A Woman's Place: A Novel (32 page)

Rona looked devastated. She had taken the call in bed the night before, had thrown on a warmup suit, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and raced to the hospital, where she had spent the night. When I arrived, she was standing beside Connie, clutching the bed rail.

"Thank God," she breathed. "I thought for sure she'd die on my watch, just to make me feel guilty the rest of my life. Bad enough that she won't say a thing. Do you think she knew I was here all night?" I stood at the door trying to find the wherewithal to enter. Loss was heavy in the air. In normal times I might have borne the weight of it more easily, but I was already depleted by what had happened back home. I was feeling weak and frightened. I wasn't sure I wanted to see my mother this way.

She was nearly invisible in the bed. Her skin blended in with the sheet, both inert, both lifeless. She was leaving us, I knew, and felt the same tiny panic in my belly that I had felt as a child when she left us each morning, not to return until night. That was where the similarity ended. I wasn't a child anymore, and she was leaving for good. Page 172

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"Claire?"

With an effort, I tore my eyes from Connie and focused on Rona.

"Are you all right?" she asked, sounding frightened. I paused, swallowed, nodded. "Just shaky." Then I forced myself past the door, went to the bed, and leaned down. "Hi, Mom. I'm here. See, even sooner than I said." My voice broke on the last word. Her face was pale and waxy. No matter that I knew she was close to death, no matter that she hadn't looked like herself for weeks, I wanted the old face back.

"Mom?" I called softly. My hand hovered over hers, awkward in a second's doubt, then lowered. I felt skin and bones, cool, smooth, surreal. I gave a little shake. "Mom?" She didn't respond. I tried another shake.

"Mom?"

"The doctors say we should talk to her," Rona said in little more than a whisper inches from my ear. She had crowded in beside me, which would have felt awkward, too, if I hadn't been feeling the need to lean on someone. True, I had never thought to lean on Rona. But I had never felt so light and weak.

"They say she might be able to hear," Rona went on in that whisper, "so I've been telling her all the things I've done in my life to please her, but she won't nod, or smile, or even open her eyes and stare at me. She used to be great at staring. It was a sure sign that she didn't like whatever it was I'd done." She gave body to her voice, pleading, "Come on, Mom. Stare at me now. I dare you to." I squeezed Rona's wrist. Then my hand found the railing and held tight. "I talked with her yesterday morning. She sounded stronger at the end of the conversation. How was she during the day?"

"I didn't come in the morning. Maybe that upset her, but I was here for a while in the afternoon. I read her half of Vanity Fair. I'm really not a terrible daughter."

"No one said you were."

"Maybe not in as many words."

We fell silent. I couldn't take my eyes from Connie's face. It was hollowed out, deathly quiet. The only sound I could hear was the faint beep of the machine that said she was still alive. The nurse came and went twice. We didn't move.

"She looks so pale," I finally whispered. "I wish I knew if she could hear."

"What would you say if you knew she could?"

"I'd tell her about the circus."

I paused, then did just that. I told her about the lions, the horses, and the elephants. I told her about being terrified by the trapeze artists and delighted by the clowns. I told her about Hoodsies, and cotton candy, and the purple alligator that Kikit had bought. At the end, I told Rona, "It was a good circus. She would have liked it."

"She hated the smells."

"She never smelled the smells."

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"What?"

"She never went to the circus."

"Never?" When I shook my head, Rona said, "Funny. I thought she had." We continued on for a while in silence, then I kept the vigil alone when Rona left to get coffee. I talked softly, calling Connie's name, touching her hand. I had expected that Rona would take her time, what with me there, but she was back in under ten minutes with coffee for us both.

We drank it without speaking, threw the cups in the trash, kept standing close. Awkwardness had given way to the need for human warmth. We were family, all that was left of the core unit now that Connie was edging away.

"How's everything at home?" Rona whispered.

"Lousy," I whispered back.

"Want to tell her?"

"Want to, but won't."

"Maybe that would bring her around. Shock her out of it, y'know?" She gave me a moment's fright when she raised her voice. "Mom? Can you hear me, Mom? Claire's here. She came all the way to see you. Wake up and talk with her. It's all right with me, really it is." Connie showed no sign of waking.

