Now she isn’t.
And it hurts. I was her round-the-clock caregiver but at the end when she looked into my eyes, she didn’t know I was her daughter. She told the nurse before she died, ‘She’s the pretty lady who takes care of me.’
I denied the subtle changes in her personality for months. Maman (I always call her that since she was born in France) started showing signs two years ago, but I never expected the downward slide to happen so fast. I watched my kind, intelligent mother lose control of who she was, the blankness in her eyes, the unsteadiness in her walk. That was coupled with times of complete lucidity, brilliance almost, a portal in her mind opening for the briefest time to give me hope… then see it dashed when the door slammed in my face. Finally, my mother fell into a calm sleep… taking in oxygen through a tube from an ugly green tank I grew to hate because it was taking her from me… breathing slower… then slower… as if she knew the end was near.
Maman, how I miss you…
I want to tell her my news about my new job and I’m angry she’s not here. No wonder my mind is wandering this morning like a spool of thread come undone. I feel like a lost chord without a song.
Sketching is my haven. A place I can call home, an anchor to find the road forward again.
Which is why I’ve spent the past hour fidgeting with this retro costume for an upcoming sixties TV drama, Wings over Manhattan, working on the design for the blue and white flight attendant uniform. I spend a long time thinking about a design before I pick up my pencil then sketch it quickly, the curves and lines appearing almost magically like an animated film clip.
My meet-up with the producer isn’t for another two weeks. Yet I’ve got it into my head that I have to finish the sketch right away. A penance, I suppose, when I should be trying to move on.
I jam the pencil into the automatic sharpener, the eerie whir jarring my nerves. I could venture out into the rain to the art store and buy another one, but the idea of sloshing through LA streets that see rain twice a year isn’t inviting.
Yet the longer I stare at the sketch, the more I need to share my feelings. I’m not into grief groups and I’m not close with the people from Maman’s life before she retired to move in with me. I walked through her funeral last week like a puppet on strings, picking up one foot then the next but feeling numb inside. I have no family and few friends I can count on in my crazy world designing costumes for TV.
Apart from Ridge McCall who never left my side.
I can’t help but smile, remembering how we met our first week of college when we bumped heads in the darkroom in photography class. I couldn’t believe this incredible guy with the gorgeous smile noticed me when the lights were on. He had a hot reputation since he’d already racked up movie credits as a stuntman and had every girl in class drooling over his muscular bod. Imagine my shock when he went out of his way to sit next to me in class, and then when he picked me for his partner for field trips, saying I had a good ‘eye’ for color and style and I should follow my dream to be a costume designer. (He caught me doodling costume sketches in class.)
And then when he asked, would I mind riding on the back of his motorcycle?
I liked him right away and we ended up getting amazing shots on film from the beach to the desert and cutting up doing it. We became great pals, pulling pranks on each other, like hiding canisters of film or shooting goofy poses to loosen up our creativity. I was so busy working and drawing and studying, I never thought about dating him. We had too much fun together to screw it up. He’d listen to me talk about my crushes, I’d comment on the long list of girls impressed by the stuntman in the stonewashed jeans and tight tee with James Dean eyes. Somewhere along the way, we eased into being a comfy twosome.
We don’t talk about our dating lives anymore.
I don’t have one, not since I started taking care of Maman. No regrets there.
Ridge… I don’t know. Maybe he’s got a girl. If so, he doesn’t talk about it. Either way, I’m lucky to have him for a best friend.
Maman always smiled when the handsome stuntman brought her fresh flowers and kept her mind busy extoling his exploits on film as a dashing swordsman or crashing a tank through a wall. I know she wondered about us, but I told her we decided long ago not to ruin a beautiful friendship by getting involved.
I pick up my cell to text him, pour out my heart to him like I’ve done for years when I need a strong shoulder to lean on, then put it down. He’s already done so much, walking me through the steps of taking care of her affairs and sitting with me for a long while when we came back to the bungalow after the funeral so I wouldn’t have to be alone.
I can’t bug him. He’s knee-deep working on a big archival assignment for a stock footage company with over a hundred years of film in its vaults, a gig he’s worked long and hard to get. I respect that.
That doesn’t help this bout of loneliness I can’t shake.
If only I had family here… someone who knew Maman. Someone who’d laugh with me about how she’d let her glasses slide down her nose when she was happily surprised, or how she insisted on having a box of chocolate nonpareils on her birthday every year since the sweets reminded her of idyllic days growing up in a French convent outside Paris.
I’ve never been to France, always had a job since high school, including working as a tour guide at a major movie studio. I was born in California, but grew up speaking both English and French. I’m thirty-six and I know zilch about my Gallic roots.
I never thought about it till now.
Which brings me to the matter of Maman’s possessions.
My study is like most parlor rooms in these 1930s-style Spanish bungalows on the West side. Built in a time when hanging multi-colored beads separated it from the main house, it’s become a convenient storage room since I work on my laptop on the veranda on sunny days, or sit on the love seat under the bay window, steadying the old artist’s wooden board I’ve had since college on bent knees.
My work habits make it easy for me to avoid this room. And what’s in it: anything and everything that belonged to Maman, sealed up like holiday presents with perfectly aligned tape and shipped over from my mother’s apartment in Santa Clara. Boxes that have sat here untouched, which saddens me.
When she first came to live with me, we talked about going through her things, but I could see she didn’t want to, as if by opening these boxes she’d have to come face to face with the reality she was no longer that person. Worse yet, she may not have any memory of what she saw, and she’d feel empty inside. Even if memories are rose-colored, we cling to them because they give us pleasure as well as the courage to go forward in hard times.
If she couldn’t remember, she’d have neither.
So I abided by her wishes to wait for the day when she felt strong enough to accept whatever she found. Waited for a day that never came.
I didn’t have the heart to go through the boxes without her. I kept avoiding it, telling myself I was too busy with the day-in, day-out routine taking care of Maman with a strong mind but a lonely heart. As if by going through her things, I’d have to relive watching her fade away all over again. I know what her last wishes were regarding her personal things and I admit I’ve been remiss in carrying them out – something Ridge and I talked about yesterday over lattes at the gym not far from the studio.
‘I worry about you since your mom died, Juliana,’ Ridge said when I found him throwing quick jabs at a heavy punching bag. Tall, dark, gorgeous, engaging his entire body as he hit the bag like he was hellbent on turning it into a pile of sawdust. Yet he was a man who sang lonesome cowboy songs off key, could lift twice his bodyweight, but also had a tender place for me in his heart I sometimes took for granted.
I felt guilty bugging him,