The Virtues of Oxygen (5 page)

“And speaking of not worrying,” Celia went on, “I’m going to send you this month’s check. I’ll put it in the mail tomorrow when I pay
my bills.”

Holly nodded, as though her mother could see her. “Thank you, Mom,” she said. “I know I say this all the time, but you’re my savior. I know it’s just a house, but it’s our security. It’s all
we have.”

“Say no more, Holly. It’s really nothing . . . but I think I should go now. I can’t seem to keep my
head up.”

“Okay then. I’ll call you
tomorrow.”

Holly hung up and went to bed, but she didn’t fall asleep for hours. She kept parsing the conversation, trying to sort out whether her mother had sounded all right or not quit
e herself.

When the call came the next day, Holly knew. The phone number on her cell was that of her mother’s next-door neighbor, who wouldn’t be calling her for anything other than an emergency. All her worst fears were confirmed. Her mother had suffered a stroke the night before, probably around the same time Holly had tossed and turned in bed worrying a
bout her.

Holly sat completely still on the hard wooden pew for Aunt Muriel’s funeral, internally reassessing everything she knew about her life. Her mother was sick and might not recover. She, Desdemona, and Henderson would now be the ones who talked to the doctors, who made decisions, who sorted through brittle, decades-old documents to find out what their mother would have wanted. Holly was numb wi
th shock.

The three of them were the only mourners besides Aunt Muriel’s even more ancient next-door neighbor and the woman who sold Muriel knitting supplies. Holly tried to pay attention as a minister who looked like a bullfrog, his bulging neck wider than his head, gave a stock eulogy. She studied the casket, its fine wood grain shining in the amber light filtering through the stained glass, and briefly wondered who, in the end, would pa
y for it.

On the drive home from the funeral, Holly’s thoughts returned to the mail and the check she was expecting. She felt guilty worrying about money when her mother was lying in a hospital bed, but
the house
. The mortgage. She had never missed a payment, even after Chris’s life insurance ran out. She realized for the first time that she could, in fact, lose the house, and that terminology had her imagining the futile drive around Bertram Corners looking for it on empty lots and behind sup
ermarkets.

What if the check wasn’t in the m
ail today?

She wondered if she had anything of value to sell besides her car—which she needed for work—just for this month, just until she could figure things out. But there was nothing except her wedding ring—a plain gold band that resided in a sacred corner of her otherwise pathetic jewelry box. No. She could never part with the ring, even if it might cover the shortfall for this month’s mortgage. She clung to the idea that her mother could have sent the check. Maybe their phone conversation had prompted her to tuck it in the mailbox early. If she had, it would probably be in tod
ay’s mail.

She pulled into the driveway and got out of the car, her heart pounding. But when she looked into the mailbox and pulled out the collection of pointless catalogues and more bills, she found nothing else. She rifled through the mail again, even shaking out some of the catalogues. When the truth descended on her, she looked up at the house, which at least was still there, and murmured a
n apology.

CHAPTER 5

Vivian’s Unaired
Podcast #2

I
n 1957 it had been five years since I’d left the hospital. My parents had paid for the front door of the farmhouse to be widened and a
ramp built so my machine would fit inside, but without an extensive remodel—which they couldn’t afford—the gurney could go no farther than the living room. I was no better or worse physically. The paralysis below the neck was indeed permanent, but my unfeeling body continued to grow and function as long as the iron lung kept the oxygen ci
rculating.

There had been a few close calls. Once when I had a bad cold, my parents stayed up in shifts for five days straight because I kept choking on the phlegm in my throat. They had to aspirate my nose and mouth with a bulb syringe like they did fo
r babies.

Another time the power went out, and the lung stopped working. My father used the hand crank for three hours, until the fire department could secure a generator. That’s when we realized we couldn’t live without one, and my parents had to sell a dairy cow
to buy it.

When I was ten, I got it into my head that I could breathe again if they gave me a chance. I had had a dream about being outside the lung, and it felt so real that I was convinced I had been miraculously cured. My parents wouldn’t let me try breathing on my own for more than the short amount of time it took to change my clothes and clean me, so I convinced a visiting friend to help me while my mother was in the kitchen getting us some lemonade. As soon as April undid the metal latch that created a seal around my throat, I felt the release that I always felt, along with a giddy sense that breathing on my own would be even more wonderful and life changing than walk
ing again.

