Within Arm's Reach (2 page)

CATHARINE

I stop the car because everyone I have ever lost is standing in the middle of the road.

They are lined up across my lane of traffic in front of the Municipal Building. I see them from a distance but don’t immediately recognize their faces. They look like a family on their way to visit the Municipal Building to log a complaint, or to have their day in court. Their body language and slightly formal clothing make them appear serious and purposeful. There is an elderly couple, and behind them a middle-aged man holding an infant, his free hand stretching back to a three-year-old girl with white-blond hair. I wonder where the mother of the little girl and the baby is. Why is the middle-aged man alone with two children? The elderly couple is clearly too old, and too dependent on each other, to be of much help—the man’s hand is under the woman’s elbow, their heads are cocked toward each other as if afraid to miss one word.

I have to remind myself that times have changed. There are single-parent households now, and wives leave husbands, whereas in the past the man nearly always left the woman. There is no telling what might be possible these days. I am, in fact, thinking about what might be possible as I drive along North Central Avenue toward the Municipal Building. Specifically, I am thinking about my granddaughter Gracie. I am on my way home from a visit with her.

I hadn’t seen Gracie or Lila for two weeks, while I was getting over a bad cold. But I noticed the change in Gracie as soon as she walked into the kitchen. There was a heaviness to the way she moved, and a shine to her face. There was more to her than there had been. I didn’t say anything, of course. I told myself that I couldn’t be right. Gracie’s not married. And my instincts are not as trustworthy as they once were. There is no way this young boy-crazy girl—she is still a girl to me— could be with child. I must be losing my mind.

“What’s with that face?” Gracie had asked, her hand on the teakettle.

“There’s nothing wrong with my face,” I heard myself say. “Your grammar is atrocious. Do you even listen to yourself speak? You should pay more attention to language, Gracie. You and your sister don’t speak proper English. Your cousins are even worse, I’m sorry to say. Maybe if you’d spent more time in church, listening to the fathers preach . . . Everything’s been diluted in you.” I had to shake my head to make myself be quiet.

“I know, Gram.” Gracie smiled and rolled her eyes at me. I could tell she was trying to help calm me down. “All my problems would disappear if I went to Mass regularly.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” I said. My head ached. “It couldn’t have hurt.”

I stopped talking then, but I felt no better, no more in control. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from careening after this impossible idea about the girl standing before me making my tea the way I like it, with no sugar and a drop of milk. Leaning against the rickety kitchen table in the house Gracie rents from her father, I saw myself, my past, in her. That period in my life when I was endlessly making, carrying, delivering babies. After all, when I was Gracie’s age I was halfway through making my family. At twenty-nine I was carrying Meggy, or perhaps Johnny. I had lost my daughter, but not yet the twins.

I am thinking about my babies as I drive closer to the people strung like a chain across the street. I have always had the ability to identify a pregnant woman before she has even begun to show. I wasn’t expecting motherhood in Gracie, which is why I wasn’t sure right away. But now, my hands wrapped around the unwieldy steering wheel of my car, I know it is the truth. I just don’t know how I should feel about it.

I’m nearly on top of the family before I recognize them. It is just a feeling at first, a seizing in the pit of my stomach, and that’s when I begin to slow down. My foot presses down on the brake seemingly without my control. The car bucks beneath me. I recognize the individuals, one by one. Mother. Father. Patrick. My eldest daughter. And, cupped against Patrick’s chest, is not one infant, but two.

I stop the car. Except for the twins, who are busy yawning and fussing against Patrick’s suit jacket, my family looks in my direction with little expression. Patrick doesn’t seem to see me at all; he is busy with the children. Mother and Father are leaning toward each other. My daughter is bent over pulling up her knee socks. I give an extra-long moment to gazing at the twins. I have never had the chance to lay eyes on them before. They are so very beautiful, and so very mine that my old shriveled breasts ache, hoping for milk.

When I can think again, I think, My God, I must be dead.

