Dry Your Smile (50 page)

“Oh god, Dr. Grimes, isn't there any other—”

“Yes. You're her daughter. Get her to eat.”

Hope was asleep when she entered the room, the face relaxed in a momentary freedom from eye twitches and tremors. The distorted mouth was at peace, not twisted, not drooling. Julian slid into the bedside chair and watched her.

Force-feeding
. Like the jailed suffragists on hunger-strike—throat torn, nasal passages scraped bloody. Her esophagus would be as wounded as her spine now was. Julian had insisted on attending a debridement, to understand what Hope was having to endure. She had seen the frayed wick of spine protruding through the waxen skin embroidered with bloated wheels of scab, each of which were regularly scraped raw to be cleansed. Hope had lain curled on her side, eyes closed, passively letting Julian grasp her talon-like hands, only whimpers escaping her side-wrenched mouth. It was Julian who had wanted to scream. Christ, that such pride, beauty, energy—however abused by others or Hope herself—should come to this!

The mother dreamed now beyond her reach, eyes rolling under translucent lids.

“I wish I could have saved you this,” Julian whispered, leaning to stroke away what could not be erased even in sleep: the forehead lines that drew to a knot of tension just between the eyes.

But when Hope did wake it was in bewilderment, demanding to know if anyone had checked on the baby in the crib.

“Momma. Momma darling? There's no crib, no baby. I'm the baby, and I'm grown now, Momma. But I still love you just as much. Even more.”

“No!”
came the cry of anguish. “The m-baby! Go chuck on! Can't geddup m'sel'!
Please
go chuck! See Joolyan's awride!”

Layers on masks on flesh
, she thought.
Do it. Feed her the lines she wants to hear, you know how, you do it with everyone, you've done it all your life. Have mercy. This once do it for real
.

So Julian rose and walked in the direction toward which Hope's head jerked in frantic pointing. She bent over the invisible baby Julian lying in an imaginary crib. She smoothed the covers. She tucked the child in.

“Yes,” she smiled back at Hope. “Yes, Hope. She's all right, she's asleep and just fine.”

“Ah, thas' good. Ya' shld singaher. Sha likesat. Lurrby 'n g'night. You do't.”

Sing to her. “Lullaby and Goodnight,” “Brahms' Lullaby,” which she remembered Hope crooning someplace, backstage or off-camera, to that youngster trying to nap between scenes. Eerie to find yourself jealous of how loved you were as a baby—before you were fully you.

“Singaher? Pleasse?”

Sing to yourself, Julian. Sing to the invisible imaginary lost child trying to nap between scenes, sing
.

So she sang, bending over the space in the corner. When she finished and returned to the bedside, Hope's face peered at her quizzically, almost with trust.

“Liss'n,” she whispered in her slurred speech, beckoning with a jerk of one clawed hand to this stranger who had sung to her daughter, “Liss'n. Ya wanna help me? I need … need …” The dark eyes filled with tears. “Need friend. Need friend.”

“Yes, oh yes. I'll help you, I'll be your friend. I'll do anything in the world to help you.” Julian leaned over the bed, hovering above this other child in this other crib. “Just tell me.”

Hope beckoned her nearer, and she bent deep into the odor of fetid flesh.
From this you came. Here you were born. All acts in your life have been metaphors for this beckoning
.

“Yes,” she whispered, “tell me.”

The black eyes glittered, spilled over. The words were forced, timed between spasms.

“Home. Wann' go. Take me? Don' b'long here. Bad here.” The whisper sibiliated into a hiss and exploded the next word like a curse. “B'othel! B'othel! Ma un modder pu' me here. C'n ya 'magine at? Ma on modder! Ina b'othel!”

Julian's brain raced frantically to translate.

“Your own mother put you where? Where did your mother put you, Hope?”

Just as desperate to be understood, the other jerked even more spastically, blistered lips forming each word with enormous effort.

“Here. Here. Bad. Go home. Wann'a.
Pleasse. Now.
”

“What is bad about this place, darling? Tell me and I'll fix it. I swear it to you. Is anybody—Has anybody been cruel or—”

“Nononono. All ver' nice
too
nice see? All day nicesweets. Bud then, then …”

“Then? What then? What happens, what?”
God, please, give her the language to speak to me, give me the power to hear her at last
.

“They c'm 'n … s'bad place. B'othel! Ma on mudder!”