I tried to use my neck muscles, but they were out of practice, and I began to asphyxiate after just a few minutes. My mother came back into the room as April was trying to reseal the collar. She managed to get the lung pumping again before I caused myself any brain damage. After that, she would call out “Marco” when she was out of the room for more than a minute or two, and if I didn’t call back “Polo” right away, she’d com
e running.

By the time I was twelve, I had begun to realize that my mother’s life revolved almost exclusively around keeping me alive. My father worked the farm and took a shift with me late at night so that my mother could get a few hours’ sleep, but she rarely even left the room except when the hospital’s visiting nurse came once a week, at which time she ran out for groceries, to the bank, and to do all her other errands. She had friends who would occasionally relieve her, but I often complained that they didn’t know how to angle the spoon correctly or didn’t fix my books at the right angle in the metal frame that held them in front of my face. They would also get distracted by a magazine or, if they came in a pair, by their own conversation, and I’d have to ask them repeatedly to turn the pa
ge for me.

The doctors’ prediction that I wouldn’t live long had caused my parents to spoil me terribly. I’m sure they assumed that any lifelong lessons about patience or charity or how you get more flies with honey than vinegar would be wasted. As a consequence, I had become a bit of
a tyrant.

“Why can’t we get a color television?” I remember asking my mother in those days. “Janet says they got one, and it doesn’t have all the lines and static like ours does. I could watch it through my mirror, and then I wouldn’t be so bored all
the time.”

“We’re saving up,” my mother told me. “We’ll get one as soon a
s we can.”

“If we got one, then Timmy Gallagher might come over to see
me again.”

My mother paused at that pronouncement. “So you like Timmy Gallagher?” she said. Despite her efforts to mask it, I could hear the caution in her voice, even the disappointment she anticipat
ed for me.

“He makes me laugh,” I said, fairly certain that if I hounded her long enough, I would get the color television that would bring the neighborhood kids around again. They had all flocked to my side in the year after I came home—all my school friends and Darlene’s friends and the dutiful sons and daughters of my parents’ friends, who had dragged their kids along to “play” with me. But now the visitors had dwindled down to a hardy few who could tolerate doing word games and puzzles and being around someone alive but trapped like a fly in tree sap. Looking back, I realize that nobody likes to be reminded of the fragility of the human condition. Yes, they all admired my parents and my ability to continue with my schooling and my mental development, but they also pitied our family for being so devoid o
f choices.

“I’ll talk to Dad about it,” my mother said, and I noticed her wiping away a tear. I knew she was worried that I hadn’t yet accepted my future. There would never be a boyfriend for me—no first kiss, no prom, no necking (not enough accessible neck), no wedding night, no marriage, no babies. She seemed to think I hadn’t come to terms with those things, but I had realized that my life would have to have a purpose outside the realm of normal existence. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the life every girl of my generation hoped to lead. But I had already had five years with nothing to do but think, and after studying literature and learning about all those women who pined away for men they couldn’t have, and all those men tempted into adultery by younger, prettier versions of their wives, I had decided I wasn’t missing out on all that much. That conclusion changed as I got older—I have spent years grieving the life that was lost to me—but at twelve, I thought I had it all fi
gured out.

A few weeks after that, our new color television arrived, and we threw a party. I’m not sure how my parents paid for that TV—we surely couldn’t afford it—but maybe they realized that it would provide me with hours of entertainment and maybe even a little time off from turning my pages or reading to me when I was too tired to read on my own. All our neighbors and their children—yes, even Timmy Gallagher—came to gather around the set for
The Ed Sullivan Show
. My mother made cookies and finger sandwiches, and we all laughed at the girls swooning in their seats over Elvis
Presley.

“He’s set for life,” I said from my position in the center of the room. “You can’t buy that kind of p
ublicity.”

The room erupted in laughter, and everyone looked at my parents with a mixture of sadness and pride. Timmy Gallagher wandered over when the show ended. He was the boy from school I missed most, because we had never felt awkward around e
ach other.

“I gotta hand it to you, Vivian,” he said. “You’re someth
ing else.”

