After Visiting Friends (23 page)

#

I return home. On the flight, I resolve to talk to my mother about what I’ve learned
about my father. Not just come clean with her, but see what she knows about him, about
that night.

I land at O’Hare, turn on my phone. She’s left a message while I’ve been in flight:
“Meet me at Resurrection. Gramma’s here. I don’t know what’s going on. Central Baptist
said she was nauseated. That she wasn’t eating. So . . . I don’t know. Okay? Bye.”

I find them in the emergency room. There’s my grandmother, all eighty pounds of her,
lying on a big gurney inside a room with white curtains for walls. My mother sits
on a plastic chair, clasping her purse. I bend down to kiss her.

My grandmother’s eyes are closed and the sheet is pulled to her chin. Only her white-tufted
head peeks out. I walk to her and whisper in her ear, “Gramma, I love you.” Her eyes
open and she smiles—or tries to. They’ve taken her dentures.

“Ohhhhh . . . ,” she says, lifting her hand from beneath the sheet and touching my
cheek, “there’s my little boy.”

All night, they push my grandmother from curtain-walled room to curtain-walled room.
In each, a different machine. MRI. CT. Others, I don’t know. When I ask a nurse what
they’re doing, she says, “Imaging. We need to see what’s inside her. We do it to everyone.”

Later, a woman tells us my grandmother’s been admitted. That there’s nothing for us
to do. That they won’t know anything until the morning.

I sense my mother’s relief at being given permission to leave.

I take her to an Italian place near Resurrection. We eat without speaking. This is
our language. This is us, communicating.

Over her shoulder, I can see the TV. The White Sox are on. Home game. A line of men
struggle to pull a flapping black tarp across the bright green field.

“It’s raining on the South Side,” I say.

She says nothing.

“Probably coming our way,” I say.

A few minutes later, a flash of lightning. The sky opens.

“Great,” my mother mutters.

“What?”

“My sump pump’s going to be running all night.”

#

The next morning I find my grandmother asleep. Room 462. Some sort of cloth/plastic
material is lashed once, twice around her thin wrists, then to the bed rails.

“She needs to be restrained,” the nurse tells me before I can say anything. “She pulled
out all her IVs in the middle of the night, screaming that she wanted to go home.”

She looks at me, looking at my grandmother.

“It happens,” the nurse says. “We call it hospital dysphasia. People her age—is this
your . . . ?”

“My Gramma.”

“People your grandmother’s age often lose their bearings when they come for care.
The familiar has been taken away. The restraints are for her own good. We believe
restraints help people remember where they are.”

She’s a butterfly, pinned in a box.

#

I sit with her all morning. She sleeps.

Everything in this room, the color of veal. The linoleum. The bed frame. The walls.
The garbage can. The tray table. The blinds. The IV stand. The curtain that pulls
between her and the other lady over there who keeps coughing a cough that makes me
wince. Even the
faded Palm Sunday fronds tucked behind the plastic crucifix that’s screwed to the
wall—veal, too. The only color here, except for the TV, a big black square bolted
high on the wall, and the plastic blue buckles on my grandmother’s restraints.

Late morning, the nurse returns and tells me the tests are inconclusive. She tells
me there’s a theory my grandmother may have “a blockage,” so they’re not going to
give her anything by mouth. Just IV.

“This way,” the nurse says, “we can see what happens.”

It’s afternoon when Gramma wakes. I lean in to her good ear. “Gramma,” I say, “it’s
Michael.”

I watch her eyes, watery and swollen, try to focus. I can feel her mind trying to
put the pieces together.

She jerks her face to the corner of the room and says, “Who’s that little guy over
there?”

“Gramma, there’s no one there.”

“When my momma died, a fireman came to our store. He goes into her bedroom and then
he says, ‘Your mother’s dead.’ I was ten. What’re you gonna do? My father buried her
the day before July Fourth. You weren’t there. Were you? Independence Day. Yankee
Doodle Dandy.”

