“Imagine her alive. Feel it.” He knelt there, in numb silence, unable to pray, unable even to think clearly. He felt as though all the wounds he had ever suffered had pierced him through, leaving gaping holes so that everything that made him human had leaked out. I have nothing. I am alone.
Whiting borrowed a car from St. Benedict House and drove to his mother’s apartment. When he entered her back door, her dogs did not run yapping as they always had. The police had taken them away that afternoon. He wanted to call his mother’s name, to announce his arrival. Instead, he stood at the door, his right hand on the knob, listening.
“Mama?” he whispered.
The silence was palpable. One of the door’s glass panes—the one the deliveryman broke—had been replaced with plywood. His heart ached at the sight of it. He raised his hand to touch the surface of the wood, but its blank brutality stopped him. He ran his hand along the three locks on her door. She was always so careful to bolt them. But the deliveryman had broken through the glass and opened them in seconds. Her locks and keys and bolts had been an illusion. A rush of alarm and pity overcame him.
The kitchen was clean—only the silence was out of place. Gone were the sounds of her radio, the clanking of pot lids, and the sizzling of grease in her black iron skillet over burners always set to high. As he passed the kitchen chair she sat in to cook or wash the dishes, he brushed his fingertips lightly across its back—willed himself to imagine her there.
“She sat to cook,” he said. “She was weak, but I didn’t see it.” His voice was hoarse with grief. What is wrong with me?
Whiting crossed to the sink to get himself a glass of water. When he opened the cabinet above the sink, he saw a stack of envelopes bundled together with a wide rubber band. At the end of each visit, she always gave him letters to mail. She would ask him to buy the stamps and to drop the letters into the mailbox without looking at them. She was always ordering from catalogs or entering contests. He knew about her aliases, had tried to talk her out of new identities, but their discussions only made her miserable. How did she manage to cope? To move ahead? He frowned and shook his head.
Whiting carried the bundle to the kitchen table and counted the envelopes, which she had stacked, as always, according to size. He pulled the rubber band from them and slid it up and around his wrist—a gesture he had seen his mother do countless times. He passed his palm lightly over the envelopes; his fingertips touched her handwriting with its small, perfect letters, written with a felt pen that had lost its sharp tip and was losing its ink. He studied the faded upstrokes on each letter. She never put a return address on any of her envelopes—it was a habit that always made him uncomfortable. Stamps might come loose. Her mail would go undelivered for the lack of a return address. He bought her a roll of address labels once, but she’d never used them—had barely feigned interest when he brought them to her. Yet she would say she was delighted. That had been their custom, to show excessive delight over even the smallest presents and surprises. Even as a grown man, he tried to find things that she might like: a tin of divinity, a box of envelopes, a package of felt tip pens in assorted colors.
Whiting suddenly saw her—the look of expectation in her eyes when she’d gotten some plan into her head. In his less guarded moments, he could still believe—and accepted that everything she said was possible. He needed to believe her—even though he could not trust her. Loved her; wished he could have protected her. And wished that she had been able to protect him.
He crossed to the utensil drawer and chose a knife from his mother’s unmatched set. Using it as a letter opener, he tried to undo the seal on the top envelope. His hand slipped and the envelope tore. He took a breath to steady himself, then worked the blade back and forth beneath the flap, sawing through the paper. At last, he pulled out the contents—Lillian’s most recent gas bill. He studied the handwriting on the face of his mother’s check—dated just three days earlier. The idea that she would be engaged in something so ordinary only days before her death made his chest ache. Her bill was twenty-three dollars, but the enclosed check had been made out for twenty-four. She had added a dollar to a fund for the needy. This will kill me. Tears blurred his vision as he ran his index finger over his mother’s signature.
The next letter opened with less difficulty—its thin line of glue on the preprinted form gave easily under his knife. Lillian had ordered four commemorative coins from the Franklin Mint. Who were they for? She had filled out the order under a fictitious name and requested the installment plan—had enclosed a money order for five dollars, the minimum deposit. A sound escaped his throat—half laugh, half sob. He studied the kitchen with great deliberateness, trying to memorize it.
Whiting stood a long time at the doorway of his mother’s bedroom. The foot of her bed had been pushed aside—evidence of the paramedics. Closing his eyes, he imagined them there. Turned his head to listen, as if the sounds still reverberated—as if the room had retained them—echoing, ever softer with each repetition. Audible with only the most careful attention. The sounds were there: the paramedics’ heavy boots as they rushed into the room. Walkie-talkies blaring curt messages and static. Anxious voices shouting his mother’s name, trying to rouse her as they tore open their paper packages: electrodes, intravenous fluids, medications to restart her heart. The heart monitor screamed its alarm. A fist pounded his mother’s chest. The crack of ribs. Someone counted, forced breaths into her mouth. Another shouted orders. The defibrillator whirred as it built its charge. The command to ‘stand back,’ the kick of the paddles. The smell of something burning.
