“What’s up?” Sam asked.
“Big Al is in hospice.”
He put his Blackberry back in his pocket and gave me his full attention.
“Jenny’s going to need to go to St. Paul to see him and my mother will—”
He pulled his phone out and started scrolling through his address list.
“Sam, what are you doing?”
“I have a client who owns a nursing home. He’ll give us the name of someone to stay with your mom at Neil’s.”
Typical Sam. Pull out the phone and find the right people for the job.
I put my hand over his screen. “No, sweetie. I can’t do that.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that my mother is going to stay with us.”
He looked baffled. “But what about Lili? She’s going to need care.”
“I can handle it.”
“Barbara,” he said tentatively.
“I can, Sam. Trust me.” I could do this for Neil. The world doesn’t revolve around your drama with Mom. I didn’t want to be that person My quivering lip betrayed me.
“Honey, I’m not so sure.”
“Maybe it’s a good idea to pop over to Neil’s, give Jenny a hug, and assess the damage.” His phone was vibrating, and I felt guilty leaving him here. “Are you okay with that?”
“Go. Lili’s asleep, and I’ve got my laptop.”
I didn’t want to leave Lili, and I was half hoping that he’d beg me to stay. He would support me doing whatever it took to regain my bearings. “Okay, you hold down the fort then.”
I kissed him and then walked down the corridor before I changed my mind. When I got out of the elevator, I heard someone call my name.
“My God, you walk fast. Didn’t you hear me shouting my lungs out?” Dawn Travinski said breathlessly.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little spacey.”
“Here, let me walk you out. How’s Lili?”
“Hanging in there.” I smiled.
“Such a bummer about that ankle.” Dawn studied me.
“How’s Megan? I miss that girl.” I missed the girls, all so busy with cross-country practices and meets. I missed their backpacks lined up neatly in the hall and their laughter coming from the family room. I missed shopping for their favorite treats. Megan loved to dip Wheat Thins in salsa, Kara liked applesauce of all things, and Brooke was always foraging for something sweet. The list went on.
“She misses you too.” Dawn looked away. “And of course Lili.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m hoping Lili loses interest in that Taylor Miller soon.”
Dawn said nothing for a few seconds and then she touched my arm. Her kindness startled me, and I blurted, “My mom just moved here.”
“Just in time to give you a hand with Lili, eh?”
I laughed aloud at the notion of my mother cooking meals or fussing over Lili’s injury.
Dawn looked puzzled. Her mom, also a nurse, and a spark plug of a woman, stayed with her for two weeks after she had a hysterectomy.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I laughed, because there’s nothing funny about my mother right now.”
Dawn reached behind her head, split the hair in her ponytail in half, and tugged. Megan tightened her ponytail the exact same way. They looked so much alike with their inky black hair and matching crossbites.
“My mom’s sick,” I said.
“Oh, shit. When it rains, it pours. I’m sorry.”
Dawn’s compassion made me want to cry, but I resisted the urge to unload on her. She was probably on a well-deserved break. “I’m going to my brother’s to see her for a second.”
“That will make you feel better.”
“Can you check in on Lili?” I asked.
“Done.”
“And Sam?”
“Double done.”
I thanked her, though I preferred being the one who pitched in by picking up extra carpool duties or feeding Megan. We stood there for a few uncomfortable seconds before I went out to the parking lot.
When I got to Neil’s house, he kissed me on the cheek, and I felt calmer. “You’re here,” he said.
“I’m here,” I answered, absorbing the slight awkwardness between us.
“How’s Lili?”
“Sleeping.”
“Jenny took Mom to Kohl’s to pick up a few things. They’ll be back soon.”
I pictured the two of them filling a basket with cottage cheese and canned pears, if she still ate that every morning for breakfast. “I don’t have much time.”
“It’s Alzheimer’s,” he said loudly, as if I were standing in the next room.
A surge of panic ripped through my body. “How long has she had it?”
“I don’t know. She covered it up pretty well for a while, but she’s deteriorating at warp speed.”
