“I won’t put the plastic bag on,” Suzanne said to Elena. “I can’t smother her. If she takes the pills and they stay down and work, that’s her choice. But I won’t put a plastic bag over her head.”
Elena was dressed for work, all in black but for a red scarf. “If the pills don’t work by early morning, I’ll put the bag on.”
“I’m going along with this because she wants it and that’s her right. But I can’t smother her and you shouldn’t. If she wakes up, that’s how it is.”
“I’ll be home by one at the latest.”
“I’m going to sit up with her.”
“So will I.”
Suzanne had not felt as close to her older daughter since Elena had been a little girl. She could place their first bad fights around the time Elena was twelve—around the time of the divorce from Sam. Her home life had become a battleground, and she had responded by throwing herself into work. She needed the money, but more, she was happiest in court and most miserable while fighting with Elena. Oh, there had been a few nasty scenes with Sam, but only a few. Their divorce was probably as amicable as it was possible for such a cleavage in four lives to be. But life with her daughter had become hard fought, an unending screaming match and duel. She knew Elena had begun to lie to her constantly, unwaveringly, with an air of triumph. What could she do about it? Only throw herself further into work until the catastrophe arrived. Her beautiful daughter had become a hostile stranger who hated her and to whom nothing she said or pleaded or threatened had any meaning. Much of the time, she did not even know where Elena was, and if she asked, Elena boldly lied.
Now after the summer’s mess, they had made a rapprochement. Suzanne did not understand why but she was too glad to question it. Elena had been more affectionate toward her than since she was a little girl, permitting Suzanne more expressions of her love. She even let herself be touched on occasion, hugged.
Suzanne sat beside Beverly’s bed, holding her mother’s withered hand. How much she had aged in the past year, as the strokes pinched and twisted her. Elena had been dyeing Beverly’s hair, but the red coiffure looked incongruous around her wizened face. She had lost weight in spite of their best efforts to stuff her. Her muscles had slackened and shrunk. The biggest change was the fire gone from her eyes. Her eyes looked out but could not see much. The doctor had told Suzanne that Beverly had cataracts in both eyes, in addition to the blurring of her vision caused by the second stroke, but that he could not recommend an operation. Suzanne hoped they would be able to put this death over on the doctor, to persuade him it was natural. She prayed he would not probe, just simply sign the death certificate and let everything slide by. The hand in hers felt cold. Since Beverly’s second stroke, medical interest in her condition had waned. Suzanne had tried to prepare the way by telling the doctor and aides how weak Beverly had become. She looked into her mother’s eyes, eyes that had always seemed a clearer, harder green than her own. She must have inherited her myopia from her father, since Beverly had not worn glasses till she needed them for reading after she turned fifty. She had always loved Beverly’s clear passionate gaze.
“How are you feeling?”
Beverly smiled. “Hopeful.”
“What do you hope for?”
“De…liv…rance.”
“Do you still want to go through with this tonight? There’s plenty of time to change your mind.” Suzanne could not keep the pleading from her voice.
“No!” Beverly shook her head from side to side three times. “Do…it.”
What would it feel like to lie there in the bed Beverly was so weary of, and know that she would die in a matter of hours? Like a condemned prisoner, but Beverly was self-condemned. She did not see death as punishment or something to be feared, but as a release. Suzanne wished she could look out through her mother’s eyes for just an hour to know if this was really what Beverly must have. Last night Suzanne had lain awake going through agonies of guilt, wondering if she had somehow let Beverly know indirectly how much it was taking out of all of them to care for her, what an enervating financial burden her support was, how overstretched Suzanne had been feeling. She had done her best to keep these feelings to herself, but she could never be sure she had succeeded. She was so tired all the time, exhausted beyond any hope of repair in the brief hours of sleep she could steal. Perhaps she had not concealed her fatigue as well as she had imagined. She could not bear to think that.
