7
The night before, they’d all taken turns sitting with Brooke. She was resting peacefully and didn’t need constant company. She could use the intercom if she waked and needed assistance; and Dave turned on the monitor any time she was alone, to alert him if there was a disturbance. But the women agreed it might be valuable to spend time with her even if she were unconscious. They had, after all, travelled great distances to be with her and, as Jodie put it bluntly, “There’s nothing else to do around here.”
So Penni went in first. She was still bewildered by what to make of her non-moving, non-speaking mother. She searched all the memories of her twenty-six years and could not find a single instance when her mother was still. Even the few times she’d caught her dozing, her hands were moving and her lips twitching, as if directing someone or some legions in her dreams or another world. But tonight Brooke’s face was blank and the other world she occupied at the moment, if there was one, buried beyond any possibility of her inclusion or understanding.
So after maybe ten minutes of a futile blank stare trying to will some kind, any kind of response or movement, Penni sighed a surrender and opened the paperback she’d bought in the airport bookshop in Boston, the second part of the “Twilight” series, New Moon, and resumed where she’d stopped on the plane, marking the page with the corner torn from the trail mix packet. After reading silently for a while, she sensed a presence in the room with her. She looked up quickly. Brooke was as she had been, flat on her back, her face framed by the pillow and the neatly ironed (by Betsy, their long-time and now aging black housekeeper) pillowcase, her closed eyes directed at the dim ceiling. The door to the hall was most of the way closed, no change there. And the three doors along the far wall—the ones on either end to walk-in closets, the one in the middle to their large master bath—were all shut. The blinds were lowered and the drapes drawn across the wall of windows facing out on the cool autumn night. There was no one else here. But for whatever reason, when Penni continued reading she did so aloud, in a firm yet quiet voice, as if Brooke could hear and would enjoy the sounds at least. And who knows—maybe she would like the story, hang around long enough to hear the end.
After her designated hour Penni emerged and stopped by Leah’s room before heading off to her room to ready for bed.
“Brooke O.K.?” Leah asked.
“Sleeping peacefully,” Penni said from the doorway with a wan smile.
“You O.K.?”
Penni considered telling her aunt about the intangible presence but decided not to. Either Leah already knew—probably Leah already knew—or else she wouldn’t understand. “Tired from the trip.”
“Get some rest.”
“I’ll try,” she said then added with a laugh, “Maybe the familiar mattress will bring me sweet dreams.”
“I’ll hope so.” Leah stood and headed downstairs as Penni departed for her room down the hall.
Having the benefit of several days with her sister conscious and a lot of time sitting with her sister unconscious, both this trip and last spring, Leah thought she had nothing left to say to the unconscious Brooke. So she reached under Brooke’s bed and pulled out the knitting bag she’d left there and resumed work on the afghan she planned to send to Jasper at school. Against her wishes, her mind couldn’t help its grudging acknowledgement that her son had other options for keeping him warm at night, the latest (that she knew of) being Stephanie whose family in Vermont he’d be visiting over next month’s fall break. But maybe this afghan, in the school’s colors, would remind him of the warmth he’d once received and still had at the ready from his mother.
Despite herself, and amidst the soft clicking of the knitting needles, Leah said aloud, “You’ve done a good job with the girls.” She wasn’t sure where that came from. Her unspoken judgment over the many years of Brooke’s largely one-sided laments over the challenges of raising five children was that Brooke had skillfully managed the raising of the boys (“But of course” she’d say, almost always over the phone, “I love men!”) while never quite finding the proper balance with the rebellious elder child or the timid and too perfect baby (“I used all my girl skills up on you” she’d say, somehow diverting blame to Leah). But with the two daughters upstairs now and whatever missteps or resentments either resolved or buried deeply, it was time to acknowledge what had never been said in her presence. “They are two exceptional women and completely devoted to you.”
“Come on, Leah! Penni maybe—maybe too much so. But Jodie? No way!”
Leah shook her head but didn’t look up from her knitting. “All Jodie ever wanted was your love, Brooke. And now I think she finally realizes she had it all along—even in the shouting and the fights, all the more so because of them.”
“Don’t you know I told her that every chance I had?”
“Not in words she could hear. She had to find it on her own.”
“By pushing me away?”
“Part of the process, yes. And by losing herself.”
“Do you know how much that hurt?”
Leah nodded. “But more importantly, Jodie knows how much that hurt you—now.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s here, Brooke. She wants your forgiveness.”
There was a long silence that Leah equated with tears, of joy and sorrow. “She doesn’t need my forgiveness. I need hers.”
“For what?”
“All the times I tried to stamp out her fire.”
Leah laughed. “You were scared because she was so much like you.”
“And felt guilty.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t have you.”
Leah weighed that. “She always had me.”
“An aunt is not a sister.”
“And now she has Penni.”
“Too late.”
Leah smiled broadly as she looked up to her sister’s sleeping face. “Just in time.”
“For what?” Jodie said from the doorway.
Leah flinched and looked around. Then she looked at her watch—10:00, their designated hour to switch. She smiled to cover her surprise. “To relieve my watch.”
