I was back for another visit. Mary was all moved in to stay for the long haul. I was just staying a few days, then had to get back to the family and work.
The hospital bed and commode had arrived during my last visit. We’d found someone who wanted the sofa, and that had been moved out to make room for the hospital bed in the living room. Mommy didn’t like that. Fussed like a wet hen, but there just wasn’t room for both in that small room. She only consented when I told her we could put it in the place against the wall where the sofa had been, and pretty it up with a quilt and some throw pillows. Hospital bed turned daybed. Perfect for tea when friends dropped by. In the meantime, she still held court in her battered and cigarette-burned recliner.
The recliner was like an astronaut’s command center on a spaceship. It was surrounded on both sides by Rubbermaid drawer units crammed with odds and ends for any eventuality. Cut up Tetley Tea boxes, to use as note paper to make her perpetual lists. St. Jude’s return address labels, enough for fourteen lifetimes of correspondence. Medicine, both prescription and over the counter, expired and current. Nebulizer treatments, old letters, tape, spare change, receipts, newspaper clippings, coupons for things she would never buy. Lists and lists and lists. On the tops of the drawer units was more of the flotsam and jetsam of her life: reading glasses, a magnifying glass, her phone, a couple of remotes, an ashtray, tissues, felt-tipped pens (always felt-tipped pens), more pill bottles, three glasses at any given time, one for water, one for Coke, and one for her homemade iced tea that was filled with enough sugar to put a diabetic horse into a coma. There was an old pill bottle taped to the floor lamp, which she used to hold a broken pair of scissors-turned letter opener. Thank God the oxygen condenser had a long cord for the nasal cannula, because the space around her chair wouldn’t have been able to fit one more thing.
My friend Sarah came for a visit one afternoon. I had known her since the fourth grade, when we first moved to the Island. We brought a couple kitchen chairs in to the living room, and Mary, Sarah and I sat with Mommy to talk, Sarah letting her know how sorry she was that she was sick. We’d been talking a while when Mommy asked us all, “What do you think is the most important thing in life?” Sarah mused it over for a bit, and said she thought it must be love.
“No.” My mother said. “You’re wrong.”
We all looked at each other. How can one be wrong about an opinion?
“No”, she said again. It’s honesty. Think about it. If you have love but not honesty, what good is it? The love is worthless. If you have honesty but no love, at least you can live with yourself.”
We all nodded in silent agreement. She may be “strongly opinionated”, but damn if she wasn’t right.
After Sarah left, I washed up the dishes. When I came back into the living room, Mommy was asleep in her recliner. I took the cigarette out of her hand and put it out, wishing again for the love of God that she would stop smoking, but I knew she wouldn’t. At least she always turned off the oxygen before she lit up. I covered her up, and went in to see Mary.
In the old days, I guess this room would have been a “parlor”. We called it “the front room”. It was a relatively small house; the first floor had the front room, living room, kitchen, bathroom and laundry area. Upstairs were two small bedrooms. She used the front room as a guest room of sorts, and a place to keep toys and coloring books for when the grandchildren would visit. Of course, they were all too old for that now, but she still kept them in there, “just in case”.
Mary was sitting on the daybed, looking at old pictures. I joined her, pulling one of Big Mama’s old quilts across my lap. The photos were mixed and in no semblance of order. There were glossy black and white photos with white borders, mixed with dark and grainy prints from the 70s and 80s, with their rounded edges. Pictures of us playing in the snow in north Jersey, swinging from trees in Louisiana, making sandcastles on the beach. There was a picture of Donald sitting on the sofa at my Aunt Mary’s house in Baton Rouge, with his baby daughter Ali sitting on his lap, each looking into the other’s eyes like they were trying to figure each other out. I don’t think they ever did. I guess they didn’t have much of a chance.
Mary picked up a picture and let out a laugh. Her eyes were twinkling as she handed it to me.
“Remember when we made this for Ron?” I looked at the photo. Four year old Veronica was sitting in a cardboard box we’d turned into a space ship for her. I’d found an old phone cord and attached one end to the box, the other to a plastic cup. We’d drawn dials and controls inside the box, and attached soda bottle tops for knobs. I don’t know where it came from, but she had a toy space helmet on, which must have been our inspiration for making the space ship for her. No doubt someone gave it to her. Or Bob found it in the trash. He had a real knack for that. In the picture, Ron is sitting in her spaceship, looking at the camera. She’s wearing a green shirt with Snoopy and Woodstock that says “Jogging is my Game”. Her left hand is pulling her lips out wide on one side to make a face, and she’s sticking her tongue out. In her left hand she’s holding a doll.
“She was such a crazy little kid, wasn’t she? Or as Bob used to say, she was ‘onry’.”
“I know. Do you remember when she was real little and she’d get mad? She’d either bite you or she’d start banging her head against the wall. There was going to be pain involved one way or another!”
“Oh my God, I know, that was nuts. At one point Mommy just told us to bite her back, but I couldn’t ever bring myself to do it.”
“And the only way we could calm her down was to give her Coke.”
