The Dutch House(77)

“Danny, our mother is here. It doesn’t matter about anyone else. Doesn’t she look beautiful?”

I sat down on the unmade bed. “Beautiful,” I said.

“You’re not happy about this.”

“I am. I’m happy for you.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Maeve, I want you to be healthy. I want whatever’s going to be best for you.”

“You have got to learn to lie.” Her hair had been brushed and I wondered if our mother had brushed it.

“I am lying,” I said. “You can’t believe how well I’m lying.”

“I’m so happy. I’ve just had a heart attack and this has been the happiest day of my life.”

I told her the truth, more or less, that her happiness was all I cared about.

“I’m just glad she came back for my heart attack and not my funeral.”

“Why would you even say that?” For the first time since Mr. Otterson had called my office, I was in danger of giving way to my emotions.

“It’s true,” she said. “Let her sleep in the house. Make sure there’s food. I don’t want her in the waiting room all night.”

I nodded. There was so much to hold back that I couldn’t say another word.

“I love her,” Maeve said. “Don’t mess this up for me. Don’t chase her off while I’m locked up in the aquarium.”

Later that day I went back to Maeve’s and packed up my things. It would be easier for me to stay in a hotel anyway. I asked Sandy to pick my mother up and take her to Maeve’s. Sandy knew everything already, including how I felt, which was miraculous considering my inability to put my feelings into words. From what I could piece together, Sandy and Jocelyn and Fluffy had each dealt with the return of Elna Conroy in her own way.

“I know how hard this is,” Sandy said to me, “because I know how hard it was. But I think if you’d known her back then you’d be happy to see her.”

I just looked at her.

“Okay, maybe not, but we have to make this work for Maeve’s sake.” Meaning that I would make it work and she would help me. Sandy had always had a lighter touch than the other two.

My mother offered nothing to explain herself. When we were in the waiting room together she stayed near the window as if contemplating her exit. A high-pitched whine seemed to emanate from her misery, like fluorescent tubing just before it burns out, like tinnitus, something nearly imperceptible that almost drove me to insanity. Then, without a word, she would leave, as if even she could not stand herself another minute. When she returned hours later she was more relaxed. Sandy told me she went to the other floors and found people to walk with, patients or anxious family members waiting for news. She would loop around the various nurses’ stations with strangers for hours.

“And they let her?” I asked. I would have thought there would be rules against it.

Sandy shrugged. “She tells them her daughter had a heart attack and that she’s waiting, too. She isn’t exactly a dangerous character, your mother.”

It was a point on which I could not be convinced.

Sandy sighed. “I know. I think I’d still be mad at her too if she wasn’t so old.”

I believed that Sandy and my mother were pretty much the same age, at least in the same ballpark, but I also knew what she meant. My mother was like a pilgrim who had fallen into the ice for hundreds of years and then was thawed against her will. Everything about her indicated that she had meant to be dead by now.

Fluffy proved adept at avoiding me, and when I finally caught her alone at the elevator bank, she pretended she’d been looking for me. “I’ve always known you to be a decent man,” she said, instructing me to be nicer.

“And I’ve known you to make some bad decisions, but you’ve really outdone yourself here.”

Fluffy held her ground. “I did what was best for Maeve.” An elevator door opened in front of us and when the people inside looked out we shook our heads.

“How is it that hearing from our mother was a bad idea for Maeve when she was just a diabetic, but now that she’s a diabetic who’s had a heart attack you think it’s a good idea?”

“It’s different,” Fluffy said, her cheeks reddening.

“Explain it to me then because I don’t understand.” I tried to remember how deeply I trusted her, how she had taught Celeste and me to raise our children, how confidently we left the house with only Fluffy there to guard Kevin and May.

“I was afraid Maeve would die,” Fluffy said, her eyes going watery. “I wanted her to see her mother before she died.”

But of course Maeve didn’t die. Every day she improved, overcame her setbacks. Every day she asked for no one but her mother.

I found it remarkable that our mother could work Maeve into her schedule. She had somehow secured the right to push the flower cart, to sit and visit with the people who had no mothers of their own to contend with. I didn’t know whom she had talked into letting her do this, or how, since when we found ourselves together she was more or less mute. I thought she was too restless to sit in the waiting room, but it was probably closer to the truth to say she didn’t want to sit with me. She couldn’t look at me. When Fluffy arrived for a visit, or Sandy or Jocelyn or Mr. Otterson or the Norcrosses or good old Lawyer Gooch or any group of Maeve’s friends from work or church or the neighborhood, there my mother would be, picking up the newspapers and magazines, seeing who wanted a bottle of water or an orange. She was forever peeling someone an orange. She had some special trick for it.