Habit (27 page)

I can't be sure Colette will be able to reach Ma on the phone in the morning, or even if Ma will manage to get the problem across to her if she does. England is asleep right now. . . .

Here's the thing, in case it's not obvious: I've been a fierce mother, especially when my kids were little—one of those parents who mostly refused to spend weekends away from her children. I'd call on the way to dinner with extra pointers for babysitters as they occurred to me. The twins were breastfed longer than most women consider seemly. Eliza's first bath was in bottled spring water; I warmed it on the stove. I once darted out onto the soccer field during a lull in a practice and reapplied sunscreen to a mortified eight-year-old Sam.

I could do a monkey about Ma's roommate problem. I could start hyperventilating and running around, and get the boys all on edge. It might be fun.

No. We really are leaving. The bags are packed. There is a way to deal with this, just let me think for a second.

Email!

Oh, nuts, that's right: Coco's email's down.

Okay, then I'll email Felix, explain what's up and ask him to call Colette in the morning. Simple.

Actually, not simple.

Felix is extremely smart. Yale-grad smart. He's a whiz with computers. He's read every
New Yorker
from cover to cover for decades, and he clobbers me easily at Scrabble. But he likes things to be very very very
clear
. When something's not
clear
right away, he'll be the first to admit that his initial impulse is usually to behave like an asshole. He always gets over it; he's happy to help. But he likes to throw his weight around a little bit while he's getting revved up to step to the plate. He also is easily distracted, which means conversations tend to veer off in many directions. Whenever you must approach Felix, it's a good thing to make sure you have your wits about you. If you get anything even slightly wrong, you will definitely pay for it.

And then, of course, there's me. Beleaguered, put-upon me: the
Special
Daughter Standing by her Poor Old Mum. Carrying the world on her shoulders. The
Special
Daughter just wants to know that everything is in order, so she can get a good night's sleep and escape at the crack of dawn for a second or two to her luxury island retreat with the piña coladas and massages with mango body wraps in a breezy spa tent with billowing white curtains on the beach. This can't be too much to ask. . . .

Emailing won't do the trick. Felix will read, but he also likes to call and
clarify
everything, and I won't be available for that. If I can't email, then I have to call and
talk
. And that's an accident waiting to happen.

Felix will want to know why Ma will only speak French right now (this could veer off into why Felix hated Latin and Greek not to mention French) and why I can't email Colette (time for a sidetrack about how useless Colette is with technology). I just have to get him to agree to call Colette in the morning and tell her to call the nursing home and get the manager on the phone (another sidetrack about why he can't just call the home himself and how I misuse the term Power of Attorney—
Suse. Listen carefully. You can't BE the Power of Attorney—you HAVE the Power of Attorney
). I'll only feel able to go once he understands Colette needs to tell the manager to wheel Ma to a conference room where she can privately explain what the problem is with the roommate (more sidetracks about what's going on with the Abbey, and what's all this about crying over your amputated legs and don't you think Ma's doing this on purpose just to keep you here and why can't you do it yourself when you get there and what on earth kind of island is this you're going to for chrissake?).

We children scattered like buckshot when we left home. Felix skedaddled to New York, but that wasn't far enough so he detoured to Vermont. Colette went to England for a semester abroad and basically never came back, and I escaped to L.A. It all seemed circumstantial, but it was awfully convenient. For each of us, there have been long periods of time when we've lived our lives without talking much to one another.

There has been speculation about why I'm the one who decided to move back home and then was nuts enough to ask Ma to join us here. There's Colette's imprinting idea. It could have something to do with horoscopes or past lives. Maybe Ma has simply put me under a spell. Most likely, it's my caretaking habit, the result of the gardener incident in Ireland. By the time I invited Ma here, I hoped all the work I'd done on that episode in therapy had paid off enough so we could find a new way of dealing with one another.

I don't want to think there's any such thing as
Special,
it seems terribly wrong to see things that way, but maybe, being the youngest, I am just the least damaged of all of us.

Back during the cancer, I asked Ma once if she had any thoughts on how her illness figured into God's Great Plan—if there was any benefit to be found in the challenge she was facing. Her answer was immediate: This ordeal would help to heal the family and bring us together. In our worst moments of despair, I've tried to hold onto this thought. More and more, I feel we're almost there. I can't wait for Ma to move to the Abbey where I'll be closer, and finally maybe calm enough to help her cope. I can't wait to see how things turn out, when the whole family has a chance to discover they can enjoy this lovely person she's becoming.

First things first: Happy ending or no happy ending, I'm going to call Felix. Then I'm going to get on that plane, and take my boys to Guana.

—A
BASKET OF CORKS
with something stuck to them.

—What?

—A basket of corks.

—What do they look like?

—They've got something stuck to them.

—Something's stuffed in them?

—No, Ma, STUCK.

—What's stuck?

—CORKS.

—Forks?

I'm standing on a chair in Ma's walk-in closet in the Mills House, working my way through her top shelves. I'm determined to include Ma in this process as much as is humanly possible. Colette and I got rid of the top layer of obvious dumpables last month, and now it's down to the nitty-gritty. What does Ma want to keep? This means describing every item to her so she can be the one to make decisions. It's going okay. The current roommate is so out of it she wouldn't know a TV if it jumped up and bit her, so it's much easier for Ma to talk on the phone now. I still think she needs that new hearing aid. The good news is I finally got a Bluetooth gadget for my cell phone—this is not the kind of thing you want to do with wires attached to you, if you can avoid it.

