Three Women (34 page)

Beverly was breathing more deeply. She began to snore. Suzanne rose
and paced into the living room and back, into the kitchen and back. She had eaten nothing for supper except the same toast and broth Beverly had consumed. She was not hungry, just anxious and exhausted. Coffee was what she wanted, but she was too wired already and could not make herself stand at the stove and make it. She kept wanting to shake Beverly by the shoulder and bring her back to consciousness, to demand a response. How could she let her mother slip away like this, further and further from her?

She decided she could run upstairs briefly to check on Marta, see if she needed anything. Marta did not know what they were doing; it was better if she didn’t. Why implicate her, if anything went wrong? But Marta would think it strange if she did not appear. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her feet propped up. Suzanne remarked, “Your ankles look swollen.”

“They are. All of me feels swollen.” She patted her belly. “I keep thinking at least it’s almost over, it’s almost time. I’d forgotten how long the last month is—twice the normal length. Obviously I’m not having any more children after this. I just want to deliver her safely. I trust Helen. She’s been my gynecologist for twenty-two years.”

“I should get back. I just wanted to check in with you. Beverly’s having a bad night.”

“Don’t leave. Stay. Let’s just hang for a while.”

“Not too long. Beverly isn’t well. She has an appointment this week, Tuesday. The doctor wants to check if she had another ministroke, perhaps without us realizing it.” She felt awkward and miserable lying to Marta, but she had to protect Marta and herself—and Elena. The fiction must be built up. “I have to get back down there. I don’t like her being alone when she’s so weak.”

When she returned downstairs, Beverly was still snoring. Her breathing seemed slower. Mao raised his head to look at her. She imagined he was reproaching her. She very gently touched her mother’s cool, slightly moist hand. Her mother’s hands had always been dry and comfortingly warm—like Jake’s, she thought suddenly—but since Beverly’s stroke, they were often cold. She resumed her seat beside the bed. She was exhausted but did not want to take her gaze off Beverly’s face. She still somehow hoped that Beverly would open her eyes, no matter how angry and disappointed she would be if the pills did not work. It was
just after eleven. Suzanne wondered again if there were anything she could have said or promised or offered that would have kept Beverly with her.

Beverly’s breathing grew shallower and less frequent. Her mouth had fallen open. Suzanne no longer hesitated to get up and move around the room, for she doubted anything she did was likely to wake her mother now. The only question was whether Beverly would slip into a coma, which in itself would simply send her to the hospital where they would discover the residue of the pills in her, or whether she would, as she had begged them, die at last. She hoped Elena had gotten the amounts and the drug mixture right. She should have checked it. Sitting there beside the unconscious Beverly, she could not believe that she had not checked out Elena’s results. She had simply, blindly accepted them, because the act they were committing was too painful for her to deal with in the detail required to confirm Elena’s conclusions. She was ashamed. Again she sat beside the bed and held Beverly’s inert hand in her own, hoping that on some level her mother could feel her presence and be comforted by it. She spoke now and then, “Mother, it’s me. I’m here with you. It’s Suzanne.” She spoke just in case Beverly could sense her presence or the affection she was trying to project. She sat holding the limp hand and weeping, slow tears flowing down until her face was swollen and her blouse, wet on the bodice, more tears than she thought her body could hold. The tears seeped out and out.

When Elena arrived, just after twelve-thirty, Beverly’s breathing was slower, shallower, but ongoing. “I’ll take over,” Elena said. “Just let me change out of my work clothes and I’ll sit with her.”

“I think I should stay.”

“You look exhausted. At least get undressed and lie down for half an hour. I’ll wake you if anything seems to be happening. I’d like to be alone with her for a while.”

Reluctantly and eagerly at the same time, Suzanne backed out of the room and went to undress and lie down. She did not intend to sleep. But she did.

Elena

Elena looked in on her mother. Suzanne had put on the flannel nightgown with little red posies Rachel had given her and was lying on her bed with a law journal open under her loosened hand. She had, as Elena hoped, dozed off.

It was a quarter after one. Now or never, she thought. She took her promise to her grandmother seriously, perhaps religiously. She doubted if Rachel would understand her use of the word, but it felt sacred to her. To untether Grandma and set her free. Elena did not exactly believe in an afterlife, but she thought something of everyone remained in the room, in the wind, in the minds of those who had loved them. She loved Beverly. No one else in her life had ever cared for her as wholly, as sweetly, as nonjudgmentally as her grandmother did. There was a price for such love, and she was about to pay it.

