Dating Without Novocaine (15 page)

I
sat beside Dad, the both of us in chairs at the side of Mom's bed. The embolism had been in her left hemisphere, according to the CT scan, so it was her right side that might not function when she awoke. We sat on her left side, Dad holding her hand, wanting to be sure that she could feel that he was there.

It was two o'clock in the morning, and the intensive care unit had a quiet, half-lit feel to it, strangely peaceful. Hospitals had never frightened me, I'd always thought of them as “home base” for the injured. If you made it there, you were safe. You would be taken care of. Someone would fix you.

It was a bit of a shock to discover that there was very little anyone could do to “fix” a stroke. They had given Mom an anticoagulant, they had given her a blood thinner, and that was the extent of what they could do. They could not go in and fix whatever damage had been done to her brain, they could not force her to wake up, they could not make it impossible for her to have another stroke in the future.

We were helpless. If there had been anything to do,
I would have done it, but all there was was waiting. Mom had to emerge on her own.

I looked at her face, slack and unconscious above the hospital gown with its blue medallion print. I wondered what her reaction would be when she awoke and understood what had happened to her. If she
could
understand. She might not be able to read. She might not be able to talk. Would she want to live?

I wanted her to die instantly, right now, and avoid any suffering, and free me from the pain of watching her suffer. And at the same time, I wanted her to live, to drag herself through any misery, just so I wouldn't have to give her up. She could be silent, wheelchair-bound, helpless, and the spark of life within her would still be Mom. And I would not be alone.

“You should go lie down for a bit,” Dad said, startling me out of my thoughts.

“No, I'm fine.”

“Go on. Louise is probably still in the waiting room. Go get something to drink, or something to eat. I'll stay with her, as long as they'll let me.”

“Okay.” I didn't want to go, but I wanted to argue even less, and I thought maybe Dad would feel he was doing something if he could at least be sure that I was being properly fed and rested. “I'll be out in the waiting room, if you need me.”

He nodded, not looking at me, his eyes on Mom.

I went down the hall and through the doors to the waiting room outside the intensive care unit. It was a quiet room, the carpeting and padded furniture muffling any sound that distressed family members might make. Magazines were spread across a coffee table, and
through a doorway could be seen a small room full of humming vending machines.

Louise and Scott were sitting on one of the couches, the table lamp beside Louise casting golden light on her brown curls. She must have called him soon after we arrived, when I first went in to see Mom. The staff only let us stay with her for short periods of time.

Louise looked as though she belonged next to Scott, with his own dark hair and his perfect chin. They could have been brother and sister; or husband and wife—one of those pairs who grow to look like one another. I had a fleeting thought that maybe someday, despite Louise's protestations to the contrary, they might get back together again.

“Hannah,” Louise said, seeing me and standing.

Scott turned and saw me, then stood and came and folded me in his arms. “I'm so sorry,” he said into my hair.

I remembered then that Scott's father had died of a heart attack several years ago. He had been through worse than what I was going through, and he would understand. I wrapped my arms around him and hugged back, closing my eyes and for a precious few moments letting myself feel nothing but the comfort of human closeness. I leaned against him, and did not try to be strong.

I had cried in Louise's arms because I could not help it. With Scott, I did not feel the need to help it. It had always been that way with me, with boyfriends. I felt no need to pretend to be strong, to put on a brave face with a guy I was close to: it was his job to be the strong one. I was supposed to burden him with my troubles.

But Scott wasn't my boyfriend. I pulled away, and he let me go, although I wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in those warm arms, snuggled close where I could pretend that nothing could hurt me and no bad thoughts could follow.

“Any change?” Scott asked.

“No.”

“I got a hold of Cass at the pub. She's probably on her way already, with some of your things,” Louise said.

“She doesn't have to do that,” I protested by rote, but the truth was I was touched the three of them cared enough to come all the way down here for me. I sniffed back an encroaching tear.

“Nonsense,” Louise said.

“I've brought you a toothbrush and paste,” Scott said. “And floss, of course.”

My mouth crooked in a smile, despite my mood. “You would.”

“There's also some bottled juices in the cooler,” he said, nodding toward the end of the couch, where a small blue chest was sitting. “I know you won't feel much like eating anything, so we have to get the vitamins in you somehow.”

“Thanks.”

