by Anne Lamott
Several nights after Noah called Al, when the moon was full and low in the sky, glazing the neighborhood with a eucalyptus light, Mattie took a surreptitious look at Daniel. He seemed different, more like his old self—not cheerful yet, but calm. She wanted to crawl into bed with him right then, to cry about Isa while he held her, lie naked in the dark with him and talk about Noah.
After the children had been bathed and put to bed, Mattie knocked on the door of the laundry room. “Come in,” Daniel said tentatively. She stepped inside, closed the door behind her and leaned against it. He was sitting on the futon with his back to the wall. He put down his book and took off his reading glasses. She could hear night birds, the cats galloping down the hall, floorboards creaking, settling in for the night.
“You okay?” Daniel asked. “Want to sit down?” She looked at him and shook her head. “Are you okay?” he asked again.
“I don’t know.” She squinted at him. He looked away shyly. “Let me just say what is true.” She swallowed, and looked off toward the window as if she had heard something down the street. “What is true is that.” She gritted her teeth. He looked afraid. “What is true is that.” She turned and said it to the wall. “I love you, Daniel.” She turned again, to face him. Daniel looked at her with misery sketched on his face, and she saw that all she could hope was that somehow they would still be friends in the morning.
“I know how much you love me, as a friend, and that’s wonderful, and I don’t know why I had to tell you that I have romantic feelings for you,” Mattie said. “I know you’re slogging through a terrible time in your life as it is. And that best friends should never cross certain lines. And now I have.” She looked at him apologetically.
He looked at her beseechingly. “So please, I’m sorry,” she said. He shook his head. Glacial water poured through her stomach.
“You don’t have to move, Daniel. I can deal with this. But I did need to say it out loud. That’s all. No problem.” Mattie waved her arms, sweeping it all away.
Daniel narrowed his eyes, as she had seen him do when he tried to read without glasses and the print of a book was fuzzy, before he held it two feet away and waited for focus. She wanted to step back a few feet, but she was standing against the wall.
“Mattie,” he said, his voice full of sorrow.
She felt woozy, faint.
“Okay,” she said. Her insides were humid and dusty and sick.
He crossed his arms across his chest and hugged himself. “Mattie,” he said, and brought his hands forward, clasped like a child’s in prayer. “Obviously,” he began. “Well, obviously,” he said somberly, “I am madly in love with you too.”
Mattie was not sure that she had quite heard him right. “You are?” She had to look away before he nodded. “Wow,” she said to the window. She sank to her haunches, blinking excessively, her mouth feeling the way it did after too much novocaine. She usually hoped to look more like Myrna Loy than an organ grinder’s monkey when a man finally proclaimed his adoration. Daniel got to his feet. He stood, looking at her. Mattie tried to stand up, but her arms flailed out spastically. Daniel took her into his arms.
She was afraid to take a deep breath for fear she’d suck him right up. He buried his face in her hair and she could feel him breathing through his nose. “I just needed to tell you that,” she whispered.
“Good.” He whispered too.
She stepped out of his arms, and for something to do, she picked a bit of flug off his flannel shirt.
“Do you want to sit down?” he asked quietly. She nodded. “Do you want to sit on the bed, or on the floor?”
“On the floor.”
“Okay.” They sat down, leaning into each other like teenagers. She turned slowly to him, and found him poised to kiss her, an almost sorrowful expression on his face. The sound of footsteps coming down the hall made them pull back, but there was no time to put more space between each other before Harry barreled in.
“Is my mother in there?” he said. “What’s going on?” he asked, drawing back.
“We were talking,” Mattie said. “What’s up? What do you need?” Daniel dusted off his hands as if they had been sitting in the road, and Harry gave him a long, gimlet look. Then he turned to his mother.
“What’s up?” said Mattie.
“I can’t sleep. Could you come and rub my back?”
• • •
She came back to Daniel’s room after Harry dropped off to sleep. She knocked softly, then poked her head in the doorway. Daniel was stretched out on the futon again, reading. “I’m going to go upstairs and go to bed by myself now, okay?” she said. “I’d like to take this really slow.”
