Sondra: 9:28 a.m. I’m here again, doing everything myself. Where are you?
Another morning’s work interrupted. I stopped answering my sister’s calls. Now she sends me text messages that she propels with all the sensitivity of bricks through my window. At first I texted back poetry to irk her. My favourite was Wordsworth:
Anne: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky So was it when my life began
Anne: So is it now I am a man. So be it when I shall grow old Or let me die!
It was so effective she replied by voicemail. I wish I’d saved it. I enjoyed her repeated use of the word “avoidance.” I could have played for my students: “Class, this poem is a free-verse amalgam of patient parroted psychotherapy terminology. Is the contemporary dialectic always a reiteration of major canonical themes? How does the prescriptive, and somewhat brutal, realism of this form of spoken word differ from the language of the Romantics? Or Modernists? Or major Canadian authors? Discuss.”
Of course I would have had to stop the tape before the part where she said poetry is flippant, and my use of it destructive.
When we were teenagers Sondra wore her bangs flipped up in an overarching hairsprayed wave that evoked Ionic columns and made her look three inches taller. The trio of safety pins she stuck into her T-shirts for the two weeks she decided she was “punk” amused me, the older sister. I think she moved on to water polo after that. Or she liked a boy on the rowing team who wore polo shirts. Ever since she graduated from girlfriend to wife, my sister has been straight and neat as pins: flat-ironed hair, manicured nails, and navy-blue cardigans. She has an enormous gourmet Mixmaster, mausoleum marble countertops, an impressive home theatre. Her bathroom is ingeniously wired with radiant floor heat. Her house has warm tiles but no heart. It’s devoid of books, the one incendiary device I wish for her children.
I dutifully send my niece and nephew age-inappropriate literature every Christmas. I am a responsible aunt.
I delete Sondra’s morning messages and keep working. I must make use of every useful fragment of time before I’m inundated with students. Office-hour visits at this time of year are always grade complaints from overinflated egos. So many excuses. I would write the litany into a long-winded dirge, except too many of them are about sick cats. Or technological failures. Don’t students fall into insane, reckless love anymore? Or does the continuous click, type, and mouse roll keep them too distracted to obsess? In lecture theatres I gaze out at the backsides of laptops operated by students with blank screen faces.
These are the precious, productive weeks between blasting air conditioning and dry, nosebleed heat at the university. Being among books in my office pleases me. I am protected by the towers of paper on my desk. I must soon open my door and shock another student with the bracing realities of academia. But first let me read this line by Wallace Stevens again. And let me again throw away the lights, the definitions, and say of what I see in the dark, “that it is this, or that it is that, but do not use the rotted names. How should you walk in that space and know —”
BEEP dissolves my poetic otherworld.
Sondra: 10:51 a.m. The doctor wants to switch her blood pressure medication but both options can cause kidney damage!
Sondra: 10:53 a.m. He says we’ve exhausted other alternatives.
Sondra: 10:57 a.m. Why do I have to decide?
Let’s silence this phone. Let’s extinguish the computer screen. L.E.D. me down a winding path to somewhere else. I yank the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet open. Behind the cardboard boxes of herbal tea is a bottle of bourbon for celebrating academic triumphs. My bottle is still half full. Today it’s also blood-pressure medication.
I open my office door, let in the first excuse. Why must I listen to tepid retail clerk remonstrations from English majors? Shall I compare clothing racks to a summer’s day? My students are all undead. A grade-sucking vampire. A zombie seeking a course refund. Then I open my office door to the complaint from the day before. Yesterday he was a wheedling, over-entitled kid: the intellectual equivalent of a car alarm, yet somehow sneaky. An imbecilic version of Ondaatje’s Caravaggio. But something has penetrated past his shiny shell of overlong bangs. He no longer emanates the new school clothes smell. There’s a face behind the screen. I want to pull this newly world-weary young man into my office and get him to tell me everything. Instead, he shows me his Ondaatje book, all marked up like I said to do. He’s read it. He has something to say! There’s bourbon in my mug, and a real, living reader in my office. I watch him as he talks, analyzing him like a novel. His shoulders sag under the enormous weight of his story.
