Washing the Dead (43 page)

I pictured my mother and the young, beautiful Andy, naked in these waters, holding each other.

“This was where we made a baby.”

His words sliced through me. I remembered the look on my
mother’s face when she went away from us, when she smoked, when I found her here in the mikveh.

“She came to my dad’s funeral to say she was sorry about the baby.” Pain laced his voice.

The baby
.

When he didn’t go on, I asked gently, “Was this where you’d come on your Tuesday nights?”

My eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to see that he was looking right through me. “No. This was where your mother came, by herself, to talk to her mother, Norman, and the baby.”

So he hadn’t been in the mikveh the day I found her. She’d been talking to her ghosts. Andy must have mussed her hair and lipstick someplace else, maybe the pantry.

My mother’s grief rolled through my body in waves. “She always seemed to be roaming with her ghosts.”

“That’s true,” he said.

My question came out before I knew I would ask it. “Then why in God’s name would she leave her own family?”

He sighed. “She thought that if she could put the pieces of herself together, then she could make things better for you.”

That was exactly why I was standing in this cellar with Andy, so I could rescue my troubled daughter. I walked toward the water. Andy reached for my elbow. “Don’t go in there,” he whispered to my back. He pulled me away as I had tried to pull my mother away, and I resisted him with a force that took both of us by surprise. The ghosts were winning the tug of war.

“I need to touch the water,” I said.

“Your mother wouldn’t like that.”

“She would understand.”

“She didn’t want you anywhere near here, Barbara. Your mother got trapped between that”—he moved my arm toward the mikveh—“and you.”

I could see the loss in Andy’s face. He would have loved to have built a life with my mother. His jacket was worn, his body weakened, yet I could see a trace of the boy who had been kind to
my mother as a child and who had helped Norman in and out of his wheelchair. My years of anger toward him shamed me.

I sat down, removed my shoes, and dangled my toes in the water. I listened for the voices of my grandparents and my uncle Norman, beckoning them to appear in front of me, as Mrs. Kessler had the night before her tahara. I shut my eyes until I could hear only the whooshing of the water and Andy’s breathing. There behind my eyelids, behind the blackness, I saw an image, blurry at first, but the harder I closed my eyes, the more it came into focus. My mother was sitting next to me, in her pink cardigan, knees cradled to her chest, visiting with my grandmother and her brother. And my sibling.

I opened my eyes and turned toward Andy. “It’s time to say goodbye,” I said.

26

S
am and Lili came home Sunday evening after I’d spent the day at Lakeline watching my mother sleep. Our fight made Sam and me cautious around each other at first. We were all treading lightly, trying to regain our footing. I put up a pot of barley soup, and Lili baked her famous lemon cake, and we ate the first family meal we’d shared in more than a week. We stayed away from touchy subjects like my mother and Taylor, and then Sam made us a big bowl of popcorn and we settled in front of the television and watched
Airplane
. Lili retrieved the afghan Rose had knitted, and we cuddled up under it and laughed. Halfway through the movie, Sam grabbed my hand, and I held it hard.

I poked my head into Lili’s room on my way to bed.

“I missed you,” she said shyly.

“Me too.” I sat on the end of the bed and rubbed the arch of her foot like my mother used to do for me.

“That feels good, Mommy.”

I took her other foot in my hand and rubbed it too.

“You know, Kara’s grandmother was in hospice, and then she got better.”

Her sweetness made me want to cry. But then, just about everything made me want to cry these days. The doctors couldn’t predict how much longer my mother would survive. Weeks, maybe a month, but she wasn’t going to recover.

“She’ll get better,” Lili said. “Pinkie swear.”

“No, Lil, she won’t,” I said. “She’s in hospice.”

“Maybe she’ll have a great day, and we’ll invite her back here, but we’ll have a
good
visit.”

“I like that plan.” I stroked her face and kissed her good night.

The next morning, Lili surprised us by getting up early and going for a run. I was making pancakes when she came through the back door, her cheeks red from the cold.

“How’s the ankle?” I asked.

“Still hurts.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. Give it more time.”

“Running is the only thing I’m good at.”

“That’s not true.”

“I’m perceptive, you’re going to say.”

“Case in point. That is exactly what I was going to say.”

She let out an exasperated breath and went up to shower.

Lili was always a little grumpy when she had to return to school after vacations, but she was particularly sullen on this Monday morning.

“What’s the plan for after school, Lil?” I asked casually. Anything could set her off when she was in one of her moods.

“Dunno.”

“Want to come with me to visit Grandma?”

She started texting, ignoring me completely; her warm feelings from the night before had vanished.

“I’ll take that as a no,” I muttered.

Her fingers continued to dance across her keypad.

“I have a planning meeting this afternoon, and then I’m going right to Lakeline. I should be home by five.”

“Okay.” She barely acknowledged me.

Sam busied himself making coffee, but I could tell he was listening, and when she left for school, I went over and rubbed his shoulders.

“Can we not fight again like that?” he said.

I reached for him, and he held me so tightly I thought he’d crack a rib.

Not even my students could distract me from worrying about my mother. I let Theresa take over leading the lesson, and she rallied as always. After finishing up in the classroom, I sat through a meeting about hiring a new music teacher, not hearing a word that was said. When the meeting was over, Sarah pulled me aside and asked me if I was all right, and I told her yes, but she knew I was lying. “Whatever you need, Barbara,” she said.

I stopped at Starbucks to pick up my latte fix and spilled the whole cup down my shirt on my way to the car. “Shit,” I muttered. I was anxious to see my mother and relieve Neil, and now I’d have to stop home to change.