He sat up and smiled at her. “How slow?” he asked.
“I just don’t want to botch this.”
“So—will you be the project coordinator on this? Manning the speed dial?”
“Sort of.” She crossed the room. They kissed for a long time. She opened her eyes. “I have to go,” she said.
• • •
It was strangely sweet in the next weeks, like being Mormons, or Victorians. Mattie stayed out of the laundry room most of the time, to avoid temptation. But they kissed a lot and gazed into each other’s eyes. When they were with the children, she sneaked glances at the nape of his neck like an old-fashioned Japanese girl. She looked down into her lap and actually blushed sometimes.
“Wait, why are we avoiding temptation?” Daniel asked one evening.
“We’re just taking it slow,” she said. “Isn’t this sexy?”
“I guess. But could we pick up the pace here at all?”
Pauline seemed to know that something had changed. Daniel did not always return her messages the same day she left them, and their late-night phone calls had been phased out. She phoned during the day to rage at him. She wrote Mattie hate letters. Mattie read the first one, and tore up most of the others. They gave her a sense of superiority, a sense of having won the guy for once: she was used to being the unsuspecting woman in the dark, or the daughter of the woman in the dark, the woman whom the man could not live without, but whom he didn’t pick.
“You’ve got to tell her, Daniel,” Mattie said one day. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
He nodded. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”
He was gone for two hours the next morning. Mattie’s mind raced with images of Pauline doing her witchy magic with him, breaking the trance Mattie had cast. They would end up back in bed, as she and Nicky had done. They would end up back in love. How could he resist Pauline, so sexy, and so vulnerable? Mattie would die if he left her. She had to lose weight, that was the ticket: when all else failed, you could always diet. She would start tomorrow; in the meantime, she headed for the kitchen and opened a bag of Oreos. She poured herself some milk and sat down at the table, dunking one cookie after another into the glass.
Daniel came back shaken and wan. Mattie was stretched out on the couch in the living room, feeling like a boa constrictor digesting a small pig. Daniel sat at one end of the couch and lifted her feet into his lap. “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he said. “I told her that I hated causing her pain. She looked at me disgusted. Then she lit up a cigarette. She’s smoking again. That made me feel terrible. I said I wasn’t in love with her anymore, and I wanted to be divorced. She blew a stream of smoke straight up like she was aiming for a hole in the ceiling.
“She asked me when you and I had started sleeping together. I said we hadn’t yet. She said, ‘Yet? Yet?’ and did I expect her to believe me, and I said no, I didn’t, but it was true.
“Then she said, ‘But you two are in love?’ And I said yes, we were.
“And she doubled over, like I’d kicked her stomach, and she cried.”
• • •
A few weeks on Prozac visibly helped Isa. She was still on the quiet side, but she came across as calm, not delusional. She didn’t even need her walker anymore. On sunny days, she and Lewis would walk alo
ng the path by the salt marsh. They worked together on jigsaw puzzles. They ate meals together; Lewis treated her to dinner in the dining room, or an aide would make them something simple to eat while they watched the evening news together in Isa’s apartment.
One day in April, the director of The Sequoias called Mattie to say that a unit in Personal Care would be opening soon. Isa could have it if she liked. It might be months before another opened, and you got to turn down an offer only twice; then you moved back to the bottom of the waiting list.
Mattie and Al sat on a curb, contemplating this opportunity, in the parking lot of the high school where he taught. Al looked tired, older, his eyes wreathed in crow’s-feet.
“What do we do?” Al said. “She’s definitely better, since the Prozac.”
“We should take the room. While she can still keep it together enough to get in. Once she’s in, it’ll be hard for them to kick her out.”
“I just feel so wasted these days, too wasted to make this decision. You really think we should take it?”
Mattie nodded. “She’s not okay anymore, Al, just sedated. She got shit on the floor.”
Al grimaced. “Yeah, but are you going to put me away the first time I shit on the floor?”
Mattie bobbed her head.
“Can you tell her? I know I can’t.”
• • •
That night when Mattie went to say good night to Daniel, she knelt to kiss him and lingered by his bed. He leaned in close. “You smell like nutmeg,” he said. She moved away, and sat down primly on the beach chair.
