by Mary Hogan
Muriel looked away. Not all mothers, she knew well, felt such bliss.
“Sometimes I look at Emma and I can’t believe God could be so good to me.” A sigh traveled through Pia’s body. “That’s why, after all these years, I can’t understand how Mama could do that to you.”
Muriel curled her fingernails into her palms.
“Why did she write those awful things about you? A child. Why would she call her child a liar?”
The one biblical verse Muriel knew by heart swirled around her head. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. That, she also knew, was a lie.
“I never told Mama I read her diary,” Pia said. “I know it didn’t seem like it at the time, but I felt ashamed of what I’d done. Both to her and to you. That’s why I’ve never said anything all these years. I’m so sorry, Muriel. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Of course. Yes. I forgave you ages ago.”
Again squeezing Muriel’s hand, Pia said, “Thanks be to the Lord.” Then she asked, “Why would Mama do such a thing? Why, in God’s name?”
The sweet Connecticut air filled Muriel’s lungs. She thought about her mother and Father Camilo. About sin. The affair she witnessed was so long ago, it seemed like someone else’s life. As if she had imagined it after all. At the time, Muriel hadn’t been mature enough to truly process what she’d seen; now that it was so far in the past, she was quite sure God had forgiven them both. Still, hiding somebody’s secrets takes its toll, she’d come to believe. Sometimes it feels as if you’ve been gripping something so tightly for so long you forget how to let go at all.
“I have no idea why Mama wrote those silly things,” Muriel said. “I was just a kid.”
Never would she tell. She’d made a promise and that was that. Besides, it was a beautiful day in Connecticut. Why darken it?
As orange striations of sunset stretched across the sky, Emma bounded onto the sunporch wearing a white cotton shift over her ballet pinks. She squealed when she saw Muriel, kissed her aunt and her mother, and pirouetted for them twice. Her cheeks were reddish from exercise, wisps of blond hair spiked out from her ballet bun. She snatched two mini cupcakes and scampered off to her room. Emma was so stunning, so innocent, Muriel couldn’t bear to imagine her motherless. Instantly, she shook her head to jostle the thought out through her ears.
“Stay for dinner?” Pia asked.
Muriel stretched and stood up. “I should get back to the city,” she said. It had been a perfect afternoon. Flush with familial love, she had an idea of how to make it a perfect evening, too.
“We’ll talk soon,” she said, her eyes filling up. “Thank God my beautiful sister is back.”
ON THE NEW HAVEN line west, with Long Island Sound through the window the color of a flickering fireplace, Muriel made a phone call.
“Mama?”
“Has something happened?”
Muriel laughed. “I was hoping you’d be free for dinner.”
“Your father is working late. I hadn’t planned anything special.”
“Perfect. Let me treat you to Uvarara in the village.”
Lidia was silent. Muriel could hear her mother’s brain working. Finally, she asked, “What’s happened, Muriel? Is it Pia? Have you seen her?”
Again Muriel laughed. “I’ve seen her. She’s fine. As perfect as ever. Now I want to see you.”
“Why?”
The train was overcooled, as it always was in the summer. Muriel rubbed the goose bumps on her bare arms. Through the smudged window she watched pristine Connecticut blink past. Redbrick houses were reflected in the glassine water. Slatted docks jutted into the Sound. Sailboats zigzagged in the water, leaving elongated V-shaped wakes. Her mind flashed on something Pia had said that day in New York while the two sisters waited for the bus to take them to the Plaza Hotel.
Sailboats fill me with such longing. It’s as if everyone on the water knows the answer and we don’t even know the question.
Now, for the first time, she got it.
“Because you’re my mother and I miss you.” Life needn’t be more complicated than that.
Lidia said nothing for several breaths. Muriel gently wobbled left and right with the shimmy of the train. She heard the ba-dum ba-dum of the tracks, felt the anticipation of a journey tingle her fingertips. For a brief moment she let her eyelids fall shut as she envisioned herself on the M train to Wyckoff Avenue, not quite a straight shot into Manhattan, wearing a snug green velvet dress with satin trim, too young for a girl her age.
