Killing Her Softly
for my grandmother, Helen Winifred Doyle, who loved whiskey and words.
“I won’t let you take him!” A ball of white cotton soars through the air and lands at my feet. It is a pair of underwear: large, full bottomed, high waisted ladies underwear. Old lady underwear. What my teenage daughter would refer to as, “granny panties.” As I bend to pick it up my mother throws herself in my path: one hundred and thirteen pounds of gin fueled fury. The gin is watered down, I started doing that two weeks ago after someone left an AA pamphlet in our mailbox, the result of a nosy neighbor and/or a recycle bin full of empty gin bottles. The fury is real.
She stands before me naked and shaking with rage. The white panties her final line of defense against which ever monster I am today. Behind her steam billows out from the en suite bathroom and begins to curl around her narrow frame. She throws her arms wide, and I notice how the soft flesh falls off of them like the skin of a peach before canning. My mother used to be large. Her heavy breasts a shelf on which to rest a tired head or the two fingers of gin she had while watching the nightly news. Her hips were wide and her butt stuck out. “Junk in the trunk,” my husband says, as he playfully slaps my rear. I looked that phrase up once and Urban Dictionary informed me that it was, “a little more than a badonkadonk but less extreme than having an SUV in the pants.” Glad I cleared that up.
“It’s time to get in the shower mom.” I take a tentative step towards her, my hands held up and out to my sides like a police officer approaching a gun holding convict.
“You can’t take him! I won’t let you!”
“I’m not here for him, I’m just here to get you in the shower.” I speak calmly, advancing again with slow careful movements, the hours of Law and Order finally paying off.
“Liar!” She begins to cry, hysterical and comes at me fists swinging. It’s in this moment I wish someone would walk in and take a snapshot. I’d sit down later with a glass of chardonnay, hold it up, and laugh at its absurdity. The little old woman, naked, breasts hanging deflated to her navel, white hair curling with perspiration and steam throwing herself at her middle aged daughter like Mike Tyson at the MGM Grand. I would Google it to see who the art director was, make a mental note to forward a copy to my best friend Lisa, and maybe, just maybe, post it to my Facebook page which would embarrass the hell out of my daughter but be just so, so funny. And I wouldn’t feel guilty laughing, not in the least, because things like this don’t happen to real people.
“Mom,” I grab her fists as they thump against my chest, and even though we’ve done this dance before, I’m still surprised at how light they are, how little impact they make. “Mom,” I say again, more firmly this time, “He’s not here.”
“What?” She pauses just for a second, recognition flickering in her eyes.
“He’s not here, dad’s not here. He died six months ago.”
She stares at me, holding my gaze, unblinking and I can almost see the neurons firing, the memories desperately trying to find their way into her mind from the void where they are circling the block but haven’t quite moved in. And then she folds. Her eyes leave mine, her fists unclench ,and she literally folds into me.
“I’m sorry.” It’s a murmur. “I’m sorry.” Over and over.
“It’s ok mom.” I hold her and I stroke her head as she continues her mantra. I lean against the wall and slowly sink to the floor until we’re both sitting, her back against mine, my arms around her waist. “Tell me again.” She leans into me and I can feel her heart beating through her chest and onto mine. “Tell me again how it happened.”
“He was sick.” And so I began the story of my father’s demise. A story I had told so often in the last six months it threatened to knock even my most creative princess/pirate/talking unicorn bedtime story from my daughter’s childhood off its pedestal. Of course like every good story I embellished a bit, and left some things out. Perhaps the only benefit of my mother’s dementia was my ability to rewrite history for her. Six long weeks of hospice care: gone. Death at home alone while we all went to Denny’s for pancakes and stale coffee: erased. The feeling of absolute helplessness I felt sitting there dabbing his cracked lips with a small pink sponge praying that he’d hold on, hoping that he’d let go. I’ve heard all the warnings and ethical ramblings about toying with someone’s memories that I’m ‘robbing her’ of her life, that I’m cheating her, that I’m lying. Fuck that. Lisa says that once you can check the 35-44 box you’re allowed to say ‘fuck’ more. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“So he didn’t suffer? He wasn’t in any pain?”
“No mom,” the lie slides out of me oily and thick, “he wasn’t in any pain.”
She nods and her body stiffens, as if she is trying to absorb the memory of my father’s death, each muscle contracting it into its very fibers. Her body trying to hold onto what her brain will forget. Then she sighs, long and slow.
“I think I’d like to shower now.”
“Okay mom, okay.”