What is his name? I need to remember — James? Scott? No — A-something. When I first started teaching I knew every student. But now all the faces and names blur past too quickly. There are too many students, and too few with stories of any gravity. Ali? Andrew? Sounds like Arrrr. He’s telling me about the English patient’s subterfuge in a hushed near-whisper. For one awful moment I think he’s going to start to sob. The horrible thing men do that sounds like choking.
Aaron. What did you do?
I want to ask him directly. But I am a professor. I probe with questions about the book, expecting him to stay crouched beneath the subtext. I do not expect him to detonate my office with the testimonial equivalent of an improvised explosive device.
“You shouldn’t leave anyone by themselves,” Aaron says. “If you don’t stand up for someone … if you make the situation worse …” He is glowering at the floor. He is calling me on inaction, he is saying the word criminal. Is he a criminal? Is Caravaggio? Is Ondaatje? Am I? The sparks of his fury, shame, and regret are incendiary. The paper tower is on fire. Hardcovers burst into flame. I hold on to my tenure with both hands until it burns. Then I think of my mother and am overwhelmed with guilt.
Aaron. What have you done?
He stops talking. The smoke subsides, the floor stops trembling. We sit in silence until my phone vibrates off the window ledge and clatters to the floor. We both turn and look out the window.
Sondra: 12:32 p.m. I don’t know what to do.
Freeways terrify me.
The monstrous green signs for the 401 appear. There’s no room for mistakes. You can’t edit while driving, and I like to revise. I am boxed in by a moving truck, a taxi, and a van. I accelerate as vehicles merge and scatter across five lanes. Across the meridian are four more lanes travelling in the same direction. A long stretch of metallic roofs reflect sunlight. Traffic is all glare and no glitter. All pollution and propulsion.
My Wordsworth heart leaps up when I behold a massive rainbow-painted refrigerator truck passing me on the right. Up ahead a green sports car swerves between lanes without signalling.
Driver of the blue car to my left: are you sweating and swearing under your breath like me? Is your gastrointestinal system bubbling with road rage, fear, rejection, agony, defeat, and anxiety?
My phone beeps. A text message I can’t check. I am ten o’clock and two o’clock and eyes ahead, not blinking.
“To everything there is a season,” I recite. “A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” And a time to drive? No. Sweat crawls down my temple, an insect-like arch. This trip is necessary but horrible. I blame Aaron.
I wanted to be the professor-priestess, granting Aaron communion and absolution after his confession. But I dropped my role. There was guilt. There were angry text messages from my sister. And now I am taking unscheduled time off to drive to Ottawa.
Guilt was there all along, of course. Aaron let it out. He’s my version of Poe’s raven. At home I tried Sleepytime tea and aromatherapy bubble bath. But my mother’s face appeared on the pillow next to me as I slept, and stared at me in my dreams. I woke up to see her upstaging everything, from shadow to spotlight, bit part to starring role.
This morning I jabbed contact lenses into stinging eyes, made a Thermos of extra-strong coffee, and cancelled the day’s appointments. I got into my car, revved the engine, shifted into reverse. But I couldn’t bring myself to text my sister.
I see skid marks, the black rubber remnants of a blown tire, and cringe. Once when I was an undergraduate I saw a psychotherapist — briefly — for stress and anxiety. It’s not like I needed therapy. Not like my sister. When exams ended, so did the panic attacks. The only thing I really remember about therapy is that when you’re feeling anxious, you’re supposed to list your anxieties. Like this:
Bugs splatter the windshield, sacrificing sentence-fragment lives. Everything is progressing to an end. The apex of guilt is the exact moment you realize your time — for excuses and forgiveness — has run out.
Traffic begins to thin somewhere past Belleville. I’ll spend the rest of the drive to Ottawa passing cavalcades of trucks, watching bright autumn trees scream by. I try to keep my eyes on the road as I shove my hand into the glove compartment. I grab a CD, struggle to open the case. My book-on-disc version of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano reverberates. I sigh like an eruption.
