Fifty-Seven
Nina was drifting in and out of sleep. The baby was crying.
Was it her turn to get up? Of course it was, it was always her turn.
Sam never got up with the kids. He had to work in the morning.
She could hear the baby but couldn’t find her body.
It didn’t make any sense. She was in her body.
Her body hurt, but she couldn’t get any of the parts to move.
She started pounding Sam’s side of the bed with her fist to wake him up.
“What is it, Nina? What do you need?” Fern adjusted the pillows behind Nina’s shrunken frame. Tucked in the blankets. “Try to sleep.”
“No no no no,” Nina was becoming agitated. “Clara’s crying. She’s hungry. She needs to be fed.”
“Okay.” Fern patted and stroked Nina’s arm. “I’ll get the baby and the bottle. Go back to sleep.” Nina quieted. From the corner, Bridie whispered, “Should I not be here with the baby? Is it upsetting her?”
“No,” Fern said. Bridie’s face crumpled and she lowered her head to Josephine’s. “I shouldn’t be sad when I’m feeding the baby,” she said, looking up at Fern, distraught. “I’m transferring negative emotions.”
“You’re not,” Fern said. “You are doing two incredibly hard things at once and nothing you’re doing is wrong.” She handed Bridie a box of Kleenex. “I think we need to call Clara.”
AS SOON AS CLARA GOT the call, she packed as quickly as possible.
She knew the call was inevitable but had refused to get a bag together based on a healthy dose of superstition and a little dab of hope.
Last month, right before Christmas, Nina had seemed to be at the end of the line, but then she rallied and had a few good weeks and even though the doctors didn’t change their prognosis, who was to say she wouldn’t beat back this episode, too?
Now Clara was sorry she hadn’t prepared better.
She made a few calls and put all her work on hold or reassigned what she could to colleagues.
She had become a producer at the Food Network and had an assistant and a proper office and a spanking new two-bedroom apartment.
She also had a dog. A rescue mutt that Philip had encouraged her to adopt while they were in the death throes of coupledom but still pretending they might survive.
“A dog is not going to make me want kids,” she told him, dubiously eyeing a spirited beagle mix.
“Does this one have a name?” she asked the volunteer at the shelter.
“He does! His name is Fettuccine Alfredo. We call him Alfie.”
“Kismet,” Philip said.
When Clara finally broke it off for good, when she realized she’d prefer to be at her place with Alfie instead of at Philip’s place with him, when she admitted to herself that she would always feel like a failed human under his gaze, he offered to be an occasional dog sitter.
It was nice. That they still saw each other and were friendly and could work together.
He came and got the dog while she was packing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and gave her a quick hug.
He had a girlfriend now. A nice woman with two kids who doted on Alfie.
She sent Philip off with the dog and a bag of toys and pet food.
She pulled her one conservative black dress off of its hanger.
Was this morbid? Was she summoning death by packing it?
She picked up the phone to call Bridie and realized she couldn’t ask Bridie.
Clara put the dress in her suitcase. Took it out.
Then she imagined what it might be like if Nina did die and her first task had to be finding a proper funeral dress at Sibley’s.
Or wearing something of Bridie’s, which was equally unthinkable. An uncharitable thought but true.
She dialed Fern’s number. “Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say this, but am I packing a black dress? Is that too—”
Fern cut her off. “Pack the dress.”
She put the dress back in her bag but kind of haphazardly rolled it, as if it were an afterthought, a thing she probably would never wear on the trip. As she got into a taxi, her cell phone rang. Bridie. “Hi,” she said. “I’m on my way to the airport.”
“Good.” Bridie sounded awful.
“What’s wrong?” Clara panicked. If Nina died before she got there—
“What’s wrong?” Bridie snapped.
“You sound like you’re crying. Is Mom?”
“Mom is sleeping.” Clara exhaled in relief. “But she heard Jo crying and thought it was you. You as a baby.”
“Oh,” Clara said softly. “Hang in.”
“I can’t do this without you.”
“I’m on my way.”
THEY ALL TOOK TURNS SITTING with Nina and when it wasn’t Clara’s shift she cooked.
She made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on repeat.