Louise dragged the little chest around to the front of the couch and opened it, taking out a couple bottles and putting them on the coffee table. “I'm going to go dash to the ladies' room,” she said, “and go see if there's a snack bar open. I don't trust the sandwiches in those machines. You okay?”

I nodded, and went and sat on the couch. Scott came
and sat next to me, opening a bottle of juice and handing it to me. I took a sip, then rested it against my thigh, staring into space.

Scott took my free hand, and held it clasped gently in his own in the space between us on the couch. “Whatever happens, Hannah,” he said, “you'll never be alone.”

And the tears started again.

 

“Hannah, wake up.” It was Dad's voice, his hand on my shoulder, stirring me from sleep. I opened my eyes, squinting against the daylight bright in the wall of windows that had been dark a few hours earlier. I had Scott's cotton handkerchief wadded in my hand, almost dry now.

“What is it? What's happened?” I asked. I'd been napping on one of the couches in the waiting area. Louise and Scott were gone, Cassie asleep on the other couch in their place, a bag of my clothes and toiletries on the floor.

“She's awake!”

“She is? How is she?” I asked, sitting up and throwing off the jacket that had been serving as my blanket.

“The doctor is in with her now, but she recognized me, she could say my name. That's supposed to be good, if she can speak.”

“Can I go in? Can I see her?”

“Come on.”

We went back to the room together, standing out of the doctor's way as he finished checking Mom. He saw us and motioned us forward, smiling.

“You've been lucky, Mrs. O'Dowd,” he said to
Mom, although plainly speaking to us, as well. “You were unconscious for only twelve hours. You can move your right arm and leg a little, and this is a very good sign. Your speech and movements are going to be slow, but they will become faster with time and therapy.”

I took in his words, the caution mixed with optimism, the absence of the words “full recovery,” but what mattered was that Mom had a weak smile and was looking at me and at Dad, and even as the doctor kept talking I went to the bed and bent down, putting my cheek to hers and then giving her a kiss.

“You…have…b-b-black…under…your eyes,” Mom said as I pulled away.

I smiled, and rubbed at my skin. The washcloth at Louise's hadn't removed all of it. “Mascara. I didn't wash my face last night.”

“B-b-bad…for…your skin.”

“I know. I need to take a shower.”

“Yes.”

Dad came to the other side of the bed and took her hand, and she turned her attention to him. He made a suspicious sound, and when I looked at his face I saw he was weeping, trying to hold it back, trying to hide it, but the tears were spilling down his cheeks.

I wanted to stay, but at the same time this was too private for that. My parents were not ones to express love for each other openly, and this was more bare and raw than I knew what to do with. I crept from the room, the doctor already on his way out, but still I heard Dad.

“I thought I'd lost you.”

I didn't know where either of us would be, without her.

I
lay in my old bed, in my old room, and gave up on trying to sleep. It was 1:00 a.m., the house was quiet, the night sounds of crickets through my open window soothing, but sleep was not coming.

Tomorrow Mom would be coming home.

It had been three weeks since her stroke. After she'd awakened, she'd been moved to a regular ward room, and had gone daily to the physical therapy center at the hospital. The doctor now said there was no reason for her to stay in the hospital: she would do fine at home, and would come in for physical therapy several times a week. A home health nurse would make visits to the house for as long as needed.

The three weeks had felt like three months, from the confusion and busy days. I'd been splitting my time between home and Portland, trying to keep Mom and Dad's house in order, to see Mom for a couple hours, and to keep my business going.

I'd ended up carting my sewing machine along with me most nights I came down, and sewing at the house until I couldn't stay awake any longer, whereupon I'd
fall into bed, sleeping without dreams until my alarm went off and I began the mad dash all over again. Most of my clients were understanding of my situation, but I worried that along with the understanding they might decide to relieve me of the burden of their patronage.

I felt shallow for even worrying about it, but there it was, and here I was awake in the middle of the night, considering the possibility that I might have to move home.

As much as he loved Mom, how could Dad possibly take care of her? He couldn't run the VCR correctly; he needed help making a cheese sandwich; he couldn't be trusted to pick something up at the grocery store, for fear he'd see a five gallon jar of pickles on sale, or a vat of peanut butter it would take a large family three years to eat. Mom ordered his blood pressure medication, she bought his clothes, she fed him, she kept the house. Who was going to take over all that needed to be done, and insure that Mom got what she needed?