“Want…first act…Mam…Butter…”
Suzanne rose and put on the CD. In the summer, she had put a speaker into this room so that Beverly could listen to music. That, and a little TV that could be operated from the bed. She had tried to make Beverly comfortable, she had tried. As she returned to sit by the bed in the flood of Puccini, she thought how weird it was that her mother’s favorite opera should be about a submissive woman who killed herself for the love of a jerk. Suzanne did not care for opera: too rich, full-blown, overwrought for her tastes. She would rather listen to jazz or baroque music or Mozart. She had always found it out of character that Beverly should love opera. Beverly used to go to the City Opera or get cheap seats at the Met with a friend of hers who taught at City College. They would talk about tenors the way some women talked about movie stars or basketball players. Now the flood of passion seemed appropriate.
Beverly was lying back against her pillow with her eyes closed, waving her good hand languidly to the music. Mao lay curled on her belly.
“Isn’t he heavy?”
“Keeps…warm.”
When the first act had finished, Beverly motioned for her to get moving. Suzanne brought a tray with toast and broth. A light meal was supposed to prevent the stomach from rejecting the pills.
“Now we’re supposed to wait half an hour.”
“Play…second.”
Suzanne put on the second act of the opera. She decided she would bury it with her mother, but then remembered that Beverly had already set up her cremation, making all her arrangements over the past two months, during the time she had been talking about wanting to die. “Want…tidy,” she had said repeatedly. Beverly had little to leave. Her meager savings were long gone. The clothes she could no longer wear had been donated to Good Will months ago. She had given Elena her jewelry, mostly out-of-date costume jewelry except for an opal pendant and an onyx cat pin with tiny chips of emerald for eyes. To Suzanne, she left Mao. To Rachel, she bequeathed her own mother’s wedding ring. She confided to Suzanne that she had worn it only when she was checking into hotels with various men. It was a wide lustrous gold band with a Hebrew inscription Suzanne could not read—but Rachel would be able to.
Laboriously Beverly printed on the pad, TELL R SORRY NOT WAIT.
“I know she’d want to say good-bye to you.”
Beverly only gave her a crooked smile. “Time…now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.” Beverly glared imperiously. “Bring…drink.”
Suzanne dragged herself into the kitchen and mixed the ground-up pills into a mug of orange juice. She used a mug so that she could better mix the grainy white stuff into the juice. Finally she had it in suspension and experienced the strong impulse to wash it down the sink. Her hands were trembling. If she accidentally dropped it, that would be that. Finally she carried the mug in to Beverly, walking as slowly as she was able. She began to cry and stopped to snuffle back her tears, as she knew crying would anger Beverly. If this was going to be their very last time together, she did not want to taint it.
Beverly reached out. Suzanne slowly handed it to her. Beverly tasted it and made a face. “Ecch.” However, she smiled wanly and drank it a gulp at a time. She reminded Suzanne of someone trying to cure hiccups by taking small sips of water. She took only sips but she kept at it, gagging once, pausing then for a minute. Finally she consumed the whole mug of drugged juice.
“There.” She sighed. “Help me lie down.”
“Do you want the music on?” Suzanne watched her mother carefully. Bever
ly could still throw up, and then it would be over. They could not go through getting all those drugs a second time. Her body might well reject the poison she was feeding it, and then Beverly would have to give this up.
“Let it…”
She took her mother’s hand and held it. Their hands were exactly the same size, the same shape. She might never see or touch her mother’s hand again. For a while, it seemed as if the pills would have no effect, and Suzanne had half an hour of hope that it was not going to happen. Perhaps Elena had mistaken the chemicals or the dosages. Beverly hummed occasionally along with the opera. She nodded to Suzanne and then freed her hand and petted Mao, who had moved to a position against her side. Her eyes fluttered shut, opened again, looked around once and again, then slowly the lids slid down. Her breathing grew more regular and deeper. Suzanne stared, wondering how she could tell the difference between normal sleep, for she often saw Beverly dozing open-mouthed in the daytime, and a mortal sleep. Suzanne would have liked to turn off the opera, but she did not want to wake Beverly by moving around the room. It felt as if it continued for an hour, but it was only twenty minutes. Then the conclusion came and silence arrived. She took Beverly’s slack hand in her own. It felt a little cooler than normal and she chafed it gently. A shapely hand, still. Beverly had always been vain about her hands but never had a manicure in her life, never wore polish.
