Grand Avenue (38 page)

“Susan.” Her mother opened her eyes, said nothing further, as if Susan’s name had exhausted all her strength.

“I don’t want to hear any negative talk. You know how important they say it is for you to think positively.”

“They
aren’t the ones in constant pain,” her mother whispered slowly.

“Are you in pain now, Mom? Do you want me to get you something for it?”

Her mother nodded slowly. Immediately Susan buzzed for the nurse.

“We’ll get you something, Mom.”

Several long minutes later, a nurse appeared in the doorway. She was tall and angular. Small, wireless glasses balanced on the tip of her long, patrician nose.

“My mother’s in pain,” Susan said, trying to keep the sharpness out of her voice. What had taken the stupid woman so long to respond to her buzz? “She needs some medication.”

“I’ll check with the doctor,” the nurse said, gone before Susan had a chance to say more.

“Would you like some water, Mom?” Susan realized she felt as helpless with her mother as she did with her older child. Mothers and daughters, she thought. Is there any relationship in the world more complicated, more
fraught?

Susan filled a glass with water from the pitcher on the nightstand beside the bed and extended it toward her mother’s cracked lips. She watched her mother sip dutifully at the clear liquid, although she doubted any reached her throat. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, darling.”

“There’s so much I want to say to you.”

“You have a captive audience.” Her mother tried to smile, winced instead.

Susan blinked back tears, stilled the quivering in her jaw. Could she say all that needed to be said, all that was in her heart, without breaking down? “I just want to thank you,” she began slowly. “For everything you’ve done for me. For helping me with the kids. For always being there when I need you. For loving me. For taking such good care of me all my life.”

Tears slowly trickled down her mother’s cheeks.

She understands I’m saying good-bye, Susan realized. “I want you to know what a privilege it’s been to know you,” she said, crying openly now. “You’ve been the best mother a girl could ever hope to have. And I love you so much.”

“It’s been my pleasure, darling,” her mother said, trying to smile, crying out in pain instead.

Susan was immediately on her feet. “Where does it hurt, Mom?”

“Everywhere.”

Susan looked anxiously toward the door. “The nurse should be back in a minute with the medication.” Where was that damn woman? What was taking her so long? If she didn’t come back soon, if she didn’t come back
right this second
, then Susan was going to write an angry letter to the hospital. No, forget that. She’d write an article for the
Cincinnati Post
. She’d make sure this issue got the attention it deserved, even if it meant suing the hospital. Patients shouldn’t be forced to
suffer needlessly. Her mother shouldn’t have to spend her last days in excruciating pain.

As if on cue, the door swung open. “Thank God,” Susan said. Only it wasn’t the nurse. It was an orderly with the food cart. The orderly was short and black, and his head was as bald and shiny as a bowling ball. “Dinnertime,” he announced.

Susan checked her watch. It was barely four o’clock in the afternoon.

“It’s the early-bird special,” the orderly said, answering the look in Susan’s eyes as he lifted the covers from the plates. “Let’s see what you ladies ordered. Roast beef in a yummy-looking beige sauce for Mrs. Unger, and chicken in a yummy-looking beige sauce for Mrs. Hill. Good choice, ladies,” he said, depositing the food on the appropriate trays. “And let’s not forget the lime Jell-O for Mrs. Unger, and the cherry Jell-O for Mrs. Hill. Personally, I prefer the cherry.
Bon appétit.”
He waved on his way out the door.

Susan stood for several seconds staring at the unappetizing display. “Well, doesn’t this look … awful,” she said, unable to lie. Just because the cancer had reached her mother’s brain didn’t make her an idiot. “What do you think, Mom? Think you’re up for some cherry Jell-O?”

Her mother’s answer was a sharp cry of pain.

“Okay, that’s it. Where’s that damn nurse?” Susan looked frantically toward the door as her mother’s plaintive moans filled the room. “Try to hold on, Mom. I’m going to get a doctor. I’ll be right back.” She ran to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Susan raced down the hall to the nurses’ station. Three nurses sat chatting behind the counter. None looked up as Susan approached. “Excuse me,” Susan said, banging on the countertop, securing their attention. “I asked a nurse for painkillers ten minutes ago. My mother is in agony.”

