Island Girl (31 page)
Authors: Lynda Simmons
“And here’s the male dancing on the lawn.” Grace frowned. “It’s hard to tell, I guess, but he really is dancing.”
“I told her to video it,” Jocelyn said. “But she doesn’t know how.”
“Then you should show her,” Mark said, flicking his napkin open and setting it in his lap.
“Here’s the lady mockingbird,” Grace said, pushing the camera at me again. “We’ve been feeding her dog food mixed with berries and it seems to be working. She seems a lot better. See?”
I don’t know much about birds, but she might have been right. It was alive at any rate. “She looks great. Maybe she’ll be flying soon.”
“If the cats don’t get her first,” Jocelyn said.
“We’re all working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mark said. “Jocelyn even came up with a warning system. Why don’t you tell Liz about it?”
“It’s bells,” she said, pushing lettuce around her plate. “And why can’t I go to the sleepover?”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Mark said.
“You’re the one who dropped it on me the moment we sat down.” Jocelyn raised her chin. “I still don’t know why you’re being so mean.”
Definitely pissed. And too good to pass up.
I leaned my arms on the table. “Whose sleepover is it?”
She looked straight at her father. “One of my friends in the city. It’s her birthday and everybody’s going except me.”
“You can go to the party. You just can’t stay overnight. I don’t like the idea of you being over there after the ferries stop running.”
“Like it’s my fault they stop so early.” She slumped back in the chair. “I hate you.”
I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “Your dad can be a pain in the ass sometimes.”
Jocelyn nodded. “Yeah, he can.”
“Liz, that’s enough,” Mark said.
I smiled at her. “Laying down the most ridiculous rules for no reason at all.”
She smiled back for the first time. “You got that right.”
“Liz,” Mark repeated, the warning clear. Stop now. Back away from the kid.
But he was the one who’d drawn the lines, treated me like a child. And everyone knows that two twelve-year-olds at a table are always more fun than just one. I sat back. “It’s like he wants to fuck up your life, just for the hell of it sometimes, don’t you think?”
Grace sprayed Coke out of her nose, Jocelyn laughed, and I tried to remember if Mark’s face had ever gone that red when I was a kid. The waitress delivered my soda. “Definitely a pain in the ass,” I said, and took a few small ladylike sips.
“You’re using the wrong tack, Liz,” he said. “I’d change course now if I were you.”
A waiter chose that moment to arrive with salads for Mark and me. I shook out my napkin, ceding the round to him. The game, however, was not over yet.
Grace plunged into the awkward silence, filling it with tales of the mockingbirds. Explaining how the male brought bits of food to the lady, and sang all night long so she’d know he was still there, waiting for her to come out of the cage and join him.
“How romantic,” I said. “And where exactly does he do this singing?”
“In the tree outside Mom’s window.”
“She must love that.”
“She hates it,” Jocelyn said. “Said it’s too bad
To Kill a Mockingbird
isn’t an instruction manual.”
To Kill a Mockingbird
isn’t an instruction manual.”
“I’m sure she’ll find a way.” I sat back as our lunches were delivered. “Seems there’s always someone around to do her dirty work. Someone to make sure she gets exactly what she wants, no matter how hard it is on anyone else.”
Mark rose and dropped his napkin on the table. “Girls, will you excuse Liz and me for a moment? We need to talk.”
I picked up my fork. “After lunch. Don’t want the pasta to get cold.”
“Now,” he said, leaving the table, heading for the gate.
Round two had begun.
“Be right back,” I said to the girls and hurried after him.
He was waiting for me at the edge of the lawn, out of earshot of people at the bike rack and the hostess at the gate. “You think this crap is going to help your case or your friend?” he asked, his voice low, his tone that of a lawyer who knows he has the upper hand at the bargaining table. “You’ve lost all perspective, Liz. You’ve become so accustomed to playing the victim that you’ve lost the ability to be rational. To figure out what’s legitimate rebellion and what’s nothing more than sheer pigheadedness.”
“I have
never
played the victim.”
never
played the victim.”
“Come on Liz, every drunk plays that role. To be honest, I blame myself. I should have dragged you to AA long ago. Or shoved you into rehab and kept sending you back till you snapped out of it. But I told myself you were a smart girl. You were hurt, but you’d find your way through, only you haven’t. Two years later and you’re still wrapped up so tightly in your own grievances, your own troubles, you can’t think about anyone else anymore. Not your sister, not me, not even the friend you say you want to help so badly.”
I kept my voice down, my tone level, matching his. “You’re so full of shit it’s a wonder your eyes aren’t brown. I’m only standing here because of my friend. Otherwise I would have told you to shove your ultimatum where the cat won’t get it. And I have always cared about Grace. All I’ve ever wanted to do is help her.”
“Well, it won’t be much help to her if Ruby sells the shop, will it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your mother’s plan. She’s going to sell the business because she wants to tie up all the ends before she dies. I’ve tried to talk her out of it because it’s not necessary and it’s going to devastate Grace, but there’s no changing her mind. You know nothing of this, of course, because you haven’t once called to see how your mother is doing.”
I threw up my hands. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve never called about Ruby before.”
“She’s never had Alzheimer’s before.”
I let my arms drop. “Fine, how is she?”
“Not good. She refuses to take some of the medications because somehow she’s got her hands on some pot instead. And she’s started a blog. ‘Show Me the Ice Floe.’ That’s how she is.”
I wrapped my arms around myself and turned away. “Sounds like she’s doing just fine. And a little pot is probably good for her. Takes away the anxiety.”
“Don’t be smart with me, little girl.”
I sighed and looked back at him. “Mark, what do you want from me?”
“I want you to move back home.”
“But what if that isn’t what’s best for her?”
“Don’t try and turn this around. Ruby wants you here. You know that.”
