Timeline: the starting scene of this fic takes place in 2023, almost twenty years after my fic "So Long as Men Can Breathe . . ."
Part 1
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with a moist palm, but it made no difference; immediately afterwards, salty water was once again pouring down behind my lenses and into my eyes. There was nowhere for it to go; the scorching-hot air was saturated already, preventing the sweat from fulfilling its biological function, leaving it only as a nuisance to add one more hardship to this unhappy day. Though the fabric was thin, my solid-black formal dress only made it worse, absorbing every ray the oppressive sun could throw at it. It is a mourning outfit, after all; it's certainly not intended to make me feel better. At least this stone bench is a little cool.
Idly, I wondered what my old friend Jane Lane would have thought had she seen me – hair professionally styled, visage accented with lipstick and a touch of blush, and a formal dress that aspired to be a knock-out in more than one sense. But idle speculation was all it was; Jane was little more to me now than just a name on my Facebook feed and an occasional sender of birthday wishes. As a distraction from my current state, such speculation was weak at best.
I shook my head in disbelief. Death shouldn't be this hot, I thought. Funerals should only happen on cold days, when the wind bites and moans, and the sky is grey and empty. Days like this should not be so full of life. I looked around at the green grass, mown regularly to keep it to an even length, and at the flowers – both those peeking out from vases next to carved stones, already dead but still with the semblance of life, and those bursting from the ground and blazing with color, soaking up the Sun and the wet to hold on to their own life as long as they could. Only the patch of ground directly in front of my bench seat was as dead as I felt it should be – a bare earthen mound that did not yet even have its own stone to proclaim its occupant. Only that mound did not offend my sensibilities. After all, I feel I am becoming an expert on graves. I've certainly stood beside enough of them by now. Some of them were sad but distant memories – aunt Rita, grandmas Barskdale and Morgendorffer. But three still held a permanent place in my psyche. I let my eyes slide a little to the left, to see another patch of ground, this one long-since covered with a healthy patch of grass and marked by a stone which was now showing its age.
In the end, graves all look the same, but I never realized just how different death could be. Dad, I stood by your grave and wept like a floodgate opening, and it was the start of my healing. I mourned, and for a while I stumbled, but in the end, I grew and was stronger. Dad's death had been a shock, but in a way, not a surprise; after all, he had suffered a heart attack only a couple of years before, and had done little in the intervening time to prevent another one. But that second grave, hundreds of miles and ten years away . . . Oh, James, when I left you there, I left my heart as well. I only had you a few years, and so much of that time was wasted, but I didn't know I could suffer such agony as seeing you waste away. Friends for twelve years, married for six, and then gone after six months, lost to a cancer no one saw coming and no one could cure. There was no delay to my crying then. I cried at your bedside, I cried at your funeral, I cried at your grave. And even when I stopped, I never really stopped. I hate to admit it, but Quinn was right – about that, only that – I needed someone else. I had just never expected . . .
And that brought me to this last, newest resting place, the one holding the body of the woman I had cared for – mothered, you might say – for the last six years. All deaths are different, but in one way, all deaths are the same. They all leave a hole. I could feel the hole left by this one, but this time, I did not cry; I felt no need to. After all, in truth, I had lost my mother a long, long time ago . . .
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Morgendorffer, Mrs. McCarthy," the doctor said, sitting across from us in his office, his face schooled to a careful neutrality, "but I'm afraid the tests have confirmed what we already feared. It's Alzheimer's."
I surreptitiously glanced over at Mom's face, and saw the split second of fear flash through her eyes, quickly replaced with anger. She quickly clutched her purse and stood up, nearly toppling the heavy wooden chair she had been sitting in. She turned to me, her face imperious, and thrust out her hand in expectation. Though I should have expected it, her actions caught me off guard, my brain still in the processing stage, its bandwidth tied up too much to allow me to react quickly.
"Give me my keys, Daria," she said, employing her full lawyer powers of intimidation, though more for me or the doctor, I couldn't say. "We're going. I don't need this quack making a mountain out of a molehill." She gestured impatiently when I didn't immediately hand them over, but my brain had shaken itself free of its contemplation enough now for me to respond.
"Mom, as much as there have been moments in my life when I would have been happy to see your brains spread out over the pavement, it's my civic duty to keep you off the road." Apparently, when I'm not thinking to restrain it, my brain still reverts to its default mode of sarcasm. At Mom's expression, I followed it up with a more mature response. "I'm sorry, but you can't drive. It's too dangerous." Unconsciously, I scooted my chair a couple of inches back from my mother's outstretched hand. Needless to say, my answer was not welcome.
"This is ridiculous," she said with steel in her words. "One small accident doesn't make me incompetent." She turned her glare to the doctor, who sat impassively. "I'm a partner at Vitale, Schrecter, and Morgendorffer, and you can be sure you will be hearing about a malpractice lawsuit very soon. You can't slander everyone who's involved in a minor fender-bender."
"Mom, you forgot you were supposed to stop at a red light!" My own frustration and fear broke through my voice, disrupting my carefully-maintained calm demeanor. "You were lucky that it was a Smart car and not an SUV. You could have been flattened! I can't give you your keys back." It was harder to say those words than I anticipated, but it was obvious that it was even harder for my mother to hear them. She looked to be readying another volley, but then she deflated, her hand and shoulders both dropping, and her next sentence came out almost a whisper.
"Fine, then. I don't want to be here anymore. Could you please use the fob to unlock the car so I can go wait in there?"
"Mom, you really need to be here to hear what the doctor –"
"Daria, please – unlock the door." I don't know if I had ever heard her sound so defeated, not even after that fight her and Dad had had at that spa for the soul. Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked toward the door.
"Mrs. Morgendorffer," the doctor said, "you really need to stay. I have instructions to give you and your daughter. I know this is hard news to hear and a big change in your life, but you have to face up –" Mom didn't even pause as she opened the door and walked out into the reception area. I knew that she was not open to persuasion at this point, so wordlessly I pressed the unlock button on the key fob and heard the car's horn beep in response.
