by Joan Barfoot
What do you say to being called precious? Someone of value. He flushed and looked down.
Now he wishes he’d had the gumption, or the courage, or the cruelty, or the compassion, to order her not to come back. His dad, either. It’s hard enough figuring out how to be here, without being reminded and jerked back by tenderness. He can’t afford to let down his guard, he feels this very strongly. But — precious. That nearly cracked him, honest to God.
The Useful Mother
They knock her out overnight, then when she wakes up they sedate her, they do this and that busy, unseen thing with her body, adjusting here, prodding there, an anaesthetist comes by to tell her about procedures, question her about allergies — they don’t seem to know anything about what’s important: that time is short. They have their priorities, their necessities, and in the end, which this may be, they don’t care about hers. It’s as if none of them has become acquainted with her. They’ve gone back to the efficient bare bones of her body.
So it’s unexpectedly late in the day when Lyle, Madeleine, Jamie, and Alix are allowed to come back. By then, Isla has quite a number of things on her mind.
She is missing acutely, for one thing, her lost ability to make lists, to write down everything she needs to remember. Today this strikes her as a great loss even among much greater ones, as beyond her as throwing herself into Madeleine’s arms, or embracing her children, or wrapping her legs around Lyle.
The kinds of things people choose: as their houses burn they grab photo albums rather than jewellery; in an invasion they hike up their skirts and their children and run. What has come first to Isla’s mind, besides hope and its unshakeable partner dread, is the extent of her abandoned possessions: right down to her underwear, aged panties, the slack-elasticked bras she wears, if at all, for gardening or lawn-mowing — there it all lies in a bedroom bureau drawer, alongside the nice stuff, right where she innocently, carelessly left it, not dreaming that stepping off that porch could finally come to mean someone else’s hands rummaging, sorting one thing from another.
“If things go badly,” she tells Madeleine, “I want you to just tip my whole underwear drawer into a garbage bag, never mind sorting or saving. But everything in my closet is in good shape, I think all those clothes can be bundled up and given to some charity, whichever you like. Do you suppose anybody’d want used shoes? If they do, that’s okay, too. A clean sweep, though. Everything out. It shouldn’t take long, do you mind?”
Of course Madeleine minds. “Please, don’t even think about that kind of thing. You’re going to be fine. Just concentrate on how well tomorrow’s going to go, and getting better, don’t worry about little things.” Little? Madeleine’s never been stupid before. Perhaps she sees this herself. She sighs, which is too bad, but says, “All right. If need be, you can be sure I’ll do whatever you want.”
Love is hard. It makes a person too vulnerable to the well-being of others. That’s how grief happens.
Also joy.
“Thanks. I’ll feel better if I know it’s all taken care of.” She turns her attention to Lyle. “We’ve never talked about funerals. I want any useful organs — do you suppose there are any? — donated, then cremation. And no open casket, nobody staring.” As long as she’s talking, she doesn’t have to wonder whose eyes these might be in a very few hours, what they might see from someone else’s more flexible, entirely different perspective.
If she paused, she’d be scared rigid.
When she laughs, everyone frowns. Never satisfied, these people.
The machinery off to the side, where she can’t see, starts to whuff and clatter at a new quickened pace. Lyle’s long fingers reach out, touch, linger over, her forehead; but just for an instant, seeing his hand coming, she thought he was striking her, and her eyes flinched closed.
Which is crazy. In a million years Lyle wouldn’t hit her, so where did that come from? Could he have seen fear before her eyes snapped shut? Did he glimpse doubt? “No doubt,” she says, or intends to.
Except he has already broken a promise. In her mind’s eye, her own right arm rises, swings back, swings forward straight, hard and fast into Lyle’s jaw, snapping his head back. Which might be why she would dodge his hand: a fear, a knowledge, that he too is furious. Specifically, as well as generally.
If it were possible, she would protect him, even from herself, but that’s no more possible than it was for him to protect her from the unguessable vagaries of an innocent step off the porch, a guileless walk into Goldie’s.
