Irises

  “Yes,” Reverend Soto said. It sounded as if he wished he weren’t. “Is there any hope of regaining consciousness?”

  “No,” said Kate, her head down.

  “You don’t know that,” Mary said to her, raising her voice. “You’re not God.”

  Kate turned, a shocked look on her face. Before she could say anything, Reverend Soto spoke. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. What’s your mother’s name?” he quickly asked Kate.

  “Catalina.”

  “Ahh. You’re named after her,” he said, smiling.

  Kate nodded. Reverend Soto lifted his hands and held them over Mama. “Let us pray,” he said. His voice got deeper and more solemn. “Lord, we pray for the soul of Reverend Romero and for the soul of Catalina. We pray for Kate and Mary, that you be with them these hard days. Let your Holy Spirit come to console them and guide them in the difficult decisions that await them. Amen.”

  An awkward silence followed. Then Mary whispered, “Mama’s not dead.”

  “Pardon?” Reverend Soto asked.

  “You prayed for Mama’s soul like she was dead, like her soul was with Papa’s. Her soul is here, with her, with us, right now.”

  “Mary, what’s come over you?” Kate asked.

  Mary searched for an answer, but she couldn’t find one.

  Kate and Mary had always shared a bedroom. When they were babies, they slept in adjacent cribs. Later they slept in the same bed. Now they each had a single bed, separated by a nightstand, with a lamp that Kate used to read late into the night. The night after the burial, they lay next to each other in the dark, awake but silent, each enveloped in her own memories and thoughts.

  Kate replayed the events of the past few days. They had stood in a receiving line at the funeral home for four hours shaking hands and hearing the same condolences: “I’m sorry for your loss. If there is anything I can do for you, anything at all, please let me know.” She smiled to herself now and shook her head. She wondered if any of them had really meant it. Maybe it was the way they said it — like they were trying too hard to sound sincere. What would they say in a month if she called them up and told them they didn’t have any money to pay for their mother’s care? How would they take care of Mother? Of themselves? These questions circled tirelessly in her mind.

  Then there was Simon. Simon had taken it upon himself to stand next to her in the receiving line, a gesture that bothered her because it expressed that their relationship was more serious than it really was. He had been her boyfriend for a year and a half. Did that give him the right to stand next to her? Maybe it did.

  Thank goodness for Bonnie. Every once in a while she would come up to Kate in the receiving line and whisper a comment that would make Kate smile. Other than that, the only good thing about the whole experience had been Reverend Soto. His eulogy had been fiery, the opposite of the mousy eulogies she had always heard. She remembered his voice and the way he looked at her when he spoke. She didn’t think the portrait of Father he painted was totally accurate, but it was an inspiring portrait nevertheless. Reverend Soto had described Father as a warm, loving man. Father was a loving man, she agreed, but his love was solid, lasting, hard, and not necessarily warm. It was unfortunate, especially for Mary’s sake, that Father Hogan was in Mexico with his church’s youth group and was not able to speak.

  She knew Mary was awake, but thought she’d ask anyway. “Mary, are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I was just thinking about Mama and wondering whether she can tell that Papa died.”

  Kate was silent for a few moments. “Mary . . . don’t do that to yourself. She’s not capable of understanding.”

  “She’ll miss him, though, somehow,” Mary said. “Do you really think it was all right not to allow any of the people who came to the house to see her? They wanted to pay their respects.”

  “We made the right decision. It would have seemed like some kind of show, like putting her on display. People would feel sorry for us more than they already do.” One of the ladies who came to the house had said, “It’s so sad that Catalina is not able to take care of you now that you’re all alone.” She spoke with such pity in her voice that it made Kate’s stomach turn.

  “What if Mama knows what’s going on deep down?” Mary said.

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Mary was silent.

  Kate continued, “She’s not aware of anything. You’re creating false hopes for yourself. Her mind is gone and won’t ever come back.” Her voice was full of tenderness.

