Warm Wuinter's Garden (31 page)

As soon as it became obvious that Ellen had
finished speaking, Bett became interested in her tea and toast.

Two minutes and then a third crept by.

Finally, in a voice so low and flat it didn’t
seem possible that it was hers, Bett heard herself say, “Please,
just leave me alone.”

Ellen looked at Bett, gave a slow nod,
gathered up the dishes and loaded them on the tray. Standing in the
doorway holding the tray in her taloned grip she said, “Should it
become important again, my dear, remember that I am your friend. A
friend who is not overwhelmed by the changes taking place in you.
Not the cancer, nor the baldness. Not the anger, nor the meanness.
You have my love, my dear.”

* * *

After a sleep filled with chopped and churned
dreams, Bett woke to a darkened room. She was sure Neil was not
home yet. As she sat in the dark with her eyes flitting around the
room looking for something new, Bett resolved that when he came to
her she would set her anger aside and treat him with love and
respect. However, as soon as her decision was made her resolve was
tested by a million ugly thoughts buzzing around and biting at her
like the worst of June’s deerflies.

When Neil came up to ask her about her day
and what she wanted for dinner, Bett told him that the thing she
most desired, and that no one seemed capable of giving, was to be
left alone. He apologized and left.

By nine o’clock it felt as lonely as three in
the morning. Bett got up and wrestled herself into her robe, then
changed her mind and climbed back in bed.

Change took too much energy. Her time was
fleeing too fast for regrets or repairs.

“Are we racing?”

“What?”

“Just that. Are we racing?”

Peter gave Raoul a puzzled look.

“Petey Sweetie, you’ve had five. About twice
your limit, I’d say. And I’m on my fourth.”

The maitre d’ tipped his glass to his mouth
and held it there until there was nothing left but ice.

“What a night. Just where did all those
people come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t know that we made bosomy
buddies of all of them. I can’t remember a worse night. What was
going on in there?”

Raoul nodded toward the double swinging doors
which separated the dining room from the kitchen.

“I was off.”

“Off like Marat Sade and Jeffrey Dahmer? It
was like the Random Restaurant out here. Steak rare? Bier sur. And
lazy lobster shows up. An hour later. Chicken Provencal? Toute
suite, monsieur. Except when it finally comes it’s painted in
veloute’ sauce. Tomatoes and onions gone to Lalaland. If I’d been
smarter I would have put the plates on the sideboard and just let
everyone file up and take a look. Like luggage at the airport. Or a
dim sum or dessert cart. Or a tea dance or midnight meat walk at
Town Hall. Which is where I should be right now. Looking for my
Isolde. Or I could have put on cake walk music and let Euterpe
decide who eats what. Speaking of which. What—and don’t lie, I
know
it’s what and not who—has been eating you? Is all this
confusion mama?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders as he raised his
glass toward his lips.

“Look, Angel Eyes, not tonight, not with me.
No shrugs. Have a coma, I don’t care. On the beach—fine. At
home—such as it is—fine. I really don’t care. But not in the
kitchen. When the coma comes to the kitchen, I care. ‘Cause I get
the problem. You’ve been bad all week. I don’t know how many
rare-ordered, medium-delivered steaks I’ve tried to explain away by
the color tones in the lighting. Even the interior decorators doubt
me. Bad all week; terrible tonight. Something’s wrong. Although
I’ve been in on more than my share of launches, I’m still not a
rocket scientist, but it seems, a’moi, that there just might be the
teeniest and tiniest of links connecting the chaos we had out here
tonight and the trouble that’s been going on in mama’s world. How
is she?”

“Okay.”

“Okay? How delightfully splendid.”

Raoul got up and wandered around the dining
room putting salt and pepper cellars on a tray for refilling. As he
walked he talked quietly in a sing-song voice, “Okay? Okay. OKAY.
Has a nice medical ring to it. What were the results of the
laparosplenectomy? Okay. And the craniectomy? Okay. And the radical
prostatectomy? Okay. Oh, no. Just okay? C’est dommage. We were
hoping for at least an okey-dokey.”

Raoul changed the pitch of his voice.