"I'm sorry, doctor," I said. "It's probably better for you to just tell me everything, and I'll pass it along when she's ready to hear it. Probably sometime after three glasses of wine."
"Well, that is one thing right there," the doctor said, his voice taking on a professional lecturing tone. "While there is no conclusive evidence linking alcohol and a worsening of Alzheimer's, I always advise my patients against drinking. There's no need to impair their brain more than necessary." Great, I thought. The one thing I ever knew to calm my mother down. Well, that, and sex, but I don't think she's getting that anymore. I wrenched my mind away from that image as quickly as possible and from a host of traumatic memories from my childhood. The doctor took out a pile of papers from a desk drawer. "I've assembled some literature for you and your mother to look over. Do you have any other siblings that could help out?"
"I have one sister, but I'm not sure how much help she will be. I'll let her know everything though." Quinn, the high-powered executive with the husband and the three perfect kids and the busy life that keeps her from visiting Mom outside of every other Christmas. How did I end up the more dutiful daughter? But I knew the answer to that question. James had been from a close-knit family and had been determined to keep up the tradition with us, even when we lived hundreds of miles away; he had countered my natural tendency to restrict my mother to a phone call every other blue moon and had kept us connected. At the time, I had found that endearing in him but annoying for me, but now . . .
"Hopefully she can be there for your mother, too," the doctor was saying. "She's going to need a lot of support, more emotionally right now than anything, but as time goes on, her physical needs will increase. First of all, do you think you can keep her from driving? I can write a doctor's recommendation and get her driver's license rescinded, but I'd rather not do that officially if I don't have to."
"I'll hide the keys somewhere she won't look." Like the pantry. "She'll grumble about Uber fees, but she can afford them. She'll probably write them off her taxes as a work expense, along with the cell phone and the computer and the weekend retreats with Eric Schrecter." OK, maybe she is still getting the sex. Definitely something else not to think about. "Can she still work?"
"That's up to your mother and her partners to decide," the doctor replied. "I would certainly recommend that she go into work for as long as possible. Anything to keep her mind active is a plus; studies have shown that's one of the best ways to slow the progression of the illness. That's especially important for early-onset patients like your mother. In general, the earlier the onset, the faster the progress, so anything you can do to keep her involved in life will help. And not just work either. Games, conversations, reading, music . . . whatever you can do to keep her going. The worst thing you can do is to just shove her in the corner in front of the TV and ignore her." He shook his head in a gesture of genuine grief and frustration. "I've seen that too many times."
"I suppose we can try a family card game." I swallowed in mild panic as I felt the weight of responsibility and expectation descend upon me, and then I realized fully what the doctor was saying. "Um, doctor, can she live alone?"
"Practically, for now, she probably could, though obviously that will change as time goes on." He leaned forward and his tone took on a note of determination. "But I would absolutely not recommend it. One of the worst aspects of this disease is loneliness. Mrs. McCarthy, your mother is going to feel herself slipping away piece by piece. She'll have good days and bad days, and the good days will almost be worse because those are the times she'll have the most understanding of what she's losing. And for someone like your mother, who has made a living through the sharpness of her mind, that pain will be even worse. To be alone while enduring that . . ." He shook his head sadly. "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. No, the best thing is for someone to live with her, someone she can talk to and interact with to keep her mind sharp, and later, someone who can help her with the everyday requirements of life. And it's best if that's someone she already knows and loves."
"But . . . I live in San Francisco, and my sister's in Houston. I suppose she could live with Quinn – she's closer, after all, and her place is much bigger than my apartment." I was closer to my mother than when I was younger, true, but the thought of sharing a one-bedroom apartment with her just felt like an unwelcome return to my teenage years, and the thought of taking care of her as she got worse . . . well, Jane had once said that anyone who looked to me for nurturing was more than just lost.
"It would really be better, if at all possible, for her to stay in the same house," the doctor clarified. "Being in familiar surroundings will help, especially once she begins to seriously decline. If you do decide to move her in with one of you, do it sooner rather than later; if you do it too late, it will be very frightening for her. And your mother strikes me as someone who will not be very open to moving." I realized that we had been discussing my mother as though she already had no choice in her life. Maybe one day, but for now, she was still very much her own person. I dreaded having to explain all of this to her. Maybe I could talk to Quinn first and decide on a course of action before we presented Mom with anything. Yes, that sounded like a workable plan.
"So how much have you told her so far?" Quinn asked, her concerned face staring out of the iPhone screen. I would have been happy to have this conversation over a normal phone call – or, ideally, text, minimizing my Quinn-teraction time – but ever since Skype was a thing, Quinn had embraced face-to-face calling and never looked back. Gives her audience a greater chance to appreciate her perfectly-composed visage, I suppose, or at least the effort that went into maintaining it. Behind her was her executive office, the colors fine-tuned to perfection with just the right accents; behind me, on the other hand, was the head-rest of my seat in Mom's (former) car, with maybe a glimpse of the garage in which it sat. The mostly-empty car, as Mom had stormed inside as soon as I had pulled in and I did not yet feel up to confronting her.
"Nothing, really," I answered. "She wouldn't even speak to me the whole drive back, just alternated between ignoring me and giving me the evil eye. I think I should probably wait until she's calmed down before I try to convince her to face reality. And this gives us some time to decide between the two of us how we are going to handle this."
"Plus you're just too timid to confront her."
I was shocked. Quinn and I had never become particularly close, but I thought we had grown past the sniping stage years ago. I nearly snapped back without thinking, but then I realized what she was doing with a mixture of offended dignity and grudging respect.
"Quinn, don't try your mind games on me. I'm not one of your work monkeys." Or your husband. Or your kids. Or any of your ex-boyfriends. "You can't manipulate me into rushing in to yell at Mom just because you think I need a push."
"Can't blame a girl for trying," she said with a casual toss of her shoulder-length hair. "I haven't gotten where I am today without getting the best out of people. It's just good management skills."
