Irises (4 page)

Kate thought. “He let me volunteer at the hospital every Saturday for a few hours. It was hard for him because I could have been helping here at home or working at the Red Sombrero, making more money for us. But he knew how important it was to have an extracurricular activity.” She talked as if she were speaking to herself, remembering.

Reverend Soto didn't quite understand.

“For college,” Mary explained.

“Ahh. That's good,” he said. “What about you?” he asked, turning to Mary.

“I can't think of anything right now.” She was thinking
of how
difficult it had been to get Papa to let her stay an ext
ra hour
after school to work on her painting. Most of h
er memories
of Papa were of him saying no to the things th
at she
and Kate wanted to do. She tried to think of times when she remembered him laughing or even smiling, but she couldn't.

“I understand. But if a memory comes to mind before the service, will you give me a call?” he asked them.

“Yes,” Kate said. She smiled at Reverend Soto. Mary remembered that yesterday, while they were washing the dishes, K
ate had
said he was good-looking. Reverend Soto had carefully combed, wavy black hair, and an ample forehead that made him
lo
ok intelligent. His dark, thick eyebrows gave him an intens
e look.
Cute
was not the right word for him. He was attractive, good-looking, handsome
— very. He was much better-looking than Simon, if the truth be known.

He and Kate looked at each other for a few seconds more. “Would it be possible to see your mother?” he asked her.

“Why?” Mary asked. She couldn't help the tone of alarm in her voice.

“I would like to pray for her,” he answered calmly.

“It's okay,” Kate said to Mary. “Father would have liked him to pray for Mother.”

Mary wasn't sure. Papa might have felt as she felt, as if something very private were about to be exposed. Reverend Soto was here to offer condolences, to plan the service. How did seeing Mama fit into all that? But she stood up reluctantly and followed Kate and Reverend Soto. For some inexplicable reason, she felt as if she needed to protect Mama.

Reverend Soto stood on one side of the bed. Mary saw him stare at the feeding tube that connected the dangling plastic bag of liquid food to Mama's stomach. But his face did not have the look she had seen many times when people first encountered Mama
— a look of slight terror, as if a corpse had suddenly opened its eyes.

“How long has she been this way?” Reverend Soto asked.

“Almost two years,” Kate answered.

Reverend Soto shook his head. Mary couldn't tell exactly what the gesture meant. There was compassion in his expression, but there was also something else.

“And she's been staying with you all this time?”

“She was in a coma for a couple of weeks after the accident. Then she entered the state she's in. It's called a persistent vegetative state.” Kate sounded tired. Mary wondered why she was being so polite.

“A
persistent vegetative state
,” he repeated, as if to himself.

“You're familiar with the condition,” Kate said.

“Yes,” Reverend Soto said. It sounded as if he wished he weren't. “Is there any hope of regaining consciousness?”

“No,” said Kate, her head down.

“You don't know that,” Mary said to her, raising her voice. “You're not God.”

Kate turned, a shocked look on her face. Before she could say anything, Reverend Soto spoke. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean
to offend. What's your mother's name?” he quickly asked Kate.

“Catalina.”

“Ahh. You're named after her,” he said, smiling.

Kate nodded. Reverend Soto lifted his hands and held them over Mama. “Let us pray,” he said. His voice got deeper and more solemn. “Lord, we pray for the soul of Reverend Romero and for the soul of Catalina. We pray for Kate and Mary, that you be with them these hard days. Let your Holy Spirit come to console them and guide them in the difficult decisions that await them. Amen.”

An awkward silence followed. Then Mary whispered, “Mama's not dead.”

“Pardon?” Reverend Soto asked.

“You prayed for Mama's soul like she was dead, like her soul
was with Papa's. Her soul is here, with her, with us, right now.”

“Mary, what's come over you?” Kate asked.

Mary searched for an answer, but she couldn't find one.

 

K
ate and Mary had always shared a bedroom. When they were babies, they slept in adjacent cribs. Later they slept in the same bed. Now they each had a single bed, separated by a nightstand, with a lamp that Kate used to read late into the night. The night after the burial, they lay next to each other in the dark, awake but silent, each enveloped in her own memories and thoughts.

Kate replayed the events of the past few days. They had stood in a receiving line at the funeral home for four hours shaking hands and hearing the same condolences: “I'm sorry for your loss. If there is anything I can do for you, anything at all, please let me know.” She smiled to herself now and shook her head. She wondered if any of them had really meant it. Maybe it was the way they said it — like they were trying too hard to sound sincere. What would they say in a month if she called them up and told them they didn't have any money to pay for their mother's care? How would they take care of Mother? Of themselves? These questions circled tirelessly in her mind.

Then there was Simon. Simon had taken it upon himself to stand next to her in the receiving line, a gesture that bothered her because it expressed that their relationship was more serious than it really was. He had been her boyfriend for a year and a half. Did that give him the right to stand next to her? Maybe it did.