—These corks, Ma. What do you want to do with them?

—Let's give them to somebody.

—Who?

—Who might like to have them?

—Not me, thanks.

—The great-grandchildren?

—Ma, these are corks with some kind of gross red stuff sort of stuck to them. I don't think your great-grandchildren would want them. I just wasn't sure if they were some necessary art thing or other.

—Oh. Well, I don't know. . . .

—I'm throwing them away. If you don't know what they are and I think they're disgusting, then they can't be important. Here I go throwing them away. Walking to the trash bag. Bye-bye, corks.

We've already done her books. She's giving a ton of them to Father Nectarios for the church library. There's not much room in the new place, so Ma's mostly keeping vital personal items and whatever is particularly essential to her spiritual health.

—
What about
God's Fools: The Lives of the Holy Fools For Christ
?

—Very important. Keep.

—Thought so. What about
How to Behave and Why
?

—
I thought I gave that to you.

—You did, for the kids for Easter. A book on manners was so very thoughtful. This must be your copy. And here's the one by Bill O'Reilly you gave us for Christmas.

—What's the title?

—It's called
The Nasty Hypocrite's Guide for Little Old Ladies Who Want to Insult Their Grandchildren.

—
Susie!

—Sorry.
The O'Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America's Families.

—
Keep.

—Here's one called
Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ
by Justin Popovich, translated by Asterios Somebodyorother et al
.
I can't pronounce it.

—What does the cover look like?

—It's got an old guy with a long white beard and glasses. He looks like he's falling asleep at his desk.

—Keep.

—This one's called
The Elder Somebodyelse of the Aegina.

—
Who is on the cover?

—Another old guy with a beard and a hat.

—Oh, he's fabulous. Yes.

—
Saint Arsenios the Cappodocian.
Old guy with a beard, no hat. It's a drawing, not a photo. He's wearing a blanket on his head.

—For Father Nectarios. No, wait. Keep.

—
Saint John of Kronstadt.
Keep, I know. Oh . . . wow, this is from another life . . .

—What?

—I wonder if you ever read this book I just found on your top shelf.

—Which?

—
Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime.

—
What on earth is that?

—This is the one I gave to you for perspective, after you gave us that O'Reilly book. It's about the war in Bosnia when these Orthodox Christian Serbs rounded up thousands of Muslims and murdered them. What should I do with it?

—Well . . .

I used to take such offense at Ma's righteousness, how she insists Muslims hold the monopoly on depravity—as if all Christians are perfect. My seething indignation is gone now, melted away. I guess I needed to learn tolerance as much as I felt she did. It's kind of sweet that she actually kept this book.

—
I'll give it to the Episcopal church, it's more their thing anyway. Ma?

—Yes?

—I love you no matter what you believe.

—That's good.

—Yes, it is.

There were some fabulous finds among the books: Ma's journals from the south of France before the Second World War, with a long account of a reckless teenage adventure she and Bobs had featuring a suspicious amount of schnapps, and a ski trip to the mountains with older friends all mixed up in a tempestuous love triangle. There was a gun involved and a car accident, and Bobs ended up in a hospital before they could escape. Wow—keep.

And, there's a curious, crumbly old volume belonging to Ma's mother, the adultering bolter:
King's Daughters' Journal.
The King's Daughters was a ladies' group devoted to good works at the turn of the century. It seems they put out this diary-type book with space for personal entries on all the days of the year. Each blank page is headed with a virtuous quote, like:

So let our lips and lives express

The holy gospel we profess;

So let our works and virtues shine

To prove the doctrine all divine.

—Rev. I. Watts

Granny must have been spiritually tone-deaf at the time. It is on these pages that she saw fit to meticulously hand-copy reams of love letters from Grandsir the flyer during their affair. Very odd letters to read, full of romantic nicknames and sappy declarations of eternal devotion. Perhaps Ma and I have a shared inclination to differ ideologically with our mothers.

Tucked between the pages is a picture of the dashing couple on horseback together near the polo field at Penllyn, posing on exactly the same spot as David and the children in their swimsuits, in that wonderful painting Ma gave me. The tree whose branch I know and love in the foreground of my painting is just a sapling in this old 1919 photograph.
Keep.

—Ma, let's talk about the art.

—Yes.

—Felix noticed there's a gallery area near the dining room at the Abbey. He thinks you could have a little show if you like.

—Oh no.

—Why not? I'll bet people would love to see your paintings, and your place is so small. You want to sell some things, right?

—Yes, but not like that. Just for friends. I'm Mother Brigid now—this and the black clothes will be confusing enough for everyone at the Abbey. I'm trying to simplify. I don't want to arrive there and be
Mother-Brigid-who-used-to-be-Marjorie-von-Moschzisker-and-would-you-like-to-buy-some-pictures.

—Got it. Ma. Can I ask you something?

—Of course.

—When did you realize you wanted to be a nun?

—Years ago.

—After Daddy died?

—No, I started thinking about it long before that. When I was little.

—Wow.

—Yes. Father Basil says my whole life has been a pilgrimage. Now I've arrived.