"I didn't call you to be managed, Quinn," I said, reining in my annoyance to the best of my ability to focus on the issue at hand. "I called you so we could have an adult conversation about what to do about Mom. She needs to be with someone, either here or somewhere else, and I thought you might actually be willing to let her use one of the two hundred bedrooms you have in your palace. You know, maybe actually be a part of her life for a change." OK, maybe I didn't rein in that annoyance all that well. That didn't mean it wasn't true, and I could see Quinn knew it. That "I'm-always-in-control" façade – the one that, ironically, she had copied from Mom once she started climbing the corporate ladder – started to slip.
"That's easy for you to say, Daria," she snapped back, eyes narrowed and lips tightened, her voice flat with just a hint of tremolo. "You have no idea of the kind of responsibilities I have, the demands on my time. All you have to do is write your little articles and columns. You don't even have a fam –" I don't know what my face looked like, but even though I was trying my best to school it to my usual impassivity, something must have come through, as Quinn slammed closed her mouth mid-word and looked like she wanted to sink into that luxuriously-upholstered office chair. My pulse hammered in my ears even as my chest felt like it was caving in from the vacuum within it where my heart had once been. My hand clenched around the phone until I could feel the rounded edges bruising the muscle. Quinn's words started tumbling out once again. "Oh, god, Daria, I'm so –"
"Don't have a family, you were going to say." It wasn't a question, or even an accusation; it was a declaration of fact. I wasn't about to let her get away with this one with just a simple apology, no matter how sincere. "No children. No husband. Not anymore. You're right, Quinn. I don't have a husband to cater to my every whim. No children to tell me what a great mother I am." Oh, but we tried. We tried and tried, and then it was too late . . . "So I suppose you're right. It makes more sense for me to take care of Mom. I don't have anyone in San Francisco; I can go anywhere I want. Maybe it will even be good for me. So consider me managed, Quinn. I'll move in with Mom, and you never have to worry about it again. Unless, of course, one of us comes down with the same illness in another twenty years. It's genetic, you know. They say it starts twenty years before it shows, so it might already be eating away at one of us. Oh, well, I guess we'll find out then. Goodbye, Quinn." I thumbed the big red button to end the Skype, wishing I could replicate the satisfying crash of a rotary phone being slammed down, and just sat there, breathing heavily, waiting for my heart rate to come down to something less than "slamming through the sternum".
Damn. Damn. Damn! Damn! DAMN! What the hell just happened? I couldn't believe how rapidly the situation had spiraled out of control. Quinn and I had had our fights before – hell, a good portion of our teenage years had been spent in one continuous needling session – but nothing had ever approached that level of vitriol. Nor, I suppose, of honesty. How long had all that been building up? And why did it come out now, of all times? How did it escalate so quickly? And are we really going to leave it this way? Already the phone was ringing. I refused the call – I couldn't handle another Quinn apology, no matter how sincere, and I did not doubt that it would be sincere – only for it to start up again. I refused it again and again, until after about the fifth or sixth try, she finally gave up. Seventy times seven, James had told me once, but I wasn't even ready to forgive the first time yet. But it did occur to me who I should be calling instead. I quickly found the contact and touched the call icon, the phone on the other end ringing only a couple of times before it was picked up.
"So how's my favorite niece?" The familiar greeting – an old joke between us – soothed the savage beast inside me ever so slightly.
"Aunt Amy," I said, and paused, not sure how to proceed. Then it all just spilled out of me, everything that had happened in the last couple of hours. Amy listened quietly as I lanced the boil and let it drain, uttering only a few encouraging noises when I paused for breath. Finally, once it was done, she remained quiet for a few moments.
"Well, you really are Barksdale sisters after all," she eventually said with a long exhalation that was halfway between a sigh and a dry laugh. "Daria, I wish I could give you better advice, but I never figured this one out myself. You know what it was like when Helen and Rita and I got together. In fact, until just now, I would have said that we should have been learning from you and Quinn. All I can say is that these are the kind of things that come out when you're under this level of stress, and that I'm sure Quinn's already regretting it. How much that regret actually means to you . . . that's for you to figure out. And as for Helen . . ." Another long pause. "I wish I could take her in for you, I really do, but I don't think the two of us would survive the week."
"I appreciate the thought, but I would never ask you to do that." I closed my eyes, and could feel myself accepting the inevitable, almost like an outsider looking in. God, I'm tired. "I know you'll help when you can, and I know it won't be that often. Thanks for listening, but I guess I'd better get started on this. Journey of a thousand miles and all that. I'll talk to you later."
"Don't be a stranger."
After hanging up, I just sat for a while, trying not to think ahead. One step at a time. I guess my first step could be picking up her new prescription from the pharmacy. I hope she'll at least be willing to take it. If she isn't, I suppose I can always slip it into a piece of frozen lasagna. Who knows, it might even punch up the flavor.
About an hour later, I walked into the house, paper pharmacy bag in hand, loins thoroughly girded, to find Mom sitting at the kitchen table with her back to me, a glass of wine before her, which sat next to an already half-empty bottle. She didn't react when I walked in, only sat there with her head bowed and shoulders slumped. I waited a few moments, to see if she would explode again or even turn to glare silently, but she showed no reaction whatsoever. The urge to turn away was strong, walk to the living room or even upstairs to my own former bedroom, let this reckoning happen at another moment, but I knew I had to keep going, to take the next step of my long journey. I closed my eyes, took in and let out as deep a breath as I could, and walked over to face her on the other side of the table, repressing the urge to tiptoe in hopes of not waking the beast. The only acknowledgement she gave was a brief lifting of the eyes, before focusing them back down upon the glass again.
"Mom, . . . um." Just say it, Daria McCarthy! Maybe you'll be lucky and it actually will get easier once you start. You know, like jumping off a cliff. "You really need to take this medicine. I know you don't believe the doctor, but –"
"I'm not a fool, Daria," Mom interrupted, her voice low and husky, and maybe ever-so-slightly slurred. "I may be going senile, but I'm not yet a fool. I know what the doctor said. I know he was right. I know what's going to, going to . . . happen to me, maybe more than you do. Just leave me one more day of denial." She reached out and snatched the bag, tore it open, and quickly extracted one pill from the bottle, washing it down with a gulp of wine. She tossed the bottle back to me, as if to say, There, happy? It was a small victory, so against my better judgment I decided to press my luck, and sat down in the chair opposite her.