Rona sank back beside me. "She's fighting me even now, keeping her eyes closed just to spite me."

"Maybe we're taking the wrong tactic," I said. "The doctor said we can tell her it's okay to let go."

Rona looked appalled. "He told me that, too, but I can't tell her to die."

"We wouldn't be doing that. We'd be saying she doesn't have to hang on if she's too tired. It may be the merciful thing."

"But I need her. I need her to wake up. I need to tell her things." I put my arm around Rona's shoulder. She and I hadn't seen eye to eye on many things in life, but I could relate to this pain. There was desperation in it, fear that the buzzer would ring and leave her knowing that she hadn't tried her hardest.

The best you can be is the best you can be, Mom had always said, the last time not two weeks before. So the lesson hadn't been lost on Rona, either.

"She thinks I'm shallow, but I really loved Jerry, and I really loved Harold, and they really loved me for a little while, and it felt so good. For that little while with each of them it was like I was the only other person in the world. I felt so good. So safe. Okay, so I didn't work like she did and like you do, but does that make me a bad person?" Safe. I needed that, too. I had married Dennis for it. But Brody Page 174

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provided it. Did that make me a bad person? "No."

"Then why did she make me feel that way?" I had to work to keep my thoughts on Rona. "Maybe she was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"You had luxuries she wanted but couldn't have. Either couldn't have, or didn't take. She felt like a coward. You had guts. She envied that."

"She did?"

I imagined so.

Sunday morning became Sunday afternoon. Doctors and nurses stopped by, but other than make a show of fiddling with charts, machines, or drips, they did little. Connie's minister dropped in for several minutes. Connie didn't so much as blink.

Rona curled up in the chair and slept for a while, then woke up and returned to her post at the bed rail. I kept expecting her to go home to shower and do herself up in her usual done-up way, but she wasn't budging from the room other than to go for coffee or food. Once or twice she rinsed her face in the sink and brushed her hair, but otherwise she remained more unadorned than I had seen her in years. I found her more approachable this way, though that might have been my own need for company. I also thought she was even prettier this way and told her so. She sighed. "Mom always said that, too." She closed her eyes, rolled her head around on her neck, sighed again. "So here I am at this late date, trying to please her still." She opened her eyes and looked my way. "Do you ever think of dying?"

"I try not to."

"No wonder. Your life is pretty full. But I think about it. I think about things I won't have done that I will wish I had." I felt a fast flare of anger. Connie had said nearly the same thing--but damn, it hadn't had to be that way. She could have done more. She could have enjoyed life, instead of playing the martyr. She could have enjoyed us more than she had.

I took a deep breath. The anger broke and scattered.

"What do you wish you'd done?" I asked Rona.

"Had kids." She shot me a look that dared me to laugh.

"That doesn't surprise me. You're great with mine. It isn't too late. Mom would love it."

Rona leaned over, propping her forearms on the rail. "She thinks I'm too flighty."

I leaned over and propped my forearms beside hers. "Do you?" She shrugged. "When you hear it enough, you come to think it, too, though, for the life of me, I don't know why I listen."

"It's not just you. I listen, too. Connie's my rock." Page 175

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Rona looked at me in surprise. "You're her rock. You were always the strong one in the family, Claire. Argue all you want, but there it is."

"I could always count on her for unconditional support." "Right. For support. But you were the answer person. The voice of reason. The doer. Much more than Mom or me."

I didn't feel like the answer person, the voice of reason, the doer. I felt totally helpless, standing, sitting, waiting there for Connie to make her move. Life or death--it was her choice. Then again, maybe it wasn't, which was as scary a thought as anything. It only confirmed my own helplessness. I wanted to think I had more control over life. So, was I a control freak?