She took a plastic freezer bag into the sickroom where Beverly had been lying since May. It always smelled of stale body odors, but she was not squeamish. Gently she lifted Beverly’s head. How light she was now. Beverly was breathing hoarsely and did not wake. Elena doubted if she ever would, unless her stomach was pumped now, but she might remain like this. Dr. Kevorkian would know if Beverly was really dying, but not Suzanne and not herself. She kissed her grandma on the forehead, and then on her cheeks. She wanted to kiss her lips, but Beverly’s mouth was open and slack. Then Elena fitted the plastic bag over Beverly’s face and tied it under the chin, tightly. She had read that sometimes unconscious patients would instinctively paw at the bag, trying to remove it. Beverly did not. Elena hoped she had it tight enough. It moved with Beverly’s breath. Elena was unsure whether she had done it correctly. If only she could ask someone, but the world was asleep, and there was no one to ask. Elena watched. It was her duty to go the last steps her mother could not take. She took
her grandmother’s limp hand and kissed it. Mao got up, stretched, and went to her to be petted.

“Even though she left you to Mother, I’d take you with me, if I knew where I was going, understand?” She rubbed under his chin, the way he liked best. “Roommates are always iffy, but it’s time for me to move on. If I get a good place to live, I’ll come get you. That’s a promise.”

She had thought Beverly might jerk or kick or give some sign she was suffocating, but she did not. Instead, the breathing stopped, started again with a gasp and then once again stopped.

“Grandma, go in peace. Let yourself go,” she said softly, again and again, stroking the limp hand that hung out from the blanket.

The breathing stopped, started again, stopped. She touched Beverly’s neck. There was no pulse. She waited, holding the limp cold hand. The breathing did not resume. She smelled urine. In the morning, she would clean up. Carefully she lifted Beverly’s head again and took off the plastic bag and put it in the garbage. Then she thought better about that and instead burned it in a flame from the gas stove, holding the corner with kitchen tongs. That residue she flushed down the toilet. She did the same with the printout from the summer.
Let Me Die Before I Wake
she carried down into the basement and stuffed way into a box containing her summer clothes. She would dispose of it tomorrow. Then she washed her hands, not of the act, but out of caution.

When she came out of the bathroom, Suzanne was awake and waiting to use it. She noticed neither of them used Beverly’s bathroom. “Mother, I think she died about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Why didn’t you get me up? I should have stayed awake.”

“It happened so gradually, I was sitting beside her, and I didn’t even see it. Her breathing just got shallower and shallower and slower and slower and then I realized it had stopped. I never saw it happen. I just looked at her and realized she wasn’t breathing any longer.”

“It was peaceful like that?”

“I didn’t even see it happen.”

Suzanne went into Beverly’s room and bent over her. She touched Beverly’s face. “She’s getting cold already.” She picked up Mao and carried him off to her room. “We must go to bed, so we can discover the body in the morning. We have to get rid of those bottles.”

“I took them away with me when I left. I left them in a Dumpster on Beacon Hill.”

“Thank you.” Suzanne turned, still holding Mao, and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart. I love you.”

Elena wondered for a moment if her mother had guessed what she had done; she doubted it. No one would ever know. Except if she loved someone intensely and she trusted them, maybe she would tell them. But she knew and was proud of herself. She had come through for Beverly, she had come through. She was a better person than she had been, even if most of society would never think so. She was ready to leave home again and plunge back into her life. She had kept her most important promise. She had dared to keep her word to her grandmother. Two small tears ran down her face, and she brushed them away. She gazed back at Grandma lying there, the empty body, and she thought she could feel Beverly thanking her for release, for silence, for the end.

Suzanne: A Year Later

Suzanne placed the yahrzeit candle for her mother in the bathtub, for fear of fire. Besides, as she admitted to herself, she found it beautiful to wake in the night and go into the bathroom lit by the small flickering of the candle in its glass. She woke several times that night and lay awake from five on. Today Karla was coming with her daughter Rosella and the twins. Rosella’s husband, Tyrone, couldn’t take off work. They were to arrive from Brooklyn by noon, so that they could all go to the cemetery for the unveiling and be done before sundown, as it was Friday. Elena was going to meet them at the cemetery. Rachel had already arrived and was sleeping in her old room—sleeping far better than her mother, as Suzanne could tell when she checked on her. It was ridiculous to look in on Rachel as if she were a baby, but having her in the house was a precious treat, making it impossible for Suzanne to resist a glimpse
of her sleeping daughter lying on her side clutching the pillow to her, as once she had clutched a stuffed rabbit.

