Things Unsaid: A Novel (31 page)

So Jules waited in the perimeter of the outside courtyard and never veered off from staring at the corner room on the third floor. She would love to throw a pebble up at the window, Romeo and Juliet–style, to try to get her daughter’s attention. But she was afraid of drawing the attention of the center’s staff.

She felt her phone vibrate. More text messages from Joanne or Andrew. They were supposed to keep her posted about her mother’s condition, but not at ten o’clock and two o’clock. She had instructed them not to. They kept texting anyway, but she never read them or texted back until bedtime, and then she shut down her cell phone for the night.

Jules had read that spouses often can’t bear the loss of their partner. But her father’s loss was an ambiguous loss, wasn’t it? For their mother? Perhaps for all of them? Less than a month since he had died.

Her phone buzzed yet again. Jules caved and looked at the e-mail from Joanne:
“I’m at the hospital with her—University of Washington Hospital in Seattle. They’re still doing tests. To see how extensive the damage is. A clot in her brain, they suspect. Can you come as soon as you can?”

Jules’s mouth went dry. Teetering, grabbing at one of the bushes on the grounds to steady herself, she wiped the sweat from her hands onto the denim. Left a dark stain.

Jules’s knuckles turned white. Her other hand clenched into a fist. She could picture her sister crying, bent over, as she composed that e-mail. She kept reading:
“Mom was so upset, Jules. That you didn’t come to the memorial service at Tahoma—for the military honors and everything. I think it was just too much for her.”

Earlier that week, their mother had been in the SafeHarbour walk-athon to raise funds for breast cancer. All the little old ladies had dressed up like the Seahawks. There was newspaper and television coverage and everything. Their mother placed third. She had thought they might want a photo of her, the best-looking woman in the seniors group, so she’d had her hair done the day before in anticipation and had heavily sprayed it so her bangs wouldn’t curl with her sweat. Always ready. In her fanny pack were her favorite cosmetics. An audience cheered her as she crossed the finish line.

Joanne and the girls had taken her to Fuki Sushi afterwards. She said it was to remind her of their father, even though she refused to step into the place when he was alive. But she picked at the food. Didn’t really eat much. And by the time they got her back to Joanne’s apartment, Joanne said, they knew something was wrong.

“She kept taking her compact out,” Joanne had told Jules later that night when she called to tell her the news. “Wiping her forehead, which was sweaty. Said she felt clammy. Oh, around ten o’clock she started really complaining that she wasn’t feeling so hot.” Joanne’s voice cracked.

“But you know how Mom can be an unhappy camper. I thought the
music and alcohol might have given her a bitch of a headache. So I was getting the futon made up for her to spend the night when I heard a crash. There’s Mom—lying on the kitchen floor, still conscious but she was having trouble speaking. The right side of her face looked like an awful Halloween mask. Droopy, lips all twisted—like a Munch.”

“Oh God.”

“I called 911. But, Jules, I was shaking so hard I could hardly push the buttons on the phone. Wanted to get Mom to a hospital as fast as I could, but I was too afraid to drive. I think this is it. It’s serious. A stroke. Massive.”

Poor Joanne! Jules had almost been able to hear her sister’s heart pounding.

“Oh—” Joanne’s voice had broken off. There was a pause. “When can you come out here? I can’t do this all by myself.”

That was the last time Jules had spoken with Joanne on the phone. She hadn’t answered her calls since.

Jules looked up at the window again. She had memorized her daughter’s schedule—every meal, every group and private session. Even her exercise and art classes. Zoë had exactly thirty minutes at ten fifteen in the morning to either shower or read. Her free time. Like a postal carrier, even in the rain, Jules stood there under her umbrella promptly at ten fifteen. To wait. To hope. And again at two fifteen she stood there. And waited. And hoped. Another thirty minutes for Zoë to be by herself. What did Zoë do at those times? Did she read? She knew her daughter loved novels about family sagas. No vampire fiction for her. Just family curses. But then again, Zoë had changed. Maybe her taste in books had, too.

How she wished she were allowed to leave books for her. She had tried once, but Trudy warned her that the security guard would be called if she dropped by the waiting room again.

Jules texted Mike to let him know about her mother’s condition. And that she was with Zoë. She would not fly to Seattle yet. She just couldn’t.

Almost at the end of the week, Jules saw Zoë for the first time since she was admitted to rehab. December 18, 2:22 p.m. What a smile! Her moment with Zoë. And Mike had been there that day with her. Luckily, Zoë had not taken the OxyContin for long, and had only taken it in small dosages. She was resilient. Her doctors were very pleased. And so was she. Ecstatic. A miracle. Recovery.