“We’re outside Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Doctor, what is the President’s condition? Okay. Okay? Why, that’s
splendid news for America. We have experts standing by to explain
the prognosis. Back to you, Dan.

“Okay. His mother’s okay. She has cancer, but
she’s okay. She’s okay, so he’s okay. She’s so okay that he
couldn’t get an order for ‘three with onion’ out of a hot dog
stand. But that’s okay. After all, it’s only our livelihood.

“Okay. Okay, already. Enough. Leave it alone.
It’s his life. If he wants to keep it bottled up, it’s his right.
Put it in a container of nice chef-checked pants and a nice white
shirt. Pull that ravishing toque down tight. Bottle it up and cork
it with a toque. Or torque it with… Be nice. Be nice. It’s
okay.

“Everything’s okay. Oh, yes, we had the
teeniest tiniest of wars. Two million folks playing hide and seek
in the sand. One hundred thousand dead in the trenches. Hey,
howzabout that war? Okay. Howzabout that collateral damage? Okay.
Correctimundo. That’s the answer we like to hear. Howzabout those
dysenteric babies? Okay. Howzabout those starving Kurds? Okay.
Okay. Okay.”

Raoul set the tray down by the kitchen
entrance. He retraced his steps until he was standing directly
behind Peter. In a monotonic whisper, he continued, “Okay, okay
already. Whatever happens, it’s okay. There’s something inside your
mother that’s eaten her breast. And, although you haven’t said so,
I’m guessing it’s eaten her leg, too. Did it, Peter? Did she have
the fucking amputation? A leg just bitten off and that’s okay?
Little mustached guys in dirty clothes vaporized in sand and that’s
okay? Everything’s okay. Always was and always will be. Gaby
trotting out the door, wedding picture in hand. That was okay. Boys
seen week-to-week like some television program. It’s Sunday
afternoon. The Kosters are on. And that, of course, is okay.”

Raoul put his hands on Peter’s shoulders. He
bent over until his lips almost touched Peter’s ear.

“Petey, sweetie, honey, dear. It’s not okay.
Death and destruction are not okay. Loneliness and loss are not
okay. Pain and suffering are not okay. Hurt and fear and disease
and dismemberment, whether the member is limb or loved one, are not
okay. I’ve had thirty-one friends die is six years. I don’t even
want to think how many more are sick. Of all those deaths, not one
has been okay. Each one’s going has been exceedingly not okay. They
want to be here. They cling. To everything around them. To their
families. Even those that never knew or refused to hear. To their
friends. To me. Death pulls. They cling. And those remaining, me,
I, get shredded. I get torn and twisted by the sharpness of their
desire to stay here. To be alive. To be healthy. That hurts. But,
you know, what hurts as much…no, what hurts more, is you. Watching
you. With your desperate calm. Your suicidal acceptance. Life
crashes all around your head and you, stoically, sit there like
some idiot savant scholar conjugating verbs as the parade passes.
‘He goes, she goes, they go.’ They all go and that is just
okay.”

Peter’s shoulders rose up in protest against
the pressure of Raoul’s fingers digging deeper into their flesh.
His ear tried to pull away from the viper’s hissing whisper.

“I’ve watched you for almost fifteen years.
I’ve seen such sweetness and goodness that it used to shame me.
But, lately, the more I’ve watched the more I’ve wondered how much
of that goodness is choice and how much is just rote and ritual.
Are you good because that’s all you know, or because you’re afraid
to be otherwise, or are you good by choice? The more I’ve watched
the more I’ve come to guess that your goodness is unreasoned.
Whatever happens, be good, be calm. Just float. Accept. Stay on the
surface. Go with the flow. Let it take you. And on and on and
on.

“Oh, Peter. The flow can take us terrible
places. I think you’re drowning. I think you’re weak and tired.
Exhausted from your frantically calm floating. Worn out from
habitual goodness. Petey, sweetie, we can only float when we’re
free. You’re not. You’re burdened. God only knows with what kinds
of weights.”

Raoul put his hand on Peter’s cheek and
pushed his head until Peter’s ear touched his lips. His whisper was
barely audible to himself.

“You can’t float with the weight of the world
on your chest. Things are not okay. They are horrible. Let them go
before you drown. Let go.”

