Brenda, Mother said—I can’t find my teeth!
So I checked her ornate nightstand, her pedestal sink, and the little glass table near the big iron chair on her private patio where dry bougainvillea blossoms piled like pink paper party favors. Mother followed me with her walker, saying, Do you see them? Where could they be?
They were not in her hutch of collectible china or her cabinet of costly curios. They were not in the closet where she kept the expensive clothes she wore. They were not in the closet where she kept the more expensive clothes she did not wear. They were not in the small, sodden bag of garbage beneath the kitchen sink or in the garage, in the larger bin of garbage that smelled like the corpse of an animal.
I came back to the dining room, where she sat with a cup of coffee. Slowly, she brought the cup to her mouth, took a sip—then curled her lip. She looked up at me.
Brenda, she said, do you suppose they’re in my mouth? She opened it wide—and there they were.
After that we rushed over to the hospital, where Mother was late for her chemotherapy appointment.
A nurse brought us to a room dimmed by dark blinds, crammed with chairs. In each one sat a person attached to a sack of clear liquid that drained down a tube into the person’s arm. The nurse lightly smacked Mother until her vein stood up to receive. Within a few minutes, Mother was asleep. It took four hours for the liquid to drain fully into someone.
I took her purse from her lap and drove to the recreational facility that looked like a coliseum. In the middle, rather than a gladiatorial arena, was a large, round swimming pool. I made a big splash. I pushed to the bottom of the deep end, where I sat quietly, emitting little bubbles.
On a yellow chaise longue I dried myself. A group of elderly men were sunning their bodies nearby. Soon one of them got up and came to stand above me. He had a rigid torso and skin like baked bread, tufted all over with wiry white fluff.
I’ve never seen you before, he said.
Just visiting, I said.
I’d be happy to give you the grand tour, he said. He lifted his arms high, like he was holding the sky. Heaven on earth! he said.
I fucked him in a stall in the ladies’ locker room. You look just like my daughter Jackie, he said, panting.
I put my clothes back on over my suit and drove to the grocery store, where it was approximately forty-five degrees Fahrenheit inside. On Mother’s card I charged a hand of green bananas, a gallon of orange juice, some mixed nuts in a red netted bag, and a tub of pistachio ice cream.
At Mother’s condo, I ate the ice cream from the tub with a large spoon. It had been whipped in a way to make it very airy. It scooped itself in soft, generous green slabs and dripped onto the speckled countertop—a garish variety of pinkish granite that looked like vomit.
Where were you? Mother said when I got back to the hospital. I’m so cold, she said. I’m really hungry, she said. I got her to the car and drove to Rita’s. Mother sat in back, looking out the window.
I was just thinking about that time you were supposed to watch your brother, she said. When he almost drowned. Do you remember that?
She ordered the egg plate with hash brown potatoes, sausage links, white toast with jelly, and fruit cocktail. Her insurance covered the chemo that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, which was much more expensive than the one that does. It let her keep her hair, too—a thick headful she set in hot rollers and wrapped in a cap when she showered.
My daughter would like to order something, too, Mother said.
I’m fine, I said to Rita. Thank you.
She’ll have the egg plate, Mother said.
I don’t want the egg plate, I said to Rita.
What’s wrong with the egg plate? It’s delicious, Mother said.
I’m sure it is, I said to Rita. All of your dishes look very appetizing.
She’ll have the egg plate, Mother said.
Mother ate everything, then used her toast to wipe up. She looked at me. She looked at my egg plate. We’re not leaving until you eat that, she said.
I’ve got no place to be, I said.
The sun was setting when Mother woke up from her nap. I’m hungry, she said.
Alone, I drove past the hamburger place, the pizza parlor, the sub shop. I stopped at a Thai restaurant in a strip mall.
There was a pair of large gold elephant statues that greeted you when you came in. I passed beneath a jeweled curtain to the hostess station and ordered two shrimp pad thais to go, then went back outside to wait. The sky was a ridiculous pink, dotted over with little shreds of purple cloud like a torn-up letter. The palms were doing their slow wag in the wind. Heat rose from the concrete as from a radiator. It was six o’clock, but it seemed everyone had gone to bed.
Back at the condo, I dumped our noodles from their foam boxes onto plates. Mother chewed each bite a long time, looking thoughtfully at the food, her head slightly tilted to one side. She picked up a large shrimp with her chopsticks and carefully bit off the head end. When she’d swallowed it, she looked at the rest of the body, then at me. What sort of chicken is this? she said.
After that I helped her up, and in the bathroom we put her teeth in a jar of sanitizing solution. Without them, her face collapsed a little—it was alarming. But if you didn’t know her, you might just think that was how she looked—soft, sick, sad-mouthed, old.
She got into bed, where she lay on her back and pulled the blanket up to her chin. Goodnight, Brenda, she said.
Here she was—the woman who made me eat until I puked, then made me eat the puke. Wendell always was oversexed—that’s what she said when I told her what my father did. And when she found me playing in the place we dumped our garbage out back, she picked up a chunk of glass and cut my hand open with it. Brenda, she’d said, this is what happens when you play in the garbage. Understand?
But now she is dead and I am rich because everything she owned is mine, which—in my understanding—is the best possible outcome for this story.