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I started out, most of the way luckily following a salt truck scraping snow and pelting salt. The three-tiered parking garage looked too much like a mausoleum, so I risked losing my car under a foot of snow by parking in the roofless lot, plodding my way to the canopied entrance. With visitor card in hand, I rode the elevator to the third floor, wishing I had gotten Dahlia this morning instead of leaving the terse message that covered the basics: stroke, paralysis, phone number.
My mother’s eyes spoke for her. One eye, her right, worked well, zigzagging furiously, telling at me to make everything normal. Her other eyelid hung half-closed and inert. From her mouth came guttural groans punctuated by intakes of breath or fits of coughing. A soap opera blared on TV. She never watched soap operas. I turned down the sound and looked at the screen. A young man and woman sat at a restaurant table with white linen and a red and green seasonal floral centerpiece. He ate, looking solemn; she refrained, looking angry.
I leaned over and kissed my mother on the cheek. A few minutes later, the doctor walked in. After perfunctory greetings, he said without smiling, “If your mother will not calm herself, we will give her another sedative. Distress has taken your mother hostage. There is no reason for suffering in today’s world.”
When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “Physical therapy will help your mother. They have made great leaps.”
For the next five minutes, this young Indian doctor in blue jeans and running shoes sticking out beneath his white hospital coat assured me that victims of stroke today could count on science, therapy and hope. When he had gone, I sat by the bed and watched her eyeball run an invisible track around the ceiling. She won’t remember any of this, I reminded myself. She lives in the moment. How wonderful. How dreadful.
The bedside phone rang. Mother’s good eye darted at me. She didn’t know it would be Dahlia, of course. How could she? She said something that might have been, “I know you have been told.”
“Hello?”
“Tansey, tell me everything that’s happened since you left your message.”
Mother’s eye quieted as I relayed what I knew, promising to send mother’s new Brewster McFain assisted living phone number. After I finished, she said, “You know, don’t you, the end is near?”
She was beginning to sound like an Old Testament prophet. “They can do wonderful things," I told her. "They work with them in bath-warm swimming pools.”
Unbelievably, she laughed. “Get a grip. Face it, your mom's mind is a cracked record stuck playing the same thing over and over. Now she can’t even wipe herself. You know what she loved: parties, people, gift-giving, vodka, volunteer work, raising you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Put the phone up to her ear,” Dahlia ordered. “Right now.”
I reached over and pressed the receiver to her ear. After about a minute, she mumbled something and handed it back to me.
“I can’t come see her,” Dahlia told me, “but I’ll get back to you. Bye.”
“That was Dahlia, Mom,” I said like an idiot. “She’ll call again. Soon.”
I held her hand. When I said goodbye, there was a slight increase in pressure.
Two days later, the advanced assisted living wing called. When they were transporting her into her new room, she had fallen out of the wheelchair and hit her head on the floor.
"I thought you attendants were trained to move patients safely."
“It was not the attendant’s fault,” the voice said flatly.
Did that imply intentionality? Furious, I thought about who at the firm could help me sue the incompetent staff. Before I got to the hospital, however, I realized my reaction only revealed my denial that the mother who raised me had left this woman’s body long ago. I was in love with a stranger.
The nurses' station told me my mother was getting a brain scan, so I waited in the room she shared with a woman recovering from “cardiac infarction.” A man I took to be her son said gravely, “She never stopped smoking.” Dressed for a business meeting in shiny black shoes, black suit, and a black overcoat he had left on, he nodded toward the empty bed. “What’s your problem?”
“Stroke.” I wished he would go back to his mother’s side to watch TV with her.
The man had left by the time they wheeled in my mother and slid her onto the bed. There was a gauze bandage taped to her forehead, but other than that, she looked the same.
“Mom?” I took her hand. No pressure. Cold as cheese.
That’s when I called Dahlia.
“What happened?” she asked as if knowing the phone's ring brought bad news.
I told her about the fall, the incomprehension, the lack of responsiveness.
“Tansey. Tell her this. Tell her the threshold is open.”
“What?”
“Just tell her, ‘The threshold is open. You can go through now.’”
“You’re nuts.”
“Look, do you want your mom to keep suffering, or do you want her happy?”
“I don’t remember any ‘threshold’ mentioned in Sunday school. What sect are you into over there? What kabala are you quoting?”
“Does it need a name and a justification if it’s true?”
“I know you love my mother and wouldn’t hurt her, but death is personal. Not to mention eternal.”
“And you, an unbeliever, are willing to risk her comfort for principles as inconclusive as ours. Do what you want, but your mom and I have an understanding. Connections you will never understand.”
The businessman strolled around the curtain. “Oh, on the phone. Won’t disturb.”
I nodded. “All right," I promised Dahlia. "I’ll tell her. Do you want to hang on?”
“I’m in Israel, stupid. No, I don’t want to hang on. Call me back.”
I hung up.
“Everything okay?” The man’s GQ face wore an understanding half smile.
My bitterness melted. This guy who I didn't know from Dr. Seuss was asking if everything was okay. I couldn’t hold back the tears.
“Coffee shop brews a good latte,” he said. “I’ll bring you up one.”
“Is it allowed?”
“If they don’t see it.”
He smiled again, gave me a thumbs-up and disappeared. After wiping my eyes with a corner of the bed sheet, I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. The good eye swept the ceiling.
“Mom. I heard from Dahlia. She said to tell you the portal is open. No, wait. The threshold.” I looked around to make sure the businessman wasn’t listening to this nonsense. “Whatever. Anyway, it’s open now and you’re supposed to go through. If that makes any sense.”
The eyeball slowed, looked up, then down, then floated back home. The lid fluttered, considered closing, thought better of it, rose, then shut tight. Something left the hand I was holding.
I lifted the bony hand, stroked its freckled knuckles, fingered the unpainted nails. Once full of gold rings topped with giant gems, these long, elegant fingers expertly played a three no-trump.
“Didn’t know if you took extra cream,” a voice whispered behind me. “I’ll just leave it on your mom’s tray. Nice she finally got to sleep.”
I let go of her hand. Or, rather, I let go of her. Standing up, I turned and swung back the curtain. The man, halfway into the visitor’s armchair, pushed himself up with a look of surprise.
“Thank you.” I thrust out my hand. “Thank you very much for the coffee. I’ll pay you back. No. I’ll get the next round.”
He shook my hand. I held onto it until he eased his grip, then I walked backwards, pulled closed the curtain and dialed Dahlia. After telling her what I knew, I hung up and reached for the cord to the neon light over my mother’s bed. The late afternoon sun was out and wanting to come through the curtains. I threw them open, then went to look for someone in charge.
On the way out, I picked up the coffee cup, and drained it in long, sure swallows.
