“How soon?”
“We don’t know. It could be in an hour, or it could be a day.”
Dora looked up. “A day?” A day seemed like forever.
“Not longer than a day, I’m afraid.” Dr. Czerny held open the door to Mimi’s room.
• • •
Dora sat by the bed and held Mimi’s hand. Dr. Czerny had mentioned that it was unlikely that Mimi would wake up, but that it wasn’t unheard of. Dora didn’t ask Dr. Czerny what she’d heard.
Con had disappeared after dropping her off; Dora had left a message on the home answering machine, then dialed Gabby’s cell phone frantically the entire trip, getting no answer, and he promised to keep calling until he tracked her down, and to let Maux know, too. Dora listened for the clack-clack of Gabby’s shoes in the hall, but there was nothing but the beep of the machines.
A nurse swept in and performed a dozen small tasks, each one executed in precise and careful ways. Dora envied her. She wanted something concrete to do: a blanket to smooth, a temperature to take, something to write and check off on a chart.
Before she left the room, the nurse came over and put her hand on Dora’s shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said, and her voice was soft.
Mimi stirred briefly as the nurse left but did not wake. Her hair had lost its set and was greasy at the temples. Dora felt uncomfortable and embarrassed watching Mimi this way. It was so hard to see Mimi’s face slack, without the usual look of puzzled love that animated it whenever she looked at Dora.
Dora had just opened her mouth to say something—anything—to Mimi—“I love you,” or “I invited Con to come by for lunch today,” or “I think we should sell reproduction shoes in the store, like Maux wants”—when all the machines exploded in an arcade’s worth of beeps.
The nurse came back in, and moved quickly along the other side of the bed. “I just have to check this,” she said as she disconnected the machine.
Dora held Mimi’s hand tighter. She counted three breaths, and then the last one was held until Dora couldn’t imagine that it was just being held anymore.
Then the kind nurse led her away.
Dora sat in the room with the soothing green furniture and the soothing blue walls, where there was a machine in the corner playing soothing ocean sounds, if you needed more soothing. Dora needed more soothing but she didn’t think ocean sounds were going to do it. The ratio of boxes of tissues to chairs was two to one, which was a good thing, because when Con found her there she had shredded nearly an entire box, twisting them in her hands, before dropping them back on the table.
He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned in against him, dropping the last tissue in her lap.
Con didn’t say anything, which was one thing for which Dora could be thankful.
• • •
Gabby rushed into the room and all but tackled Dora in her need to hug her. Gabby’s makeup was smeared from crying, and her hair mussed.
“Honey, honey.” Gabby’s beringed hand was smoothing Dora’s hair. “I’m so sorry.”
Dora let the tears run down her face, silently.
Con stood, awkwardly. Bits of Dora’s torn Kleenex stuck to his jeans.
“You call me right away if you think of anything. I’ll call tonight, Gabby, and see if there’s anything I can do.” He patted Dora’s shoulder, gently. Dora put her face back into Gabby’s shoulder, and didn’t watch him leave.
• • •
Somehow they got all the paperwork done, made the right arrangements. Dora wanted to wait until they had gone home and brought back Mimi’s funeral folder, but Gabby insisted they make a start. “I know what Mimi wanted, we talked about it often enough. Don’t look so surprised, Dora, that’s what old ladies do. Girls plan weddings, and old ladies plan funerals.”
So they filled out forms and left things blank if they had to, and Gabby pushed it all through with a combination of bereavement and pure charm. Dora wrote things mechanically, checking boxes, answering things as Mimi would have wanted. Yes to “organ donation.” “Name of funeral home.” Signed next to “next of kin,” and then remembered: Camille.
“Camille’s going to make a fuss about Uncle John not being next of kin, isn’t she?”
“Maybe she will and maybe she won’t,” Gabby said. “I don’t care. I’ll sweep her out of the house with a broom if I have to. And that sniffy John, too. Mimi always said he was an adorable little boy once, but I can’t see it.”
Dora tried to smile, but she didn’t think her face responded.
• • •
In the car, Gabby tried to be soothing. “We’re going to head right home, and get you into a hot bath. And I’ll make you a cup of hot tea. And soup.”
Dora realized that Gabby was treating her as if she’d been caught out in the rain.
