A Slender Thread (13 page)

“Lacey is truly an angel,” she said. “Her oatmeal raisin?”

He nodded, not bothering to explain that Lacey had made her usual recipe with sweetened cranberries for the holidays. Lacey came to see his mother whenever Alex traveled, and she often brought banana bread or her celebrated cookies, feeling that it was important to keep up the morale of the staff. Alex hoped these periodic gifts of baked goods made them all especially attentive to his mother.

“Your mother is looking real pretty,” Donna said. “The hairdresser came in this week, gave her a cut and a perm.”

“That's great,” he said. “In time for Christmas.” He thanked her and headed down the hallway to the wing with his mother's room. He pressed the special code to open the locked doors and felt his heart close down as the doors shut behind him.

A small bulletin board with photographs was placed outside each resident's room as a reminder that the person who lived here had once had a regular life, had been able to recognize friends and family, and had functioned fully in the world beyond the Maple Tree wing.

The largest photograph on Edith's bulletin board was of her and her husband, Spencer, on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Lacey had hosted a dinner in their honor at the house in New Castle. Alex's dad, trim and erect in a dark suit, his gray hair still thick, had a determined expression, as if some part of his mind was at work fighting the cancer that would kill him the following year. Edith wore a navy wool dress and pearls.

Beside that picture was one of Alex's older brother, Daniel, and his Japanese wife, Noriko. They had not come to the party. Alex frowned, unable to shake a lingering annoyance. Daniel had been in the midst of completing his doctoral degree in bioengineering at the University of Washington when their dad was having trouble with the family company. If Alex hadn't gone to business school and stepped in to pick up the pieces, the company would have gone to ruin, leaving their mother with nothing. Yet his parents had always bragged about Daniel, the brilliant scientist who had the impressive degree and wrote books in his field. Daniel and Noriko rarely came east anymore. It amazed Alex how Daniel had slowly slipped out of his life, almost the way his mother had slipped away, her mind gone from her physical body. Now, in light of Lacey's problems, Alex hardly cared, and rarely thought of his brother.

There was also a photo of Toni and Wink on the dock at Bow Lake, when they were still little enough not to mind wearing matching red tank suits, and a picture of Lacey standing in her garden. Alex bent to look closer and swallowed. The photograph of Lacey must have been taken recently, as the newly planted peach tree in the picture looked much as it did now. Lacey had promised to bring Edith peaches once the tree had matured. Was something eating away at Lacey's brain even when she made the promise?

Alex tapped on the door. “Hey, Mom,” he said, pushing it open. His mother sat in her wheelchair next to the window overlooking the woods. At this time of year it was a depressing view. Alex squatted on the floor in front of her. “It's me, Mom, Alex.” Edith stared out the window as if he weren't there. “How about a little ride? I'll take you to the sunroom. Maybe we'll see that woodpecker again.”

He stood and went behind her chair, releasing the brake and pushing her toward the hallway while keeping up his pointless banter. The woman seated in the wheelchair was his mother and yet she was not his mother. His mother had always worn her hair up on her head in what she had called a French twist. The staff had explained to him that it was easier for them to keep his mother's hair short. Lacey had suggested the permanents to give her some curls. His mother's clothes had changed, too. She now wore elastic-waist pants and loose polyester tops that required no ironing. Ease of care seemed to dictate everything that went on at Rollinsford. The staff didn't have time to wash woolen sweaters by hand or take tweed skirts to the dry cleaner.

More than anything, this woman he wheeled down the carpeted hall was not his mother because this face remained smooth and expressionless, unsmiling and vacant. Unlike his mother, who loved a good conversation and was adept at putting people at ease, this Edith George, the one who was now closed off from the world, never said a word.

“Oh, my, she's so easy,” Donna Peters and others often said. “Our Mrs. George is no trouble at all.” The staff constantly reminded him that the disease was hardest on the family, that his mother was not suffering. And today, as usual, she appeared content.

This was not the case for all the patients. The last time Wink and Toni had come with Alex to visit their grandmother, the woman across the hall from her had howled nonstop.

“Like a wolf,” Wink had said.

“I hate it here,” Toni had added, always direct. She spoke the truth.

