by Susan Morse
Keep
—A BASKET OF CORKS with something stuck to them.
—What?
—A basket of corks.
—What do they look like?
—They’ve got something stuck to them.
—Something’s stuffed in them?
—No, Ma, STUCK.
—What’s stuck?
—CORKS.
—Forks?
I’m standing on a chair in Ma’s walk-in closet in the Mills House, working my way through her top shelves. I’m determined to include Ma in this process as much as is humanly possible. Colette and I got rid of the top layer of obvious dumpables last month, and now it’s down to the nitty-gritty. What does Ma want to keep? This means describing every item to her so she can be the one to make decisions. It’s going okay. The current roommate is so out of it she wouldn’t know a TV if it jumped up and bit her, so it’s much easier for Ma to talk on the phone now. I still think she needs that new hearing aid. The good news is I finally got a Bluetooth gadget for my cell phone—this is not the kind of thing you want to do with wires attached to you, if you can avoid it.
—These corks, Ma. What do you want to do with them?
—Let’s give them to somebody.
—Who?
—Who might like to have them?
—Not me, thanks.
—The great-grandchildren?
—Ma, these are corks with some kind of gross red stuff sort of stuck to them. I don’t think your great-grandchildren would want them. I just wasn’t sure if they were some necessary art thing or other.
—Oh. Well, I don’t know. . . .
—I’m throwing them away. If you don’t know what they are and I think they’re disgusting, then they can’t be important. Here I go throwing them away. Walking to the trash bag. Bye-bye, corks.
We’ve already done her books. She’s giving a ton of them to Father Nectarios for the church library. There’s not much room in the new place, so Ma’s mostly keeping vital personal items and whatever is particularly essential to her spiritual health.
—What about God’s Fools: The Lives of the Holy Fools For Christ?
—Very important. Keep.
—Thought so. What about How to Behave and Why?
—I thought I gave that to you.
—You did, for the kids for Easter. A book on manners was so very thoughtful. This must be your copy. And here’s the one by Bill O’Reilly you gave us for Christmas.
—What’s the title?
—It’s called The Nasty Hypocrite’s Guide for Little Old Ladies Who Want to Insult Their Grandchildren.
—Susie!
—Sorry. The O’Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America’s Families.
—Keep.
—Here’s one called Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ by Justin Popovich, translated by Asterios Somebodyorother et al. I can’t pronounce it.
—What does the cover look like?
—It’s got an old guy with a long white beard and glasses. He looks like he’s falling asleep at his desk.
—Keep.
—This one’s called The Elder Somebodyelse of the Aegina.
—Who is on the cover?
—Another old guy with a beard and a hat.
—Oh, he’s fabulous. Yes.
—Saint Arsenios the Cappodocian. Old guy with a beard, no hat. It’s a drawing, not a photo. He’s wearing a blanket on his head.
—For Father Nectarios. No, wait. Keep.
—Saint John of Kronstadt. Keep, I know. Oh . . . wow, this is from another life . . .
—What?
—I wonder if you ever read this book I just found on your top shelf.
—Which?
—Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime.
—What on earth is that?
—This is the one I gave to you for perspective, after you gave us that O’Reilly book. It’s about the war in Bosnia when these Orthodox Christian Serbs rounded up thousands of Muslims and murdered them. What should I do with it?
—Well . . .
I used to take such offense at Ma’s righteousness, how she insists Muslims hold the monopoly on depravity—as if all Christians are perfect. My seething indignation is gone now, melted away. I guess I needed to learn tolerance as much as I felt she did. It’s kind of sweet that she actually kept this book.
—I’ll give it to the Episcopal church, it’s more their thing anyway. Ma?
—Yes?
—I love you no matter what you believe.
—That’s good.
—Yes, it is.
There were some fabulous finds among the books: Ma’s journals from the south of France before the Second World War, with a long account of a reckless teenage adventure she and Bobs had featuring a suspicious amount of schnapps, and a ski trip to the mountains with older friends all mixed up in a tempestuous love triangle. There was a gun involved and a car accident, and Bobs ended up in a hospital before they could escape. Wow—keep.
