“Did you get the MRI results back yet?” It’s almost eight. They might wait until the morning.
“I did! And all is well. No bleeding. They say I could be discharged as soon as tomorrow.”
Great news and . . . not so great. This is exactly what I was worried about, that she’d be switched to the nursing home while I was in L.A. A month of waiting and, bing, as soon as I step on a plane they move her. Murphy’s Law.
“That’s it, I’m not going,” I decide on the spot. “I’ll call D’Ours and reschedule this taping for another time. No big—”
“Don’t be silly. Your father’s here. He can take care of me. He’s my hero avenger, you know.”
Yes, I think dully. Does he even know where the nursing home is?
Mom extends her soft, wrinkled hand and clutches mine. “He loves you, too, Julie. I know he doesn’t show it, but he’s so proud of you, of the way you’ve raised Em and kept a level head after the divorce. You should try talking to him more. He needs you.”
“Yes, Mom. I will.” I give her a squeeze.
“And, Julie? Thank you for all your hard work. You’ve helped more than I can say.”
This is so not true. I did squat. Got her a so-so nursing home for which Paul is footing the bill because, having been out of work a month, I can barely afford to pay
my
mortgage. “That’s nice of you, Mom, but I didn’t do that much. There were other places besides Riverhead I wanted to get you in and it would have been ideal if I could have swung a private nurse. Maybe if this new job works out.”
“Irrelevant,” Mom says, yawning so loud it sounds like a vacuum-sealed can being opened.
“Why is it irrelevant?”
“Trust me.”
“Okay, I trust you,” I say, relaxing slightly. The MRI is good news. Tomorrow she’ll be settled in a nursing home and begin a new course of rehab. This might work out after all.
Over the intercom comes the announcement that visiting hours are about over. “I gotta go, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says dreamily. “And don’t forget, love abides.”
Backing out of the room is hard. I don’t want to leave her and yet . . . I can’t wait to go. I’m torn between my desire to see L.A. and experience something completely different and my responsibilities to Mom and Em.
I have to remember what Em told me this afternoon: that quitting WBOS and joining up with D’Ours was actually good for her because it proved adventure didn’t end just because you were a mother and over forty. You know, I think she was sincere, even if the line did sound like it was straight out of
The Feminine Mystique.
That’s what I’m thinking about, women’s studies, as I ride the elevator to the garage floor, turn the corner, and run smack into Michael. And Carol.
Ah, yes. Miss Universe wreaks her final revenge. I knew I couldn’t leave Mom without paying a price.
“Julie! What are you doing here?” Michael says as if my being in a hospital where my elderly mother practically lives is so unexpected.
Nodding upstairs, I say, “Mom. Remember?”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. I wanted Carol to meet Betty before she left to go to the nursing home. You know how important Betty is to me and, and . . .” He’s embarrassed at being caught trying to slip in right before visiting hours ended so he could introduce Carol to Mom without bumping into me. He’s even stuttering. “I, I didn’t . . .”
Carol shifts her feet and looks awkward. I give her a friendly finger wave.
“I mean,” he says, “weren’t
you
going to L.A. tonight?”
Paul must have told him. Or, less likely, Liza. “That’s right. I am.”
Carol says, “You know what? I really need to go to the little girls’ room.”
“One floor up, to your left,” I say, directing her to the elevator, touched by her decency.
“I know what you’re thinking. It’s not what it seems,” he says.
“Oh my God, that’s like the beginning of a bad movie, Michael. Please. Don’t treat me like a child. I get that you’re playing Dr. Freud to her Dora,” I say, attempting to wedge past him.
He stops me. “Can I take you to the airport? That way we could talk. There’s so much—”
“Sorry, Michael,” I interrupt. “ ‘But love that comes too late, / Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried, / To the great sender turns a sour offence.”
“
All’s Well That Ends Well
.” He grins. “That’s a second Shakespearean reference. I’m impressed.”
He should be. I spent five hours flipping through
The Oxford Complete Works of William Shakespeare
just for a moment like this.
Now to see if all that hype about the magic of Shakespeare’s poetry is true.
When I get to the gate, I find I’m the last to board and the flight attendants give me a quick scolding.