There’s grief here: for skin, that singular good thing, and everything it comes to mean. Head-to-toe touch. Bones and flesh. All that meeting. All that gone.
She has a memory, although it’s not her own memory, of him in another hospital, with another wife in terrible trouble. In this memory Lyle and Sandra, Sandy, are sitting up straight beside each other, holding hands tightly, both their faces taut and drawn as that famous painting of the farmer standing with pitchfork and his solemn, pinched, shoulder-to-shoulder wife.
For all Isla knows, this is an old routine for Lyle.
“I don’t know if you’ve already made burial arrangements for yourself?” He shakes his head; looks struck dumb. “I don’t suppose it really matters where we each land up. You’ll have to do what you think best, I guess.” Tricky etiquette, deciding which wife to be buried with. If his arteries had exploded, where would she have put him?
Not with Sandy. Although his sons would have had something to say. And why would it matter? Dead is dead. “You should discuss it with Jamie and Alix, though. But of course you all know that. And you know my will is in the top left-hand drawer of the rosewood desk in the spare bedroom, right? It shouldn’t be out of date, except maybe to do with the business. It doesn’t take into account that I think Martin wants to sell now. It says he should be offered my share of the agency, and the money should go into trusts for Jamie and Alix. That’s probably okay, more or less, but if he’s into selling rather than buying, I’d like you to go along with whatever he wants.”
“Please, Isla, don’t worry. I’ll do the right thing, trust me, I promise.” Well, he does look trustworthy. “It’s not going to go wrong, you know. You’re going to come out of this right as rain.”
A curiously old-fashioned expression, is it not, right as rain? And rain is not always right, is it? Sometimes it floods, sometimes it drowns. “I expect so. But bear with me, I need to know I’ve thought of everything. I’m sure in a few days, we’ll be laughing.” But she isn’t sure at all, and having said the words out loud, has frightened herself again. Promises and big predictions are bad luck, they invite random shock.
“It’s just that it’s kind of morbid, Mum,” Jamie offers. “Depressing.”
“Not to me. And surely to God it’s my turn to be depressing.”
That was sharper than she intended. It silences them all, until Lyle says, “I know it’s hard, Isla. But you can count on us to do whatever you need, whatever we can. You know any of us would go to the ends of the earth for you.”
That’s nice. “I’m afraid you’d probably have to. Since I can’t seem to do that myself.” Well, she thinks it’s funny. “Hey, work with me, all right? I’m dying down here.”
“Should I get somebody?” Madeleine asks Lyle anxiously.
“No!” Isla cries; then more calmly, and cruelly, “I’m sure everything’s easier if I’m knocked out, but it doesn’t do much for me.” Having said that, though, again she isn’t sure. It almost seems as if something goes on when she’s out of reach of the world, although she can’t put her finger on what it is, or where it takes her.
She is forty-nine years old, and may, or may not, soon be fifty. She once had red hair, which has darkened and greyed and grown coarser. She had excellent legs and strong arms, but all their skin and muscles are shrivelling. She was a fool for lanky and lean, but some fo
olishness is a curse, some a blessing. She has been very good at her work, and likes to make lists, and has been known to race after running children with the object of rescue.
She is smart enough, but seems to have pulled up, puzzled, at the line drawn by wisdom.
She has patience, but not this much.
Now this is what it comes to: these people, this mass of dismay and affection are her only real grip on the planet. The only ones she can think of right now, anyway, and they seem both too much, and also not nearly enough.
“There’s one other thing I want to be clear about. If I get through surgery but there’s some other difficulty, I want you all to understand I do not want to be kept plugged in to anything that just keeps me breathing. We all know these things happen, so in case there’s any doubt or discussion, if it happens to me, just let me go. Do you promise?”
Lyle’s mouth is working strangely, lips tugging at each other, although not with laughter, not his usual way. Perhaps this, too, he has lived through before. “All right,” he says finally. “We understand. Don’t we?” and looks to the others.
Brave words; his and hers both. And if she is unsure she meant her words, and she is, can she be certain of his? She can feel in her throat some clotted protest rising up, a terrible desire to stay on this earth. To merely keep breathing, if that’s all it comes to.
