38. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The smell of antiseptic stung Effie’s nose. Each word she caught from the doctors and nurses around them through the fog of her grief carried with it a horrid new taste.
Stroke. Too much salt. Unconscious . Rusted copper. Hospice. Hot wax.
Somehow the rest of her family was able to give the medical professionals their full attention as they discussed the palliative care ahead.
But Effie could only stare at Aunt Beatrice, laying horribly still in a hospital bed, wires and tubes connected to her.
Machines beeping was the only real sign that she hadn’t been lost yet.
Effie settled into a stiff chair with its plasticky upholstery and took Aunt Bea’s hand in hers. She traced the veins visible beneath her fragile skin with her thumb. Bits of paint clung to the underside of her fingernails, and Effie couldn’t have stopped the tears that came for anything.
It didn’t matter that eighty-three was a good long life.
It didn’t matter that she’d had a fulfilling career in the sciences and shared her wisdom with countless students.
It didn’t matter that Beatrice had loved her Thatcher women with her whole heart and given the rest to a man who never came home from war.
All that mattered to Effie in that moment was that Aunt Bea wouldn’t see her own art show.
She wouldn’t meet up with those old friends.
She wouldn’t get to do all the things she’d put off, because her time had finally run out.
At least that’s what the doctors were saying around her.
That this was nearly impossible to come back from.
But if Effie knew anything, it was that Aunt Beatrice was as unpredictable as they come.
She had turned from chemistry to watercolors.
She brought home exotic birds and dished like a schoolgirl in the cafeteria.
She was too vivacious to be snuffed out.
Though Effie knew it was an inevitability, being faced with the reality was entirely different.
People filtered in and out of the room all afternoon, but Effie remained.
Finally, when the sky had darkened outside the open window of Beatrice’s hospital room, Effie felt a firm hand on her shoulder.
She looked up to see Pamela beside her, eyes red-rimmed from crying. “We’re heading home,” she said. “There’s no support we can give her if we don’t get some rest.”
“I don’t want to leave her. Someone should stay.”
Pamela combed her fingers through Effie’s hair the way mothers do when they want to soothe away the hurts of the world. “Let me.”
Effie didn’t know what else was baked into the offer. An olive branch. Maybe a show of solidarity or a desire to shield Effie from some bit of pain.
“That’s okay,” Effie said. “I want to stay. Besides, you should go be with Grams.” Pamela didn’t say it aloud but Effie knew she was grateful.
Pamela had always preferred to grapple with the tangible problems before her, and making her own mother tea and rubbing her back until she fell asleep was something Pamela had the capacity for.
Effie wasn’t sure holding vigil in the quiet alone was.
Long into the night, Effie sat beside Beatrice. Her hands, usually clammy and sweating when her emotions were heightened, were steady and warm while Beatrice’s grew colder.
She wondered what Beatrice was like when she was Effie’s age.
Did she always wear bright pink bows in her hair?
Had she been as sassy and bright when she met the only man she’d ever loved?
Did she always dream of the life she’d built or was she just along for the ride?
Did she regret not doing things sooner to set her heart on fire?
Effie watched as Beatrice exhaled her last breath, any hope of getting to ask her vanishing with it.
It felt wrong for the sun to rise. For the birds to chirp and the streets to be filled with people going about their day like nothing happened as Effie walked home.
It was a substantial distance, five miles or more, but Effie didn’t care.
She needed the air. After Aunt Beatrice finally fell into her endless slumber, Effie became paralyzed.
The lone, piercing beep of a flatline was her only company for what felt like an eternity, though Effie supposed it was only a few moments before the nurses rushed in.
In all of Tibby’s estate planning, she’d made sure to get directives from everyone in the house about what to do in case of such things.
Beatrice wanted no extreme measures taken.
When she went, she wanted to be let go. Effie thought that made sense at eighty-three if the alternative was a half-life of illness, but for herself, she wanted every extreme measure.
At least until she reached a benchmark where her death would be sad instead of tragic.
Her arms turned to gooseflesh. A life cut short without experiencing the breadth of existence did not sit well.
She thought of her dad.
He was only thirty-eight when he died. Effie wondered if he greeted Aunt Beatrice. If they were getting to know each other again in the afterlife. The thought eased something in Effie’s chest as she plodded along, the day near sizzling as the sun rose even higher.
Effie had apologized profusely for wanting to leave once her family arrived. But nobody blamed her. In fact, they’d tried to encourage her to wait for Tibby to give her a ride home, but the walls of the hospital were closing in, a sort of helplessness piercing through her.
So she walked.
Effie’s favorite thing about walking was how it cleared her mind.
How it brought everything into sharper focus and had her feeling grounded.
It didn’t fix every hurt or help her understand life’s bigger problems, but if she could focus on putting one foot in front of the other, even the hardest days felt a little lighter.
As she turned onto her street, the scent of lilac in the air, Effie wished she wasn’t so familiar with grief.
Fifteen years had passed since she’d lost her father, eight since Gramps, but the road looked the same.
An aching heart, a hole in her mind where musings of Aunt Bea’s activities used to live, a vile nausea at realizing she’d never hear her voice again.
But as she rounded the corner onto the brick path that led to the house that would now feel a little more empty, she noticed something different about the journey of her grief.
And it sat on the front steps waiting for her.
Theo stood when he saw her, a tightness to his expression, none of the deep feelings she had seen before, like he tried to mask it and be here for her without any expectations. “Your mom called me,” Theo said in his rich timbre.
Effie stood before him. Whether it was seeing him or the fact that her mother had thought he was what Effie needed that broke the veneer of calm, she couldn’t say. But Effie melted into Theo’s embrace and let the tears come.
He held her through the wave. Thoughts of the art show and sitting for Beatrice’s portraits, bifocals, and the quirk of her lips when the gossip was getting deliciously good.
Every bit of Beatrice branded on Effie’s life flashed through her mind as she stood there in the sturdy arms of a man who wanted to love her.
At some point, he had ushered her inside.
Exhaustion and heartache made everything fuzzy as she watched him move through Dorothea’s kitchen like he’d lived there all his life.
He found Effie’s stash of tea in the cabinet by the kettle and fixed a pot for her, taking down a china cup and saucer from the open shelves to his right.
He grabbed a copper pan and rummaged in the fridge for eggs and vegetables, concocting a delicious-smelling omelet that he put in front of her.
“You don’t have to eat it all, just a bit before you go rest.”
Effie wanted to thank him as much as she wanted to push him away.
It felt too good to be taken care of and even good things had an expiration date.
But she nibbled on the omelet in silence, washing it down with the queen of teas he had brewed for her.
She wasn’t sure what he saw in her face, but he stated more than asked, “You stayed with her all night?”
Effie nodded. “She was more than family. She was my friend.” Effie hated how was tasted today. It didn’t usually carry much flavor. It was bland like water, but today it was spiked with the tang of sulfur like the filter had failed.
“I wish I could have known her better,” Theo confessed and it sounded sincere. All Effie heard was that if she wasn’t such a loser when it came to relationships he would have had the chance. The walls went up and she set her fork on the table.
“Thanks for stopping by. I think I’ll go try to sleep for a bit.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, and he showed no reaction to her terseness. Effie tramped out of the kitchen, and as she climbed the stairs heard the distinct clatter of dishes being washed. Her heart ached for a whole different reason.
Aunt Beatrice would have been so disappointed in her for pushing away the best thing the world had ever brought to her doorstep.