Court of the Myrtles (12 page)

“You already said that.”

Alice squats down and rests her head in her hands rested on her knees. She exhales deeply and looks up at me. “The plan is to live out our life as intended, whether it's three more months or thirty more years.”

I hear regrets in Alice's voice that I've never heard before. “Look, Alice, I didn't expect you to say it's okay for me to shoot myself or overdose on a bottle of pills…”

“Well, you can if you want,” she says standing back up and motioning for me to move before she turns on the hose. “But let's go on that whale watch just in case she's there. I mean, what the hell?”

“Fine,” I answer impulsively. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Why not? Sure. Yes. I'll join you. But I have to warn you…”

“What?” I say anticipating one of her usual crazy observances.

“I get seasick. I may spend the entire time with my head hung over the railing.”

“Vomiting?”

Alice nods sheepishly.

“Oh, Christ,” I say letting a small smile loose. “Are you going to cause a scene?”

“I'm hoping the whale will show up and do that for me.” She winks.

“Don't make me laugh. I'm supposed to be angry, in despair, remember?”

“Blah, blah, blah….” Alice is ignoring me now, releasing the lever on the water spray.

“Oh no, not again.” She aims a full-force spray at me. I attempt to dodge it, hands at my face in surrender, “What are you, like
twelve
?”

“Young at heart, kid, young at heart.”

It was 5 p.m. sharp at Sam's Beauty Bonanza. I had been closing up shop when the phone rang and a voice on the other end of the line said, “This is Officer White down at Police headquarters. I'm looking for a Marla…”

“Yes, yes, this is Marla,” I interrupted.

“Mother named Rosie?”

“Yes.”

He dove right in: “Marla, I'm sorry to inform you…”

Stop all the clocks of the world. Grandpa's cuckoo clocks, too. Cease counting every second. Five o'clock precisely, my entire world stopped ticking.

Arriving at the emergency room was a blur. Not that it mattered because it was too late. She was gone. The nurses tried to calm me, but I thrashed, kicked and screamed like a madwoman. Then, for a split second, I turned almost sane again, realizing my outbursts would change nothing, before crumbling to the floor. The officers supported both my arms and practically dragged me to the room where I would identify my mom's body.

I saw her for the last time lying on a cold metal table. Her life was gone. I don't just mean she was dead, I mean the force of life in her had gone. Her twinkling brown eyes were closed shut and a tinge of grey crept over her usual creamy complexion.

Seconds later I collapsed against the morgue wall. I screamed one loud howl. My best friend, Julia later told me that as she listened from the corridor—the only person I could call “next of kin”—when she begged the security guard to let her in.

When the story hit the evening news, Eddy phoned my house repeatedly, leaving long, tearful messages. But I never picked up. I watched through the drawn draperies as mourners left bouquets of flowers and notes on our porch, in memory of all she had done for our community. A white minivan pulled up, too. I didn't recognize whoever was inside, but they blared John Lennon's “Imagine.” I don't know who they were but I thought it was so kind to show their sympathy in their own sweet way.

I asked the policeman to take me to the scene of the crime. It was important for me to see that this was real, to know exactly where my beloved mother was standing in the final moments of her life, as though details would make up for the fact that I wasn't there.

Yellow plastic tape wound across the pavement. Lifting it up over my head, I made my way to the smears on the sidewalk otherwise covered by chewing gum stains and litter. I saw the red marks turned to streaks of brown, reached out with my fingers to touch her blood. Sticky. I brought my finger to my nose, inhaling the last of my mother, my best friend, my other half. And then nothing else mattered.

Pregnant Joy waddled breathlessly to the ringing receiver. She answered with ironic surprise—“Hello, Mother.”

“Very funny,” said Alice. “How do you know it's me?”

“Because you're the only person who calls at 9 a.m. every day like clockwork. That's how.”

“Is this a bad time? Shall I call later?”

“No, its fine,” said Joy, pulling up a chair and motioning for her cleaning lady to move the vacuum into the next room so that she could hear herself speak. “Scotty took the day off to golf at the country club. Make them happy. He doesn't even swing a club.”