How many times had he witnessed this scene at St. Theresa’s? The nurses and doctors rushing into a room. The deep rumble of the crash cart as they wrestled it forward, its drawers—and all that was in them—trying to burst open. Buzzers. Lights. Alarms. The glissando of the curtain rings as the drapes were closed to hide the scene. What strangers had surrounded his mother in the end? Paramedics? Police? She had always feared strangers in her home.
He opened his eyes and saw the edge of something white sticking out from under Lillian’s bed: the sheath from a syringe, left by the paramedics. He picked it up and held it between his index finger and thumb. The inside of the packet felt damp.
Whiting thought about the deliveryman. Jim. The one who broke in. He didn’t think that they had ever met. He had tried to talk his mother into shopping at another store. The prices at Frankie’s Market were high; their produce lacking. But she liked the people. Liked that they took phone orders, delivered her groceries, and let her run a monthly tab.
On his mother’s dresser was the statue of Virgin Mary that he had given her years before. The plaster figure was chipped and dusty. Lillian had wrapped a rosary at the Virgin’s feet. Its bright green glass wound round and round, like a snake. He ran his finger along the dresser, making a line in the dust. When had she stopped her daily cleaning?
I’ve been having such terrible heartburn, Sammy. Even Tums don’t help. Sometimes, when it comes, I just have to get out of bed. Sit in a chair. He had let himself believe that it was nothing. He studied the kitchen chair she kept at her bedside. Imagined his mother sitting there, alone in the darkness, taking shallow breaths—her dogs at her feet. His chest tightened.
Just then, he heard a noise from within Lillian’s closet. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He wanted to run, but could not move. Some local thief saw the police. He’s here to take my mother’s things. Not today. Not anymore. His heart hammered in his chest. After what seemed a very long time, he charged across the room and flung open the door. Taffy, the last of his mother’s poodles huddled inside.
The dog was trembling; its tail lay tight against its haunches. It was not the dog itself, but its unkempt appearance that confused him most. His mother had always bathed and brushed her dogs. But the dog’s eyes were crusted, its fur matted. The sight of the neglected animal told him a story of decline that he had failed to see or to believe—a story that he had bee
n there less and less to notice.
The dog was there when his mother fell. He imagined its panic and confusion. The deliveryman. Breaking glass. Sirens. Paramedics and police rushing through the house. Frantic voices. Sounds of struggle in the bedroom. The silence when the struggle stopped. His mother taken from the house. The other dogs rounded up. Then nothing. The pup had pushed itself into the corner, behind a shoebox, under a long coat hanging next to the wall. The police had overlooked it when they took the others.
He reached down to pick up the dog, to offer it some reassurance. But when he touched its side, his fingers pressed against something large and pulpy, like a water balloon. He recoiled, and then forced himself to take a closer look. A purplish growth ran along the dog’s right side. He lifted the pup gently and placed it on his mother’s bed, then sat down beside it. He stroked the dog’s back. It could not stop trembling.
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
The dog whimpered softly as Whiting looked around the room in silence. He had worked very hard to put this all behind him. But the cost was too great. He heard the sound of his own heartbeat. Blood rushing in his ears. Growing louder, until he could hear nothing else. At last, the sound subsided, replaced by one more rhythmic, which increased in volume and force. His chest heaved. His sobs filled the empty apartment as he wept, without comfort or hope.
Whiting sat across from the funeral director; he was thinking about his childhood. When he was a boy, he had learned to continually gauge his mother’s moods and change his behavior accordingly. When she raged about the burdens of supporting them, he remained mute, repentant. When she announced that they were moving to a new city, he did not add to her worries by sharing his own. When she wept at being passed over for an acting job, he expressed compassion, even sorrow, for her suffering. He had borne witness to the worst of her storms, through all the years when she spoke of killing herself, and later, when threats of suicide gave way to intermittent, though adamant, references to her funeral.
No viewing, Sammy. No flowers. Send them while I’m alive or don’t send them at all. And make it a nice, quick service—the funeral home is fine. Why go to church then if I don’t go now? I don’t know if they let you pick the service, but if they do, make it simple. I think the Unitarians do something nice. You decide. No priests though—except you, of course. You know what I mean. And I don’t want those long lines of cars to the graveyard. People are grieving then. Not paying attention. They could be killed from an oncoming car or bad weather. You read about that kind of thing all the time.
He tried to remember each of these pronouncements as he answered the funeral director’s questions.
“No, there will be no viewing.”
The director turned the form over to the second side. He asked each question slowly, wrote the answer on the form before him, hesitated, and then asked the next. The man seemed pained, embarrassed by his own inquiries, and even colored when Whiting answered, ‘No, my mother was not a practicing Catholic. She will not be buried in the Catholic Church.’
“So your mother didn’t attend any church?” The director punctuated each question with a trembling smile.
“She hadn’t lived in this neighborhood long. She was, in fact, going to move again next month.”
“Then, is there another church, perhaps near where she used to live? We could call there for you.”
“No. She lived there less than a year. No.” Whiting cleared his throat. “My mother moved around a bit.” They each smiled in turn. Whiting’s lips were dry to his teeth. The director wrote something on the form.