Four hours later I pull up to ARC The.Hotel, where I like to stay in Ottawa despite the absurd punctuation liberties marketers have taken with its name. It’s downtown on Slater Street. Close to everything enjoyable and nowhere near my sister’s house in Kanata. I hand the valet the keys to my Toyota. It’s a relief to feel my feet on solid sidewalk. I shoulder my laptop bag while my carry-on-sized suitcase is whisked into the foyer ahead of me. Check-in is a credit card flash and signature for an expressionless youth in a navy suit. I take the shiny, mirrored elevator up to my floor and fumble with my key card in the dimly lit hallway. The door clicks open to reveal a room so compact the bed seems enormous. A single green apple rests on a heaping pile of fat white pillows.
Mom can wait a few more minutes, I think. It’s only midafternoon and visiting hours run until early evening. Besides, Sondra might still be there. I set my bags down, kick my shoes off, and sit on the spongy bed, my laptop balanced on my knees. I fiddle and click until I figure out the hotel’s Wi-Fi. I think about how my mother goes to sleep early. I type the URL for the National Arts Centre website and am surprised to see the evening’s performance by a Montreal modern dance company is not yet sold out. Filling in the ticket purchase form feels like a daring form of procrastination. The apple topples from the pillow and rolls down the surface of the white comforter. I grab it, recline on the pillows, take a few bites, and fall asleep.
I wake up confused to strange lights twinkling through the window. I stand and look for clues. The lights are from a cluster of criminally austere concrete office towers. Double buses roar past. Ottawa at night. It’s too late to go see Mom now. I turn away from the uninspiring view and lift my suitcase onto the dark wood dresser.
Mother can wait until tomorrow. I pull out the dark brown wool suit I’d packed for our visit. She doesn’t know I’m here anyway. Still, I avoid making eye contact with myself in the mirror.
The NAC is only a few blocks from the hotel. I walk, my wool pants draping comfortably, even in the city’s continuous wind. A man in a wrinkled white shirt and tie, obviously worn all day at the office, holds the door open for me. I mill around the lobby among the small crowd of conservatively dressed middle-aged bureaucrats and unkempt students. Ottawa is a two-university town. Being back makes me feel plain and less expressive. Tired. I imagine who I’d be had I stayed. An NAC subscriber. A professor at Carleton, the more liberal of the two campuses. I would have malingered over publishable papers and research grant applications. I left because I needed to be bigger than my hometown. I was ambitious. My father understood. My mother kept asking when I was going to get married and have children, like perfect Sondra, as though that would cure me of my career.
The lights dim and I hurry to find my seat. I’m a dozen rows back from stage left. I squeeze past an elderly couple and sit down next to a large bald man in dark jeans and Converse high-tops. Laces undone. The man’s arms occupy both armrests. He belongs in a tattoo parlour. His sizeable legs splay to either side and push right up against the seats in front of us. He breathes heavily, tosses his program on the floor, and taps his foot without a discernible rhythm. I lean toward the seniors on my right. They’re reading their programs.
“Make sure you try to understand what it’s about this time,” the elderly woman says. She gives her partner an elbow nudge. “I don’t want another interrogation on the drive home.”
“Bah,” the man says. He shakes his grey-haired head. “That last one was strange, but I think this one will be nicer. We saw them last year, remember?”
I glance at my program. The names of the performers are like class attendance: Terrance Cho, Alexandre Chouinard, Jennifer Alleyn. I immediately forget them.
The house lights go down and the deep, slow notes of a stand-up bass and piano rumble from the orchestra pit. There’s a tension-building pause that feels interminable in the dark. Then the curtains glide open to reveal an empty stage lit in deep twilight blue. A thin man in black pants, white T-shirt, and bare feet walks slowly onto the stage, moving back and forth in large, wistful movements. Soon, like a shadow, the other male dancer begins dancing behind him. The large man seated beside me edges forward when the female dancer appears. I think I hear him sigh. He smells pungent and dank like a basement. The aged couple to my right is small and silent, obliterated by the dark except for the blue-tinged reflections that bounce off their glasses. When I glance in their direction I catch the slightest fragrant whiff of maple syrup.
The couple onstage begins a complicated pas de deux with lots of lifts, but the female dancer keeps gazing at the man in front, who begins spinning in a series of spectacular turns. Her story seems obvious. She can’t keep her eyes on the partner who dances for her, supporting her at every lift and turn. He is desperately in love. He reminds me of Mitchell, my former fiancé. Mitchell used to make me coffee and breakfast every morning, ask me how things were going at school, keep our shared condo clean.
