Softly and Tenderly (23 page)

“It’s what she wants, so, yes, it is.”

Talking about hospice iced Jade’s sentimental journey into the past. She closed the sewing box lid. “I feel like we’re just giving up. And I hate it.”

“It’s been a long eight years, Jade. She’s tired. Most chronic leukemia patients don’t live this long.”

“Well, I’m not ready for her to go. I can’t make up for lost time if she dies.” Getting to her feet, Jade stepped over the memorabilia and passed June to exit the closet. Did the earth under her feet have to crack open all at once? “Even though I hated her at times and we weren’t close for many years, she is still my mama. Daddy’s in Washington, out of my life. She’s my only real parent, June. And she’s dying. I’m thirty-one. How is this fair?”

“I don’t suppose it is. How is it fair Rice died at thirty-eight, leaving her nineteen-month-old son behind?”

“It’s not fair. But don’t mix issues, June.” Jade peered at her through misty eyes. She slipped off the headband she’d tied around her head and carefully folded it against her palm. “I just hate the alone feeling. Even more that I’m afraid.”

“Sugar, you’re not alone.” June stood, cradling Mama’s clothes. “You got your husband, me, Willow, and Aiden.”

“I’m not going back to Max, June.”

“Just like that, you’ve decided? Doesn’t he have a say?”

“He voiced his opinion when he slept with Rice.”

“Jade, come on, aren’t you being a bit immature?”

“If being mature means I have to endure forty years with an adulterer, then, yes, I’ll be immature.”

“Max is not Rebel, Jade.”

“No, he’s not. Yet.” Jade turned out the closet light and closed the door. She wanted out of the room. The walls were inching closer, squeezing out the thin air.

“Jade, Max has always struggled with being sidetracked. He’s brilliant . . . And I’m not saying that as a mother. He is. But his weaknesses rival his strengths. That’s how he got onto the pain pills. How he ended up with Rice in his room on his bachelor weekend.”

“I don’t have to go down with him, June.” Jade started down the back stairs. She was hungry. “I grew up dealing with a lot of other people’s weaknesses. I’m all out of endurance.”

June broke into the kitchen behind Jade. “So you judge Max?”

“Judge? No. But make a sound assessment? Yes. I won’t be tread upon.”

“Is that what you think of me? I’m tread upon?”

“Aren’t you?” Jade jerked opened the fridge and took out sandwich meat and fixings. Beyond the kitchen window, Tank Victor plowed his field.

“Love makes us do strange things.” June walked around the table and took the bread from the wooden box. She tugged a couple of napkins from the holder on the counter and got down paper plates from the top of the refrigerator.

Jade tore open the lunch meat package. “By the way, Aiden and Willow will be here this weekend.”

“Beryl will be happy to hear that.” June handed Jade two slices of bread.

“I hope she’s still here by the time they arrive.” Jade peeled off a couple of slices of roast beef and matted them into her bread.

“She’s too stubborn to die without seeing her children.” June handed Jade the mayonnaise jar and a knife.

“Thank you.”

June walked behind Jade, her fingers gently dusting her shoulder. “Now, you want tea with your sandwich or a soda? Or pop, as you say in Iowa?”

Mama was home and settled into her bed. She fussed about Jade and June fussing, cracking on herself about her old, worn-out body. But she surrendered to her pillows without a word.

Her legs constantly rustled under the quilt. Every once in a while, she’d moan, low and long.

The hospice nurse arrived around noon and spent a good bit of the afternoon talking with Mama. Then she sat on the living room sofa with Jade and June, reviewing the medications Dr. Meadow prescribed, setting expectations and explaining the goal to keep Mama comfortable and let her live out her final days the way she wanted.

“If she wants to go outside, let her. If she wants a chili dog—”

“Mercy be, a chili dog?” On a good,
healthy
day, June turned up her nose to chili dogs.

“Yes.” The hospice nurse gave June The Look.
You’re not going to be difficult,
are you?
“A chili dog.”

“I’ll bring her everything on the Dairy Queen menu if she wants,” Jade said.