Neil rubbed his hand along the back of his neck, disappeared into the kitchen, and returned with a glossy brochure for Lakeline Assisted Living. He let the brochure drop on the coffee table. I told him that whatever he and Jenny had picked would be fine, but I didn’t mean it. My mother had been my responsibility when she had her breakdown, and I was irrationally put out that he and Jenny were taking charge.
I heard the front door open and Jenny tell my mother that I was here for a visit.
“Oh, Barbara’s here for a visit,” my mother repeated.
I met them in the hallway. Her cheeks were rosy from the crisp air, but she’d stopped coloring her hair, and gray helmeted her skull, the remaining auburn fringing around her earlobes.
She sat down on the couch with her coat on.
I embraced Jenny and spoke into her hair. “Neil told me about Big Al. You okay?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Not really.”
My mother looked at us, bewildered.
“Here, Mom. Let me take that for you,” Jenny said, helping my mother out of her coat. It had never bugged me to hear Jenny call her “Mom” until now.
“No thank you, darling. I’m cold.”
I sat down a few cushions away from my mother, and Neil turned off the Brewers game he’d been watching.
“How’s Lili doing?” Jenny asked.
“She’ll be okay. I’m going to need to get back to her in a sec,” I said.
“Lili’s in the hospital. She had ankle surgery,” Neil explained to my mother.
“Oh, she’s in the hospital,” my mother repeated carefully. She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not one for hospitals.”
“Because of the appendicitis attack?” Neil asked.
I felt like we were kids sitting around the Shabbos table or at one of my mother’s teas, waiting for her to tell one of the recruits her moving story of meeting the Schines in the hospital after her appendicitis attack.
She looked at Neil blankly. “Appendicitis?”
“When the Schines came to see you in the hospital and they took care of you, Mom,” I prodded.
She looked back and forth at Neil and me, like a lost little girl we’d found in a shopping mall. “You must be confusing me with Dad. He had his appendix out.”
My mother had told her appendicitis story to every recruit we’d ever hosted. Neil and I glanced at each other, and I was both scared by my mother’s confusion and grateful that I had a brother to confirm the facts of our childhood.
“Lili should soak those legs. It will make the world of difference,” she said with great authority.
“Thanks, Mom. That’s good advice,” I said.
“It sure is. Isn’t that right, Norman?”
“Right, Mom,” Neil said.
“All this talk of Lili. How are you?” I asked her.
“How am I?” She put her tongue over the top of her upper lip as she’d done when she was threading a needle or removing a splinter from my big toe. Then she looked at me, and her eyes clouded.
I looked away, too frozen to act on my Pavlovian impulse to jump in and either answer or divert the question, to be that girl in t
he Schines’ pantry who’d pointed out her mother’s smeared lipstick.
Jenny came to her rescue instead. “She’s doing just great. We’ve been getting some big shopping done, and we went to feed the ducks today.”
“Oh yes, the ducks.” My mother clapped her hands together.
“Well, Lili will be happy to see you after she gets better,” I offered.
“I hope you don’t mind, but all this fresh air has worn me out.” She got up and started walking in the opposite direction from the guest room.
Again I felt the strong drive to cover for her. Jenny rose and went to her. “Here, Mom. Let me take your coat before you go to bed.”
My mother turned around to face us, her eyes revealing her gratitude that she’d been spared the embarrassment of getting lost in her son’s house. “Sleep tight, chickens.” She bade Neil and me her old goodnight. He looked over at me, and I could see that his eyes were starting to water. No doubt he too was remembering how we’d waited for our mother in our beds, all cozy in our Dr. Denton pajamas. She’d ask us if we’d brushed our teeth, and if she wasn’t too tired, she’d make up a story about an orphan named Birdie.
My mother unbuttoned her coat slowly, revealing the pale pink cardigan I hadn’t seen since she left us. The delicate wool had pilled, and a long thin coffee stain paralleled a row of mother-of-pearl buttons.
I was back in the hospital within an hour. Lili was snoring, and Sam had muted the television and was staring blankly at a closed-captioned news report about Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland for an old charge of sex with a minor.
“What a creep,” I muttered, and sat down next to Sam.
