The sun was peeping up, the sky golden and pink, the wind sauntering by, relaxed, as if it had all the time in the world today to see Momma off. All was still, sleepy, and content.
Except for the three of us sisters, who were twisting in the middle of an emotional battlefield filled with booby traps and land mines.
Momma was not in a good mood. The breakfast I made her was “flat.” Janie was making her nervous. I hadn’t snuck a man up to my room last night, had I? The kitchen was messy, she never had a messy kitchen. Cecilia was late. She’s always late. “Not an organized woman. She’s a mess. A mess.”
“Stop spinning around me,” Momma snapped, attaching a pearl earring. “Do not tell me to relax, Isabelle! Cease mumbling to yourself, Janie. Or are you speaking to an imaginary friend? Cecilia, for God’s sakes, you have enlarged. You’re bigger than you were yesterday! You have got to stop eating. One of the biggest days of my life, if not the biggest day of all because I am getting open-heart surgery, if you girls care to remember, and here you are, making me late!”
“We’re not late, Momma,” Janie said, tentative. “Don’t you worry—”
“I am worried, Janie. I’m worried that I have a daughter who has written nine books and all she does is murder people in bizarre, twisted ways.”
“I don’t murder people, Momma—”
“You do! What is going on in that head of yours? This is not the lady I raised you to be!” She wriggled in her perfectly pressed blue suit and recrossed her blue heels. “When are you getting married and having children? You’re going to get too old—”
“Momma,” I interjected, as soon as Cecilia pulled out of the drive. “Don’t miss the sunrise. It’s beautiful.” Momma, don’t you want to stay in the hospital five months instead of five days? Don’t you want the doctors to sew your mouth shut for the rest of your life?
With both hands, I pressed my braids tight to my head. I could feel that blackness again, right on the periphery. I fought so hard against that blackness. It had plagued me since childhood. Sometimes it won, sometimes I won. I was definitely sliding into second place today.
“Please, Isabelle! I know what you’re trying to do,” Momma argued. “You’re trying to change the subject and it won’t work. Drive by my bakery, Cecilia, immediately. I want to see the building one more time before you girls get in it and burn the whole thing down.” She shook her head, tsk-tsked her tongue. “I’ll be out of business before a week is up.”
“You won’t be out of business, Momma,” Cecilia said, turning toward town. She always tried to appease Momma, as she’d tried to appease Parker for years. Cecilia had simpered and catered and smothered her own personality around him to meet his endless and unreasonable needs and wants. With Parker, she had recreated the same relationship she had with Momma. In turn, he had decimated her soul.
There was no one else on the planet she did that for, as she is a tornado with feet.
“Janie and Isabelle are going to take good care of the bakery, and when summer starts I’ll be there, too, while you recover.”
Momma humphed in the front seat. “Humph! And what will Henry do without me?”
“Henry will be fine,” we all three said.
“And what about Grandma?” She patted her perfectly brushed hair. Twisted her pearl necklace.
“Grandma will be fine,” we all three said.
“The house will be declared a waste site when I return,” she muttered.
“The house will be fine,” we said.
“What are you, parrot triplets? Stop. You’re hurting my ears.” She massaged her ears.
I groaned.
Janie gurgled.
Cecilia sighed.
It would be a long drive.
You might find me callous for not wringing my hands and diving into semihysteria about Momma’s open-heart surgery. After all, this is what they do in open-heart surgery, if I’ve got it correct: They cut your chest open with a knife as if you are a fish to be filleted. A human does this. Then, they yank open your rib cage, like it’s a closed clam, using something refered to as a “spreader.”
Even thinking about this bothers me. If God had wanted our rib cage opened up, I’m sure he would have inserted a zipper in the middle of it. I see no zipper.
Then they stop your heart.
Boom. Beatless.
You’re hooked up to a heart-lung machine, which does what you could imagine it should do. It beats and breathes for you, like it’s a person only it has an off-on button.
Then they (often) cut open your leg and borrow a blood vessel or two without asking the permission of your leg. They use the blood vessel to bypass a clog in your artery. The vessel that is clogged may well be clogged because in your lifetime you have eaten the equivalent of nine cows, four pigs, and a multitude of yummy stuff like wagons full of fried chicken. This cholesterol clings like plaque to your arteries.
If you don’t get your arteries hosed out or fixed, well, you’re a goner.
So, you might think I would be worried that Momma would soon be a goner.
That is not going to happen. Why?
Because I know it.
Momma will live to be one hundred. Maybe older. I can see her living to be one hundred and twenty-one to taunt me and Cecilia and Janie. By then we’ll be in our late nineties and I hope I will have lost my hearing so I can’t hear her anymore and I will have lost my sight so I can’t see her anymore and I will have lost my mind and will believe that I am someone else.
Like Amelia Earhart. Or Cleopatra. Or Joan of Arc.
I vote for Cleopatra.
On our way into Portland I saw a windsurfer. He had a red and purple sail. He was whipping right along on the waves of the river. Away from struggles. Away from people. Away from life. Free.
He was free.
I wondered if he’d take a shift for me with Momma.
5
W e got Momma checked in to her room at the hospital. She didn’t like her room. (“It’s small. Dirty. I feel like I’m being housed on the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag.”) She didn’t like the hospital outfit. (“I will not wear this green sacklike monstrosity. Never. Bring me my pink robe.”)
She complained of being hungry but she was not supposed to eat. (“I’m being starved to death. Starved. You girls can’t even get your momma fed properly.”) She didn’t like the nurse. (“The nurse is too thin. If I need help, she’ll snap like a toothpick.”)
She didn’t like her doctors. “Too young. One is Mexican. One is Chinese. One is short. I need a tall, white doctor.”
She told them that.
“I’m sorry,” I said, raising my voice to a thundering decibel to block her out. “She’s always like this. Ignore it or go into therapy. The three of us have done both. Still, we’re all slightly insane because of her. Want to knock her out right now with a hammer to the head? Do you have a hammer?” I made a pounding motion with my hand. “I’ll do it for you.”
The doctors’ eyes widened in surprise.
Janie started to hum and rock. Then she whispered, “I am envisioning a peaceful place. My houseboat. On the river. Ducks. Birds. Charm. Quiet. I am in control.”
“Shhh!” I ordered Janie. “Put