comforting. This will be the beginning of a few years of work. Over the course of our sessions together, I will try every trick in the book to distract, entertain, and antagonize Anne, but she will not flinch. She will not be my mother, much as I throw myself against her walls. She asks if Iâd like to come back. I nod that I would. Anne takes out her planner, which looks more like a teacherâs attendance book, and opens it on her lap. We agree on a time for the next session. She marks it with a pencil.
Like Rhodaâs, Beaâs place is furnished from a previous lifetime. There is a heavy credenza, couch and chairs covered in dark fabric. The ladies play in a breakfast nook in her kitchen with corner windows and a Tiffany-style lamp hanging over the table, decorated with a slot machineâs bright cherries. Thereâs a small TV off to the side.
As Iâve observed, talking subsides once they start playing. The game requires total concentration. Rhoda takes a long time to lead and Bea mutters, âPlay it. Youâre not going to sleep with it.â She rarely needs time to ponder which card to play and flicks itinsouciantly into the middle of the table. Her speed is intimidating, dealing quickly and scooping up tricks in one quick motion.
Between rounds, Bette reports that a good friend had a fall. She has a black eye, a gash on her head, and a sprained wrist. It could have been worse, the ladies say in unison, as if in reading responsively at services. It also comes out that a friend is down to ninety-three pounds and is in so much pain she canât make it upstairs to her bedroom. Theyâve transformed the dining room into her bedroom. I know my mother would rather die than set up camp in a hospital bed in the dining room for all to see.
Now that the subject of death has been broached, I ask the ladies if they fear death. Rhoda, first, emphatically says no. Jackie and Bette look down, stricken. âYes, I do,â Bette finally says, and Jackie commiserates. I have pushed them to talk about something difficult and yet I suddenly donât want the responsibility of holding up an unwanted mirror. Do they think about how many days of glorious sunshine are left? How many more winters will wash through their bones? Just hearing them admit fear scares me. Of course, we all think our mothers will never die, that cord never cut.
More than death, my mother fears becoming a burden. Sheâs also concerned about the availability of a good manicurist and electrologist in the nursing home, should it come to that. Betteâs doctor told her if she falls it would be the end of her.
âYou need to get a new doctor,â Rhoda chimes in.
Then I ask Bea, who has been uncharacteristically quiet, if she is afraid of dying. âYouâre dead, youâre dead,â she barks back.
Beaâs father died when she was eight years old some years before penicillin could have cured him. She cocked her head when shetold me this, as if to say: thems the breaks . I figure itâs her way of pushing it off; what else can she do? It was a long time ago. She has been fatherless for many decades. At eight, do you even understand the magnitude of such a loss? And at eighty, do you still long for him?
I suspect Beaâs life was irrevocably changed when she lost her fun-loving father, an only child left with a mother she never quite connected with.
âEvery year we lost at least one teenager,â Bea told me that first meeting at the diner. She was tired by then and was no longer animated. âThe kids were warned not to go swimming in the quarries,â she said, disgusted that the warning wasnât heeded. Her class lost a beautiful young boy called Millard Fleetwood, age sixteen. The cliffs were as beautiful as they were treacherous; the sheer rock face rose as high as it plunged beneath the blue-green water, irresistible to teenagers who believed themselves impervious to danger,
Like Rhodaâs, Beaâs place is furnished from a previous lifetime. There is a heavy credenza, couch and chairs covered in dark fabric. The ladies play in a breakfast nook in her kitchen with corner windows and a Tiffany-style lamp hanging over the table, decorated with a slot machineâs bright cherries. Thereâs a small TV off to the side.
As Iâve observed, talking subsides once they start playing. The game requires total concentration. Rhoda takes a long time to lead and Bea mutters, âPlay it. Youâre not going to sleep with it.â She rarely needs time to ponder which card to play and flicks itinsouciantly into the middle of the table. Her speed is intimidating, dealing quickly and scooping up tricks in one quick motion.
Between rounds, Bette reports that a good friend had a fall. She has a black eye, a gash on her head, and a sprained wrist. It could have been worse, the ladies say in unison, as if in reading responsively at services. It also comes out that a friend is down to ninety-three pounds and is in so much pain she canât make it upstairs to her bedroom. Theyâve transformed the dining room into her bedroom. I know my mother would rather die than set up camp in a hospital bed in the dining room for all to see.
Now that the subject of death has been broached, I ask the ladies if they fear death. Rhoda, first, emphatically says no. Jackie and Bette look down, stricken. âYes, I do,â Bette finally says, and Jackie commiserates. I have pushed them to talk about something difficult and yet I suddenly donât want the responsibility of holding up an unwanted mirror. Do they think about how many days of glorious sunshine are left? How many more winters will wash through their bones? Just hearing them admit fear scares me. Of course, we all think our mothers will never die, that cord never cut.
More than death, my mother fears becoming a burden. Sheâs also concerned about the availability of a good manicurist and electrologist in the nursing home, should it come to that. Betteâs doctor told her if she falls it would be the end of her.
âYou need to get a new doctor,â Rhoda chimes in.
Then I ask Bea, who has been uncharacteristically quiet, if she is afraid of dying. âYouâre dead, youâre dead,â she barks back.
Beaâs father died when she was eight years old some years before penicillin could have cured him. She cocked her head when shetold me this, as if to say: thems the breaks . I figure itâs her way of pushing it off; what else can she do? It was a long time ago. She has been fatherless for many decades. At eight, do you even understand the magnitude of such a loss? And at eighty, do you still long for him?
I suspect Beaâs life was irrevocably changed when she lost her fun-loving father, an only child left with a mother she never quite connected with.
âEvery year we lost at least one teenager,â Bea told me that first meeting at the diner. She was tired by then and was no longer animated. âThe kids were warned not to go swimming in the quarries,â she said, disgusted that the warning wasnât heeded. Her class lost a beautiful young boy called Millard Fleetwood, age sixteen. The cliffs were as beautiful as they were treacherous; the sheer rock face rose as high as it plunged beneath the blue-green water, irresistible to teenagers who believed themselves impervious to danger,
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