But to be kept merely breathing is as unknown, dark, and solitary as death. And you have to be brave about something, she has to mean what she says. Only, she doubts, too. She hopes she can trust Lyle not to doubt.
Madeleine places a thin, firm hand on Isla’s forehead: driving in reassurance. Testing. Something like that. As when Isla was young and got sick and Madeleine was assessing her temperature and willing her well while she was at it. “There’s nothing to be worried about. I hope you know that.” Even lying, Madeleine’s voice is as firm as her hand.
Is it strange that the details of tomorrow’s full-tilt run at a dark, solid wall are, if nothing else, simpler than considering the — well, complexities is the easiest word — of staying alive? And even so, there’s only so far a person can take that train of thought before it dead-ends. Grief and panic come to their own conclusions at the exact moment life does, which is not precisely comforting, but certainly puts a limit on things.
Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. How is that possible? But it is.
Being mourned and missed would be good. Being a burden, their pet cripple, would not.
Being healed would be fine.
Her options are too broad, too radically disparate.
Alix steps forward, light catching her halo of hair. “Do you have anything in particular you want me to do, Mum?” Well, no, come to think of it, the kids get off scot-free here, task-wise; as if they really were kids. “Because if you don’t, here’s my plan, if it sounds okay.” She sounds firm, practical, and — could it be? — normal. “I’m going to go shopping. So the next time you see me, I’ll have all new clothes. Then I think I should write a letter or two. For luck, in a way.”
If no one else knows what she’s talking about, Isla does. The perfect gift, too, no more goddamn brown dresses. One letter, no doubt, to Master Ambrose. The other, well, the other doesn’t bear thinking about. But maybe yes, for luck, in a way.
“Get something gorgeous, then. And really bright, okay?”
“I will.” Alix’s jaw is strangely set, descending over Isla, brushing lips to forehead. “I’ll see you, for sure.” She stares down for one last, long moment. Then she’s gone.
Well. It’s a hard way to win, but triumph is triumph. Take that, Master Ambrose.
In the strained, puzzled silence left by Alix, Madeleine places a hand on Jamie’s much higher shoulder; is she shrinking? Leaning? Hard to tell, from this angle. She does look more rested today, and also much stronger. “I wonder,” she says to Jamie, “if you and Lyle would mind leaving your mother and me alone, just for a few minutes. Do you feel like a coffee?” When Lyle nods, she looks at him fondly, and when he and Jamie have gone, and she has settled herself in that well-used chair beside Isla, she smiles and says, “Haven’t we been lucky, the two of us, really: my Bert, your Lyle. So fortunate in our second choices.” Second chances.
“But.” Madeleine takes a deep breath. “Here’s what I wanted to say, and it may sound odd to you, but for some reason it’s got stuck in my mind: I’ve been wondering if you’ve missed being brought up in some faith, if you wish you had that sort of comfort right now.” She’s right, this is startling; ominous, even. “If so, I guess I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t do it. The stories, yes, I know we told those, but not the kind of religion people go to church for, or say they feel. So I’m sorry if you’ve ever felt that was missing. And I guess in a way I wish now I knew how to pray.”
Oh dear. “You do? That doesn’t exactly charge up my optimism, you know.” Isla would like to get Madeleine smiling. She’d like to feel there’s some faint reason to laugh. A faint smile is what she gets, a mere flicker. “But no, I can’t see that religion would make much difference to this. Not to me. It hasn’t particularly crossed my mind.” Belief has, trust has, hope has, even some of the stories have, but not what Madeleine’s talking about.
“Good. Well then, my actual point is, I may not know how to pray, but I’m with you, I don’t believe any of it makes a damn bit of difference.” Doesn’t she look angry now!
“Anyway, you know, Mum, if I were going to pray, or even wish very hard, at the moment I’m not sure I’d know exactly what for. Know what I mean?”