"Mom, there are a lot of decisions to make, and we have to talk."
"You mean like you and Quinn did?"
My mouth dropped open, and the rest of my speech died on my lips. I was inside the car and inside the garage! Even if she had listened to the door, I don't think she could have heard. How does she know? "Well . . . Quinn . . . I mean, we . . ." I stammered as I thought of a response, and Mom's lips curled upwards ever so slightly.
"I told you I wasn't a fool, Daria. Over thirty years of experience with the law. Do you know how many cases I worked on involving Alzheimer's patients? Usually because some ungrateful bastard was trying to get his father declared incompetent so he could get his hands on the family fortune. Sometimes we were able to get it for him, too." She took another swig of wine with a rueful chuckle. "I didn't have to be there; I know exactly what the doctor said. And I know you, Daria; again, probably more than you know. I know you called Quinn to work out the details, and given my knowledge of my other daughter and your actions since, I'm willing to bet it didn't go so well. How am I batting so far?"
"A thousand, unfortunately." Damn, am I getting predictable, or does she really have some kind of mother's psychic power, like she used to claim when I was little? I had never thought much of my mother as a lawyer, but maybe I would have to admit that she might not have been half bad as one. "What else do you know?"
"That you and Quinn argued over who would get stuck with me, and you got the short end of the stick."
"Mom, no!" I reacted instinctively, denying without thinking. "Yes, Quinn and I argued about . . . taking care of you, but the least I ever wanted to do was split the responsibility with her. I'm not going to abandon you!"
"After nineteen hours of labor, you'd better not," Mom muttered into another sip of wine. Then she put the glass down carefully and seemed to come to some decision. "Have it your way, then; I guess it's inevitable in the end. But remember this." She put the full force of her will of steel into her voice. "No matter what happens, no matter how bad I get – I am still your mother. I am not your child, or some object of pity. I bore you and raised you, and your sister, and sometimes even your father. I. Will. Have. Your. Respect. I will not live with anyone who does not honor that. I told you I've seen the way too many children treat parents with Alzheimer's." She softened slightly. "I'm not saying you would abuse me, or even neglect me. But I also know that you and Quinn are already acting like I'm some infant to be passed around without consultation or permission. That stops now. As long as my mind is still clear, I will have a say in my own life. Do you understand?" I nodded while wishing my chair would swallow me up. "And the first thing I have to say is this. I'm not leaving this house, Daria. I spent too much of my life here, with too many memories. No move, no nursing home, no hospice facility – at least not until I'm too far gone to know any better."
I gulped as unpleasant images started to fight their way inside my mind, even as I erected my strongest mental barriers against them. I closed my eyes against the onslaught. No, don't think of it. Don't go there again. Not now. My embattled state did not go unnoticed by my mother, and her voice softened even more as she reached out to take my hand, triggering the feelings and pictures even more strongly.
"Daria, are you sure you're up to this?" she asked, her concern now focused on me in place of her anger. "You're not really the care-giving type, and you don't know how difficult of a thing it is you are taking on."
"Have you forgotten already, Mom?" I said, rising anger quickly overcome with panic. "You aren't the first dying person I've cared for." I couldn't hold the memories down anymore, and yanking my hand out of my mother's, I ran, no longer seeing the space in front of me . . .
After six months of cancer, James's body simply disappeared under the hospital sheet, his form leaving no impression on the bed. All I could see of him was his face – pale and shrunken, with a nasal cannula stretched across it – and his right hand, which I held in as tight of a grip as I dared, doing my best to avoid the IV needle that impaled it. His labored breathing almost drowned out the beeping and whistling of the machines around him, and when he spoke, his words were broken up by long, rattling inhalations. But his smile – that brilliant, all-encompassing grin that took in all the absurdities of the world around him and transformed them into laughter – somehow, that remained intact. I knew that, at the moment, I could never match it; I doubted I ever would again.
"Are you in any pain?" I asked, terrified at the thought of more suffering. If anything, his smile widened.
"Nah, they have me on the really good stuff," he replied, dragging each word out from somewhere deep inside himself, determined to make himself heard. Despite his denial, I shuddered at the effort required, but I did not want to cut off this last thread of contact. "I've been thinking of some memorable last words. I'm torn between 'I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil' and 'that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns'. What do you think?"
"Dying is easy; profundity is hard."
"Ah, there's the Daria I fell in love with back in Chem class." His body shook with a cruel parody of laughter, and his eyes crinkled up while never leaving my face. I opened my mouth to join him, but instead of a laugh, I choked out a sob, and once the first one was out I couldn't stop the rest. James didn't have the energy to lift his hand to console me as I wept, but I felt the slightest squeeze from it – all he could manage. We stayed that way for – oh, I don't know how long – but eventually my tears ran dry and I could open my eyes and speak again. And yet, even with all the energy it took, he still spoke first.
"Please, love, don't cry for me," he said, his voice now little more than a ragged whisper. "Cry for yourself, but not for me." He laid his head back on the pillow from which it had been slightly raised, and his eyes took on a faraway look. "So many times, you joked about my 'Sunday School childhood', and I did too, but I've been thinking a lot about that lately, and I think I know where I'm going. I'll be OK. I'll miss you, but I'll be OK. But, Daria, promise me this." He turned his eyes to look at me again, and his voice gained a forcefulness I hadn't heard from him in months, as though he was willing every last ounce of life into the words. "Don't be lonely, Daria. When I'm gone, don't run away. Find friends. Find a lover, if you want. Just don't be alone. We're made for this, Daria" – and he squeezed my hand again – "and you're too wonderful to deny yourself to someone else who might need you. Promise me you won't be alone . . ."
His last words trailed away to nothing, and his head floated back down to the pillow as a last gasp of air escaped his lungs. His hand, the one I had been holding onto as though I could hold him here, relaxed, the last of its strength gone. Then a dozen different machines and monitors went haywire. People rushed me from all sides as they tore me away from my lifeline, my last contact with the man I loved, and I didn't realize that the wailing, piercing screech that I heard was my own.
