Postcards From Last Summer

by Roz Bailey

  88

  Lindsay

  For me, the month of August came to be measured by progress in reading my manuscript to Ma. Forty pages was a good day, sixty sensational. Twenty had to suffice on a day when Ma needed pain meds, an increasing event now that the tumor had grown. “It’s very likely the tumor has created a blockage in the bowels,” said Willow, a pear-shaped rented nurse who seemed to match her name with her wooden clogs and wiry gold hair down to her waist. “That’s going to be causing you a lot of pain. Dr. Garber says I can increase your pain medication, if you like.”

  “Day by day,” Ma had answered, pressing her eyes closed as Willow helped her shift positions in the bed. There was to be no more surgery, no talk of stents or chemotherapy. Even the drug trial was over for Mary Grace McCorkle. “I want to go with dignity, at home,” she told anyone who cared to listen. “I’ll not linger on, a bag of bones in some cold hospital.” I understood my mother’s decision and, though I respected it, watching the inevitable unfold wasn’t easy.

  By the third week in August, we were a mere fifty pages from the end of my manuscript. I went to bed that night with a promise to read more in the morning, and Ma flipped from Jay to Dave and back, looking for some comic relief in the night. “Are you okay, Ma?” I asked the question I seemed to repeat a million times a day. “Are you okay? Are you hot? Are you cold? Do you need juice? Are you hungry? Do you need the bedpan?”

  “I’m fine, dear,” Ma said, pushing a smile. “You sleep well.”

  But up in the dark attic, I fell into a deep sleep that led to a nightmare I couldn’t escape. Despite the dream’s surreal quality, its choppy sense of reality, I was unable to pull myself out of it, unable to run fast enough from the towering tidal wave that loomed over me, unable to dig fast enough in the mound of sand that had covered the people on the beach.

  I bolted up with a screech, unable to shake the image of the impossible mound of sand despite the watery moonlight of my bedroom. My brain seemed to throb in my head as I threw back the covers and padded downstairs to the porch, where black-and-white images of soldiers in WWII tanks flashed on the television. Ma’s eyes were closed, her breathing steady. I clicked off the television and turned to leave.

  “You can leave it on,” my mother said. “I was just resting my eyes.”

  It was an old family joke, something my grandfather had started when he fell asleep reading the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons. “Just resting my eyes . . .”

  “I had a bad dream,” I admitted, my hands still trembling. “A whopping nightmare.”

  “Come here, lovey.” Ma curled to one side of the bed and patted the mattress beside her.

  “It was awful,” I said, lowering myself to the crisp white sheets of the hospital bed.

  “What happened in the dream?” Ma asked, running her hand over my arm soothingly.

  “I dreamed there was a huge, towering tidal wave coming. You and I were on the beach together, and we just stood there, frozen in a panic as this monster wave arched over us. People were screaming, and I got toppled by the water. And when the wave receded, there was just this mound of sand beside me, and I knew you were under there, and I just kept digging, but . . . but . . .”

  “Shh.” Ma stroked my hair, pressing my face into the white sheets as I sobbed. “It was just a dream.”

  “I was in such a panic,” I said, remembering the sensation of tearing into the sand with my bare fingers. The panic and fear, the helplessness.

  “It’s okay, lovey. Let your problems fall away, sand through your fingers.”

  My mother had used the sifting sand metaphor many times before, but tonight it brought back the horror of the dream again, the digging and scraping to unearth her. In the dream I needed to save my mother from death, and yet my conscious mind reminded me that her last days were inevitably near.

  “Ma?” I swiped at my tears and lifted my head. Ma’s skin was pale, with dark half moons under watery brown eyes that once had burned with such energy. “Are you scared?”

  “What would I be afraid of? An end to the pain? Eternal rest? An all-expense-paid trip to heaven?” Mary Grace drew in a tired breath. “I’m so exhausted, weary to the bone, any kind of rest would be a blessing. I’ve had a good life, Lindsay. Thank the Lord, I’m not leaving anyone in the lurch if I exit the planet soon. I wouldn’t mind doing more, but my body is simply not cooperating, so I guess that will all have to be saved for my sequel in heaven.”

