by Webb, Peggy
*
We get to Jean’s and she’s locked out of her house, her key inside her other purse and her spare hidden in a good place it takes us twenty-five minutes to find. Oh, I’m on a roll here.
So why am I not surprised to find Jefferson shedding hair in his kennel and Mama’s toilet stopped up? I shout and beg and plead at the water overflowing the toilet bowl when I flush, but it keeps on coming, soaking my shoes and Mama’s favorite white cotton bath mat. I might as well pack my bags and head to Tijuana, get an oversized Mexican sombrero and live out the rest of my life herding donkeys and drinking Tequila.
I race to the kitchen, grab a mop and tackle the mess while Jefferson tries to hide under Mama’s bed. It’s two inches from the floor and he won’t fit. Thank goodness. At the rate I’m going, he’d stay there the rest of his natural life, and I’d have to spend my remaining days on my belly, hand-feeding him Fit ‘N Trim.
“Look at it this way, Jefferson. At least I know how to use a commode plunger.”
An hour later he’s staring at me with his ears flattened and his fur falling while I try to think of new and creative ways to address the malfunctioning toilet. I’ve gone through my vocabulary of expletives. Twice. Now I’ve not only lost my future on this earth but one in the afterlife, as well.
Mama would disown me. Or applaud me. With her it’s impossible to tell.
Remembering her quick transition from frail, machine-dependent woman to feisty queen demanding a red-feathered gown, I attack the toilet with renewed vigor.
“I’m not giving up,” I tell Jefferson.
But thirty minutes and two broken fingernails later, I do. In the way of loyal pets who understand body language and battered emotions, he sidles up to me and rubs his big head against my leg.
His canine compassion is my undoing. I slump to the floor, wrap my arms around him and fall apart.
What I need to be is somebody else, somebody with a healthy mama, a job and a twenty-year marriage. I want to climb in bed and stay forever, creeping out only to answer the call of nature and the telephone.
Instead I get up and start dusting Mama’s collectibles – not just the tops and bottoms but each tiny ceramic leg of her dogs and every miniature feather of her carved angels. They’ve left imprints in the dust on her whatnot shelves, and I carefully wipe that off before I set them back in the exact spot.
There’s something soothing about this tedious task, something that says, Here’s an ordinary woman, a woman who knows how to endure.
Oh, lord, I never wanted mere endurance. I wanted triumph. Joy. Amazement.
But for now I’ll take what I can get.
Next I’ll change the sheets on Mama’s bed and clean the kitchen and vacuum the rugs and iron the curtains. Well, I’ll wash them first.
But what if the washing machine’s drain is connected to the toilet? Will I flood the utility room, wash the whole house into the street?
Suddenly I lose my taste for frenzied activity. I’m still hanging onto a rose quartz angel when Jefferson trots to the front door whining – and there stand Hattie and Horton Grimes with two pecan pies and every kind of salad known to man.
“We heard Victoria was a-coming home tomorrow and though you might be needing this,” Miss Hattie says.
“If there’s anything we can do, let us know,” her husband adds.
When I tell him about the toilet, he says, “I’ve got just the thing to fix it.”
Sometimes, suddenly, there’s mercy. And my gratitude is immeasurable.
______________
Chapter Six
______________
“There’s some more May sunshine on the way, folks, so roll up your sleeves and get out in the garden. Plant a rose. Plant a tree. Leave your little patch of earth better than when you found it.”
Rainman
“Do you think Mama will like this?” Jean’s holding a beautiful phaleanopsis orchid full of blossoms that look like white butterflies.
“She’ll love it.”
Mama loves everything about Mother’s Day, partially because Jean and I always give her flowers, but mostly because she’s the center of attention. Of course, she has to be since she’s the only one in this family with offspring. Not that Jean and I ever let that stop us from celebrating. Usually the two of us doll up the Saturday before and go to a late night spot where there’s music and dancing and plenty of cheap wine. We spend the evening toasting each other and talking about how wonderful our children would have been if we’d had any.