. . . I returned to my senses and found myself sitting with my back to the door of my old room, closed behind me. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. The declaration ran through my head like a mantra. Not again. James was sick for less than a year, and it nearly killed me. But this . . . Mom could last a decade, maybe more. How am I supposed to take care of her for all that time? I'm not the person I used to be. With James, I was strong, I was happy, I had friends and a life. All that's gone now. How can I face this alone? My love, how do I decide to just not be alone?
The next day, I flew back to San Francisco to close out my affairs, which basically meant moving out of my apartment. I had to break the lease, of course, which cost me three months of inflated San Francisco rent, but I didn't really see a choice in the matter, and sadly there was no "Good-Samaritans-Get-Out-Free" clause in the rental contract. The packing up didn't take long – the apartment had come furnished, and the only things in it that were truly mine were my clothes, my books, my computer, and some other odds and ends. Four years here, I thought, as I tossed the contents of my bookshelf into a cardboard box, and this is all I had to come back for; and once I'm gone, there will be no impression of me left behind.
I looked at the next two books to be taken off the shelf – short story collections that included my contributions – and next to them, my single published novel, which hadn't completely bombed but certainly had never troubled even the lower reaches of the bestseller lists. They were the only physical copies of my works – everything else out in the publishing world that bore my name was a denizen of the digital realm, nothing but a series of electronic switches on a server somewhere. I felt as ephemeral as they.
No friends, no connections here. I never really did get the hang of making friends after college, out in the "real world". James managed that for us. How does one make friends outside of a job anyway? I never was one for bars or clubs, and they're more for hooking up anyway. Looking back, I wasn't certain how often I had even left this apartment, except for necessities. How could I spend so much time here and still leave the place so sterile?
I looked over to the one place in the apartment that felt like it still maintained some connection to life – the computer desk, over and around which were placed a panoply of photographs – real paper photographs – of the happiest years of my life. Placed where I would be surrounded by them at the place where I spent most of my waking hours, so I could absorb myself in them and forget the reason I was sitting in a cramped, empty apartment two thousand miles from everyone I knew. I picked up one of my favorites – James and I and four friends – Diane and Jonathan, and Jackie and Dylan – on the National Mall in front of the Washington Monument, just a few miles away from the building where James and the others worked in D.C. Well, James's friends, really; they were his co-workers, not mine, and I was more along for the ride. Still, we were – in a way – our own little clique. But James was the catalyst; I never would have had them on my own.
I smiled in fond memory even as my chest tightened and my hands shook. James had come so far from that awkward, unsure, callow youth I had met my first semester of freshman year at Raft. We had been friends at first, but then he asked me out on what had to have been one of the most disastrous first dates on record – two inexperienced ships crashing in the night. Astonishingly, after some time apart – and after Dad's death – we slowly rebuilt our friendship to something stronger and deeper than before, though still quite tumultuous at times. But it was tumultuous because we challenged each other, and eventually we learned how to handle that. Jane and James and I had been a trio, and it seemed as though we had reached a good, stable equilibrium – after all, a stool with three legs is far more stable than one with just two. But, in our senior year, a convergence of unlikely, unusual events drove James to once again act on the feelings that he had never really lost and ask me out again. Against my better judgment, I had accepted, and this time, the spark ignited in both of us. We became inseparable, dated for two years, then married as soon as I finished my Master's. Unfortunately, we never really recalibrated that equilibrium with Jane, and she slowly drifted away. Never acrimoniously, but she slowly became less and less part of our lives as our worlds diverged. Was the wedding the last time we saw her? I think it might have been. Sad to think of now, but at the time it had seemed normal, just the way life went. And maybe it is. Honestly, I hadn't even noticed. James and I had been happy with just each other, and as we settled in D.C. with our first adult jobs – me as a freelance journalist and fiction writer, and James on the staff of a freshman Congressman – we began to build our life together.
"Um . . . yeah, that sounds great," I could hear James say on the portable phone as he sat on the couch behind my writing desk in our "cozy" – code for "would be a tight fit for jumping spiders" – studio apartment in Arlington. "So Friday night, then? That works for us, I think, though I'll have to check with Daria to be sure. See you then." I heard the beep as he pressed the off button on the portable phone. I turned around in my chair to see James gazing at the phone with a mild expression of wonder. "Well, that was unexpected," he said.
"What did you agree to?" I asked. "Are we joining a cult now? Will we have to grow corn in our front yard? Or is it more of a swinging situation?"
"I don't think so," James replied, "though I'll keep the keys in my pocket, just to be sure. No, that was Dylan, from work. He and Jonathan and their wives are getting together for dinner Friday night, and they asked us to join them. Apparently it's a semi-regular thing for them."
"So were they calling numbers at random, or did they pick your name out of a hat?"
"Well, Dylan and I have been chatting some at work, and I've told him about you, and he once mentioned that he thought you and his wife Jackie would get along well." He shrugged. "I wasn't sure where to go from there, but apparently he is."
I could feel my brow furrow as I processed this unusual situation. "James," I finally said, "are we actually making couple friends here, like adults? Are we getting a social life?"
"Maybe," he said, sounding as uncertain as I felt. "I guess this is how it's done." He grinned, and his eyes sparkled. "Who'd'a thunk it?"
Jonathan had been right; Jackie and I had gotten along quite well, and though I hadn't gotten as close to Diane, as a group, the six of us were a good fit together. But the last time I had seen any of them was at James's funeral near his family home in South Carolina. After that, I had fled to California, as far away as I could get from all of the memories; they were all too connected in my mind to James for me to separate them out. But these pictures – these were just right, just enough to keep James alive in my mind without tearing me in two. I carefully packed them all up, wrapped in numerous layers of paper and set gently into a box.
And with that, I was done. The place was even more barren now than before. I left, feeling the mocking scorn of the silent, empty cell behind me.