“Rehab will soon be a thing of the past,” Zoë declared proudly. “My doctors say I can go home soon.”

To be a family again, Jules hoped.

She reached out and touched her daughter’s hair. Zoë had never liked her touching her hair—not since she had become a teenager. She’d say her hair needed to be washed. Or that Jules was messing it up. But Jules couldn’t resist touching it now. Her daughter’s hair was lovely again. Long and lush. Not falling out in patches, as it had been before rehab.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Pause. “I know you don’t like me touching it, but I just love your hair.” She cried into her daughter’s hair, kissing the top of her head the way she had when Zoë was a toddler.

“It’s okay, Mom. I know what you’ve done for me.” Jules was surprised to hear her daughter’s voice break as she said that. Zoë didn’t like anyone to see her cry. “Quiet crying,” she had called it when she was in kindergarten. So Jules pretended not to notice now.

She cleared her throat. “We’ll talk about college options later. I’ve been doing a lot of research on psychology programs for you, sweetie. And your dad is on board, too. We’ll work this out together.” She willed herself not to tremble.

They kissed, a mother-daughter, shy sort of kiss.

“You chose me after all,” Zoë whispered.

Waiting standby at the SFO airport for a flight to Seattle on Alaska Airlines, Jules curled up under her jacket on a vinyl-and-steel chair. She
was bone tired. The waiting area was as dreary and depressing as her mood. Going to see her dying mother. Beige dominated the curtains, walls, linoleum.

When they brought Zoë home, Mike hadn’t said anything before but now volunteered to stay at her apartment while she flew out to see her dying mother. She had loved how he used to crawl into bed with her and they fell asleep curled up, warm and safe, in a spooning position. The silence had been reassuring.

Now, turning, curled up fetal-style, alone in a plastic chair at the airport terminal, she thought of her mother and her Zoë and reached inside her purse for her travel pillbox. She knew she would have to nibble on some Ambien if she was going to sleep on the plane.

T
he University of Washington hospital room machinery was all shiny stainless steel. Jules shuddered involuntarily. Merely looking at her mother was painful, even alarming. She seemed shrunken—an unbelievably small homunculus, spine twisted. The turquoise hospital clothes seemed draped over a cadaver that was getting smaller and smaller before her eyes. It both was and was not her mother’s face. But she had waited for her after all. Was Andrew coming?

She hugged Joanne, whose eyes were all glassy, lids tear swollen, and her sister seemed filled with water—insubstantial and vulnerable.

“Hello, Mother. How are you?” Jules bent over her mother’s bones to give her a kiss on her cheek. Joanne walked over to the other side of the bed and patted their mother’s hand, and Jules robotically copied her. The hand she touched was cold, like their grandpa’s hands had been in his open casket, Jules remembered. Like Italian marble. The only dead body she had ever touched.

“It takes … a lot of … to talk,” her mother rasped.

Jules and Joanne looked at each other in silence. Sarah and Megan sat there, quietly watching.

“Why don’t you two go downstairs and get something to eat?” Jules suggested.

“We don’t want to leave Grandma,” Megan said, her large doe eyes turned downward.

Even Sarah’s eye shadow seemed to have lost its glitter.

“Hello. How are you doing, Mrs. Whitman?” the attending nurse, clipboard in hand, asked brusquely, walking over to look at the machine readings. “She’ll be here when you come back,” Joanne whispered to her two daughters. “Go on. It’ll be good for you to get a little fresh air.”

Sarah and Megan left the room. “It won’t be long now,” the nurse said to Jules and Joanne, smiling gently. “I take it you’re family.”

Jules cleared her throat and nodded.

“Well, I’ll tell you … she has a very strong will to live, in spite of her vital signs. She doesn’t want to let go.” Still smiling, the nurse left, dimming the light as she went.

“She’s mumbling,” Joanne said, bending over their mother’s mouth. “Mom’s saying what a hateful man Dad was!”

“No! You’re kidding, right?” Jules leaned in and put her left ear closer to their mother’s mouth. It was hard to get close to her; it always had been.

Her mother picked at the hospital sheets—agitated, jerky—as if she were having a small seizure. Her pressure was dropping. Her pulse was decreasing rapidly. But her eyes still seemed to give off heat.

“Your father’s such a … selfish man,” she now gasped into Jules’s ear.
She doesn’t remember that Dad is already dead
. Jules felt disconnected, like she was looking at some exotic animal in a zoo. All she needed was to take out a notepad and write field notes. “But … I was selfish, too. Didn’t know how not to be.” Her mother’s voice gathered force, compelling and apologetic all at once. “Mother … mother …” Jules thought that’s what she heard her mother saying. She was probably delirious.