Letting Go
/She was drifting, eyes open, coffee mug nestled in her lap, to all appearances conscious, but drifting nonetheless, her gaze fixed on the maple outside the window as its new leaves wafted to and fro, to and fro.
But everything she saw existed light years from where she lay, swaddled in multiple layers of brightly colored blankets.
She was in the milking parlor back in Wisconsin, standing in a wet, concrete pit between two rows of cows, the smell of manure pungent in her nostrils. The milking machine rumbled and pulsed as spurts of milk coursed through the plastic bubble below each udder and disappeared into a black hose. There was a great splat as the third cow on the right let loose a long stream of manure. She reached for the flat-ended shovel and scraped the excrement into the gully that ran the length of the milking platform. Replacing the shovel, she turned and caught her father’s grin as he watched with approval. The tips of his moustache hairs were brown with traces of the morning’s first chew of tobacco, and his smile was punctuated by a missing incisor. She returned his smile, and a glow of pride ran through her at the thought that she was really helping, and that her help was important. Then he turned and swung the lever that released the row of cows on the left and let in the next six. The cows crowded down the aisle, nose to tail, huffing clear, wet snot from their giant nostrils, anxious to get at their grain and be relieved of the pressure in their giant udders.
A bird chirped outside the open window, “whet, whet, whet,” and pulled her back to the present. She raised her mug carefully to her lips. She couldn’t see the bird, but she knew it was there, a few branches above where the window frame cut off her view. From the chaise lounge on the porch, she’d spied its nest in the front oak.
Then she was gone again, flung like a droplet from a sprinkler, the kind that twirled round and round and that they had run through as kids on blistering summer days.
This time she was with Paul, her college sweetheart. It was late August and a heat wave had overwhelmed Boston. Their little apartment on the third floor along Com Ave had become unbearable. So they rode subway cars and busses, making their way north to Marblehead, lunch stuffed into backpacks that usually held thick textbooks. When they finally reached the beach, they giggled as they spread towels between boulders the size of dump trucks and lay themselves down to watch the clouds tumble by. Suddenly she could picture his face as clearly as if it had been yesterday, as clear as if she could turn her head right now and see his profile, straight nose, closely clipped beard, fair hair with a tinge of red, already thinning though he was all of twenty-three. His mouth turned up more on one side when he laughed, which he did now, mocking the cries of the seagulls as he turned to tickle her. She reached to stop him, sliding her hand along the surprisingly soft hair of his lower arm, catching up his hand and capturing it between her breasts.
Where was he now? An osteopath, somewhere in the Mid-west… Chicago? She shivered. Who would choose to live in that cold, barren place?
Bruce had had hairy forearms, too. Hair thicker than Paul’s and not as soft, perhaps because he’d been dark-haired before the grey had taken over. The hands at the ends of those arms were small and squarish and might be taken for clumsy, but just picturing them brought back the feel of his fingers brushing gently down her back and over her buttocks, stroking her thighs and coaxing excitement even when she was sure that the well was dry. Sex with Bruce was the best she’d had, even though she was post-menopausal and all the commercials on TV should have convinced her that sex would be awkward and uncomfortable. But he had electrified her in a way that made every square centimeter of her vagina tingle with pleasure and filled her until all she could do was cling to him with her legs and let the orgasms wash over her.
Again, she shivered, this time at the sheer intensity of her memory. But she’d let him go, too, a year into their relationship when he’d insisted that she marry him or at least move in, and she’d refused. It couldn’t have worked, she knew, would have tipped some delicate balance that allowed her to give herself freely.
She took another sip of now cold coffee and carefully set the mug on the nightstand. Rosa was fond of scolding her for dripping coffee on the sheets, and they’d switched to all white linens just so Rosa could bleach out her accidents. She felt like she might need to pee, but she was comfortable, too comfortable to contemplate leaving her memories for the shock of pushing off the blankets.
So, instead, she let her gaze fix on the painted border that ran along the top of the wall, yellow ducks on turquoise water punctuated by green reeds. The ducks had been there for decades now, faithfully paddling along, from the week she and Jim had assembled Olivia’s crib to the night she’d held his hand as he slipped away from her for the final time. But this time he wasn’t slipping away to rendezvous with his latest prodigy, one of which gave him and then, of course, her, a good dose of gonorrhea. No one had ever understood why she hadn’t thrown him out, not even Olivia, that it wasn’t because she forgave him or that he’d become ill before she’d had the chance. It wasn’t money or even the public disgrace of people knowing what he’d done, after all, he’d never been particularly discreet. It was just that, after the initial shock, she’d reached a place where she wasn’t angry enough or hurt enough to want to control him in any way. Divorce was so inconvenient and, in the final analysis, she just hadn’t had the energy.
Whatever, she said to herself, mimicking her grandson’s favorite expression. She hadn’t meant to open up that memory. But it was funny how long she could sit and let her mind turn. Like a revolving door, it spun erratically, and memories spilled out like patrons from the big department store downtown.