I gaze at the young woman. She is fragile, compact, and absolutely stunning. A mystical muse to enrapture poets and cause men to obsess. The kind of dangerous beauty I never possessed. She circles the lavish, turning, twisting man, becoming transfixed, while the other male dancer retreats downstage. I wait for her to jump, like I did, for the magical intellect of the linguistics professor I’d once admired. Except I leapt into his arms and he dropped me. My face flushes, even now, hidden in the dark.
But the young woman dancer instead launches out on her own, dancing solo as the two male dancers disappear into the wings. She flicks her long dark hair in every direction and extends each limb at impossible angles, filling the entire stage with movement. The large man next to me fidgets nervously as he watches the dancer whirl across the floor. She makes no mistakes. I am awed, jealous. It took me a long time to be able to perform in my field with this level of skill and authority.
The piano and bass music crests toward a crescendo. The backlights turn crimson. The dancer leaps. Her back arcs and legs extend in a tremendous grand jeté, like flying. But upon descent her ankle seems to give way. Instead of landing she crashes onto the stage, collapsing to the floor in shudders and violent trembles. The large man beside me gasps and stands. The music stops. The curtain closes. The man pushes past me and the aged couple, shoving knees and elbows to reach the aisle. He jogs toward the exit closest to the stage, making wheezy huffing noises. The audience sits in silence as the house lights come up. A smattering of applause infiltrates the confusion.
“What just happened?” the woman next to me asks.
“I think she’s injured,” I say, “I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to go.”
“Oh dear,” the woman says. “The poor thing. What are they going to do now?”
The audience burbles with whispers. I am restless. I can’t decide whether the performance is over, or if this is only a forced, impromptu intermission. A loudspeaker crackles.
“Due to injury, the role played by Jennifer Alleyn will now be danced by her understudy, Maria Verados,” a man’s voice announces.
The house lights go down again. The curtains open, the music begins pulsating and a new soloist walks onstage to restrained applause. As she stretches her legs and arms I decide she is neither as riveting, nor as beautiful. The two male dancers slip onstage and swoop around the understudy, but their new triangles are cautious and tepid.
“Well, that was different,” the elderly man says to his wife when the show finally ends. “It was obviously an allegory. A political power struggle. Brought me back to the old days on the Hill. Too bad about the soloist, though.”
“So unfortunate,” the woman says. “That poor dear. Probably the end of her career.”
The audience swarms up the stairs into the foyer. Couples stop to chat in groups of fours and sixes. I head for the doors. Outside the air is cool and humid. I take the steep staircase down to the public boardwalk along the canal and stand for a moment at the edge to watch the bulbous lights reflect on the oily shimmer of water. The performance was supposed to be a luscious escape. Instead, it was a series of unnecessary reminders culminating in a snapped Achilles tendon.
For a moment I wonder how the lummox seated beside me could possibly be connected to the ethereal dancer, but I’m too worn out for conjecture. I look around for something to distract me. It’s very dark where I’m standing. The orbs of light are too dim. What did my professor idol say to me before he left? I close my eyes, but can’t remember. My mind used to be so muscular. I wish I had someone to help archive my memories. Like my father did for so many years for my mother.
The dancer is broken, mangled, career over. The brightness of my mind is fading, and there’s still so much work I want to accomplish. Yet I’d rather be embroiled in any modicum of intellectual struggle than endure a normal life. Be a wife. Drive through the suburbs. Walk the dog. Look after my mother.
Someone sputters and coughs nearby. A disgusting clearing of phlegm and the revolting sound of spit hitting concrete. I whirl around. The large, awful man is wheezing and stumbling down the stairs toward the boardwalk. I step back, out of the light. I look around for joggers, strolling couples, smokers, but there is no one. Fear bubbles. I clutch my purse tighter. If I move he’ll see me. I watch as the man strides toward the canal, waiting for him to reach the railing, gaze out at the water so I can slip away.