Perfect. Taylor’s car was in our driveway. There were two other unfamiliar cars on the street, one with a University of Wisconsin decal.

I huffed up the front steps, furious that Taylor had the audacity to park in the driveway. When I opened the door, I heard loud music, and the foyer smelled like cigarettes and beer. I rushed to the back of the house.

“Hey, Babs,” Taylor said. She was lying on our couch, one elbow behind her head, her boots planted on the cushions, her eyes cutting into me. Our afghan was on the floor, and there was a keg on my coffee table. Lili’s Adderall bottle, the second one she’d asked me to replace, was lying on top of Taylor’s purse.

I snatched the bottle. “What the hell?”

Taylor smirked. “Oh, I was just holding this for Lili.”

“Where’s my daughter?” My voice trembled.

She shrugged and took a drag of her cigarette, scattering ashes on the carpet. I stormed into the kitchen, where two girls were eating Lili’s apology cake with their fingers. I marched over to Sam’s iPad and turned it off. The house quieted, and a dozen kids stared at me. “Where is Lili?” I asked in a tone Sam called quiet crazy.

“I think she’s in her room,” said one of the girls, who looked older and a little drunk.

Christ. I thought of those girls who had just been killed in a car accident. These kids could wreck their cars after drinking in
our home. I felt dizzy.

“All of you sit down, and don’t move until I come back,” I barked, and ran upstairs to find Lili.

I heard retching sounds from the bathroom. I went in and found Megan holding Lili’s hair while she vomited.

“Christ, Lili.” Her eyes were closed, and she was moaning. Seconds later, I heard footsteps and turned around to find Dawn standing there in her scrubs.

“Lili called me, and she didn’t sound right, so I called my mom,” Megan said apologetically.

“You did the right thing, sweetie,” I assured her. “I’ve got it from here.”

Dawn walked over to Lili and examined her. “Lil, can you hear me?”

Lili nodded her head.

“How much did you drink, sweetie?”

She answered by throwing up.

Dawn wiped Lili’s mouth and checked her eyes and took her pulse. “Okay, she’s going to be fine. You stay with her while I go collect those brats’ keys and make sure nobody drives home drunk.”

Megan lingered in the hallway. Lili was literally hugging the porcelain bowl. She wore an off-the-shoulder sweater I’d never seen before and jeans so tight I wondered how she got them on. When she looked up, mascara streaked her face.

“I’m so sick,” she groaned. I ran the water, wet a washcloth, and wiped away the mascara and liquid eyeliner.

Dawn’s voice drifted upstairs. She was calling parents to come and pick up their kids. Every time my doorbell rang, I cringed. The timing of Lili’s caper meant everything. You didn’t have to be a parenting guru to figure out that she was screaming for my attention.

When Lili finally finished throwing up, I stuck her in the shower to rinse off the vomit. I helped her into a clean pair of pajamas and tucked her in bed, a wastebasket at the ready.

“I’m so sorry, Mommy,” she mumbled over and over again.

Dawn came upstairs with a big glass of water. “Drink this, Lil. Slow sips.”

I went into the hall and Dawn followed. “God, this is so awful. She’s been supplying her little friend Taylor with Adderall,” I said.

“You can deal with that later. For now, they’re all gone.”

“Where is Sam?”

“On his way.”

The phone rang. “Just a second.” I ran into the bedroom to answer it.

“It’s Mom,” Neil said. My knees went weak because I knew what he was going to say next. “Her organs are starting to shut down.”

“Oh, God.” I told him about Lili. “What should I do?”

“I don’t know what to say, but it’s bad.”

“What do you mean? I thought she had a few weeks or days at least.”

“I’m sorry, Barbara.”

I hung up the phone and sat on my bed. I couldn’t leave Lili when she needed me most, but if I didn’t, I might miss the chance to say goodbye to my mother. I didn’t want her to die without me there to hold her hand. I felt the profound pull of her need, as a dying woman, as a motherless child alone in the mikveh talking to the dead.

“Barbara.” Dawn was standing in the doorway. I pictured her in some hospital room, guiding a family through an impossible decision.

I told her about my mother’s condition. “What should I do?”

“That’s your choice, but know that I’ll stay and take care of Lili.”

“Where the hell is Sam?”

He appeared behind Dawn. “Right here.”

“Tell him,” I said to Dawn, and she relayed the facts of the situation.

He walked over to the bed and sat next to me. I was being
sawed in two. There was no good choice. I got up and went into Lili’s room. She usually slept on her back with her arms slung over her head, but she was curled under the covers in the fetal position, her hands over her ears. I’d assumed this exact position when I’d had my breakdown. Now I only slept on my stomach. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my body around hers and hold her.

“I’m going to the hospital,” I told Dawn and Sam.

He leaned over and whispered into my hair, “I got this, sweetie.”

Dawn looked at me like she wanted to say something.

“You think I’m doing the wrong thing?”

She shook her head and pointed toward my coffee stain.

“Oh. I owe you.”

“You’d do the same for me,” she said.

I would, but up until now, I’d never been able to ask for help. When this was over, I’d tell Lili that I did have a friend. Dawn.

I put on a T-shirt and yoga pants. It took every ounce of strength I had to walk past Lili’s room and go to my mother’s side.

Bonnie was trained as a hospice nurse, and she’d been assigned to my mother’s care full time. My mother probably weighed no more than eighty pounds. She’d been shrinking since her heart attack, and her breathing was labored. Bonnie had dressed her in one of her favorite nightgowns and put a clip in her hair. Seeing her that way made every bone hurt, as if I had the flu.

Andy sat on one side of the bed, and Neil and I on the other. We stayed with her for the next twenty-four hours. This time we were not waiting for her to come back to us.