This year, though, it’s all we can do to muster energy to drag ourselves to my Jeep and make at least three trips a day to the hospital. Any less, and Mama would pretend she didn’t even know our names.
We find her telling Dr. Holman he ought to be ashamed of himself, keeping a fifty-five-year-old woman in the hospital so long.
“Why, Victoria, I thought you were seventy-five.”
“Not when you’re around,” she says. Then she winks and adds, “I could give you a run for your money.”
Mama’s a big flirt, and today, dressed in her red gown, she looks every inch the woman who got rave reviews on Broadway and would have been a star if she hadn’t followed her heart to Mississippi and settled for being the sun for her husband and the moon and stars for her daughters.
While Mama and Jean admire her orchid, Dr. Holman motions me into the hall. I think he’s going to give me simple instructions for Mama’s care after we check her out of the hospital.
Instead this man with gentle hands and healing touch, this Brain with his reassuring ways and a pocketful of miracles tells me there will be no miracles for Victoria Lucas.
“Maggie, there’s no easy way to say this. The trauma of surgery further weakened her already-failing heart.”
“You’re telling me Mama’s dying?” Please, I’m thinking. Please, no.
“She’s in no immediate danger of that, but the nature of this illness is a slow but steady decline.”
“How slow?”
“At best, I’d say she has seven years. But I can’t guarantee that. She’s likely to experience more severe problems such as this perforated ulcer.”
He takes my hand. Not a good sign. Every time Michael Holman does that it’s a signal he’s getting ready to deliver news I don’t want to hear.
“Maggie, Victoria’s going to need round-the-clock care.”
Impossible, I want to shout. Not my mama. She’s indomitable, immune to the small tragedies that befall ordinary people.
“You have to make certain she gets plenty of rest, eats properly, takes her medicine and doesn’t take any chances that will result in unexpected falls.”
Oh, lord. Who will do this? Certainly not my sister who falls apart at the drop of a hat.
I don’t want to know the answer, don’t even want to think about it. I’ve only recently made my big bid for freedom and independence. How can I start moving backward?
Now Dr. Holman is saying to me, “There are many good facilities in this are that provide assisted living. If you need my help getting Victoria into one, let me know.”
Mama would die before she’d move into a nursing home. She’s made her views on them perfectly clear.
Suddenly I remember a favorite saying of hers: When the jackass is in the ditch, don’t stand there wondering why. Just get it out!
“Thank you, Dr. Holman. I’ll let you know.” I walk into Mama’s room trying to look like a normal daughter instead of somebody trying to figure out how to get the jackass out of the ditch.
*
I tell Jean what the doctor said while we check Mama out. It takes two hours to get through the red tape, but finally we arrive home, and the smile on Mama’s face is all the proof I need that I was right to say no to Dr. Holman’s offer.
The Victoria Lucas standing in the middle of her bedroom with her hands on her hips and her lips pursed is the Mama I imagined bringing home.
Doctors can be wrong.
“What happen
ed to my dog?”
Jefferson thumps his tail at the sound of her familiar, commanding voice, and another glob of hair plops onto the floor.
“He missed you,” is what I tell Mama. “We all missed you.”
“Flitter, you were just glad to get rid of me.” She finishes her inspection of Jefferson, then goes to check out her collection of angels. She gives a pink quartz one a half-quarter turn, and then eyes Jean and me with her take-no-prisoners look. “But I’m back, and don’t you forget it.”
I want to put my arms around her frail shoulders and beg her not to leave us again. I want to say, Mama, I’ve lost everything, I can’t lose you.
But she despises syrupy scenes, and so I say, “Hallelujah.”
“Amen,” Jean says.
“Quit that kidding around. I’m hungry.” She sits in her recliner and pulls a red lap robe over her legs. “Jean, fix me a plate. Hattie said she brought some of that good chicken salad. But her potato salad gives me indigestion so you might as well not put it on my plate.”
