Elizabeth Strout - My Name Is Lucy Barton

A few days later, Chrissie said to me about the book with Tilly in it, “Mom, it’s kind of a dumb book.”

But the books my brother loved about the girl on the prairie, Chrissie still loves those books too.

On the third day that my mother sat at the foot of my bed, I could see the fatigue on her face. I didn’t want her to leave, but she seemed unable to accept the nurses’ offer to bring in a cot, and I felt she would leave soon. As has often been the case with me, I began to dread this in advance. I remember my first dreading-in-advance as having to do with the dentist of my childhood. Because we had little dental care in our youth, and because genetically we were thought to have “soft teeth,” any trip to the dentist was quite naturally filled with dread. The dentist provided free care in a manner that was ungenerous, both in time and manner, as though he hated us for being who we were, and I worried the entire time once I heard I would have to see him. It was not often that I saw him. But early on I saw this: You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.

—

It was Serious Child who came for me in the middle of the next night, saying that blood tests had come back from the lab and I needed a CAT scan immediately. “But it’s the middle of the night,” my mother said. Serious Child said I had to go. And so I said, “Let’s go, then,” and soon some orderlies showed up and put me on a gurney and I waved my fingers at my mother and they took me into one large elevator after another. It was dark in the hallways, and in the elevators; everything seemed very dim. I had not left my room at night before, I had not seen that night was different than day even in the hospital. After a very long trip and many turns I was pushed into a room and someone put a small tube into my arm and another small tube down my throat. “Hold still,” they said. I couldn’t even nod.

After a long time — but what I mean by that, I don’t know in real time or terms — I was pushed into the CAT scan circle and there were some clicks and then it went dead. “Shit,” said a voice behind me. For another long time I lay there. “The machine’s broken,” the voice said, “but we need this scan or the doctor will kill us.” I lay there a long time, and I was very cold. I learned that hospitals are often cold. I was shivering, but no one noticed; I’m sure they would have brought me a blanket. They only wanted the machine to work, and I understood that.

Finally I was pushed through and there were the right-sounding clicks and tiny red lights blinking, and then the tube was taken out of my throat and I was pushed out into the hallway. This is the memory I think I will never forget: My mother was sitting in the dark waiting area there in the deep basement of that hospital, her shoulders slumped slightly in fatigue, but sitting with all the seeming patience in the world. “Mommy,” I whispered, and she waved her fingers. “How did you ever find me?”

“Wasn’t easy,” she said. “But I have a tongue in my head, and I used it.”

The next morning, Toothache brought with her the news that the tests had come out all right, that in spite of what had shown up in my blood the CAT scan was okay, the doctor would explain it all later. Toothache had also brought with her a gossip magazine, and she asked my mother if she’d like to read it. My mother shook her head quickly, as though she’d been asked to handle a person’s private body parts. “I’d like it,” I told Toothache, holding out my hand, and she gave it to me and I thanked her. The magazine lay that morning on my bed. Then I put it into the drawer in my table that had the telephone on it, and I did that — hid it — in case the doctor came in. So I was like my mother, we did not want to be judged by what we read, and while she wouldn’t even read such a thing, I only didn’t want to be seen with it. This strikes me as odd, so many years later. I was in the hospital, essentially so was she; what better time to read anything that takes the mind away? I had a few books from home near my bed, though I had not read them with my mother there, nor had she looked at them. But about the magazine, I’m sure it would not have made any dent in my doctor’s heart. But that is how sensitive we both were, my mother and I. There is that constant judgment in this world: How are we going to make sure we do not feel inferior to another?

It was merely a magazine about movie stars, one my own girls and I, when they were older, would look at for fun if we needed time to go by, and this particular magazine often featured a story about an ordinary person who had suffered something extraordinarily awful. When I took the magazine from the drawer that afternoon, I saw an article about a woman who had gone into a barn in Wisconsin to find her husband one evening and had her arm chopped off — literally chopped with an ax — by a man who had gotten out of the state mental asylum. This happened while her husband, tied to a post by the horse pens, watched. He screamed, which made the horses scream, and I guess the woman must have screamed like crazy — it did not say she passed out — and the sound of such noises caused the escaped-from-the-asylum-man to run off. The woman, who easily could have bled to death as her arteries were spurting blood, managed to call for help, and a neighbor came right over and tied her arm with a tourniquet, and now the husband and wife and neighbor made a point of starting each day by praying together. There was a photo of them in the early morning sun by the barn door in Wisconsin, and they were praying. The woman prayed with her one remaining arm and hand; they were hoping to get her a prosthetic soon, but there was the issue of money. I told my mother I thought it was bad taste to photograph people praying, and she said the entire thing was bad taste.

“He’s a lucky husband, though,” she said in a few moments. “I see on the news those shows where a man might have to watch his wife be raped.”

I put the magazine down. I looked at my mother at the foot of my bed, this woman I had not seen for years. “Seriously?” I asked.

“Seriously what?”

“A man watched his wife be raped? What were you watching, Mom?” I didn’t add what I most wanted to: And when did you guys get a TV?

“I saw it on television, I just told you that.”

“But on the news, or one of those cop show things?”

I saw — I felt I saw — her considering this, and she said, “The news, one night at Vicky’s house. Somewhere in one of those awful countries.” Her eyes flipped shut.

I picked the magazine back up and rustled through it. I said, “Hey, look — this woman has a pretty gown. Mom, look at this pretty gown.” But she did not respond or open her eyes.

This is how the doctor found us that day. “Girls,” he said, then stopped when he saw my mother with her eyes closed. He stayed just within the door, he and I both watching for a moment to see if my mother was truly asleep or if she would open her eyes. That moment, both of us watching to see, made me recall how in my youth there were times that I wanted desperately to run to a stranger when we went into town and say, “You need to help me, please, please, can you please get me out of there, bad things are going on—” And yet I never did, of course; instinctively I knew that no stranger would help, no stranger would dare to, and that in the end such a betrayal would make things far worse. And so now I turned from watching my mother to watching my doctor, for in essence this was the stranger I had hoped for, and he turned and must have seen something on my face, and I — so briefly — felt I saw something on his, and he held up a hand to indicate he’d come back, and when he stepped out, I felt myself dropping into something familiar and dark from long ago. My mother’s eyes remained shut for many more minutes. To this day I have no idea if she was sleeping or just staying away from me. I wanted terribly to talk to my little children then, but if my mother was asleep I couldn’t wake her by speaking into the phone next to the bed, and also the girls would have been in school.