I hear a shout. Something tall, thin, and fast bolts out of the shadows, hurtling itself at the large man. The figure collides with the large man with such wild intensity it seems supernatural. It’s not until the man and the figure scuffle under the light that I see it’s a young person. I think for a moment that he looks like that student of mine, Aaron. But then he throws off his jacket and I can see his dark clothes are worn and shabby. The large man grabs hold of the kid’s shirt and tears it. Retaliation is a dirty hand reaching up and scratching at the large man’s face. This is not a student fight on campus. It’s sordid. Malevolent. A duel. The young man is vicious. But his opponent is twice his size and grasping for something in his pocket. Weaponry. My legs wobble. I bolt, running as fast as I can up the grassy embankment. This is not the Ottawa I remember, nor the one I want to experience.
I try to block out the shouting. What if the large man has a gun? Or a knife? And what will the younger man do with those monstrous hands? I don’t want to hear. Or know. The two men are swearing. Yelling. Something that sounds like “Jennifer.” Or “Vancouver.” Or “Remember.” Rage. Cries of pain. A splash.
Then silence.
I keep running. The streetlights on Elgin are bright beacons. I look in desperation for a cab, but there are never cabs when you want them in this city. I get turned around, lose my sense of direction. I’m not sure where I am until I see an intersection, street signs. Laurier. How did I get here? In my panic I’ve overshot the hotel. I stop on the sidewalk, smooth my hair, slow down to a walk.
I look for my cellphone in my purse, press nine then one on the keypad. My hand shakes. What did I see? It was dark. I was right to stay out of it, run away. Protect myself. The splash was nothing. My imagination, or, at worst, someone’s shoe hurtling over the railing. The man’s laces were undone. No need to panic, call the police, embarrass myself. Become involved. Must be some kind of horrible business. No — I don’t want to know. I have my own worries and problems. I can’t take any more on. I’m full up on drama. My brain won’t process any more of it. And by now the two men are probably gone, anyway. By the time the police arrive there won’t be any sign of them, and I’ll look like the fool. Best to forget this ever happened. To use forgetfulness in my favour.
I stumble back to the hotel, holding my phone in my hand. On the elevator I think about the splash. It was a quiet splash. Something small. An object. I’m sure of it. Nothing to worry about, nothing human. In my room, two nightstand lamps emit a warm glow. I kick off my shoes, sit down on the big bed, and pick up a pillow, pressing my hands, then face against its softness. But it’s not comforting. And I am not at all sleepy.
The red L.E.D. numbers on the clock bleed, reflecting onto the surface of the shiny nightstand. 11:11. 11:12. 11:13.
Anxieties of the moment:
Sondra: 11:21 p.m. We’re making her comfortable.
I turn my cellphone off. I focus on the minutiae of my evening routine. I floss and brush my teeth. Wash my face, apply moisturizer, expensive eye cream, hand lotion. I fold my suit, put on my pajamas, click the lamps off, too. Then I lie in the soft bed, unable to sleep. My thoughts keep going, swirling in a wide circle around my mother. I analyze the meaning of the word comfortable. Its etymology. I can’t think of a single brilliant quote with the word in it. It’s not very poetic. I think of the lyrics to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” How inappropriate they are for the moment. How comfort does not necessitate joy.
Sondra: 8:12 a.m. Some breathing problems in the night.
Sondra: 8:14 a.m. Am going to talk to the doctor again.
I sleep fitfully, climb out of bed after checking my messages, then shower and dress quickly. Today I have one task to complete. Only one.
The morning wind feels harsher than the airy swirls of the night before. I stroll along Elgin Street, avoiding the canal. The city has lost its lustre. The blocks feel short, the storefronts are drab and cluttered. I take the long route, buy a cup of coffee and sip it slowly, but I’m still unprepared when I arrive at the steel-edged glass doors. They slide apart automatically as I step through. I ring the buzzer in the lobby and a nurse in blue scrubs opens the interior door with a smile.
“Hello, I’m here to see Agnes Moreland,” I say. My voice wobbles. “I’m her daughter.”
“Sure, you go on up.” The nurse pauses, waiting for me to move. I stand there until she realizes I need the room number. She consults a clipboard list and smiles. “Three oh five.”