More or less silence. It was Saturday night and cars were careening up the hill and down again, local kids. A dog was barking hysterically. Someone was walking along the street calling a cat. “Max! Max!” Mournful appeal. She imagined calling after her mother, “Beverly! Beverly! Come back.” It did not seem possible, what was happening, that she should be sitting here holding her mother’s hand as her mother was leaving her, steadily, gradually, moving beyond the sound of her voice and the touch of her hand. She gazed at Beverly’s gaunt face and felt she had never loved her as much. It could not end like this. The slight curve in her mother’s nose, the way one eyebrow was more arched than the other, the softness of her unpierced earlobes, her high, fine cheekbones—all to be lost? She could not bear it. She had not spent enough time looking at Beverly, not enough time.
Beverly was breathing more deeply. She began to snore. Suzanne rose and paced into the living room and back, into the kitchen and back. She had eaten nothing for supper except the same toast and broth Beverly had consumed. She was not hungry, just anxious and exhausted. Coffee was what she wanted, but she was too wired already and could not make herself stand at the stove and make it. She kept wanting to shake Beverly by the shoulder and bring her back to consciousness, to demand a response. How could she let her mother slip away like this, further and further from her?
She decided she could run upstairs briefly to check on Marta, see if she needed anything. Marta did not know what they were doing; it was better if she didn’t. Why implicate her, if anything went wrong? But Marta would think it strange if she did not appear. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet propped up. Suzanne remarked, “Your ankles look swollen.”
“They are. All of me feels swollen.” She patted her belly. “I keep thinking at least it’s almost over, it’s almost time. I’d forgotten how long the last month is—twice the normal length. Obviously I’m not having any more children after this. I just want to deliver her safely. I trust Helen. She’s been my gynecologist for twenty-two years.”
“I should get back. I just wanted to check in with you. Beverly’s having a bad night.”
“Don’t leave. Stay. Let’s just hang for a while.”
“Not too long. Beverly isn’t well. She has an appointment this week, Tuesday. The doctor wants to check if she had another ministroke, perhaps without us realizing it.” She felt awkward and miserable lying to Marta, but she had to protect Marta and herself—and Elena. The fiction must be built up. “I have to get back down there. I don’t like her being alone when she’s so weak.”
When she returned downstairs, Beverly was still snoring. Her breathing seemed slower. Mao raised his head to look at her. She imagined he was reproaching her. She very gently touched her mother’s cool, slightly moist hand. Her mother’s hands had always been dry and comfortingly warm—like Jake’s, she thought suddenly—but since Beverly’s stroke, they were often cold. She resumed her seat beside the bed. She was exhausted but did not want to take her gaze off Beverly’s face. She still somehow hoped that Beverly would open her eyes, no matter how angry and disappointed she would be if the pills did not work. It was just after eleven. Suzanne wondered again if there were anything she could have said or promised or offered that would have kept Beverly with her.
Beverly’s breathing grew shallower and less frequent. Her mouth had fallen open. Suzanne no longer hesitated to get up and move around the room, for she doubted anything she did was likely to wake her mother now. The only question was whether Beverly would slip into a coma, which in itself would simply send her to the hospital where they would discover the residue of the pills in her, or whether she would, as she had begged them, die at last. She hoped Elena had gotten the amounts and the drug mixture right. She should have checked it. Sitting there beside the unconscious Beverly, she could not believe that she had not checked out Elena’s results. She had simply, blindly accepted them, because the act they were committing was too painful for her to deal with in the detail required to confirm Elena’s conclusions. She was ashamed. Again she sat beside the bed and held Beverly’s inert hand in her own, hoping that on some level her mother could feel her presence and be comforted by it. She spoke now and then, “Mother, it’s me. I’m here with you. It’s Suzanne.” She spoke just in case Beverly could sense her presence or the affection she was trying to project. She sat holding the limp hand and weeping, slow tears flowing down until her face was swollen and her blouse, wet on the bodice, more tears than she thought her body could hold. The tears seeped out and out.