“Under TSA guidelines,” an attendant informs me, zipping my ticket through the machine, “we’re to deny boarding to anyone who is five minutes late to the gate. In your case I’m making an exception because it’s the last plane of the day.”
“Thank you and I’m so sorry,” I say sincerely. “I was saying good-bye to my mother, who’s in the hospital.”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “That’s okay, hon. Better hurry.”
I rush to first class, where D’Ours’s people have booked me a luscious seat for the cross-country flight. It’s filled with businessmen, though, who seem none too pleased with me‚ the late boarder who’s obviously held up traffic. Then I can’t find a spot for my carry-on and nearly bump my elbow on the head of the guy in front of me when I try to squeeze my case into a tiny overheard space. It’s a total disaster.
“I’ll put this up front,” an attendant says, taking my bag. “Meanwhile, why don’t you sit down and I’ll be back to get your drink order.”
Slipping into the aisle seat, I clip on my belt and try to get comfortable. Next to me a paunchy man pretends to be sound asleep, his leg definitely trespassing into my territory. Oh, well, at least I made it. L.A., here I come. Leaning back in the leather chair and extending the footrest, I wonder, is the flight six hours or five?
The flight attendant who took my bag returns, my bag still in her grasp.
“Are you Julie Mueller?” she whispers so as not to wake the man next to me.
“Yes. Are you having trouble storing that? Because I think I can fit it under the seat in front of me.”
She wiggles her finger. “Could you come with me, please?”
Mr. Paunch wakes up and gives me the evil eye.
“Is there a problem? Because I cannot get off the plane. If I miss this flight . . .”
“It’s a phone call and it’s very important,” she whispers. “Do you mind?”
My heart leaps. It’s Michael calling to tell me not to go! I knew he wouldn’t let me leave. Though . . . it’s not exactly great timing. They’re about to close the doors. “I can’t,” I say. “I’ll miss my plane.”
“Please,” the attendant presses. “I’ll take your bag in case. Just come.”
Goddammit. Why couldn’t he have said something sooner? This is going to hold up the whole plane and everyone’s going to hate me. And didn’t the person who checked me in say this was the last flight of the day? D’Ours will be furious.
It’s stunning, frankly, that Michael can pull this maneuver, what with all the regulations these days. He must have leaned on one of his political cronies to make some calls on his behalf.
At the gate where I checked in, a flight attendant waits, holding the phone.
“Do you know if there’s another flight to L.A. tonight?” I ask. She might as well check while I’m talking to him. Why waste time? “I really need to be there by tomorrow morning.”
The flight attendant just thrusts the receiver at me and says, “Here.”
I get on and say, “Michael?”
“Is this Julie Mueller?”
It’s the voice of a strange man sounding very formal and officious. It’s not Michael at all.
I have an awful thought: not only that Michael doesn’t care whether I go to California, but that the TSA
does.
They think I’m a terrorist or something because I was the last to board the plane. That’s why they pulled me off. I’m going to be arrested and thrown in Guantánamo Bay!
“I’m Dr. Mori at Mt. Olive,” he says. “Your father suggested I try to reach you before you take off.”
Blackness circles the outer reaches of my vision. My focus seems to be limited to the white numbers on the black phone. “No,” I hear myself say. “No . . . I’ve got to go.”
“Your mother,” he tries again, “seizure . . . five minutes ago . . . I happened to be on rounds, so I was there. There was no pain. . . . It was very fast, Julie . . . I’m so sorry. She’s gone.”
Which is when I drop the phone and slump into Michael’s waiting arms.
For the next few minutes I simply survive as Michael transports me from the airport to the hospital. For the umpteenth time he recounts, at my request, how he was waiting for the elevator having just said good-bye to Mom when he heard the codes and figured out what was happening. He left Carol at the hospital and drove to Logan to find me while Mt. Olive’s personnel put in an emergency call to security so he could be there when I got the awful news. And he made it—barely.
My one relief is knowing Mom was not alone when she died. Dad was there. Michael, too. And, oddly enough, Carol. Though, for all I know, she might be the Angel of Death. I will have to investigate that later.