There’s a stooped, white-haired woman with a walker in the elevator. She doesn’t look up at me and I’m not sure she can. On the third floor I clear my throat and listen to it echo in the empty halls. The air is heavy with disinfectant. Beside each room is a photo of the inhabitant inside. Every door has a name plaque and I delight in the Modernist-era monikers: Myrna, Eloise, Lydia, Edmond. Agnes.
I knock. When I put my ear to the door I hear TV, a faint “hello,” and a cough. I press down on the cold metal lever and push. The room is bathed in sunlight. My mother is propped up into a seated position in her hospital bed, surrounded by pillows. She holds a white teddy bear in the bend of one arm and nods her head up and down. She’s wearing a pink cotton nightgown and a green velour bathrobe that’s at least three decades old. It still has all of its pink plastic flower buttons intact.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, standing over her. I turn and fake cough over my shoulder, stopping myself from the horrible thing that sounds like choking. Then I put my trembling hand on top of her idle one.
She looks up at me and her eyes are still the same blue. “Hello,” she says, without a flicker of recognition. “Is it time for dinner?”
Disappointment is the worst emotion.
“It’s breakfast time, Mom,” I say. “Did you have breakfast, Mom?” I repeat the name, hoping it will trigger her memory.
My mother presses random buttons on the TV remote control and the channel changes to sports. She’s always disliked sports. She stares at a soccer game with a content expression.
“Look at that nice young man,” she says of one or all of the Italian players running around the field. “Isn’t he handsome?”
I sit down on the guest chair beside the bed and study mother’s puffy face. I want to trace each new line and crevice with my fingers. The map of old age. Her white hair has thinned. I should not have to see my mother’s scalp. I grasp to remember her with lustrous, long dark curls, in a flowered sundress that floated as she walked. I wait for her to tease me about my dark, wrinkled suit, the grey in my hair. But Mom lies inert and silent. She is small and thin, and the velour housecoat is too big. I reach over to straighten her collar, like she used to fix me, and notice the rickrack trim is coming unstitched. I am already too frayed. I fumble in my bag for my phone.
Anne: 9:57 a.m. The child is the father of the man.
Anne: 9:58 a.m. Sorry. I want to tell you I am here.
Anne: 10:02 a.m. Mom doesn’t remember me.
I hover, uncertain. I hear footsteps and turn, expecting to see Sondra. But it’s a middle-aged nurse wearing a yellow cardigan over blue scrubs. She’s holding a cardboard cup of medication. I don’t know how to talk to medical professionals. Where is my sister?
“Hello,” the nurse says to me. “You must be the other daughter. Sondra’s told me all about you.”
I step back while she pours a cupful of water from a blue plastic jug at the nightstand. “I’m visiting from Toronto today,” I say.
The nurse nods, then places her hand on my mother’s shoulder.
“Hi, Agnes,” she says loudly, leaning in close to my mother’s face. “It’s time for more medication.”
“Well, is it time for supper?” my mother asks in an exasperated voice.
“No, Agnes, you just had breakfast. We’ll be serving lunch soon, though. Here are your meds, dear.”
My mother swallows the pills and water obediently.
“When are we going to the market?” she asks the nurse. “I have to get a good roast and some potatoes for Sunday supper or your father will be all out of sorts.”
“We don’t need to go shopping today, Agnes,” the nurse says. “Just relax and visit with your daughter. She’s here to see you all the way from Toronto.”
“I hate Toronto,” my mother says. “But you’re very nice,” she adds, patting the nurse’s hand.
“She’s been having problems with her eyes and she won’t wear her glasses,” the nurse says to me. “That’s why she seems a little more confused than usual. She can’t see very well. So sit close and she’ll know you’re here. It’ll be fine.”
Sondra: 10:11 a.m. She doesn’t remember much of anything.
The nurse fluffs my mother’s pillows and steps out of the room. Her white running shoes squeak down the hall. I look at my mom again. She doesn’t see me. She can’t see. I watch her eyelids droop closed as she falls asleep. I look around her room and remember how the red Ukrainian embroidery picture used to hang above the kitchen table in our house. The painting of the woods with the path leading to a lake used to be in the dining room. I wonder who lives in our old house now.
