BETSY WAS ALREADY ON HER FEET when Oliver breezed into the plush lobby of Shady Grove. Her typical smile was being held hostage by a worried frown and a series of deep crevices that started between her eyebrows and disappeared under her bangs. She glanced at the spot where the beefy security guard usually sat, then motioned Oliver forward with a series of quick shoveling hand gestures.
“Did you get my messages?”
“I guess not,” Oliver said.
“Huh, I checked the number twice. And I would have sworn that was your mother’s voice on the machine. Anyway, your mother has been moved.”
“As in, moved out of Shady Grove?”
“Not out, up.” She pointed her index finger skyward and pumped it a few times.
“Unofficially?”
“I’m worried about her.”
Now Oliver was too. “Worried how?”
“Well, she has been kinda depressed lately. Mostly because she can’t remember things. She complains about the way she’s being treated, says she feels like she’s dying.”
“When was someone going to tell me about this?”
“I’m sorry, Oliver. I figured Dr. Strahan would have called you already.”
The security guard roamed back into the lobby, and Oliver would have sworn the guy gave him a dirty look. It occurred to Oliver that the tight security at Shady Grove should make him feel better about his mother’s welfare, not worse. Betsy cleared her throat. The worry lines were gone and the corners of her mouth had magically risen to reveal two rows of perfectly crooked teeth.
“So …” Betsy reverted to her chirpy tour guide voice again. “Just take the elevator to the third floor, go left, and she’s three doors down on the right.”
When Oliver arrived in his mother’s new room she wasn’t there. It was a miniature copy of her old room—same wallpaper, same linens and curtains and bathroom fixtures. But the bed was bulkier, more industrial. And most of her personal stuff was missing. It was obviously too small to accommodate her recliner and love seat and favorite coffee table. All that remained were her imitation oriental rug, rolled up and leaning in a corner, and her bookshelf. The floor was littered with nearly a dozen boxes marked Miles 322. Only one had been opened.
Oliver knelt and used his car key to break the seal on the remaining cartons. He took his time moving the contents of the boxes onto the shelf. Someone—probably Betsy—had gone to the trouble of blowing the dust off the pages of her books.
When he found the tape recorder, he listened to a few seconds of his eleven-year-old self doing comedy—a few seconds was all he could take—before lining it up on the top shelf alongside his favorite photos of himself and his mother. He grinned when he realized her chest of drawers was also missing, wondering where his mother would hide the photos when he left.
The last two boxes contained her prized (and very expensive) collection of John Irving novels. Oliver suspected that these were the only books she actually pulled down and read with any regularity. He used to track her bookmark as it moved through The World According to Garp and into Widow for One Year or Imaginary Girlfriend. Today though, he wanted his eyes to travel the same literary terrain as his mother’s. He took his time then, paging through slowly, allowing his fingers to graze as much of each page as possible. He looked for smudges or stains on the pages and tried to imagine her making them.
Oliver was fanning the pages of A Prayer for Owen Meany when the handwritten letter fell out and fluttered to the floor.
He’d seen this before, or something very much like it. She’d included the month and day, but not the year. So Oliver had no way to know how old it was. The tone felt familiar, scripted in deliberate upright strokes. The ink was black, no-nonsense. And the stationery was the same she’d been using since Oliver could remember. She never ran out because Delores Miles didn’t write letters. She wrote suicide notes.
He was sixteen the first time he found one of her notes. She’d been running late for work when she saw him sitting at the table reading a single sheet of paper. When he hadn’t responded to her goodbyes, she walked over and stood across the table from him. She didn’t ask what he was reading; apparently she could see it in his face. She eased the paper from his hand and scanned it.
“Oh … this old thing?” She had tried to make her voice sound frothy and droll, but missed badly. “This isn’t mine, I swear. I was, um, writing this for a friend.”
“Not funny, Mom.”
“Seriously, honey, you can make good money ghostwriting suicide notes.”
“Still not funny.”
He would eventually find eleven more notes, all dated within the previous year. Apparently, she blamed her suicidal tendencies on her failure as a mother, as a lover, and her inability to make a “decent living.” One recurring theme was her undying love for her son. Oliver wasn’t so sure.
“Look, I have to run, sweetie. Can’t really afford to be late for work again. Just promise me you won’t worry.”
Oliver hadn’t promised anything.
“Think about it,” she said. “Have I ever left you without saying goodbye?”
“Not when you were sober.”
“Touché. Still, logically speaking, I can’t kill myself with you watching because you’d try and stop me, right?”
“Yes, probably.”
“So my only alternative would be to write my farewell, then do the deed while you were at school or something. But that simply is not going to happen.”
She tapped the unfinished note and said, “Writer’s block.”
He hadn’t meant to laugh. But Roscoe was right. She was either the funniest sad person he’d ever met, or the saddest funny person.
Oliver scanned the note a final time and tucked it into his hip pocket. He searched for more, but found none. The closest he came was another handwritten page titled “Sermon Notes” where his mother had scribbled random ideas about parents not exasperating their children and the value of training kids up in spiritual disciplines. Near the bottom, in all capital letters, she’d written: Possible title? The Healing Power of Forgiveness. Apparently Delores Miles was still coloring in the lines of her penitence, her tongue still tucked into the corner of her mouth, sweat still beading on her forehead as she continued to work out her salvation with fear and trembling. Oliver’s gaze angled toward the heavens as the conflicting emotions roiled inside him and finally bubbled up into a one-word prayer that seemed to cover both his mother’s illness and all his own raging inadequacies. “Help,” he whispered.
After alphabetizing his mother’s books, Oliver divided his time between breaking down cardboard boxes and resisting the urge to study the fresh suicide note tucked into his hip pocket.
When he heard his mother’s voice wafting through the open door, he walked to the hallway and watched as she berated a pair of young nurses. She gripped her Fisher-Price doctor kit in one hand and used the other to pound the desk of the nurse’s station, demanding to know what they had done with her patient and threatening to quit. When they finally tried to explain that Ms. Tompkins had passed away, Delores Miles just pounded harder and yelled louder.
What Oliver should have done was calmly escort his mother back to her new room. But all he really wanted was to see her, to make sure she was still okay. So what he did instead was put his head down, ignore the elevator, and hurry down the echoey stairwell.
Betsy was speaking into her headset, giving someone directions to Shady Grove. The security guard was in his customary spot, leaning his chair back on two legs. Oliver didn’t look at him but felt his gaze nonetheless, certain it was focused on his hip pocket.