“What else am I?” I asked, blinking at him with eyes as wide as they w
ould open.

Timmy laughed and bumped his shoulder against my iron lung, the equivalent, I supposed, of a friendly punch in
the arm.

“What’s this thing made out of anyway?” he said. “Kr
yptonite?”

“You guessed it,” I said. “I could take down
Superman.”

Just then Timmy’s mother came over and told him they wer
e leaving.

“So nice to see how well you’re doing, Vivian,” she said, showing me her teeth in the most insincere smile I had ever seen, and I had already s
een many.

“Thanks, Mrs. Gallagher,” I said, fake-smiling back. “Come over
anytime.”

She put both hands on Timmy’s shoulders and steered him toward the door like she was pushing a lawnmower. Before he left, he glanced back to give me a nod, and that was the last time I eve
r saw him.

CHAPTER 6

T
he stroke had been catastrophic, but Holly still assumed that her mother would fight her way back to health, until the doctors finally admitted that in her mother’s case “rehab” was simply death in the slowest of motions. Within a week it was clear that Celia’s cognitive ability wouldn’t return and that she could no longer communicate and might not even recognize her own children. The sense of loss was palpable, even though some fragment of Celia remained. Holly felt sick at the notion that her mother—the fixer, the decider, the stopper of gaps—could no longer do the job she was born to do. She missed her terribly, often thinking incoherently that she needed her mother’s advice to cope with her mother’
s illness.

“Ready?” H
olly said.

“I guess so,” Desdemona replied. They left the car reluctantly and walked slowly to the lobby of the rehab hospital, where they each nodded to the front desk clerk, then took the elevator to the fou
rth floor.

Celia was propped up against a nest of pillows with her hair splayed out around her head. At seventy-six, she still dyed her hair black, which provided a stark contrast with the white mask of a face that only approximated the face of the mother Holly remembered. The stroke had shut down her left side, which made one side of her mouth and her left
eye droop.

Holly looked at Desdemona, who looked as pale as one of their mother’s hospit
al sheets.

“You look wonderful, Mom,” Desde
mona said.

“You do,” Holly said, turning back to her mother. “You have more color than the last time we
saw you.”

Desdemona went to one side of the bed and took her mother’s hand. “How are you
feeling?”

Celia looked at Desdemona, then at Holly, but without any sign of recognition. Holly counted it a blessing that Celia didn’t seem to understand what she had lost. Desdemona looked as if she wanted to cry, and Holly stepped around to the other side of the bed to pat her sister on the back even as she wanted to cr
y herself.

“Marshall and Connor miss you, Mom,” Holly said. “They’ve both been so busy with band, Marshall es
pecially.”

Holly went on for a while, offering short vignettes about the boys and the newspaper, until her mother’s eyes closed. When it looked as if Celia was asleep, Holly walked over to the window and looked out at the parking lot below. The cars turned into a blurred mosaic
of colors.

“She sleeps a lot, doesn’t she?” she said. “I wonder if they have her too dr
ugged-up.”

“She does seem tired,” Desdemona said, still holding her mothe
r’s hand.

Holly picked up a handmade card from Connor that she had propped on her mother’s windowsill. As much as she hated to accept the role, she had to be the fixer now. Desdemona was too passive and Henderson too tied up with his own
problems.

“Eventually, you know, she’ll max out her time at this rehab,” she said. “Then one of us will have to take care of her at home, or we’ll have to find a nurs
ing home.”

Desdemona put a hand on her forehead, as if checking her own te
mperature.

“I don’t think I could take her in my studio. You’re already pulled in a dozen different directions, and Henderson certainly couldn
’t do it.”

“Why couldn’t Henderson do it?” Holly said. “He’s not working r
ight now.”

Desdemona got up from Celia’s bed and stood near Holly at the window, crossing her
thin arms.

“He doesn’t have the right temperament. He’d be impatient with her. Don’t y
ou think?”

Holly put an arm around Desdemona’s narrow shoulders, barely finding a place to hold on. Desdemona’s frailty sometimes bothered her more than Henderson’
s bluster.

“You’re right,” Holly said. Her head felt heavy and fogged up, as if she were getting a cold. “I’m not sure any of us could handle it, frankly. She has some savings anyway. That will get her in s
omewhere.”