She pulls the edge of the blanket toward her mouth.

Or tries to.

She can only raise it a bit before the restraints go taut. To her, it’s like there’s
something wrong with her arms. She lifts her head from the pillow and inches it toward
the blanket. She looks like an old tortoise craning its head out from its shell.

And then, finally, she bites the blanket.

“Hey,” she rasps, “this watermelon is dry! Smoky Joe sold you a bum melon.”

She drops her head back and closes her eyes. Every time she closes her eyes, I think,
This is it. I watch her chest now, thin as a balloon and exposed by her veal-colored
hospital gown, to make sure she is still breathing.

Her eyes flick open.

“My whole life, I was afraid I was going to be alone. Then your momma was born. The
nurse brought her in and gave her to me and I pulled the sheets over my head and held
your momma and I cried and cried.”

After a moment, she says, “Let’s go to Carson’s. I need a new coat. Winter’s coming.”

She looks around the room. Her eyes lock on the high corner where the window meets
the wall.

“I got two kids waiting for me at home! I gotta go home. Let me outta here!”

She jerks her wrists against the restraints. The pale blue buckles slide tight.

I stroke the back of her hand with my thumb, the way I remember her always doing to
me. “Gramma, you have to stay here until you get better.”

Not even a hint of recognition. She looks through me.

“Let me out of here!”

Her voice is shredded and shocking in its volume, the way a baby’s screech never fails
to startle me. She heaves again against her restraints, each wrist pulling. A diminished
Hercules. She writhes, but no pillars crumble.

“My kids are all alone!” Then her eyes lock on me. “Hey, what El line do we need?
Which way?”

“Gramma, do you know where you are?”

“Hell yes. State Street.”

“So—”

“—sew buttons on your underwear, zippers aren’t in style!”

“What?”

“Is that a hickey on your neck?”

“No.”

“I’m observant, aren’t I? You look ninety percent like your father and ten percent
like your mother.”

“What’s the ten percent?”

“Your smile.”

I smile. She closes her eyes. The restraints go slack.

Above her bed, two pieces of paper are taped to the wall. The first:
THIS PATIENT IS NPO
. (For the Latin
Nil Per Os
—nothing by mouth.) The second:
THIS PATIENT IS DNR
. (For the English
Do Not Resuscitate
.)

I watch her sleep. Her mouth drops open. A hole. Agape.

Agape. From the Greek: filled with love.

#

I return to New York. Two days later, my mother calls, tells me she’s been released.
A full recovery.

“So what was it?” I ask.

“Dehydration. That’s what the doctors say. But she’s better now.”

TWO STEPS AHEAD

It was a few weeks before Christmas now. My father was dead longer than he’d been
alive, and I’d spent years searching for an answer. For the truth. A lead here, a
stray thought there. Then, I was at work one afternoon when Lynne, that woman from
Thorek Memorial’s records department, calls. She tells me, “Mr. Mike, I found your
father’s emergency room admitting form for that night.” She says, “It was just one
lonesome old piece of paper and it had slipped between two file folders. I looked
in that cabinet three times. And yesterday I got to thinking I wanted to help you,
so I went back one more time, went through that file cabinet like I was looking for
a winning Powerball ticket, and Lord, there it was.”

“Lynne, you are the best! Thank you. Can you mail me a copy today?”

“No, honey. Not without authorization from my supervisor.”

#

I call the supervisor, tell her what I need. The supervisor says, “And you are next
of kin?”

“I’m his son.”

“And his wife is deceased?”

I consider telling the supervisor my mother is dead. But that lie terrifies me. Magical
thinking, I guess.

“No. My mother? No. She is alive.”

“Well, you’ll need to have her send a signed letter requesting the file. We only release
files to next of kin.”