Marta drove the van, with Rachel and Karla’s entire family onboard. Suzanne held the squirming Emily on her lap. She was blond like Marta, chubby, avid, curious, and had just begun to talk, more or less. She was still crawling everywhere and in bursts she struggled to get down. She was used to being held by Suzanne, so that was no problem, but all the people excited her. Rachel began making faces at her till she was wildly giggling. “Cool it a little, if you can,” Marta said over her shoulder.

Karla, sitting up front with Marta, turned to beam at the baby. “Such a darling girl! How lucky you are. I was forty when I adopted my first little girl. I wish she could be here today.”

“You know Suwanda can’t be coming east all the time, Mama,” Rosella said, leaning on the back of Suzanne’s seat. “She’s paying off her condo, and San Diego is plenty expensive. She thought the world of Aunt Beverly, so she’d come if she could.”

Suzanne began to wish she had driven her own car, but then she would have had half the relatives in it anyhow. She just wanted to be quiet and find her core, not to lose this odd ritual connection with Beverly. Rachel was looking at her and understood.

“People, I think we should start to get into the mood. We should be thinking about Grandma. This is a memorial for her. To show respect for the dead and to remember her and thus keep her alive in our lives.” It was Rachel’s rabbi voice, fuller, more commanding than her normal speaking voice. Suzanne was just getting used to the change that would come over Rachel when she was being official, when she was on duty. Suzanne was grateful to lapse into silence. “Rosella,” Rachel turned around. “Would you like to hold Emily for a while and give my mother a rest?”

Suzanne thanked Rachel with her eyes and handed Emily to Rosella. The twins set up a clamor, but Suzanne was able to close her eyes and concentrate. A year and a day since Beverly had left them. The pain of that night had never healed. It was still raw within her, but she could not believe Elena and she had done the wrong thing. Beverly would never have acquiesced in continuing. It would have been a long quarrel,
not good for any of them. But the raw wound persisted and the guilt. It would never leave her.

A year ago, she had buried her mother. At least the cemetery was not far. She had been back twenty times to the grave. Now came the unveiling of the monument. As they drove in under the metal archway, Suzanne stirred herself to give directions. A car was already there—Elena’s. Suzanne admitted to herself she had expected Elena to be late, but she understood when she saw Jaime and Elena together at the grave site. Jaime was never late. Under his charge, Elena made appointments even with her mother and kept them.

Suzanne had found it hard to take when Elena had moved in with him, but she had gradually got used to it. At least she liked and trusted Jaime, which was more than she could say for most of Elena’s past choices. He was wearing a suit, a dark suit in which he was radiant. Elena was also in a suit. She had several styles now: her former flash at the restaurant, drab student outfits for her classes, and lately a new conservative wardrobe Jaime must have picked out. She suspected those outfits had to do with Elena’s image of herself as a therapist—and the need to accompany Jaime to various functions.

Elena was standing over the grave talking to Beverly about Mao, when Suzanne came up. Elena had her grandmother’s cat. As always Suzanne was a little dazzled by her own daughter. She and Jaime were a striking and gorgeous couple. Suzanne sighed. Jaime had his law degree and was clerking for a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. That was a year’s gig, and then what? She could not tell if Elena was seriously interested in him, nor could she ask her, nor could she guess from Elena’s attitude. She opened her hands mentally and let the matter drop. Elena and she had a warmer relationship these days, but she could never presume on their new cordiality to pry.

As they all shuffled up to the site where a bit of canvas still hung over the stone she had ordered, Rachel took charge. Suzanne remembered meeting her when she returned from Israel deeply, darkly tanned, leaner and more defined. Her eyes looked bigger and greener against her dark skin. Her hair was cropped short to a halo of curls. That assurance, that hardening Suzanne had noticed from the moment Rachel got off the plane was still with her. The daughter Suzanne had sent off was not
the daughter she got back, but one who was at once less and more than she had been.