“B'othel? What do you mean, oh darling, what—”

“Hoehus! Hoehus! Sha thinks Umma h-h-hore. So sha pumme here! Home? Pleassse? Now? Friend?”

“Whorehouse. Your mother—your mother thinks you're a whore. She put you here. Brothel. Dear God.”

The head tried violently to nod between jerks of a neck that kept shuddering it sideways.

“Y'ss! Y'ss!
Ya unndersd'nd! Y'ss!”

Somewhere in this whole vast bleak merciless universe there must be a space free of suffering, somewhere
.

“Awww, h'ney. Thas' nice. Ya cry'n fa
me?
Fa'
me?
Aww.
Nice
frien'. Nodda hore. C'n ya he'p me?”

Feed her the lines. Collaborate. Feed her the lines as you would the soup cold now by the side of her bed, like cues for a script, feed her, nourish her. You know how to do it
.

“Yes. Yes, I'll help.” Julian cleared her throat and dropped her voice to the conspiratorial level of Hope's. “Well, first of all, you're not a whore. Anybody can see that, plain as day. Now. Tell you what. I have a plan.”

The black eyes brightened, watching her with rapt attention.

“We'll smuggle you out, okay? But it'll have to be very well planned, you understand?”

The eyes blinked rapidly with excitement.

“The trouble is, you're weak right now, see? And we can't get you out of here if you're so weak. We've got to build up your strength first. It's very important, you understand?”

Frantic nodding.

“So I want you to let me feed you some of this soup here. Don't worry, it won't burn you. It's room temperature by now.”

“Mide be p-p-poy-poy—”

“No, it's not poisoned. I'll have some first, so you'll know it's safe. See? It's all right. I swear to you.”

The eyes opened wide again, trusting. A split second of almost recognition, almost mistrust. Then it passed, and Hope began, spoon after slow spoon, to swallow the soup.

Exhausted by this effort, she fell into a doze almost immediately after Julian put down the empty bowl and sat, her head drooping, her arms loose in her lap.
You must come now not just once a day but twice at least. She will eat for you, for the friend you can convince her you are. Only you can keep her alive
.

She stared at the black-and-white tiles of the nursing-home floor. No ambiguities now. No time now for anything but this. No time for the sweet wild freedoms of long-ago last night, or the would-have-been writing of this afternoon. No time for anything but Hope: her life and the losing of it, her fears and the calming of them, her soul and the reaching of it. Strip it down to this. One last try.

She rose and tiptoed toward the door, but froze at the scream that cleaved the air behind her.

“I see ya Joolyan! I see ya tryinna s-sneeek oud affer steeelin' all ma forchun! I woan leaf ya nuth'n—ya hear? I see ya!” But when she turned, Hope only glared at her for an instant, then shut her eyes like a mechanized doll and fell to sleep again.

Mrs. Costello, the day floor-nurse, approached Julian as she waited for the elevator.

“Miss Travis? May I speak to you for a moment?”

Julian gave her an automatic smile. “Certainly, Mrs. Costello.”

“Did you—Have you seen the doctor today?”

“Yes. And I got her to finish the soup you'd left. I'll come both at lunchtime and after work each day now. In the mornings, too, whenever possible. To try and get her to take food from here on in.”

“Oh good. Though I know it's an awful strain on you. But that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Julian straightened for whatever would be coming. She noticed the copy of an Athena book tucked under the nurse's arm.

“Your mother's been a bit of a problem lately. Oh, she can be terribly charming when she wants to be. But you know, well, she's been upsetting some of the other residents.”

“How?”

“She … she
sings
. Quite a bit sometimes. Quite loud, too, sometimes.”

Julian began to laugh.

“No, really, Miss Travis. At first we thought it was pleasant. Cheerful, you know. I mean better than having them rave or cry. But your mother never seems to know when to
stop
, she—”

Julian was laughing uncontrollably now, leaning against the wall, her knees sagging. The nurse giggled.

“I know, sometimes it gets to you. But there
is
a serious side. Truly, Miss Travis. Let's be realistic.”

It sent Julian off into another gale of laughter, brought to a halt only by Mrs. Costello's voice cutting through.

“She's been exposing herself.”

“What—do—you—mean.” Each word came out of the laughter as if suddenly drenched with freezing rain.

