Hugh takes the inside stairs two at a time up to Mimi’s hall. Racing up is sometimes the only way you can go in. The quietude, the ambient air of death is so thick.
Halt. Ruth’s backing out the door with a tray of dishes, tubes, cloths.
“You missed Newell, he brought flowers. I chased him out, though.”
Hugh takes the tray from her and sets it safely on a cart left in the hall. No crashing, no broken glass this morning.
“She’s not herself,” Ruth says, to warn him.
Ah, but she is, Hugh’s willing to bet. The door is ajar. From inside he can hear a buzzing droning singsong. The litany streams on without pause, as if breath doesn’t pertain. He nods to Ruth, shoulder-clasps her.
In he goes.
“Hugh Hugh Hugh Hugh Hugh Hugh,” his mother is saying, brokenhearted. (Or else, of course, “You you you you you you …”) Tears track down her crepe de Chine cheeks.
Happy time is over, it seems. “What’s the deal, what’s the deal here,” he murmurs, keeps murmuring, a stream of Yes it’s me, it’s all right, it’s okay. Heavy scent of Newell’s roses, white hearts opening outward, waterdrop halfglobes on the green table.
Leaning over in the familiar partial kneel, since there’s no room to sit on the bed beside her, Hugh takes Mimi’s hands to stop her fretting with the blankets. Tubes and sticks get in the way, but he is patient. He untangles them all gently, without causing her to cry out.
Today she is not coherent, at least not intelligible. But he’s been listening to this language, this deathspeak, for a while now. He can hear the words—not so different from bad racing manic-anxious times he recalls from childhood. “Thank you Ruth. Thank you. Thank Hugh.” That for some time, bead-telling, rote-repetitive. Then singsong Mairzy doats and dozy doats, also for a good while, over and over, never progressing. Crouch-kneeling by her side, Hugh joggles the needle of her mind in one of the pauses: “… and little lambs eat Ivy,” he sings. Nibbling lambs circle Ivy’s green skirt, her small hands patting their heads. Her lamblike hinder end—he almost laughs.
Mimi falls silent. Then begins the whispered recounting that he’s afraid to listen to. One thing that keeps him away from her, away from here. Snatches of memory thrown up from her disintegrating mind, urgent to impart: “She drove us in her little car all the windows open down along the shore he sat beside me our legs touching she told me I was only there to make up to him and no kind of a friend it hurt me so much to have her say that he sat beside me our arms touched all along the upper lengths I shifted on the seat in the heat he’ll never amount to anything she said he only …”
You can’t know another person, can’t know anyone. You are alone, alone. No matter what life you construct, no matter what duty you give them or how you love them. She can never know you, or you her. Huge white roses rise from thick green thorns; heavy glass refracts, magnifies the stems and the thorns.
“I knew him that’s why I went I trailed my hand along the tops of the stones grey lichen green moss stubble graveyard dust the horses the horses were buried under that mound he told us then later he climbed into bed with me when no one was about.”
He can hardly bear to hear. It murmurs on and on, so much life to be confessed at last. He thinks and thinks and still she goes on recounting, the tape spooling out of the cassette.
“I pushed him aside I promise I but he was there with me and what was I to I told him I knew all about her and what she’d said it was all so clear, all perfectly all clear I knew I knew it all along I knew it as soon as I saw the blood that they were that I was that it was I who, I did, it was my …”
Hugh bends to kiss his mother’s cheek. Swollen in the early stages, then shrunken; now a soft husk around her bones, not her face that he has always known. But more her face than ever, the face he now knows best of all. He presses his cheek to her cheek. He hums to her along those mairzy dozy lines, floating the song along, easing her. “Never mind,” he says to her. “Never mind, never mind, it wasn’t your fault, it’s all done with now, you don’t need to worry now.”
“Now no now no thank you, no thank you Hugh thank you, thank you,” she whispers.
It gives his head more pain to hear her thanks—more pain than he can in any way allow,
and since she seems quieter he stands and leaves the room
and there is Ruth outside the door, she nods and trades places with him
and off he goes blind
into the long-stretched wet autumn sunlight
down the hospice steps away
up the steps to Ken’s office: insist on information
no Jenny
her assistant says Ken’s assistant has an assistant now
down the steps down the street
they are not together they must be together
—Buckthorn/County Rd 23—
Ken loves her as a friend, who’s needed help from time to time
when her boyfriend went off the rails he helped, that was good for him
that’s the law, helping people who go before the courts
he loves to help he loves me
—Bobcaygeon, 30 km—
still after all this time who knows why
he does not have another wife in Toronto and four children
he is not with Jenny, he could not have kept that from me
he is in pain distraught
—having a nervous breakdown—
in the middle of the night no matter who I am now
how I have failed in everything I’ve set my hand to he pulls me to him
to kiss my mouth and body no erasing that for him or me
he loves me he is such a fool
—Echo Bay Road, left at the windmill—
here is a nice leafy road a quiet place to park
I’ll sit and listen to the birds
look there is Jenny driving in trim tidy car
trim tennis figure bending to the trunk
pulling out groceries a carton of Diet Dr Pepper
no one else drinks that
so there is where he is
Jenny armsful at the cottage door:
Hey, I’m back! Lunch!
the snap the buckle of the screen such long brown hair, sweet-eyed face
a lovely person, intelligent, kind, on her way up in the law
axe in the head axeblade in the belly where it hurts the most