The Year My Mother Came Back (14 page)

PART 3

“Never say good-bye because good-bye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

—
J. M. BARRIE
,
Peter Pan

ONE

“You look like a snowman,” Eliana said groggily, while she was still conscious. I was wearing a billowy white coverall, surgical mask, slippers, and hairnet. “You should wear that for Halloween.”

“I will,” I promised.

I held her hand as she was rolled into the presurgery room. She was hooked up to an IV and quickly going under, her eyelids fluttering. “I love you,” I whispered, kissing her forehead.

There was no turning back.

I joined Michael in the waiting room, and we stared out the picture window at the red sunrise over the ice-capped East River.

“I wish we'd braided her hair,” I said hoarsely, after a few silent minutes.

“I was just thinking that,” said Michael.

“No clips or rubber bands allowed,” the nurse told us. “Just pile her hair up in the net.” But I knew how tangled Eliana's long, thick hair could get, and I regretted not braiding it. I also regretted . . . I suppressed the thought. There were steps I could take to repair tangled hair. My other misgivings were without remedy and therefore pointless to dwell on. So I obsessed about her unbraided hair and drank bitter waiting-room coffee.

An hour passed, and Dr. Campbell appeared.

“The surgery went like clockwork!” he proudly announced.

Michael and I held hands as we walked into the recovery room, cheerful as a morgue. Unconscious men and women lay in two rows of beds, tethered to breathing tubes and IVs.

Eliana was the only child. She looked like a beautiful fairytale princess who wound up in the wrong story. Her face was pale and still. We sat and waited and watched. Finally, her eyelids flickered and her fingers twitched. As she awakened, she was animated, surprisingly cheerful, kind of loopy. I was glad we'd prepared her for the discombobulating experience of waking with no sensation in her legs. She delivered a slightly demented and very funny running commentary on her sensations and lack thereof. She made us laugh.

But when the anesthesia wore off, she felt the bulky metal rod on her right leg. She realized that her thigh was impaled, through flesh and into bone, with six long bolts, which fastened the heavy fixator to her. She realized that this contraption would be attached to her leg for six months, and that she couldn't move her leg without intense pain.

“I wouldn't have done it, if I knew it would hurt this much,” she sobbed.

Eliana wanted to forget the four terrible days and nights she spent in the hospital: the pain and dislocation, the excruciating hours of physical therapy. I felt responsible for her agony, and regretted everything. Michael wanted me to stop my self-reproach, for God's sake, and move on.

Eliana's hair was so tangled by the first night that it was impossible to comb without causing more pain, so we postponed the inevitable task. The second day, her hair was a single dreadlock. The third day, her locks were more tightly locked, her dread more dreadful. On the fifth day, the physical therapist on staff said Eliana had made sufficient progress to be released from the hospital.

THE ORDERLY HELPS
us get into a cab. The three of us squeeze into the back seat and hold hands. Eliana's pediatric-sized walker—with which she is able to take a few painful, hesitant steps—lies folded on the floor in front of her. The taxi careens through Central Park and takes us home.

TWO

Eight months, for an eight-year-old girl, might as well be forever. The doctor said she had to begin weight-bearing immediately, even though each step is painful. This is more terrible than Eliana could have imagined. This is exactly as terrible as I had imagined. This is precisely the manageable challenge Michael had imagined.

Unlike me, Michael is not collapsing into a puddle of emotional ineptitude. He's on top of it. He remains even-keeled, matter-of-fact. He deals with everything. He's a rock. He's the man. He's the father. He sometimes has to be the mother, since I'm too incapacitated by sadness and fear and regret to be of much use. So much for my goal of maternal perfection.

Before the operation, Eliana was private and modest. She would get upset if I inadvertently opened the door while she was getting dressed. Now, she has to compartmentalize her modesty. She closes the door when she dresses herself in the morning, but accepts, resignedly, that Michael has to bathe her every night. I'm not strong enough to pick her up. Michael lifts her into the tub, carefully seats her on the plastic stool, and bathes her with the hand-held showerhead we installed before the operation. She wraps herself in a towel while he cleans the six pin-sites on her thigh, where the fixator is attached, with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and saline solution—literally pouring salt into her wounds. With six holes in her leg, infection is a constant danger, and Michael is vigilant.

If only I could kiss her boo-boo and make it better. I try to do the pin care, but when she cries, “It hurts so much, please stop, please stop!” I stop. It's a reflex. I can't continue when my child cries.

Eliana is able to temporarily lose herself in movies and television. She watches every episode of
The Brady Bunch
and
Little House on the Prairie,
and countless hours of
SpongeBob SquarePants.
On the third day home, I ask her to choose a movie so I can attend to the one problem I know I can fix. While she's reviewing her options, I run across the street to the small salon where Ahmed cuts my hair.