Rona and I might argue forever about who was the rock, but the fact remained that the foundation of my world was shifting. Here, back home--I felt the shaking and was left weak in the knees. More than once I wished Brody was with me. He was an answer person, a voice of reason, a doer. I would have leaned on him with relish. But this wasn't a time for Brody. It was a time for Connie, Rona, and me. As the hours passed, as afternoon gave way to night and still Connie stayed with us, her face grew more polished, almost opalescent. I thought about the story of Grandmother Kate's pearls, and couldn't help but imagine that Connie was becoming one herself. It struck me that that was what death watches were about, a chance for family to pull together for a few last hours of peaceful communion, the creation of a final memory, a last pearl to add to the strand. In that sense, I was grateful Connie lingered.

I made Rona go home that Sunday night for a few hours' sleep while I dozed by Connie's bed, but she was back well before Monday's dawn. She had showered and changed into jeans and a sweater, still the ponytail and the naked face remained. She looked about eighteen. We curled in side-by-side armchairs by the bed, pulled at fresh croissants, sipped coffee, and talked--hushed and intimate--as we hadn't done since we had been pubescent teenagers intrigued with boys. Now, instead of boys we talked about men--Rona of her husbands, me of Dennis. Whether we felt drawn to confessions because of the quasi religious nature of the occasion, I didn't know. But, there in the purple-blue light of dawn, with the hospital world barely launching its day, Rona confessed to having a nonexistent sex life with Harold, and I confessed to being evicted by Dennis.

"Do you miss him?" she asked when I was done with my tale. I had asked myself that more than once. By rights, what with the suddenness of the separation, I should miss him, well beyond the mourning period Dean Jenovitz had presumed. When a person was part of your everyday life for fifteen years, the place he had taken up should feel empty, shouldn't it?

"Those first few days were so filled with fury that there wasn't room for missing much besides the kids," I said. "Now? I miss knowing I'm married. There's security in being married. I miss having my life settled. There's security in that, too. I miss the anonymity I used to have walking around town. People have questions now. Sometimes they just look at me and I know they're wondering. Obviously, I miss the kids. That never stops. Do I miss Dennis? The man himself?" I thought for another minute, just to be sure I wasn't being rash. But, of all the Page 176

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emotions I had felt in the last few weeks, missing Dennis wasn't one. Those good parts of my marriage were memories now. Pearls. I would never lose them. But there wouldn't be any more that included Dennis.

"No. I don't miss him. We had grown apart emotionally." It was so very clear to me now. "We aren't the same people we were when we got married. We shaped each other in ways that made us less compatible. Ironic, isn't it? And pathetic that it took such drastic action on Dennis's part for me to see it. Boy, was I blind. I kept thinking that every marriage had its rocky spots, that no marriage was perfect."

"Did Dennis cheat on you?"

"No." I thought of Phoebe. "Well, not until the end." At least, I assumed that. Was I off base there, too?

"Did you cheat on him?"

"No."

"Nothing with Brody?"

"Not yet."

She didn't say a thing, just gave me a sly smile.

Quickly I said, "I don't know what I'd do without Brody. He's been just about running the business single-handedly since all this began. It's a big load off my mind."

"Does Dennis know you're here?"

"I called him yesterday." My eyes drifted back to Connie. My voice was low, one step up from a thought. "I felt he needed to know. To be prepared. He said he would fly out with the kids ... if necessary." Connie remained comatose through Monday. Exhausted by evening, Rona and I left the hospital, picked up pizza on the way to Rona's house, scar fed it down in her kitchen, and slept until early morning. Then we returned to the hospital.

That Tuesday we talked about our childhood, tossing memories back and forth across Connie's bed. Sometimes we included Connie in the discussion. Other times we talked above her. On occasion we laughed, and laughed hard. Our own emotional survival demanded it. Besides, we didn't think Connie would mind. She would have liked the idea that Rona and I were communicating after being emotionally distant for so long. She had asked me to look after Rona. I rather thought we were going one better, looking after each other, at least for this short time.

During those hours, I grew complacent. Enclosed in that small hospital room, with the machine beside Connie beeping rhythmically and my sister and I getting along, I felt oddly relaxed. I was with my mother. I was with my sister. For that little while, I had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Work, the children, the custody battle--all seemed distant. I was living through an intermission in the drama of my life, actually enjoying it, in an odd kind of way.