The Eyes Have It

by L. M. Reed

  ~ * * ~

  The days following Elsee’s death were nightmarish. The autopsy showed that she had died of a massive stroke and most likely hadn’t suffered. I was glad for that, I hated to think of her scared, alone, and in pain unable to call for help.

  We had constant visitors in and out while people brought so much food we had trouble fitting it all in our refrigerator.

  Even with the massive amounts of constant traffic, the big house felt empty. I already missed Elsee so much it was a constant ache inside of me. James walked around holding Mark, looking shell-shocked, attempting to smile and mingle with people, but failing miserably. I determinedly plastered a smile and tons of makeup on my face to hide my grief, always the perfect hostess, in order to make people feel comfortable.

  If it had been up to James I wouldn’t have ever seen Elsee’s body, but I knew it was something I needed to do in order to truly accept the fact that she was gone.

  We scheduled the visitation from six to eight the evening before the funeral, and James and I were to be there by five in order to see her before anyone else.

  I couldn’t speak all the way to the funeral home, unable to do anything other than stare out the window at the passing scenery. James drove and kept Mark occupied at the same time by playing an ‘I spy’ game. He was worried about me, I could feel his gaze resting on me periodically, but I could do nothing to reassure him…the nervous dread in my stomach keeping me uncharacteristically silent.

  For days, I had been able to fool myself into believing that Elsee was just away for a while, but I knew that in less than a half hour the thin grasp I had on my self-control would slip completely and I wasn’t sure how I would handle it.

  James parked the car and turned toward me, uncertain what to say. We hadn’t talked much, only to Mark, each realizing that anything we said might cause the other to break down completely, knowing we had to hold it together through the funeral.

  “It’s time,” he said, finally.

  I nodded.

  While he unbuckled Mark from his car seat I got out and stood on the sidewalk taking deep breaths, trying to prepare myself for the ordeal ahead, all the while ironically realizing there was nothing in the world that could even remotely prepare me for what I was about to face.

  James came around the car carrying Mark and took my hand in his, gripping it tightly. Slowly, reluctantly we walked towards the entrance of the funeral home.

  I can’t do this…I can’t do this, I panicked silently. This can’t be happening…Elsee can’t be lying in there, dead, gone forever. How do we go on, never seeing her smile, hearing her voice, feeling her hugs? I can’t do this!

  Desperately my eyes searched for and found James’ as we reached the door. I could see my emotions reflected there in his eyes, on his face. Life would be so empty without Elsee in it, but we had each other, and we had Mark and the new baby, a baby girl. My free hand involuntarily moved to touch where the baby kicked at that exact moment letting us know she was still in there, waiting to enter the world.

  A small smile touched James’ lips, the first genuine smile I had seen on his face since that tragic morning when he had discovered his mother lying dead on the floor in her bedroom. I squeezed his hand reassuringly and returned his smile with one of my own as the doors opened and the funeral director solemnly greeted us.

  As he escorted us to the room where Elsee lay, I felt myself begin to shake. I couldn’t control it. My whole body had gone cold. James released my hand and put his arm around my shoulders protectively…as if to shield me…and the gesture was so typically James that some measure of warmth seemed to return to my skin.

  I stopped abruptly inside the door, able to see just enough of Elsee’s face over the side of the casket to recognize her. I felt a lump rising suddenly in my throat and I couldn’t breathe. The tears, which had been threatening all day, blurred my vision and spilled over, a steady stream down my cheeks.

  “You don’t have to do this,” James murmured softly in my ear.

  “I…do…” I managed to whisper.

  I took a couple of steps forward until I could see her better. The unfairness of it all suddenly swamped me.

  This can’t be right. I anguished silently. You can’t be gone for good. There’s been some mistake.

  Come back, I begged pitifully. We need you. I need you. Please don’t leave us.

  Without volition, I found myself standing next to Elsee’s body, sobbing. Her hair was all wrong. Digging a comb out of my purse, tears streaming from my eyes, I pulled a few tendrils out of the front of the perfectly ratted hair to give her the bangs she always wore. She had a high forehead and never liked it to show thinking it made her look like she was going bald.

  Stuffing the comb back into my bag, I reached down to touch her face, her hands, but there was nothing except coldness…no trace left of the warmth that Elsee had always embodied anywhere. I unnecessarily straightened her clothes, trying to busy myself with something in order not to think about what was happening.

  Everything felt so surreal. Nothing about it was right. How could she be there one minute and so completely gone the next? I couldn’t seem to grasp the finality of her death. Any minute she was going to sit up and smile her warm smile, telling me it was all a mistake, she wasn’t gone, she’d only been sleeping.

  Yet there she lay, pale and unmoving, not breathing, her essence absent as if it had never been. But she had been, and in my mind still was. I tried to wrap my brain around the fact that I would never see, hear, or feel her again, but it was too much for me to process.

  I could feel a type of numbness overtaking me. In a way, it was a relief and I hoped the numbness would stay with me through the next twenty-four hours, helping me to deal with all of the people that were sure to stream through the funeral home during the visitation and the funeral scheduled for the next day.

  Resignedly reaching into the pocket of my maternity blouse, I grasped the two small metal objects there and brought them out to examine…such small things, but what a big impact on all of us. My lower lip trembled as I smiled recalling how nervous I had been asking Elsee if I could give her a ride home that first day, the day we met, not realizing how life changing that one ride would be.