“Try this,” says Ahmed, handing me a large bottle of extra-strength detangler, “And this.” He grabs a jar of hair goo from a high shelf. “Comb one small strand at a time, starting at the ends and slowly moving up to the scalp.”

“Thanks, Ahmed. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Just tell your daughter to get better, and bring her in if you need my help.”

Grateful for his kindness, I race back with the loot.

“I chose
The Wizard of Oz.
”

“Focus on the movie and pay no attention to me.” I liberate one strand at a time, while Dorothy survives a tornado, vanquishes the Witch, and outs the Wizard. By the third click of her ruby slippers, the tangles are out.

Eliana refuses to take pain medication. I stroke her back to help her fall asleep, trying to channel my mother's expert touch. “X marks the spot, with a dot, dot, dot, and a dash and a line, and a big question mark. Trickle up, trickle down, trickle all around, with a pinch and a squeeze, and a cool ocean breeze.”

“Again, Mommy,” she murmurs half-asleep, reminding me of myself as a child.

“X marks the spot with a dot, dot, dot . . .” I can comb her tangles and give her back rubs, but I can't make her better. I'm too weak and too squeamish to give her the medical care she needs. Michael is in charge of that. I'm merely his assistant, his sous-chef. It isn't enough.

When she's asleep, I swallow my first dose of tamoxifen. I put the pill bottle back, close the medicine cabinet, glance at the mirror, and see my mother's face.

In a panic, I swing open the door of the medicine cabinet, so I can't see the mirror. I distractedly rearrange the clutter of antacids, tamoxifen, Band-Aids, and pain meds, and sit down on the edge of the tub, my heart pounding.

Why is she here? I told her to stay away, that I didn't want her around right now.

Yes, I want to remember my mother. I miss our talks and those radiation sessions, when we were transported back in time. But I refuse to be literally haunted by her. Mom wouldn't have believed in this version of herself—showing up as a ghost in my bathroom mirror. She adamantly did not believe in an afterlife. No heaven, no eternal spirit, no ghosts, no angels, no visitations. “I want to be cremated,” she said, though her wish was trumped by her father's wish for her to have a Jewish burial. “When you die, the body is meaningless, except that it makes excellent fertilizer. New flowers will grow where old ashes are buried,” she told me. She subscribed to no concept of a hereafter, except for her pantheistic belief that everything and everyone is part of one infinitely connected Cosmos, guided by Mother Nature. She herself wouldn't endorse this vision of her ghostly face in the mirror being anything but a product of my imagination. She can't be here. She has to leave.

I slowly close the medicine cabinet—and see only my own face.

I look older. I'm beginning to look like my mother. I stare at my silvering hair, the circles under my eyes. When did I get this old?

I turn from the mirror. This is not the time to dwell on mortality.

THREE

Eliana's classmates send her an enormous get-well card. Her teachers send her a cookie telegram. Madeline sends books. Jennifer sends her a sock-puppet-making kit.

She gets a stomach flu. She grips her walker and slowly shuffles back and forth between living room and bathroom many times a day. No one can visit. She's lonely and sad.

A week after her surgery, we begin to lengthen her leg, one millimeter a day. We do this by fitting an L-shaped Allen wrench onto the bottom bolt of her metal fixator, and turning it ninety degrees, four times a day. It is astoundingly low-tech. Eliana often lengthens her own leg. It takes only a few seconds to turn the wrench 90 degrees, and—
Voila!
—the leg is a quarter of a millimeter longer. After the fourth turn of each day, her leg is one millimeter longer; in ten days, a centimeter. After seven weeks, her right leg will be five centimeters longer, about two inchs. At the end of the whole procedure, she'll still need a one-inch shoe lift, down from her current three-inch lift.

The quarter-turns don't hurt. But the cumulative impact of this rapid elongation of her leg, soft tissue and bone, does hurt. Bending her leg at the knee—supervised by me, Michael, and the physical therapist who comes to our apartment daily—is terribly painful.

Eliana is missing all the classroom prep for the fourth-grade test. We hire a tutor to prepare Eliana for the high-stakes citywide exam in January, which determines where kids will be admitted to middle school.

Katherine is smart in a bookish way and attractive in a goth way. But she has, among other problems, a deeply embedded
I don't really like children, and I dislike their parents even more
problem.

“We need to be alone!” she snarls, shutting the door and forbidding us to enter the living room. We mistake this for intellectual rigor.

At Katherine's second visit, she hands Eliana four stapled pages just before she leaves. “Make sure Eliana completes these sample test questions before my next visit,” she says sternly, buckling her black leather coat before vanishing into the overcast, wintry afternoon.

