by Sarah Price
She felt a resentment building inside of her. If Madeline hadn’t wanted to leave her home, she could now understand why. Moving from such a nice house into one room would, indeed, be a major setback for her independence and privacy. Why would her son force her to do something like that?
“Nice house,” Nicholas commented as he parked on the street in front of another car.
“Surprisingly. I had expected it to be a small Cape Cod or ranch.” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the car door before carefully stepping onto the street. “I wonder what her husband did?”
They walked down the driveway to the front walk. Nicholas held her elbow, guiding her along the narrow walkway to the front steps. The gesture comforted her, mostly because she couldn’t remember the last time that he had thought to do such a thing. Once again, she realized how grateful she was that Nicholas had insisted on accompanying her, even if she had been hesitant about his company earlier in the day.
James opened the door and stepped aside for them to enter. “Welcome, Frances. Nicholas. Glad that you could make it after all.”
Frances couldn’t help but avoid eye contact with him. She slipped out of her heavy coat and handed it to him, thanking him with her eyes still averted. She took a moment to look around. There were even fewer people at the house than there were at the church. But she recognized the two women that she thought were Madeline’s daughters as well as one of the staff members from Pine Acres.
Nicholas went to fetch her a coffee, and Frances slipped into the room where the others were gathered. It was a large, comfortable room with white bookshelves lined with leather-bound books and family photos. A fireplace along the back wall glowed with a small, well-managed fire burning to add both ambiance and some heat to the room.
She walked up to the woman from Pine Acres and promptly introduced herself.
“Why, yes! I remember you from the night she went to the hospital,” the woman said. “The first night, not . . . the last night.”
“So sad,” Frances said. “And so unexpected. I thought she was doing well.”
The woman merely nodded her head, and Frances realized that, even after death, privacy laws were in effect. She would learn nothing about Madeline’s passing from this woman.
Nicholas returned and handed Frances a coffee. He smiled at the woman, but made no attempt to introduce himself.
“Gladys. Marion. Come meet one of Mother’s friends,” James said as he joined the small group of people.
Frances turned and forced herself to smile as she was introduced to Madeline’s daughters. She wondered which one lived in London and where their spouses were.
“It’s good to meet you, Frances,” the one named Marion said. She was tall and willowy; only the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes indicated that she was well into middle age. Her light-brown hair was pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her diamond stud earrings glimmered in the firelight, as did her wide-band diamond-encrusted ring when she reached out to shake Frances’s hand.
“It’s so nice to know that Mother was not alone during her final days.”
The other sister, who resembled Marion with the exception of her short hair, merely smiled. There was something sorrowful about her dark eyes.
“We were in chemotherapy together.”
Gladys caught her breath. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry. I . . . I didn’t know . . .” She suddenly appeared very uncomfortable. Her hands fluttered before her, and she looked as if she might burst into tears, especially when she glanced at Nicholas. “At least you have a good support system, I see,” she said in a meek voice and with a forced, nervous smile.
Marion pressed her lips together, giving her sister what could only be described as a look. Get it together, she appeared to silently suggest. “Some people need a good support system,” she said drily. “Others don’t.”
It took a moment for Frances to realize what Marion had just said. She felt her chest tighten, just a little, as she fought the urge to scream at this well-manicured woman. Everyone needs a support system, she wanted to shout. Hadn’t she just learned that the hard way? That people needed to care for the patient and their family during such a hard and trying time? Perhaps she had denied herself the comfort and care of her family because she hadn’t been strong enough to make them pause to listen to her, but Madeline? Not one of her children had been with their mother during her years of treatment. Unlike Frances’s family, Madeline’s knew and had still denied their mother the consideration of being by her side.
James cleared his throat and glanced from Marion to Frances. “It isn’t as if we didn’t try,” he said. “Mother wanted it this way.”
At his comment, Frances’s mouth opened in surprise. Once again, she thought that she had misheard him. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand you. She wanted what this way?”
Gladys looked away as Marion reached out to take her sister’s arm. Clearly, the one sister was upset and needed to be comforted. They walked to the side, their heads dipped close together as Marion spoke softly to her sister.
James gestured for Frances and Nicholas to step closer to the bookcase, out of earshot.
“Mother was diagnosed with cancer almost ten years ago. My sisters had already moved, and Mother had cut off any contact with them,” he said. “In fact, she cut off contact with most of her friends and stopped attending church. That surprised all of us. She’d been so active in the church; it was her home away from home.”
None of what James said made sense to Frances. Certainly, he was mistaken. “Why would she do such a thing?”
His shoulders lifted in a semi-shrug. “Who knows why my mother did most of the things she did? When we were growing up, she did the same thing to her sister when she was ill. Just shut her off from the rest of us. It was a terrible mess when everyone found out. We were all very close to our aunt Barbara.”
Shut off her sister? Frances narrowed her eyes as she studied James, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. “That doesn’t sound like the Madeline I knew.”