“It’s okay, Gabby. Don’t fuss.” That was what being an orphan really meant, Dora decided. No one to fuss over you.
The best thing about growing up with Mimi had been that Mimi never fussed. Mimi didn’t fuss if you only ate carrot cake for three days straight. “It’ll all balance out,” she’d say, eating a piece herself. Mimi didn’t give Dora a curfew: “Come home when you’re tired,” she’d say. But if Dora stayed out so late that she overslept the next day, Mimi wouldn’t wake her up. “Your choice, your consequence,” she’d say, when Dora tore downstairs, her ride waiting impatiently in the driveway. Dora didn’t stay out too late much. Mimi didn’t care if Dora saw an R-rated movie. “Talk to me if it makes you feel upset,” she’d say, or even plop down on the couch and deliver a running commentary, which Gabby called “MBO,” for “Mimi’s Box Office.”
Dora knew that Mimi’s lack of fuss was because her father had died. Mimi had done everything right with him, Dora knew. And he died anyway.
And so Mimi had turned her back on careful mothering, and had taken to a kind of detached grandmothering. Not that she didn’t love Dora; Dora’s first memory was of sitting in Mimi’s lap, playing a game of “I can hug you harder.” Mimi loved Dora, but Mimi also gave her up to the gods. Mimi knew a child could die before his mother, and thus a grandchild could die before her grandmother. No amount of nagging about eating vegetables was going to change that.
If Dora had come home soaking wet, from being caught in the rain, Mimi would have greeted her with a raised eyebrow, and let Dora draw her own bath. Maybe she’d make Dora a cup of tea, but only if she was making one for herself anyway.
The only thing Mimi ever fussed about was clothes, in a resigned way (“There are girls all over the world who would shoot somebody for a dress like that one, and you’re wearing cargo shorts and plastic shoes,” she once groaned, after Dora refused to wear yet another vintage gem), and school—“That’s your work,” she’d tell Dora. And, of course, what Dora was going to do after graduation.
• • •
They saw Camille from a block away, sitting on the front porch, and looking livid. She walked into the driveway to meet them.
“I’ve been calling and calling,” she started, and then stopped when she saw Dora’s face.
“Oh. Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” Camille’s voice softened. Her whole posture changed. Even her hair seemed less brassy.
She took the keys from Gabby’s hand and opened the door. “You all sit right down. I’ll make tea.” Gabby led Dora to the couch.
“I’ve put the kettle on,” Camille came in and announced, minutes later. Or maybe it was hours. Dora wasn’t sure. “There’s plenty to eat,” Camille went on, talking slowly and loudly, as she would to a foreigner. “There’s a ham, and someone made biscuits—they look as good as yours, Dora. I’ll just make up some plates and put them in the fridge for later.” She looked at Dora, her face kinder than Dora had ever seen it.
“I spoke with John. He sends his condolences and says he will come tomorrow; he doesn’t think he should drive tonight. His eyes aren’t so good after that surgery he had last year. I’m just going to run out for some ice cream.” She looked stern. “We’ll want it later. Believe me.”
Dora managed a weak “Thank you,” but Camille just waved. “Back in a bit.”
Dora stumbled over to the couch. “I’m just going to lie down here for a minute,” she mumbled. Gabby covered her with the afghan, and she was out.
Sometime later, she barely registered Camille coming in with eight flavors of Ben & Jerry’s; Gabby offering her some ham; and several phone calls, none of which she answered. Eventually Gabby helped her upstairs to her bed, and undressed her like a baby.
Chapter Eleven
D
ora slept late, later than she had for days. Weeks, even. Although it didn’t feel like sleep, real sleep; she felt semiconscious, like at the dentist’s. She heard the doorbell ring, people come in and out. She heard quiet conversations, peppered with her name, and Gabby’s voice, answering questions.
It was well after noon when she made it downstairs. She had hesitated in front of the closet—a black dress seemed so self-important, but she didn’t want to wear anything bright and seem disrespectful. She settled on navy blue. Dora hated navy blue.
Gabby was just closing the front door as she came down the stairs.
“Did we wake you, honey?” Gabby hugged Dora. “How are you feeling?”
Dora couldn’t answer. She managed a weak smile.
“You must be starving. Let me make you some eggs.”