Dr. Mori asks if I want to see Mom before she goes down to the morgue and I say,
Mom
? That’s not my mother. My mother is elsewhere.
Isn’t she?
Michael drops me off at home and arranges to get my car from Logan. I think he kisses me on the cheek and rubs my shoulders and tells me he’s there for me at any hour, day or night. I dunno. It’s all a blur. All I know is that I have to be strong and do what Mom would want me to do: comfort Dad.
I find my father in the kitchen searching for the telephone book to call the funeral home. For some reason, he’s rummaging through the silver-ware drawer and won’t stop until I hug him, his once sturdy chest now hollow and flabby in my arms.
“Mom called you her hero avenger,” I say, trying to remember every glowing word she said about him.
“I know,” he says. “I was there. I was the last person she was with.”
As it should be. Those two always did have a special relationship with their own rules and rewards. Mom said I didn’t understand it and she was right. I didn’t and now I never will.
Dad and I stand there hugging silently and I’m surprised to feel this man of steel and concrete who’s spent a lifetime in construction bear his weight against me. But then it hits me: This is how it’s going to be from now on. My mother’s not here to carry him. It’ll have to be me.
“You sit down and have a cup of tea,” I say, taking him to the couch. “Michael called Paul and he’s on his way from New York. We’ll take care of everything. I’ll call Teenie.” Who is probably by the phone waiting and ready, I suspect.
“There are papers in the freezer,” he says. “There’ll be instructions on her arrangements and who should get her jewelry.”
“The freezer?”
“In case there was a fire. Your mother had a theory the freezer would protect them from getting burned.”
Freezer burn, I think as I pick past the bags of frozen corn and peas, the almost empty carton of Hershey’s chocolate chip. (Mom never could abide the teeny Ben & Jerry’s tubs for $4.49.) There, behind the ice trays, among the many frozen leftovers and frosty bags of chicken parts, behind a roll of her famous icebox cake, is a double Ziploc bag containing folded white papers, an antique diamond pendant that was Nana’s, and—lo and behold—a velvet box containing a pair of sapphire and pearl earrings marked as once belonging to Aunt Charlotte.
Now for Em.
I freeze—literally—my hand on the earrings Mom had “seen” in the hospital gift shop. Aunt Charlotte. Was Mom
really
talking to Aunt Charlotte? Charlotte didn’t want her to go to Riverhead. Charlotte wanted Mom to be with
her
.
“Find ’em?” Dad calls out.
“Found them.”
I pull out the bag and read the label that could have easily been for MONDAY’S CASSEROLE or LAST SUMMER’S BEANS. In my mother’s careful handwriting it is:
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
OF
ELIZABETH HENDRICKS MUELLER
And so it begins.
A take-charge energy comes over me in the days following. I am Miss Efficiency signing permission slips left and right to have my mother’s body moved from one floor to another, to have the Eisenhower Bros., Inc., pick it up and cremate her remains.
While holding Em, whose sobs rack through my body, rippling against my ribs, I plan the funeral from first reading to exit hymn. A service Friday morning at Our Lady of Miracles with a reception afterward in the Parish House. Lois and Teenie can arrange the food. I’ll make the dessert. All of it.
“How come you’re not crying?” Em asks. “I can’t stop. I miss her so much. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“She’s not gone. She’s right here.” I tap my heart. “There.”
Though, really, it’s more like she’s in my head nagging me to call my cousin Karen in Texas and tossing out half my menu suggestions. Already she’s nixed the banana pudding as too hot for this weather. Why not use the icebox cake in the freezer? Better eat it up now, she tells me, before it goes stale.
With Paul by my side, his arm securely around me, we go to Eisenhower Bros. and retrieve the urn of Mom’s ashes and yet another Ziploc bag, this one with her smooth platinum wedding band and worn diamond engagement ring. I want to clasp them to my chest and never let them go. But I don’t. I hand them to my brother. He is her child, too, and she loved him with all her might.
“If you give them to Scooter,” I tell him in a mafioso way, “I will break your legs.”
He shakes the rings onto his palm. “I remember being sick and sitting in her lap, playing with these.” He coughs and looks away. “It’s my earliest memory. I can still smell that perfume of hers.”