Last Rights

by Lynne Hugo

  We had to wait for Jill’s bus at my grandmother’s house before we could even leave for the hospital, so we couldn’t even go to the first hospital where they took her, which is pretty close. By then, though, they took her in a helicopter to another hospital in Indianapolis where they have more equipment, and that’s where me and my grandma and my cousin went. Aunt Rebecca was having chemo, that’s why Grandma had to wait to get Jill, too, but I couldn’t believe I had to wait for my cousin while my Mom was in Indianapolis maybe dying. I was so scared she might be dying and it turned out she was. They were still working on Mom when we got there, we went running in through the emergency room. Mom had left work feeling bad. On the way home she stopped and called Sharon at the office. Either Mom or Sharon, we’re not sure yet who, called 911 then, and Sharon took off to where Mom’s car was. It’s a red Dodge Spirit, I don’t know what will happen to it now. When Sharon got there, an ambulance and the police were already there and Mom was unconscious.

  At the hospital, they worked on her until after eight, shocking her and doing whatever with their machines. Later, they only let us see her once, when they were moving her to another room because they decided to put her on the life-support machines to see if maybe she’d start breathing on her own. Then they let us be with her until they turned the machines off. She was all swollen and bruised on her chest and down her arms. She didn’t look like herself at all. It was like something on TV that makes you say, “Oh, those poor people.” I think they must have hurt her, but the doctor said no, she wasn’t conscious when they were banging on her. But then they said she could still hear me maybe, and I might want to tell her goodbye. So if she could hear, how could it make sense she didn’t feel them hurt her? I told her I loved her and I lay beside her with my head on her chest and my arms around her. They made me get down from the bed, but let Mom hold my hand. When they turned the machines off, I could feel her hand get stiff but then it moved so I didn’t believe them that she was dead. A nurse told me it was just Mom’s muscle, that it happens.

  In the hospital the first time I saw her, I was there with my head on her crying and crying and saying, “Not my mommy, not my mommy.” I didn’t care what anybody thought. I’m a little embarrassed now, but I’ll never see those people again. I hope I don’t. I think they hurt my Mom.

  She didn’t look like herself in the coffin, either. I had to put her in a long-sleeved dress, her blue one with the lace collar, not the green silk blouse and skirt she really liked, because her arms were bruised from the IVs. She would have been mad at me for letting them do her hair flat like that; she hated for her hair to be flat, but they didn’t put too much makeup on her, which was good. She used to be so pretty. If I frost my hair, I think I might look more like her. I brought her own lipstick to the man because they put an ugly color on her, and I made him change it to her own, but she still wasn’t my Mom anymore. Mr. Smith at the funeral home asked if we wanted a picture of her in her coffin, he said it was an included service. Grandma said no, but later I went over by myself and told him I did. In case I don’t believe it’s really happened. I’ll get it soon, I guess. Grandma wouldn’t like my saying yes, but it’s an included service so it won’t cost extra. I put some pictures in with her, too, so she won’t forget who I am.

  I have her ring on, the opal she always wore that was on her in the coffin. Mr. Smith asked if I wanted it and the little pearl earrings she had on. I said yes to the ring, but no to the earrings because she used to say she felt naked without earrings. And I have the Bible she was holding in the coffin. I have the clothes she was wearing when they took her to the hospital. Her navy blazer is okay, but they cut everything else off her. It’s strange because they didn’t give me the legs of her panty hose, just the panty part; you can see how they cut the legs off because they were going to try to put a tube up her leg to get to her heart and put a balloon there to open it up. It didn’t work. I think she’d still be alive now if they didn’t turn off the machines, and that would be better. Even if she couldn’t answer me, I just want her to be alive. I could still talk to her. Before they turned them off, some priest came in and asked me would my mother want last rights. Grandma told him no, like she was mad.

  The TV screen had a straight green line across it that just went on and on and then they turned that off, too.