She made a beef bourguignon over three days and everyone who walked through the door said, “What is that amazing smell?” She baked cookies and brownies and an Alsatian tart and made lemon curd and chocolate pudding.
She cooked with love, not fear or regret.
She put forgiveness into every bowl, love on every plate.
One afternoon Clara and Bridie were looking through Nina’s nightstand for a clean nightgown, something warm and sturdy.
Nina’s nightgowns were all lightweight, flimsy things.
Were they sexy? Clara shook the thought away.
As she was reaching toward the back of a drawer, hoping to feel flannel or cotton amongst all the silk, she felt a box.
She pulled it out. She knew she shouldn’t open it, but at this point who really cared?
“I hope it’s not a photo of Garret,” Bridie said.
“That would be something.”
“Is it a vibrator?” Bridie said, voice lowered.
“Are you serious?”
Bridie shrugged. “I don’t know. What else do people keep hidden in shoeboxes in their bedside table? I don’t think it’s her stamp collection.”
“I guess I know where your vibrator is.” Bridie rolled her eyes and Clara opened the lid. “Huh,” she said.
Nina had fallen asleep, so they tiptoed out of the room and brought the box downstairs. Everything inside was from the infamous elopement. A stack of photos, matchbooks, postcards. A tiny piece of pink soap that faintly smelled like roses and looked like a scallop shell.
“Look at this one,” Clara said, sliding a snapshot across the table. “I remember that dress.”
“Me too,” Bridie said looking at their forty-five-year-old mother standing in a hotel room with a balcony behind her.
“She looks scared,” Bridie said. Clara nodded.
“I never thought of her as being scared during—all that.” Clara and Bridie looked at the other photos.
Nina in the shallow end of a pool with some brunette bombshell, both holding drinks and waving at the camera.
Nina wading in the ocean. Nina sitting at an outdoor restaurant with a huge seafood cocktail in front of her, miming shock at the size of the platter.
One on the steps of a government building with a small group of other people, mostly men, surrounding an unsmiling Nina wearing a black dress.
“Finn must have taken all the pictures,” Clara said. “He’s not in any of them.”
“He’s in the one by their bed,” Bridie said.
“Right.”
“I never asked her about this trip. Did you?”
“Never. I wonder why she hid all this.”
Bridie snorted. “Really?”
“Everything’s not my fault, you know.”
“I didn’t say it was. Did anybody, including me or Dune or Fern, ever ask about it?”
“I guess not.”
Clara stood to put the teakettle on. Grabbed a couple of mugs off the shelf. “Should we prop the photos up in her room where she can see them?”
“That would be nice,” Bridie said.
When Bridie walked into the kitchen later, Clara was taking a cake out of the oven. Another one? Bridie almost said but didn’t. The counters were overflowing with food that Clara had made or was in the process of making or was planning to make. More food than any of them could ever consume.
“Look what else I found,” Clara said, gesturing toward the counter and the faded copy of The Joy of Sex.
“Oh my god,” Bridie said, flipping through the pages. “This is even stranger than I remember.”
“And a lot hairier,” Clara said.
Bridie laughed. “This book terrified me.”
“Whatever happened to Bess Pfeiffer?” Clara said. “Is she still on Cambridge Road?”
“No. Not for years. She sends postcards to Mom from Taos. I think she runs meditation retreats or sound baths or both.”
“Sounds right,” Clara said.
“She was the only person who stuck by Mom after everything. The only person who was kind to her for so many months.”
Clara nodded. “I always liked Bess. We should let her know what’s happening.”
“I’ll look for her number,” Bridie said.
“Is it my turn to go upstairs?”
“Fern is there now. Then you.” Bridie looked around at the sink full of mixing bowls and the counters covered with cutting boards and rolling pins and little bowls of who knew what, spices, herbs, egg whites.
The wooden spoons in the sink, the flurry of tongs in a ceramic holder.
Most of these things had entered the house in the past few months.
Every time Clara came home, she bought more supplies for Nina’s kitchen.
“How many tongs does a kitchen need?” Nina had asked on her last visit, the last time Nina had the strength to eat at the table downstairs.
