Mothered (66)
“I know you’re disinclined, but try to get some decent sleep,” said Jackie. “Everything’s hard right now, but you’re gonna get through it.”
“Okay. Thank you.” She sipped her coffee and listened to her mother go back downstairs. Jackie started coughing, the sound diminishing as she headed for the kitchen. We’re a mess.
She appreciated that her mother was helping her, especially as their living arrangement had been made under the pretext that Grace would do the caregiving. It was fortunate that Jackie was well enough, but Grace was worried about her mother’s cough. And her wily brain. And her own discombobulated brain. And Miguel’s lungs. And her mother’s lungs.
Was there any part of her current existence that Grace wasn’t worried about?
She found herself in a self-reflective mood as she ate her breakfast. There was no way to make sense of the dream that felt like an entire lived day, or her disappointment that it hadn’t been real. It was too fresh, too raw, so she shoved it aside and focused on something that had been claiming more territory in her thoughts: Had she really, really been as burdened in her childhood as her memory wanted her to believe? Had she really spent that many hours tending to her sister, or did it just seem that way because of a child’s uneven sense of time? Looking back on it, it didn’t seem realistic that she and Hope had been on their own, unsupervised, as often as it may have seemed.
Jackie had worked full time, but Grace remembered her being there in the mornings and getting Hope ready for school. And giving them breakfast. If she and Hope had been on their own every day, wouldn’t it have been for a short time—the window between when the babysitter left and their mom got home from work? Yes, there had been the occasional evening when Mommy had to stay late or run errands before coming home. As a child, had it all felt like always and forever?
Did it matter?
It mattered because it bothered Grace now to think of how burdened she’d felt—that was a real memory—when perhaps it had only been her selfish impression of the responsibilities their life situation had demanded. It’s so unfair. That had been a frequent motto—it being every chore that Grace had undertaken when Hope had none; it being every minute of her own life that she’d given to helping Hope or Mommy that she’d wanted all to herself.
She might have been selfish. Probably was. But weren’t most children?
The coffee eased her headache, and the toast was filling, and she told herself she should go take a long walk and clear her head with a little exercise. But her eyelids were noncompliant, naughty theater curtains dropping over her field of vision even though the show wasn’t over yet. She didn’t want to sleep her life away—
Her eyelids sprang open as she wondered if this was what Miguel was feeling. Was Grace sick? Was her mother? Did they both have milder forms of the virus? It was almost reassuring, as being sick was better than going mad. Or maybe it was a sickness of madness—a new variant. A mutation.
Grace felt herself mutating as she dropped into sleep. Her body folded itself into something weightless as her consciousness detonated into the fragmented infinity of the unknown.
41
The stained-glass windows were beautiful in spite of the dreary day. Hope’s funeral was held in a church Grace had never been in, and the pews were filled with people of all ages. Mommy’s coworkers came (and a few of the elderly residents). And kids from school (with their parents). And families from the neighborhood. Everyone said nice things to Mommy as they gripped her hand or leaned in for a feeble hug. They whispered to Mommy that Hope was in heaven or that she was an angel. Even if Hope were in heaven, Grace considered it very unlikely that her sister was an angel; Hope just didn’t have the temperament for that, though she would probably enjoy having wings and flying around.
It was creepy to imagine a ghostly Hope watching her from above, hovering near the ceiling, spying on everything she did.
Nobody said very nice things to Grace. They just looked at her and frowned and maybe patted her cheek like she was five, not almost twelve. From Grace’s perspective, Mommy still had one more daughter but Grace didn’t have any more sisters. She’d heard people say, long before Hope died, that parents never got over losing a child, that it was the worst possible thing that could happen. Grace didn’t understand why people didn’t say the same thing for someone who’d lost a twin. For all their differences, they were as bonded and alike (at least genetically) as any two people could be. For as many times as Hope had driven her bonkers, she’d also been a best friend. And Hope was always the fearless one, the one unafraid to be alone in the house when it looked like a horror movie outside. Hope had been the one with all the ideas for things to do and games to play.
As Grace sat in the front-row pew, she felt very small, apprehensive of what it would be like to go home to an empty house, truly alone. Time would tick more slowly without Hope there, hours and hours of solitary uncertainty. Grace remembered all her cranky wishes: praying for more time to herself, more time to do her homework, more time to make her own decisions. But now her wishes had come true, and this wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want to do her homework if she couldn’t help Hope with hers first. She didn’t want to decide how to spend her afternoons if it meant Hope didn’t exist.
On the ride to the cemetery, Grace sat in the limousine with Mommy. They gazed in opposite directions, watching hard flakes of snow skate across the windows. Grace wasn’t dressed warmly enough, her tights and dress shoes no match for the biting wind. When Hope’s casket started sinking into the hole, Grace thought it was going to descend forever, like the elevator in the coal mine she’d visited on a field trip. An endless plunge into the darkness. When she tried to grip her mother’s hand, she found a statue of ice beside her. Her mother didn’t move, didn’t cry; Grace wasn’t even sure she was breathing.