  SHE HAD DIARIES THAT started back in high school when she was going with her ex-husband who ran away because of the war in Vietnam. I can’t really call him my father. I said the word goddamn to my grandmother about him, but she didn’t slap me. My Grandpa called him that. And some poems. She wrote one about how birds are like spirits that was published in a book with other people’s poems. It was pretty, the way every verse had “take me in your beak, put me on your back, raise me on your wing.” We put it on the memory card and had it read at the funeral, too. That bothered Jill a lot, I don’t know why. She might have cried more than I did, which I thought would hurt Mom, but Grandma said I’m shell-shocked. I hardly cried at all. Jill snuck outside with Emily and smoked a cigarette while the people who weren’t driving to the cemetery came up and talked to me and Rebecca and Grandma. I smelled it when they came back even though Jill had gum. She better be more careful. There’ll be another death in the family real quick if Aunt Rebecca finds out, but Jill says who cares? Because not smoking doesn’t keep you from getting cancer. She proves it by her mother never smoked. I can see her point. Nothing you do keeps bad from happening.

  I looked at Mom’s diaries a little bit, but I couldn’t read them because it made me feel like I had to talk to her. I didn’t tell her I loved her or hug her. Now I feel so bad and when Tim says bad things about his mother, I tell him to stop and to talk nice to her. It made me mad when other people started looking at her diaries, people who don’t have any rights. I made them stop. They’re closed in a box now in Mom’s old closet at Grandma’s, and Grandma said they’re mine.

  three

  CORA’S HOME WAS the two-story frame farmhouse in which she’d been raised, once white, but painted light gray now, with black shutters. The front door, tucked behind the wraparound porch, was still a red echo of the old barn; that much had never changed. She and Marvin had moved back from Darrville when Christine was a baby, even before Cora’s mother needed any help to keep the house. The land and outbuildings from the original farm had long been sold off. The house was short on bathroom space as old houses are, but had plenty of room for Lexie—who’d spent the night there close to once a week since she was a baby anyway, and more often in the summer. It made sense that she’d be awkward as company during the comings and goings around the funeral, but a few days later it seemed she ought to be settling in. Instead, Lexie was stiff and distant, crying when she thought Cora couldn’t hear her over the noise of the running tub water. She took a lot of baths.

  “It’s like she doesn’t remember Christine was my daughter…I mean, she keeps to herself so much it’s like she thinks I don’t understand, or I don’t have my own crying to do. When I try to hug her, well…and she was always so affectionate with me,” Cora said to Jolene over coffee at Cora’s kitchen table a week after Christine was buried. Her cup sloshed over, clattering in the saucer as she set it down.

  Jolene reached over and patted Cora’s left hand, where her wedding ring was a pinstripe of worn gold. Last night’s dinner dishes jutted at odd angles from the sink and the chipped yellow counter had remnants of food on it, neither in the least like Cora. The old linoleum floor could use a good sweeping, too, although it had been in place so long that some of the darkened areas were like that from age, not dirt. Like liver spots, Jo thought, just like my liver spots. “Well, be patient,” she said. “Has Jill been around?”

  “Some. But she doesn’t stay long, so I wonder is Lexie shutting herself off from her, too? Maybe it’s because Rebecca is feeling poorly though, and wants to leave. I don’t really see, because Lexie and Jill disappear into…oh, that’s the other thing. She won’t use Christine’s old ro
om anymore. She wants it left as it is, you know, and she wants to use Rebecca’s old room or my sewing room as her bedroom, set it up like the one she had at their house. What do you make of that?” Cora’s cloud of hair drooped over one side of her forehead, tired-looking, a step in front of unkempt.

  “Maybe she’s trying to make it like it was, you know, like she is really still just a guest.”

  “Could be, but you know she never was a guest here.”

  “It’s all changed now, though. She’s got to be feeling that. When’s she going back to school?”

  “Maybe tomorrow. Not so many kids calling here as the first two or three days.”

  “They don’t know what to say after I’m sorry, no more than anyone does.”

  “I guess.” Cora heaved herself out of the dinette chair and said, “You keep me company and maybe I’ll get these dishes done. Seems like I don’t have the heart to do much of anything.”

  “I’ll do better than that. You wash those, I’ll sweep the floor, then we’ll dry ’em and put ’em up.”

