Kiss Mommy Goodbye (15 page)

“Donna,” Victor called, the shaking of the keys having failed to move her, “I think we better go.”

“My master’s voice,” Donna said, dripping with sarcasm.

He walked over to her. “You really shouldn’t drink when you’re taking antibiotics.”

“Oh, hello, Victor. Congratulations. I didn’t realize your medical certificate had arrived in the mail.” She turned to the other guests. “You send in two boxtops from Preparation H—”

The rest of what transpired was pretty much a blur.

It took several more minutes of cajoling, reasoning and bullying before Victor was able to get her out of the house. She remembered shouting some vague obscenities—nothing as specific as she would have liked—and wondering why she was behaving this way and then thinking it didn’t really matter—nothing did, and soon she was sitting in the car beside a Victor so silent, she could actually feel his rage inside her own body, growing and about to implode. She closed her eyes.

She was surprised to discover, as the car pulled to a halt under their carport, that she had actually slept all the way home.

She walked almost dreamlike past Mrs. Adilman, heard Victor thank her, pay her and show her out before she reached Adam’s door. Out of habit, she opened it and checked on her sleeping son, then she walked across the hall to the bedroom she shared with Victor. All she wanted to do was go to sleep. She had never felt so exhausted in her life. The only night that had in any way approximated the way she was feeling now was the night her mother had died, a night she had sat up by the telephone, knowing it would ring, praying it would not. And when it had, at
about three
A.M.
, she had been startled nonetheless. Oh my God, no! It’s the hospital, the nurse had said. You better come, your mother’s very low. Is she—? She’s very low. Donna had called a cab, not trusting herself to drive. Her father was already at the hospital, her sister was with him. Only Donna had come home, hoping perhaps irrationally that by not keeping a deathwatch, death would go elsewhere where he received greater attention, thinking how strange it was that when humans assigned death a human form, it was always male whereas life was always a woman. Her mother.

Donna sat down on the bed and began unzipping the back of her green dress. In front of her she saw the back of the cab driver, his black hair slick with cream. She had told him where she was going and to please hurry. Are you a nurse? he had asked, trying to make conversation. No, she had answered, my mother is dying.

Donna stood up and stepped out of her dress. Absently, she picked it up and threw it over a chair. There had been no further conversation. The cab driver had stepped on the gas pedal and gotten her to the hospital in record time. She walked inside, found the proper elevator and somehow made it up to the eleventh floor. She saw her sister as soon as she turned the corner. Joan’s face was bloated and red and her knees were obviously about to give way beneath her. She stood alone in the middle of the hallway. Nurses passed her; no one noticed that she was about to collapse. Donna rushed toward her, encircling the child in her arms, realizing even as she did so that when your mother dies, you’re not somebody’s little girl anymore. Immediately, Joan’s knees gave out, wobbling toward the floor. She held
onto Donna as if Donna were made out of granite. Who is holding
me
up? Donna wondered, as the two sisters stood in the center of the sterile corridor and sobbed.

Donna walked into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face. The effect was negligible. She spread some toothpaste on her toothbrush and brushed her teeth, then she rinsed her mouth and walked back into the bedroom, discarding her bra, panties and shoes on her way to the bed. She pulled down the covers and crawled inside.

When they had let her go into the room, the first thing she felt was the stillness. Her father sat numbly on the bed, slouched over and motionless, almost like a piece of sculpture by George Segal, white papier–mâché instead of flesh, an overabundance of feeling so strong that it became no feeling at all. Frozen in time.

Donna closed her eyes, aware now that Victor had just entered the room. She would not see him.

Her eyes moved from her father who sat at the foot of the hospital bed, up to the body of her mother. Funny, she thought, how quickly it becomes “a body.” But that was precisely what it was, she thought. It wasn’t her mother. Most assuredly not her mother. The face was so thin, the body beneath the white sheet just a skeleton, the lines of her hips and bones so painfully evident. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. Someone had hurriedly affixed her wig and it balanced somewhat askew atop her head, too large for her. Donna had walked past her father and stood by her mother’s face, looking at it without searching for any answers, knowing there were only facts.