“Could you lower your voice please?” one of the nurses said from her seat behind her computer.

“Could you get up off your ass and get my mother something for her pain?” Susan shot back.

The oldest of the nurses stood up, approached Susan slowly, cautiously. “Okay, can you just calm down now? We don’t want to scare the other patients.”

“We don’t give a damn about the other patients,” Susan told her. “We just want to get my mother some morphine.”

“Please try to keep your voice down,” the nurse, whose black skin was topped by a short mop of curly, orange hair, advised. “Your mother is …?”

“Roslyn Hill. In room four oh seven.”

The nurse checked her chart. “Mrs. Hill had a shot of morphine at two o’clock this afternoon. She isn’t due for another one until six.”

“She’s in pain right now.”

“I’m sorry.” The nurse lowered the chart to the desk.

“That’s it? You’re sorry?”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“I want to speak to Dr. Wertman.”

“Dr. Wertman isn’t here right now.”

“Then I want to speak to another doctor. Any doctor.”

“I already spoke to Dr. Zarb,” one of the other nurses piped up, the same sharp-featured nurse who’d responded to her mother’s buzzer. She looks exhausted, Susan thought, refusing to feel sympathy. “He says he’d prefer to wait at least another hour.”

“Really? And would he prefer to wait another hour if he were the one with cancer?”

“Please, Mrs. Hill …”

“It’s Mrs. Norman. My
mother
is Mrs. Hill.
She’s
the patient, and
she
has cancer. That cancer has spread from her breasts to her lymph nodes to her lungs and her spine and now her brain. She is terminal. And she is in horrendous pain. And you just sit here and do nothing.” Susan looked helplessly down the long corridor, watched it blur with her tears as her voice echoed down the hall. “I don’t understand you. My mother is dying. What would be the harm in giving her more painkillers? Are you afraid she’ll become addicted? Is that it? Are you afraid she’ll die a drug addict?”

“Susan?” Vicki was suddenly beside her. “Susan, what’s the matter? Has something happened?”

“My mother’s in horrible pain, and nobody will help her.”

“I’ll try to contact Dr. Wertman,” the third nurse volunteered.

“Please try to calm down, Mrs. Norman,” the second nurse advised. “Your hysteria won’t help your mother.”

“Fuck you!” Susan’s arms flailed wildly at the air as she took off down the hall accidentally knocking the Styrofoam cups filled with hot coffee from Vicki’s hands.

Vicki trailed after her. “Susan …”

“Please don’t tell me to calm down.”

“I don’t want you to calm down. I want you to wait up.”

Susan stopped, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I spilled coffee all over you.”

“No. Mostly you got the floor.”

“Think they’ll call security?”

“Let them try,” Vicki said as they reached room 407, and entered the room together.

Susan’s mother was lying in bed, her neck and back arched in pain, her eyes tightly closed, bony hands clawing at the bedsheets.

“Oh, God, look at her,” Susan whispered, her hand covering her mouth. “She’s in such pain.” She approached the bed, collapsed into the chair beside it, cried softly.

Her mother opened her eyes, used all her strength to raise her head from the pillow. “What’s the matter, baby?” she asked Susan. And then another spasm ripped through her body and she cried out, a loud, piercing scream that brought the nurses running, and a young doctor scrambling for medication. Susan watched gratefully as the resident administered a shot of morphine, felt her mother’s twisted body gradually begin to unravel and stretch out, the lines on her face uncreasing, like a crumpled piece of paper relaxing in an open fist.

“Maybe you should go home and get some rest,” the young doctor advised.

Susan shook her head, clung tightly to Vicki’s hand.

“Susan?”

“Yes, Mom?”

But her mother had already drifted off to sleep. Susan leaned forward, adjusted her mother’s wig, brought the sheets up under her chin. Then she sank back down, Vicki’s hand resting on her shoulder, and watched her mother breathe. “I’m here, Mom,” she whispered. “I’m here.”

S
usan’s mother died four days later.

Both Susan and her brother wanted to hold the funeral as soon as possible, but they had to delay it a week to give their sister time to drive in from California. Actually, she didn’t drive. She took the train. “It was horrible,” Diane told everyone who’d listen. “I didn’t sleep for three days. I’m still completely nauseous. The thought of the return trip …” She broke off, as if the thought were just too much to bear.