On the flight back to Baltimore, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes to allow the vibration of the plane to bring some soothing to my raw psyche, I deliberately cast my mind forward (but not too far forwards) instead of backwards, trying to figure out how best to handle this situation with Mom – to be precise, how to handle Mom herself.
Obviously, she wants to stay in control of everything; she wouldn't be Mom if she didn't. And I hate to admit it, but Quinn and I were being pretty awful, making plans for her like she didn't have a say in her own life. Of course, maybe we wouldn't have cut her out if she weren't so difficult to deal with – not that Quinn is a picnic either. And she's been getting worse lately. If she'd been reasonable, she would have listened to us and gotten tested months, maybe years, ago, and we would have much more of a jump on this thing. I need to have a plan in place to deal with her when she gets really irrational. Sadly, no plan jumped to mind, leaping fully-formed from the head of Zeus. Maybe try for something a little less daunting first. One step at a time.
The literature the doctor gave us said to establish a routine – something predictable that she can hold on to and to give her some structure. It also said to keep her mind active. She's never been much of a reader, and I think the only time I can remember ever seeing her play a game was during that one week I was grounded, in the final extremes of boredom. I'm not really sure what she does now except work; when I was young she would also pry into my life on occasion, but I don't think that counts as a brain-stimulating activity. What was she like before work, before kids? I know she was a hippie, but that's less a personality and more a mental disorder. What did she do with her time before spending it all at work and on the phone? God, I didn't realize that I never knew Dad until he was dead, and now I'm realizing that I never knew my mother, right as she's diagnosed with a terminal illness. What kind of horrible daughter am I?
This is getting me nowhere. Stay focused, Mrs. McCarthy! I can deal with my shortcomings later. I – we – have some time to figure things out. As long as she's working, her brain's plenty active at pretty much every hour of the day. She just needs to keep working as long as possible. Surely she can keep that up for a while, can't she?
I could hear Mom swearing even before I opened the door to the house, and it caught me off guard. She's supposed to be at work right now. A premonition of doom struck me suddenly. Oh, no, what happened? Denying my inner drive to duck and cover until the storm blew over, I quickly stepped inside to find Mom pacing back and forth in the living room, face and eyes red, hair in disarray from having angry hands repeatedly run though it. At my feet, I found her iPhone – her work phone – screen shattered, apparently from a run in with the wall just to my right, which showed a fairly deep iPhone-corner-shaped dent. I didn't even get the chance to ask what had happened before she stormed into it.
"Do you know what those fucking bastards Vitale and Schrecter did to me?! They got together and fucking voted me out of the firm! Mental incompetency! Goddamn incompetency! After all I've done for that god-forsaken firm! Not to mention after I'd been screwing Eric left and right every time he wanted me for the past ten years! God, do you know what that was like? What I had to endure just to get a little release every now and then? Do you have any idea of the kinds of perverted ideas he came up with? Once I dressed up in a gorilla suit for that man and went –"
"MOM!" I shouted as loudly and as quickly as I could. "I do not need to hear about that!" I knew there were more important issues to address, but that was not an image I needed in my head now. Or ever. Mom's reply was contemptuous.
"Oh, grow up, Daria. You were a married woman; even if you never gave me grandkids, you must have been doing something. Stop being such a prude." Be understanding. Don't shoot back. Don't retaliate. Yeah, that wasn't happening. Time to turn the tables.
"Fine, Mom," I shot back. "Let's talk about it. You think you can shock me? You want to hear about the time that James licked whipped cream right off my –"
"OK! I get it! That's enough!"
My point made, we both fell into an enraged pause. We stood there, breathing heavily, Mom still muttering obscenities underneath her breath. My face felt warm, and not all of it was anger or embarrassment. Certain memories might have been a nice distraction other times, but this was not the proper venue. However, Mom's sex talk wasn't the worst thing, certainly not the most painful. That grandkids crack had hurt, and I had lashed out; I couldn't allow myself to be baited so easily. Personality changes. Mood swings. Sudden bursts of hostility. They're all symptoms. They're only going to get worse. I can't escalate – that's what all the literature said. I have to learn not to fight with her.
"How did they find out?" I asked, working very hard to turn the conversation back to possibly more profitable channels. "We didn't tell them, and the doctor isn't allowed to, so how did they know?"
"Oh, that snake Vitale has his tendrils all over Lawndale," she said in disgust. "I'm sure he has people planted in every doctor's office in town. How do you think he wins so many cases?" She collapsed onto the sofa, all her anger instantly replaced by despair and exhaustion.
"Do you want to get a new doctor?" I asked, taking my own place in the chair opposite her. She shook her head in defeat.
"There's no point. The damage has been done. I suppose I could try to sue them to get my partnership back, but I'd lose. It's over." I'm not sure I had seen my mother so downcast since Dad had died, and maybe not even then. Now that the anger had passed, she had withdrawn into herself, shrinking down until she looked like a shadow of her former self. The rapidity of the transformation was shocking.
OK, be practical, I thought, mind racing to try to find a solution before Mom got even worse. This doesn't change anything; it moves up the timetable, that's all. I realized then that wasn't true. There was one really big, immediate change that I couldn't believe I hadn't considered before.
"Mom, did you get some kind of severance package?" I said, feeling awful about bringing up such a subject when Mom was clearly hurting, but I had to start planning as soon as possible. "Medical insurance? COBRA?" Oh, please, I hope she doesn't have to go on Medicare. With everything else going through my head, I had yet to even consider the subject of money – after all, it had never been an issue with my parents before, or even myself. The privilege and curse of growing up comfortably upper-middle class, I suppose. Grad school had trained me to pinch a few pennies, true, but once James and I were married, his salary was enough to keep us going when my writing wasn't bringing much in. Truth be told, James had provided for us like a good 1950s man of the house, and since his death, I had done fine with his life insurance and the occasional article on a website or local paper. Money had never been an issue in my life, but now it might be.
She didn't reply. Then I realized that I was sitting there, thinking about money, while my mother was collapsing in grief right in front of me. What am I supposed to do? I thought in near-panic. I don't know how to comfort her. I don't know how to comfort anybody! What do I say? Am I supposed to say anything? Old, half-buried memories of premarital counseling rose to my conscious mind for the first time in years. Listen. I'm supposed to listen. "So . . . um . . . do you want to talk about it?" Not exactly the smoothest line, but maybe it would do. And it seemed to work.