Madeleine’s blue eyes may be more opaque than they used to be, but they can also turn sharp. “I think so. Yes. You must have thought I was stupid, telling you not to worry, and you’d know I was a liar if I said I’m not worried, so I won’t waste more time on phony business like that. I am worried, and you must be as well, and that’s all there is to it. But I do want you to know that we may not be able to pray, but I’m aiming every ounce of strength and will I have in your direction. And you know, I believe that counts for something.”
As does Dr. Grant. “So do I.” So she does: Madeleine’s own formidably honed, undiluted and disciplined will — nothing to mess with, a powerful weapon on Isla’s side.
“And afterwards, I’ll be here to help. You’ll have some work to do then, and I’ll do anything at all that I can.” Her little teeth are gritted, her faded eyes glitter. “I’ve wished a hundred times I could trade places with you, but after a while that’s just self-indulgent, and a waste of energy. So since we can’t do that, I’ll do anything else. Whatever gets you back on your feet.”
Ignited, this is a fierce energy, Madeleine’s. She sparks and radiates, her little body looms huge in its silvery, goldeny, deep-bluey will. Those colours cannot be visible; Isla sees them anyway. Bert once called Madeleine a “hot little number,” which Isla found peculiar and possibly disrespectful and which put a small dent in her affection for him. This might be what he meant, though, what he was seeing.
“Thank you. I’ve been so lucky you’re my mother.”
“Hardly. But we all do our best, don’t we?”
Some do, some don’t.
“And this will go by. It won’t be easy, but you’ll do it.” Madeleine is saying reassuring words, but her real and hard, true meaning is in her eyes, which are saying, You shape up, you get through this. “Now I’m going, but I will see you very soon. And you will be fine.” Each word is separate and distinct and determined; no mere “catch you later,” but a promise, and a demand. One more time she places her palm hard and firm on Isla’s forehead, and when she leaves Isla is under the impression that she has been scorched by her mother’s hot touch, and her magnified gaze.
Could she really, truly, be seeing these people for the last time? She can’t take this in. She knows, but the information dazes, it blinds, it is impossible; although possible.
“Mum?” she hears from the doorway; Jamie’s voice, naturally. They have organized these moments of privacy, they must have: a chart regulating potential last words. The luxury of careless, or even carefree, conversation has vanished, and so — what words does Jamie bring? Her children are unnerving, they require gearing up for. Look at Alix and her desire to spend time, perfectly good, precious time, with the insignificant-in-the-world author of this small, barely remarkable, hardly noticeable-to-the-world personal tragedy. Also Alix’s leap into freedom, that announcement as well. Isla’s children, her tilted, aslant offspring, are prone to springing surprises. Like kids on tiptoe trying to slip out of a sleeping household, knowing perfectly well the need for alertness and caution, they trip, stumble, knock over lamps. They are often clumsy; or just inattentive.
Jamie settles into that bedside chair, and like Dr. Grant leans into the railing, hovering close. The resemblance, this near, is a good deal less marked. “You know,” he begins, “how grateful I am you stuck by me, and I’m sorry about causing so much trouble.” He’s said that often enough before, it hardly needs repeating now.
“The whole mess took a big chunk out of my life, though” — hers too, she would say, not to mention Lyle’s, but anyway — “so I’m running behind most people my age. I knew I didn’t want to spend my life at a flower shop, but I guess I was taking a while to figure out how to make a change. But now it feels like I better get moving. I mean, all this,” and he waves his arm overhead in a wide gesture so much like Alix’s he might have caught it, like measles, from her, “it makes you think.” Think what, that life is short, or uncertain? That shit happens? Awful shit, good shit, what?
“So I thought you’d like to know that Lyle says he’ll help me find out what courses I still need, or if I can just write high school equivalency exams, and then I think I’m going to apply to university. I don’t figure,” and he suddenly grins so brilliantly she can almost see her little boy again, the one with no lines, no shadows, no sorrows yet and no crimes, “all that experience should go to waste. It should be worth something. So I think I’d like working with people in trouble. Addicts, maybe. Stuff I’ve talked about but I never got off my ass before. I figure I better. It’s time.”