She’d been complaining ever since Susan had picked her up at the station. She refused to visit the funeral home, dismissing such displays as barbaric and insensitive. Besides, she was too broken up, she said, taking to her bed in Susan’s guest room. Of course the bed was too small, the mattress too soft, and Ariel played her music much too loud. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t have children,” Diane said more than once, although she thought nothing of asking Whitney to get
her a drink, a sandwich, a magazine. “God, these magazines are so old,” she said instead of thank you.

The funeral was more of the same. Diane wore black from head to toe, including heavy dark stockings and a floppy, feather-strewn hat whose translucent veil completely covered her face, despite the heat of the August day.

“Where’d your sister find that hat?” Barbara asked Susan at the chapel.

“I think she’s been living in Hollywood too long,” Chris said.

“You’re sure she’s not an Arab terrorist?” Vicki asked.

Somehow, even the funeral was all about Diane. While Susan and Kenny shared fond memories of their mother with the other mourners, and even Ariel, relatively cleaned up and soft-spoken, delivered a touching tribute to the grandmother she’d adored, Diane eulogized herself, discussing her various triumphs over adversity, of which her mother’s death was only the latest in a long line of crosses to bear. “Would you like a copy of my speech?” she asked Susan at the conclusion of the service, and again at the cemetery.

“Would you like a copy of my speech?” Susan heard her asking Kenny’s wife, Marilyn, back at the house. Susan had invited everyone over after the ceremony for coffee and cake, and as she scurried around making sure everything was running smoothly, Diane held court in the center of the living room. “The train ride was pure hell,” Susan heard her expounding. “All that stopping and starting. And those damn whistles. I don’t think I slept a total of two hours in three nights.”

“She’s so self-absorbed,” Barbara commented.

“She’s having trouble coping with her grief,” Chris allowed.

“She’s a cunt,” Vicki said.

“Ssh!” Chris and Barbara squealed, almost in unison. “Don’t let Susan hear you say things like that.”

“Too late,” Susan said, entering her kitchen, grateful beyond words to see her three best friends huddled together in front of the food-laden counter. Chris, Barbara, and Vicki had been over every day since her mother’s death, keeping her company, holding her hand, listening when she wanted to talk, sitting quietly beside her when she needed to be still, crying with her, making her laugh. They sent food, made coffee, got the house ready for visitors. Diane, of course, did nothing. She was too upset. She was nauseated. She was useless, Susan decided. “Vicki’s right,” Susan said now. “She’s a cunt.”

Again Chris squealed, the sound a curious mix of outrage and admiration. She giggled. “You know I’ve never said that word out loud.”

“Get out of here,” Vicki said. “Say it now.”

“I can’t.”

Vicki looked astonished. “After everything you’ve been through with that cocksucking, motherfucking, son-of-a-bitch ex-husband of yours, you’re embarrassed to say the word
cunt?”

Chris buried her face in her hands. “I don’t believe you just said that.”

“What?
Cocksucking, motherfucking, son-of-a-bitch
, or
cunt?”

“Stop it!”

“Look at you.” Vicki laughed. “You’re blushing like a little kid. Say it.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ve never said it either,” Barbara admitted sheepishly.

“You’ve never said
cunt?
I don’t believe you two. Come on, say it. It’s very liberating. You’ll see. Say it together if you can’t say it alone.”

“Susan, where are you?” The sound of Diane’s voice assaulted Susan’s ears from the other room.

“Say it,” Susan told her friends. “I dare you.”

“I double dare you,” echoed Vicki.

Chris and Barbara grabbed hands, as if they were about to plunge off a high cliff. “Cunt!” they cried in unison, as the door to the kitchen swung open and Ariel appeared, stunned, in the doorway.

“Excuse me?” She was wearing a plaid skirt with a white blouse, and except for the spiky shock of pink-and-purple hair, looked astonishingly like a normal teenager, home from boarding school and waiting for her milk and cookies.

The four women collapsed in helpless laughter.

“Mom? Mom, are you all right?”

Susan couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Ariel so concerned about her well-being. It made her laugh even harder. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Is there something you need?”

“Diane wants another cup of coffee.” Ariel moved warily toward the coffee machine on the counter.