  Ever so gently I opened the pocket of Elsee’s ‘best suit’ and tucked one of the yarn threaders deep into the recesses where it would stay forever as my final earthly ‘goodbye’ to Elsee, just as they had been our first ‘hello’ so many years ago. I put the other one back into my own pocket linking us together, always a reminder that I would see her again someday.

  I knew she would be happy in heaven with Michael and Marcus and my little baby Richard, she would be so glad to meet Richard for the first time, waiting for the moment when the rest of us would join them and I was determined that we would join them when the time was right. She had made a believer out of me just as Marcus had made a believer out of her during their all-too-short marriage.

  There had to be a heaven, a place where we would all meet to be together forever, never having to say goodbye again. Goodbyes were too painful, too…final, but I couldn’t accept that Elsee’s death was final. There had to be more. I would hold onto the faith Elsee had instilled in me, the faith that assured me of the existence of heaven, knowing she was there and I would see her again and meet my son Richard and James’ father and brother and Hannah…Hannah would be there to welcome me.

  Turning to James, I silently took a subdued Mark out of his arms and set him on the ground. James had allowed me my time to be alone with Elsee…it was his turn.

  “Gramsee,” Mark demanded, reaching for Elsee. “I want Gramsee.”

  “I do, too,” I whispered brokenly. “I do, too.”

  Taking Mark by the hand I firmly led him out into the large sitting area.

  Epilogue

  “I believe the little one is hungry,” the nurse said as she pushed the baby int
o the room. “She’s got an absolutely powerful set of lungs on her.”

  Smiling in agreement, I took my baby girl from her and positioned her in my arms so she could nurse.

  “I can see you’re an old pro at that,” the nurse said in satisfaction. “You must have nursed your other little one. He is absolutely precious; he looks so much like you.”

  Once again, I smiled, not saying anything.

  “This one looks more like her daddy,” she continued, needing no encouragement. “He is an absolute hunk. You have an absolutely beautiful family.”

  That’s four, I counted to myself, wondering in exasperation how many more times she would use the word ‘absolutely’ before leaving me in peace. She was a nice enough woman, but had been an ‘absolute’ annoyance all morning when I wanted nothing more than to be left alone with my baby and my thoughts until James and Mark returned.

  “Is there anything else you need before I leave?” she asked solicitously.

  “No thanks, I’m good,” I spoke for the first time since she’d entered.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  I stifled my laugh as I silently added one more ‘absolutely’ to the count.

  “Positively sure,” I replied in the faint hope she might take the hint and switch up her vocabulary a tad.

  “Alrighty then, I’ll just leave you and the baby to bond,” she winked at me. At the door, she stopped and turned back as if she’d just remembered something. “Oh, by the way, we need the baby’s name. Have you decided yet?”

  James and I had decided on Mary Catherine, his grandmother’s name, but all of a sudden, I couldn’t…it just didn’t feel right. I looked down at the sweet bundle in my arms, so much like Elsee, and I knew exactly what I had to do.

  “Elsee Caitrin Wilson,” I answered firmly.

  “Are you sure you want to name a child Elsee?” the nurse asked doubtfully.

  “Absolutely,” I answered, gently mocking her.

  “If you say so,” she said skeptically. “Could you write it down so we get the correct spelling?”

  I could tell by her face and voice she didn’t believe any spelling of that name would help, but was determined to remain polite.

  “Absolutely,” I knew she would truly begin to question my sanity if I allowed myself to cackle so I resolutely reined in my somewhat warped sense of humor, something I had picked up from living with James, and managed to arrange my face into a suitably solemn expression.

  I wrote the name down on a piece of paper and sent the nurse on her way. As soon as she closed the door, I burst out into gales of laughter, the first genuine amusement I had felt since Elsee’s death. I was still chuckling when James walked in with Mark.

  “Care to share the joke?” James asked, obviously relieved to see me in better spirits.

  “I think the nurse may be ordering me a straight jacket,” I said gravely.

  “I see,” he pretended to ponder that for a moment. “I will probably regret asking this but…why?”

  “She needed to know the name of our new baby girl,” I replied nonchalantly. “So I gave it to her.”

  “What name did you give her?” he asked suspiciously. “I don’t have a daughter named Minnie Mouse do I?”

  “No,” I laughed at the look on his face. “I’ve been feeling…not quite right…about the name Mary Catherine, but I couldn’t figure out why. When the nurse asked me what we were going to name her, I looked at her and saw your mother. It was just…right somehow.”

  “You named her after Mom,” he said softly.

  “I had to,” my eyes pleaded with him to understand.

  “You know people will call her Elsie the cow,” he reminded me gently of the night we met.

  “We aren’t going to call her Elsee, that was your mom’s name just like Marcus was your dad’s name, and it wouldn’t feel right.”

  “So we call her Caitrin?”

  “No, we will call her CeeCee,” I stated firmly.

  “Where did you come up with that?”

  “I got the idea from the way your mom always signed her name and what Mark called her,” I explained excitedly, “Elsee C. Wilson and Gramsee. It’s a combination of the last syllable of her first name and the first letter of her second name. CeeCee,” I finished triumphantly.

  “CeeCee,” James repeated thoughtfully. “I like it. CeeCee it is.”

  Tossing Mark up on the bed with me so he could have his ‘Mommy time’, James gently took CeeCee from me in order to burp her, searching her face thoroughly.

  “So, CeeCee, how do you like your name?” he asked lightly.

  I hoped the answering belch wasn’t an omen.

  The End

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