  “You’ve got your own work to do.”

  “Come on, now. This here is Jo. I’m going to throw in a load of laundry just to get it started,” she said, opening the door to the basement and picking up the basket of dirty clothes and towels that sat on the floor next to it. “I’ll be right back.” Jolene clicked on the basement light and went downstairs without waiting for an answer. She knew when to overlook an objection.

  Cora stood at the kitchen sink and stared out the window into her backyard. The bird feeder near the lilac bushes was empty and so was the suet holder. Wouldn’t Christine have a fit about that? It was because of her there were four bird feeders and two birdhouses on the property. When she and Lexie lived in an apartment, Chris kept giving them to Cora and Marvin for Christmas, or Mother’s Day or Father’s Day and then fuss at them if they didn’t keep each one crammed with a different kind of seed. “They’re to attract different birds,” she’d explained when she brought the platform feeder. “Doves like this kind.” (Would that be morning doves or mourning doves, Cora wondered as she looked at the empty wooden structure, and resolved to look it up even though she knew she wouldn’t bother.)

  To bring hummingbirds in summer, Christine had hung baskets of hot-pink petunias from a sunny spot on the front porch right next to a hanging feeder for red sugar water. Cora favored dahlias herself, and every summer had their bright round faces all along the front walk that linked the long gravel driveway and the front porch. Once Chris had her house, new bird feeders went to her own yard. “There’s something to be grateful for,” Cora had said to Marvin. “I can hardly walk outside without a bird pooping on my head.”

  Had Christine had a premonition? Cora’s mind turned to wrestling that particular demon. Why were her files so orderly, everything so clearly labeled? Her will, her life insurance, her financial records. She’d been to a funeral in October, a distant cousin whose husband was murdered by her enraged former spouse, or some such trashy story fit for a talk show which Cora had decided to skip knowing about. Danny would have been about the same age as Chris. Maybe his dying had put the idea in her head.

  Lexie appeared in the kitchen door. Smudges dark enough to look dirty were beneath her eyes, and her shoulder-length hair was scraggly, even greasy. As though she suddenly noticed that herself, Lexie used the fingers of one hand like a rake to pile it toward one side of her head. The girl did look some like her father, thanks to that near-black hair, but by some genetic gift she had her mother’s light eyes, more blue than Cora’s which had too much gray. Snow White, Christine used to call her daughter, but she was named Alexis—after her father, Alexander. Lexie’s lips had a deep upper bow like Christine’s, too, the top fuller than the lower, ever so slightly out of proportion. (Christine had learned how make the bottom one look bigger by some lip-pencil trick she’d learned at a make-over. Who would teach that to Lexie now?) A shallow widow’s peak echoed her upper lip.

  “Hi, Grandma,” Lexie said. “I’m getting myself a piece of toast. Is that okay?”

  “Honey, you don’t have to ask. You never asked before. This is your home, always has been. How about an egg, maybe a little bacon with that toast? You know, we still have all this food. The refrigerator is stuffed. I need to be making some room. Can you help me out?”

  “No, thank you,” Lexie said in her polite voice. Her steps were almost noiseless. She wore white socks, gray sweatpants and a shapeless gray sweatshirt.

  Cora watched, propping herself against the sink while Lexie toasted a piece of bread. She couldn’t think of a thing to say that sounded halfway normal. From the basement, the washing machine hiccuped and began filling. Jolene’s heavy steps began a slow ascent, though not slow in comparison to what Cora’s speed would have been.

  “Jolene, honey. Just Jolene,” Cora said, responding to the anxious question on Lexie’s face. “You weren’t scared were you?”

  “No,” Lexie said, but Cora didn’t find her credible. “Do you mind if I take this upstairs?” Lexie said, skimming the toast with Cora’s applebutter. “I’ll be sure to bring the plate down.”

  “Of course not,” Cora said, though she’d always had a rule that food wasn’t to leave the kitchen, and Lexie knew that as well as she did. “Here, let me give you some juice with that,” she added, and rinsed out a little juice glass languishing in the sink. This one’s from yesterday morning, she thought, a guilty string twanging in her head.

