When the Messenger Is Hot (9 page)

I button her shirt and pull her sweater over her head and pretend not to notice that she's trying to pretend it's not as exhausting to her to hold her arms up for 2.4 seconds as it would be for me to suddenly run a marathon tomorrow. I blend in her makeup and feel reassured that I have been blending in her makeup for years now because she's had bad vision since the failed chemistry experiment when she was ten. Which is followed by wondering what my mother was like when she was ten. I finish blending in her makeup and I wish that my complexion was for even one day as good as hers is now and I ignore the irony that the person who so steadfastly avoided the sun and cigarettes came down with cancer anyway. I look for an overnight bag and when she shakes her head and says,
No, the wheelie bag is ready
, I ignore the way she has to breathe in before she says each word and also ignore that she's got a bag half-packed for times like these and I follow her instructions to pack the baby's needlepoint she hasn't finished along with the latest Robin Cook novel and some hotel stationery from a trip she took twenty years ago and her
book
and I do not remind her that she is going to the hospital and not for a week in the country. I put in a pair of pink socks, a nightie and a worn Ziploc bag with eighteen prescription bottles in it (recognizing only the ones I might personally care to ingest) and I close up the wheelie bag. I half-smile at my mother calling it a wheelie bag. Under no circumstances will I openly cry or yell or appear to have any human feeling that might make her feel worse. I tell her I love her when she gets into the car with my dad and I make a mental note that this is the first time I've ever said it first.

When my father comes home late that night and tells me my mother has pneumonia but that with antibiotics she should be home in a week, I believe him and I do not consider the reality that pneumonia + cancer + one lung = bad. I consider only that all the math problems I've been doing lately add up to bad. When he says she might miss Thanksgiving I feel grateful for curable diseases like pneumonia but remember how bummed out she was when she missed Easter and I believe the doctors one last time. Later, not so much.

When my father drops me off at the hospital the next morning to find my mother in a morphine-induced coma, I understand only that the
nurse practitioner
whatever the hell that is must be mistaken when she says,
It's just a matter of days
. I understand that she does not know me and does not know that this is
my
mother, that I have no siblings or husband or children and furthermore that things were just starting to get better with me and my mother and that I will need more time, that she will need more time, that I am sure that over the next twenty years things will naturally improve even more especially after she is miraculously cured and has life-changing revelations as a result of being cured that lead her to the serenity she hasn't quite found yet in spite of looking in a lot of places. This is followed by me explaining to the nurse practitioner that she must wake my mother up immediately so that I can talk to her and tell her that while the people at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
seem
perfectly pleasant and all, that it is really full of quacks and liars and people with weird titles that I never heard of before and that I love her very much but she needs to snap out of it and heal now, followed by me demanding to speak to the president of the hospital and all of the scientists who thought up these horrible, painful, ineffective non-miracle cures so that I can explain that sixty-three is an unacceptable age for my mother to die, which is followed by me realizing that I have just turned into my mother.

So I call my father and when he arrives at the same time as the actual doctor who says he's so sorry, I do not cry and I do not understand for another twenty-four hours that this isn't a mistake and that she cannot be woken up. I understand only that junkies eventually wake up and I fail to see the difference. I take turns with my father holding my mother's hand for the next forty-eight hours and we do nothing besides watch her breathe because that would be wrong. When I come back from the cafeteria with my twenty-fifth cup of coffee, I notice that the old lady in the next bed is no longer there and assume she died until it occurs to me that they moved her because my mother is about to die. I meet my cousin at the door and tell her to just try to remember my mom how she was and burst into tears when she tells me her five-year-old lit a candle for her and prayed to Santa Claus and hands me a drawing with “I'm sorry” written in letters so big that the Y is on the other side.

When one of the nurses kindly suggests removing my mother's pink socks as well as the diamond ring from her fingers before she goes, I cringe, I remove both the socks and the ring and I feel like a thief. This is followed by me realizing that this is not the diamond ring I'd dreamed of owning followed by wondering about the need for removing the pink socks. When another nurse mentions that my mom could linger like this for a while and asks if I'd like the priest to come by, I look at my father and we nod vigorously at the exact same time even though I have more than a few questions about god that to date remain unanswered and as he reads the last rites I listen in confusion. When the phone rings with a call from her own minister who's on her way up and my mother takes her last meager gasp in that second, I do not fail to recognize that maybe god is in touch with my mom, even if he's crossed me off his call sheet. When the priest tells us she's with Jesus now, I manage to suppress my urge to say,
Oh really?
and follow it up with a lot of sarcastic questions. I zip up the wheelie bag and wait about a half hour before crying, followed by crying more than I ever thought possible. Followed by crying continuously for the next month, crying when things are funny and crying when people say nice things. Followed by wondering what god was thinking. Followed by wondering if god thinks.

The next day: I call everyone who needs to be called and note inappropriate responses such as dismay that my grief conflicts with someone's cocktail party. I take a call from a nice college friend I lost touch with and I appreciate her overlooking the fact that I never responded to her wedding invitation.

Day two: I wonder if it's wrong to go out to dinner followed by knowing that it is and going anyway and laughing in between crying spells followed by wondering later how I could have laughed when nothing is funny anymore.

Day three: I realize that I am marking time in “days since” now and I realize that it is Thanksgiving and I note irony again.

Day four: I realize that the outfit I brought for Thanksgiving is not also appropriate for a funeral and I think about going shopping and then I feel creeped out about shopping and then I get my cousin to go shopping for me.

Day five: I realize that the medical community is actually a medical industry.

