to England and begged Elizabeth I for help, but was instead imprisoned. She was 26. She was beheaded when she was 44.
•The execution took three whacks. Seriously. Then the executioner, named Bull, raised her head up into the air and yelled over the heads of the crowd, “God Save the Queen.” Also, her beloved pet dog hid under her skirts and came out after all covered in blood. Ew.
Thirty-Five
Teddy
I went to Sid’s to play Xbox again. I wanted to talk to her about Macbeth. I had a whole plan—I would walk into her room and tell her about it—describe the costumes, tell her about the dinner party scene. Talking about something outside of Hospice would distract her and that would be good. I’d tell her how much I missed her and how I would take her to another show later. I would promise.
When I entered the room was dark, depressed, Sid staring at the screen. She chewed her lip and barely acknowledged me. I asked, “How are you?”
“Okay.”
“Can I play?”
“Sure.”
I picked up a controller and began to play.
Then she asked, without taking her eyes from the screen, without looking at me or anything, “Do you know what happens to men when their wives die?” Without waiting for an answer she said, “They die. They die too, because they can’t bear it, to be alone. Or they remarry. They have two things, death or remarriage. That’s a fact. It’s what happens. There’s no hiding from it.”
My mind searched for something, anything, to say. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“Well, It’s a fact, ask anyone.”
She continued to play.
After that day Sid was just gone. She wouldn’t answer the phone, texts, anything. Her entire extended family descended on the hospice room, and Sid seemed indifferent to any of us being there, so Mom decided I should skip going. Because I took up space. Clearly my presence wasn’t helping. I wasn’t helping. She visited without me. I asked her to tell Sid that I was thinking about her.
Now that seemed like a stupid thing to say.
I hoped she would send a message back, anything, but how would Sid respond to, I’m thinking about you?
“Uh, thanks, stalker boy. My mom’s in Hospice, give it a rest,” seemed like the only fair response.
Thirty-Six
Hospice Diary
It took nineteen days for my mom to die. That’s all. That’s everything.
Thirty-Seven
Sid
After your mom dies you get to go home. Maybe alone. Maybe in a crowd of people. But those walls, that roof, the carpets and knickknacks she ordered and decorated and chose and dusted, you get to go back to that. You might think the house will seem empty without her. And it does, terribly empty. But also and how in the hell do these two things exist at the same time—it’s also full. Your home is so chock full of her stuff that you can’t even breathe. You become hyperaware of every fucking bit of it. You might suffocate from the lack of air because your mom has filled that home with herself so much.
You’ve been warned. Take an oxygen tank. Leave bread crumbs. Keep your phone in your hand, 911 on speed dial. Trust me.
Thirty-Eight
Sid
Dad and I drove home. We were silent, because we had been doing this together, just the two of us for three weeks. We had said it all, felt it all, cried it all, yet here we were at the beginning. Starting, again, all the saying and crying and feeling. Except now we didn’t need to drive to visit someone anymore. That part was over.
Dad raised the garage door and you know what was the first thing I noticed? My surfboard leaned up against the wall. I stared at it for a long time. Just standing and staring. I supposed Teddy had put it there at some point over the last three weeks. And I never noticed, but now, coming home after Mom died, I noticed. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I don’t know how to describe it, but that day on the beach, in Malibu with Teddy, that day had been interrupted. I had been interrupted. Mom had been interrupted. The whole freaking world. But now my board was back. I wasn’t able to go back to that day and finish it. That day was done. It was all done. We were all done. It was suddenly final.
I burst into tears, sobbing, standing in the garage beside Dad’s car, facing my surfboard. Teddy had waxed it. Cleaned it up. He was trying to be nice but instead he had stopped the—
Dad returned from the house, “Sid? I’m putting a casserole in, your Aunts and Uncles will be here in ten minutes.”
I nodded. “I’m coming in a minute Dad thanks.”
Guns and Roses played extra loud through the door over his shoulder.
We fed everyone with casseroles that Teddy and others had been shoving into our refrigerator for three weeks. I got napkins and filled water glasses and spooned casseroles and set timers and busied myself in the kitchen while my heart screamed—didn’t you people notice that my mom died and that Teddy returned my surfboard and the world stopped turning and I’ll probably die of the Ache because there are so many tears welled up in my head that I might drown from the inside?
But nobody noticed. They ate. They held our hands and patted us on the shoulder and left at the end, oblivious to all but their own pain. Because that’s what happens, come to find out, grief is isolating. Who would have guessed with so many people around to share it?
