“Maybe you should have. I sure remember. She wanted everything you had. I don’t know how many times I heard her explain that she was born first and that you two weren’t supposed to be twins, as if you’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and belonged to another family.”
“There are no twins in our family that we know of. We used to tease my mother that she got too close to the heavy water in the lab.”
“She was a scientist?” Tracy asked helpfully.
“She was a cleaning lady.” My friends chuckled, but I didn’t. “It was less funny when she got sick.”
“Cancer?” Lydia asked quietly.
I nodded, not really wanting to go there.
Antonia was on a mission and didn’t mean to take a detour. Good and bad. She was practically hanging out of her chair. “What did Marcia look like when she showed you that picture?” she asked. “Can you remember the expression on her face?”
I closed my eyes and sat back, comforted despite myself by the warmth of the mug of tea. I really didn’t want to consider that Marcia had played a big role in this, despite all the things we’ve said to each other over the years.
But I remember exactly what Antonia suspected.
“I remember wondering why she was so pleased with herself, then figured it was because such a good catch, as my mother liked to say.”
Antonia eased back. “A good catch, if your sister had snagged him first. A particularly tasty one if Ms. Gimme stole him from you. He can’t be a dope, Maralys. She must have deliberately tried him. She must have lied.”
“Then why was she so angry about the mole?”
Tracy cleared her throat. “Maybe it started out badly but she really loved him and thought he really loved her when they got married.”
“That would be a cruel blow,” Gwen suggested and we all nodded.
Antonia shook her finger at me. “But you ran away. You big wuss, Maralys! I never thought you had it in you. I always thought that you had the balls to fight for what you wanted.”
“I was young and pregnant and confused!”
Antonia lit a cigarette, which she knows I hate, took a long draw and exhaled. “Then what’s your excuse now?”
“What excuse? We’ve aired our differences and can move on. Phew! I’m glad that’s behind me.” I reached for the chocolate.
Antonia started to cluck like a chicken.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re still chicken.”
We glared at each other across the room. The others had never seen us annoyed at each other and it had been years, but Antonia couldn’t just poke around with my nerve endings to amuse herself. “You’re just trying to stir me up.”
“Enough to react, yeah. Afraid to be happy, Maralys? Afraid to fall in love?”
“No, I…” I began furiously but Antonia cut me off.
“You are afraid to fall in love because you’re afraid to lose control. You don’t really trust any of us, Maralys, and you really don’t trust James.” She dragged and exhaled again, her gaze knowing. “But if you spend your whole life managing everything yourself, then you’re going to spend your whole life alone.”
“Maralys was married!” Tracy protested, defending me in her naivité.
“To a little boy who wanted a mommy,” I corrected quietly. “I could control him and fix his life, well, I thought so anyway.”
“And when you couldn’t save him from himself, you paid his debts anyway,” Phyllis’ tone was hard.
“I should have seen it coming!”
Antonia bowed low, her hands stretched out in front of her. “Oh, touch me with your infinite wisdom, omniscient Maralys.”
I should have been insulted, but it all made too much sense. “This is really not fair,” I grumbled. “I’ve worked so hard to keep you from knowing all about me and so you’ve gone and made up a bunch of stuff. It’s true that James and I had history, it’s true that we had to vent, but it’s also true that it’s done now. Over and out. Case closed.”
Antonia grinned, unpersuaded. She smoked and watched me, and my heart skipped around like a wild thing.
I swallowed, then took a scalding sip of tea.
“We often have to sacrifice something to gain something greater,” Khadija said quietly. She squeezed my shoulders and I looked into her dark eyes, seeing all the sacrifices that had brought her to her current success. Here was a woman who had lost her child, due to the lack of a simple preventative measure. One that she had not known about and evidently neither had her doctor.
“You never talk about your daughter.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Maybe next time.” Tears welled in her eyes. “But I would have been very happy to never acknowledge what had happened. Her disability and subsequent suffering was at least partly my fault. I had to find some goodness in what she went through, if just to ease my guilt. Preventing even one baby from developing that disease is all I ever wanted.”
I was humbled by her bravery. “Do you talk to your other daughters about her?”
Khadija smiled and one of her tears slipped free. “All the time.” Her voice was hoarse. “I think every day of what she might have become. And then I wonder whether there was a divine plan for what happened.”
She shook her head, marveling. “We have raised so much money for research and spread the word of prevention to so many expectant mothers. All because I said “my baby died” when I would rather have not done so. I never imagined that out of grief could come such success.” Her grip was urgent on my shoulders. “Take a chance, Maralys, and you may be surprised. Life is too short to cower.”
Life is too short to cower. I liked that. I looked at each of them in turn, their expressions expectant, and I loved every one of those women with painful intensity. I knew that they would be there for me, that they had always been there for me, even though I had never had the grace to trust them before tonight.
Even though they’d twisted what I said into something it wasn’t. They meant well and I was touched by their concern.
“All right,” I said, then spoke more vehemently. “That’s enough advice for Maralys. I’m new to this stuff so go easy on me. And please, don’t tell me that we have to have a group hug.”