“Yeah,” he said, dazed. He pointed to an enormous bouquet of stargazer lilies. “Sheri.”
“They’re gorgeous,” I said. I loved Sheri.
“She wants you to call her when you come up for air.”
I walked over to the flowers. Their odor was strong and sweet, like Sheri. “Did you tell her where I was?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. “Jenny okay?”
“She’s tough,” I said, avoiding mention of my mother.
“I’m glad you’re back.”
“Did Lili wake up?”
“Nope.” He got up to leave. “You snuck out without getting caught.”
I felt as though he was comparing my outing to my mother’s late-night adventures with the Shabbos goy. But he wasn’t. He knew nothing about the Shabbos goy or the hazy force drawing and repelling me from my mother right now.
9
Big Al died in his sleep. The morning of Lili’s release from the hospital, Neil called to tell me that he and Jenny were taking the next flight to St. Paul. While Sam checked Lili out of the hospital, I picked up my mother. The rebbetzin’s words had been prescient. My mother’s care had in fact fallen on me, albeit temporarily.
Neil’s kitchen smelled like coffee and hair dye. My mother was leaning over the sink in a stained smock while Jenny sprayed her scalp with one hand and rubbed dye out of her hair with the other.
“Hey, you.” I slung my arm around Jenny’s shoulder and pulled her toward me. “I’m so sorry about your dad.”
“Is that Barbara?” my mother called over the running water, her head facing the drain.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready to leave?” I asked Jenny.
“Soon,” she said, massaging my mother’s scalp with shampoo. The steady movements of Jenny’s hands mesmerized me. When she finished, she blotted moisture from my mother’s hair with a towel. “Ta-dah!”
My mother looked like Lucille Ball with a bad haircut. “I’m speechless,” I muttered.
“Go take a peek.” Jenny directed my mom to the hallway mirror and turned to me with a look that said, “I tried.”
I bit my tongue. My mother was going to be upset when she saw her hair. When Revlon modified Dark Auburn 31, she had tried four different rinses before finding the right color. So now, in the midst of taking care of Lili, I would either have to run out to Walgreens, find another dye, and redo her hair, or take her to the salon. My mother returned to the kitchen with a grin. “It’s perfect.”
Now I knew we were in trouble. “I think we’re ready, then,” she said brightly.
“Mom, you might want to give Jenny back her smock,” Neil said as he entered the kitchen with my mother’s suitcase.
She looked down at the blue floral polyester and laughed. “Silly me.”
I gave Jenny a bear hug as Neil led our mother out to my car and settled her in.
“We’ll be back in two days,” he said.
“You take care of your wife.” I kissed his cheek.
I’d get through this. I’d mentally hunker down as I had for the Caribbean cruise we took to celebrate Rose and Artie’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, though I knew beforehand that a vat of Bonine wouldn’t stave off my motion sickness. Maybe I wasn’t ready yet to assume my mother’s care, but I’d worry about that later. For now, I just had to survive two days. One hour at a time.
Sam headed out to the office right after we arrived. I wish he’d given me a few minutes to check in on Theresa, which I’d been wanting to do all day. I knew she could handle the class, but I wanted to call her and hear her talk to me as if I were the guru she thought I was, and I wanted my mother to go back to Neil’s house so I could go back to Theresa and my kids.
Lili looked up from the television when my mother and I walked into the den. “Hi, Grandma,” she said, groggy from pain medication, a blanket I’d crocheted draped over her shoulders. It was unusual to see Lili so still. She was always moving—jiggling her leg, stretching, pacing—even when she was sitting down.
“Oh, look at your foot, all bandaged up. Does it hurt something awful?” my mother clucked.
“Uh-huh.” Lili’s glassy eyes lingered on my mother’s hair.
I sat on the ottoman and fussed with the pillows under her ankle. “Let’s get you elevated.”
“What are you watching?” my mother asked.
“Titanic,” Lili mumbled.
I heard a humming noise, probably the whiny motor from our neighbor’s leaf blower, but it was coming from the direction of my mother’s chair. I looked over at her, and she was indeed humming, bobbing her head, eyes closed, as if she were trying her hardest to recall something.