“The polpettine are fabulous there,” Lidia said, softly.
Muriel grinned. “I was thinking the fazzoletti.”
“Maybe we could split the two?”
“Perfect.”
Perhaps in her universe the planets took a bit longer to realign. Feeling as if she’d just that moment fully grown up, Muriel said, “I’m on my way, Mama. See you as soon as I get there.”
Chapter 27
THE PHONE STARTLED Muriel awake. She thought it was the downstairs buzzer. UPS. FedEx. But the light in her apartment was hazy. The sun was barely up, its silvery rays poking softly through the curtain sheers. The phone rang again.
“Hullo,” she said, sounding like a man.
“Muriel.”
The way Will said her name, with a period instead of a question mark, said it all. His voice was so tired she could almost see it crumpled in the back of his throat.
“But I just saw her a week ago,” she said, losing her air.
“We lost her last night.”
“But her treatments had worked. That’s what she told me. She said she was going to be fine.”
“It happens that way sometimes,” he said, sadly. “One last rally.”
Muriel’s left hand covered her mouth in disbelief, then it slid down to her chest as if she needed to help her lungs expand and contract.
“But it’s Pia,” she said, almost to herself, a flood of images racing through her mind: her sister’s long blond ponytail swaying like a hula dancer when she walked, the way she ate a single tortilla chip in ten tiny bites, the impossible narrowness of her hips, the perfect ridge of her wrist bone, the smooth tan of her arms and the flatness of her toes, the way everybody smiled when she did. As if she was right there with her, she saw the confident jut of her sister’s chin. How could an entire life vanish in the middle of the night?
“Emma and I were with her,” said Will quietly. “She wasn’t alone.”
“Emma. Oh, God.” Muriel pictured her niece bounding onto the sunporch all praying-mantis limbs and satiny skin. Her blue eyes would now be red. Muriel’s heart broke.
“Pia went to bed early last night,” Will said so softly Muriel strained to hear. “Right after dinner. Emma and I knew something was wrong. That day you’d seen her, well, she was so happy for a few days afterward. Her old self. But things got bad again. It was like a punch in the gut. Last night was worse than usual. Blanca made her soup, but she only pressed the cup to her closed lips. She only pretended to eat. Her eyes were glassy. I knew the painkillers were kicking in. So I helped her to bed.
“You saw how she was. So tiny, she barely weighed anything. I put her in bed and I could see her fighting sleep. I think she knew the end was near. Her jaw hung open. She was so weak, Muriel, she couldn’t keep her mouth closed. She kept mumbling, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ When I kissed her forehead, it was cold. Like she had no blood left at all. So I called Emma in. The three of us lay there on the bed, Pia between us. We held her hands and whispered in her ears. We told her how much we loved her, how she was the light of our lives. Even Root Beer was there at the foot of the bed. He, too, knew the end was coming.”
His voice raspy, Will said, “We stayed like that much of the night. All of us together on our bed. Pia faded in and out but she knew we were there because she squeezed my hand from time to time. Emma, God bless her, fell asleep even as she fought it with her whole being. I promised I’d wake her if it was time. I was afraid
I’d fall asleep myself, but Blanca stayed the night and brought in hot espressos and cold compresses for my eyes and somehow I managed to stay awake. Then, my God, it was the strangest thing.”
Will stopped. In silence, Muriel waited, unaware she was holding her breath until air involuntarily rushed into her lungs.
“It was about three in the morning. I remember looking at the clock and thanking God he gave us one more day with her. All of a sudden, a whoosh swept into the room. I don’t know, some kind of . . . energy. That’s the only way I can describe it. It felt like someone opened the back door and a blast of fresh air came rushing through. Pia’s eyes shot open. Emma woke up at that same instant. ‘Mommy,’ she said. She hasn’t said ‘Mommy’ in years. Pia smiled at her. We both saw the love in her eyes. It was absolutely clear, unclouded by pain or meds. Pure love. And it was her. Our Pia. She was back. Emma and I both burst into tears, it was so damned beautiful and unexpected. We circled our arms around her, held on to her. Then she sighed this utterly contented sigh and let go. Just like that. She released herself. We literally felt her soul leave the earth. It was the most profound experience I’ve ever had. My daughter and I felt Pia enter heaven.”