"Nearly twenty years," Mom said, her voice deep and flat, nearly as monotone as mine used to be. "Nearly twenty years I gave that firm, put everything else in second place so I could make partner. Sacrificed my youth, my family . . . all for them. And this is what it got me. Tossed out like so much garbage as soon as they had an excuse to do it. Probably to make way for some newer, younger, naïve kid with something to prove." Her voice began to once again show its previous heat, lower in volume but equal in intensity. "And if Eric Schrecter has anything to do with it, probably a hotter ass, too. Yes, Daria, they gave me a severance package. Three months pay. That's all I was worth to them. A few thousand fucking dollars, to make up for stabbing me in the back and throwing me out in the street."
"I'm sorry, Mom," I said in complete sincerity, but it did not get the response I had expected.
"Oh, you are, are you?" Suddenly, all the venom in her words was turned on me, catching me completely off guard. "Don't play innocent with me. I know you hated that place. You all hated my job! I worked my ass off to provide for all of you while your father played around at being an adult, but all you saw were the phone calls and the late nights and the missed parent-teacher meetings. Well, that was the price of our life here. You were never a mother, you were never a provider. You can't understand what I gave up for you! You can't understand what I lost today! So don't look at me with that sad expression, telling me how sorry you are. Just . . . go away. Leave me alone."
"Mom, I really shouldn't –"
"Go. Now."
Not knowing what else to do, acting on my resolution to avoid conflict and de-escalate whenever possible and fearing my presence was only making her worse, I stood up and left, heading up to my old room almost by force of habit. On the way up, however, my good intentions rapidly mutated into something more extreme and visceral, and I found myself torn between wanting to cry and wanting to strangle my mother with my bare hands. Maybe I should leave. She doesn't want me here, obviously. She can take care of herself right now, and when she can't, I'll just stick her in a nursing home and not look back. I can't fight with her when she's not around, after all. She's only my mother by an accident of birth, and she didn't do the best job of it. What do I owe her, anyway? Even as I was thinking them, I was not proud of the bitter thoughts stampeding through my brain, but they felt good in their own way – self-righteous, self-justifying, and completely absolving me of responsibility – and I wasn't proud of that either.
"We were made to have relationships," James had once told me after another acrimonious bout with my mother over some minor issue I could not now even recall. "We're made to have family. We don't always get to choose our obligations, but that doesn't make them any less binding."
"Made?" I said, gently mocking. "That's your Sunday School childhood peeking through again."
"Maybe so," James said, "but that doesn't make it wrong. I know your mother can be a trial sometimes, but you're still her daughter, and that's not a bond you can break easily."
"Family is who you choose," I replied. "I chose you, not her."
"And I will always love you for that," he said, "and be totally mystified as well. But if – when – we have a child, don't you think you will love her no matter what, even though you didn't get to choose who she would be?"
The thought was terrifying, but when James spoke of our future son or daughter, it was also irresistibly appealing. I never thought I would want children, but to make something that was part James, part myself . . . I couldn't think of a better thing to build my life around. And I would love her, no matter who she turned out to be. So maybe – just maybe – my mother felt the same way about me.
James embraced me, and after a moment enjoying the warmth of each other's presence, our lips met, and I found myself hoping I would have those children sooner rather than later . . .
Damn, I thought, leaning on the wall in the hallway outside my old room. How do I fix this now?
Much like myself, my old room had changed a great deal since my teenage years. Gone were the padded walls, the assistance bar, the TV bolted to the ceiling that never worked right, and the disturbing poetry inside the closet door. In their place were a neutral paint job and tasteful furnishings – the typical bland guest room, designed to be inviting while have no personal touch whatsoever. Even my old bed was gone, replaced by a queen-size. But even with all the changes, lying on my back on the bed, staring up at the same cracks in the ceiling, was soothing.
Recovering from my mother's emotional assault, I realized that much of her recent behavior made a lot more sense now. In the last year or so before James died, it had seemed that she and I could not even interact without fighting; the slightest wrong word could set her off. I had attributed it to stress at work, the additional expectations and responsibilities of becoming partner, and with James's support, kept the relationship going. Even after I had moved – honestly, ran away – to San Francisco, I had still kept in touch, even when I had shut out almost everyone else, visiting at least a few times a year; my way of honoring James's memory. That was what had allowed me to see the early signs – forgetting small details, occasional confusion about things she had known for years – and Quinn and I both had started to push her to get checked. Of course, that just caused more fights, and it was a couple of years before we wore her down enough to get her into the doctor's office. We had thought we had caught it relatively early, but now it seemed obvious that we had been sadly mistaken.
It was a symptom. All those fights that seemed to come out of nowhere over nothing – those were the first signs. She's been going downhill for at least . . . five or so years, now. If it's that far advanced, maybe Vitale and Schrecter didn't even need their spies; maybe they just saw it the same way I did. I felt like a fool, a useless fool. It just never occurred to us that's what was going on. We never would have thought it could have hit someone so young. Well, maybe young. I wasn't absolutely certain of my mother's age, come to think of it; she kept that a well-guarded secret. The dread of time lost descended on me. All this time . . . she could have been on medication, she could have been doing things to slow the progression. All that possibility – lost. Oh, God, how much time does she have left? I could feel the future rushing in, falling in on us like an avalanche – a rushing wave that would catch us no matter how fast we ran to outpace it. Still, better to run as fast as we can – last as long as we can – rather than just giving up and letting it run us over.
A knock at my door startled me, and I sat up on my bed while calling for Mom to come in. She opened the door, but at first she just stood there, refusing to meet my eyes. After a few seconds that seemed like hours, she walked in and sat next to me on the bed, just like the last twenty years had never happened, and she was there for one of our infrequent heart-to-hearts from my teenage years. For a while, we both sat in silence; I wasn't sure what she might be here to say, so I thought it best to let her make the first move. Mom, on the other hand, was no doubt gathering up the requisite courage and humility to make the first confession.