Dad and I watched them drive away and then we each disappeared. Dad turned the music, that our guests had forced him to turn down, back up. Guns and Roses, a live album. The applause made our house and yard sound like an amphitheater. I climbed the stairs and sat on Mom and Dad’s bed. I didn’t touch anything; I just stared at it all. I wished I was doing something amazing—like memorizing everything’s location so that fifty years later I’d have a photographic memory of what her room was like. But no, I was blank-stare looking. After a while I went into Mom’s bathroom and stared at her stuff there. I opened her dressing table drawer and stared down into that. I opened the linen closet and looked at all of that. Two hours passed of me looking at stuff.
I went downstairs, Dad was standing in the living room looking at the bookcase. Arms crossed resting his mouth on his thumb.
“Dad, it’s eleven-thirty, I’m going to bed.” I startled him because he had the blank-stare too.
“Oh, yeah,” he looked around like he couldn’t believe where the time went while he stared at the bookshelf. “I still have some things to do.”
“Sure Dad.” I went to bed, but he took another hour before he finally turned the Guns and Roses off.
Thirty-Nine
Teddy
I woke up the day before the funeral with a terrible cold. Like the worst. My mom, red-rimmed eyes and deep sighs, said, “It’s just a summer cold, you’ll be fine.”
I got worse. Snot poured from my nose, my throat was killing me, I was chilled
and then hot, and even worse—my chest rattled. It started with a dry hacking cough and progressed into the wet hard and loud kind of cough that racked my body and should not be heard out in public. It was the Get Out Of The Way kind of cough. I’m not telling you this because I know you enjoy thinking about mucus and phlegm, but to set the scene for the most tragic of moments.
I mean, that came out all wrong, the funeral was the most tragic of moments—the loss of Sid’s mom. In comparison my tragedy was minuscule, but also giant.
This is what happened:
“Mom! I need medicine and all you’ve got is this bullshit homeopathic stuff.” I walked into the kitchen carrying our remedy bin. It was full of little bottles of pills and oils and nothing to make a cough miraculously disappear. I punctuated my complaint with a coughing fit that doubled me over.
Mom stopped wiping the counter. “Your body can heal itself.” She appraised me. “You look like poop.”
“I feel like poop. C’mon, I need the ‘Beyoncé needs to sing tonight’ medicine, this is Sid’s mom. I can’t go looking like this.”
“I’ll run out and get you something but let me get ready—” Another coughing fit folded me over. “Okay, I’ll go now.”
Somehow I managed to get ready. Suit. Tie. Clean shirt. Combed hair. I even had on shoes with socks. I usually tried not to do that on principle, but I did it. I carried the Robitussin cough syrup in one pocket, a wad of tissues in the other. I put on sunglasses to cover my bloodshot eyes.
I rode to the funeral suffering in the backseat. Blowing my nose, coughing, snuffling and moaning. The cough syrup wasn’t working. Beyoncé would have been pissed.
Over a hundred people were there. Many friends that Sid and I knew. Many people that I assumed belonged to Alicia’s family and friends from her past.
Mom and Dad and I stepped into the receiving line to pass into the chapel.
Sid was tiny at the end of the line. My heart dropped. She was looking into the face of an elderly woman who spoke to her holding both of her hands. Sid was nodding. She looked so small and weak and broken and I wanted to rush to her and shove everyone away and—I don’t know—take her away from this. She shouldn’t have to do this. She had to though. Because.
Mom said, “There’s a big turnout. Alicia would have been so happy to know she . . .” She sobbed into a Kleenex. We passed a box and I grabbed another handful for my pocket.
It took a while to get to Sid and Mike. I smiled, the best I could, forgetting to take off my sunglasses. Then a cough climbed up from my deep inner core, a doozy. I held my breath, tried to hold it down and tried to be present in the chapel, as my mom held both of Mike’s hands and told him how much she—but I couldn’t control it. I coughed. Spasms folded me over, with croup and gunk and loud hacks. I directed my mouth into my sleeve and managed an, “I’m sorry,” to Sid as I rushed back outside.
That was it.
Sid was going through the Worst Thing Ever, and I was her best friend, and had I done anything right so far? Nope.
I returned after the services began. I sat in the back row and lurched out whenever my coughing fits started. I was concentrating so hard on Not Interrupting that I didn’t hear anything being said. I missed the first half of Mike’s words. Then Sid got up to speak, and I tried to stay, but a doozy of a coughing fit forced me to leave.