  Ma made it all sound so lyrical, like an old Irish poem.

  “Do we need to have a night nurse for you?” I asked, latching onto the only tangible thing I could control. “Is the pain getting worse?”

  “The nights are long, but I don’t want to go all loopy with the drugs. It’s tolerable for now. But since we’re both not likely to find sleep anytime soon, why don’t you read some more for me? If you don’t mind. When you read it to me, I find it’s an effective diversion. A lovely distraction.”

  “How’s that for a cover quote . . .” I slid out of bed and pressed the shoulder of my T-shirt to my damp eyes. “Critics call it ‘a lovely distraction!’ ”

  “I’m no critic,” Ma chirped. “I’m your mother, and I’ve always known you’d be a writer some day. I’m very proud, lovey.”

  “Thanks, Ma.” Trying not to blush, I took a deep breath as I removed the rubber band from the manuscript and flipped ahead. Just two and a half chapters left. We might just finish, after all.

  89

  Darcy

  When the phone beeped just before four in the morning, Darcy knew.

  With a sick feeling twisting her stomach, she sat up in bed with her eyes closed and felt her way to the receiver, hoping to catch it before Maisy was awakened. “Hello?”

  “She’s gone,” Elle said in a warbly voice.

  “Oh.” Darcy’s voice fell in the dark stillness of her bedroom. She pushed her pillow against the headboard and crossed her legs. “We all knew it was coming, but somehow it’s still a shock, isn’t it?”

  “It’s true.” Elle seemed hesitant. “Darcy, I know your show just opened, but you gotta find a way to get out here. The wake’s going to be at the house. The funeral at the Catholic church in Southampton.”

  “Of course I’ll get there,” Darcy said, alarmed that Elle would think otherwise. It was the third week in August, and it would be hell getting away from the show, with so many sold-out nights, but some things just stopped you in your tracks. “Why wouldn’t I be there?”

  “Oh, you know . . .” Elle said vaguely.

  Darcy wondered if Elle was thinking of the distance that had grown between Darcy and Lindsay of late, the separation Darcy had nurtured out of guilt over Noah. Damn him! Darcy had vowed never to let a man get in the way of her relationship with a friend, and somehow, without even trying, Noah had pushed her and Lindsay apart.

  “How’s Lindsay holding up?” Darcy asked.

  “It’s hard for her,” Elle said quietly. “It’s a big loss, but also a relief. Nobody wanted to see Mary Grace in that much pain.”

  “She did so much for her mom,” Darcy said, thinking of the last time she’d seen Mary Grace, just weeks ago when she’d been able to walk and laugh and cajole Maisy. Somehow the conversation had gotten to the ingredients of a good marriage, and Darcy had asked Mrs. Mick how she’d made her marriage work for twenty-plus years. “Was it your good cooking that kept Mr. Mick in the game? Those yummy Irish meatballs?” Darcy had asked. But Mary Grace shook her head. “When we got hitched, I couldn’t even boil an egg! That’s how pathetic I was in the kitchen.” “So what was the secret to keeping it all together?” Darcy had asked her. After giving it some thought, Lindsay’s mom had answered, “It’s all about kindness. Be kind to others, that’s all. Oh . . . and I should add, never wear blue eye shadow.”

  How long ago had that been? Just two or three months. And though the doctors had warned that pancreatic cancer often moved swiftly, Darcy hadn’t really believed them. Perhaps t
he only one who really got it was Mary Grace herself, brave, bold Mrs. Mick.

  “Can you tell Noah?” Elle asked, bringing Darcy back to her dark bedroom. “Lindsay doesn’t want to talk to him, but I think he should know, don’t you?”

  Darcy turned on her bedside lamp and drew away from the circle of yellow light. “I don’t get why she doesn’t want to tell him. Did they have a fight?”

  Elle was silent, then she blurted out, “You don’t know? They broke up, weeks ago. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Well, no. We don’t talk usually about personal stuff.” Darcy wasn’t surprised that Noah hadn’t mentioned anything, but what about Lindsay? Wasn’t this something worth telling your best friend?

  “Wait a minute! That’s a royal waste of time,” Elle said. “So you two haven’t . . . I don’t believe this.”