“I can’t hold out much longer,” Daniel told her.
“I just want to feel a little less crazy when we first go to bed. I don’t want to be putting my mother in a facility the first time we make love. Oh, Daniel!” she said. “It’s a facility! When you can no longer lock people out of your own home, that means you’re in a facility. I’m about to put my mother in a facility.”
• • •
Mattie woke with a start in the middle of the night. She had felt someone crawling into bed with her. For a moment she was scared to death—and hoped—that it might be Daniel. But it was Harry. He shook her by the shoulder; he had woken from a nightmare and couldn’t go back to sleep.
“You scared me,” she admonished. “My heart is still pounding.”
“I dreamt a bad guy got in and was going to kill us,” Harry whimpered.
“Daniel won’t let anyone hurt us. And God is keeping watch over us.”
“Don’t you get it?” Harry asked. “God would never not let a burglar come in, if the man had picked your house to burgle. God has to let life do its ways.”
• • •
The next day Mattie knocked on Isa’s door, and when no one answered, she let herself into the apartment with her own key. Isa was at the sink, washing dishes with great cheer, all but whistling while she worked like Snow White. She wore light pink lipstick, and her cheeks had a hint of color again. Her hands were in yellow rubber gloves. Hot water poured from the faucet. Mattie leaned against the stove. The house still reeked of urine, from the cat box, from Isa’s bed. Newspapers had piled up everywhere, as had scores of direct mail, from every imaginable liberal political organization in the country.
“Where’s Linda? Where’s Frieda?” Mattie asked, looking around.
“I fired them all today,” Isa said proudly. “I don’t need them anymore. I am much better. I can take care of myself.” She continued washing dishes, a tight smile on her face, now simultaneously Snow White and the Wicked Stepmother. In fact, she only appeared to whistle while she worked; underneath she was all shadows and schemes.
“Mom,” Mattie said gently. “You’re better, true. But a studio has opened up in Personal Care, and you need to take it.”
Isa twirled around like a gymnast. “Don’t you dare tell me what I need to do or not do, don’t you dare!” She held out a steaming cup of soapy water, like a gun, her face red and enraged. “I will never go to Personal Care. You’re not in charge of me. You go to hell.”
“Mom!”
Isa continued to hold out the cup, menacing.
“I know I’m not in charge of you. But the director here is very concerned. They don’t want you to stay in this apartment any longer—your neighbors worry too much.”
“Get out of my house,” Isa shouted, and flung the hot water into Mattie’s face.
Mattie cried out as the water scalded her, and Isa did too, reaching for Mattie even as she pushed her roughly. Mattie splashed cool water on her face and neck. Isa bleated.
“God!” Mattie whipped around to face her, toweling herself off with a dishrag. Her hands trembled as she grabbed Isa by the shoulders and shook her like a dog shaking a kitten. Isa drew her hands in front of her face to ward off blows she must have thought were coming. Then Mattie pushed her roughly against the stove.
“You burned me,” she said. “My face is on fire!” She walked down the hall to the bathroom, splashed more cool water on herself, and dried her face with a towel that smelled, sickeningly, of her mother. She could hear Isa’s sniffles in the other room, but her heart felt cold and hard. Help, she prayed. She sat quietly, waiting. Her face stung. It was going to peel. She was going to look like Otis.
After a minute, she heard her mother’s footsteps in the hall, and then a knock on the door. “Go away,” Mattie said.
“I’m a mean mommy,” Isa cried. She kept knocking, and pleading, and weeping, and eventually Mattie opened the door. Isa was staring heavenward, eyes brimming with tears. She looked at Mattie with contrition. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Mattie allowed Isa to tug her into the living room. Isa sat down on the couch and patted the spot beside her. Mattie sat instead on the floor. For five minutes, Mattie listened coldly to her mother cry. Finally she scooted closer and brought her mother’s bony leg down over her shoulder, and held her feet, as though she might be carried away if Mattie let go.
• • •
When the unit officially opened up at The Sequoias, Adele, the director, called Mattie.