  There was a long pause, and Kate feared her words might have hurt Mary. But it was important that Mary realize the truth once and for all, especially now that Father was dead. It was just the two of them, and there was no room for illusions.

  “I saw Papa’s soul leave him. That’s why I didn’t call 9-1-1,” Mary whispered.

  “His soul?”

  “It was like a beautiful, strange light with a warm glow. When I went to the bedroom to check up on Mama and I saw that he wasn’t breathing, I sat next to him on the bed and saw this light, his soul, slowly disappear.”

  “How do you know it was his soul?” Kate asked.

  Mary paused. “I used to see a light coming from inside of people. I saw this light all the time when I painted, and I saw it again when Papa died. I think the light came from his soul. What else could it be?”

  “Oh.” Kate kept herself from responding. What could she say? Mary was so different from her. She belonged to Father’s world, the world of spirits and invisible things. How is your soul? Father had asked the afternoon he died. Kate felt that soul was just another word for the mental processing that went on inside our heads, for consciousness, and consciousness expired when the body ceased to function — or even before, as with Mother.

  She could pinpoint the exact moment when she stopped believing in soul as an entity separate from consciousness. It happened a month or so after Father brought Mother home. Kate was rubbing Mother’s legs with alcohol when all of a sudden her mother began to make whimpering noises, as if she were having a bad nightmare.

  “Mama, are you okay?” Kate asked instinctively, forgetting her mother’s condition. She shook her gently, but the more she shook, the more the whimpering increased until it began to sound like a baby crying. Kate climbed onto the bed and hugged her mother tightly, and her tears came convulsively, in rhythm with the noises her mother was making. She stayed like that, her arms around her mother, long after Mother had returned to her silence.

  That was when she stopped believing in a soul, or in another world where souls go after the death of the body, or in a being that is spirit and creates all souls. There could not be a soul trapped inside her mother’s body. The sounds her mother made that day, the sounds of anguish, could not be made by a being that still felt pain, a being that at some level was able to understand her own pitiful condition. It would be cruel to have it otherwise.

  “Kate,” Mary continued, “I know you may not agree with what I did. But I wanted you to know why I didn’t call 9-1-1. I was certain he had died and I wanted to let his soul leave his body peacefully.”

  “You should have called 9-1-1,” Kate said.

  “But —”

  “You could have saved his life.”

  “His life was gone, Kate.” Mary’s words came out with force.

  “Let’s drop it. What’s done is done.”

  Another silence. Then Mary spoke again, changing the subject. “Mrs. Guerney took good care of Mama while we were at the funeral. Thank goodness for Talita and Mrs. Guerney. They’re saints.”

  “Yes, thank goodness for Talita and Mrs. Guerney,” Kate agreed. Talita was the nurse who came over for a couple of hours each day to replace the bag and clean the tube that provided Mother’s nutrition and hydration. Mrs. Guerney came when Father went out on church business. The rest of the time, it was Mary and Kate’s job to take care of Mother —
putting ointment on her lips, moving her arms and legs gently so they wouldn’t atrophy, changing her diaper. Mary also kept her company, listening to the radio, talking to her, waiting for her to wake up one day. Sometimes it seemed as if all their free time was given over to Mother. Kate’s mind came back to the same questions again: How would they pay for her care without Father?

  “We’re on our own now, Mary.”

  It took a few moments for Mary to respond. “We have Mama.”

  Kate sighed. Sometimes it was impossible to talk to Mary. “Mother is someone we need to take care of. I mean, we need to take care of ourselves now.”

  “There’s Aunt Julia.”

  “I don’t think we can count on her for any help.”

  “She’s Mama’s only sister.”

  “She didn’t even come to the funeral,” Kate said.

  “She couldn’t leave her beauty shop at such short notice. We did rush things.”

  “No, we did the right thing. It was too painful to be sitting around . . . waiting.”

  “Anyway, you need to be nice to her when she gets here tomorrow. I know you don’t like her.”