I help her into the shower, turn on the overhead light and leave a fluffy pink towel on the hook beside the plexiglass door. I watch as she stands, head bent, letting the stream of hot water wash over her. I wait until she lowers herself onto the white plastic shower bench, her back to the water so it can beat against her shoulders. Then I walk to the kitchen and fill a glass tumbler with equal parts Tanqueray and tap water. I add a couple of ice cubes and return to the bathroom, the glass clinking merrily as I walk. She’s still sitting there, eyes closed, her back bright red from the water’s heat. I open the door and hand her the glass. She takes it from me without a word, raises it to her wrinkled lips, and drinks. Then she closes her eyes and leans her head back into the spray.
Drinking in the shower is the Taylor women’s preferred form of therapy. While other women spend thousands to projectile puke their feelings onto a fifty something shrink with tortoise shell frames and a pleasant expression the Taylor women prefer to swallow them like bitter medicine chased with steam and alcohol. The alcohol to numb the pain, the steam to soothe the ache it leaves behind.
“Mom?” The voice, high and sweet, calls tentatively from the bedroom, “Is everything okay?” It’s Margeaux, my daughter. She’s fifteen and more mature than I’ll ever be, warm and wise far beyond her years. She’s solid, like I am, like my mother once was, with chocolatey brown hair that falls in loose waves all the way to the middle of her back and brown eyes so dark and deep I find myself getting lost in them. I walk into the bedroom, closing the bathroom door behind me, and she’s standing there in her pajamas, hair pulledback in a messy knot, Maya Angelou’s “I Still Rise” dangling from her right hand, her index finger marking her place.
“Is it grandpa again?”
I nod and sink onto the bed, she comes and sits beside me and rests her head on my shoulder.
“She was good today. Up till now.”
“Yeah, today was a good day.” And it had been, a perfect spring day. The weather was warm, unseasonable warm for Michigan in early April, and we had driven the forty five minutes to the lake. We had taken off our shoes and watched our toes turn bright red from cold as we walked along the shore. Margeaux and I had played the game where you run as close as you can to the water and then retreat as the waves break and chase you up onto the beach. Over hot chocolate and cinnamon scones we had discussed school, friends, and Rob, the junior boy who had asked Margeaux to the prom, by far the biggest event of her high school career. My mother had smiled, and listened, and asked questions and to anyone looking on we were just a happy family enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
“What happened?” Margeaux’s face is clouded with worry. My mother’s dementia has been hard on all of us, but especially on her. They always shared a special bond: a love of poetry and language, and an unassailable bullshit detector.
“I don’t know sweet heart. I wish I did.”
“She’s not going to get better, is she?” Those big brown eyes look up at me and oh how I want to take her in my arms, hold her close, and tell her that everything is going to be ok. But I can’t because we both know it’s not true, so we just sit there on the bed in silence.
“This fucking sucks.” Margeaux grabs a turquoise throw pillow and hurls it at the wall. It bounces off noiselessly and lands on the floor.
“Yeah,” I sigh, “it really fucking does.” The water stops running and I hear the shower door open and close. “I better help grandma get ready for bed. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“No it’s ok,” Margeaux carefully dog ears a page to mark her place and sets her book on the dresser, “I can help.”
I go into the bathroom and when I return Margeaux has pulled back the blankets on the bed and stands there holding my mother’s light blue cotton nightgown. I watch while my daughter helps my mother get dressed and into bed. She leans down and whispers ‘Good night grandma’ gently kissing her on the lips and my heart explodes.
“What is this?”
My mother is asleep, Margeaux, book in hand, has retreated to her room, and I am officially ready for a drink and some mind numbing reality tv, something with battling housewives in tiaras. My husband, who now stands in the kitchen holding the bottle of Tanqueray, apparently has other ideas. “It’s a handle of Tanqueray.” I take the half empty bottle of chardonnay out of the fridge, pull the cork out with my teeth, spit it on the floor, and take a long drink. “Though it doesn’t really have a handle, which is funny if you think about it.”
“Please don’t do this Nina.” He is still wearing a white dress shirt, though the top two buttons are undone and his red tie hangs loosely around his neck. “Can you ever just answer a question without the sarcasm? You know I can’t tolerate it.”
“Can you ever ask a question like I’m your wife and not one of your aides?” The thing about having a husband that’s running for office is that during election season he tends to forget that you’re not his employee. He tends to forget anyone isn’t his employee.
“Fine.” He sets the bottle gently on the counter between us and gives me a winning smile, the famous Jack Barlow smile, full of teeth: straight, white,honest. “I was just wondering what this very large bottle of gin is doing in our kitchen when two weeks ago we agreed it would be best, for her health and for our family, if your mother stopped drinking.”
