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Authors: Jane Hamilton
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an egg that has been blown out. I wasn’t always sure there was any such thing as a soul to begin with, if there was an essence that was independent of our bodies, and that doubt made it all the more difficult to think of a little soul. Was Lizzy’s soul like a bird with its wings clipped, inside that bloated body, growing quiet and still, and then closing its eyes? Or had it flown out, up and up, days before, when she began to sink in the pond?
Dr. Hildebrand dispensed his diagnoses gradually, until the final decision seemed to be a mutual one made by him and Reverend Nabor and Dan and Theresa. They were going to let her go. The family filed into the lounge late the third night. The nurse took a wooden rocking chair into Lizzy’s room, with braided circles tied to the seat and the back. In the lounge we all sat trying not to look into the unit, at the window with the curtain drawn, and the closed door, where, somehow, impossibly, a life was coming to an end. Mrs. Clark, the prayer leader, swished her behind in her seat, her preamble to rising, but her daughter reached for her hand and kept her down.
In room 309 the nurse took the I.V. out of Lizzy’s arm, the tube from her nose, switched off the respirator, the heart monitor, removed the blood pressure band, and the catheter. Dan lifted Lizzy out of the bed and took her to the rocking chair. His shoulders were at his ears. He rocked her a little. Theresa kneeled on the floor and put her head on Lizzy’s lap.They could touch her anywhere they wanted now. They talked to her, and believed that her reason had returned, that she could now hear and understand. Dan counted to himself while Lizzy took breaths first twelve seconds apart, and fourteen, and eighteen, and twenty. They waited, bent over her, but no next breath came.
Chapter Four
——
H OWARD’S MOTHER N ELLIE HAD not only occupied Emma and Claire for three days, but she also had baked bread and pies and cookies, made two pans of chicken and broccoli casserole, as well as miscellaneous foodstuffs: several different Jell-Os, dips, her secret garlic salad dressing. When we got home that night of Lizzy’s death, the fan in the living room was blowing the hot air in circles. Howard wondered if the fires of hell could be any hotter than the present temperature of our own kitchen. I said I didn’t know, it felt pretty hot, but hell was probably in a different league, that it—
“Never mind,” he had said.
In bed we closed our eyes over a veil of tears and lay awake. It was no use trying to sleep and well before dawn I slipped down the creaking stairs. Out of long habit I went over, opened the refrigerator, and stood motionless in front of its maw. The light had burned out weeks ago and it was all a darkness. The green glow of the digital microwave clock on the far counter, as soft as candlelight, illuminated the room. When I shifted my weight from my right to my left foot the raspberry Jell-O on the bottom shelf, with banana and pineapple chunks embedded inside, caughtthe light and seemed to wink. Howard had told me that the church ladies were distributing food to the Collinses, that Nellie had carefully marked our Tupperware with masking tape and an indelible ink pen and then taken several dishes over to the church kitchen.
He had not said a word on the way home. When we were just inside he asked me when the funeral was going to be, as if he expected me to have learned something between the car door and the threshold. I had gaped at him, my eyes wide and mouth slack, like a dolt, and of all things, I had laughed. I couldn’t think where it was I wanted to be, where I could go to feel steady. The lingering smell of fresh bread, the abundance of food made from scratch, the sink scrubbed clean, the place mats that had been cleared off the table and stacked neatly in a pile on the cold wood stove, the saltshaker filled to the brim—every one of those details made me feel a stranger in my own kitchen. Life is
Dr. Hildebrand dispensed his diagnoses gradually, until the final decision seemed to be a mutual one made by him and Reverend Nabor and Dan and Theresa. They were going to let her go. The family filed into the lounge late the third night. The nurse took a wooden rocking chair into Lizzy’s room, with braided circles tied to the seat and the back. In the lounge we all sat trying not to look into the unit, at the window with the curtain drawn, and the closed door, where, somehow, impossibly, a life was coming to an end. Mrs. Clark, the prayer leader, swished her behind in her seat, her preamble to rising, but her daughter reached for her hand and kept her down.
In room 309 the nurse took the I.V. out of Lizzy’s arm, the tube from her nose, switched off the respirator, the heart monitor, removed the blood pressure band, and the catheter. Dan lifted Lizzy out of the bed and took her to the rocking chair. His shoulders were at his ears. He rocked her a little. Theresa kneeled on the floor and put her head on Lizzy’s lap.They could touch her anywhere they wanted now. They talked to her, and believed that her reason had returned, that she could now hear and understand. Dan counted to himself while Lizzy took breaths first twelve seconds apart, and fourteen, and eighteen, and twenty. They waited, bent over her, but no next breath came.
Chapter Four
——
H OWARD’S MOTHER N ELLIE HAD not only occupied Emma and Claire for three days, but she also had baked bread and pies and cookies, made two pans of chicken and broccoli casserole, as well as miscellaneous foodstuffs: several different Jell-Os, dips, her secret garlic salad dressing. When we got home that night of Lizzy’s death, the fan in the living room was blowing the hot air in circles. Howard wondered if the fires of hell could be any hotter than the present temperature of our own kitchen. I said I didn’t know, it felt pretty hot, but hell was probably in a different league, that it—
“Never mind,” he had said.
In bed we closed our eyes over a veil of tears and lay awake. It was no use trying to sleep and well before dawn I slipped down the creaking stairs. Out of long habit I went over, opened the refrigerator, and stood motionless in front of its maw. The light had burned out weeks ago and it was all a darkness. The green glow of the digital microwave clock on the far counter, as soft as candlelight, illuminated the room. When I shifted my weight from my right to my left foot the raspberry Jell-O on the bottom shelf, with banana and pineapple chunks embedded inside, caughtthe light and seemed to wink. Howard had told me that the church ladies were distributing food to the Collinses, that Nellie had carefully marked our Tupperware with masking tape and an indelible ink pen and then taken several dishes over to the church kitchen.
He had not said a word on the way home. When we were just inside he asked me when the funeral was going to be, as if he expected me to have learned something between the car door and the threshold. I had gaped at him, my eyes wide and mouth slack, like a dolt, and of all things, I had laughed. I couldn’t think where it was I wanted to be, where I could go to feel steady. The lingering smell of fresh bread, the abundance of food made from scratch, the sink scrubbed clean, the place mats that had been cleared off the table and stacked neatly in a pile on the cold wood stove, the saltshaker filled to the brim—every one of those details made me feel a stranger in my own kitchen. Life is
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