  “I’ll try,” Kate said grudgingly. But it was going to be hard. Kate thought Aunt Julia was very bossy.

  “We’ll be all right, won’t we?” There was apprehension in Mary’s voice, as if the possibility that they might not be all right had just dawned on her.

  Kate suddenly remembered that her father had life insurance. She knew about it because one day, a few weeks before, he’d asked her to come to his study. He opened a desk drawer, showed her a folder marked Personal Documents, and told her that was where he kept the insurance and tax records and other important papers. She had a fleeting notion to get up and look for the insurance policy, but she decided to wait until morning. She wondered whether the life insurance would be enough. “Yes. We’ll be all right.”

  “At least we have each other,” Mary said.

  “Yes,” Kate answered. She closed her eyes and sighed.

  What color was a sigh? How would she paint it? It would be impossible to find the right color for it. Purple? Indigo? Indigo with tinges of light blue, maybe. Kate’s sigh reminded Mary of Van Gogh’s irises, the ones she had been trying to paint.

  When Mary was a child, Mama would save her drawings and paintings and show them to Papa when he came home. Mama framed one especially beautiful drawing, a picture of a bald eagle flying on a blue-sky background, with rays of golden light illuminating its flight. Papa kept the picture on his desk until the day Mama came home from the hospital. Then he put it away somewhere. Mary never knew where.

  Removing the picture from his desk marked the beginning of Papa’s change in attitude toward Mary’s paintings. It was as if Mama’s accident meant they could no longer waste time on impractical things. He thought that people who painted were weak, unable to survive in the harsh world, and he was afraid for her.

  Something else happened to her painting then. Making art had always come naturally to Mary. It was simply something she did without thinking. Through painting she could see the light that dwelled in all things, in all people. Those who saw her paintings were amazed. They could not believe that someone her age could paint like that. Even then, people offered to buy her work.

  But after Mama’s accident, the very act of painting was not the same as before. Painting became a duty rather than a joy. The light was no longer seen. She continued painting because the sense of loss was less when she painted, but she knew in her heart that something was missing. Her painting now took place in darkness. The feeling behind the painting was gone.

  Nevertheless, people admired her work. When Mary was a freshman, her art teacher, Mr. Gomez, came to the house to convince Papa to let her stay after school for extra studio time. Mary had never heard anyone speak to Papa the way Mr. Gomez spoke to him that day. “You don’t understand,” he said. “She has an extraordinary gift. She needs to learn a little technique, but not much. She’s already more original than people who have their stuff hanging in galleries.”

  “She needs to look after her mother after school,” Papa answered.

  She knew that when Papa spoke that way, there was no moving him. But somehow Mr. Gomez convinced him. He reminded Papa how he had entered one of Mary’s paintings — one she had done before her mother’s accident — in a citywide competition, and it had won first prize and a five-hundred-dollar award. Perhaps it was the money that convinced Papa. They were always in need of extra cash.

  Mary waited to make sure that Kate was asleep. As hard as Papa’s death was for Mary, she knew it had been harder for Kate. In the midst of all her sorrow, Kate was worried about how they were going to live without him. Mary worried too. After a long, long time, Kate finally stopped tossing and turning. Mary got up softly, put her slippers on, and slipped out of the room. When Papa was alive, the girls kept the door to their room closed, but this past week they had kept it open so they could hear Mama. Mary glanced in and saw that Mama had her eyes closed and was breathing softly.

  Then she walked to Papa’s office, closed the door, and turned on the lamp on his desk. Papa had a brass lamp with a cream-colored shade that cast a soft glow over the room. One of Mary’s earliest paintings, the one that won the five-hundred-dollar award, was a watercolor still life of Papa’s study. It showed the huge oak desk with its three drawers on each side. The wall in front of the desk was blank, because Papa didn’t want to have any distractions while he was writing his sermons. On top of the desk she had painted an open Bible, a few white sheets of paper, an old-fashioned fountain pen, and a bottle of ink. She invented the fountain pen and the bottle of ink because she thought it would give the scene a quiet, peaceful mood. She depicted a room where thinking and writing were done slowly. In reality, Papa used a pencil and an old Olivetti typewriter.