“Oh my God,” Mattie said.
“I know your mother loves her independence,” Adele said sadly.
“She’s going to hit the roof.”
“She needs to move out of her apartment, whether she takes the studio or not. She’s no longer consistently well enough to live alone. The studio is a lovely little space. I can’t decide for you. But if it were my mother, this is what I would do.”
“Can we have some time to make a final decision, my brother and I—and Isa?”
“Yes, of course. I can give you until tomorrow night.”
• • •
When Al gently broke the news to her that she would be moving, Isa sobbed and struck at Mattie. Mattie caught her by the wrist, and made noises of understanding and misery, and Isa pulled away and stalked off, tottering. Mattie and Al exchanged glances, but neither got up to follow. They knew where she was headed—down the hall to Lewis’s apartment.
Half an hour later the phone rang. Mattie answered and Lewis told her they could come get their mother.
She was in Lewis’s easy chair, and she would not speak to her children. She had been crying. Lewis stared off in Isa’s direction with his hands clasped. “This is very hard for her,” he said. Mattie and Al, at the door, nodded. “This is hard for all of us. We’ve been hoping this day would never come, and now it has. But Isa understands that she cannot live alone any longer. And she agrees to at least go look at the studio tomorrow. Right, Isa darling?” Isa nodded miserably. Mattie came and knelt at her mother’s feet, and put her face in her lap. She heard Al’s soft footsteps, and she knew he was standing beside them now. She turned and looked up at him as he placed his hand lightly on Isa’s shoulder. Mattie closed her eyes, and after a minute felt her mother’s bony hands reach for her. Having found Mattie’s ear, Isa began to scratch behind it idly, as if Mattie were a cat in her lap.
• • •
The
next day Mattie was walking with Isa hand in hand down the hall. I am asking for another miracle, she prayed. You did something pretty amazing with us yesterday, and now we need one more favor.
They passed the reception desk, where no one was sitting, and the dining room—all high rafters and beautiful wood, the sun shining through windows and skylights—where a few people were having late-morning tea. They passed the piano room, and then Mattie heard someone call her name—a grackle-voiced woman. She and Isa turned to the sound, and the elevator in her stomach flipflopped. It was Yvonne.
She was dressed in yellow linen, with turquoise wrapped around her neck and forearms. Isa was recoiling, squinting at Yvonne, visibly disturbed at this old woman reaching for them. Things swirled and swam on the murky surface of Isa’s face, and then she gaped, and gasped with recognition.
“Tillie!” she cried.
Mattie turned to look at Yvonne.
“Tillie, Tillie,” Isa repeated, drifting into Yvonne’s arms. “I never thought I’d see you again!” Yvonne held her warmly, looking bemused, waiting for the joke to be explained. Isa stepped back to look at her, throwing her hands into the air. “I’ve never forgotten you, Tillie. Oh my gosh, where are my manners? This is my daughter, Mattie,” she said. “Mattie, this is my old friend Tillie. From—jeez, I can’t remember, we go so far back. Help me out here, Tillie. When did we first meet?”
Yvonne tried to remember when she’d ever been Tillie. She shook her head. She couldn’t seem to remember either. “Let me show you around,” she said.
• • •
Every day Mattie and Isa walked to Personal Care to visit Yvonne. Isa’s studio would not be ready till the weekend. Isa cried about her cat, but Lewis would take care of it, and she could visit every day.
It stormed on moving day, wild and fierce, the wind lashing the trees outside. Daniel and Al and a couple of their friends carried Isa’s furniture down the long hall, out of Independent Living, and on to the back, to Personal Care. They loaded her boxes onto dollies and wheeled them away. Isa wrapped the last of her fragile mementos in tissue paper and boxed them. When she was done, Mattie and Al walked her to Lewis’s, the cat in her arms. Mattie had already brought him cat litter, and the half-dozen bags of kibble that had turned up in various nooks of Isa’s apartment. Lewis threw open the door for them, and they flocked inside, all four of them crying. The cat smelled Lewis’s little dog and dove under the sofa and would not come out. So Mattie never had to take the cat out of her mother’s arms.