“With who?”

“His parents.”

“I see,” said Alice, trying to comprehend the kind of lifestyle that allows one to have a day off in the middle of the week. “And he didn't invite you?”

“No, I don't golf, remember. Plus I'd be on my feet all day, so…”

“Well, how are you? How are you feeling?”

“Same as I was
yesterday
when we spoke, Mother.”

“Well, I'll let you go…”

“But Scotty's not.”

“Not what?”

“Feeling fine.”

“What's the matter with your husband?” asked Alice.

“He's still having weird symptoms.”

“The headaches?”

“Yes, still, but losing more weight, a lot of fatigue. He did what you said and went to a doctor who ran a series of tests. We're waiting for the results.”

“He's just run down. I remember being married to a young rookie officer trying to prove himself at the squad. Those old-timers work the rookies senseless. Well, if it's serious, you'll let me know.”

“Of course I will,” said Joy. “But you know you'll call tomorrow anyway.”

Joy's sarcasm caught Alice off guard. For the first time Alice could hear herself in her daughter's voice. History repeating itself. That vague, distant, fed-up person she'd been to Joy was now giving her a taste of her own medicine. “Okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow, then. Maybe I'll take the train to see you next weekend.”

“Maybe,” said Joy, non-committal. “It's a little crazy these days with Scotty's sister's wedding, Scotty being best man and all…”

“Well, so long as you and the baby are healthy.”

But they weren't. It was bad. No, it was a nightmare. Joy stared at the doctor who repeated the news again with a longer explanation this time. “The initial phases of HIV infection occur briefly, usually a month or two after exposure. The doctor sat behind the safety of his desk. Scotty and Joy sat across from him, startled, hands clasped together tightly, watching the doctor's mouth moving robotically as their minds failed to process the news fast enough. The only thing they could do was nod. “Then you understand that you'll need to be tested too, Joy,” said the doctor. “I'm sorry, Scott.”

“But I'm pregnant!” Joy blurted out.

“This is crazy!” said Scott.

“We're married!” said Joy.

“Marriage doesn't incubate you from the virus. Failure to diagnose could harm the fetus.” A moment more to analyze his news. The doctor had been well versed in delivering information his patients didn't want to hear.

Joy knew that the worst of it was that this newly discovered virus could kill all three of them, but she couldn't bring herself to look over into her husband's face.

She imagined what he must be thinking as he put the pieces of the puzzle together. Scotty gently pulled his hand away from hers as he replayed the accident in his mind. The victim he dragged to safety from behind the convenient store counter after the hold-up. The victim who was bleeding like a gusher as Scotty tried to tourniquet the blood on his arm, his chest, oozing out everywhere until it splattered on Scotty's face and he wiped his own eye with a bloodied hand. It was then he must have contracted AIDS from the victim.

Weeks later he began to feel strange. Suddenly fatigued, vomiting violently, feverish, headaches. Now it all made sense.

Alice sat in the rocker of the newly decorated nursery in disbelief while Joy folded a stack of freshly washed receiving blankets on her protruding belly. “I just lost all my baby fat, and now I have, well, baby fat,” she chuckled for a moment before her laughter turned to tears. Alice leaped up from the rocker and moved to her daughter's side. “We just had the baby shower,” said Joy whimpering. “I was planning her little layette—getting her little room ready. What if Scotty doesn't live to see her? What if he's not there for the birth? What if a million things?”

“I know, Joy,” said Alice, incapable of saying much more.

“What are the chances that the victim's blood was contaminated with HIV? Huh? What are the chances? Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe the test results were somebody else's, right? It's not fair!”