  Mary looked for the crayon drawing of the bald eagle. She wanted to know that Papa had not thrown it away. She wanted to believe that deep down Papa valued her painting, even if she no longer did. The drawing was not in her parents’ bedroom, because she had searched for it before when she was taking care of Mama. Now she opened all the drawers in the desk, starting from the bottom. She lifted out the folders and papers in the drawers and looked carefully. There was a gray file cabinet where he kept all his old sermons and she looked inside it, but she couldn’t find any of the paintings or drawings she had given Papa over the years — not just the drawing of the eagle, but the pictures she had given him for his birthday or Father’s Day.

  Mary sat on the floor and put her hands over her eyes. Papa had thrown away the drawing of the eagle. He had thrown away all the paintings and drawings she had ever given him, and she felt a terrible and dark loneliness.

  Aunt Julia arrived the following morning. She came into the house, gave Mary and Kate each a hug, dropped her turquoise suitcase, and plumped herself down on the sofa, breathing heavily, her hair disheveled. She was thinner and paler than the last time Kate had seen her. Kate expected her to make some excuse as to why she hadn’t attended the funeral services, but Aunt Julia was silent on the subject. Instead, after telling them how the taxi from the airport had not been air-conditioned, she looked directly at Kate and asked: “So what are you girls going to do?”

  “We’re going to be okay,” Kate said. Aunt Julia had not been in the house more than five minutes and Kate could already feel her blood rising.

  “Who’s going to take care of Catalina while you girls go to school? I can’t stay here forever. I have to go home soon.”

  She has to take care of her cats, Kate thought.

  “Aunt Julia, would you like to go in and see Mama?” Mary said.

  Aunt Julia ignored her. “Did your father leave you any money?”

  “I have to find out,” Kate said coolly. “There’s an insurance policy.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  “That’s something you need to c
heck quickly. You’ll need to file a claim and send a death certificate. When my Phil died, it took a couple of months to get a check from the insurance company. They’ll do whatever they can to keep from paying.” Aunt Julia seemed to think they were little children who did not know the ways of the world. “Do you still have a nurse come every day?”

  “Yes,” Mary answered. “Talita. She loves Mama.”

  “How much does she charge?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate responded. She made a mental note to find out how much Talita would charge to stay with Mother for the hours she and Mary were in school. For the time being, Aunt Julia would have to do.

  “I don’t know either,” Mary said.

  Aunt Julia looked at them for a moment before taking out a tissue and coughing into it. “Well, those are things you girls need to know.” Kate thought that Aunt Julia looked like a dried-up prune. All her freshness and juice were gone. “What about the house? How long can you stay here?”

  Kate didn’t answer, so Mary said tentatively, “I’m sure we can stay here for a while.”

  “They told you that?”

  “No, but Papa was the minister for nineteen years. They’re not going to just kick us out.” Mary’s bold response made Kate smile.

  “Pssh!” Aunt Julia said.

  “We haven’t had a chance to look into a lot of things.” Kate stared briefly at Aunt Julia in case she had any notions of running their lives.

  “I’m just trying to help,” Aunt Julia said.

  Kate grinned. She could not believe how Aunt Julia had started asking questions the minute she walked in. She thought of Reverend Soto. Maybe she could talk to him about the house, confirm with him that they could stay as long as they wanted.

  “Aunt Julia, do you want me to take your suitcase to Mama’s room?” Mary asked.

  Aunt Julia shook her head quickly as if the very notion frightened her. “Poor Catalina,” she said. “I wanted to come to visit her more often, but I couldn’t. I . . . haven’t been all that well. And then, to be honest with you, there was Manuel. I just couldn’t face the fact that he was driving the car when they had the accident. If he hadn’t been so careless, she wouldn’t be like this.”