Sondra wasn’t at all sentimental about selling it. We fought and I grieved like someone had died. I still miss my father’s study. Stuffed full of books and neatly organized papers, it smelled like leather and dust and felt like information. I thought I could become smarter just by making an appearance there. I have fond memories of sitting in the big chair and reading. And asking my dad the answers to perplexing questions. His mind was a computer until the end.
If I had visited more, would my mother still recognize me? I close my eyes and press my fingers against my temples. When my dad died he left Mom alone with all of our family memories. Within a half-dozen years she began scrambling them all, serving up non sequiturs as regularly as she used to whip up bacon and eggs. Sondra found her addled sayings and muddled sentences hilarious.
I don’t think memory loss is funny.
I sit and wait and listen. Eventually I hear high heels clacking down the corridor. I immediately straighten. Sondra appears in the doorway. Tidy hair, predictable cardigan. There are wrinkles in her slacks.
In books this is the turning point of the narrative arc when the sisters tearfully hug and cling to each other in mutual adoration and forgiveness.
Sondra freezes. I fail to smile.
“It’s almost easier to text you,” she says. “One of us is going to have to sign the form.”
“What form?” I ask, unsure why we’re discussing paperwork.
“DNR.”
My sister’s efficiency is exhausting. I want Mom to open her eyes now. I need to know if she still recognizes my sister. I need to compare, compete, work toward something. I want more time. But my mother sleeps. Sondra stands and I sit. I stand, then Sondra sits. Neither of us notice when my mother awakes.
“Bernie?” she shouts. “Bernie! Teakettle tooth wig! Aaaaahhhh!”
I’m startled. Scared. But when I look at Sondra, she shrugs.
“She gets agitated,” Sondra says, handing me a Kit Kat bar. “This is what she likes now. She’ll probably eat the whole thing and calm down.”
Our father’s name was Leonard.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay,” I say. I stand up and pat her hand. “I have some chocolate for you, Mom.” I open the package, break off the first piece and offer it to her. She picks it up and examines it closely before popping it into her mouth. Her dentures move up and down, liquid chocolate beading at the corner of her lip.
I move to sit down, but she puts a hand over mine on the pink chenille bedspread. “I don’t know who you are,” she says, her voice booming in the stillness of the room, “but I sure do like you.”
We spend an hour suspended together in this simple choreography. She is delighted anew with each piece of chocolate. Sondra leans against the window, clicking buttons on her BlackBerry.
I’m startled by voices in the hall. More shouting. I release Mom’s hand to go take a look. Mom’s nurse is standing, arms crossed, lips pursed, glaring at a teenaged girl with an impossibly thick black ponytail.
“You had no right!” the girl sputters.
“Shhhh,” her mother says sharply.
“Half the stuff I wrote in that journal is made up!” the girl shrieks.
“Lhia —”
“It’s mostly not true. I make things up!”
“Lhia,” her mother says, “we’ll talk about it later. Go do your homework.”
“But Mom —”
“Go.” The nurse gives her daughter a stern push toward a door marked Employees Only. I duck back into my mother’s room.
Oh, fantasies. And youthful daydreams. And make-believe. I used to fight with my mother, too. I remember standing in the kitchen after school. I must have been in grade eight or nine. There’s the Ukrainian embroidery hanging on the sand-coloured wall. There’s my mother’s big red kettle chugging to a boil on the stove. I’m leaning against the old white Formica countertop, banging the back of my heel against the bevelled cupboard door.
“Mom, why don’t you just tell me how to solve these math problems so I can get my homework done?”
“Because you have to figure it out for yourself, Anne.” Mom is fussing over a coffee cake she’s about to put in the oven.
“But Dad helps me all the time!”
“Anne, can’t you see I’m busy? I’ve got to get some baking and cooking done or we won’t be eating tonight. You’re a smart girl. You go do your own homework.”
I remember stomping up the stairs to my room to solve my own math problems. I must have flung myself across the soft surface of my bed and struggled through it by myself. My dad may have helped me with my university and scholarship applications, but it was my mom who pushed me and challenged me. She gave me the fight to get there.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say.
“Do you know when Anne is coming home?” My mom’s eyes flutter open as she says it. “She’s been studying for so long.”
Sondra looks up from her screen.
I gaze into my mother’s bleary face. I miss her.