  “Thank you,” Lexie said. Everything but the curtsy, Cora thought.

  “You leaving?” Jolene said to Lexie from the top step. “Come sit and talk a minute.”

  “I’m…looking over my school work. Please excuse me.”

  “Well, sure, honey,” Cora said hastily. After Lexie was through the living room to the stairs, she turned to Jolene and whispered, “See what I mean?”

  “I do see,” Jolene said. “I do see.”

  CORA’S MIND MUST HAVE been running alongside a track parallel to Lexie’s. Before Jolene left, Cora had said, “Look at this splinter I’ve got in my finger,” extending her forefinger for Jolene’s inspection. “There’s nothing much to see, but to touch anything with it hurts like the devil. Could you get it out?”

  “Sterilize a needle, wash your hands,” Jolene said.

  The flame had reached up and darkened the metal point. Jolene’s silver-framed glasses slid down her nose as she settled herself back in the kitchen chair and angled Cora’s hand toward the window light. “Hurt?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but go on. See how red it’s got? It’s infected. I left it go too long.”

  “Doubtless. Not had anything else on your mind, either, have you?” Jolene was good at backhanded absolutions, and Cora relied on them.

  “Not much,” Cora said. “No more than I can bear without being in the ground myself.” Tears welled in her eyes and she willed them back down. “But I can’t figure out what to do about Lexie, about being her guardian, I mean. She’s scared Alex is going to show up and claim her.” Cora’s head shook as she spoke, as if her body were saying no, no, no.

  “This hurt?” Jolene asked.

  Cora winced but shook her head. “I don’t care if it hurts. Just clean it out.”

  Jolene had broken the skin at the center of the reddened tip of Cora’s forefinger, and now squeezed it between her thumbs. Yellow-white pus oozed out. “Lotta junk in here,” she said. “I need to get alcohol on it. Got some?”

  “In the medicine cabinet,” Cora said, and lumbered up to get it out of the downstairs bathroom.

  When Cora came back, a couple of minutes later, she was using her cane—something she didn’t ordinarily do in the house. She handed the plastic bottle to Jolene and sat back down, finger extended all the while Jolene saturated a cotton ball and recapped the alcohol.

  “I was thinking how this puts me in mind of Alex, the splinter I mean,” Cora said. “It hurts even though you can’t see it. Even when you get the pus out, it�
�s still there ready to get infected again. Only thing to do is get the whole splinter out, no matter how hard it is to do.”

  “So what’s in your mind?” Jolene asked, knowing she’d not heard the end.

  “I don’t exactly know,” Cora said. “I’ve just got to hope something comes to me.”

  Then, within an hour of Jolene’s leaving, Lexie padded into the kitchen where Cora was sitting at the table staring out of the window. “Grandma, can I talk to you?”

  Cora thought about how hard it was going to be to get Lexie’s socks white. She could see the heel and under the ball when Lexie sat down and crossed one leg over the other knee, gray and stubborn as winter rain, the white under the arch a last patch of snow. “Of course, honey. You can always talk to me” was all she said, though. Lexie could just throw out all the socks and buy new ones for all she cared, or for all the laundry that was getting done these days, anyway.

  “I was wondering. Could you, like, could you like…adopt me?”

  “Well, honey, your mother made me your guardian. That’s like the same thing.”

  “But what if Alex shows up? I mean, if you’d adopted me, then he couldn’t take me away from you. I’d feel a lot better.”

  Cora’s inclination was to reassure Lexie, with He’s not going to show up after all these years, honey, and How could he even know anything’s happened to your mother? She bit back some of what came to her own mind: He didn’t want you then, he’s not going to want you now, and Alex doesn’t want anything that might cost him. She had to swallow some bile to do it, but Cora had standards and there were some things she just wasn’t going to say to any child about her parent no matter if he was a bottom feeder like Marvin always called him. A goddamn bottom feeder, Marvin said, and Cora had shushed him for his language.

  “We can look into it, honey. There’s a lot to think about. I need to get your mother’s social security. We might lose that if I adopt you.”