“Mom, what does this mean?” asks Eliana, poring over Katherine's printout.

“They're sample test questions.”

“No, I mean the stuff on the back of the pages.”

I take the stapled packet from her
.
Good grief! Printed on the back is a pornographic story, graphically describing Katherine's experiences as a dominatrix.

“Oh, my God! I can't believe she gave this to you.”

“What does it say?”

“I can't tell you what it says, it's so inappropriate.”

“But it's mine!” She grabs for the stapled pages, which I hold out of reach. “It's mine! She gave it to me, Mom.”

Julia, home from Princeton for winter break, takes the pages from my hand and holds them even higher above Eliana's reach.

“Oh! My! God!” says Julia, giggling as she reads. “This is unbelievable!”

“I want to read it!” says Eliana.

“No way!” says Julia.

No more tutoring.

WHY DID WE
fix what ain't broke? It's certainly broke now.

“Nobody prepared me for this,” Eliana says, and I can only nod in agreement.

Her ambulatory skill improves, but she says the walker makes her feel like an old person. I understand. The sound of her tentative footstep alternates with the dull thud of the walker.

“I'm not myself anymore. I feel like I've lost myself and will never be myself again.” She wishes she could tear out the fixator. “I can't be my real self with this thing in my leg.” She can't roll over in bed. She can't wear pants. Even the oversized, snap-up sports pants don't cover the heavy strip of metal that extends several inches past her knee when she sits down.

There's no turning back.

Eliana is depressed.

It seems terribly wrong for my eight-year-old to be depressed. Since I can't do the pin care, I should be able to help her with her depression—I've been there, I'm the resident expert. But I don't know what to do, other than listen when she talks, worry about her without telling her I'm worried, empathize with her, schedule physical therapy and doctor visits, dispense hugs and back rubs, lullabies and comfort and three meals a day, and comb her hair as gently as I possibly can. That's not enough, is it? It can't possibly be enough.

“Why isn't that enough?” my mother asks, at my kitchen table. She's very old, with a wobbly voice. Her wispy hair is completely white.

“Because she's so unhappy.”

“Who wouldn't be, under the circumstances? She has every reason to be unhappy. Why do you put such a premium on happiness?”

“Because she's only eight years old, and she needs me.”

The kettle whistles. I fill the teapot.

“Well, of course she does. But let the girl be sad, or mad, or whatever she needs to be. This takes time. You can't do a quick fix, or make it go away. And you can't make it perfect.”

“Yes, you keep saying that.”

“Is there anything I can do for my little granddaughter? Or for—”

“I know you want to help, but I told you—”

“I can make chicken soup.”

“Eliana is a vegetarian.”

“How 'bout for you?”

“Mom.”

“You don't have to do this alone, Sweet—”

“Please go away.”

She slowly fades away till there's just her outline on the chair, like a stencil shape filled in with fog, and then she's not there at all. The temperature drops. The tea is stone cold. I shiver. Suddenly, there's a steamy hot bowl of chicken soup in front of me, with a sprig of dill floating on top. It's delicious. I'm warm again.

“Wait. Please come back, Mom. I do want your help.”

She's at the table again, in her nightgown, barefoot. I sit beside her and take both her hands in mine. Her wrinkled skin sags loosely from the bone, but her grip is strong. Her eyes are cloudy. She's in her late eighties, the age she would be today. We whisper, so as not to wake Eliana, asleep in the next room.

“Eliana is depressed, and I don't know how to help her.”

“Yes, you do, Alice. You have the unenviable advantage of first-hand experience.”

“Nothing like what Eliana is going through.”

“Think back. Do you remember your senior year of college?

“I'd rather not.”

“You got through it.”

“That was totally different.”

“Different. Not totally.”

It was my senior year of college, and everything was falling apart. I lived in a tiny dorm room, due to a housing snafu; my parents' marriage seemed to be failing; my boyfriend Richard didn't pick up his phone; and was I imagining it, or were my friends acting weird around me?

Early one morning, I let myself into Richard's dorm room. It smelled of cigarettes, sweat, and semen. He and a girl were asleep, naked, a rumpled sheet half-covering them. They woke. The girl turned toward me. It was my friend, Maria. Nobody said anything. I felt sick. I walked out. It was raining.

I ran through the rain to the arts building on the other side of campus, drenched by the time I got there. One of my larger-than-life chair paintings from junior year was missing from the student gallery, and my environmental sculpture—made from two-by-fours, rope, marsh reeds, and a wooden chair—on display for the summer, was wrecked. The discarded ropes, boards and reeds lay in a heap. This was a nightmare. Did someone vandalize it, or did it just fall apart? Did my sculpture dismantle itself to teach me a lesson? What was the lesson? That I couldn't build anything to last? If that was the lesson, I'd quit. Since all my artwork disappeared or fell apart, I should switch to an art form that's meant to be ephemeral. Or was the lesson that I couldn't complete anything? That I was like my mother, who could never finish her P-H-Phucking D? That was a terrifying thought. I couldn't graduate from Princeton until I turned in a book-length senior thesis.