Peter pulled Raoul’s hand from his face. He
sat completely still for a moment gathering his strength. The
moment didn’t work. When he rose, he lurched. He grabbed the edge
of the table for balance.

“Petey, sweetie, you are blotto. All my words
wasted. Here, let me help.”

Raoul stepped from behind Peter’s chair to
offer his boss his hand.

Peter turned and flailed before capturing
Raoul in a clumsy bear-hug. He tucked his face into the curve of
Raoul’s shoulder.

“Well, they say one ligature’s worth a
thousand words.”

After the strength drained from Peter’s hug,
Raoul collected the money bag and put it and Peter in his car. He
deposited the receipts at the bank and Peter to his living room
couch before driving slowly, safely home.

Even as her mother’s disease had progressed,
Dilly had not changed Bett’s Life Expectancy. Not the surgery, not
the radiation, not the chemotherapy, nor the discussion of bone
marrow transplants, nor the recent mention of amputation of Bett’s
leg had made Dilly feel as if her mother’s L.E. should be
lowered.

Until this morning it had been impossible for
Dilly to project any end to her mother’s life other than that of a
quiet falling to sleep sometime when Bett was ninety or more. When
the occasional thought had come to her of how irrational it was
constantly to adjust others’ life spans and yet keep her mother’s
the same, Dilly had simply waved them away. She didn’t care whether
her thoughts seemed irrational, she
knew
she was right. Her
mother would live a long life. It was as simple as that.

In her thinking Dilly always skipped over the
small selfish link which made it important that her mother’s life
be long. She was her mother’s daughter. Of the four children, she
was sure she most resembled Bett in body, genetic code, spirit and
mind. In Dilly’s unacknowledged thinking, if her mother were to
live a long life, she, Dilly, would be assured of many more years.
She was like a small child hiding behind her mother’s skirt. Her
mother would go first. It would not be for a long time. After
another very long time she would follow. She was safe.

Dilly’s deep faith in her own longevity had
been shattered that morning. In response to the breaking of that
faith, she had left her children before they were ready for school,
had left her husband without breakfast, had left the house in a
turmoil to stagger through the quiet aisles of a convenience store
grabbing at sugar wafers and bags of Mars candies. She had driven
to the thinly graveled parking lot of Lerkun’s Pond where she now
sat behind the steering wheel crying, eating cookies and candy, and
watching the too tame ducks competing for the orange-hued cheese
doodles spilling from the large-knuckled hands of an old man slowly
walking along the gray froth-rimed edge of the pond. Dilly was
eating and wondering what the ducks would eat if no one came. Did
they even remember how to forage for themselves?

A few minutes after the old man left, Dilly
got out of the car and walked to the water’s edge. As soon as they
saw that she was carrying a bag, the flotilla of teal-headed drakes
and russet-colored ducks altered course toward her. As they
maneuvered closer and waited for whatever bounty was to come from
the bag, the ducks burbled to themselves about their rights to
certain positions. Their pushing and shoving and chattering, their
neediness, angered Dilly. Out on the edge of the shifting half-moon
of mallards were two small ducks swimming back and forth alone.
Dilly cracked several cookies into small pieces and began to toss
them toward the two at the back. After a couple of tosses she swore
to herself and, after switching bag and crumbs to the opposite
hands, began pitching the pieces with her right hand. In a rage she
crushed a fistful of cookies until her hand held only dust. With an
ungainly sweep Dilly hurled the crumbs toward the startled
ducks.

That morning’s Boston Globe had reported the
results of a study on left-handedness. Working from a sample of
death records, the researchers had found that left-handed people
died an average of nine years earlier than those who were
right-handed. As she had read the report Dilly had felt all her
ligaments lengthen and loosen. She had been unsure, were she to try
to get up from the kitchen table, whether she would be able to do
so. She saw herself trying to walk to the sink with the flopping
ungainliness of a cheap marionette.

Nine years was an unbelievable price to have
to pay for something as innocuous as being left-handed. Almost a
decade’s punishment. For something one didn’t choose. Favoring
one’s left hand wasn’t an exercise in free will. Almost a decade.
The long breath between ten and twenty, grade school and college.
How much had happened in those years. Nine. All but two of the
years that Jessie had been alive.