Authors: Robin Antalek
Bella thought of the roast beef recipe in her mother's handwriting. ”Did Grandma tell you that?”
“Oh no, my mother thought the âwifely arts' to be very important. How to run a house, care for your husband and children, that sort of thing.” She hesitated. “Not that there is anything entirely wrong in that, Bella. But you, my fabulous girl, you can do so much more, I'm sure of it.”
“Did that make you mad? What your mother wanted?”
“Mad?” Her mother cocked her head to the side. “I don't know. Times were different. Expectations were different. This is going to sound awful to say, but I never gave much thought to any of it.” She paused. “Until I had a daughter.”
Bella felt shame for dismissing her mother as just her physical body. There was so much she should be talking to her about, and she didn't. “My mother the feminist,” she half joked, wondering what her mother would have done with her life if she hadn't been chronically ill.
“An excellent title for your first book,” her mother laughed. “Tell me, did you get a dress for graduation yet?”
Bella arranged the slivers of grilled cheese sandwich on the napkin next to the soup. “I have one. It has to be white. I can wear this sundress I bought last summer.”
“But you should have something new! You only graduate from high school once. Linda or Ellen can take you shopping.”
Bella shook her head. As much as she liked her sisters-in-law, an outing with them meant their babies came as well, turning the event into a large, messy affair with enormous strollers and crackers and bottles and diaper bags bursting with baby paraphernalia. She'd rather wear what she had than spend a day trailing them around with a bag of animal crackers to keep the kids quiet.
“I'm sorry, Bella. You know . . .”
Bella nodded and took a large bite of her sandwich to avoid answering. Her mother was eating mechanically, dipping the long pieces of sandwich into the soup and bringing them shakily to her mouth. There was a crime scene dribble of tomato soup on the cloth Bella had placed on her mother's chest.
When they were done eating Bella cleared the dishes and carried them back into the kitchen. She set them in the sink under running water and stared out the windows. The day had been
warm but slightly overcast, the clouds swollen and low. But now the sky looked silver in the early-evening light. Bella got a lump in her throat and suddenly she needed her mother to see the sky.
Bella walked back into her mother's room. Her face must have betrayed her because her mother looked alarmed. “What is it?” she said in a shaky voice.
Bella moved to the bed and picked up her mother's hand. “I want to show you something. Outside.” Bella couldn't remember a time her mother had been outside for anything other than a doctor's appointment. There had been an aide once who insisted on what she called the fresh air cure, but she hadn't been employed long enough for her methods to see results.
“Bellaâ”
“I can lift you into your chair. I just did it. Please?”
Her mother looked around the room as if someone else would speak on her behalf, talk sense into Bella, and allow her to stay in bed watching television.
Bella moved the wheelchair close to the bed. She straightened the oval of foam and the lambskin in the seat and she grabbed a blanket, even though the temperature had to still be in the seventies. She looked at her mother. “Trust me.”
Bella navigated through the house slowly. Theirs was a one-story house, low and modern and open. Her mother peered at the rooms in a detached, polite manner, as if she were visiting a museum.
At the sliding door to the deck Bella struggled, slightly tipping the wheels over the track and onto the wooden floorboards. But it was only a moment, too short for her mother to protest, before they were out the door. Bella pushed her mother toward the railing and carefully put on the brake. When she looked at her mother her eyes were closed.
Bella touched her arm. “Mom, are you okay?”
Her mother opened her eyes slowly and blinked as if she had woken from a sound sleep. “Yes.”
Bella pulled a chair up next to her mother and sat down. “This is nice, isn't it?”
“It is.”
“Are you warm enough? Do you want the blanket?”
Her mother shook her head. “No, I'm fine, honey.”
Bella exhaled. From inside the house she heard the phone ring. She ran through the possibilities: the night nurse, again, with another explanation, or Ruthie or Mindy wondering when they were going to Frankie's, or her father checking in. She waited for the beep of the answering machine and then she heard a click. Her bet was on the night nurse. Her father or Ruthie would have left a message.
