Anything Is Possible(11)

In their marriage bed they held hands, and never went any further. Often, during the first years especially, he had terrible dreams, and he would kick the covers and squeal, it was a frightening sound. She noticed that he was aroused when this happened, and she was always sure to touch only his shoulders until he calmed down. Then she rubbed his forehead. “It’s okay, honey,” she always said. He would stare at the ceiling, his hands in fists. Thank you, he said. Turning his face toward her, Thank you, Patty, he said.

—

“Tell me, tell me. Smell me. How are you?” Her mother poked a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth.

“I’m well. I’m going to see Angelina tomorrow night. Her husband’s left her.” Patty put mashed potatoes on her meatloaf, then put butter on the mashed potatoes.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Her mother placed her fork on the table and looked at her quizzically.

“Angelina, she’s one of the Mumford girls.”

“Huh.” Her mother nodded slowly. “Oh, I know. Her mother was Mary Mumford. Sure. She wasn’t much.”

“Who wasn’t much? Angelina’s a great person. I always thought her mother was really nice.”

“Oh, she was nice. She just wasn’t much. I think she came from Mississippi originally. She married that Mumford boy, he was rich, and then she had all those girls and plenty of money.”

Patty opened her mouth. She was going to ask if her mother remembered that Mary Mumford had left that rich husband only a few years ago, in her seventies, did she remember that? But Patty wouldn’t ask. She would not tell her mother that she and Angelina had become friends over it: mothers leaving.

I wanted to kill him, Sebastian had told Patty. I really did want to kill him. “Of course you did,” she had said. And I wanted to kill my mother too, he said. And Patty said, “Of course you did.”

—

Patty looked around her mother’s small kitchen. It was spotless, thanks to Olga, a woman older than Patty who came in twice a week. But the table she sat at had a linoleum top that was cracked at the corners, and the curtains at the window were very faded in their blue. And Patty could see from where she sat, down the hallway to the corner of the living room, the blue beanbag chair that her mother, after all these years, refused to give up.

Her mother was talking—so often this was the case these days—of things from the past. “All those dances at The Club. My goodness, they were fun.” Her mother paused to shake her head with wonder.

Patty put another slab of butter on her potatoes, ate the potatoes, and then pushed the plate aside. “Lucy Barton’s written a memoir,” she said.

Her mother said, “What did you say?” And Patty repeated it.

“Now I remember,” her mother said. “They used to live in a garage, and then the old man died—whatever relative he was, I have no idea—but they moved into the house.”

“A garage? Is that where I remember going? A garage?”

Her mother said, after a moment, “I don’t know, I can’t remember, but she was very inexpensive, that’s why I used her. She did wonderful work really, and she barely charged a nickel for it.” After a long moment, her mother said, “I saw Lucy on TV a few years ago. Hot shot. She wrote a book or something. Lives in New York. Smork. La-de-dah.”

Patty took a deep, unquiet breath. Her mother reached for the coleslaw, and as her bathrobe fell open slightly, Patty could see—briefly—the flattened small breast beneath the nightgown. After a few minutes Patty stood up, cleared the table, and did the dishes rapidly. “Let’s check your meds,” she said, and her mother waved a hand dismissively. So Patty went into the bathroom and found the container with the divided daily sections, and saw that her mother had not taken any of the pills since Patty was last there. Patty brought the container out to her mother and explained again why each pill was important, and her mother said, “All right.” She took the pills that Patty handed her. “You need to take these,” Patty told her. “You don’t want to have a stroke.” She did not say anything about the medicine that was supposed to slow dementia.

“I’m not going to have a stroke. Stroke poke.”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

“You turned out the best,” her mother said at the door. “It’s too bad your be-happy pills added that weight, but you’re still pretty. Are you sure you have to go?”

Walking down the driveway to her car, Patty said out loud, “Oh my gosh.”



The sun had just set, and by the time Patty was halfway home—past the windmills—the full moon was starting to rise. The night her father died the moon was full, and in Patty’s mind every time the moon became full she felt that her father was watching her. She wiggled her fingers from the steering wheel as a hello to him. Love you, Daddy, she whispered. And she meant Sibby as well, for they had merged, in a way, in her mind. They were up there watching her, and she knew that the moon was just a rock—a rock!—but the sight of its fullness always made her feel that her men were out there, up there, too. Wait for me, she whispered. Because she knew—she almost knew—that when she died she would be with her father and Sibby again. Thank you, she whispered, because her father had just told her it was good of her to take care of her mother. He was generous now in this way; death had given that to him.