Celia stirred and mumbled something, and they both ran back over to her bedside, almost tripping over each other on the way. Holly wanted Celia to wake up, to show the doctors that they had been wrong and that she would fight her way back. But by the time they reached her, her eyes were closed, her body qui
et again.

“I think we should go,” Holly told Desdemona, who had started patting Celia’s wither
ed hands.

“Hey, where are her rings?” Desdemona said, placing Celia’s hand on the bedcovers and looking around the nightstand. “She’s not wear
ing them.”

“I don’t know,” Holly said, ducking her head under the bed. “I’m pretty sure she had them on last time we were here. Maybe they had to take them off for a procedure or something. Look in h
er purse.”

Desdemona pulled a neat envelope-style leather purse out of the nightstand near Celia’s bed and rummaged around. “Nothing,”
she said.

Holly looked around at the stark, gray semigloss walls, the clean linoleum floor, and the expensive monitors hooked up via wires and tubes. How long might Celia need full-time nursing care? Holly could already see the inevitable sucking away of a lifetime of gathering, earning, and saving into the insatiable void of the health-care industry. Her mother’s rings seemed to have been pulled into the same terrifyi
ng vortex.

On the way out, Holly and Desdemona stopped by the nurses’ station. A plump young woman wearing blue scrubs stood at the desk tapping away at a
computer.

“Hi,” Holly said. “W
e’re. . .”

The nurse held up a chubby finger to stop her, then spoke into a headset Holly hadn’
t noticed.

“Dr. Miller won’t be in until Wednesday,” she said. “I would suggest you call b
ack then.”

The nurse typed for another full minute, her nails clicking on the keyboard, before looking up at Holly and Desdemona and offering a disingenu
ous smile.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said, who felt like she was always apologizing for existing in the cluttered and complex world and taking precious time from someone else’s day. “Our mother is Celia Fenton in room 236, and we were wondering if you knew where her wedding and engagement rings were. She never took
them off.”

The nurse looked at them as if they were in need of medical
attention.

“It clearly states in the admission papers that valuables should be left at home,” she said. “We can’t be responsible
for them.”

Holly squinted at the nurse, then looked at Desdemona, who was already beginning to tear up. She tr
ied again.

“But, as I said, she never took them off. I’m not sure she could get them over her knuckles. The engagement ring was very distinctive—a two-karat diamond with emeralds on each side. What could have happened
to them?”

The nurse pursed her lips, as though Holly and Desdemona were accusing her of stealing the ring
s herself.

“I’ll write a note on her chart to have the orderlies look for them,” she said curtly. “I’m sure they’ll
turn up.”

Holly murmured an obligatory thank-you as Desdemona dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Holly knew the rings were most likely gone for good, which probably didn’t matter to her mother anymore but mattered to her family because of what they re
presented.

“Maybe we should go back and look again,” Desdemona said. “Maybe they fell off because she’s gotten so thin in the last f
ew weeks.”

Holly nodded, and they went back to the room, where Celia was sleeping. Desdemona crawled under the bed but found nothing. Holly scoured the top of the nightstand, its small drawer, and the tray table that pulled up t
o the bed.

“They’re gone,” Holly said. “J
ust gone.”

Desdemona looked at Holly with eyes that registered her complete disillusionment with humanity. “Someone probably sold them for the gold,” she said. “To one of those horrible cash-for-gold places. They’re sprouting up all over the
city now.”

Holly nodded her head, appalled that Desdemona was probably right and that she herself was helping Vivian establish just such a place in Bertram Corners. The business hinged on people gathering up their gold—any gold they could get their hands on—and sending it through the spinning machine to make hay, the opposite of Rumples
tiltskin.

“What would Dad say if he were still alive?” Desdemona said, crying now. “It’s like we’ve let
him down.”

“We didn’t know,” Holly said. “Did you read the fine print when she was admitted? I was a little preoccupied with her survival.” Holly put her arm around Desdemona. “C’mon.
Let’s go.”

Together, they walked down the hallway. Nurses and visitors glanced at them with expressions of sympathy, probably assuming they had just lost a relative, which, in a sense,
they had.