“Oh, Will.”
“It was truly amazing. I feel blessed to have experienced it.”
Muriel took another noisy breath. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The image of heaven as a joyful destination made her feel hopeful, as if time really didn’t run out. Repairs could always be made somewhere.
“What do you need?” she asked, helpless. “Tell me what to do.”
A long silence followed in which Muriel could hear Will’s breathing. A labored inhalation followed by air forcibly pushed through his nostrils, as if he was ordering his lungs to fill themselves, then commanding them to expel the oxygen they had trapped within their bronchial tubes. As if breathing was no longer automatic. She knew his answer. Nothing. What could anyone do? No one could bring her back, reshape her diseased cells into plump organisms, erase the speckled blackness beneath her eyes, ease the angry pain in her bones. No one could restore the soft touch of her hair or return the hungry look she used to give her husband when they awoke on languid Sunday mornings and decided to stay in bed. No one could do a goddamn thing.
“Tell Lidia.”
“What? No.” Muriel surprised herself with the force of her answer.
“I can’t do it,” Will whispered.
“No,” Muriel repeated. “No.”
The last time she’d seen her mother was a first. It was actually fun. She saw her the same day she’d last seen Pia. They had dinner at Uvarara—Lidia’s favorite restaurant in Middle Village. Happy from her Connecticut visit with Pia, Muriel was relaxed and confident.
“Na zdrowie!” She toasted her mother with a glass of Chianti.
“Dating anyone special?” Lidia asked. “Anyone at all?”
“No. You?”
Lidia laughed. Throughout their dinner, her jabs were only flesh wounds. Habit, really. Across the candlelit table, Muriel saw her mother in a new light: an aging woman who was beginning to feel the weight of the mistakes she’d made. Confessed Lidia after a second glass of wine, “Had I been a happier wife, I would have been a better mother.”
That night, Muriel felt hope that a new relationship could be found in the wreckage of the old, the way seeds sometimes take root and sprout at the very bottom of a dump.
“Please . . . ” Will’s heavy voice trailed off. Muriel shut her eyes and felt her heart sag. Her brother-in-law was asking the impossible. Without even knowing Pia had been sick, news of her death would kill their mother. Never would she forgive Muriel for shattering her life out of the clear blue.
She said nothing.
Will said nothing.
In his leaden exhalations, Muriel heard the weight of the past few months. Or had it been years? How long had Pia kept the secret of her terminal illness? Had she been sick last Christmas? At Lidia’s annual birthday dinner? How many months had the slim figure she’d so envied been the emaciation of disease? The perfection of her haircut and color, had it been an expensive wig for more than a year? Shame overtook her. The truth had been right in front of her eyes, yet she hadn’t seen a thing. Apparently, she was more like her mother than she thought. Choosing to believe that bad things disappeared if you redirected your gaze.
Why, Muriel suddenly wondered, had Pia not called her to say good-bye at the very end? Had they not begun again? Why, Muriel questioned over and over, had her sister not given her one more chance to ask for forgiveness?
“I tried to be who you wanted me to be,” she would have said. “Honestly I did. I’m so sorry I never measured up.”
Forgive me.
In the long silence over the phone, Muriel heard the toll Pia’s illness had taken on her husband’s life, too. When Pia passed, his light went dark. Slowly, he’d watched the sexy woman he loved and desired fade before his eyes. Her tanned and toned arms became bruised and slack. Her smooth hair went wiry; her body skeletal. When your spouse has cancer, can you ever complain of sore muscles? A tension headache? Can you golf while she’s in the chemo chair? Watch a television ad for shampoo and guiltlessly wish you could comb your fingers through thick hair? After work, over a quick beer with the guys, can you commiserate about wives who spend a fortune at Neiman Marcus, then complain that you’re never home? Like money rains down from the sky! Women. Can’t live with them or without them. As your wife disappears before your eyes, can you ever afford to look the other way? Can you stop loving someone who’s nothing like the woman you fell for in the first place?