She had leaned over and kissed her mother on the forehead, her flesh in the middle ground between warm and
cold. What amazed her was the total absence of breath. Of life. What had been her mother, truly been the essence of her mother, was gone. And so, she realized, what she was kissing was not her mother at all. She was kissing a memory: the memory of her mother’s back as she walked up a flight of stairs, of the time she made a chicken pie and forgot to add the chicken, of the laughter they had shared when Donna, at age eight, had come home from school and told her first dirty joke (“and the thunder rolled over the mountains and the little boy ran in the cave”), of her anger so healthy and honest, of her arms, of her eyes, of her smell, so soft and reassuring. When she held you and you felt her arms around you, her smell encircling you, and you knew you were safe—you’re nobody’s little girl anymore—

Donna tried to move.

She couldn’t.

The smell.

A different smell. Donna tried to move.

She couldn’t.

She opened her eyes.

He was on top of her and he was a stranger. She opened her mouth to speak, but his hand quickly covered it. “Just shut up for a change, Donna,” he said. He was moving her legs, trying to force them apart. The weight of his body was fully on her own. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. “Open your legs, dammit,” he shouted, though his voice stayed below a whisper. She tried to twist away, but her arms were pinned down at her sides. He prodded her with angry fingers; she glared at him with frightened eyes, more frightened than she had ever been, of anything, of anybody. God, please just let me die, she wished as he moved
her body into position, boring into her as if he were a drill, scratching at her insides, inflicting all the pain he could manage. She was dry and unresponsive; when he was inside her and pounding against her, she thought only of the son they had somehow created together, from this same act. No, not this same act. There were no similarities.

When he was finished, he moved without apologies away from her and into the bathroom. She remained motionless, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her hair a loosely fitting wig. She knew only a few things, but those things she knew for absolute certain. Her mind created an imaginary list, bold-faced black type over a white corpse.

1. She could never leave Victor. He would never let her. He had proved that tonight.
   

2. She would never let him touch her again. If he did, she would kill him.
   

3. She would never yell at him again. She would do whatever he wanted as long as he agreed never to touch her. But he would get no more arguments from her. Nothing was important enough to fight over. Not anymore.
   

4. She would never again drive a car.
   

5. She was dead. As dead as she would ever be.
   

M
rs. Adilman looked grayer and plumper than when Donna had last seen her. Unlike most of the other witnesses who carefully avoided looking anywhere in her direction, Mrs. Adilman had smiled and said hello as she walked past Donna to take her place on the stand. Donna was surprised to learn the woman’s first name was Arlene, something she had never thought to ask her. She was surprised also to discover that the woman was only fifty-six, a fact well suppressed by the cotton housedresses and comfortable walking shoes she always wore. Mrs. Adilman seemed to Donna, then and now, the epitome of the kindly grandmother, the one who brought you cookies and could always be persuaded to read just one more bedtime story. The kindly grandmother who was about to whip off her false front and reveal the wolf underneath. Why, Grandmother, what big teeth you have!

They dispensed with the unarguable facts quite quickly. She had met Donna when Donna had first married Victor
and moved into his house (stress possession of house); they had become better acquainted with the passage of time and especially with the birth of Victor’s son (an interesting interpretation, Donna thought). Donna was a very sweet girl (thanks a lot, lady) but very susceptible to colds and flu bugs. (Must we sit through this again?) This was especially true after Sharon was born. Mrs. Adilman seemed to be there at least two days a week while Donna was in bed. Her behavior became increasingly strange (that word again). Objection. Overruled. Moving rapidly from the realm of the unarguable. She would often see the lights on at all hours of the night. Once, when she had to get up to go to the bathroom, she noticed the lights on in the Cressy house and Donna up washing the living room walls. It was almost four
A.M.
, and Donna had spent the day sick in bed. She knew that because she had come in to look after the children. After that, whenever she had to get up in the middle of the night, which she often did, her kidneys subject to infections easily, you know, she always looked to see if the lights at the Cressys’ were on. They always were. Donna was always up. Cleaning.