They laughed and we had a celebratory gorge of chocolate, chattering like magpies all the while. When they left in the wee hours of the morning, carefully carpooling so that no one was on the evil streets alone, each one hugged me tightly.
Individually.
“Call if you need me,” Antonia said and nearly broke my ribs.
“I will.” And to my amazement, I meant it. “Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. I forget to tell you. I’m having a party and you all have to come.”
* * *
My dream came again, the next night, but then I had half-expected that it would. I’d been fretful since the Ariadne’s left and that - or the consumption of melted cheese right before sleep - always conjured up that airline terminal. I was stewing about James and his deadline, my father and my life, as well as getting this software delivered brilliantly and on time.
Nothing else, all right?
The dream was every bit as upsetting as all the other times I’d had it. And it was exactly the same.
Except that it didn’t stop. When I was pounding on the glass, watching my Cashin bag go around, a woman came through one of the doors marked NO ADMITTANCE. EMPLOYEES ONLY.
But this woman didn’t look like a ramp rat. I pressed my face to the glass to see better. She was wearing a hospital gown in ghastly green and white terrycloth slippers. She was on an IV drip and pushing that little rolling rack ahead of herself, leaning on it for support. She headed straight for my bag, charting a course to intersect it with the least amount of walking for her.
And she plucked it off the conveyor. She flashed some cheek when she went for it and I saw how thin she was. I swallowed, maybe sensing what was to come. Even in a dream, it was incongruous for a woman like this to be in a plac
e like this and even in my dream, I knew it.
Something important was going to happen.
I stood and stared, my fingers clenched, hoping against hope that she wasn’t taking my bag for herself. She slipped it onto her shoulder, the one without the IV, confirming my worst fears. Then she turned slowly, as if it pained her, and looked straight at me.
I gasped and took a step back. You see, I knew who she was, though I hadn’t recognized her at first. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to recognize her.
But how could I not have known my own mother?
I remembered that I hadn’t recognized her when I first got to the hospital, all those years before. She had lost so much weight, she had been pale and her hair had fallen out. She had been a faded unfamiliar specter of my mother and you had to look for the truth in her smile. You had to hide your shock.
Not that she would have known the difference. Oh yes, my father was not the only one to fail Mary Anne. I came too late and too changed for her to remember who I was.
And now, this specter danced for me again.
Or more accurately, she hobbled across the cheap linoleum tiles of my nightmare airport terminal, as if she might demand an accounting for my failures. I went to the sliding door, prepared to accept whatever she doled out to me. Repentant, head bowed. Forgive me, Mother, for I have sinned. She opened it from her side by stepping on the tread, a whish of air, then nothing happened.
I looked up tentatively and realized that she held the bag out to me. An offering from the other side.
But it wasn’t what I wanted.
I tried to take her hand, tried to speak, but she shook her head. “This is all you need,” she whispered, her words like a wraith in the wind.
She offered the bag again, and this time, I took it.
She waited, expectantly, so I opened it. The bulge in the bag was a ball of wool. I pulled it out and stared at my mother.
“Don’t be afraid, Mary Elizabeth,” she said in that same soft voice, then blew me a kiss. I leaned forward, welcoming this almost-touch, expecting to feel the impact of that air kiss, wanting some contact before she left again.
Instead, everything went black around me. The terminal disappeared, my bags were gone, my mother had faded without a trace. There was only darkness and impenetrable shadows, the kind that put a primal part of me on full alert.
The ball let off a faint glow and when I looked, I saw that I held only one end. A string unwound from the ball and snaked off into the endless darkness, faintly luminescent for as far as I could see it.
“Don’t be afraid,” my mother had said. I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but this dark was different. It was darker.
Brooding.
Breathing.
That was when I realized that I wasn’t alone in this void. I heard a stirring of some great beast far behind me. It snorted and I thought it pawed its feet.
Unfathomable depths ahead and a nameless threat behind. I made my choice but quick.
And I swear to God that as I began to run, winding the string as quickly as I plunged into mysteries I could not name, I felt the steam of the minotaur’s breath upon my butt.
* * *
I woke, sweating and panting as before, my loft looking like an alien landscape to me.
“Don’t be afraid.” The whisper clung to the edge of my consciousness like a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. And like that cobweb, it drew my attention over and over again, taunting me to get rid of it, even though it couldn’t easily be reached.
Afraid. Not a word I associated very often with myself, but there it was. You have to give some credence to the wisdom of dreams and to your own mother.
Afraid. Hmm. Okay, I was afraid as to how it might look if James and I had any kind of relationship beyond the usual sister-in-law/brother-in-law one (sordid), and what people would think (slut steals twin’s hubby). Then there were the questions of why James was so determined to pursue me (sex sex and more sex; convenience), what effect it would have on the boys (incapable of committing to a pair bond ever in their lives), and the big whopper - whether it would really work out in the end or my heart would get ripped out and stopped flat under those perfectly polished Italian oxblood oxfords.