“An ungodly amount. As many as possible,” Clara said. She’d put three cobalt-blue ceramic bowls down on the table, one each for her, Bridie, and Nina. A soft cloud of polenta covered in sautéed mushrooms, crispy bits of pancetta, two perfectly soft-boiled eggs, and a sprinkling of minced parsley.
“Almost too pretty to eat,” Nina said as they all picked up a spoon and took a moment to admire the meal before they dug in. They barely talked as they ate, occasionally smiling at each other, the occasional “This is so good.”
Clara was heating up some chicken broth, dropping in spoonfuls of pastina because it was easier for Nina to eat than noodles. “Do you want to bring this up to her?” she asked Bridie.
“Sure.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Clara, you have to stop asking me what’s wrong.”
“Right, sorry. Why are you frowning at me? I’ll clean everything up.”
“I didn’t realize I was frowning. I was remembering that our house looked like this after Mom left with Finn. Like a hurricane had come through but only touched the kitchen.”
Clara shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do. I cook.”
NINA WAS ALERT FOR THE first time in days.
Fern recognized this part; the surge, they called it.
The surge could be hard for families because it looked as if the patient was improving, but they were just getting ready to die.
“Can I get you anything, Nina?” Fern asked. “I think Clara has some soup ready.”
“Fern,” Nina said, sitting up taller. “Come here.” Fern sat on the edge of the bed. “I owe you an apology,” Nina said, and Fern didn’t have to ask what she was talking about.
“You don’t.”
“I looked out the window,” Nina kept talking, “and there you were.” She turned to Fern, her voice weak but her eyes blazing.
“I was so surprised I thought I was imagining you. I almost waved back. Did you know that? I was going to wave back to you and then I thought, What are you doing? Not just about the wave.”
Fern smiled at her. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Nina put her palm on the side of Fern’s face. “It does. I’m sorry you had to watch us leave.”
BOTH brIDIE AND CLARA HAD fallen asleep on the sofa that had been brought into Nina and Finn’s bedroom over the past weeks.
Finn was sitting in his usual chair, a small lamp throwing a little light on his book.
Nina was restless and Fern was trying to make her comfortable.
Bridie stood suddenly. “What’s wrong?!” she said.
“Nothing,” Fern said.
“It sounds like she can’t breathe.”
“She’s okay; it’s normal.”
Clara sat up. “What’s going on?”
“I think we’re almost there,” Fern said. Clara and Bridie stood and moved to one side of Nina’s bed. On the opposite side, Finn took Nina’s hand. “Keep talking to her,” Fern said. “She can hear everything you’re saying.”
“What should we say?” Bridie whispered.
“Whatever you want. Anything. Sometimes it helps to let people know they can go. That you’ll be fine.”
“Do you think we’re keeping her here? Sitting in the room like this?”
“No, I don’t think that.”
The sisters sat on one side of the bed, hands on their mother’s leg, her arm. “We will miss you so much, Mom,” Bridie said, trying to keep her voice steady. She was done crying; she wanted to meet this moment with grace. “We love you.”
Clara leaned over, close to her mother’s ear, and whispered, “We love you, Mom, and we’re going to be fine.
” She said it over and over until Nina opened her eyes and looked at them with perfect attention.
“Mom?” Bridie said, excited, grateful. “Mom,” Clara said, inching closer to Nina.
“Can you hear me? I want you to know something.”
Nina needed her suitcase. The green one with the ivory trim, the one with the tiny stain in the corner she could never get out.
She would need the suitcase, and she would need her lightest clothes.
A few linen dresses. A swimsuit. She looked out the window and saw the snow swirling and worried their flight might be delayed, worried it might not be delayed.
“Mom,” Clara said as Nina turned and looked her straight in the eyes, “it’s okay for you to leave.”
Nina felt the reassuring warmth of her hand in Finn’s, so gentle and soft. She marveled at the kindness of it all. The almost liquid competency of Bridie covering her with an extra blanket, Clara’s hand on her arm, nothing left unsaid in this room. They were all going to be okay.
And then she was in the front seat of the station wagon and Finn was brushing snow off his hair, smiling at her and reaching out his hand and she smiled back and thought, I love you, and he said, Here we go, and she thought, Yes! It was time to go. “Thank you,” she said.
Thank you.