Thank goodness for Bonnie. Every once in a while she would come up to Kate in the receiving line and whisper a comment that would make Kate smile. Other than that, the only good thing about the whole experience had been Reverend Soto. His eulogy had been fiery, the opposite of the mousy eulogies she had always heard. She remembered his voice and the way he looked at her when he spoke. She didn't think the portrait of Father he painted was totally accurate, but it was an inspiring portrait nevertheless. Reverend Soto had described Father as a warm, loving man. Father was a loving man, she agreed, but his love was solid, lasting, hard, and not necessarily warm. It was unfortunate, especially for Mary's sake, that Father Hogan was in Mexico with his church's youth group and was not able to speak.

She knew Mary was awake, but thought she'd ask anyway. “Mary, are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“I was just thinking about Mama and wondering whether she can tell that Papa died.”

Kate was silent for a few moments. “Mary . . . don't do that to yourself. She's not capable of understanding.”

“She'll miss him, though, somehow,” Mary said. “Do you really think it was all right not to allow any of the people who came to the house to see her? They wanted to pay their respects.”

“We made the right decision. It would have seemed like some kind of show, like putting her on display. People would feel sorry for us more than they already do.” One of the ladies who came to the house had said, “It's so sad that Catalina is not able to take care of you now that you're all alone.” She spoke with such pity in her voice that it made Kate's stomach turn.

“What if Mama knows what's going on deep down?” Ma
ry said
.

“Do you really believe that?”

Mary was silent.

Kate continued, “She's not aware of anything. You're creating false hopes for yourself. Her mind is gone and won't ever come back.” Her voice was full of tenderness.

There was a long pause, and Kate feared her words might have hurt Mary. But it was important that Mary realize the truth once and for all, especially now that Father was dead. I
t was
just the two of them, and there was no room for illusions.

“I saw Papa's soul leave him. That's why I didn't call 9-1-1,” Mary whispered.

“His soul?”

“It was like a beautiful, strange light with a warm glow. When I went to the bedroom to check up on Mama and I saw that he wasn't breathing, I sat next to him on the bed and sa
w t
his light, his soul, slowly disappear.”

“How do you know it was his soul?” Kate asked.

Mary paused. “I used to see a light coming from inside of people. I saw this light all the time when I painted, and I saw it again when Papa died. I think the light came from his soul. What else could it be?”

“Oh.” Kate kept herself from responding. What could sh
e say?
Mary was so different from her. She belonged to Father's world, the world of spirits and invisible things.
How is your soul?
Father had asked the afternoon he died. Kate fel
t that
soul
was just another word for the mental processing that went on inside our heads, for consciousness, and consciousness expired when the body ceased to function
— or even before, as with Mother.

She could pinpoint the exact moment when she stopped believing in soul as an entity separate from consciousness. It happened a month or so after Father brought Mother home. Kate was rubbing Mother's legs with alcohol when all of a sudden her mother began to make whimpering noises, as if she were having a bad nightmare.

“Mama, are you okay?” Kate asked instinctively, forgetting her mother's condition. She shook her gently, but the more she shook, the more the whimpering increased until it began to sound like a baby crying. Kate climbed onto the bed and hugged her mother tightly, and her tears came convulsively, in rhythm with the noises her mother was making. She stayed like that, her arms around her mother, long after Mother had returned to her silence.

That was when she stopped believing in a soul, or in another world where souls go after the death of the body, or in a being that is spirit and creates all souls. There could not be a soul trapped inside her mother's body. The sounds her mother made that day, the sounds of anguish, could not be made by a being that still felt pain, a being that at some level was able t
o un
derstand her own pitiful condition. It would be cruel to have it otherwise.

“Kate,” Mary continued, “I know you may not agree with what I did. But I wanted you to know why I didn't call 9-1-1. I was certain he had died and I wanted to let his soul leave his body peacefully.”

“You should have called 9-1-1,” Kate said.

“But
—”

“You could have saved his life.”

“His life was gone, Kate.” Mary's words came out with force.

“Let's drop it. What's done is done.”

Another silence. Then Mary spoke again, changing the subject. “Mrs. Guerney took good care of Mama while we were at the funeral. Thank goodness for Talita and Mrs. Guerney. They're saints.”

“Yes, thank goodness for Talita and Mrs. Guerney,” Kate agreed. Talita was the nurse who came over for a couple of hours each day to replace the bag and clean the tube that provided Mother's nutrition and hydration. Mrs. Guerney came when Father went out on church business. The rest of the time, it was Mary and Kate's job to take care of Mother
— putting ointment on her lips, moving her arms and legs gently so they wouldn't atrophy, changing her diaper. Mary also kept her company, listening to the radio, talking to her, waiting f
or he
r to wake up one day. Sometimes it seemed as if all their free time was given over to Mother. Kate's mind came back to the same questions again: How would they pay for her care without Father?

“We're on our own now, Mary.”

It took a few moments for Mary to respond. “We ha
ve Mama
.”