Love/Hate

I remember wondering, “How is it--even in death--she can be this way?” She snapped at the orderly because the lights were too bright. She made me readjust her pillow a hundred times and then rolled her eyes whenever I inevitably got it wrong. When they finally turned off her oxygen, she complained that she couldn’t breathe, and she looked at all the nurses as if it was their fault her lungs were full of fluid and unusable. I hate myself for thinking it--especially now, but when she lost consciousness, I laughed and thought, “She’s finally quiet.” I heard it in her voice, like it was her joke.

She kept breathing--long, slow, rasping breaths--for three more hours. Every time you thought it was over, that she was gone, she’d breathe again. I told the doctor, “She’s nothing if not stubborn. If there is anyone that can live through this, it’s my Mother. She’d live just to spite God Himself.”

It’s funny that moments like that are the ones that stick with me. She told me she loved me. She kept saying it--said it with her last words. She held my hand and she cried and she said, “You know I’m proud of you, right?” I cried with her, and I wouldn’t let her hand go. I know those moments happened, but they’re never what come to mind when I think of that hospital room.

The only “happy” memory I have is when the lady from her church group came in to give her comfort and secure her Last Rites. In the middle of this grand speech about the afterlife, the church-lady’s phone went off on full volume, she took the call, and then started talking about how bad the traffic had been getting to the hospital--the traffic, when a woman no less than ten feet from her was riddled with cancer and the rest of us were in mournful silence. I could see the sarcastic anger in my mother’s eyes, and I knew that under different circumstances, she would have gotten a kick out of raking that lady over the coals.

When she died, we had no idea. We were all so busy telling stories about her life--about how she wouldn’t let us hang stuff on the fridge because it was “clutter”--when my boyfriend noticed he hadn’t heard anything from her in a while. We called the doctor in, and he told us she had passed. We all got weepy and silent. I kissed her forehead expecting it to be colder. We collected all of her things--her bag, her scrapbooks, a picture frame decorated to look like a window that faced the sea--and we left.

A week later, we had a meeting with the lawyers. Unbeknownst to us, my mother had sued the hospital and a couple of doctors for malpractice. My first thought was, “Of course she did,” but I felt bad when they walked us through the case. A couple of years ago, she’d injured her shoulder. The doctors had taken an X-ray, and the lump that would eventually kill her had been clearly visible. They failed to report it. The hospital had already settled, and it looked like the doctors would too.

We had never had money growing up, and neither of us have ever had much since. I’ve had my troubles keeping a job--a fact that my mother pointed out often, and our father was never around. Even if he had been, my mother wasn’t about to let him provide for us. He had walked out on her for another woman when I was one year old. I only really learned the story after he died--and from his wife, not my mother.

The lawyers told my brother how much money was in the trust but not me--under orders from beyond the grave. There was a lump sum for each of us up front, and then we’d make interest off the trust once a year for the rest of our lives. The first sum was $20,000. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was pissed at her. I remember slamming the door leaving the lawyers’ office. I’m trying to get married and don’t have the money to do it. I’ve been living in a small apartment most of my life. I drive a beat-up car and have a dead-end job. My brother tried to calm me down. He tried to tell me that we’d get more over time, that he’d be happy to help me out in the interim, but then he made the mistake of telling me how much money was in the trust, and I shut down.

It’s a bad habit of mine, but sometimes, I just can’t face things. They break me. It’s like a wall comes up between me and the world, between me and the things that cause me pain. People have always told me that I can’t hide, that it’s always better to face things head-on. The only one who ever told me different was her. She used to say, “You take all the time you need.” It was always in the middle of an argument and normally followed by, “I’ll be right here when you’re ready.” She could yell it at me--scream it at me, but it always made me feel better. She meant it too. She’d let me take my time, walk away, sit on my feelings for days if I needed to. My brother always said she got a sick pleasure out of being right. I thought that was weird because everyone does.