Who was there but me?

And I wanted to do it, I wanted to make sure Mom got all that she needed. If I wasn't here, I would be worried that Dad wasn't doing what he should—not through laziness on his part, but ignorance and incompetence.

And yet, at the same time, there was part of me that was afraid of what the future might look like, if I moved home.

I might never leave again.

Mom might have another stroke. Dad might fall ill. And I would be the spinster daughter, the caretaker, who is duty-bound to care for her parents for one year, for
two, for three, for ten, her own life passing her by while she cared for others.

I had read about such characters in books, and seen them in movies. They were women who grew fat and shy, entombed in the house, only emerging back into the world in their late forties, like groundhogs coming out of their den and seeing the sun, all squinty-eyed and scared.

I would do it, because I loved my parents too much not to.

And I would resent my role, because I wanted my freedom.

I turned on the bedside lamp and got out of bed, heading for my closet. I was borrowing trouble, worrying about a future that might never come to pass. The wee hours were the time when such demons of thought came to prey on vulnerable minds—it was the time I was most likely to worry about my teeth—and the best thing to do was to distract myself.

My closet, like my room, was a chamber of horrors from the late eighties and early nineties. There were clothes in there that had been too nice to get rid of, but looked too awful to wear, even when new. I dug through them, looking for something that might be salvageable.

At the back was a sand-washed red silk skirt, bought at an outlet store. It had potential. I took off my nightie and stepped into the skirt, and as I pulled it up past my butt I felt the crinkle and give of the rotten elastic in the waistband. The stretched-out skirt hung at the top of my hips, making me feel slender.

I looked at myself in the mirror inside the closet door, and grimaced. The skirt reached to that Queen Elizabeth
II length: the knee. It had reverse pleats that had permanently creased the fabric, and the fading would show if I took them out.

Garbage. Or scrap material, although I already had boxes of scraps that I never used.

I dug some more, and found an old pair of jeans. Calvin Klein.

I remembered these jeans. I'd loved them. I'd thought they made my butt look small, which was something Levi's never could do. I'd always envied those women whose thighs were so slim and free of saddlebags that Levi's flattered them, and on whom the jeans looked comfortable and loose instead of like dark blue sausage casing. It seemed that there were some who were born to look good in jeans, and some who were not.

I was not. I was a tailored wool sort of creature, dark colors preferable for their minimizing effect. No pockets to inflate my thighs, no pleats to pouch my tummy, no waistband to create a roll of flab above.

I pulled on the jeans, jumping up and down in my bare feet as I tried to get them up my hips. I looked in the mirror, at the gaping V of belly and panty that the open zipper revealed.

I hadn't grown any taller since I'd worn the jeans, but I'd certainly grown larger.

I remembered once when one of Mom's old friends had come to visit, and they'd sat looking at photos together. They'd laughed at how thin they'd once been, at how at the time they'd thought the opposite. Now it was my turn to do the same, and to wonder, as well, if ten years from now I'd think my twenty-nine-year-old self slender, and dream of once again being this size.

I took off the jeans and pulled my nightie back on, and sat on the flowered throw rug in the center of the room, looking at the ring with mosquito netting hanging above my bed, looking at the posters of Baroque cherub-filled art, looking at the inexpertly painted columns and arches on the wall beside my bed, put there in a juvenile effort to recreate a Victorian illustration I'd once seen for Sleeping Beauty.

Ten years had not brought me as far from my teenage self as I had thought it would. I lived on my own, but in some ways I was still in a fairy tale, waiting for Prince Charming, for my wedding with the white gown and the carriage and horses, the arch of flowers, and my suburban castle where my future little princesses and princes would romp in well-garbed splendor.

Deep in my heart, I believed that my life would not really begin until I found the right guy and got married. I didn't know why I believed that, or where the idea had come from, but there it sat. It was like I was a jockey at the starting gate, waiting for someone to show up with my horse.

Which was stupid, really. What was this I was doing in the meantime, if not living my life?

In ten years, I either wanted to have a family started, or I wanted to be financially secure, and possessed of the same ease and style of Ms. DeFrang, whose bedroom curtains, cushions and duvet I had sewn. One way or another, I didn't want to find myself at thirty-nine, sitting on my old bedroom floor, moaning about my weight gain and wondering when my life was going to get started.