“Mama, chicken salad’s not enough,” Jean says. “You need to build up your strength.”
“If you want somebody to eat it, you eat it yourself.” She turns her back, dismissing Jean, who hurries off to do her bidding. “Maggie, sit down over here. I’m worried about you.”
“Why, Mama?”
“Jean has a good man to love and take care of her, but you don’t. I want you to have somebody really wonderful, like your daddy. Or Laura Kate’s nephew.”
Charlie, the geriatric who peed on the toilet seat and drooled his soup. If Mama hadn’t arranged the blind date, I never would have gone out with him. Lord, that was six months ago. Which just goes to show the pitiful state of my social life.
“I’m doing fine.” Small white lie. “And I’m definitely not interested in Charlie Lindsey.” The gospel truth.
“Maybe I’ll go out with himself. I’m looking for a younger man.”
“The one thing I know about you, Mama, is that if you wanted a man, you’d have one by now.”
Shutting her eyes and leaning her head against the back of her recliner, she says, “I’m tired. I don’t want to talk. Go on and let me rest.” Then she sneaks a peek with one eye to see if she’s fooling me.
I pretend she is. For all I know Mama has men stashed all over Mooreville. I wonder if Jean knows. After all, she knew about Mama’s preferred funeral garb. What else does she know that she’s not telling me?
I tiptoe to the kitchen, just in case Mama’s not playing ‘possum. Jean is standing at the sink wearing Mama’s faded, flower-sprigged apron, her shoes kicked off and one bare foot resting on top of the other as she arranges chicken salad on freshly washed lettuce leaves.
“How is she?” my sister asks.
“I honestly don’t know.”
When she tears up, I say, “Don’t you dare let her see you cry. We have to try, here, Jean. We all have to try.”
“I know. I’m just thinking about what the doctor said.”
The Victoria Lucas I brought home is not the woman I expected. Mama is shedding her invincibility bit by bit – swollen legs here, bird appetite there, flying-off weight everywhere. She’s leaving us slowly, not going softly into the night but blazing through our universe with the brilliance of a comet burning itself out.
Her walker, standing in the hallway, is mute evidence.
______________
Chapter Seven
______________
“It’s another sunny day in May, but hang onto your hats, folks; it looks like some rough weather ahead. There’s a storm front pounding the Gulf Coast and it’s headed this way. Batten the hatches. We’re in for a gully washer.”
Rainman
Storm clouds gathering on the southern horizon mirror exactly how I feel, my insides boiling with tumult and indecision. No wonder Mama’s worried about me. I’m a woman coming undone with nothing left to hold me together except dogged determination.
Daddy used to go for a walk every time he had something heavy on his mind, and today that’s what I’m doing, walking with Jefferson while Mama naps. Squatting beside a stream, I pit up a handful of soil and let it sift between my fingers. This will endure – fertile earth and winding waters, spreading oaks and soft green grasses that cushion my footfall.
Like Carter Lucas, I’ve always taken comfort and courage from the farm. He used to tell me, “No matter what happens to us, Maggie, this land will go on.”
Now I plop down on the root of an ancient black walnut tree, close my eyes and listen to the earth breathe, simply listen. It’s a peaceful, steady sound, one that makes you want to fall into it and float.
Jefferson puts his head in my lap and whines.
“I know, boy. Coming home again might not be such a bad thing.” Forget that I would be giving up my own place, relinquishing the little cocoon where I was going to hole up, caterpillar-like, until I could emerge with wings.
Considering my current state of affairs, the cocoon is not working. Maybe a change is in order.
Still, I want to talk with my sister. Maybe she can come up with another solution.
I dust off my slacks and walk across the pasture to Jean’s. Not that I want to do anything behind Mama’s back. What I don’t want is Victoria Lucas saying, “Just go on home. I can take care of myself.”
