Aven bit her bottom lip, and I could see her white teeth. She looked at her mother because she didn’t know what to say. Maisie nodded at her. It was the smallest nod I ever saw in my whole life, and Aven said, “I won’t, Grandmother. I promise.” To be honest, I said a long “Whew” to myself. I felt glad we had gotten through that one without some big emotional disaster.
Well, after that, we waited mostly. Bruno didn’t leave Harry. He had a bed set up right beside her. There was room for all of us. Maisie, Oscar, and Aven slept in one of the rooms, and they gave me and Kali a little study room down the hall, where Harry had done her bills for her foundation and stuff. Ethan kissed me again but he went into a room by himself. Winsome arrived for her shift. Harry was still alive in the morning but restless, talking and moaning. Dr. Gupta came to look at her, and he talked to Bruno in the corner. Bruno was nodding. I didn’t understand the medical stuff, but they weren’t going to let the pain get the better of Harry, so they gave her drugs and Harry got really quiet. She lay there as still as could be, so still it made me think about how all the leaves stop moving right before a big storm. I kept cleaning even though Bruno yelled at me, “I still don’t know what the hell you’re doing here!” Ethan told him to leave me alone. “Mother wanted her here. You know it and I know it,” he said. “Let her stay.” Ethan was a hero to me right then.
Well, late in the morning, around eleven thirty, we were all sitting around, just waiting for Harry to die. I had done what I could, and I felt pretty confident the chakras were as clean as they were ever going to be. I had put my purple agate on her belly to open the spiritual flood when the time came, because it works on the upper chakra. Then, all of sudden, we saw Harry jolt in the bed, and in a voice that woke us all up, she said, “No.” Then she said it again, and then a third time just for good measure. And after that, she said nothing at all.
A man named Phineas arrived that afternoon. He was a slender black guy, medium height, actually he was very light brown if you want me to describe him right. He had lots of freckles on his face and thin, arched eyebrows, and a soft mouth with a bottom lip that stuck out a little. I liked his clothes, skinny pants, boots, and a nice-looking sports jacket. They all knew him. Harry couldn’t talk to him and that was too bad, because he’d come all the way from Argentina. Ethan informed me that he was one of Harry’s covers. He had played a part for her, like Anton, but he hadn’t been upset about it the way Anton was. Phineas sat beside Harry and talked to her even though she couldn’t hear him, at least not in the ordinary way, because she was not awake anymore. He talked for a long time and he held her hand. I remember he called her “pal” and “my pal, old pal.”
Later, Phinny — that was his nickname — ran out to get sandwiches for us, and we all sat and ate them and talked about this and that. Ethan read the newspaper that was lying on the table, and Maisie got upset and said we were all forgetting Harry, who was lying over there almost dead, and what were we doing? But I told her that’s how it is. We aren’t dying now. We will all die later. We have to eat. Harry would want us to eat, wouldn’t she? It was raining outside, raining hard outside the windows, which were covered with little droplets that ran down the glass like tears. I remember thinking that.
That night I slept with Kali curled up next to me, and I wondered if Winsome or Bruno would come in and say that Harry had died, but she was alive in the morning. Dr. Gupta told us her body was shutting down. But Harry was still breathing. And the rain stopped, and the sun came out, and Bruno opened the window to let in some air. I took Kali out for a walk and ran with her past the water taxis and the big warehouse where they show art, and I thought maybe Harry should have had her works in there. When I came back in we waited some more. I studied Harry’s aura — so much cleaner. The colors were pure. Some red, but lots of greens and blues. It made me happy because I had answered my destiny. I daydreamed about my apartment and my teas all lined up in my kitchenette and the clients I had canceled to be with Harry, and I was a little bored while I was waiting, to tell the truth, but I didn’t want to leave her yet. I wanted to be there for the transition, for the time when Harry would leave our world for higher realms of consciousness.
Before she left, Harry made a strange sound, a deep, dark shaking noise, and when I heard it, the sound bounced around in my own head, an announcement of an end and a new beginning. We were so quiet. I did not go to Harry, but I saw the light leap up and out around her. Dr. Gupta, solemn and straight, told us she was dead. Harry looked so still and her skin was kind of see-through, but I didn’t see a shred of pain in her face. I knew it was time for me to step away. Bruno was holding her, and Maisie and Ethan were standing by the bed, so just a few minutes later, I picked up Kali and my bag of stones and toe-heeled my way out of the room as quiet as a mouse and called Legends from the kitchen to come and pick me up. I left the purple agate, and I hoped they would remember to rinse it.
I have only one thing left to say. I stayed in touch with Ethan and, about eight months later, he asked me if I wanted to come and see some of Harry’s work while it was still in the studio. They were organizing it or something. I said yes. Maisie and Ethan took me in. I’d left Kali with Deborah, my neighbor in the building, because Deb just loves babysitting her. Ethan unlocked a door, opened it, and flicked on the lights that came on above me. It was late fall, and the sky through the windows was gray with some brown and white in it. They told me Bruno and the Barometer were still living there in the building, and that they didn’t get along too well, so there were problems, but they were trying to sort them out and there was something about Harry’s will and that she had provided for them; but I wasn’t listening, because I was looking around me at all the things in the room, the big soft dolls and the rooms and the houses. There were some small sculptures hanging from the ceiling. One was of a penis, and I just had to laugh at it. And then I felt that funny lifting feeling I get sometimes, as if I’m getting pulled up toward the ceiling. It was a sign, maybe it was coming from Harry. I could feel something important was happening to me and then I saw a woman squatting on the floor, not a real person, but a great big statue with no hair. And she had lots of people inside her head, but also numbers and letters, and she was raining numbers and letters and little people from her private parts, her vagina, anyway, and I felt a big grin come over my face, and I walked over to her to get a close look. There’s a lot of art I don’t understand. To be honest, it’s kind of boring to me, but this was different. I got down on my hands and knees and started looking around at the tiny ones, and I had the sacred feeling. I told Ethan I had it. I opened up my arms and said, “Wow,” and then I saw her. “Look,” I said to them. “Look, it’s Harry. Can I touch her?” They didn’t know that Harry had put herself into the art, so it was exciting. I pointed at the little person, and Ethan and Maisie got down on their knees. They saw her right away. Maisie said, “It’s Mother, all right.” “Look,” I said, “she’s just walking along, all happy and healthy, just minding her own business, looking up at the sky.” I guess there were too many little sculptures for them to have noticed their teeny-weeny mom among all those other little people.