“But you didn’t know I was here.” She walked up to the second chair beside the bed and sat.
“Eyes in the back of my head, from when I was deaf.”
“Then I’m glad I didn’t have you as a mother.”
Leah took a chance. “Are you?”
Jodie stared at her aunt for a few seconds then looked to her sleeping mother’s face floating almost like an apparition above the multiple layers of bedspread, blankets, and sheets, pale in the nightstand lamp’s dim light. “Growing up I always wanted you to be my mother. I wished it so much it became part of my identity, my middle name—Jodie Wants-Leah Howard Redmon.” She laughed. “And I carried that identity with me for years after I left home, after it didn’t matter anymore.”
“Punishing Brooke.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I guess I figured she’d punished me for eighteen years, I’d give her eighteen back—insofar as I thought about it at all, which wasn’t much.”
“Unconsciously.”
“Like Mom over there.”
“Sleepwalking through your life dragging all your resentments behind.”
“Whoa, Leah! You channeling Mom or something?”
Leah laughed. “Sorry. Spending so much time with Brooke has made me maybe a little too forthright in my assessments.” She extended a hand to brush Jodie’s cheek. “You forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive. You’re exactly right. Blaming Mom was an excuse for not holding myself accountable.”
“For what?”
“For starting my life.”
“And now you see that.”
“With your help, and hers. I don’t know if it’s her illness or just growing up, but I suddenly see her life in all its challenges. I couldn’t see that before.”
“Children aren’t supposed to see the challenges of parenthood.”
“Why not?”
“It’d scare them to death!” Leah laughed but didn’t retract the claim.
“And they’d never want to grow up.”
“Maybe not.”
Jodie raised her hand. “Prosecution Exhibit A.”
“All things in due time.”
“Too late?”
“Never too late, Jodie. You’ve got a lifetime in front of you.”
“For her?” She looked to her mother.
“No.”
“How will she know?”
“Just tell her Jodie. She’ll know.” Leah gathered up her afghan and needles and yarn and stood. “Take care of my sister, dear one,” she said then left, pulling the door shut behind her.
Jodie stared at the shut door. She wanted to run after Leah, pull her back into the room, and ask her to sit with her through this watch. Every instinct and intuition was telling her to run—out of this room, out of this house, out of this town, this state, this side of the continent. Run. Run. Run!
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath then turned toward the bed. She opened her eyes. Her mother looked so peaceful. She could see the bedcovers rising and falling ever so slightly, so she knew the subject was alive. But where was her mother? Where was that dynamo of activity and energy and will that had propelled and motivated every minute of her life for better and for so much worse since the day she’d emerged from her womb (she figured she’d blame her for those first few years too even though she couldn’t remember them)? Where was she? Goddammit, where is she?
Jodie had not breathed since turning. Her body threatened collapse and forced her mouth open to seize a long draught of air, the inhalation’s gasp merging into a deep moan of visceral pain. Her body fell forward onto the side of the bed, her face buried in the soft covers next to her mother’s waist. She remained there for the longest time, in the gray cushioned world of her grief.
Then she started to speak into the covers, her words echoed back into her ears but maybe also echoed forward into the layers of fabric and through the pajamas buried and into the warm flesh just inches from her lips. “Why didn’t you let me love you, Mom? That’s all I ever wanted. That’s all I ever was—love for you! But you put so much between us—your move back home, school, Dave, the boys. One after the other—I thought they’d never stop popping out of your belly, encroaching on my turf! Then worst of all Penni. She was such a beautiful baby and so sweet. She never once cried or made a fuss—not in twenty-five years! How could I ever compete with that? All I ever did was cause trouble when all I ever wanted to do was love you. How did it get turned upside-down? Why did we let it?”
She may have lost consciousness then. It was hard to say. It was a strange and different world down here in the covers, the fabric puffing in and out, pushing her breaths back into her face. Eventually, a rhythm seemed to take hold, a rhythm of sound and motion outside herself, like a breathing in and out but of someone or something outside of herself, taking her over, enfolding her into itself.
“I’ve always loved you, Mom. Even when I hated you, most of all when I hated you, I loved you. I bottled it up inside, wouldn’t tell you or even myself; but it was always there. Why do you think I got so upset? Why do you think I did all that crazy stuff and said all those mean things? What could have caused such passion except a hidden and thwarted reservoir of love? But it’s not hidden anymore, Mom. It’s not buried under all those layers of resentment and self-loathing. It’s right here—in my mouth, in my head, and in my heart. I want you to take it. I want you to use it in whatever journey you’re facing. I want you to take it off my hands thirty-six years too late. I don’t want it locked inside me anymore.”
She took a long breath and fell silent. She’d said all she had to say, a lifetime’s worth. She let her head roll to one side so that half her face was exposed to the room around her. She opened one eye, saw the wall of bedcovers nearby, the nightstand light, the gray walls and ceiling. Then she felt it, the other half of her face still in the covers pressed now against something more than just sheets and blankets, pressed against a firm wall, rising and falling ever so slightly—her mother’s side.
And then a word or what she thought was a word, from beyond her—Penni. She accepted that weight, no longer with resentment.