“Father ….” He spoke with obvious hesitation. “Father, we could have the service here. It’s often done, especially when the departed was not actively involved in a specific church … as seems to be the case with your mother.”
Whiting’s eyes stung. He thought he might be feverish.
“We have a number of ministers in waiting. We’ll be happy to call one of the people on our list. I assure you, whoever we call will do a lovely service.”
“Is there a Unitarian?” He struggled to keep his voice level. “My mother often mentioned—” He bit his lip and tried to maintain his composure. “If that would be possible … please.”
When Whiting returned to the funeral home on the morning of the service, the director was waiting for him just inside the door. The man approached noiselessly in crepe-soled shoes and a dark, pinstriped suit—his uniform for appointments and unexpected drop-ins.
“This way, Father Whiting.”
The man spoke in hushed tones, and Whiting recognized in him the same quiet professionalism he employed at the hospital—the mask that was designed to reassure, while also maintaining a distance from the bereaved. An unspoken contract that insisted, “I am here as witness to your grief and suffering. But this suffering is not mine. My role is to contain, to redirect, to get things done as you struggle with your sorrow and your confusion. Once you are past this point, my work is done. Then I’m on to the next—they are always coming—and you must go back to your life.”
Whiting had the feeling that the man expected something of him—some reaction that, in his log of family experiences, would tell him who Whiting was, how he felt about his mother, and what might come next. He knew this because he had done the same many times, with countless patients and families. Now he hated the funeral director for it, just as he hated himself for his decades of acting, his religious insincerity, years of pat answers about God and suffering, about a plan that exceeded man’s understanding. It’s a mystery. It’s all a Goddamned mystery.
The funeral director escorted him to the room where his mother’s casket lay. “Here we are.” The director’s tone was solemn, but he smiled as if he was personally in charge of cheering Whiting up. “Lovely, don’t you think?” He might just as well have been pointing out some item—say a wallet—in a display case.
Whiting couldn’t look at the casket, not yet. Instead, he took in the room, which, in the funeral home’s efforts to remain non-denominational, was completely devoid of feeling. Plants and flower arrangements stood on pedestals near the casket. Seeing them, he thought how his mother had disliked the idea of flowers for the dead and half heard her now as he scanned the arrangements. He was grateful to the senders, intensely eager to know whether any of the flowers were from Nikolai, and at last decided there were too few arrangements.
“She should have had more,” Whiting murmured.
“Pardon?”
Whiting turned to look at the funeral director. “The flowers, I was wondering who sent them.”
“Oh, we take special care with that. The cards will remain on the arrangements until the departure. Then we remove each one and present them to you with the guest book.”
Whiting stared blankly at the director, who seemed to take his reaction as a sign of grief. The man smiled a knowing, self-satisfied smile and lowered his eyes modestly. Whiting hated him even more.
The director stepped toward Lillian’s casket and extended his hand in a gesture that encouraged Whiting to go before him. Instead, Whiting stayed with the flowers. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, he removed the cards—one by one—and read them. One arrangement was from the chaplains in his department. Members of his order sent a spray of sterling roses. The Missionary Sisters sent a wreath. The people at Frankie’s Market sent an arrangement of carnations and roses. Two of Lillian’s neighbors sent small plants. There was nothing from Nikolai.
After he’d read the last card, he looked up to see the funeral director watching him. Whiting returned the last card to its plant and joined the man before his mother’s casket.
“As you can see, we’ve followed your wishes, but if you’d like, I can open it for one last farewell.”
Whiting studied the closed casket. He wanted to see his mother, but he feared the moment. If he saw her, then he would have to admit that she was really dead. The idea made no sense, but he held onto it. Seeing Lillian in her coffin would of
fer him no comfort. And he feared his own reaction. At last he shook his head—he could not be sure whether the director was disappointed or relieved.
“We’ve provided a small table to display family photographs of the departed. Did you bring any photographs, Father?”
“No.”
The director, he was sure, wanted him to say more, to explain, but he didn’t really understand the situation himself. The photographs he remembered—publicity shots from his mother’s career, photos from his childhood, even his school pictures and report cards—were not among his mother’s papers. Did she suspect that she was dying? He could not bear the idea. But so few of her possessions seemed to be there. What did she do with them? Where did they go?
After searching her apartment, he decided that she must have thrown them away in one of her moves. But even if he had found them, he knew he could not display them. To do so would be a betrayal of her secrecy. Her privacy.
Without the photographs, without an open casket, no one would have any idea of his mother. At that instant, he could not remember her face. His head throbbed as he tried to force himself to conjure it in his mind’s eye. It’s stress. Don’t panic. You can’t forget her.
“If you need anything, I’ll be in my office.”
“What if I get a phone call? Will your staff call me to the phone?”
“Of course, Father. Are you expecting a call?”
“Yes, possibly.”
The director’s expression was neutral.
“Yes.” He said more emphatically.
“Is there a particular name? I can alert the office staff.”
Whiting considered the question. Would Nikolai show up or call?
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