#

It’s 1973. My mother deletes her “r.” It’s morning. Kitchen table. She’s reading the
Sun-Times,
skimming “Kup’s Column” for people she knows. I’m eating Kix. Drowning it in sugar,
trying to make it not taste like packing material. I ask her if she can sign my permission
slip for our class field trip to The Field Museum. She picks up the blue Bic pen,
the one for working the crossword. Signs,
Ms. Barbara Hainey
.

“What’s a Ms.?” I ask.

“ ‘Ms.’ is a new word,” she tells me. “That’s what I am now.”

“But aren’t you always a Mrs.?” I ask.

“I’m not a Miss and I’m not a Mrs. I’m a Ms.”

I’ve seen these Ms.’s. They have long straight hair and wear aviator glasses and tight
shirts. I see them in the paper, carrying megaphones. I see them on TV, calling men
pigs. They don’t need anyone, they say. The whole thing is too much for me to grasp.
A total rebellion. If she is no longer a Mrs., how can she be my mother?

#

The next day, I send the supervisor a letter requesting my father’s records, signed
by me, Ms. Barbara Hainey.

Forgery. To forge ahead. The American Way. Daniel Boone. All that.

#  #  #

Christmas comes.

I find my grandmother in the cafeteria. All the residents are seated around a woman
at the piano singing carols. A few sing along.

She’s next to the piano, asleep. Her head, flicked back on one shoulder, as if her
neck muscles have been unhitched. I know she’s asleep, but each time I reach out to
her, I’m prepared for her not to wake.

As I walk through the room, I feel the eyes of the residents upon me. They make me
aware of my outsiderness. Of my ability to exist in a world beyond this room.

I touch her thin shoulder.

Nothing.

“Gramma, it’s me.”

Her eyes open, just a slit. She looks at me for what seems like forever. Then, “Are
you married?”

“Not yet.”

She closes her eyes, whispers, “Only when you’re away from me do I know where you
are.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?”

I wheel her to her room and ease her into a chair. Her eyes close immediately. I look
out the window. Some snow-rain falls, blown slant by wind I cannot feel. A young oak
stands quiet, its bark wet and black against the low gray sky.

“Gramma, I love you.”

She opens her eyes.

“Where’s Momma?”

“Home.”

She closes her eyes again.

On her table is a palm-size cardboard box from Carson Pirie Scott & Co. The corners
are split, held together with masking tape that’s cracked and dried. Inside I find
two tiny prayer books, the kind with thin metal latches on them, both in Polish. There’s
a rosary and a crucifix of wood. And there’s a piece of faded paper. Years ago, she
wrote her inventory:
FIRST COMMUNION ROSARY. CRUCIFIX FROM MOM’S CASKET.

I kneel down in front of her. I take her hands again in mine. She does not open her
eyes, but she pinches my hands with her thumbs and index fingers, moves her hands
over my hands. A slow, soft circle. This goes on for ten minutes, maybe more. I am
not sure if she is sleeping or in some sort of fugue state. I do not want to wake
her.

I lean close to her good ear.

“Gramma, what are you doing?”

Her eyes do not open. “Making a pie,” she says. “Gotta pinch the dough just like this.
Gentle-like. Get it right against the dish. You want apple or pumpkin?”

“Apple, Gramma.”

“Apple’s good. I got nice ones for you. I had a dream about you last night. You were
walking somewhere with Bob. He was holding your hand. You were a little boy and he
was talking to you.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘You know what to do.’ ”

“What was he talking about?”

“That was it,” she says.

“And what happens?”

“He’s always there. He never goes away. He was a good man.”

And then, for a moment, she opens her eyes, looks at me.

“You should stop kneeling.”

She closes her eyes. Her hands go on.

#  #  #

In the mail there is a large envelope from Thorek Memorial. Inside, a lone piece of
paper. A grainy photocopy of
EMERGENCY ROOM REPORT AND CHARGE NO. 38562
filled out by Nurse Gray in perfect Palmer Method penmanship.