How to Be Brave(15)
Evelyn shakes her head. “My condolences. Really. That just sucks big-time.”
A security guard who can’t be too much older than us jumps up the steps, pointing his finger. “Hey, ladies. You can’t smoke here. You should know that. It’s a family place.”
“Oh f*ck, sorry!” Evelyn throws her cigarette on the ground and digs her heel into it. “Man, you’re right. There are like, kids here and shit.”
“You could also watch your language.” The guard frowns at the dead cigarette. “And don’t leave that there.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry.” Evelyn picks up the crushed butt. She turns to us. “Shall we get out of here, then?”
Evelyn hops down the benches toward the exit. I say a silent good-bye to the sea lions, wishing with every cell of my being that I could be inside the pool with them, swimming in circles, safe and confined, with no opportunities for illicit drugs or other illegal activity to tempt me. Actually, wait a minute. Maybe that’s the last thing I should be wishing for.
Liss takes my hand in hers and squeezes it. “You know it’s going to be okay,” she whispers. “We’re just going to have some fun, that’s all.”
Deep breath, Georgia.
Try it all once, Georgia.
And when you do, think of me.
This is what it was like
at the end, when the sepsis
invaded her brain,
and she didn’t make sense anymore.
She spoke of colors and light
and when I told her I got straight A’s
she said, Of course you did, you’re in kindergarten, they give A’s to all the kids.
And then she caught herself and said,
I’m proud of you, honey. You keep working hard, okay?
That last day, when she no longer made sense,
I squeezed her hand and she squeezed it back,
and it was the last day she knew it was me.
The next day she was intubated,
and she hated it, the tubes down her throat,
in her arms,
in her wrists.
She screamed and yelled and ripped them out.
Until finally,
they had to strap her to the bed.
Until finally,
the sedatives wore her down.
Until finally,
she wouldn’t wake up.
Until finally,
she was done.
A quiet nurse who was older than my mother
shook her head.
This is usually how it goes, she whispered in a thick foreign accent.
The infection goes to the brain, incites the worst kind of anger.
And then when it wins,
there is nothing else left.
In the end,
there was nothing left
of her.
*
Evelyn lives a few blocks away in a small two-bedroom apartment on the twelfth floor of a high-rise that overlooks the city. She tells us that her dad left her mom a long time ago and that they had bought the place long before “everything went to hell and she couldn’t afford to move anywhere else. The building’s nice, but this apartment’s a tiny little shithole.”
We head over there so she can grab her “stuff,” and she’s right. It is a shithole. There’s crap everywhere, laundry and dirty dishes and wrinkled magazines from 2004. “My mom’s a stewardess, so she’s never here.” In her room, Evelyn kneels on the floor and reaches underneath an open space of an old wooden cabinet. She pulls out a crumpled paper bag. “She’s always on my ass for doing this shit, but she’s always getting high, too. My feet just stay on the ground when I do it.”
Evelyn stashes the bag in her pocket. “We shouldn’t eat these here. We should get to the museum first, otherwise we may never find our way there.” She laughs.
“I don’t want to get too messed up,” Liss says, and I want to hug her. She’s just as big a dork as I am.
“Me, neither,” I add quickly.
“Oh no?” Evelyn raises her eyebrow and then nods. “That’s cool. Just eat one bite, then. You’ll be all right.”
We leave her apartment and walk over to the 151 bus. It takes us alongside Lake Shore Drive, where people are running and sunbathing on North Street beach, even though it’s sixty-five degrees and the middle of September. I guess we’re not the only ones cutting today.
The bus stops at the front entrance, where Hare Krishnas are dancing and chanting and jangling their bells between the bronze statues of two lions, who look like they’ve had enough.
We pay for our tickets and head inside, into the familiar central lobby where school groups and families and tourists shuffle up and down the mass of stairs that weave like a spider’s geometric web under the echo of wide arches and towering columns. I’m instantly regretting this idea, not because we’re about to get high, but more because I shouldn’t be here like this.
This place is sacred.
It’s more than a museum.
It’s a church.
My mother’s church.
She came here at least once each month, with or without my dad and me, and she walked and walked, meditating on the endless lines of art. Except for the day of their wedding, he never forced her to go to his Greek Orthodox church with him (though she did a few times each year), and I think it was because he understood that she didn’t need the church’s lessons; she had art. She had thousands and thousands of years of human life to meditate on. She had Picasso and Kandinsky. She had the Hindu sculptures of southern India and the Buddhist heads of Thailand. She had Chagall’s blue windows and the rows and rows of armor and the fragile glass paperweights.