She closed her eyes and took two deep breaths to dispel the bad memory. When she opened them, she heard the front door open and close downstairs. A car started in the driveway, her son-in-law Max leaving for his job at the pharmacy. When Olivia had informed her of their intention to move back to Catawba, she’d been full of fear. They wanted to live with her until Max could find a job. It would be easier for all of them, Olivia claimed. But after so many years of living alone, how could she cope with someone else being there all the time, not just Olivia, but Max and their teenage son, Jamie? Would her house be overrun with teenagers and that music that pounded out from car stereos passing on the street? Would she be expected to visit politely in the evening instead of keeping to her own routines? They might watch annoying TV shows and rearrange her stuff. Or, worst of all, they might grow tired of her, and then she’d catch them rolling their eyes at each other when they thought she wouldn’t notice. Ironically, when she’d finally given in, she’d insisted that Olivia and Max take the big bedroom and allowed her things to be moved down the hall to Olivia’s old room. “After all,” she told Olivia, “It’s not like that bedroom has so many great memories.”
“Hey, watch what you say,” Olivia retorted, “that’s where you made me.”
They’d put Jamie in the game room above the garage, and things had really gone quite well. And wasn’t that how things happened? How many nagging fears had she wasted energy on over the years that had really amounted to nothing? Even the ones that had come true hadn’t been the tragedies she’d expected. The day her gynecologist had told her that her annual exam had turned up positive for gonorrhea, she’d almost been relieved. She knew then that she wasn’t the neurotic, suspicious shrew that Jim accused her of being. The vindication was almost worth having to go through the humiliation of having an STD.
It was amazing, really, how twenty-five years of marriage had faded into memory, with just a few snapshots that always stood out. Though it made her feel a bit like Scarlett O’Hara, she’d always gone out of her way not to replay bad memories if she could help it. Sometimes she pretended that her mind really was a file cabinet and she could just put away disturbing images, like the way Jim’s body changed as he succumbed to the cancer or Olivia’s panicked cries that day, twenty-some years ago, when the car slid off the ice on Route 311, and they were both pinned in place for the eternity that it took the rescue vehicles to arrive. Since she’d been staying in this room, she’d found comfort in sitting in the rocking chair by the corner window, remembering instead the nights she’d opened her nightshirt to nurse, feeling that delicious pain as Olivia’s little mouth latched on and her milk let down. Most nights, she hadn’t even needed to turn on the light, but just rocked the baby gently in the moonlight, watching the shadows move across her face.
Outside the window, orange diamonds of light glinted through the leaves. Car wheels crunched on the gravel driveway; the front door again opened and closed. Was it Rosa or Amy? What day was it, anyway? She just couldn’t keep track any more. She looked over at the cell phone lying on the nightstand, just a bit out of the reach of her good right arm. Darn, she really had to pee now. She leaned toward the nightstand, but as she did, the door opened and Olivia walked in.
“Sorry, Mom, I started cleaning off the stovetop and got carried away. Do you need to use the potty?”
She opened her mouth as though to answer, then nodded and tried to muster a grateful smile.
“Here we go. “
Olivia came around the left side of the bed, pulled the blankets down and inserted an arm behind her back. With her other hand, Olivia pulled her legs around so they dangled just above the floor.
“Okay. One, two, three,” Olivia counted as she stood her mother up, turned her around, pulled down her pajama bottoms and set her on the potty chair in one smooth motion.
“Amy’s here. She’ll be up in a minute. Then we’ll do your meds, get you all freshened up and change your sheets. Do you want to sit in the rocking chair or out on the porch? It’s a beautiful day.”
She brought her lips together and managed to push out a puff of air as she pointed toward the front of the house.
“Porch it is,” Olivia acknowledged.
She smiled again. A year ago, she would have thought this type of existence intolerable, depending on others, especially her lovely daughter who truly deserved to have a life of her own, to take care of her every need. And she never, under any conditions, would have chosen it. But when they’d brought her home from the hospital, she soon realized that fighting it just made things harder for everyone. So, she’d gathered all the grace she had left in her graceless existence to acquiesce.
Amy appeared at the door.
“Good morning, Miss Veronica,” she greeted her. “Would you like a tub bath or sponge this morning?”
Veronica raised her right arm and squeezed her hand closed.
“Sponge. Very good. I’ll be right back with the basin and your meds.”
An hour later, she sat on the second-floor porch in her favorite wicker chair, a sweater clipped around her shoulders, her breakfast tray pushed off to one side. At least, with her good right arm, she could still feed herself, as long as the food was cut small. This morning there had been scrambled eggs with diced tomatoes, ham and feta, rye toast, well-done, and a little glass of cranberry juice. Olivia would be pleased because she’d been hungry and eaten almost every scrap. Through the slats in the porch rail, she’s watched her neighbor, Julie, across the street, transferring geraniums into planters, as she’d done every spring for so many years. The mail truck turned the corner and made its way down the lane. Within reach on the breakfast tray was her Kindle, loaded with the audio version of Anne Tyler’s latest novel. When she got tired of watching the coming and goings of her neighbors, she would switch it on and close her eyes, maybe even get through a chapter without dozing.
The screen door opened, and Olivia poked her head out of the house.
“Mom, I’m going to run to the store. Do you need anything?”
She turned toward Olivia and shook her head.
“Amy’s ordering your refills, but she’ll be up to check on you soon. Are you sure you don’t need anything?
She mustered a half-smile and mouthed the words, “No, nothing,” and it was true.