I love my husband. I really do. He is a good man, a good father, and, it has to be said, dashingly handsome. He’s tall and lean with dark hair just kissed with silver. He has a strong jaw, high cheekbones, and full lips. The camera loves his face and, as he is currently ahead in the polls by a significant margin, so do the voters. I believe he would make a great governor of our state. He is hard working, and he really, truly wants to change things for the better. But he is, it has to be said, delusional.
“I seem to remember it being best for the campaign if my mother stopped drinking. I don’t think it was ever what was best for her.”
“Yes, it’s good for the campaign.” I can see the thin veneer of his patience starting to crack. “But it’s also for her health, we both know that the alcohol isn’t helping her.”
And then I lose it. I don’t know if it was my mother’s episode, or my realization that my little girl is growing up, or just the fact that my husband is standing in our kitchen on a Sunday night still in that damn shirt and tie, a constant reminder that’s he’s working hard, that he’s someone important. “The alcohol is the only thing that’s helping her! My mother is seventy five years old Jackson, and she’s dying. She isn’t going to get better. This isn’t going to get any better! And if having a drink makes her feel a little less hopeless then by God I am going to get her that drink, your spotless reputation and the campaign be damned.”
“We are less than six months from the primary Nina, and I am not going to ruin everything I’ve worked for, everything we’ve worked for.” He runs his hands through his thick hair and clasps them behind his neck. “We already have the neighbors thinking we have a drinking problem, what do you think would happen if the press found out? I am a conservative for God’s sake. My platform is built on family values.”
“Fuck your family values.”
“Ok Nina.” He turns to go. It’s his signature move. Nina is flying off the handle again so Jackson takes the high road and walks away.
“Don’t walk away from me.”
“I don’t think that anything productive is going to come of this conversation Nina. You’re not going to see my side, and I’m not going to see yours, so lets just leave it.”
“No. I’m not going to leave it. You talk about family values, why don’t you value your family for once.”
“You think I don’t value my family?” He turns toward me, a flush of red rising out of the pristine white collar of his dress shirt, spreading like a forest fire. “Everything I’m doing is for my family. I am killing myself with this campaign so I can make a better life for you and Margeaux. So I can have a say in what kind of world she will live in. And you would throw that all away so your mother can sit in the shower and get drunk.”
“Fuck you.”
“Have another glass of wine Nina.” He stalks out of the kitchen and I hear the door to our bedroom slam.
Twenty minutes later as I’m sitting on the shower floor there’s a knock at the bathroom door. He walks in sits on the edge of the tub across from me. Through the steam I can see him, now in grey sweats and his favorite Columbia Law School tshirt. His shoulders are slumped and he doesn’t look at all like the man smiling on our neighbor’s yard signs. He looks older. Tired. We sit there as the minutes pass. Finally I stand up, turn off the water, and open the shower door.
“I’m sorry Nina.” I grab a towel from the rack on the wall and wrap it around myself, leaving my hair wet, then I go and sit beside him.
“Me too.”
He takes my hand and raises it to his lips. “This is all so much harder than I thought it would be. This campaign, it’s what I want, it’s what I’ve always wanted, but I didn’t think it’d be this hard.”
I nod and water runs down my shoulders pooling in the crook of my elbow.
“I haven’t been here for you, or for Margeaux, and you have to know how much that kills me. Your mom, and your dad, and everything, it’s just, it was just…”
“Piss poor timing,” I finish for him and he smiles. “I know. I know you love us.”
“If you want to talk about your mom we can. We can talk about anything you want.”
“Lets just go to bed.” I stand, leaving my hand in his, and lead him into our bedroom. I turn off the bedside lamp and wrap my arms around him in the darkness, letting the damp towel fall to the floor. I pull him closer into me, feeling the soft, worn cotton of his tshirt against my cheek, and exhale.
Later, when I can hear the rhythm of Jackson’s breathing steady with sleep, I crawl out of bed and slip out of our room letting the door close quietly behind me. I walk quickly down the hall to my mother’s room, my bare feet slapping the floor gently, waves lapping against the sand. The room is dark but I know my way and I recognize the small bundle that is her body curled tightly, taking up barely half the bed. I pull back the blankets and climb in beside her, wrapping my body around hers, feeling the sharp blades of her shoulders against my chest.
“Nina,” she exhales, more breath than word, but doesn’t turn to face me.
“Hi Mom.” I wrap my arms around her, nuzzling her neck, inhaling the scent of clean linen and lemon soap.
“I know where I am, but I don’t know how I got here.”
“I know, Mom. Me too. Me too.”
The End.