And, there’s a curious, crumbly old volume belonging to Ma’s mother, the adultering bolter: King’s Daughters’ Journal. The King’s Daughters was a ladies’ group devoted to good works at the turn of the century. It seems they put out this diary-type book with space for personal entries on all the days of the year. Each blank page is headed with a virtuous quote, like:
So let our lips and lives express
The holy gospel we profess;
So let our works and virtues shine
To prove the doctrine all divine.
—Rev. I. Watts
Granny must have been spiritually tone-deaf at the time. It is on these pages that she saw fit to meticulously hand-copy reams of love letters from Grandsir the flyer during their affair. Very odd letters to read, full of romantic nicknames and sappy declarations of eternal devotion. Perhaps Ma and I have a shared inclination to differ ideologically with our mothers.
Tucked between the pages is a picture of the dashing couple on horseback together near the polo field at Penllyn, posing on exactly the same spot as David and the children in their swimsuits, in that wonderful painting Ma gave me. The tree whose branch I know and love in the foreground of my painting is just a sapling in this old 1919 photograph. Keep.
—Ma, let’s talk about the art.
—Yes.
—Felix noticed there’s a gallery area near the dining room at the Abbey. He thinks you could have a little show if you like.
—Oh no.
—Why not? I’ll bet people would love to see your paintings, and your place is so small. You want to sell some things, right?
—Yes, but not like that. Just for friends. I’m Mother Brigid now—this and the black clothes will be confusing enough for everyone at the Abbey. I’m trying to simplify. I don’t want to arrive there and be Mother-Brigid-who-used-to-be-Marjorie-von-Moschzisker-and-would-you-like-to-buy-some-pictures.
—Got it. Ma. Can I ask you something?
—Of course.
—When did you realize you wanted to be a nun?
—Years ago.
—After Daddy died?
—No, I started thinking about it long before that. When I was little.
—Wow.
—Yes. Father Basil says my whole life has been a pilgrimage. Now I’ve arrived.
Our parents’ marriage was harsh for quite a while. When I was in boarding school, Daddy felt so desperate over their inability to compromise on his budgets that he moved out and sold the antiques from his side of the family to clear their debts. The formal separation lasted two years. Daddy still took care of Ma, paying her an allowance and the rent of our family home, from a distance and with firm rules. She’s acknowledged that her satisfying career as a portrait painter might never have flourished without that forced incentive.
Daddy had his second heart attack just after he left her. He went to live in a small run-down dump of a hotel near our house. When I was home for vacations, I used to meet him at a local pub for dinner and watch him numb himself with mart
inis. He’d ask questions about school and my life, and then forget my answers and ask the same questions again. One balmy summer evening, he invited me back to his place—he had a cassette tape I’d never heard, of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. His little room was a shock: so sad, with his undershirts and socks drying on the edge of the bathtub. He perched on the bed so I could sit in his only chair, and we listened to Reverend King in rapt silence.
Years later, just when David and I had first moved back to Philadelphia with the children, I ran into an older couple who used to do things with my parents before they separated. I was glad to see these old friends after so many years, but that night I called Daddy in Florida to tell him I couldn’t figure out why they’d seemed a little cold. He explained that after he’d left Ma, this couple had invited him to dinner.
—We’ve picked you instead of Marjorie, they said.
He was so affronted on Ma’s behalf (and well-oiled cocktail-wise, I’m guessing) that he told them both off and stalked out before they could serve the main course.
