She didn’t call me that day, or Wednesday or Thursday. Wurster and I worked on the cartoons I’d bring Ray Burn for our meeting. They were fine, as good as I could do, but it made me sick to look at them.
“What is it?” I asked Wurster. “Tell me what the problem is, here.”
He shrugged. “There’s no problem.”
“Of course there’s a problem,” I said. “Look at them!”
A cat hopped up onto his lap. He lifted it by the belly with great gentleness and set it down on the floor, where it moved off sniffing like a child’s electric toy. Then he regarded my current drawing yet again and emitted a tired sigh. “I guess it depends on your standards, Tim. If you’re comparing it to your father’s work, it’s fine. Considering you couldn’t draw a month and a half ago, it’ll do just fine.”
“And?”
He scowled at me, obviously irritated. “And if you’re comparing it to Degas, you mean? Well, what do you think? Then it’s crap.”
He shrugged, fell back in his chair. That wasn’t quite what I meant, but I could see why he was upset. I never wanted to be a cartoonist, and he was turning me into one in a matter of months; meanwhile he’d wanted it all his life and could never make it work. I watched him staring at me for a while, then picked up a fresh piece of paper and started inking a new draft.
* * *
That afternoon, a Friday, I came home to find the answering machine light glowing with disheartening steadiness, and in a spasm of loneliness resolved to visit my mother. It was not yet dark, but it would be soon, and sitting out in the studio I felt a strange urgency, as if this impending visit, which had no specific purpose, was as important a mission as I’d ever undertaken. I turned off the lights and locked the door, then went to find my brother, whom I didn’t want to come along. He was on the patio, staring at the shrubs that separated our yard from the Praegels’.
“How’s it going?” I asked him. Ice cubes melted in a sweaty, empty glass on the ground beside his chair.
“Not bad. I’ve been out here for something like three hours without panicking.”
“Good, good.”
“Look there,” he said, pointing through the bushes.
I saw a form, moving slow circles around the yard. “Yeah?” I said.
“That’s Anna. She’s been out there as long as I’ve been here. I think she might be naked.”
“No kidding?” I squinted but couldn’t make out any specific organs through the branches.
“I think she’s going nuts. Isn’t that sad?”
“It is.”
“Maybe I should talk to her or something.”
“That might be a good idea,” I said. “Pierce. I’m going to visit Mom, okay?”
He looked up at me. “Okay.”
“You’re all right alone for an hour or two?”
“Sure.”
He watched me a moment, expectant, but I had nothing to give him. I said goodbye and went in to get the car keys.
* * *
It was nearly dark by the time I got to Ivy Homes. One shift was apparently ending and another beginning. Nurse’s aides in white pants and blue blouses filed in and out of the building like factory workers, and people picked them up and dropped them off in shabby old cars. I wondered what they made per hour, how long the average tour of duty was, if any of them lasted longer than a year. They were all young — misanthropic-looking student types, summering with the senile and terminally ill.
The attendant at the desk was eating tortilla chips from a colorful bag and watching a sitcom on a tiny TV. She told me visiting hours were long over and that I should come tomorrow. I went back out.
My mother’s window was on the side of the building that faced the parking lot of a strip mall. I walked around, past lit rooms where blue figures passed, fussing over the residents, until I stood in a scrappy patch of juniper, looking in my mother’s open window. She was watching TV from a wheelchair, and a book was open on her lap, exactly like there had been at home when I was a child. She used to sip from an iced glass of some vile liquor and read during commercials. Seeing this moved me, and I felt like I was in a dream, the kind in which dead relatives return, alive and healthy, and explain that everything, the hospital, the funeral, was a misunderstanding. I tapped on the glass.
She turned and looked through me. “Mom,” I whispered, and tapped again.
She wheeled herself over to the window and tapped back, her face expressionless and infantile. I was beginning to think I had done a disastrously cruel thing when she reached up, scrabbled at the catch, and tried to open the window.
It was a terrible sight. She had little leverage with her knees wedged between herself and the wall, and had to splay her elbows on the sill to pull up on the handle. “Stop,” I said through the glass. “Mom, stop.” But she didn’t stop. I could hear her thin grunts, mixed with the sounds of cars pulling in and out of the strip mall. Behind her, in the room, her door stood half-open, and aides walked past, oblivious.
When she had the window open a crack, I wedged my fingers under and pushed up, and the window leapt as if loaded with springs. My mother’s face opened up like a treasure chest, and she let out an elated cry. “Come on,” she said. “Nobody will know.”
I looked behind me and saw no one, so I hoisted a leg up onto the sill and climbed in. The room looked different at night, not so sterile. A table lamp cast a comfortable light. There were flowers on the dresser and I wondered who sent them.
“Hi Mom,” I said. I kissed her cheek. Her skin, usually so dry, was hot and moist, as if I had awakened her from a feverish dream.
“Oh! Don’t call me that.”
“Okay, I…”
“Close the door!” She sounded angry and afraid, even as her eyes were thrilled. “They’re all asleep.”
I went to the door and closed it quietly. “How are you feeling?” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. “I got your note.”
“What note?” I sat down on the bed.
She smiled, waved her hand at me in mock offense. “‘What note.’ The note you left in my book. At school?”
“At school.”
“We’re going to…I’m going…” She began to turn toward the door, as if guided that way by a sturdy hand. Her eyes were full of hope. I followed her gaze.
If it’s possible for a normal person to have moments of perfect empathy, then I had one at that moment. It was not a pleasant experience. I had no idea who or what my mother expected to see there, but when I turned it was with the expectation that I would see it with her: a gathering of congenial ghosts popped in from the past, maybe, or a nurse bearing lavish gifts. And though I couldn’t see her face when I found only the gray metal door, shut firm against the hollow bustle of the hall, with its yellowed, scotch-taped fire exit map peeling away at the corners, I knew its expression as well as I knew the dreary contours of my own mind. Her disillusion was my own.
“Mom?” I said, my voice every bit as brittle as hers, like a twig dragged through gravel.
“Oh! Suddenly I’m very tired, just now.” She was slumped in the wheelchair, her hands curled inertly in her lap. “Don’t call me that. It isn’t funny.”
“Maybe you should get some sleep,” I said.
“I was hoping you’d kiss me goodnight.”
I didn’t know what to say. We sat like that awhile, me with my knees pressed together on her bed, her with her chin buried in her nightgown. Then I went to her and kissed her again on the cheek. She raised her head and her lips parted, and a small, grievous sound escaped her throat. Her eyes were closed, the lids pulsing with the press of blood. “Goodnight,” I said, and this time kissed her lips. They were a young woman’s lips, warm and soft, and they barely moved under mine. I pulled back and stood before her, wondering what had happened, and how it had happened so quickly: I couldn’t have been here for more than a few minutes. Then the door opened.