Her mother seemed not to have heard the phone. “You know, when we first moved into this house that line of trees wasn't there.” She nodded toward the back edge of their property, where a column of towering pines swayed almost imperceptibly. “We planted them ourselves and they couldn't have been more than five feet back then. Your father thought it would be easier to put in a fence. But I really wanted those trees. I had a vision.” Her mother laughed. “And that was the extent of my green thumb.”
Bella jutted her chin out in defense of her mother's ambition. “I like the trees. They used to be a great hiding place when I was little.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished she could take them back. The more incapacitated Bella's mother had become, the more a much younger Bella had retaliated by going places her mother could never reach her, testing to see if her mother was really wheelchair bound or if she could get up and walk if she wanted to. Bella recalled not only the shelter of
the trees but also the top of the jungle gym and the maple tree, which had been lost to rot years back but where the tire swing had provided a boost up to the branches and beyond.
Bella's mother laugh turned to a cough, a cough that quickly turned into an uncontrolled fit. The dry mouth was a symptom of one of the many medications she took, and Bella had forgotten to bring along some of the lozenges her mother sucked on all the time. As her mother's face turned bright red and her entire body shook with the effort, Bella jumped up and ran inside, returning with a glass of water and a handful of lozenges.
She tilted the glass at her mother's mouth so she could get a drink, repeating the action several times until the high color in her mother's cheeks slowly receded and her cough was only a raspy tickle.
Bella unwrapped a lozenge and slipped it into her mother's palm. She watched her pop it into her mouth, then sat back down, unsure of what to do next. Bella knew how to perform the simplest of tasks for her mother, but it scared her to imagine anything worse than a coughing fit if they were alone.
They sat in silence for a while until her mother said in a weak voice, “It's Friday night. Don't you have plans?”
Bella shrugged. “Frankie Cole is having a graduation party. It doesn't matter when I get there.”
“Is it safe to count his chickens before they hatch?”
It took Bella a moment to figure out what her mother meant, but then she laughed. “He is the smartest dumb person I've ever met. Third in the class, can you believe it?” Bella's mother raised her eyebrows and Bella laughed again. “If you ever saw any of them at a party you would have some serious doubts.”
“Well, boys are a little slower catching up. Your brothers were such fools.”
“That doesn't even seem like it happened in my lifetime, you know? They were both so much older than me.”
“You were my surprise.” Her mother's smile was so wide it covered half her face, making fishtail pleats of flesh at the corners of her eyes.
“Some surprise,” Bella said softly.
“I wouldn't have changed a thing, Bella.”
“Seriously, Mom?” Bella said. “How can you even say that? If you hadn't had me you might not have gotten sick.”
“Bella, listen, tomorrow is not a guarantee for anyone.”
Bella rolled her eyes. Her parents had been holiday-only Episcopalians and that was how they had raised her brothers and Bella. But the sicker her mother got, the more phrases acknowledging a spiritual world had entered her mother's lexicon.
“Doctors try their best with the science at hand,” her mother continued, “but they can't tell you what it's going to be like to live with your decisions while you wait out their medical conclusions. I wanted you before I knew who you were. It's important for you to know that.”
Bella looked down at her feet. She didn't want to have this particular discussion with her mother right now. Her once-white sneakers were now gray and smelly from being caught in too many rainstorms and wading at the shore, and were decorated with designs in Sharpie marker. The laces were shredded and the rubber was worn off in places. But she didn't want a new pair. She hated the look of new sneakers. “Do you want a bowl of ice cream?” she asked abruptly, standing without waiting for an answer. It was mean, this upper hand that she played, and she knew it and regretted it, but it still didn't prevent her from doing it.
She took the carton of vanilla from the freezer and scooped
until her hand hurt. She filled two bowls and carried them back outside, handing her mother a spoon along with the bowl. She placed a dish towel on her mother's lap and watched as her mother rested the bowl on her thighs.
