“That was just desperate. It must have broken her heart.”
“Her arthritis was so bad she could hardly hold a pen, let alone a needle.”
“You must have broken her heart.”
“Well, Ma, this isn’t getting us to the car. What’s the plan?”
“The Marshall Plan.”
“What?”
“The Marshall Plan. People of my generation don’t scoff at that.”
“Ma, maybe we’d better give standing by the booth another try. You don’t even have to speak to the man. Will you do it?”
“Do you have some objection if I get on the elevator with you?”
“No, but this time if you say you’re going to do it you have to do it. We can’t have people holding doors open all day. People need to get where they’re going.”
“Listen to the things you say! They’re so obvious, I don’t know why you say them.”
She is looking through her purse. Just below the top of her head, I can see her scalp through her hair. “Ma,” I say.
“Yes, yes, coming,” she says. “I thought I might have the card with that hairstylist’s name.”
“It’s Eloise.”
“Thank you, dear. Why didn’t you say so before?”
I call my brother, Tim. “She’s worse,” I say. “If you want to visit her while she’s still more or less with it, I’d suggest you book a flight.”
“You don’t know,” he says. “The fight for tenure. How much rides on this one article.”
“Tim. As your sister. I’m not talking about your problems, I’m—”
“She’s been going downhill for some time. And God bless you for taking care of her! She’s a wonderful woman. And I give you all the credit. You’re a patient person.”
“Tim. She’s losing it by the day. If you care—if you care, see her now.”
“Let’s be honest: I don’t have deep feelings, and I wasn’t her favorite. That was the problem with Rene: Did I have any deep feelings? I mean, kudos! Kudos to you! Do you have any understanding of why Mom and Dad got together? He was a recluse, and she was such a party animal. She never understood a person turning to books for serious study, did she? Did she? Maybe I’d be the last to know.”
“Tim, I suggest you visit before Christmas.”
“That sounds more than a little ominous. May I say that? You call when I’ve just gotten home from a day I couldn’t paraphrase, and you tell me—as you have so many times—that she’s about to die, or lose her marbles entirely, and then you say—”
“Take care, Tim,” I say, and hang up.
I drive to my mother’s apartment to kill time while she gets her hair done, and go into the living room and see that the plants need watering. Two are new arrivals, plants that friends brought her when she was in the hospital, having her foot operated on: a kalanchoe and a miniature chrysanthemum. I rinse out the mug she probably had her morning coffee in and fill it under the faucet. I douse the plants, refilling the mug twice. My brother is rethinking Wordsworth at a university in Ohio, and for years I have been back in this small town in Virginia where we grew up, looking out for our mother. Kudos, as he would say.
“Okay,” the doctor says. “We’ve known the time was coming. It will be much better if she’s in an environment where her needs are met. I’m only talking about assisted living. If it will help, I’m happy to meet with her and explain that things have reached a point where she needs a more comprehensive support system.”
“She’ll say no.”
“Regardless,” he says. “You and I know that if there was a fire she wouldn’t be capable of processing the necessity of getting out. Does she eat dinner? We can’t say for sure that she eats, now, can we? She needs to maintain her caloric intake. We want to allow her to avail herself of resources structured so that she can best meet her own needs.”
“She’ll say no,” I say again.
“May I suggest that you let Tim operate as a support system?”
“Forget him. He’s already been denied tenure twice.”
“Be that as it may, if your brother knows she’s not eating—”
“Do you know she’s not eating?”
“Let’s say she’s not eating,” he says. “It’s a slippery slope.”
“Pretending that I have my brother as a ‘support system’ has no basis in reality. You want me to admit that she’s thin? Okay. She’s thin.”
“Please grant my point, without—”
“Why? Because you’re a doctor? Because you’re pissed off that she misbehaved at some cashier’s stand in a parking lot?”
“You told me she pulled the fire alarm,” he says. “She’s out of control! Face it.”