Day six: I decide not to go to the funeral and then I go to the funeral. I sob like I did when I was a kid and didn't get my way, that way kids do when they seem like they're going to stop breathing they're sobbing so hard. I note that there are several hundred people at the funeral and I wonder if I even know several hundred people and I wonder if even several people will show up at my funeral. I feel grateful when the minister's homily reassures me that there is a god and I feel strangely reassured by her admission that she has no idea why these things happen or whether god is participating in this area at all. I appreciate that the minister speaks kindly of my mother while avoiding canonization. I consider joining this church even though I live 900 miles away and still have some dissatisfaction with god and I laugh through my tears when a dozen people of various faiths and distant cities tell me they are considering joining this church, but later I feel less certain about joining this church when my father hands me the audiotape of the homily (apparently a routine practice at this church), which to me seems like a macabre wedding video I would never want to watch.

Back at the house, I laugh with my friends like it's a party and note the overwhelming compassion of everyone present and I tell all my friends I love them. After they leave I call up everyone else I love and tell them I love them and vow to myself never to speak to anyone again who I don't completely love.

Day seven: When I find my mother's pink socks among the laundry the housekeeper has folded and put on my bed, I cry on them and put them in my suitcase.

Day nine: I go back to Chicago.

Day eleven: I go back to work.

Day twelve: When I can't stop crying, I go back to New York for two more weeks, realizing that my body is out of my control.

Month one: I join a support group and I notice that I am now marking time in “months since.”

Month two: I resent anyone who still has a mom and speaks about it openly in front of me.

Month three: I notice that the people in the support group don't appreciate my sense of humor and I realize that outside of Manhattan everyone has not already been through therapy and may react by stomping out of rooms instead of laughing at my sense of humor. I burst into tears when my mom's car comes even though it's a thousand times better than my K car, which at this point doesn't even go anymore.

Month four: I cry a few times a week and quit the support group because it's depressing. I feel surprised that it's depressing. I note that aside from my three best friends, no one's calling to check up on me anymore and I assume this means I'm supposed to be over it even though I am certain that I will never be over it. I remember that when some of their mothers died, I probably didn't call them in month four. I promise myself that when the rest of their mothers die I will call to check up on them in month four.

Month five: I cry once a week, but still as hard as ever, and I decide it's okay to wear one of her sweaters now but when I notice how it still smells like her I burst into tears. This is followed by smelling her perfume bottle and then deciding that I will only smell it sparingly so that it doesn't get used up and so that it always reminds me of her.

Month six: I cry randomly, as hard as ever, and notice that I am no longer crying once a week. I realize that I am a terrible person and that this can only mean I am someday going to forget her altogether.

Month seven: I donate some of my mother's things to charity and hold a garage sale for the rest of it. I give an unfinished needlepoint, with yarn, free of charge to a nice lady who I am certain will always remember the woman she never knew who started it, but later refuse to sell a burnt potholder to a guy who haggles one too many times.

Month eight: I quit my job because life is short and I do what I want to do. I consider a backup plan, if necessary, of moving to a pleasant, remote location where there are fewer people for me to meet who could potentially die later.

Month nine: I freak out about moles and go to the dermatologist twice in a month, just to be sure.

Month ten: I have some success at what I want to do and I feel guilty and sad that my mother isn't here to see that I finally like my life except for the part about her being dead.

Month eleven: I open my mother's
book
. I find a to-do list that includes a section on the bottom headlined XMAS underneath which it says only

at which time I remember I have a drawer full of stocking stuffers that never got stuffed and I burst into tears in a day-two fashion.

1
^st
anniversary: I wonder why people die on holidays and whether Mom would have made it to Christmas if I'd planned to come then and I wonder if I'd never come at all if she'd still be alive, waiting for me to come and I am sure it's my fault and then I wonder if I will always mark time this way and then I become sure that I will.

M
Y FRIEND is fucking a girl who has a thing for knives. She likes to cut people. Sometime during the sex she likes to cut you. I am supposed to understand that these are not mortal wounds, that it's more of an erotic thing or symbolism or something and what I say to that as he smiles and says it's no big deal really is
Yet
. When I ask what he supposes happened to this girl, what happens to people who can only have sex in ways like this, ways that hurt, he says I don't know. Something. He says the girl with the thing for knives looks like a normal person and dresses like a normal person (khakis, black tee, chunky black wedgies) which in this case, in my estimation, is a disguise. (Conversely, I disguise myself with ink and vintage when the truth is I am obviously at least normal enough to be mystified by the knife thing.) The girl with the thing for knives has some kind of really normal job (anything I can't understand by title alone and characterized by the presence of benefits and little overtime and vacation pay and made-up words like
visioning
) and a normal apartment where the knives are no more conspicuous than they are at anyone else's house who has knives but not a thing for them. So I ask my friend, who is also fucking a few other girls, if anyone else noticed, and he says oh sure they have and I say what did you tell them and he says he told them he walked into his car door or something. How he explained why he might have walked into his car door naked I'm not sure, because knife girl cut him on his ass and so I am thinking that when he amasses cuts on his neck and his back and his dick, and you know it's got to go that way, I am thinking this is a ruse that won't last long and I am a little concerned for him because he's a sweet guy (disguised as a player) and because he's pretty, and I'd hate to see that pretty face messed up and because he likes trouble, more than me even, and I like a little trouble.

N
ATURALLY, THERE ARE PEOPLE who think I need counseling.

They tell me that I'm in denial. They say
I'm here for you
. They say
You can call anytime just to talk
.