I Liked My Life(44)

CHAPTER NINE

Madeline

Linda is dying. Rory leaves her brother a simple message. “Hi, Brian. Mom is at the hospital. Room 366B. It won’t be long now.”

She massages the veins on her mother’s wrinkled hands and bloated feet, watching, whispering, “I love you. You’re going to be okay.” She notices the skin sagging from her mother’s arms. Seeing her daily made the weight loss less evident, but today, this last day it seems, her mother’s frailty is fully exposed—monitors humming, tubes delivering pain medication and hydration, eyelids remaining halfway down even while she’s awake. When her heart fails they won’t resuscitate; Linda’s paperwork is clear. Rory is grateful for the formality of it, that it simply isn’t her choice. Her mother’s last gift.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” Linda says when she wakes, though Rory’s been there all day. “I have something to tell you.” It’s exhilarating, for a moment, how engaged Linda appears, but she fades back to sleep before any telling takes place.

An hour later Linda wakes again and continues talking, as if the nap was only a pause. “You must forgive yourself, sweetie.” Rory blinks, questioning her mom’s lucidity. Forty-three years of motherhood enables Linda to read Rory’s mind as well as I can. “I damn well remember who you were before that accident. You need to get back there.”

“I will, Mom, I will,” Rory soothes, holding back her tears for later.

“Don’t you dare let my death be another excuse.”

Rory nods. “Okay, Mom, I won’t, you’ll see.”

Around noon, Linda’s eyes jolt open. Rory continues running her hand down her mother’s arm and asks if she needs anything. “No, nothing, my baby girl.” Her breathing slows, but she clutches Rory’s hand with startling strength. “Just promise you’ll open your heart to love again.”

“I promise,” Rory whispers back.

Her spastic breathing and mild moans continue throughout the afternoon, but those are Linda’s last words.

I try to keep this moment for Rory, but envy seeps in. I’m pretty sure I left the world screaming, Oh shit. Hollywood taught me that one’s last seconds are spent looping through life’s biggest moments, but all I remember is the wind carrying snot back up my face and thinking how disgusting it felt.

My own mother’s death was no better. During our last conversation she called me a selfish martyr. Her mind was already going. I found it an amusing oxymoron, but later I uncovered a cruel truth in her words. Did I need to be needed? Did I use sacrifice to inflate my self-worth? My mother died the next day, alone and drunk. They found her covered in vomit. At the time I assumed she did it so Meg and I would regret the boundaries we set to protect our children from her drunken chaos, but later I came to see that was unfair, almost narcissistic. Her death had nothing to do with me. She just saw no reason to keep on keeping on.

Linda’s death is exponentially more profound. She leaves in phases, willfully, as if someone is there, talking her through the steps. I didn’t have that—no light, no escort, nothing. I was simply spit back into the atmosphere. I try to extract the guidance Linda receives for my own benefit, but the conversation is encrypted. Even before her last breath, life leaves her. I sense she’s now nearer to me than Rory, not in the dimension I’m in, but closer, higher. I shudder at the idea I’ve been bypassed. I assume Linda is in heaven, so where the hell am I? As if in answer to that question, my spirit ascends, furthering the distance between the world I left and me faster than the times before. When the ride stops, I look down, terrified they won’t still be there, but they are.

*

Brian arrives as they wheel away Linda’s covered body. He sobs, the way guilty grievers do, hugging Rory almost violently.

She stands there, letting him pull strength from her. When he pauses to catch his breath, she gently moves away. “She was ready.”

He’s incredulous. “How can you say that? Why aren’t you crying?”

She finds his audacity comical in that delirious way only very sad things can be to very tired people. She holds back the raw chuckle she feels. “I want Mom to be comfortable more than I want her here for me.”

“But I didn’t get to say good-bye.”

Rory looks at her younger brother, deciding whether to let the comment slide. “No,” she says, “you’d have to have been here for that.”

“I came as soon as I could. You can’t just bail on a court date.”

Rory rests an arm around his shoulder, rubbing his back the way their mother would have. “Death doesn’t wait to be convenient. And when you’re older, you’ll look back and see that life doesn’t either.”

He stiffens. “I have a great life.”

“You have a busy life, where you make a lot of money and eat dinner alone.” She hadn’t meant to be so pointed. “I’m sorry, I’m exhausted. I’ll call tonight so we can make arrangements.”

I present Rory’s subconscious with the hypocrisy of her words as she walks to her car. Rory doesn’t make a lot of money, but she eats dinner alone. As her mother so eloquently pointed out, she, too, is closed to the world. If work is Brian’s vice, grief is Rory’s. I need her to recognize this as a flaw—the only one I’ve sussed after months of stalking—so she’ll take her mother’s parting advice seriously. Rory needs Eve and Brady as much as they need her. Our goals are colliding.