Alice LaPlante - Turn of Mind

Today my mother died. I am not crying, it was her time. So it goes. So it always goes.

Oh Mary! My father would say when my mother did something outrageous—danced the cancan on top of a chair at a formal dinner party, stoned a pigeon to death in front of horrified passersby. Oh Mary! Their love duet.

Such a lovely man, my father. He had a quiet mind, as Thoreau would say. How did he end up with my mother? She flirted with homosexual priests, told audacious lies, uncorked the whiskey at four o’clock every day. And now, finally, gone.

My flight to Philadelphia is delayed, and so when I arrive at the hospice the bed is already empty—someone failed to pass on the news that I was coming. I sit on the stripped bed. Does it matter? No. I don’t know if she would have known me in any case.

She wandered at the end. A devout Catholic always, in the last months of her life she forsook Christ and the Blessed Mother for the virgin martyrs. Theresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, and Lucy were her constant companions. She would giggle, swat at the air with a Kleenex, offer them bits of food. A hungry, witty lot, to judge from the constant feeding they required and my mother’s constant laughing at their repartee.

She retained her mischievousness. She never lost that. Once, she secreted a ketchup package from her lunch tray and dotted it on her wrists at the lunocapitate joints, on her ankles at the talonaviculars. Bitter, vinegary stigmata. The nurse’s assistant screamed, to my mother’s obvious delight. She gave a high five to an invisible coconspirator.

Ultimately what did her in was a fall. An innocuous one. Her knees buckled as she hobbled from her bed to the toilet. She collapsed onto the floor, was helped up, and that was the end of her.

That evening, she was running a high fever. Throughout the night she remained deep in conversation with her saints. It was a different kind of delirium than usual: She was saying her good-byes. She kissed the virgins good-bye, gave them long, loving embraces. She waved goodbye to the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies. She waved to the hospice visitors passing by in the hall. She asked for, and received, a large glass of Scotch whiskey. She was given her last rites. Good-bye, good-bye.

My father wasn’t mentioned. I wasn’t either.

She was a lover of practical jokes until the end. When the orderlies came to remove her body, one noticed an oddly shaped lump between her breasts. Gingerly fishing his hand down the front of her hospital gown, he gave a shriek, jumped back, and shook his hand. Something bite you? his coworker said, grinning. Yes, indeed: my mother’s false teeth. A beautiful woman when younger, she had never stopped believing in her allure. So one of her last acts was to spring a trap where she apparently still believed someone would want to go.

The nurse told me all this, and I smiled. I wonder what will remain in my mind, at the end. What basic truths will I return to? What tricks will I play and on whom?

Jennifer.

Someone is shaking me. The nurse.

Jennifer, it’s time for your pills.

No. I must call the funeral home. Make arrangements for the cremation. Because I cannot bear the thought of a funeral. Ashes to ashes, that is all that is required. The plot is paid for. My father is already there. Beloved husband and father. All that is necessary is to finish carving the double headstone. I can arrange for that tomorrow and be on an evening plane. Back to my surgery, to James and the children.

Jennifer, you are in Chicago. You are home.

No. I am in Philadelphia. At Mercy Hospice. With the body of my mother.

No, Jennifer, your mother died a long time ago. Years and years.

No, not possible.

Yes. Now take your pills. Here’s your water. Good. Now. How about a walk? She holds out her hand. I take it. I study it. When I cannot sleep, when I am confused, I label things. I try to remember what matters. And I use their right names. Names are precious things.

I run my fingers across the hand I am holding. This is the hamate . This is the pisiform . The triquetrum , the lunate , the scaphoid , the capitate, trapezoid, trapezium . The metacarpal bones, the proximal phalanges , the distal phalanges . The sesamoids .

You have a gentle touch. You were a good doctor, I suspect.

Perhaps. But not necessarily a good daughter. When did you say it happened?

More than twenty years ago. You’ve told me the stories.

Did I mourn?

I don’t know. I wasn’t around then. Perhaps. You’re not one to display much.

I continue holding her hand, stroking the fingers with my own. The things that matter. The truths we hold on to until the end. These are things that make life as we know it possible, I used to say in my lectures, pointing to each phalange in turn. Treat them with the utmost reverence. Without them, we are nothing. Without them, we are hardly human.

The beautiful one would leave by the back door as James came in the front. Duplicity. Making rounds with him and needing to be stern. He was so young. Reprimanding him for poorly executed sutures. But we saw the patient’s symptoms and functions improve after I reconstructed the traumatized joint , he argued once, almost whining. Not attractive in that context. No.

The sullenness of the inexperienced, sulk of the injured. Why do you treat me this way? he would ask.

Because I cannot show favoritism.

Because people would notice?

Because it compromises my reputation and the reputation of this hospital.

If I’m so substandard, why put up with me?

Because you are not substandard. Because you are beautiful.

It did not last long. How could it? And people talked. But I would not have given up a millisecond of it. Still, the loss. To lose and to grieve and to be unable to confide that grief. It is a lonely place to reside.

I stretch out my arm and feel nothing but bedclothes. The clock tells me it is 1:13 am, and James is still not home. The fact that I know where he is does not alleviate worry. It’s a dangerous world, and the hours between 1 am and 3 am are the most dangerous ones.

Not just outside, in the city streets, but here, inside. Sometimes I get out of bed to go to the bathroom and relieve myself or to check the windows and doors, and I hear breathing. Rough and rasping. When there shouldn’t be anyone else in the house. Not the children, they are long gone. Not James, he has not come in from his wanderings.

I seek the source of the noise, and it comes from one of the spare bedrooms. The door is open. I see a shape in the bed, large and bulky. Man or woman? Human or homunculus? At this hour, in these confused half-awake times, anything is possible.

I breathe deeply to control the terror, close the door, and back away. I make it to the steps, run downstairs, nearly falling in my haste. I look for a safe place. The only room with a door is the bathroom. I lock myself in, sit down on the toilet, and try to calm myself. To have someone to clutch, to have my hand patted and be told, It’s just a dream. Or just a movie. For I cannot tell the difference anymore. But no one is here.

Magdalena is out and about, leaving me alone in this house with an unknown thing. I wish suddenly for a dog, a bird, a fish, anything with a heartbeat. I adore cats, but we never got one, because I hated the thought of keeping one trapped indoors when its instinct would be to roam. The risks of letting one out in Chicago were too great.