“Yes! We’d put Coke and a little water in her baby bottle. She was like five years old and still walking around drinking Coke out of a bottle looking bad-ass. It seemed so normal at the time, but now when I look back, that was kind of crazy, don’t you think?”
“There was a lot that was crazy back then.”
I picked a picture out of the box. This was another one of Veronica. She was stretched out on a blue sofa, asleep, and for some reason holding a mop. Was she playing Cinderella? Her red hair is shiny, catching and reflecting the light. Her little face is that of an angel. Man, she was the cutest kid.
“Remember this sofa?” I angled the picture for Mary to see. It was long and blue, and the back was tufted with buttons. Very fancy. At first glance, anyway. In the photo, you can see the fabric is shiny with dirt and oils, and the cushions are flattened from overuse. What is NOT obvious from the picture, is how low to the ground it sat.
“Oh yeah,” said Mary. “We had to watch TV looking through our knees.” This had been quite the score on Big Trash Night. We’d piled into Bob’s pick-up one night, on the prowl for whatever treasures might present themselves to us. And there she was, too good to be true, gleaming in the light of the street lamp. We quickly loaded her into the truck bed and hurried home before the previous owners could change their minds. There was a leg broken off, and another on the way out. Bob planned on building new legs, but in the meantime, so we could use it right away, he figured he would just remove the remaining legs and let it sit directly on the floor. But he and Mommy must have gotten into another fight, and he left or was thrown out, for the umpteenth time. The sofa, of course, never got new legs, and we continued to sit about a foot off the floor for years.
The next picture I picked up was one of Donald, Mary and I on the beach, our first winter on the Island. Donald and Mary were standing, Mary holding an armful of beach toys and looking like she had to pee. I was squatted down, with my arms around our cocker spaniel, Mitzi. We all looked cold, but happy. The wind is tugging my hair from the hood of my jacket, and Mitzi looks like she’s plotting her next break, so she could lead us on a chase down the beach.
How I loved that little dog.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You can’t do that!” I yelled.
“Yes I can. It’s not something I want to do, but there’s no other way. And you’d better watch your tone and remembering who you’re talking to, young lady.”
“But I don’t even know what you’re talking about! You can’t give Mitzi away, she’s our DOG, which is the same thing as our FAMILY! You wouldn’t give Mary away, would you?”
“We’ve still got fleas, and as long as we have a dog, we’re not going to be able to get rid of them, and I’m NOT going down that road again.”
“I can get rid of the fleas! I’ll gave her a bath everyday, I promise!”
“Sister, those flea baths just don’t work, you know that. Don’t you remember how bad it was in Surf City? We got rid of almost all of them, and now they’re coming back. I won’t have it, I WON’T!”
I knew that acting like a little child and getting hysterical would not work. I decided to take a more mature approach. I tried to steady my trembling lips and calm my breathing.
“Look. You’re right. The flea baths never kill ALL the fleas, but they get a lot of them. Mitzi will just have to live outside. I’ll build her a doghouse. I’m sure Bob can find me some scrap wood and he’ll let me borrow his tools. I’ll build her a nice, warm doghouse and she can stay right in the backyard.”
She looked at me, the steel resolve in her eyes fading a bit, the hardness in her jaw softening. I was getting to her. It would work. It HAD to work.
But just then she saw three year old Veronica scratching absent-mindedly at her ankle, and the steel came back, her jaw set.
“No. It’s already settled. There’s a nice older gentleman who wants her.”
“What? Where did HE come from? How do you know anyone wants her?” My fleeting act of maturity crumbled in an instant and I felt about five years old, on the brink of uncontrollable sobbing.
“I put in ad in the paper, and he called me. He’s coming to get her tonight, and there’s nothing more to be said about it.”
I looked up at her. I was 13 years old, and she was still a few inches taller than I was. I wanted to scream, I wanted to hit her, knock her to the ground, tell her there was no way I was letting her take my dog. But I knew I could do none of those things. Instead, I called Mitzi, and ran upstairs.
I lay on my bed, sobbing, stroking Mitzi’s honey-colored silken ears, and desperately trying to come up with a plan to prevent this from happening. I could run away with her. But as soon as that thought entered my head, it vanished. I had no money, nowhere to go. I could ask Daddy and Caggy to take her. But I shot that thought down, too. They had a baby now. And their prim, neat house. If children weren’t even allowed to sit on their precious green sofa, imagine what they would think of a dog. Maybe I could find some place to hide her, and I could go see her everyday to feed her. Maybe …
I woke some time later to Mommy calling my name.
“Annie? Anne, darlin’, bring Mitzi down.”
My throat felt swollen and tight, my face puffy. My cheeks were wet from tears and the area under my nose was slick with snot. I felt panic, but knew there was no way out of this. I couldn’t come up with any plan that would work. There was nothing to do but do what I was told. I heard a voice I didn’t recognize drifting up the stairwell. The old man. I hugged my dog close to me, and she licked the tears from my face. “Come on, girl. Time to go…”