“Just what I said. She exposes herself. To the nurses, the doctors, the male aides when they come to wash the floors. Even to the window-washer-man. She somehow manages to throw back or kick off the covers, lord knows how, and lies there with her private parts exposed, and even—well, she deliberately winks. Last night she shouted for about half an hour that she was ‘Queen of the Whores.' Unfortunately, her speech was perfectly clear at the time. It took a while to get her settled down, I assure you.”

Julian looked at the nurse. A closet feminist. Keeps herself sane by reading Athena books. A nice woman. Compassionate. Possessed of a sense of humor. Tired.

“Mrs.—Ms. Costello. I don't know what to tell you, but there's nothing I can or
would
do at this point to stop my mother from doing whatever on earth she wants. If singing loudly gives her pleasure, I suggest you all learn somehow to enjoy that with her. I can imagine the awkwardness her other actions create for you, and I'm sorry for any inconvenience. But frankly, if that's her way of affirming what's left of her body, then I applaud it. It's her body, her voice, her labia and clitoris, and if she wants to sing out any or all of them to the whole goddamned world, it's about time. She's paying a considerable rent to be here, and she has a right to her … eccentricities. Don't take this wrong, please, Ms. Costello. It's nothing against you. But do understand clearly that if I ever see her put in restraints for this harmless behavior—however socially unacceptable others may find it—I'll
sue
Peacehaven for one hundred thousand dollars per every pubic hair of hers that's been ruffled. I'm on
her
side, Ms. Costello. Let's never forget that.”

The elevator doors opened. Julian stepped in and turned around, pressing the lobby button. As the doors began to slide shut in a narrowing frame around the stunned nurse, Julian called, “Happy Independence Day.”

CHAPTER TEN

Autumn, 1983

Twice a day then, for the rest of the summer, while Manhattan turned livid with August and the streets seemed in danger of buckling from concrete-reflected heat, Julian appeared at Peacehaven. She brought flowers three times a week, marking time by the seasonal shift: as tulips had given way to lilacs, so iris ceded to freesia, roses to tiger-lilies. Chrysanthemums began to bristle in the shops, heralding autumn. Every day she brought offerings of sustenance—custard or ice cream, soft Chinese noodles, breast of chicken—whatever might tempt the interest of the old woman who was waiting for her, waiting to get strong again, waiting to go home.

Julian was waiting, too, though for what she wasn't sure. The remainder of her hours not spent at Peacehaven volleyed between Athena, house-sitting friends' apartments during their vacations, weekends at the office trying to work on her book, and time spent with Iliana—or with Laurence. Each time she saw Laurence, she came away convinced she was waiting for the breakthrough which would permit her, too, to go back home. Each time she saw Iliana, she came away suspecting she was waiting for something else, some definitive sign or act that would propel her forward. Each time she saw Hope, she came away with the unsettling belief that such a sign would come neither from the husband nor the lover, but from the mother.

By the end of August, Hope's plaintive refrain, “Home, go home,” seemed the sign, though Julian chided herself for falling prey to infantile magical thinking in interpreting it as such. But being in Hope's presence had become a peculiarly safe activity. There, despite the grief and pre-death mourning that characteristically prevail at such a bedside, a restful cocoon enwrapped both mother and daughter. Some evenings Julian would simply sit watching Hope sleep, a slumber so deep she might already be exploring the outskirts of a region distant from consciousness. Some days Hope would listen, with the intense absorption of those who don't comprehend, while Julian told bedtime stories of a future, shining and peaceful, that waited as soon as Hope was strong enough to be smuggled out of the brothel.

Weeks had passed since the mother last recognized her visitor as her daughter. Julian wondered whether that was not the reason for the serenity between them; she was now “Friend,” the familiar stranger who could be trusted to watch over the baby in the crib, who brought food safe to eat, who had miraculously been sent to help plan an escape. The ache of longing to be recognized as Julian, to be perceived as herself by her mother, was acute. But it was an old ache, after all, and she was becoming reconciled to the certainty that recognition would never now anoint them both with a mutual healing. Instead, the autonomy and authority this new role of Friend conferred on Julian was its own relief. Somewhere buried beneath the ache, she was as grateful to Hope for freeing her from Julian's identity as Hope was to Friend for promising freedom from the brothel. The eagle of guilt at last seemed to have lifted its wings from the two women, while they waited, suspended in time, ignorance, and merciful pretense, for the perfecting of their relative liberations.