Chapter 5 Marigold #3
“Let’s play from the coda one more time,” my mother said.
I flipped through my sheet music to the right page, then arched my back, cracking out the tension that had accumulated there after the hour-plus of practice before my mom joined me.
I glanced back at my mom, but she hadn’t even touched her own music yet; she was staring at her flute with a tiny frown settled about her mouth, like it was a puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out.
“Mom?”
She startled, like she’d been caught doing something wrong. “What? Oh.” She flipped back through her pages. “Sorry about that. I’m ready when you are.”
I counted down, and we resumed.
The piece was neoclassical, by a Japanese composer best known for his film and TV compositions, although this one—a flute solo with piano accompaniment—was always meant to stand alone.
The piano part, while not technically difficult in the same way that some classical pieces can be, still required a lot of concentration.
Enough to make the piece feel almost more like a duet than a flute solo.
The flute part was stunning, a soaring bird cresting over the rest. The piece made me feel like I ought to be on an ocean somewhere, riding the swell of deep blue waves. Like I wanted to take flight.
But then the flute went silent.
“What happened?” I asked, but I knew the answer before my mother even told me. It was written in the crease of her brow, the wan pallor of her skin, the slight tremor to her fingers as she lay the instrument down.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m sorry, Goldie. I just…I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
My mother used to be this unstoppable force, a goddess in an evening gown whose music had the power to lure entire audiences under her spell.
As her lupus got worse, it was like being a frog in a pot of boiling water.
You didn’t really notice the difference until moments like these, when suddenly you were snapped out of time and into a harsher reality.
And then you could see how much she’d really changed.
It’s only been five minutes, I wanted to say. But she knew that, of course. She’d already lost so much: her principal flautist position at the Phil, her social life, and now these moments with me, which I knew she cherished.
“It’s okay,” I said, pasting a smile onto my face. “I need a break anyway. I’m starving.”
My mother let out a slow breath. “Sweet girl,” she said. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but she reached out and squeezed my shoulder before she left, like she could impress her words into my bones.
I unscrewed her flute slowly, placing the three separate parts into their little velvet beds, then latching the case shut.
The house was too silent with my mother ill and my father at practice, school on Thanksgiving break.
I drifted from room to room like a ghost. I couldn’t remember what I used to do to occupy my time.
I didn’t want to keep playing and have the sound of the piano keep my mother up if she was trying to rest. Should I read?
Check out what was on Netflix? Every option felt empty and soulless.
I was glad when lunchtime came. I thought maybe after her rest, my mom would be feeling better—if not back to her old self (she hadn’t been her old self in a long time), then at least able to crack a few jokes.
But when she came in, she looked—if possible—worse than before. Even the golden light cast by the dining room chandelier couldn’t lend her face any color.
She told Tiff that the food was delicious, but she barely touched it. I couldn’t eat mine, either; I was too busy watching my mom push her salmon around the plate with the tines of her fork, divvying up the fish until it was just a mess of flesh.
“I was hoping to talk to you both,” my mother said after lunch was taken away.
My father and I watched her in silence. Nothing good ever came from someone saying I wanted to talk to you. I tried to wrangle my mind into silence; it was only too easy to start theorizing all the different things she might be about to say.
My mom examined her plate like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. She tapped the tines of her fork against the porcelain three, four times. Just spit it out, I wanted to say. Get it over with.
Another part of me wished she wouldn’t speak at all. That this entire moment would evanesce into a dream.
But the words came out of her anyway—too fast and all at once. Brusque and blunt, like she wanted to get it over with.
“I want to discontinue treatment. I’m tired of being on dialysis, I’m tired of being in and out of the hospital all the time. I’m done with it all. I just need to rest.”
The words landed heavy on the table. I heard my father’s sharp intake of breath even as my own ears buzzed with white noise.
Quit treatment? My mother had lupus nephritis. Her kidneys didn’t work. She needed dialysis, she needed it to…
“But that’s it,” I said, before I could even think through what I was about to say. “That’d be it. You can’t live without dialysis. So…so what? You’re just going to—”
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it.
“Miri…” my father started, but he couldn’t seem to speak, either. It was as if my mother had stolen all the air from the room and left us both suffocating.
She shrugged, far too casual a gesture for the conversation.
“I’ve quit my job. I can’t play music anymore.
I can’t even leave the house unless it’s for treatment.
I sleep most of the day. Even walking up the stairs is enough to make me feel like I’ve just climbed an alp.
I want to enjoy the rest of my time, not…
” She sighed. “You both need to understand…you know how this ends. No matter what. Sooner rather than later, no matter what I do. Ever since my transplant failed, we’ve just been counting down the clock. You know that.”
Her voice sounded tight all of a sudden, and she looked away, grabbing her fork to start macerating her fish again.
“Just wait a little bit,” my father pleaded with her. “Just give it a few more months. You can’t make this kind of a decision out of nowhere, you—don’t be impulsive, Miriam.”
“It’s not impulsive. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
And the worst part was that I believed her.
I should have seen it. I should have seen it coming a long way off.
I’d watched her get tired, her lupus eating away at every part of her—joints, skin, heart, lungs, kidneys.
She’d been dying for a long time now. The only reason she wasn’t already in the ground was the machine keeping her blood clean and her body alive.
“Don’t, Mom,” I said. “Please, just…please think about this. Longer. Please don’t just—you can’t leave us!”
The last words burst out of me, scraping raw and ragged against my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks. At least my mother had the decency to look conflicted. But it wasn’t enough.
She didn’t have to say it. Her mind was made up.
I tried to imagine a world without my mother in it, but it was impossible. She had always felt larger than life, a symphony that filled every room she was in. A goddess among mortals, invincible—until she wasn’t.
I thought about her chair vacant at the dinner table. The side of her bed empty while my father slept. Her flute case gathering dust on a shelf.
The tears finally broke free. I shoved my chair back from the table and fled. Maybe it was childish—but I didn’t care, I didn’t care, because my mother was…
Selfish. It was selfish. How dare she try to leave us before we were ready? She had a choice; she could stay.
I slammed my bedroom door shut behind me, hard enough the picture frames rattled on the wall. I felt like a child, like I might as well be two goddamn years old, as I flung myself onto my bed and pressed my face into my pillow and screamed.
It wasn’t fair. This was…she couldn’t be serious. She hadn’t thought this all the way through. She didn’t realize the effect it would have on me and Dad to be without her, that was all. We’d make her realize. We’d make her see reason.
But even as I whispered these reassurances to myself, I knew how this ended.
I’d known it for a long time.