My sister’s house sprawls all over the hilltop. She and Walter love to entertain, and built a mansion that rivals Tara in Gone with the Wind. Jean is in her kitchen cooking enough to feed a third world country. Simmering pots fill every eye on her stovetop, and her oven groans with casseroles.
“I thought I’d make a few things Mama likes to eat. You can come back this afternoon and pick it up.”
“Well…good,” I tell her.
She’s just wrecked my diet. I can’t stand to waste food. I picture myself in Mama’s kitchen at midnight scarfing down leftover roast beef and garlic mashed potatoes and baked ham and German chocolate cake. Emptying the dishes so I can take them back to Jean.
“Here…” Jean slices off two big slabs of cake, and pours two cups of coffee. “Let’s eat while we talk.”
We dig in, and Jean delivers the first good news I’ve heard since April. “Walter’s coming home this evening.”
To help do some of the driving, I hope. This respite means I’ll have at least a few hours to go back to my apartment and turn on my computer. Writing is a different story. I’m still torn between the urge to put words on a page and the fear that my muse won’t be there to turn them into magic.
“That’s great,” I tell Jean. “How long before his next trip?” Six months is what I’m hoping for, long enough for me grab hold of my endangered career and pull it to safety before it plunges to the bottom of the ravine.
“Three days,” she says, and I hear a kerplunk as my unattended career hits the bottom. “That’s why I’m doing all this cooking today. When Walter gets home, I don’t plan to spend a single minute in the kitchen. I plan to…”
“I get the picture, Jean. Spare me the prurient details.”
“You don’t mind taking care of Mama while Walter’s here? I mean, after all, I’ve hardly seen him, and he’s fixing to turn right around and head off to the Philippines.”
“I understand.”
“Well, you don’t act like it.”
“What do you want me to do, Jean? Jump up and down singing ‘Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’?”
“You’re still mad at me about the caskets.”
“I am not mad at you the caskets. Or the sex, either.”
“I didn’t mention sex. Did I mention sex?”
“For Pete’s sake, Jean…” I’m so frustrated I cut myself another big slice of cake. It will be all my sister’s fault if I get big as a house. “Let’s just stick to the subject. What are we going to do about Mama?”
“Walter and I could hire a sitter, but she’d have a hissy fit.”
Mama’s made her views on the subject of si
tters perfectly clear. Last year when the Maycomb brothers hired Miss Nell Plunkett to take care of their mother after she fell and broke her leg in two places, Mama said, “Poor old Annie’s sitting down there depending on strangers to take her to the bathroom. When I get to the point that I can’t take care of myself, just take me out to the back pasture and shoot me.”
“I know she would, Jean. There’s only one thing to do.” I eat a large bite of cake before continuing. “I’m moving in with Mama.”
“Maggie, are you sure? I know how much that little apartment means to you.” This is a weak protest. Jean’s mind is obviously on taking care of her house, her husband and her red-hot libido.
“Is anybody ever sure of anything?”
Considering that I no longer have the means to pay my rent – and we won’t even talk about taking care of my libido - I could view my move as a blessing in disguise. But that takes more philosophical acceptance than I can muster right now. What I’m going to do is drive to my apartment and kick furniture.
But first I have to put a spin on this proposal for Queen Victoria.
On the way to Mama’s I decide to present the idea as if she’ll be doing me a huge favor. I’ll ask if I can live with her a while. If necessary, I’ll beg.
Mama doesn’t give me a chance to do any of those things. She’s in the kitchen teetering on top of a straight-backed chair, defying death and the laws of gravity.
“Good lord, Mama. What are you doing? Get down from there”
A can of creamed corn tumbles from the cabinet and rolls across the floor. Mama looks over her shoulder and scowls at me. Her intimidating look. I know it well. What she doesn’t know is that it stopped working with me when I was fifteen. Well, maybe thirty-five, but that’s to embarrassing to admit.