“Judaism gives us great leeway in what we think happens after death. We are not required to believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or heaven or hell or anything in between. We are required to respect and remember the dead. We are here to share our loss of Beverly, our grandmother, our mother, our sister, our aunt, our friend. When I look at this family, I see a legacy she left us. We are a multicultural, multiracial family, and a monument to the risks she took and the bravery she demonstrated in her civil rights work and in her organizing for those who needed her. She sought justice, and to go on seeking justice is her bequest to all of us. Justice in the courts, justice in our religion, justice on the job, justice in the streets and in the legislatures of our land. Justice for everyone, not just the privileged or the fortunate. That is Beverly’s legacy to us. We have lost someone dear and precious.
Ha-makom yenahem otcha v’otach
. May the Eternal One comfort you and may being in this place together today bring comfort to all of us.” She pulled the cloth from the stone, black marble engraved with Peh Nun, Here Lies, Beverly’s Hebrew name, Batsheva bat Shimone v’Ranit, her English name, Beverly Blume, and her dates in both calendars.

Rachel was reciting the Twenty-third Psalm in Hebrew, printed phonetically on the sheets she had handed out. Then she launched into the
El Malay Rachamim
, while they more or less joined in. Suzanne still remembered it from the funeral. Compassion. They—she and Elena—had tried to demonstrate compassion to Beverly. She would never rest quite easy in her mind that they had done the right thing, but at least they had done what Beverly had asked of them, however difficult.
Rachamim
was such a beautiful word, but so hard sometimes to act upon. Compassion, pity. It seemed larger than those English words. There had been no inquest. Beverly’s primary stroke doctor had signed the death certificate after a few perfunctory questions, as Elena and she stood holding hands in the rigor of fear. They had buried Beverly the next day.

Now together they recited the Mourners’ Kaddish, which Suzanne had memorized during the last year. She had managed to get to the nearest acceptable synagogue once a week to say it as it was supposed to be recited, in a minyan, but all other days, she had said it in her
bedroom upon rising, and that was the best she could do. Respect and remembrance. That she had given, freely. Her eyes flooded briefly with tears and she snuffled them back.

Rachel had brought a bag of stones so that those who had not thought of it could each have a stone to place on Beverly’s grave. “Here at the
bet ha-olam
, the permanent place, we place a remembrance on the
matzevah
to show we have come and paid our respect.” Flowers were never used. A stone lasted. Besides, Beverly had not been a flower sort of person. She had never planted a garden or tended one in her life, and she was not the sort of woman to whom men brought flowers or who would ever buy them for herself. Men had taken her out to dinner and on an occasional trip; had brought her bottles of wine and schnapps; had given her scarves and costume jewelry. And one child. But never flowers.

She only wished, looking over to Jaime and Elena standing with less than an inch between them, that she had Jake with her. She had argued his appeal and he was out while it was decided. Still, he had not completely forgiven her for failing him, as he saw it. He had come out of prison wan and haggard. She had told him the truth about Beverly’s death, and perhaps that made some difference. He was still dealing with what had happened to him. On spring break she would fly out to see him, and then they would resume being lovers or they would not. She tried to avoid thinking about it but did not succeed. She needed him now, but she had not been with him when he needed her. They would begin tentatively and then they would see what had survived between them. She put the stone she had brought with her on the top of the black marble marker. “Good-bye,” she said softly. “Good-bye, Mother.”

She waited until Rachel stood alone again and then she went up to her younger daughter and kissed her on the mouth. “Thank you.”

Rachel looked mildly surprised. “You liked the little service? I wanted to keep it simple.”

“I want to thank you for putting it together for me, what I never saw before. That I’m actually doing the same thing my mother was, in a different context. Justice. Thank you, Rachel. That was healing.”

Rachel took her hand. “That’s good to hear. This year, I do more and more services, but sometimes I feel like a fraud. I’m pretending to be a
rabbi, ’cause I’m still a student and I know how much I don’t know yet. But you make me feel as if I’m real.”

“Oh, you’re real, sweetheart.” Suzanne looked at her family straggling toward the van and the car. “We’re all real and we try.”

“A sixteenth-century rabbi said that keeping the precepts of our parents is more important than saying Kaddish for them.”

Suzanne smiled for the first time that day. “I don’t care what some sixteenth-century rabbi said, Rachel. I care what you say. And you’ve given me some meaning in this. A sense of continuity with her. I can promise her, we will remember.” She took Rachel’s hand and pulled her along to catch up with Elena, whose arm she took, so that they left together, her between her daughters as Karla walked with her own little family. Away they went slowly from the place where she had left what remained of her mother, except for memories and the quest for justice. Maxine’s appeal was going forward even as she wasted away in Framingham Prison, and Jake was free at last. Suzanne would win that appeal. The trial transcript revealed that the judge had been wildly biased. She would go on teaching and seeking justice, no matter how flawed and partial. Justice in the world, but for each other in intimacy, mercy and as much kindness as she could muster.