  “You two, who two?” Darcy asked as Maisy plodded into her room like a wraith in a flowered nightgown. She dove onto the bed and pressed her face into Darcy’s thigh. “No, I haven’t talked to Lindsay for at least a week, but she never mentioned this. What happened?”

  Elle groaned. “I can’t really go through it now—I’ve got these phone calls to make about Mary Grace.”

  “And I’ve got Maisy here now.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Elle said. “But you’ll tell Noah, right?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Darcy said, clicking off the phone with a feeling of dread. She didn’t mind telling Noah; the difficult one would be Maisy. Six years old and she’d now lost the only person who’d ever been a grandparent to her. Darcy felt a tear sting her eyes and she found herself wishing she could spare her daughter this pain.

  “Mommy?” Maisy moaned without lifting her head. “Who was that?”

  “It was Aunt Elle about Grandma Mick.” Your only grandparent, Darcy thought. A gift to both of us.

  Maisy lifted her head. “Did she die?”

  Darcy nodded, then pulled her tearful child into her arms. Please, let me be half the mother that Mary Grace was, she prayed. Darcy could only hope that some of the older woman’s generosity and kindness and goodness had rubbed off on her.

  90

  Lindsay

  I stood on the threshold of the porch door, signing the truck driver’s voucher. The man and his crew had loaded our rented hospital bed into their truck, and now the screened porch of the Southampton house looked hollow and empty, like the gaping hole in my heart. “You’ll heal in time,” my mother had promised before she went. “We all do. Adapt or die—it’s our only choice.”

  I’m just getting a little sick of adapting to disappointment, I thought as I tore off my receipt and handed the mover his clipboard and a tip. “Thank you,” I said, glad to have yet another onerous task off my list.

  When I turned away from the door, Tara was already on the porch, sweeping sand and dust bunnies into a pile. She and Steve had arrived two nights ago and were still struggling with the time change. “You know, Linds, you’re brave to have the wake here at the house. In a few hours you’re going to have more than a hundred people streaming through here.”

  “That was what Ma wanted,” I said, sliding one of the porch chairs out of its corner so Tara could sweep. “All the grandchildren and neighbors and friends. A good old Irish wake, she called it. She didn’t want her grandchildren creeped out by having to go into a funeral home with bodies lying about in coffins. Ma always believed you’ve got to feed the grieving, and a little drink doesn’t hurt, either.”

  “Looks like there’ll be plenty of both,” Tara said, brushing the debris into a dustpan. “Your neighbor Nancy recruited all her friends to cook, and the Red Hatters are coming with desserts, I hear.”

  “Which just leaves booze.” I hugged myself. I had volunteered my brothers from upstate. “Think the brothers can handle it?”

  “The McCorkle brothers?” Tara tossed her head. “They know their way around a bar. It’ll be fine.”

  As Tara dumped the dust into the kitchen trash, I found the woven India print mat in the closet and lugged it out. “This will help fill the space on the porch,” I said.

  “And we can open up the table and push it toward the center of the room,” Tara said as Steve joined us, his hair wet and fresh from the shower.

  “Help us with this stuff, will ya, sweetie?” Tara asked, and he hoisted the heavy mat onto one shoulder.

  As we worked, Tara asked about my book. “I’m glad it happened while Mary Grace was still alive to see it,” Tara said. “But I have to tell you, it makes me nervous to think that my life is going to be on display for the world. I still hate the way my father plays to cameras.”

  “I’ll get you a copy of the galleys to read,” I said. “Trust me, I didn’t give up anything personal,” I added, hoping it wasn’t a lie. Had I gone over the line? Had I revealed any personal secrets of Tara’s? At the moment, my brain felt too compressed to recall my own story.

  “Did Mom get to read it?” Steve asked.

  “Her eyesight was going, so I read it to her,” I said. “We finished two days before she died, and let me tell you, I was reading fast in the end. Calida, the hospice worker, had warned us that Ma was going into systemic failure. I wanted to finish before she slipped out of consciousness.”

  “That’s speed-reading for you,” Steve said, with a laugh.

  I laughed along, but my giggles quickly turned to sobs. “I just wanted to finish,” I said, recalling my mother’s approving smile as I sat at her bedside reading.