And as a mother?

Donna held her breath. The lady could hurt her.

“She was pretty good with Adam,” Mrs. Adilman began. The lady was going to hurt her. “But I do remember one peculiar incident.” She looked apologetically at Donna.

“Please tell us about it,” the lawyer encouraged.

“Well,” she said, “I was out watering the flowers—I hadn’t been able to sleep that night so I was up early—and I noticed Donna sitting in her kitchen. She was drinking a cup of coffee and so I went over to say hello. Victor was out
of town on business, and I asked her if the baby was sleeping. Adam was a bit colicky as a baby. He used to cry a lot and that particular morning it was so peaceful.”

“And what was her reply?”

“She said she thought he was dead.” Donna missed the next several exchanges while she watched the judge’s face. It looked appropriately shocked. Way to go, Arlene, Donna thought. “She said that if she checked him and found out he was dead, she’d never get her cup of coffee.”

Ed Gerber pretended to think for several minutes—Donna could tell now when he was only pretending, because he always brought the third finger of his left hand to the tip of his nose and crossed his eyes in the process. It was very difficult to think when you were so busy crossing and uncrossing your eyes. This was done to allow the witness’s testimony time to sink in. This pretense continued for only several minutes, however, because any longer and the humor of it all might emerge from the midst of this horror.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Mrs. Adilman added (how could we possibly get you wrong? Donna wondered), “I think Donna loved her little boy. I think she loved him.”

Thank you, Arlene. Actually I still do.

“Did Mrs. Cressy inform you when she was pregnant with her second child?”

“Yes.”

Donna closed her eyes.

“Could you tell us about it, please.” More a statement than a question.

“Objection.”

“On what grounds, Mr. Stamler?” asked the judge.

“I fail to see the relevance, your honor.”

“I assure you,” interjected Mr. Gerber, “we will show relevance.”

“Objection overruled.”

“Please tell us about that conversation, Mrs. Adilman.”

Donna prayed for a thunderbolt to strike the woman dead. None came. Her lawyer looked over at her. “Well, I tried,” he said, patting her hand.

“I was out in my garden as usual,” Arlene Adilman began, obviously fixing the scene in her own mind. “Donna came home. Yes, she’d been out—Adam was at nursery—and I remember the taxi brought her home—”

“Taxi?”

“Yes. I hadn’t seen her drive her car in a couple of months. She took cabs all over. I assumed something was wrong with the car.”

“So, the taxi brought her home,” Mr. Gerber reiterated, stressing the word taxi and getting the witness back in the right lane.

“Yes. And she looked very upset—”

“Objection.”

“Well, she’d been crying,” Mrs. Adilman said, lodging a protest of her own. “That much was very obvious.”

“Overruled. Witness may continue.”

“She walked over to me and I said hello and asked her if she was feeling all right. She told me she’d just been to the doctor and that she was pregnant.”

“And what did you reply?”

“I said that that was wonderful. That there was nothing sadder than an only child.”

“And her response?” Gerber asked.

“She said she didn’t want the baby.”

“Didn’t want the baby?”

“She said it was a terrible mistake and that she just couldn’t have this baby.”

“Couldn’t have?”

Did he have to repeat everything? Was he hard of hearing?

“Did she elaborate?”

“She just kept repeating that she couldn’t have it, that she didn’t want it, and then she begged me not to tell Victor that she was pregnant. I told her he’d find out soon enough anyway.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She said he might never have to find out about it at all.” She paused and looked directly at Donna. “When it occurred to me what she had in mind—”

“Objection. The witness has no way of knowing what was in Mrs. Cressy’s mind.”

“Sustained.”

“Just tell us what was said, Mrs. Adilman,” the lawyer advised.

“Well, after she said that, about Victor never finding out, I said, ‘Oh no, Donna, you can’t mean that. You wouldn’t do anything to hurt that helpless baby, would you?’ I mean, I just couldn’t believe that she would actually do anything like that, kill her own—”