My mother speaks.
No, Catharine, you’re not
.

My mother is smiling, and it is a smile I had seen many times before, during my childhood. It is the smile I’d always dreaded because it meant lies and craziness. I had hated to see my mother turn her eyes away from me to look at people she only imagined were there. But now she was pointing that loony smile straight at me. And she had said that I was alive. And somehow I knew my mother had engineered this moment. She had brought me my family.

I scan their faces. Patrick is bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, trying to quiet the baby boy. The infant and his father look so similar I feel a catch in my throat. Each has a frustrated, balled-up expression on his face. The three-year-old girl, my daughter, tugs on Patrick’s suit jacket, wanting his attention. Patrick’s face pinkens. I can tell he wants a drink. I can tell he is about to explode. I have seen that look before. I want to warn the children, to get them out of the way, but I can’t move.

I told your father you would be able to see us,
my mother says.

Please help the babies,
I say.

My parents are not listening to me. They are sharing a look. They have forgotten me and mine. Patrick now has our little girl by the arm and he is shaking her, trying to make her quiet. At first she fights him and then she stops fighting and she moves like a rag doll under his touch. The twins, both crushed against Patrick’s chest, are shrieking at the top of their lungs. I feel my own breath leave me. Their screams are deafening. Their tiny faces turn purple.

I think, Oh Jesus, it is happening all over again.

And then everything gets louder, worse. The nasal roar of car horns and tires screeching overwhelms the cries of my babies, and then my car door flies open. I think, Oh thank goodness, I can go to them now. I can save them.

But the road in front of me has emptied. My family has disappeared and Kelly’s husband, Louis, of all people, is leaning over me, unbuckling my seat belt, taking me by the elbow, half-lifting me out of the car into the clear white light of midday. He is talking to me. His words dance over my head like stars. My son-in-law tells me that I must hold myself together, that my children need me, that my influence is greater than I know, and that before I even think about disappearing—in any way—I need to make things right with them.

LOUIS DRIVES me to the hospital against my will. I want to go home. I want to sit calmly in my room, among my things. I want to be alone, so I can figure out what is happening.

But instead I am put in a wheelchair when I am perfectly capable of walking on my own, and wheeled into an exam room, where a young doctor with a bushy mustache and hair growing out of his ears pokes and prods me and sticks a needle into my forehead and asks stupid questions. When he leaves without even saying
It was nice to meet
you
, or
Good-bye
, the nurse tells us to wait and then we are left alone.

I give Louis a good glare now and ask, “What are we waiting
for
?”

“They didn’t say,” he replies.

This non-answer doesn’t surprise me. I have always liked my son-in-law, but he tends to be weak.

There is a clatter out in the hall, and then Lila is standing in the doorway of the exam room. She is wearing a white coat like everyone else in this godforsaken place, but she has the clipped stride and stressed face of my second oldest grandchild. She is in her third year of medical school and she is a natural worrier. It’s clear that finding me here in her hospital as a patient has upset her hard-won sense of balance. I blame her father for this, too.

She looks to him first. “Daddy, what’s going on?”

“Sweetheart, hi. There was a little accident across the street from my meeting. I just happened to be there.”

“I’m fine, Lila, don’t worry,” I say. “I had a fender bender, that’s all. I wouldn’t have even come here, but your father insisted. This is an obvious waste of time and money.”

Louis clears his throat. “I told you I would cover any costs, Catharine.”

“But the waste of time,” I say, and am surprised by how upset I sound.

Lila moves to the side of the bed and takes my hand. She is checking my temperature, and to see if my skin is clammy or dry. Lila is my own personal health watch team. Every time I see her she takes my pulse and asks a few specific questions about how I’m feeling. Anger and fright struggle across her round face as she presses her fingers into mine. “How many stitches did they give you?” she asks. “What happened?”

I wave my free hand toward her father. “Louis, why don’t you go and track down that woman who said she would check me out. Lila will keep me company.”