  “Aw, Linds . . .” Tara touched my back gently, and Steve swept me up into a bear hug.

  “It’s okay to cry,” he said. “You did it all. You did everything for her in the end, and we’re all grateful for that.”

  I let myself cry on his shoulder, thinking that the tears would subside one of these days, that it would be time to move on with my life, a thought that truly terrified me. I wanted to tell Tara and Steve that I’d just lost my mother and my boyfriend and maybe my job, and I wasn’t really sure how to start rebuilding my life.

  Instead, I could only manage, “I’m going to miss her.”

  With a rigorous crying jag behind me, I felt ready to face the mourners two hours later with a glaze of peace and good humor. I bounded down the stairs, surprised to find Darcy Love helping my brother Tim McCorkle set up a drinks table in the dining room.

  It was difficult to look at Darcy, her skin gleaming and blond hair sparkling as if she had glitter in her genetics. Even in a black tank dress, she looked stunning. Gorgeous as always, while I had given up trying to cover up the red blotches that always appeared around my eyes when I cried.

  “Hey, you.” Darcy stepped up to the stairs and waited as I slowed at the landing. “I was hoping we’d have a chance to talk before the masses arrive.”

  “Looks like the first wave is here,” I said, scanning the downstairs. “That’s just the McCorkle family, though I think our numbers rival a small army. I’m trying to avoid my sister-in-law Ashley, who seems to think we pulled a Kevorkian on Ma.”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. “There’s one in every family.”

  “I think she’s in the kitchen.” I nodded toward the front door. “Let’s get out of here before they make us serve ziti or hand out mass cards.”

  Outside, we wound around the house and found a shady spot in the garden near the shed. The old stone table held half a crate of impatiens, their stalks leggy and yellow, bending to withering pink buds. “Ma never finished with these,” I said haltingly.

  Turning toward the shed, Darcy disappeared and returned with a pair of potter’s gloves, empty pails, and two spades. “There’s some potting soil in the shed. Here, I’ll be lefty,” she said, tossing me the right glove.

  “So, Martha Stewart, besides repotting impatiens, what’s on your mind?” I asked.

  “I know this might sound self-centered,” Darcy began.

  “Who, you? Self-centered?” I gasped with mock surprise.

  “However,” Darcy continued,
“I keep thinking back to that summer when my life was falling apart. I mean, my parents are still alive and healthy, but my father was going off to jail and my mother went off to a younger man and a very different life that didn’t include me. And we were losing the beach house. And the Visa card. And all the status. There wasn’t enough money to finish college, my boyfriend was marching off to fight fires, and then I found out I was pregnant. Remember how I cried in my salad?”

  I shook a plant loose from its plastic container, recalling those days well. “You were so freaked about your father’s reaction to the pregnancy,” I said. “And remember what Tara said? ‘The man’s in the big house for fraud; do you think morality is actually high on his list?’ ”

  Darcy smiled, a dimple showing on one side. “I was such a mess. But you guys pulled me out of it. You gave me a place to live. Your mom helped me so much with Maisy. Elle loaned me the money to finish school. And then she bought the damned Love Mansion and turned it into our summer spa.” Darcy swiped a strand of hair out of her eyes as she pressed a flower into its new pot. “You guys saved my life. And I know this is different for you, but I want you to know I’m here to help, in any way.”

  “I think I know that.” Slowly, I tapped the spade against the table to remove some dried dirt. “But I have to admit, I was pissed at you for a while.” I caught Darcy’s eye. “The Noah thing.”

  Darcy shook her head. “I am so sorry.” When I waved her off, Darcy lunged forward and grabbed my arm with a soiled glove. “I mean it. I never went after him. Whatever developed between us, it just happened. Sort of work related.”

  “I felt so stupid when I had it pointed out to me. I didn’t see what was going on before my own eyes.”

  “But nothing was going on,” Darcy insisted, slamming a spade against the stone table. “And I was guilt ridden just because of what I was thinking about him.”

  With a deep breath, I looked down at the spade in Darcy’s hand. “I think you’ve knocked that one clean, Darce.”

  She let the spade drop onto the table. “Are you still mad?”