I missed everything that mattered, and then I couldn’t bear it anymore—I had failed so epically that I stayed alone outside on the steps, coughing, waiting for Sid’s Mom’s funeral to end so I could go home and go to bed.
Forty
Sid
All of this was new, so I didn’t understand what to expect. I had never been to a funeral before. Or a church. Or a service of any kind. This was what I knew: I was expected to stand and greet everyone, personally. Also, that I needed to say a few words. I also had to wear black, so my aunt took me shopping, and I failed miserably because my heart wasn’t in it. I bought a too-tight skirt and a too-big top. The effect made me look ill-prepared, but maybe, probably, that part was the truth.
I was ill-prepared. But then Teddy appeared at the end of the line. He was tall and handsome. Wearing sunglasses. A suit. He looked prepared. He worked his way down the line, and I tried to focus on the friends and family parading by. Each one said a variation of, “I loved your mother,” and, “She was an amazing woman,” and, “If there’s anything I can do for you,” but what I really wanted was this:
Teddy to sidle up and say, “Hey Sid.”
And for him to stand right beside me, a little back from the line.
And for him to not say anything, to just be. Kind of like with the Xbox—shoulder to shoulder.
It was a weird want, for someone to stand to the side, caddy corner, a little back. What was that position even called? But then I realized it was called: I’ve Got Your Back. That’s what it was. I wanted, truly needed, Teddy to have my back.
His family was right there. His mom talking to my dad. Teddy leaned in about to say something then he started coughing. He stepped behind his mom, gasped, “I’m sorry,” and then he left.
Tears welled up in my eyes as his mom grabbed my hands. “Sorry about Teddy, he has a summer cold.”
I nodded.
She said, “I loved your mom. If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”
Tears streamed down my cheeks.
Forty-One
Texts
Hey Sid, you there?
I’m sorry about that
I’m really sick.
Wanted to be there.
Feel really bad about it.
It’s okay.
I’m going to bed now.
Okay.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Sid u there?
Sid?
?
Sid, it’s been three days.
Is your phone broken?
I guess if it was
you wouldn’t be able
to answer this.
Sid I called your dad
he says your phone is fine.
I’m so sorry.
Sid.
I’m here.
I’m just super tired.
I think I need to go to bed.
It’s 730.
People go to bed at 730 sometimes
Baby people ;o)
I need to talk to you.
I’m calling.
Okay, here’s the thing
I know what’s happening
what happened
it’s awful and terrible and
The only person you need to
worry about is yourself
but when you don’t answer
my texts or the phone
I feel totally panicked
Maybe it’s Zombies
or Ebola
or suicide
that’s where my brain goes
I know you don’t have to talk to me
but I need to talk to you
I’m calling you again
Please
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You really thought zombies were attacking my house?”
“Worse.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No Sid, I’m sorry. Can you tell me it’s okay? I was sick and I . . .”
“Yeah, it’s okay. These things happen and . . . What did you need to talk about?”
“I hadn’t thought past getting you to answer. No wait, that’s not true. I’ve been planning what I would say for weeks now.”
Sid said, “Okay.”
“I just—I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. None of this makes any sense and you deserve better and I want to help. I’m no good at this.”
“Me neither.”
“So I need you to tell me what I can do to help.”
“I don’t know.”
A long pause.
“What if I listed some things and you told me yes or no?”
Another long pa
use.
“Do you need more casseroles? My mom wants to know.”
“No, not really, there’s lots left and . . .”
“That was a trick question; I already told her to lay off the casseroles. How about a Starbucks delivery every morning until you beg me to stop.”
“Nah. Thank you but I had a lot of Starbucks in the last three weeks.”
“I’ll pick you up and we’ll go surfing, tomorrow.”
“Nah, I can’t, not . . .”
“Xbox.”
“Maybe.”
“Okay, I’ll come play Call of Duty, give me a minute.”
“You’re outside?”
“Parked outside. Told you I was panicked about the zombies. I can hear your dad’s music from my car. Guns and Roses still?”
“Yeah, it’s all that’s keeping him here.”
“I’m at your front door.”
Forty-Two
Sid
A week later there was a knock on my bedroom door and Dad walked into my room. He took a look around—probably noticing the clothes all over the floor, the overflowing trashcan, and the lamp knocked over—pulled up a chair, and sat on it backwards. I was facing the screen, box of cookies open on the floor, half-eaten.
“I see you’re having dinner?”
“Yeah, I’m hungry. Did you already eat? Need me to heat up some casserole?”
“God no, do you think those women will ever stop bringing them?”
Sid and Teddy Page 5