"I'm sorry, dear," she said, so low I had to strain at first to understand her. "I can't believe . . . I can't believe I said those things. You put so much effort into seeing me, I know, and it seems all we do anymore is fight. It's like . . . it's like the words fly out of me and I have no control over them. Please don't take them personally. They're not true. I don't think of you that way. I'm so proud of you. You're no less of a person because you chose a different path than mine. I'm so sorry."
I had to swallow a few times before I could answer. "Thank you, Mom," I finally said. "I know that wasn't easy." I smiled ruefully. "And you weren't totally wrong. I can't understand what you went through. I'm not a mother."
"No, Daria!" Mom immediately protested. "I didn't mean that! I never wanted—" I put up a hand to stop her, and thankfully she acquiesced.
"But I wanted to be," I said, and Mom gasped. "James and I . . . we were trying. Not long before his diagnosis, we started trying. But nothing happened, and then . . . and then, it was too late." I had never spoken those words out loud to anyone before, at least partly because I knew exactly what would happen when I did. Exactly what was happening now. I broke down, and I let my mother hold me until the sobs subsided. And once they did, I felt a little bit – a very little bit – better.
"Thank you for telling me," Mom finally said. "I want to be here for you as long as I can be. However long that is. Daria, I've always seen myself to you, even when you were a frustrating teenager. Maybe that's why I was as hard on you as I was. I know you've always looked up to Amy, that you feel a special bond with her, and I would never want to do anything to hurt that, but . . . really, Daria, you're far more like me than her. Amy might seem like the 'cool aunt' now, but when she was young, she was more of a mouthy brat than anything. I was the serious one, the studious one, the one who was frustrated with a world that was swimming in hypocrisy and injustice. Much like a young girl I once knew." Her mouth curled up fondly, even as her eyes were far away in the past, but her smile was soon swallowed up in present grief. "And now, you and I share another bond, one no one else in this family does. We know the pain of losing far too early the men we thought we would spend the rest of our lives with far too early. It's not a bond I would choose, but we have it, and I want it to bring us closer. I don't want to tear us apart. Please, Daria, remember that the next time I can't control it. Please remember that the words I'm saying . . . they're not true. I don't believe them. I just can't stop them." I saw something in my mother's face I don't know if I had ever seen so openly before. Fear. "This anger. The lack of control. They're . . . the disease, aren't they?" I couldn't trust myself to speak, so I just nodded assent. She nodded back.
"Mom, we can't . . . we can't beat this, but we'll hold it back as long as we can." It was the only comfort I could offer her. The coldest of cold comfort. Practical. Be practical. That's something we can both cope with. "We have to keep your mind active. You need hobbies, activities, things to keep your mind up. Music. Music is supposed to help too. We can play music you like." Great, a bunch of 60s hippie bands on repeat. Well, if it were me, it would just be a bunch of 90s grunge on repeat. Maybe we can compromise on the Beatles. "I'm sorry, Mom, but I don't really know. What kind of things do you like to do?"
Mom sat there in silence for a while, appearing as stumped by the question as I was. At first I was worried her uncertainty was a new manifestation of her illness, but then I realized that she didn't know the answer to the question any more than I did. Her life had been work for so long that she didn't really have much beyond that, especially since Quinn and I had left home.
"I still want to go powerwalking every day," she finally said, words slowed from her concentration. "Other than that . . . I'm not sure. Back in my commune days, I used to do a lot of gardening. And making bread."
"Is that something you would like to try again?"
She looked at me aghast, and then laughed. A real laugh, one that came from true amusement, not just dark humor. "Oh, that's right," she said once the laughter had subsided. "For some reason, you weren't around when Willow and Coyote came to visit that one time. No, my gardening and bread-making days are well in the past, and I'd like to keep them that way."
"We need to find something for you to do, Mom. Just sitting around the house bored is the worst possible thing for the disease. What about games? Do you play chess?"
"Daria, I am not about to play you in chess. My ego doesn't need that kind of a beating." She was silent for a few moments, thinking. "We used to play card games in the commune. Not for money, of course; that was too capitalistic. But it was something to do, since we didn't have TV." Once again, she smiled in recollection, and her voice was wistful as she recovered long-ignored memories. "I also painted, threw pots, wrote poetry. I haven't thought about that in ages." Her smile only widened at my expression of shock. "You thought Jane was the only artist you ever had in your life? I had a full life before you. Your father did too, for that matter. It wasn't all Mad Dog and Corporal Ellenbogen for him. I know, it's a shock when you realize your parents are people, isn't it?"
I had thought I had a pretty accurate picture of my mother as a human being; certainly, I had never seen her as some flawless, near-divine being, as so many children supposedly do. But I think I had made the opposite error – seeing her as less than she was, instead of more. For the first time, I saw my mother as someone I could actually be friends with, someone I might want to get to know better, not out of obligation but out of interest and a genuine connection. How could it have taken me so long? Why did I wait?
"So . . . what other things did you do back then?"
Mom and I talked late into the night. At first, it was all her, as she pulled out memories going all the way back to her childhood, of growing up with two sisters, one a flake and one a pest, giving me a perspective on Rita and Amy I would never have imagined on my own. She talked about her days on the commune and the friends she had there, how she had loved it at first, had believed they were truly saving the world, but had slowly come to see the absurdity of it. She talked about her dive into law, about her drive to succeed, not just for herself but for us, to give her daughters opportunities that she'd had to fight for tooth and nail. And she talked about Dad, to a depth I had never heard before, both the passion and the frustration. She opened herself up.
And, so, eventually, I did as well. I talked about James, our fights and our making-ups, our shared jokes and his quiet wisdom that so often formed a counterpoint to my worldly-wise cynicism. About how I had watched him blossom in college and afterwards. About the friends he had made that had somehow extended to me as well. About our decision to have children, and our failure. And she held me as I talked about his death and how I could not seem to give up the years that had been stolen from us. And she understood.
That night I slept in my old room. And for the first time in four years, I felt like I was truly home.