He shrugged again, a gentle reminder to Frances that she really hadn’t known Madeline very well at all. “Sometimes I wonder if she didn’t feel guilty for having abandoned her sister during her time of need. I never could figure out why she did that.” He frowned and scratched at the side of his head. “Over the years, I believe she didn’t want to upset us, so she avoided the topic as well as Aunt Barbara. It was selfish, really, but I suspect that she wanted to protect us from the ugliness of death.”
Frances swallowed and avoided looking at Nicholas. Hadn’t that been her own intention?
“But,” James continued, “it backfired. Gladys and Marion couldn’t believe that anyone could do that to their sibling. At the time, my father was on the rise as an executive at good old Ma Bell, and they were both focused on climbing the social ladder. A dying sister just didn’t fit the image, I suppose.”
“That’s ridiculous! No one thinks like that!” But she knew it was the truth. There were far too many people in their own social circle who were exactly the same. Hadn’t those people, supposed friends, merely disappeared when they learned that Charlotte had filed for divorce? And since news of Frances’s cancer had begun to circulate through the country club circuit, only one person had reached out, and that had been a sparse attempt lacking any authenticity or genuine concern.
Maybe Madeline had cut off people before they could cut her off.
“Mother had an idea of what the perfect family was and what it wasn’t,” James explained. “She didn’t want anything unpleasant in our lives, Frances. She sheltered us so much that we practically lived in a bubble. When I was younger, I thought she walked on water. But when I learned about Aunt Barbara, I realized that she wasn’t a saint. In fact, she was cruel.”
“Cruel is a very strong word.” Her voice must have carried anger, for Nicholas reached out and pressed his hand against the small of her back.
“It is. I agree. But she aba
ndoned her sister during the darkest days of her life. When Aunt Barbara needed someone to hold her hand and comfort her, my mother turned her back on her. It was almost as if she felt cancer was contagious. That it wouldn’t exist if it was ignored.” He gave a soft chuckle. “Cancer taught her a lesson there, I suppose.”
“Is that why neither you nor your sisters talked to her?”
“For a while, yes,” he admitted. “But when she was diagnosed ten years ago, we tried to rally around her, to reconcile our differences. We didn’t want to repeat the cycle.”
“And what happened?”
“She refused. Said that if we loved her, we would leave her alone.” The doorbell rang, and James looked over his shoulder. His wife was answering the door, so he returned his attention to Frances and Nicholas. “We still tried, Frances. But she never relented. And then when Dina and I wanted to move in with her, she refused and insisted on moving to the home.”
Once again, Frances was left speechless. This version of Madeline’s story was creating a new visual of the character of her friend. While she had hoped for some answers, she only had more questions. Nothing made sense.
“Ah, the pastor’s here.” He smiled apologetically. “If you’ll excuse me, I should greet him.”
Frances wanted to know more. Unfortunately, she knew she was going to lose James’s attention, as several other cars appeared to be pulling up to the house.
Quickly, she placed her hand on James’s arm.
“Before you go,” she said in a pleading tone, “I have something I wanted to ask you.”
He smiled at her. “Of course.”
“Her room. At Pine Acres. Has anyone cleared it out yet?”
He shook his head. “Not yet, no. We’ve ten days to go through her things. I’ll be down there sometime this week, or Saturday at the latest.”
She hesitated, trying to think of the right words to formulate her request. When none came to mind, she decided to just say it outright.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, “there is something in her room that I . . . I would like to take. It’s small. Insignificant. But it’ll remind me of her.”
James gave a soft laugh. “Most of her things will go to the Salvation Army, Frances. What does she have there but clothes, bedding, and a few decorations? Feel free. It would please me greatly to know that something of hers is with someone who managed to be a friend at the end. We have, after all, enough memories of her here.”
As he walked away, Frances glanced at Gladys and Marion. The emotions had subsided, for the moment anyway, but Frances knew better than to approach them with any questions. It was too soon to leave yet, even though Nicholas was beginning to jiggle the change in his pockets in that irritating way. Ignoring him, she wandered to the bookcase and looked over the titles. The books varied from leather-bound classics by Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy to leather cases of National Geographic magazines that dated back almost twenty years. It made for an impressive collection.
She looked at the many picture frames, all but one holding aged photos that showed different aspects of Madeline’s life: a young wife, a young mother, a church activist, and, to her surprise, part of a women’s group at the very country club where she and Nicholas belonged. Her eyes skimmed over an empty picture frame, and she wondered about it.
But Nicholas wrapped his arm around her waist, interrupting her thoughts. “Let’s go,” he whispered into her ear. “The children will be home from school soon, and I want you to have time to rest.”
She agreed and set down her coffee mug on a nearby table. There was nothing more she could do to honor Madeline now. Besides, she was feeling fatigued and didn’t know when the antinausea medicine would wear off. The last thing she wanted was to get sick in public. Within minutes of saying good-bye to James and his sisters, Frances was back in the car, Nicholas driving, and headed toward home.
