I Liked My Life(45)

When she gets home it doesn’t seem possible she’s only been gone half a day. The twelve hours at the hospital spanned a week in her heart. Greta sits patiently on the couch, honored to be Linda’s messenger. “Your mom gave me this weeks ago,” she says, handing Rory an envelope.

Rory offers a wearied smile, unsurprised. Her mom was a schemer. “Thanks.”

“Just so you know, honey”—Greta presses her hand against her heart—“your mom had a lot of clarity yesterday while you were tutoring. We talked about her childhood, her dancing, her labor with you. Did you know she picked Rory because it sounded powerful?”

“Yeah, she told me that.”

“Well, yesterday, she called you her lion and I realized why she thought of Rory as a powerful name—Roar-y.” Greta giggles. “Only your mom would think of that. She was quite a lady.”

Rory embraces Greta with ostensible gratitude. “Thank you … so much, for, well, for everything.”

“I’m going to miss her. And you. Stay in touch?”

Rory nods. Greta and Linda were the same age, both widows. They grew so close over the past few years that Rory had come to consider Greta part of the family. That she doesn’t intend to disappear with her last paycheck is a relief to Rory.

Greta collects her things and goes. Rory sits on her mom’s cot and opens the letter. There’s no greeting, just Linda’s distinctive script.

Don’t put me in a coffin like your father. I have no desire to continue taking up space in this world (or to be consumed by maggots, for that matter). Have me cremated and buried in our plot. No wake … No death dress or makeup … No postfuneral potluck. I’m not beholden to any religious rules—I am myself a spiritual being. If you have a memorial, make it a celebration. This is not a tragic death. I’m ready.

And Rory, me leaving should give you time to focus on you. Enough already with the pain and guilt. You’ll see Emma again, when the time is right. Until then, I’ll watch over her. You’re here with a purpose. Ana?s Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage,” or something like that, and she’s right.

I’ll be sending love, Mom

Rory’s mind explodes with images and recollections. The way she said “God bless you” right before you sneezed. Her hard laughter the day I put lines all over my body with permanent marker because I wanted to be a tiger. When she spoke at Emma’s funeral and said that nothing will ever make sense again, but we still need to seek goodness wherever we go.

She sits in the room her mom faded in, enjoying her scent, reading the note again and again, weeping. When she finishes, Rory dries her eyes with a lightness any mourner would covet. Rory did right by Linda; she won’t suffer the way I did.

When I told Meg last Christmas I felt somewhat responsible for our mother’s death, she laughed it off, saying, “Mom dug her grave one drink at a time.”

True enough, but it wasn’t always that way. I have three years on Meg; I remember things she doesn’t. Before the zany jogging suits and hallway puke and everything else, she was a middle-class socialite, if there is such a thing. She attracted strong personalities like her friend Eve and my father. The hostess with the mostess, everyone agreed.

At eleven, I was the only one unimpressed.

I saw my mother as someone who let life happen to her. The cookbooks she loved, the clothes she wore, even mundane decisions like which flowers to plant each spring were all based on popular opinion. She’d rather be boring than risk ridicule. This fear was likely born from her own bad habit of calling out anyone who dared to differentiate. Though I was too young to know it, there’s a strong correlation between judgment and insecurity.

I watched in awe as my mother’s girlfriends broke the mold. I remember Eve stopping over after a court appearance, decked out in a smart suit, telling me about the time she led a band of ladies to a D.C. women’s rally. “Can you believe it was 1972 and women still didn’t have equal protection under the law?” I replied to my hero that, no, I couldn’t believe it. She told me to hold on to my chair because here it was—1982—and fifteen states still hadn’t ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, which was signed in both houses a few months after the rally Eve attended. I understood the legislation as historic, and in my na?veté, Eve played a major role. When I asked my mother if she went to D.C., she warned me to be careful what I wished for. “Equal rights? Sheesh. There’s a lot your father does that I want no part of.” I was disappointed. Women were demanding change, willing to serve in the military if that’s what it took, and yet my mom seemed proud that she voted for whomever my father told her to.

By the time I was twelve her dependence repulsed me. Puberty kicked in. I scoffed when she offered up homemade cookies, saying obnoxious things like, “You do realize you wouldn’t have to be on diets all the time if you stopped eating so many cookies, right?” Where the hell did I find the nerve? (Looking back, I have an idea where. She and my father had started to have a rocky go of it. I’d snicker alongside him as he berated her for letting any tiny household task slide. I mean, really, Janine, he’d say, leaning over the counter into her personal space, what the hell were you doing all day? How his disappointment became my anger is less clear. All I know is I let my aversion be known, and by my thirteenth birthday, my mother was drunk before noon. It was as if she turned into the useless character my father and I cast her as.)