I put the entire lump sum into the wedding. I bought nicer flowers than I should have. I booked a live band. I extended the guest list. The first thought I had when I was picking out a wedding band was, “You were right, Ma.” I didn’t need platinum. I didn’t need the extra stones in the pavé setting. She would have told me I was wasting my inheritance. She used to tell me the same thing if I tried to sneak a can of Beefaroni into the shopping cart growing up. I bought the expensive stuff to spite her. I didn’t want her money hanging over my head anymore. When my bank account was back down to its original amount, a weight lifted off my chest.

A couple of months later, my brother told me he had sold her house. He said we had a week to clean the place out and asked me if there was anything I wanted. I sent him a link to a dumpster company. He was silent for a couple of days. I knew he was hurting, so I told him one morning I’d be down to help him after work. When the time came, I stayed late. I sat in the car for half an hour without starting it. Only the thought of him alone in her kitchen got me out of that parking lot.

When I got there, he was smiling. He took me on a tour of the place and showed me all the things he’d done so far, all the things left to do. Some of the boxes had my stuff, some of them had things that stirred his memories of our lives in that house. It felt like we were in the hospital room again, talking about her while she died. I washed dishes facing the back window so he couldn’t see my face. I couldn’t cry, but I couldn’t smile like him either. When all the dishes were washed, I dried them, wrapped them gently in sheets of paper, and placed them in a moving box. I almost dropped her gravy boat, and for some reason, that set me off.

My brother heard me growling from the other room and asked me what was wrong. “This house,” I said. “That woman. She was infuriating. Even now, I can hear her in my head. ‘Careful, Stephanie,’ like I’m trying to break her stuff. She never just let me live. Everything I did was wrong. It still is. She doesn’t trust me with the money. I just can’t breathe in this house.”

The tears came hot and fast, and before I knew it, I was on the back porch sitting in her chair. The whole place smelled like cigarettes. It annoyed me, and it was intoxicating. I don’t know how long I sat there by myself. When he came out, I was half asleep, cuddled up against one of the wicker arms.

“If you want to take off, I can take care of the rest.”

“No, she was my mother too.” I stood up. “Plus, someone has to take care of her bedroom.”

I roped him into a hug and let him cry for a bit. He explained that he couldn’t bring himself to go in there, that it felt too much like her space. I didn’t want to either, but I figured there were things in there that he’d want to have.

Her bed took up more than half the room. It had taken my brother and three of his friends a couple hours to get it up there. All the while, she’d stood at the top of the stairs just watching them with her hawk eyes. I cleared out her closet, packed up the clothes, stripped the bed. I took a bunch of little, glass figurines from her headboard. I went through all the drawers in her vanity. It only took me twenty minutes. I never stopped, never even slowed down.

The last thing to clean out was a linen closet in the corner by the door. Everything in there was already in boxes, so I just took them out and stacked them with the others. The last box was wooden with a bronze clasp. I had seen it before--exactly once. I had walked in on my mother putting something inside it. She’d snapped the lid shut, then snapped at me, told me to mind my own business. I remembered that as I pulled it out. It was the only reason I opened it.

Papers for her legal case and her treatment were on top. I moved those aside and found a little, black book. I was going to open it, but I caught sight of a hand-drawn card beneath, signed with my brother’s name. There were dozens just like it from him, from me, from her friends. There were letters I had written to her from summer camp. There was a school report I’d done in third grade on mallard ducks. There were programs from every one of my recitals. At the bottom of the box were two sets of initials--hers and my father’s. It was the only evidence of him in her life.

After I’d read the cards, I picked up the little, black book. For a while, I just ran my hand over the velvety cover. The first entry was dated the day my father left. It talked about her scrapbooking class, about her garden, about how much she loved her windchimes. It never mentioned him.

I closed the book without reading any more. I brought the box down to my brother, and I watched him go through it. He remembered so much more than I did. He cried so much more than I did. He laughed and rolled his eyes and looked more like my mother than he ever had before.

I just kept thinking about how much she would complain about the flowers at my wedding, how much she would love them, too.