When Elena arrived, just after twelve-thirty, Beverly’s breathing was slower, shallower, but ongoing. “I’ll take over,” Elena said. “Just let me change out of my work clothes and I’ll sit with her.”
“I think I should stay.”
“You look exhausted. At least get undressed and lie down for half an hour. I’ll wake you if anything seems to be happening. I’d like to be alone with her for a while.”
Reluctantly and eagerly at the same time, Suzanne backed out of the room and went to undress and lie down. She did not intend to sleep. But she did.
49
Elena
Elena looked in on her mother. Suzanne had put on the flannel nightgown with little red posies Rachel had given her and was lying on her bed with a law journal open under her loosened hand. She had, as Elena hoped, dozed off.
It was a quarter after one. Now or never, she thought. She took her promise to her grandmother seriously, perhaps religiously. She doubted if Rachel would understand her use of the word, but it felt sacred to her. To untether Grandma and set her free. Elena did not exactly believe in an afterlife, but she thought something of everyone remained in the room, in the wind, in the minds of those who had loved them. She loved Beverly. No one else in her life had ever cared for her as wholly, as sweetly, as nonjudgmentally as her grandmother did. There was a price for such love, and she was about to pay it.
She took a plastic freezer bag into the sickroom where Beverly had been lying since May. It always smelled of stale body odors, but she was not squeamish. Gently she lifted Beverly’s head. How light she was now. Beverly was breathing hoarsely and did not wake. Elena doubted if she ever would, unless her stomach was pumped now, but she might remain like this. Dr. Kevorkian would know if Beverly was really dying, but not Suzanne and not herself. She kissed her grandma on the forehead, and then on her cheeks. She wanted to kiss her lips, but Beverly’s mouth was open and slack. Then Elena fitted the plastic bag over Beverly’s face and tied it under the chin, tightly. She had read that sometimes unconscious patients would instinctively paw at the bag, trying t
o remove it. Beverly did not. Elena hoped she had it tight enough. It moved with Beverly’s breath. Elena was unsure whether she had done it correctly. If only she could ask someone, but the world was asleep, and there was no one to ask. Elena watched. It was her duty to go the last steps her mother could not take. She took her grandmother’s limp hand and kissed it. Mao got up, stretched, and went to her to be petted.
“Even though she left you to Mother, I’d take you with me, if I knew where I was going, understand?” She rubbed under his chin, the way he liked best. “Roommates are always iffy, but it’s time for me to move on. If I get a good place to live, I’ll come get you. That’s a promise.”
She had thought Beverly might jerk or kick or give some sign she was suffocating, but she did not. Instead, the breathing stopped, started again with a gasp and then once again stopped.
“Grandma, go in peace. Let yourself go,” she said softly, again and again, stroking the limp hand that hung out from the blanket.
The breathing stopped, started again, stopped. She touched Beverly’s neck. There was no pulse. She waited, holding the limp cold hand. The breathing did not resume. She smelled urine. In the morning, she would clean up. Carefully she lifted Beverly’s head again and took off the plastic bag and put it in the garbage. Then she thought better about that and instead burned it in a flame from the gas stove, holding the corner with kitchen tongs. That residue she flushed down the toilet. She did the same with the printout from the summer. Let Me Die Before I Wake she carried down into the basement and stuffed way into a box containing her summer clothes. She would dispose of it tomorrow. Then she washed her hands, not of the act, but out of caution.