Alex hated it here too, but here was where his mother had to be. It was the only way they could manage.

Alex steered the chair to the large picture window that overlooked a terrace surrounded by fir trees. The outdoor furniture had been brought inside, but two bird feeders on tall poles were kept filled, and the husks of scattered seed indicated the popularity of this destination for the hungry birds that stayed north in the winter. Did birds ever lose their ability to sing? Were there birds that remained silent? Could birds live with other birds if they lost their normal call? Alex pulled himself away from the bleak, empty patio.

“I think we missed their dinner hour,” he said.

It was after four in the afternoon and nearly dark.

“Remember the year Dad took Daniel and me out to the woods to cut the Christmas tree?” Edith George said nothing. Her chin had lowered during the ride to the sunroom. Her eyes were closed. She may have been sleeping; he couldn't be sure.

Alex continued his reminiscence. “Do you remember that Christmas? You accused us of not having an artistic bone in our bodies. We came home with this lopsided specimen that you insisted would be impossible to decorate. That's when Daniel said we should ‘trim' the tree, meaning prune it to make a good shape. Dad thought that was really funny. You refused that kind of trimming and made Dad put it outside the kitchen window. A tree for the birds, you said. We covered it with chains of popcorn. Lacey loves that story and she does that every year. One tree for the house, one for the birds. That's thanks to you, Mom.”

A faint gong sounded in the hall. Lacey would be starting dinner and sipping tea while she chopped, stirred, and talked with the girls. Here, the residents ate at five. The nurses sounded the gong at four thirty to alert everyone to the coming meal, a pointless exercise in Alex's mind, as there was no one in this part of Rollinsford who had even the remotest idea what the gong meant. Yet how did he know that? Just because they didn't say anything didn't mean they had no thoughts at all in their minds.

“I think the birds have already eaten, Mom. That bell means it's time for you, too.” Edith opened her eyes and for just a second she looked around as if mystified as to where she was. She raised a hand, bony and white, her wedding ring loose below the knuckle, and waved once, as if to tell him where he should go. Her lips pursed in displeasure, then slackened. Her face resumed its blank expression.

“Here we go, then,” he said, trying to fill the void. With some relief, he guided the wheelchair out of the sunroom and down the dark hall to the dining room. Now he could leave her, walk to the parking lot, and start for home.

Tonight when he left the building tears stung his eyes. He reached his car, fumbled with his keys and swiped at the moisture. For the next few minutes he sat behind the wheel, incapable of moving, thankful for the darkness as tears he could not stop coursed down his face. As sad as his mother's condition was, she was an old woman. Lacey was too young to suffer. His body rocked with sobs. He moaned aloud and leaned back in his seat. There was no business plan for a tragedy. He had done his research—Lacey's illness was a venture that could not be saved. For the first time the loss felt devastating, as if his heart was being torn from his chest.

At fifty, Lacey was all the more beautiful to him. The few wrinkles around her eyes gave proof of the years of laughter they had shared. And talk. The best part of his day was lying close to her in the dark, just before sleep. They might have made love, or not, but they always exchanged a few final words. Sometimes they talked about the girls, his work, hers, something she had read, family. Lacey's voice made him feel like he was warming his hands near a fire or moving into a band of sunlight. He gravitated toward her, toward the soft curves of her body, toward the proximity of her voice. Once at Bow Lake, lying in bed in the early morning listening to the mourning doves, he was reminded of the sound of her words, a mellifluous tune softly entering the whorl of his ear.

Alex jerked his head against the headrest and thrust the key into the ignition. He turned it too far and the engine emitted a high-pitched squeal.
Goddamn
, he thought.
Goddamn. So goddamn unfair
. He turned the key more carefully the second time and put the car into gear.

 

Every December Margot went to the Metropolitan Museum to buy Lacey the annual spiral-bound desk calendar for Christmas. Each week of the year had two pages devoted to it, one page showing a reproduction of a painting from the museum's collections and the facing page divided into seven blocked spaces, one for each day of the week. Lacey saved these museum diaries from year to year. She marked down all the events that made up her family life—the usual ordinary dates: dentist appointments, car services, school activities for her daughters, dinner parties, family trips, visits from friends, birthdays. She would often add sticky notes to the pages when she needed more space to record the abundance of events. Sometimes she included the weather as if keeping a log: first frost, first snow of the year, rain again. Or other happenings in nature: huge storm, the Thomases' tree down, lilacs blooming, leaves need raking.