Corporate law was too dull for Daddy’s taste. He had a varied legal career as a prosecutor and defense lawyer. He wrote, too, and still deserves some credit for a historic period of rejuvenation in Philadelphia under the Democrats. He so respected Ma’s conviction about the necessity for art in all our lives that he eventually dreamed up the “One Percent for Fine Arts” program: One percent of public money spent on any building project must be used for fine arts—sculptures, frescoes, murals, and fountains, whatever. Whenever I go in the city, I’m bumping into reminders of Daddy—Claes Oldenburg’s Giant Clothespin by City Hall, or Ralph Helmick and Stuart Schechter’s pewter birds suspended in patterned flocks above my head at a ticketing lobby in the airport—and I’m thinking about his relationship with Ma.
They got back together when he joined AA, to all our amazement. They still had their moments, like when she backed her car over his shih tzu. (Your father left the front door open, and Dusty wandered out and fell asleep in the driveway. I told him he had to be careful about the door, but he doesn’t pay attention!) Daddy was extremely sentimental about his pets.
Anyway.
—What should we do with the Chinese barrel?
—That could go to Margaret—it’s in her portrait, she might like to have it.
—There are a few more books here I must have missed.
—Oh, what?
—There’s one called The White Stallions of Vienna.
—That’s for Colette. She loves the Lipizzaners.
—What about The Birds of North America?
—Keep. Birds are very important.
—A Stranger in Spain.
—Strangers on a train?
—One stranger. In Spain.
—Oh. I mumph . . .
—Ma?
—Yumph . . .
—Ma, do you need to go to sleep now or can we go on?
—No, I’m all right. What did you say about strange brains?
—A STRANGER. In SPAIN.
—Why would I have that?
—I don’t know; it’s your book. Do you want to learn Spanish?
—Give it to your cousin Christine. She’s taking her daughter to Spain.
—Okay. Christine. Now, Gut Instinct: What Your Stomach Is Trying to Tell You.
—Definitely keep.
—Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible? It’s an updated edition. Sounds exhausting to me.
—Ha-ha. Keep.
As Ma became more and more religious, Daddy had to find ways to keep up with her on his own terms. They went to church together. He embarked on a column for the local Florida paper, earnestly exploring the key aspects of a given religion each week—Buddhism, Judaism, Lutheran, what have you. Ma was his editor.
I stop for a minute to look at a framed photograph—a real treasure.
Colette took this picture. We all have our copies. Ma and Daddy in Sarasota, probably taken a year or two before he died. Sparkling water, bleached wood. A faded sky.
It’s a picnic on a dock; Ma is holding a paper plate. She has a little cross around her neck. They’re both wearing beautiful turquoise button-down shirts that almost match—Daddy’s is cotton, and Ma’s is definitely linen. Daddy has a jaunty straw hat to keep his freckles out of the sun, and Ma’s adjusting the brim for him. His eyes are closed, and he’s patiently dipping his head so she can reach, with dignified acquiescence. And they’re smiling; it seems like he’s just teased her about something that made them both laugh. Daddy did love to make Ma laugh.
This is a picture I hold in my heart. Keep, yes, keep.
I was furious at Daddy for quite a while after he died, even before I heard the rumors about his gambling at the golf club. He had made some effort to warn us that Ma would need financial help. But the closer I looked into their affairs, the more clear it became that his children (who had not much of a sibling bond at that point) had been left with a colossal, time-consuming, emotionally draining, and expensive mess. Given the circumstances, it was mostly going to be my mess, and could end very badly for Ma. The most disappointing thing was that if the two of them had been more practical, the job I’d volunteered for could have been so much less stressful. I kept wondering what he was thinking would happen. I’d look at that picture of them in their matching shirts, smiling and fiddling away while Rome burned around them, and just think Phooey.
There was a night that first year after Daddy died when despair really kicked in: I was in the middle of selling their Florida house and apartment hunting for Ma and dealing with the accountant I’d had to hire to sort out the three years of tax mistakes Daddy seemed to have overlooked, and somehow trying to convince Ma she couldn’t afford to keep racking up bills with her icon video project no matter how much she thought all humankind needed it, and figuring out how to set the boundaries so there wouldn’t be any unfortunate episodes with Ma and the kids.