“Alzheimer’s patients are supposed to avoid agitation and stress, right? Well, talking to me, even seeing me from afar, only causes more of both. I can only imagine how horrible it would be for both of us if I lived there. Like it or not, Mark, the best thing, the most loving thing I can do for Ruby, is to stay the hell away from her.”
“You tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
“What would make me feel better is knowing why you’re pushing me this way. Why you won’t just leave it alone?”
“I can’t leave it alone because your mother is going to kill herself. She has pages of notes, Liz. And a spreadsheet with more ways to kill yourself than I ever imagined possible. She even has a column of risks associated with each one. Risks that aren’t death.”
“She always was thorough,” I said, and had no trouble picturing a spreadsheet with precise rows and neatly labeled columns: Method, Equipment, Pain Factors, Risks. While the last column probably wouldn’t have occurred to me any more than it had to Mark, I suppose she had to take the risk factors into consideration, be prepared for outcomes that weren’t part of the plan. Dismemberment, for instance. Or paralysis. Any number of fates that would definitely be worse than death, if that was the goal.
“Not just thorough,” Mark said. “Meticulous, which leaves no doubt in my mind that she’ll try.”
“And you intend to stop her?”
“What else can I do?”
“Leave her alone. Let her handle this in her own way.”
“Even if her way is wrong?”
“How dare you decide that for her. How dare you think you know what she needs, what’s good for her. My mother may have been a bitch, but she always knew her own mind and precisely what she wanted. Now that mind is telling her to get out while she still can, and I can’t fault her for that.”
“Can’t fault her? You just said that her mind is telling her to do this, and her mind has Alzheimer’s for God’s sake. Her decision isn’t rational.”
“Come off it, Mark. She’s always felt this way and you know it. ‘Take me out and shoot me,’ she used to say every time Great-Grandma Lucy took off all her clothes at the ferry dock or threw tea bags at the tourists. I was just a little kid, but I remember it clearly. ‘If I ever get like that, take me out and shoot me.’”
“But no one ever took Lucy out and shot her, did they? Because life is precious.”
“No one shot her because we didn’t have a gun. And the winter they found her body in the woods on Hanlan’s Point, we were sad, but we all breathed a sigh of relief, didn’t we? We were all glad the crazy old coot was gone and Ruby could finally fix up the house. Add the second floor we’d needed for years but couldn’t do until the queen bee agreed, which she wouldn’t do because she was fucking crazy. So don’t give me clichés about the preciousness of life, Mark. Give me one good reason why Ruby shouldn’t kill herself instead.”
His shoulders slumped, his eyes closed, and he looked tired all of a sudden. Old and tired and vulnerable in a way that I hadn’t seen since the day Ruby packed his bags. “Because suicide is the end of hope,” he said, and opened his eyes. “It’s giving up and giving in. Turning your back on the possibility of miracles.”
“You mean a cure.”
“Yes, a cure. And if not a cure, at least something that will slow the progress better. Something to hold the illness where it is and prevent further loss.” He paused and drew in a breath. Shook off whatever had been weighing him down and pushed his shoulders back. Mark returning. “There’s research being done all over the world, scientists searching for answers every day, and that gives me hope. It should give Ruby hope too, but it doesn’t, and that’s not like her. Your mother has never been the kind to give up hope, no matter how pointless the cause. If anything, she’s been the patron saint of lost causes all of her life, fighting to save her home or stop the expressway or—”
“Ban the ban on altar girls.”
“Exactly. She knew she wouldn’t win all of her fights, but she never gave up trying, she never gave up hope. She still’s fighting the airport, for God’s sake. What kind of crazy optimism is that? Yet she won’t fight to save herself, and that’s not your mom, that’s not Ruby.” He put his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes. “She needs you, sweetie. She needs you because you’re right about avoiding agitation and stress. Both of those things will only cause the disease to advance faster, steal her from us that much sooner. And the biggest stress in Ruby’s life right now is the house. She needs to know the house will stay in the family.”
I pushed him away. “Then let her leave the goddamn house to Grace. I don’t want it, I never wanted it.”
“Grace can’t handle that house on her own. She’ll always need help.”
“And that’s my problem, is it? The fact that Ruby needs to hold on to her piece of the Island is my responsibility.”
“Yes,” he said, so simply and with such conviction that I realized he believed his own shit. He honestly expected me to come home and take over that goddamn house. How in God’s name was I supposed to answer that?
“Liz,” he went on. “You don’t have to come forever. Just for a year, six months even. Just long enough for your mother to know that she can relax. Once she does that, then together we can show her she’s wrong about the suicide. Prove to her that this illness is worth fighting, and we’ll be with her every step of the way.”
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t make sense of it. But he mistook my hesitation for a way in, and he put those hands on my shoulders again. Weighed me down and held me in place while he made his closing argument. “I know it won’t be easy. I know you and your mother can fight at the drop of a dime, but that’s not how it has to be. You’re the healthy one, Liz, the one with the ability to think and reason. That’s why you need to be the one to change things. Your mother is who she is. She’ll always find fault, but only because she loves you and wants the best for you.
Her
idea of what’s best, yes, but that’s all she has. That’s all she’s ever had.
Her
idea of what’s best, yes, but that’s all she has. That’s all she’s ever had.
“So I’m asking you to stop fighting with your mother. I’m asking you to come home, bite your tongue, and be the daughter she needs you to be. Not forever, just until she settles down. Comes to see that the future isn’t as grim as she imagines.” He paused there and smiled. “Can you do that, Liz? For Grace. For me. Can you do that for all of us?”
I looked away, watched the line for the patio growing longer. Thought of the pasta congealing on my plate, of Grace waiting to show me more pictures of the mockingbird, and Ruby plotting ways to kill it.
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