Louis seems relieved to be freed into motion. “Right,” he says. “I’ll see if I can’t speed things up a little.”

We are not a touchy-feely family, and I can tell Lila is as aware as I am that my hand is still in hers. I pull away slowly. I say, “Don’t you look professional, in your white coat.”

Lila puffs up with pride. “My coat is shorter than the doctor’s,” she says. “That’s how people distinguish the students from the real thing. But I did get to put in stitches yesterday morning. It was kind of an honor, being allowed to do that.”

I nod, but I am only half-listening. It has occurred to me that I should take advantage of this time with Lila. If I am going crazy I should make something positive come out of it. I need to talk about my family to my family.

“Gram,” Lila says. She still looks shaken. “Do you think it’s possible for people to change?”

I am already on my own track; I don’t know what she means, and I can’t stop to think about it. I say, “I want to get the entire family together for Easter.”

Lila squints. “Easter is in a few weeks. Everyone? Even Uncle Pat?”

“Everyone. And I want to have the party at your and Gracie’s house.”

Lila takes a step away. She has her doctor-in-training expression back on. She thinks I’ve become disoriented, that I don’t know what I’m saying. “You mean Gracie’s house, don’t you, Gram? I’m just staying there for a few days while I sort out my medical school housing. You know that.”

“I don’t want you to leave her. I want you to live with her for good.”

Lila gives a short laugh that doesn’t sound at all amused. “What are you talking about? Gracie and I haven’t lived together since we were kids, and there are good reasons for that. Besides, you know that I need to live alone.”

“Nobody needs to live alone. You’re just more comfortable that way. A little discomfort might do you good.”

Lila is squinting so hard her brown eyes have almost disappeared.

“Look, dear.” I try to make my voice softer, more charming. I know how stubborn my granddaughter is. By pushing her I am just pushing her away. “Your sister needs your level head. You’ve always had more common sense. Besides,” I say, “it must be financially difficult for you to afford your own apartment. Living with your sister makes sense on so many levels.”

“I need my own space, Gram, whether you believe it or not. It’s not that easy around here and I need a place to go where I can lock the door and be alone.”

I lean forward. I want my grandchildren, and everyone I love, to be strong and tough. Sometimes that requires my giving them a little shove. “Who ever said becoming a doctor was going to be easy? Life is not supposed to be easy, Lila. Easy is a cop-out.”

Lila has darker hair and more freckles than her sister. Gracie is pale of skin, hair, and eyes. Gracie often looks washed out, but when she’s happy, she is lit by an inner light. Lila always looks strong and vibrant and, at the moment, angry. She is a spotlight to her sister’s candle.

I don’t look away from her gaze. If Lila wants a staring contest, I will win. She should know that much by now. I say, “So we’ll all gather at your house then, for Easter. I can’t fit everyone into my room at the home, and your mother gets too stressed out when she has to host these kinds of gatherings. You and your sister will help me, won’t you?”

Lila opens her mouth to speak, but the nurse comes in then, a clipboard in her arms, announcing in a bullhorn voice that she is here to check me out. Louis is one step behind her. I’m not concerned that our conversation is cut short. If Lila has something else to say, I’m sure she’ll track me down and let me hear it.

WHEN I lay my hand on the doorknob of my room at the Christian Home for the Elderly, I am suddenly so weak I have a hard time turning it. I didn’t realize how shaken the accident had left me until then. But I feel better with each step inside. My room reminds me of the hotel suites where I grew up. I am safe in this place, which reduces my whole life to one room. In old-age homes, as in hotels, personal taste and unique touches are necessary to distinguish your space from that of your neighbor next door. It is your possessions—your favorite chair, your grandfather clock, your large black-and-white photograph of every single one of your children smiling at the same moment—that make it home, not a mortgage or a backyard or a husband or a view. This is how my parents lived their entire lives, and this is how I am able to feel close to them now. I prefer feeling their presence in this room to confronting their dead selves in the middle of the road in the middle of the town that I have lived in for most of my adult life.