Margot was glad to give this book to her sister each year. In her early years in New York it was the only present she could afford. This morning, while making the purchase, she was haunted by the thought that Lacey's ordinary jottings would not go on forever. How many more years would she be able to live her normal life? It had been three weeks since Thanksgiving. She and Lacey had exchanged phone calls, but fewer than usual. Lacey had sounded almost normal, but she never spoke in long sentences. Then again, most conversations were like that.

One time when Margot had telephoned, Alex had picked up. He had sounded impatient, distant, almost rude, saying that he would have Lacey call her back. This behavior was unlike him, yet Margot knew that he must worry about Lacey even more than she did. He was probably coping as best he could. Margot decided that she, like Alex, would have to go along day by day for now. Sometimes the knowledge of Lacey's illness made her incredibly sad, and she found it difficult to concentrate on her work. Other days, she would be swept into the busyness of her life and forget about her sister completely.

On this annual trip to the museum Margot always went to see the Angel Tree. After leaving the gift shop she wound back behind the medieval collections with the darkly woven tapestries, the jeweled swords, the polished armor standing poised as if the men were still inside ready to fight, and the supine bodies of knights on their cold stone sarcophagi. Eventually, she came upon the large fir tree decorated with hundreds and hundreds of crèche scenes. Carved in Italy, the exquisitely made figures were a powerful reminder of what the Christmas story was all about.

Margot's father had taken her and Lacey to see this tree once when they were little girls. Their mother was away that year—at a special hospital, their dad explained, where Mommy could rest until she was feeling better. No one said the word “alcoholic” back then, at least not to young girls. Margot was six years old, Lacey ten. Surely Lacey must have known what was going on. The trip to New York was a special treat and probably planned so they would not have to endure a Christmas at home without their mother. They went to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and visited the Guggenheim Museum. Margot had started to run down the circular ramp and had to be reminded to be a big girl like Lacey. Their father had seemed lively, almost happy, during those few days, so unlike the silent man he was at home in Concord.

Margot stepped closer and studied the face of an angel hanging from a branch. It was a pleasure to have the tree all to herself for a few moments. The museum was quiet. Her father used to tell Margot and Lacey to keep quiet when their mother was having a “hard day.” A hard day meant a day when she stayed in her room, the shades drawn, a cool compress on her head.

Margot's father took the train from Concord into Boston each day to his job at an insurance company. They lived in a modest clapboard house near the center of town. Grandmother Winkler, her father's mother, lived in a big old Colonial house five miles away on what had once been a farm. Granny Winkler was a tall, freckled woman who dressed in wraparound skirts and cardigan sweaters, and “ruled the roost,” Margot and Lacey's mother used to say. Because of their mother's health, the girls often spent afternoons with their grandmother after school.

Helen Lacey, their mother, for whom Lacey was named, came from Charleston, South Carolina. Their father had met her in Virginia when they were both in college. While the other mothers in Concord volunteered in the historic museums, ran bake sales, carved pumpkins with their children, made costumes for school plays, and carpooled to sporting events, Margot and Lacey's mother rarely did anything, especially not on her bad days. When she was feeling well, she played the grand piano that took up most of the living room. Even now, the sound of piano music carried Margot back to the hours she spent lying on the floor by the piano listening to her mother play. Sadly, those memories of her mother before her “illness” became worse were few. Her other favorite memory was of her mother on the small glassed-in porch in the back of their house watering the geraniums that she tried to keep going through the winter. Margot could still picture her mother in the faded blue bathrobe that she called her wrapper, her lovely honey-colored hair hanging in a braid down her back. “You're my dearest one, Miss Maggie Mouse,” she'd say, and her soft hand would sweep across Margot's forehead. Her mother always spoke slowly, her words like clouds floating across the sky on a summer afternoon.