“I’ll tell her,” Muriel said, abruptly. Which, of course, Will knew she would. Then she remembered the gray satin dress in the back of her closet, neatly folded, still in its shopping bag with the tag on it. Natural polish, natural lips. None of that thick makeup they slather on you. Pia was counting on her. Will won’t care, Muriel. But I do. I care.
“I’ll be out later this morning. After I talk to Mama.”
Will thanked her and hung up. Muriel felt like throwing up. On wobbly legs, she walked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Braced against the bathroom sink, she looked in the mirror and saw the reflection of Lidia’s daughter. The only daughter she had left.
“You can do this, Muriel,” she said out loud. Hadn’t they recently had a lovely dinner at Uvarara? Sure, her mother fell back into herself and talked about Pia the entire time, but change didn’t happen overnight. Seeds of closeness had to be planted, watered, fertilized, given air and warmth before they blossomed into even the tiniest fragile buds. They had time. Didn’t they?
“You can do this,” Muriel repeated, forcefully, swallowing the emotion that stung her whole face.
Even though she repeated it over and over, she didn’t believe herself one bit.
Chapter 28
THE NINETY-SIXTH STREET subway station arched into the gray sky like a Star Wars storm-trooper helmet. Muriel knew the route by heart. She swiped her MetroCard at the turnstile and descended the stairs to the downtown express, getting off at Fourteenth Street. There, she transferred to the L, followed the herd down the stairs and around the corner to the M. She knew everything there was to know about this transital umbilical cord attaching Manhattan to Queens, from the way the train felt like a clothes dryer on the west side of the river, a washing machine on the east, to the acrid smell of the New York Times versus the inky aroma of the Post. On cold rainy days, the city trains smelled like wet wool. Borough trains smelled of dripping leather. Even the seats were different. Manhattan’s orange row of seating was shaped into the curves of individual asses, a single overspilling passenger disrupted the whole row. Across the river, the long side seating was gray-blue and smooth, always warm from a recent exit.
With Pia’s shopping bag in her hand, Muriel sat on the train in stupefied silence, her lips parted, as if a stranger had walked up and yanked her hair. The neural connection between knowing Pia was gone and actuall
y feeling it was clogged with a to-do list: get to Queens, tell Lidia, get back on the train to Grand Central, take the Metro-North to Connecticut, deliver Pia’s gray satin dress. Without resistance, she let the train jostle her from side to side, flopping far over at each stop. The bag made crinkle sounds as it swayed in the grip of her closed fist. It was still early—more people on their way into the city than out—so the eastbound M was nearly deserted. By the time she reached the end of the line, Metropolitan Avenue, the only other person on her subway car was a scruffy post-teen in an oversize sweatshirt, asleep, soon to be on his way back west.
“You can do this,” Muriel muttered to herself for the hundredth time that morning. Her stomach was a tight knot. Her ears buzzed from deep within. It took muscle memory to exit the train and climb the stairs to the street. How, exactly, do you tell a mother that her favorite daughter has died in the night? Do you suggest sitting down first? Have a tissue ready? Would Lidia faint? Bury her weeping face in Muriel’s shoulder? Was it her job to be brave?
Muriel’s breath hitched as she walked along the avenue. In the suddenly cooling pre-fall air, some of the leaves in the cemetery to her right were already the color of blood oranges. The sidewalk felt hard beneath Muriel’s thin-soled shoes. Lidia didn’t know she was on her way. She hadn’t called ahead. There were some things you had to do face-to-face, before other walls went up.
Putting one foot in front of the other, Muriel crossed Metropolitan Avenue at the light and made her way to her parents’ row house two blocks away. Lidia would be starting her busy day. Dressed, no doubt, in slacks with a DRY CLEAN ONLY tag. Owen would already be gone, his coffee cup rinsed in the sink.