Maybe I would never get married, never have chil
dren. Maybe my fate was to be an entrepreneur, and have employees and my own private sweat shop, or maybe I would give up self-employment and end up in management at a clothing manufacturer. Maybe I'd eventually have my
own
company, heading it like Gert Boyle headed Columbia Sportswear.

I was not going to let myself become a groundhog. Even if I had to live at home for the next five years, I would not let that happen. I would keep working, I would keep dating. I would keep living.

Mom would die, eventually. Dad would die, eventually. I would be alone, eventually. It was like I'd told the teen beauty queen, Bethany: it was my life, to make what I would of it, for I was the one who would be left to live it. It might as well be a life that I liked.

The future might hold horrid things, but I resolved that one of them was not going to be Hannah O'Dowd, wondering where her life had gone.

 

“Dad. I thought you'd be gone already,” I said, coming into the kitchen. It was nearly 9:00 a.m., and Dad was sitting at the table, an empty cereal bowl with bits of bran flakes stuck to the sides sitting beside the paper. A banana peel hung over the edge of the counter.

“She won't be ready to go until eleven.”

“I know,” I said. I got a bowl out of the cupboard and a box of Rice Krispies. “We've got everything ready, don't we?”

The living room had been completely rearranged, a bed put in there for Mom. She wasn't strong or stable enough yet to safely climb and descend the stairs to her own bedroom, and Dad could not carry her. The bed in
the living room had seemed the best solution, although I knew Mom would hate it, and not just because the bedspread didn't match the couch.

We'd also altered the toilet in the bathroom, attaching rails that made the fixture look like a white porcelain armchair. One of Dad's friends had built a temporary ramp for the front steps. We'd rented a collapsible wheelchair, and Mom had chosen a walker with four wheels and hand brakes that she would use until she was steady enough for a cane.

I hated these alien, physical presences in the house, with their stench of disability and illness. It was as though our house had been contaminated with hospital DNA, and started to grow medical features.

But at the same time that I hated the aluminum tubing, the gray rubber wheels and the plywood ramp, I was grateful that they existed, and intrigued enough by their strangeness that I had taken a spin around the living room in the wheelchair—and discovered in the process that end tables and stools needed to go into storage to keep the pathways clear.

“I think we're set,” Dad said. “I can take care of anything else as it comes up.”

I poured milk on my cereal, listening to it crackle and pop just as the box promised, and carried it carefully to the table, the milk threatening to slosh over the rim.

“And the nurse will come this afternoon?” I asked.

“Yes.”

We were silent, as I started eating and Dad stared at the paper. My cereal had reached that pleasantly half-soggy, half-crunchy stage when he spoke again.

“Hannah?”

“Mmm?”

“Your mother and I were talking last night.”

I nodded. “Yeah?”

“We think you should go back to Portland.”

I stared at him, masticated Krispies pushed into my cheek. “What? Why?”

“It wasn't my idea, it was hers. But the more I thought about it, I saw she was right. There's no reason for you to stay down here and take care of her.”

“But—”

“I can do it,” he said.

My disbelief must have shown.

“The nurse will be here to help, and your mother may have been slowed down, but she can still tell me what to do. There's no reason for you to give up your life in Portland to come down here. She doesn't want that.”

“And I don't want to abandon her!” I didn't want to abandon her to a house full of old banana peels and Dad, rough and awkward, helping her bathe. I didn't want to abandon her to whatever excuse for food he would come up with, or to lying in the living room ignored while he turned on the TV and let it blare.

“You're not abandoning her. If I wasn't here she'd need you, but I
am
here. It's my job to take care of her. I'm her husband. The last thing she wants—that either of us wants—is to be a burden to you.”

How could I say I didn't trust him to have the competence to care for his wife? That I would rather be burdened than fear that Mom was being kept in a home-style nightmare of a care center?

There was no way to say it. And even as I rebelled against being kicked out of the house, a small guilty
part of me was relieved that this was not going to be my burden. Not yet, at least.

“I can come down once or twice a week, though, can't I?” I asked.

“Of course you can. We didn't mean you shouldn't visit. We just don't want you to stay.”

“Thanks. I guess,” I said.

“If it makes you feel any better, you can do the grocery shopping when you come down. And the laundry. And someone is going to have to take care of the yard.”

“Okay, okay!”

“You're a good girl, Hannah. Don't worry about us. We're going to be all right.”