I was miserable. I wanted to leave school.

That night, I was lying in bed, in my crappy dorm room, when the phone rang. It was Tim, one of my housemates from this summer on Martha's Vineyard, calling from Brown. He was having a rough time, too, so he'd decided to take a semester off from school to travel around Peru. He asked if I wanted to join him.

I called home and asked for permission to take a semester off to go to Peru with Tim. They hesitantly agreed, as long as Princeton would refund my tuition.

Mom stayed on the phone after Dad said good-bye. I was defensive, expecting her to rail about what a scumbag Richard was for cheating on me. I braced myself, prepared to shut down and stop listening to her. I was accustomed to Mom despising my boyfriends for flaws real and imagined. Now that she was pissed off at my dad about some real or imagined transgression, and immersed in her angry feminist, anti-man “Don't get married until you have babies, and who wants babies” mode, she'd be even more likely to release her vitriol on my latest bad boyfriend.

Instead, she simply listened.

My mother listening and not talking? Lord Almighty, my mother was listening! This was unprecedented. She wasn't raging. She let me cry. Let me be sad. Let me call Richard a scumbag, without trying to beat me to it. I could hardly believe that she was so understanding. I had no idea she was such a good listener. She called me Sweetiepie, Honeylamb, Darling—terms of endearment I hadn't heard for years, which ignited a small flame of joy in me.

“Thank you, Mom. Thank you.”

But I missed the deadline for a tuition refund by one day.

“This is totally screwed up!” I shouted, which didn't exactly endear me to the registrar.

I called home in tears.

“I'm so sorry,” said Mom. Again, she listened. She let me cry. I wanted to confide my feelings to her, which I hadn't wanted to do for years.

“Why don't we get together?” she offered. “Would you meet me in the City tomorrow?”

I took the train from Princeton and met her at the Museum of Modern Art. I needed to get off campus. I'd been feeling horrible. I forced a smile when I saw her outside the museum. When she put her arms around me, I closed my eyes and crumpled against her chest. It was a warm, breezy September day. We sat outside in the museum's sculpture garden and sketched the sculptures: Maillol's voluptuous, larger-than-life nude bather, dipping her hair in the reflecting pool; Matisse's
Backs,
four monumental bas-relief sculptures of a female figure, the surface of her body like a craggy mountain, getting progressively more abstract and geometric in each iteration.

I asked Mom to pose for me. She sat on the edge of the fountain, tightened the scarf over her hair, and held down her wraparound skirt, which kept flapping open. She turned her face toward the bronze bather, while I drew her.

I hadn't really looked at her, not for a very long time, not closely like this. She looked different. I observed a softening in her face that I hadn't noticed when I was home in August. I drew her eyes; her large, warm, brown eyes. I sketched her jaw, more relaxed than I'd remembered, and her curly hair, grayer now. Did she look softer because she was getting older and her flesh was more flaccid, the skin more wrinkled? Yes, but there was also a gentleness that hadn't been there before. Her feelings for me had softened.

“I love your drawings. They're beautiful,” she said.

Again, that small flame of joy. Then I remembered that I wasn't a visual artist any longer. I told her that I quit last week, because all my artwork falls to pieces. “If I'm going to be an artist at all, I'll make performance art that only lasts for the duration of the performance.”

“Whatever you want,” she said, wistfully. I would miss having Mom praise my drawings. The museum was closing. I hugged her, holding back tears. I didn't want to say good-bye.

The sun was going down when I got on the train back to Princeton, back to my crappy room, to my ruined artwork, to the humiliation of Richard and Maria's affair, to Tim's postcards from Peru, to the train wreck of my senior year.

I was so unhappy at Princeton that I went to the student counseling office. They referred me to a Jungian psychologist in town named Dr. Winterbottom, a ridiculous name for a shrink. I bicycled to her office and told her my dreams. Dr. Winterbottom explained that there was a war going on between my anima and animus. I thought this therapy might be bullshit.

The dour thesis adviser listened to my unorthodox senior thesis proposal—a theater piece exploring the commonalities between the rituals of animal behavior and human social rituals. My confidence waned as her scowl waxed.

“You need a new epistemology,” she said dismissively.

I couldn't respond, because I had no idea what “epistemology” meant.

“The anthropology department expects your senior thesis to be a book-length dissertation.”

I knew what a dissertation was. It was something you worked on your whole life and never finished. It was the family curse.