There you go. I had to catch my breath. A whole army of fears flushed from the woods. Who’d even known they were there?
Cluck, cluck, cluck. I’ve never looked good in red.
As in ‘little red hen’. ‘Chicken’ for those of you handshaking at less than 56K baud.
I exhaled and swung my feet out of bed, shoving my hands through my hair.
What I needed was a good strong coffee. Espresso was the ticket.
* * *
I waited until Sunday, so he’d had a couple of days without the pleasure of my company, but then I went to visit my dad. James’ assurances were all well and good, but I needed to see the wounded leprechaun myself.
He was staring out the window when I arrived, so I took the chance to have a look before declaring myself. There was no one in the other bed now, and the rubber-covered mattress was stripped bare. The sunlight came through the big industrial windows and touched my father’s face, making his skin look as fragile as rice paper.
The sky was a giddy blue, the same hue as the rubber mattress cover and my dad’s gown. It made his eyes look tired and faded, instead of the vibrant hue they usually were. He was paler and thinner than I recalled, and looked as likely to blow away on a whiff of wind as a dandelion seed.
It shook me, if you must know. Guess I’m kind of used to having him around. A regular sparring partner and all that.
“So, how are you feeling?” I asked, not quite as antagonistically as I would normally. He turned and looked at me, his eyes bright in his face. They must have been giving him something, because his pupils were small, but he seemed alert. We stared at each other for a long time and I wondered how much he remembered of the other night.
He turned back to the window, his gaze following the swoop of a couple of seagulls. “I have been talking to your mother,” he admitted quietly.
The hair prickled on the back of my neck, but I sauntered into the room as if untroubled. “That’s a helluva trick. She’s been dead a long time.”
He flicked a glance at me. “I’ve not forgotten that, Mary Elizabeth.” His tone was not accusing and we eyed each other again, somewhat uncertain how to proceed.
It seemed that we were both shaken by his fall.
“Sounds like you have. I warned you not to go expecting me to remember all your stuff as well as mine. I’m already low on RAM cache.”
My father ignored this in a most uncharacteristic way. I wondered, if you must know, exactly what kind of little prezzies were in the IV drip to keep him mellow.
His brow tightened for a moment, his gaze on those birds again. “Perhaps I’ve been dreaming of her in this place.”
I perched on the side of the bed. “Is that different? Don’t you usually dream of her?”
His gaze fixed on me. “Do you?”
It seemed pointless to dodge the question. “Yes.”
My father seemed intrigued by this. “What does she do in your dreams?”
I didn’t know how the heck we got on to this, but it didn’t seem as if we would get off it soon. “She talks to me, sometimes.” I shrugged. I wasn’t going to treat him to the full buffet of bizarre. “Sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she smiles, as if everything is going to be okay.”
My father smiled. “Is it?”
“Hardly ever.”
We both smiled at that.
My father sobered and turned his narrowed gaze on the birds again. “No, it hardly ever is. But then, your mother always had such faith.”
“What does she do in your dreams?” I asked when he looked troubled. “Here. Lately.”
My father shook his head minutely. “She’s just here.” He looked around the room then, glancing at the stainless gizmos and the pastel painted walls, the functional furniture and hand
rails and monitoring equipment. It was as if he sought a glimpse of her in these surroundings while he was awake, maybe as proof that she could visit him at night. “She didn’t want to die here, you know.”
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. “I didn’t think she had a lot of choice.”
Now, he was stern, the disciplinarian I remembered from my childhood. “We all have choices, Mary Elizabeth, and we had best do our best to make good ones. We have to live with the choices we make.” His vigor faded and his voice faltered. “Even the bad ones.”
I waited but he didn’t continue. “What bad choices?”
“Your mother didn’t want to die here. She was quite insistent. She wanted to go home.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“It was between the two of us, as all such discussions should be. Two became one when we made our vows each to the other. We made choices together. We stuck together.” He sighed and again, the heat left his voice. He looked beaten, which isn’t how I’m accustomed to seeing my dad. “Except that last time.”
“You wanted her to stay here?”
My father frowned, the birds clearly fascinating him. “I didn’t know there was a choice. There was less talk in those days of home care and counseling and such. The doctors thought she should stay here. I guess I thought they could fix it, that they could heal her.”
“Even cancer?”
“Especially cancer. They seemed to have the most tools to use against it.” He shook his head. “You have to remember, Mary Elizabeth, that in our youth, there were not so many hospitals. Certainly not for poor people as your mother and I were, all those years ago, back in the villages of Ireland. Babies were born on kitchen tables and the sick died in their own beds. Many suffered and many died young. You cannot blame us for believing, after all we had seen, that this modern way was best.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
“At the end, though, we all become the child we once were. All she wanted was to go home, to die in her bed as was right and proper. Maybe I was afraid. Maybe I was hoping she’d recover. Maybe I thought that the only salvation for her was in this place of miracles.” His lips tightened. “Maybe I still thought that a gracious God would answer my prayers.”