Gabby made her a huge breakfast of eggs and ham. Dora spread strawberry jam on a leftover biscuit mechanically, and ate it without tasting it. She broke her yolks and drew her fork through them in circles on her plate. She cut up the ham and pushed it back and forth. Gabby kept her cup full of hot tea, and Dora dropped in sugar lump after sugar lump.
Gabby sat at the table across from Dora. She had found the folder marked “Funeral” from Mimi’s desk drawer. Dora looked away from it.
Gabby opened it up. “I’ve called everyone on Mimi’s list, and we’re all set for the chapel on Saturday.”
Dora just nodded.
“The man from Riffett’s is coming by today to get Mimi’s clothes. She had them all set aside, we don’t have to do anything.”
Dora nodded again.
“The store’s closed today, and it will be closed on Saturday, of course, but Maux called and she’ll go in tomorrow after her class. I can go in to open up tomorrow, if you want me to.”
Dora found her voice. “I want to do it. I want to be in the store.”
“We’ll have to figure out what to do when you go back to school, but I can pitch in for a while, and Maux said she’d take extra shifts until we sort things out.”
“I’m going to stay and run the store.” Until the words dropped out of her mouth, Dora hadn’t known she was going to say them. She didn’t feel any need to take them back. It felt like the right choice.
Gabby patted her hand. “You don’t have to decide now, you know. It’s okay. Mimi would have wanted you to take your time. Mimi wouldn’t expect you to give up on what you want to do. . . .” Gabby trailed off.
“Gabby, if I had something special I wanted to do, I’d do it. But I don’t. I just have things I don’t want to do, and the store isn’t one of them.” Dora took a breath. “I like the store. I like the dresses and the people and Maux calling people jackasses.”
Gabby smiled. “They usually are, at that. But you shouldn’t decide this based on a few cuss words and missing Mimi.”
“Mimi wanted my father to come into the store, right? I mean, not this store, the old department store.”
“Yes, but, honey, that was years ago. Decades. It’s not something you have to do, any more than it was what your father had to do. Even Mimi knew that, eventually.”
“It’s not just that,” Dora said. She swirled her tea around in the bottom of the mug. “I don’t know why, but I know I want to do it. I can always change my mind, right?”
“That’s true.” Gabby looked relieved. “Honey, you want another biscuit?”
The back door rattled, then opened. It was Maux.
“I don’t know if you want me, but I’m here. Just tell me what the hell I can do.” Maux swallowed Dora in a hug. Her face showed signs of crying.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Dora didn’t want to let Maux go.
“Anyway. I’m here. What can I do? I bet there’s a metric fuckload of stuff that has to get done, and none of it is anything anybody wants to do.”
Dora looked lost, but Gabby pulled out a list. “I was just trying to think of all the food we should have on hand for after the service,” she said. “Nothing makes people hungrier than funerals. Of course they’ll all bring things, but we’ll need drinks and some cold cuts and so on.”
Maux grabbed the list. “We’ll go to Costco. I know just what we need. C’mon, Dora, we’ll get you out of the house.”
Maux was driving a white Toyota. “Excuse the car. Harvey’s pissant Mustang is in the freaking shop again; this is the loaner.”
Dora smiled. “He can’t drive this, can he? So uncool. I bet he has your scooter.”
“Got it in one.”
The warehouse store was almost empty. Maux wrangled a huge cart out of the tangle in the parking lot, and Dora trailed behind. The door checker waved Dora through. “I’m so sorry about your grandma, honey,” she said.
“I forgot how small Forsyth is,” Maux said. “I don’t even know that lady!”
“It’s someone Mimi knows from the library, I think. She helps with the book sale, maybe?”
Maux shoved the cart to the deli. “Cheese, cold cuts, bread. Giant jar of mustard?”
They passed a ten-foot stack of Lorna Doones. “Those were Mimi’s favorite,” Dora said. She put her hand on a box.
“Sure, let’s get some. But doesn’t Gabby hate them? Don’t get too many, or they’ll just get stale when you go back to school.”
“I’m not going back,” Dora said.
Maux looked smug.
“Don’t look like that,” Dora said. “I’m not dropping out. I can finish up and graduate from here. I’m just not going to grad school. Not right away, anyway.”