Bella sat back down and buried her head in her bowl of ice cream. She didn't look up until she had three brain freezes and the bowl was almost empty. When the sliding glass door opened behind them she twisted in the seat, surprised that the light had faded so quickly. There was a milky film over her teeth and tongue and she wished for a glass of water.
“Ladies,” her father said as he walked toward them, trying hard to contain the surprise in his voice. He was without his suit jacket and his tie was looped around his neck untied, but his face bore the exhaustion of a day that was never-ending.
Bella looked over at her mother. The ice cream was nearly untouched and was now a puddle of white cream that threatened to overflow onto her lap. Bella reached for the bowl and put it down on the deck.
Her father steadied himself by grabbing on to the handles of the wheelchair before he bent over to kiss her mother lightly on the top of her head. Bella looked away. It was just as awful to witness a completely asexual kiss as it was to see a passionate one.
“Where's Sasha?” Her father squinted into the corners of the deck as if the nurse's aide were hiding.
Bella shrugged. “Broken car, no bus, I don't know.” Her mother was looking down at her lap. Bella knew she hated the presence of the nurse's aides in the house. She had reluctantly agreed to someone during the day and evening but refused to have a night nurse, making do from eleven until seven, when the day aide came in.
Her father sighed. “I'll call the agency, get someone new
tomorrow. Should we go inside?” His hands reached for the wheelchair's brake.
“Why don't you go make a drink and bring it out here?”
Bella and her father glanced at each other, surprised by Bella's mother's suggestion. Bella looked away quickly, collected the ice cream bowls, and stood up. Suddenly she felt an overwhelming urgency to run away. She walked back into the house without a word and deposited the bowls in the kitchen sink. When she looked back outside her father had taken her seat. His hand was on the armrest of the wheelchair, his legs splayed out in front of him. She could tell from the movement of her mother's head that she was talking. Occasionally her father nodded, even laughed. It should have made Bella feel better, but it just made her angry.
In the way
, way back of Frankie Cole's backyard, which was really a second lot that had remained wooded and undeveloped, there was a tremendous bonfire in the fire pit and constellations of people dodging stray sparks. Bella searched for a familiar face and almost immediately ran into Stephen Winters and Peter Chang carrying cases of beer.
“Take one,” Peter urged, his face red and puffy. “Or six.”
Bella took a can even though she really didn't want it. Peter huffed with effort and walked by, Stephen in the rear. He carried three cases to Peter's two and it barely looked like it was an effort.
“There you are! Finally!” Mindy grabbed Bella's arm. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Bella said, handing Mindy her beer.
Mindy took it and popped the lid. She took a large swallow before she sighed. “We're never going to see each other again.”
Bella laughed. “Minâwe live within blocks of each other. All of us.”
“Ugh, can't you just let me be dramatic for once?” Mindy smirked. “We are all going off to discover the world and then what? We've been together our entire lives!”
Bella shook her head and looked back toward the fire for Sam. “Vassar is in Poughkeepsie. Sarah Lawrence is a few train stops away in Bronxville. The world? Really?”
“The world is out there waiting for us. My guidance counselor, my parents, and
Seventeen
magazine have told me so.” Mindy frowned. “Whoa, why are you so bitchy?”
“I'm sorry,” Bella said quickly. It wasn't Mindy's fault that Bella wanted to get as far away from her house as possible tonight.
Mindy smiled again and squeezed Bella's arm. When she did, the beer she was holding tipped and spilled. She righted her hand quickly, only to spill more beer all over her shirt. “I'm drunk, I think.” Mindy burped. “Have you seen Peter?”
Bella pointed in the direction he had gone.
Mindy swayed. “You okay if I go? Ruthie is over there by the fire with a hundred of our closest friends, and Celia is around somewhere outrunning Johnny Ross.”
“Okay, I'll go find them. You don't need any help?”
“Bella, Bella, Bella.” Mindy lunged toward her and cupped Bella's face in both of her hands. “You are a gem. A true friend. But no, I am fine. I am going to find Peter Chang and we are going to kiss. It is probably a mistake, but I'm feeling it and I think he is too.”