“I won’t.” I lean over and kiss her on the cheek, ignoring the paper-thin feel of her skin. “I have you.”
Steve is idling illegally on Fifth Avenue when we depart.
“Not having to wait for a taxi or bus is certainly worth extra effort.” Mom winks at me. Steve gets out and helps Mom into the car, carefully propping up her feet on the extended leg rest. The venture out drained all her energy and she’s asleep before we hit midtown. He must have called ahead because Ian greets us at the curb.
“Thanks, Steve. I’ll see you in the morning.”
It takes both of us to help my mother up to the apartment. He shoots me a worried look as he supports her slim weight, but I refuse to acknowledge the concern in his eyes.
“She’s fine,” I mouth to him.
“Lie down with me, Tiny,” she says when we step into her bedroom. I ignore Ian’s worry and help Mom into bed.
Using the remote, I shut the drapes and roll onto my side so I can cuddle with my mom as we did when I was a child. Because it was the two of us, we often slept together even as I grew older. Lying here with her now, though, I feel as if I’m the protector and she’s my child.
“I love you, Mommy,” I whisper, laying my hand on her chest.
“Love you too, dear. More than all the stars in the sky.” Her cool hand covers mine, lightly gripping it as she drifts off into sleep. The steady, even sound of her breathing is comforting and I let my cares drift away, cocooned in the expensive comforter inside this lush apartment and holding my mother’s hand while my lover waits for me.
It is everything I could have hoped for.
But while I sleep, a cold drifts over us, waking me. My mother’s hand is ice cold and there is blood coming out of her nose, dripping onto the pillowcase. There’s a dark, ugly pool on the side of her face.
“Ian!” I scream, shaking my mother but she is non-responsive. “Iannnnn!”
He’s at the doorway and then at my side.
“I already called 911.” He has the phone in his hand.
He slides a finger into her mouth and then tips her head back to clear her airways. Then he blows into her mouth. Once. Twice. He pumps her chest, one hand folded over the other. Blowing and pumping over and over as I grip my hands to my mouth to keep the screams inside me.
I don’t remember the ambulance arriving or the trip to the hospital. I only recall the sounds. The shrill whistle of the sirens as we sped uptown toward the hospital. The digital beeps from the machine. The thud of the crash cart. It’s a macabre symphony playing a funeral march. And the drum beat that I want to hear never comes.
I know she is gone before anyone comes to the waiting room. I suppose I knew it when we were at Frick and she was telling me goodbye. I didn't want to acknowledge it was goodbye, so I shushed her. I wasn’t ready to hear her talk of death, even though that was what she needed—whether it was to prepare herself or me, I’m not entirely sure.
She was ready to go as soon as she learned that her remission state was over. She told me so on the stairs after the first appointment with Dr. Chen.
I can’t make it.
And maybe if Ian hadn't come along she would have clung longer for me, but she was ready and saw his entrance into our lives as a sign that I wouldn’t be alone.
I can’t really begrudge her that. Not when it was her suffering that would end. My pain is a selfish thing. I realize that now.
But oh my heart is empty. The sun has been snuffed out and inside me there is only vacant hallways and rooms through which the wind gusts endlessly from one barren corner to another. The frost is building up, the vortex of feeling being wiped away. And in the void, I am cold but the piercing pain is gone. And for now, that is good enough.
I remain numb throughout the parade of nurses and doctors who have come to say they are sorry. For what? Not saving her? It's with little interest that I watch Malcolm and Ian pretend to get along while arranging for my mother's interment. I am able to tell Ian that my father is buried in Flushing Cemetery. He stops bothering me about the details after the third day. I dress myself for the funeral in a black knee-length shift that Ian must have bought for me. It’s sunny out, which makes me weirdly offended—as if the clouds should be crying instead of smiling. But I’m not crying either. I can’t. I’m afraid if I start, I’ll never stop.
“I’m sorry, Victoria.” Malcolm’s mother has arrived. She looks worn out and old—far older than her fifty-some years. The skin under her eyes is dark and wrinkled. Her face is heavily lined and she smells like a tar factory. I feel nothing but pity for her.
“Thank you,” I say. It is the first of a thousand thank yous I dispense that day in return for the thousand I’m sorrys. Through it all, Ian stands by my side. He’s my spine today. Without him I wouldn’t be upright.
I wish I had something inside myself to give to him. At the end of the service and after the burial is over, I find that even with Ian beside me I cannot stand. He catches me before I collapse on the dirt. Cradling me in his arms, he carries me to the Bentley. I’m glad. I think of the Maybach and its little folded leg rests as my mother’s car, and I wouldn’t be able to ride in it today—maybe not ever.
“I can’t help you with Richard anymore.”
“Forget it. It’s unimportant.”
It’s not, but I can’t bring myself to care at the moment. I want to stop caring about everything right now.
Chapter 30
THAT NIGHT, IAN DRAWS ME into his arms but makes no effort to have sex with me. I wonder if he’ll leave soon. If I conjured up my future mate, he’d be someone who drove a delivery truck like my dad. Or maybe he’d be a construction worker. Some kind of blue collar guy who didn’t make much money and spent his time watching the Mets and cursing the Jets. Someone like Malcolm, without the drug dealing and the pimping. Ordinary. And if I were asked what kind of woman Ian would end up with, I’d say rich, beautiful, smart. A lawyer or a banker. Or the daughter of some super smart investor. Not a semi-illiterate, learning disabled bike courier.
It’s not a reality I’m ready to face, so I sleep for a very long time where the painless void awaits me.
After we buried Mom, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to eat, dream, work. I especially did not want to make love to Ian. I didn’t want to be happy. The spring days of late April and May mock me with non-stop sunshine.
All around me there are advertisements for Mother’s Day so I’ve stopped leaving the apartment until that Sunday morning. Ian wants to take me out but I refuse. Instead I lock myself in the bedroom and stare at the wall. I’m empty inside. I don’t have anything to give him, not anymore.