“Only if she wants.” The nurse smiled. “I know this is hard, but the less stressed and more comfortable your mother is, the better it will be for all involved. Be prepared for Beryl to see things.”

“Like what?” Jade asked. The hitchhiker came to mind, but that was her vision.

“She might see someone from her past, a parent or treasured family member, maybe an old friend. I’ve had patients see demons and angels, even God.”

Intense. “Will she get frightened or upset?” Jade glanced at June.

“She might. Usually the patients have comforting visions. Just talk with her, help her through anything that might be disturbing.” The nurse reached down for her bag. “Here’s my card. Call if you need me.”

June walked the hospice nurse out. Jade brought Mama her tea and set her up with the remote control and a tattered paperback.

“
Atlas Shrugged
?” Jade read the book’s spine.

Beryl held out her hand. “Been on page eighty-five since high school.”

“Ayn Rand? Seriously?” Jade flipped through the pages of the book before putting it on the nightstand. “They’ll come take your socialist card away.”

“Got to see what the other side is thinking.” The bang of the kitchen’s screen door echoed up the stairs along with excited female voices and laughter. “Having a party down there?”

Footsteps echoed up the back staircase and June appeared in the door. “Carla Colter is here to see you, Beryl. Sharon and Elizabeth too. They brought a passel of food. Mercy, we’ll have to pawn some off on Linc.”

“Well, send them on up.” Mama scooped her hand through the air. Once. Her hand dropped to the quilt. But Mama never refused a party.

“Wait a few minutes, June. Then send them up.” Jade stretched out next to Mama and held her hand, listening to Mama’s soft and even breathing. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

“Jade, don’t coddle me. The hospice nurse gave me the same speech she gave you and June,” Mama said. “Carla and the girls are good friends. Though, please, go down there and make sure Carla didn’t make her tuna casserole. A hideous dish, but none of us ever had the heart to tell her. She keeps cooking it and bringing it to parties.”

“Doesn’t she get suspicious when no one eats it?”

“Shh, we just scoop it into the garbage.”

Jade laughed. “Your idea, I’m sure.” Jade had eaten a lot of meals at the Colters’ the year she’d been with Dustin, but she didn’t remember bad tuna casserole. Yet she’d been so happy and in love, Carla could’ve served baked mud and Jade would have thought it was chocolate.

Above Mama’s bed, the ceiling fan swished the warm air around. Daylight slipped beneath the partially drawn shades. In the corner by the dresser, the floor lamp cut a white V into the shadows and highlighted the edge of the area rug.

Below them, the kitchen was full and alive with female voices and clattering dishes. But the bedroom remained still and peaceful.

“Are you scared, Mama?”

It took a moment for her to answer. “A little.” She squeezed Jade’s fingers. “I want you to do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Will you call him, please?”

“Who?” Jade sat up, peering at Mama, who spoke with her eyes closed. She’d anticipated this, Mama’s deathbed urging for her to work it all out with Max. Another warning from the hospice nurse: the dying become peacemakers.

“Your dad. Please, call Harlan. He’s all you have.”

Jade picked at a pucker in the quilt, inhaling slowly. “He’s all you have” stung her heart with the same sense of loneliness she’d experienced sitting in the closet yesterday.

Several times last night she’d walked the edge of panic, the burnt amber sparking on the horizon of her soul and heart. Her heart raced as she tried to outmaneuver the bottoms-out fear.

She searched her mind for the triggers, but other than
her whole life
, there wasn’t anything specific. If she closed her eyes, she could almost envision some dark thing hovering over her, spitting and vomiting its brand of evil. At least that’s how she felt in those moments, like an ooze ran down her hair.

Jade hopped off Mama’s bed, trying to escape the memory. On its own, it had the power to kick open panic’s door. Purple swirls hung in the corners of the room waiting for their moment to descend.

“Jade?” Mama called, eyes still closed. “You all right?”

No, no, I’m not all right. You’re leaving me. I’m alone
. “Just stretching my legs.” Jade paced, whispering, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” as she corralled her thoughts and spurred them away from the mire of anxiety.

Loneliness and anxiety were kissing cousins.