That night, I got the kids to bed and went outside to stew on the back steps. I was so focused on my anger at Daddy, I wished more than anything he hadn’t gone and died so I could tell him to his face how stupid he was, and ask him why, why did he do this, and, this terrible job of his that I’d somehow inherited SUCKED and he was really bad at it. WHAT did he think the end of Ma’s life would be like, or mine and David’s and our children’s for that matter? And WHY did he even marry her and create this problem if he couldn’t solve it before he had to go and DIE? I mentally shook my fist at the night sky in the general direction of where he might be right then, and thought Daddy! What am I going to DO???
Then I emptied my mind for a minute and listened. I’m not psychic and I don’t even like the idea of communicating with spirits; whether that’s possible or not is beside the point. But I was so desperate; I sat there on the steps, looked up at the stars, and waited.
I waited, and then I heard something that I’ve puzzled about a lot over the years. Even now, I think I’m only just beginning to understand and appreciate what I heard that night after I’d railed at my recently deceased father and demanded he come back right away and explain himself, or help, or do something for lord’s sake.
He laughed. I really heard him laugh.
The laughter went on for a while, and it grew, and sort of embraced me. It’s hard to explain. It was so so real.
Daddy had a great laugh, warm and intelligent and full of compassion. His laugh was never at anyone’s expense; it always included us. When he took me for driving lessons in his eager little orange VW bug, I’d regularly stall out on this one hill on a quiet road behind the golf course and start to roll backward, feverishly trying to get back in first gear, squeaking in monkey panic:
—Ohmygodohmygodhelpohmygoddaddyhelpdaddyhelp!
He always kept his cool on that hill. He didn’t barrage me with rapid-fire instructions. He’d sit back and wait till I figured it out. And he’d laugh, like we were both having the most jolly time rolling backward down the hill by the sixth fai
rway. As if we were sharing the most wonderful joke.
That used to really piss me off.
So here we are some three decades later, Ma and I: We’re on the sun-faded dock in our matching shirts. She’ll be adjusting my jaunty straw hat from now on, and I’m working on my humility and patience. Rome’s not burning anymore, and we both really know how to laugh.
Toward the end of his life, Daddy told me he was hoping he’d be the first to die, because life would be just too dull without Ma. She kept him amused, he said.
I think I kind of know how he felt.
Sarasota, 1995
21.
Sisyphus
LIFE IS GOOD. Why can’t I enjoy it?
The apartment at the Abbey is all painted and carpeted. I’m moving Ma’s stuff in tomorrow, right after the twins head out for their Latin final. Then I’ll have a couple of weeks to make things ready before I pick her up. I’ll spend the night in Carlisle so we can get an early start in the morning, and Ma can stop briefly at the church for a big bash they’re having that weekend. The Bishop (that hottie with the long black braid and the Harry Potter sorting hat) will be there, and she doesn’t want to miss him.
David’s home right now, but he’s taking off again soon. Ma’s move to the Abbey is timed for a weekend when the boys are staying with friends at the shore (we’re not dumb enough to leave teenagers alone in the house overnight). She’d like to stay a little longer and go to a special service the following week when the Bishop’s in town, but I’ve explained this is my only free block of time. Ma offered to find a friend to drive her, but I won’t hear of it. There’s nobody else I trust to get her here safely.
—You’re very overprotective, Susie.
—This is nonnegotiable, Ma. You’re barely over the last accident. You are not going anywhere, especially that church, with anyone but me.
The other day, I realized what this two-year crisis has been like: Sisyphus. He couldn’t stand it that everyone had to die. So he went against the gods and imprisoned Death. Death escaped, because you can’t defy fate, and when it was time for Sisyphus to go to the underworld, he tried to escape as well. Sisyphus was very persistent, but the gods finally caught him and they were pissed. They decided that for all eternity, Sisyphus would have to push a rock all the way up to the top of a mountain. At the top, the rock would always roll down. So Sisyphus would have to start over. And over. And over again. A bit like those driving lessons in Daddy’s orange bug car out behind the golf course.