Before I Let You Go(97)
I press my face into his chest, and I breathe in his scent. He is the warm blanket around my cold heart, but it is not enough—nothing will ever be enough to take away the ache in my chest.
I share awful phone calls with my mother over the days that follow. Our relationship is just close enough that I’m calling her to make sure she’s okay, but distant enough that I’m wary when she picks up the phone. All it will take for me to lose my mind completely will be one thoughtless platitude, and surely she is building up a database of them. Robert would have reacted to the news of Annie’s death with some condescending, self-righteous commentary, littered with Bible verses and scorn—and Mom is virtually his sidekick. If I hear her say those things, it will be the end of what’s left of our relationship.
And then my family will be gone. Not just broken, not just chaotic: gone. I’m more scared of this than I should be, given how dysfunctional we’ve been for the last twenty years.
But my fears go unfounded. Mostly, we discuss details for the funeral; those little things that really seem to matter in the hollow space between a death and the final farewell. I can’t bring myself to ask Mom if she’s coming, but she seems to want to know the plans, and eventually I realize that I have to assume Robert has agreed to let her come.
It’s important to Mom that the service is in a church, but I know Annie would have hated that, so I insist we hold it at the funeral home. Mom argues initially, but then just as I decide to give in and give her what she wants, she suddenly acquiesces to my wishes and focuses her attention on the wake. Who will be there? Where will we hold it? Who will bring food? We discuss all of this in far too much depth, and it becomes blatantly obvious that it’s simply an unspoken plea from each of us to stay on the line—something to connect over, after all of these years of polite, infrequent, surface-level chats.
Mom eventually tells me that she’s flying in the day before the funeral, but the request to pick her up remains unspoken until I offer to send Sam. He’s more than happy to oblige—he’s been hovering around me looking for ways to support me, and I love him for it, but I can’t open up to him about how I’m feeling just yet. He keeps telling me this isn’t my fault, and I know he’s wrong—but I’m not exactly going to argue the point.
As I watch his car leave the driveway to go get Mom, I exhale for the first time in days, grateful for both his assistance and the space.
I have prepared Sam for his first meeting with my mother. I’ve given him a crash course in the customs of the sect; from the long skirt she’ll be wearing to her hairstyle and head covering, and the oddly formal way she speaks sometimes, as if twenty-first-century slang has bypassed her village. I’ve even warned him to turn the radio off before she gets in the car, to avoid an awkward request from Mom to do so.
“And don’t offer her food,” I add just as he’s walking out the door. He looks at me blankly.
“But . . . why not?”
“She can’t eat with us.”
Sam blinks at me.
“Members of the sect can’t eat in the presence of nonbelievers. I’m not exactly sure how that will work yet. She’ll probably eat before or after us.”
Sam rubs his jaw wearily.
“Right. No radio, no food, no profanity, no haircuts. Got it.”
I waste the hours while I wait for Mom. I bring Daisy into my bed and I lie beside her and stare at her. I’ve always seen Dad in Annie’s daughter, but now I just see Annie. I run my forefinger over Daisy’s eyes and her little lips, and her cheeks and into her fine hair.
“I don’t know how, Daisy,” I whisper. “But I’m going to do better for you.”
When I hear Sam parking the car, I walk down the stairs with Daisy in my arms. Sam leads Mom into the living room, and she pauses when she sees me with the baby. I haven’t seen my mother face-to-face in almost twenty years, and she has aged terribly in that time. Her hair is now white, still straight and long down her back, tucked beneath a dark gray scarf. Her eyes are as red as mine must be.
Mom drops her luggage onto the floor and walks stiffly across the room toward me. Her hands shake as she reaches for Daisy, but I pull the baby away from her. She doesn’t deserve to hold Annie’s child.
My nostrils flare as I stare at Mom, but her focus is entirely on Daisy. She reaches to touch Daisy’s cheek, and the baby turns her head toward Mom’s finger and tries to gum it.
Don’t waste your energy, Daisy. Mom will never provide sustenance.
“She is beautiful,” Mom chokes, and I let my gaze linger on my mother’s face. She wears so many new lines and so many shadows of sadness. How old is she? Sixty-four, I calculate, but she looks so much older.
I soften suddenly. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the tears that roll down over the lines on Mom’s face, maybe it’s the reality that I just can’t stay angry with her—we have an awful few days to get through, and besides, she is here now. I pass her Daisy, and she sobs noisily as she helps herself to a seat on my couch with the baby in her arms. I watch silently for a while, but then I notice I’m tapping my foot frantically against the floor and I realize how much nervous energy I’m sitting on. Now that my anger is gone, I’m only hurt and deeply saddened that Annie isn’t here. If only Mom had come earlier, she could have been.
Anger starts to rise again at that thought, and I decide that I need to distract myself. I stand, then walk to the kitchen, and I carefully make tea for all of us, focusing hard on each step. When I’m finally before Mom with the tea, she looks up and I see the shadow cross her face. I feel like a complete idiot. Didn’t I warn Sam about this before he left? Mom can’t drink it in the same room as us. It’s one of the community’s basic tenets; the principle of separation.