After a moment, peace flowed from the well she’d been digging for the past two years, since she’d met Jesus. It only took a few seconds, but seemed like an eternity. The darkness ebbed and the boundaries of her true self came into view.

“It’s not a fair request, I know,” Mama whispered. “But I’m a dying woman.”

“Mama, we’re just not meant to be, Daddy and me.” Jade exhaled, sitting on the side of the bed. “He came to the wedding, and after a few e-mails, we just stopped communicating. What do you say? ‘Hey, how’s life been treating you since you walked out on me when I was eight?’ We can’t undo all the years of distance and silence. Besides, I have Aiden and Willow. And the Bensons . . . well, June.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers.

Was she destined to be alone, without a family? She was finally finding her place as a daughter with Mama, who was leaving this world. Where was the place Jade could exist where she was 100 percent home? No masks. No secrets. No addictions, or abortions, or miscarriages, or ex-fiancés and ex-husbands.

“I never asked much of you, Jade. Didn’t ask you to make straight As or to . . .” Mama struggled for each word, for each breath. “. . . cheerleader . . . band, or home . . . queen.” The rattle in her chest vibrated like metal dragging along the pavement.

“Mama.” Jade’s gaze fell on the oxygen tank, trying to remember the nurse’s instructions. “Do you need the mask?” Dr. Meadows said she’d be weak.

“No . . .” Mama peeked through narrowed eye slits. “I’m fine.”

Jade smoothed her hand over Mama’s pale forehead. “I never gave you a chance. Never tried to understand you. You wanted me to try to see the world through your eyes, but I refused to try. I liked being resentful.”

“Did the same thing to Mother . . .” Mama barely lifted her finger to point. “In the dresser . . . for you.”

“Hey up there, is it safe to come up?” Carla’s voice shot up the stairway and into the room.

“Five minutes, Carla,” Jade called out the door, then went to Mama’s dresser. “Which drawer?”

“Top . . . left.”

Sliding the drawer open, Jade found a small, velvet black ring box and inside, Mama’s jade ring. “You kept this?”

Jade hadn’t heard the story of Daddy giving Mama the ring during a Fleetwood Mac concert in decades. “I thought you tossed this into Miller’s Pond.”

“I wanted to . . .” she whispered. “But we named you after—” Talking drained her strength. “Jade . . .”

Jade slipped the ring onto her pinky finger and held up her hand for Mama to see. “It’s beautiful.”

Mama strained to open her eyes. “Jade-o, promise me you’ll talk to your dad. For me.”

For Mama’s sake, he’d come to Jade’s wedding. For Mama’s sake, she could promise to call him. “If I say no, then you’ll have to keep on living.”

“If you say no, I’ll die with a wound in my heart.”

Jade knelt by her side of the bed. “Maybe we should just let things be, Mama. They are the way they are for a reason.”

“Jade, try.” Mama tugged on Jade’s pinky finger, the one with the ring. “Promise me.”

“Aren’t you the one who told me not to cling to things in life that aren’t making me happy? Or benefiting me? I should move on when the moving was good?”

“Jade-o, my roots-in-the-ground girl. Moving on is not for you. You need to be stable, in the same place, day after day, year after year. Leave the wandering to me and Willow.”

“I’m tired of being grounded, Mama. I get stepped on.” Jade studied the ring’s shades and depth of green in the light. Next to it, her ring finger was stark and barren. She’d forgotten again.

Jade brushed the tears from her cheeks.

“You pull up roots too quickly, Jade-o, and you’ll wither. You need the soil, sun, and rain, even the winds. Be strong. Bloom where you’ve been planted.”

“What if I want to uproot and bloom in a new place?”

Mama touched her cheek. “Then do it quickly. Know what came to my mind while I was in the hospital? Your sixteenth birthday party.”

“Oh, please, what a nightmare.”

“Nightmare? What party are you remembering? I’ll give you it started out slow, but—”

“All right, it’s been five minutes. We’re coming up,” Carla called. Footsteps announced the approach of Mama’s friends.

“Well, look at you all lounging around.” Carla came around and hugged Mama, Sharon and Elizabeth right behind her.