You will be happy, she told me.
You will shine.
Mom asks to speak with Jeffrey. He comes out on the porch with her and they have a long talk. I watch them from the living room. Jeffrey is slumped in the Adirondack chair next to Mom’s, his hands folded in his lap, looking down. I can’t hear what they’re saying, and anyway it’s none of my business, but I think maybe it’s the same thing she told me earlier. My purpose, she said, is you.
Jeffrey keeps nodding, and then he kneels in front of her, leans in stiffly to hug her, and I turn away from the window. I’m startled to see Dad standing by the fireplace, a glass of red wine in his hand. His eyes are filled with knowledge.
“Now’s the time for you to be brave, Clara,” he says. “Very soon.” I nod silently. Then I go to Dad and step into the circle of his joy, and try to let it fill me, push aside the sudden ache that’s growing in my chest.
Chapter 19
The D-Word
I wake up before dawn with this strange feeling, something like deja vu. I sit up with a gasp, then tear out of bed and down the stairs and burst into Mom’s room as Carolyn is coming out. She nods at me. “Today,” she says.
Now we’re all assembled in there: Jeffrey, whose anger has deserted him for the moment, sitting in a kitchen chair by her bed, leaning forward onto his knees. His eyes never leaving her face. Billy stands in the corner and doesn’t say a word, but whenever Mom looks at her, she smiles. Carolyn flits in and out to take her pulse and try in vain to get her to drink something.
Dad sits at the foot of the bed, passing the time cracking angel jokes.
“Do you know why angels can fly?” he asks us. We all kind of shake our heads. “Because we take ourselves so lightly.”
Killer, I know. But it’s comforting, him being there. He’s only been hanging around with us for a little more than a week, but already I feel used to him, his silent joy, his steadiness, his weird sense of humor that fits just perfectly with Mom’s.
And then there’s me. I’m holding her hand. Waiting. All of us waiting, like we are a wheel and Mom is the center of it, the hub. We rotate around her.
“Such serious faces,” she whispers. “Geez, is someone dying?” But then she stops talking altogether. It takes too much effort. She sleeps, and we watch the rise and fall of her chest. I have to pee in the worst way, but I’m afraid to leave the room.
What if she goes while I’m not there? What if I miss it?
I cross my legs and I wait. I examine her hand in mine. She’s wearing her wedding ring again, a simple slender silver band. She and I have the same hands, I realize. I’ve never noticed that before. Hers are frail now, light as the hollow bones of a bird’s, but the resemblance to mine is there. We have the same long nail beds. The same spacing of our knuckles, lengths of our fingers, the same vein that crosses the back of our left hand.
All I have to do to find my mother is to look at my hands.
Then she takes a deep, shuddering breath and opens her eyes, and I forget about having to pee.
She looks at Dad. He reaches for her free hand, the one I’m not squeezing on to for dear life, and he kisses her wrist.
She looks around without moving her head, just her wide blue eyes, but I can’t tell if she really sees any of us anymore. Her lips move.
“Beautiful,” I think she says.
Then I’m distracted for a minute because Dad disappears. Right in front of our eyes, he simply vanishes. One second he’s sitting on the bed, holding Mom’s hand, and the next, gone.
It takes me a moment to realize that Mom’s gone too. It’s so quiet, I should have known.
We’re all holding our breath. Mom’s lying back on the pillows with her eyes closed again. But she’s not there. Her chest isn’t moving. Her heart has stopped beating. Her body is here, but she’s gone.
“Amen,” Billy says.
Jeffrey jumps up. The noise of his chair clattering back against the wall seems unbearably loud. His face looks like a mask to me, stretched at the lips, eyebrows drawn low over his red-rimmed eyes. A single tear makes its way down his cheek, hovers on his chin. Furiously he dashes it away and flees the room.
I hear the front door bang as he goes. His truck roars to life, then peels on down the driveway, scattering gravel.
Something floats its way up from my chest, not a sound but a terrible choking ache that makes me think my heart will explode.
“Billy. .,” I call desperately.
She’s here. Her hand comes down on my shoulder.
“Just breathe, Clara. Breathe.”
I focus on getting the air to move in and out of my lungs. I don’t know how long we stay in this position, Billy with her fingers dug into the flesh of my shoulder, hurting me but a hurt that feels good, reminds me that I, unlike my mother, still inhabit my body.
Seconds tick by. Minutes. Possibly hours. It occurs to me that Mom’s hand is being warmed by mine. If I take it away, it will get cold. Then I’ll never hold her hand again.
Outside the sky goes gray. A light drizzle of rain falls against the house. It feels appropriate for it to rain at a time like this. It feels right.
I glance up at Billy.