“Life is never fair,” said Alice, grasping tightly to the back of the rocker for support, her worst nightmare coming true. It's one thing to lose your daughter to Philadelphia but to lose your daughter and your unborn granddaughter was unthinkable. And it's not as if Joy had been doing anything wrong to deserve this illness. Like one of those cancers that comes from choosing to smoke. Or driving drunk and winding up wrapped around a tree trunk. Alice sighed. Nobody deserved to end up with cancer or to wind up dead, but some people made choices—they picked up that packet of cigarettes, or they downed that last tequila slammer—but what was happening to Joy was truly random, a one-in-a-million piece of bad luck.

“Mom,” said Joy. “Did you hear me?”

“What, honey? I'm sorry, I was thinking about something.”

“How did you handle it when Daddy was shot?”

“As well as could be expected, I guess. Your father was a hero.”

“Yes, he was. We have already lost one policeman in our lives. I lost my father; you lost a husband. Now God is going to take my husband too? How many fucking heroes does God need?”

“I'll move in with you,” said Alice, moving toward her daughter and taking her hand in hers.

“It's okay,” Joy shrugged her off. “We'll get a nanny.”

“But she's not the baby's grandmother!” Alice stepped back knocking over a pile of Little Golden books. “I don't care about Scotty!” she screamed out. “I never did! I care about you. You're
my
baby. Truth is I only want you. What if you die? That's my question. What if
you
die?”

Joy gazed out the window and went into some odd protective trance: “Hey, Mom, did I tell you I tried to find Georgey Pfeifer?”

“Who?”

“Georgey Pfeifer. You know, that little boy who was always so nice to me. Lived two houses over? Was with me all through grammar school and then high school?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Alice, using every ounce on energy to be nice when she wanted to scream. “So?”

“Well, I ran into an old classmate the other day in, of all places, the post office here in Philly. All these years I imagined Georgey in some abstract way, like a painting that could be made whatever I wanted him to be, you know. Imagined him as some sexy hotshot banker with a sports car, cheerleader wife, paying a mortgage, raising kids, the white picket fence…” Joy turned from the window to meet her mother's eyes. “Well, you know what, Mom? He's dead. Died of a drug overdose nine years ago. Who would have thought?”

“That's horrible,” said Alice. She didn't care about Georgey right now.

“I'm worried about Scotty, Mom. If anything happens he'll never have the chance to read all those fairy tales to our daughter.” Joy stared at her just long enough before looking away.

“Yes, the very ones I neglected to read to you, okay? Is that what you want to hear?” Alice stooped down to help her daughter pick up the pile of children's books.

“No, it's not what I want to hear,” said Joy. “You were working to help bring in some money to the household, and then you had to do it all alone after Dad died, I understand that. Think I'm not scared that the same thing will happen to me and Sophia? I hope that Scotty's family will help us out, but what if they don't? Will I have to work late nights? Will Sophia lie awake waiting for me to come in and kiss her on the head when she's supposed to be asleep?”

“Is that what you'll call her?” asked Alice, softly. “Sophia?”

“Yes. Do you like it?” she whimpered.

“I love it,” said Alice, running her hand along her daughter's profile. Alice stopped crying. “I'll help you read to my granddaughter. Every night.”

“Mom, I have to tell you something I've kept inside me for so long.” Joy moved to the windowsill and stared out to the yard.

Alice was confused. What worse news could she have than the news at hand?

“The truth is… well, I'm not sure how to say this, so I'll just say it. I'm the reason Daddy died.”

“What are you talking about, Joy? He was shot!”

“Yes, but when you were on the phone with the nurses, he wanted a cup of water. There weren't any cups. I didn't give it to him. Then he died. From dehydration.”

“Oh, honey, is that what you think?” From where she sat on the floor, Alice reached up for Joy's hand above. “All this time? That you killed your father? It was the fluid in his lungs, honey. A glass of water couldn't have helped that.”

Joy squatted next to her mother, not an easy task, her huge abdomen balanced between her knees. She motioned to her mother to bring herself forward so she could attach her arms around her neck. They rocked quietly for a long while against the wall, and then Joy whimpered, “I wish Daddy were here.”

“I do too, Joy, I do too.”

“You'll really read to her
for
me mother, won't you? If something happens to me?”