Frances stared out the window at the houses, so unfamiliar to her but probably so familiar to Madeline that they had become a faded part of her everyday life.
This new side of Madeline shocked her. Yet, in some ways, it was parallel to what she had done with her family. While she had wanted to tell them in the beginning, she considered their not being involved in her illness a way of protecting them. In reality, there simply was no way to shield family from the inconvenience of cancer.
She took a deep breath and looked over at Nicholas. “Do you think . . . ?”
“Do I think what?”
“Maybe it’s time we sit down with the children, Nicholas. And talk about the double mastectomy?”
He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead until they came to a traffic light. When the light changed from red to green, the car did not move.
“Nicholas?”
He turned to look at her and slowly nodded. “There’s no time like the present, I guess. But we’ll do it together.”
Leaning over, she placed a soft kiss on his cheek, not caring that the driver behind them was honking the car horn. “Thank you,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 24
Frances walked into Pine Acres, thankful that, for once, Nicholas had gone into the office and given her some breathing space. She needed it. With her mother arriving for an extended stay, Frances knew that time alone would soon be a precious commodity.
She recognized the woman at the desk as the same one from the postfuneral gathering.
“Frances, right?” she said with a bright smile. “Mr. Cooper mentioned that you might be stopping in to gather up some of his mother’s things.”
Frances shivered, even though she wasn’t cold. James hadn’t hesitated when she had asked to take something, a small memento, from Madeline’s room.
The woman walked around the desk and led her to Madeline’s room. The door was open, and the sun shone through the window. Immediately, Frances looked at the bird feeder and saw that it was filled with seed, even though there were no birds eating there at that hour. The bed was made, and everything looked as if Madeline had merely gone to the dining room and would return at any moment.
“You two must’ve been very close.”
Frances turned to look at the woman. She didn’t want to admit that she had known Madeline for less than two months, and that all of their friendship was centered around cancer. So she gave a little shrug and said, “We had chemotherapy treatments together. But she was a great support to me in a way.”
“Well, Mr. Cooper said that you should feel comfortable taking anything you want and he’ll be by this week to collect the rest.” The woman smiled as she backed out of the room and shut the door, giving Frances some privacy.
At first, Frances stood in the center of the room and looked around. After having been to Madeline’s former house, she could understand the resentment that her friend had felt at being muscled out and put into such small, cramped quarters.
But then Frances quickly reminded herself that, according to James, that wasn’t what had happened. Madeline had chosen to leave her home and live her remaining years in the small hospital-like room. Had she really been punishing herself for having abandoned her dying sister?
She took a deep breath and walked over to the dresser. There wasn’t much to pack up, a few knickknacks on top of the dresser and some books on the nightstand. Frances moved to the bed and sat down near the pillow. She let her hand fall onto the bedspread as she studied the books: the Bible, daily devotionals, and an autobiography by C. S. Lewis. She tilted her head, surprised at the selection yet not entirely sure why. Hadn’t Madeline talked about how she had a personal relationship with God but did not care for organized religion?
Curious, Madeline picked up the C. S. Lewis book and flipped through it. Several passages were marked, underlined in pencil or with a yellow highlighter. One of the passages jumped out at her: “Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.”
Frances laid the book down upon her lap and stared a
t the wall. What a gruesome thought that is. What had compelled Madeline to underline it? Yet, at the same time, she knew it had been exactly what she, too, had felt during the past few months. Her thoughts on what family should be were nothing compared to what she had realized they were. What, exactly, had Madeline gone through to come to such a realization?
It disturbed her that she was uncovering a new side of her friend. From everything that had happened at the funeral and then afterward at the house, Frances realized how little she knew about the woman. Of course, she had known her for no more than a few months, but Madeline had seemed so open and honest.
With a sigh, she set the book back onto the nightstand, and with a mixture of both curiosity and hesitation, she opened the drawer and peeked inside. It was organized neatly: lotion, reading glasses, and a small pile of letters tied with a ribbon. Curious, Frances picked up the letters and glanced at the first one. It was dated five years earlier and addressed to Madeline’s Madison address. The return address was from London. Most likely from her daughter.
Two other letters were from the same address. Curiosity got the best of her, and despite knowing that she was intruding, Frances opened the oldest letter, which was dated January of 2008. Her eyes scanned the neat handwriting of the short one-page missive.
Dear Mother,
I hope this letter finds you well. It has been a while since we have heard from you, perhaps since Father’s funeral. Both Ron and I have talked and we would like to visit in the summer. I know that you say you don’t want visitors, but it’s unhealthy for you to isolate yourself from friends and family. James has contacted us and expressed concern that you are not well. I trust that you will see the doctors and follow their instructions.
While I know that we have talked about this in the past, I just want to remind you that God forgives, even when we cannot. He sees everything, including what is in your heart. And he forgives and loves us. Just as we forgive and love you, too.
With love,
Gladys