“Mom, you okay?” I asked.
She opened her mouth, and a song I’d learned at summer camp tumbled out of her. “It was sad when the great ship went down to the bottom of the sea … fishes and turtles, little ladies lost their girdles….”
Lili stared at my mother, her eyes large as dessert plates. We let her finish singing.
My mother was the only person in our family who could carry a tune, and I remembered how she sang to me when I was a little girl. Her illness had stripped her of her inhibitions, made her much looser. Maybe these few days weren’t going to be so rotten after all. Maybe there was an opening for all of us and she’d finally let us in. Maybe I’d let her in, too. “Now, that takes me back to a very long and bumpy bus ride,” I said.
“You hated that camp,” my mother said.
“What camp?” Lili tore her eyes away from Leonardo DiCaprio.
“It was a Jewish camp out in the cornfields, too Jappy for your mama.”
My mother never used words like that. I laughed nervously. “I’m going to show Grandma to your room,” I said to Lili, assuming that Sam had discussed the sleeping arrangements with her. Lili was going to sleep on the pullout couch in Sam’s office to avoid the steps.
Lili shot me a look.
“Lili would rather I not,” my mother said, a perfectly lucid observation she normally would have refrained from voicing.
“Well,” I said, “Lili doesn’t have a vote on this. She can’t handle the steps yet.” Besides I wanted my mother upstairs in case she wandered.
I settled my mother in Lili’s room, and she told me to go tend to my daughter. She was tired and wanted to rea
d her new biography of FDR. I was relieved that she could still enjoy this pleasure. She pulled her book out of her suitcase and opened it up to the first page. I went back downstairs.
“Mommy, it really hurts.” Lili pointed to her ankle. She had an enormous pain threshold, which was what made her such a promising endurance runner.
I sat down next to her, and she rested her head on my shoulder.
“Forty more minutes, and I can give you another Vicodin,” I said.
“Good.”
I could feel her eyelashes brush against my skin.
“Grandma’s kind of funny this way, not so ice princessy.”
“We should probably cut your grandmother a little slack right now. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Lil.”
“I figured,” she said, picking up her head from my shoulder.
“So what do you think?” I tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.
“That’s sad.”
“It’s okay for you to be sad.”
“I said it’s sad that she’s sick, but I’m not sad, because I don’t really know her. Is that okay?”
No, it’s not okay, and I don’t know her either, I wanted to say. “It’s okay, but we can wish it were different.”
Titanic was over. Lili started punching buttons on the remote, and I got up and made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I called up to my mother, and the three of us ate them on trays in front of the television. Lili had found a documentary about the Spanish-American War on the History Channel, a network she’d begun watching after Sam and I designated it the only television we’d allow. Now she trounced both of us in the history category of Trivial Pursuit.
My mother watched intently, and when a commercial came on, she said, “They’ll talk about the Treaty of Paris next, you watch.”
Lili and I looked at each other.
My mother clapped her hands together three times. “It’s how we came to acquire the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, ladies.”
Lili grinned for the first time since she’d been home. “That’s the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War, Mom.”
They started to chat easily about William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan and their opposing views on acquiring the Philippines, and I remembered the last time I’d seen them enjoy each other. My mother had visited a few months before Lili was diagnosed with ADHD along with a slight amorphous learning disability that made reading and writing difficult for her. Sam, Neil, and the boys were watching a Packers game in the den, and Jenny and I were slicing bagels in the kitchen. When the food was ready, I found Lili and my mother huddled together on the sofa with a soft tan leather scrapbook, a gift from my mother, straddling their laps. They were inspecting the empty pages as if they were silently mapping out the placement of Lili’s mementos and photos. A mix of jealousy and longing ripped through me as I remembered what it felt like to languish in the warmth of my mother’s undivided attention. Lili startled her by kissing her cheek, and I turned around quickly, pretending that I didn’t see the surprise on my mother’s face. After the brunch, I found Lili in her room, sifting through a pile of ticket stubs, photos, newspaper clippings, and party favors she’d been collecting, as if she’d been waiting for this very scrapbook to appear.
Washing the Dead Page 12