The First Time (32 page)

“Do you want me to come with you?” Jake asked, as he’d asked several times earlier.

The last thing Mattie saw before she left the kitchen were Kim’s eyes following her from the room. Be careful, the eyes warned. Mattie nodded silently, although she wasn’t sure for whom the warning was intended, and backed out of the door.

The living room looked essentially the same as it always had: pale green walls and matching wall-to-wall carpeting, an unimaginative cluster of furniture that was decidedly more utilitarian than decorative, a series of muted Audubon prints on the walls. Mattie selected a relatively clean spot in the middle of the straight-backed mint green sofa by the front window, pretending not to notice the fine layer of dog hair that covered the velvet surface like a blanket. Mattie sat with her hands folded in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankles, her back arched and stiff, trying to connect with as little of the sofa as possible.

“I vacuumed right after you called,” her mother said pointedly, plopping down into the green-and-white-striped corduroy chair to Mattie’s left, tilting her head to one side like one of her dogs, waiting for Mattie to speak.

“The place looks nice,” Mattie said, as a small brown dog with incongruously large and scraggly ears jumped onto the sofa beside her. Mattie had no idea what breed of dog it was. Probably her mother didn’t either, she thought, quickly lowering the mutt to the
floor, shooing him away with the toe of her shoe. Ever since she could remember, she’d been fighting with dogs for her mother’s attention. The dogs always won.

“Come here, Dumpling,” her mother instructed the dog, scooping him into her arms and laying him across her lap like a napkin. “Martha doesn’t like dogs,” she apologized, kissing the top of his head and deftly removing a gob of mucus from his eye. Immediately several more dogs flocked to her side, arranging themselves around her feet, like so many slippers. They all stared at Mattie accusingly.

“It’s not that I don’t like them,” Mattie began, then stopped, lifting her eyes from her canine accusers to stare blankly at the wall ahead. I don’t have to defend myself to a bunch of dogs, she thought. “At any rate, what I like isn’t important. What’s important today is what Kim likes, and Kim is certainly thrilled with George, even if he’s too young to take home just yet. And for that, I thank you.”

Her mother shrugged, squirmed in her seat, her cheeks acquiring a sudden faint blush. “You should thank Daisy for giving birth so close to Kim’s birthday.”

“I’ll send her a thank-you note,” Mattie said, then wished she hadn’t. What was the point in being sarcastic? Especially now. Besides, her mother was much too literal for sarcasm. “Have you found homes for the other puppies yet?” she asked quickly, remembering how surprised her mother had been when she’d called several weeks earlier to ask if she might have any puppies available.

“Not yet. I wanted Kim to have first pick of the litter.
But it’s never a problem finding people to take them. I might even keep one or two myself.”

“Isn’t there some sort of city ordinance about having so many dogs?”

“Is that what you brought me in here to talk about?” her mother asked, not bothering to disguise her irritation. Again she tilted her head to one side, waiting.

“No, of course not,” Mattie said, then stopped, unable to proceed. How do you tell your mother you’re dying? she wondered—even a mother who’s barely acknowledged your existence while you were alive? “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Well, go ahead. Spit it out. It’s not like you to be shy.”

How would you know? Mattie wondered, but didn’t ask. “You remember that actor from one of those soap operas you watch,
The Guiding Light
, I think it was—”

“I never watch
Guiding Light,”
her mother corrected. “Only
General Hospital
and
Days of Our Lives
. Oh, and sometimes
The Young and the Restless
, although I can’t stand the way they drag their story lines on forever.”

“There was an actor on one of the soaps—he died a little while ago of something called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” Mattie said, barely waiting for the end of her mother’s sentence. “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” she qualified.

Her mother’s eyes remained infuriatingly unresponsive, so that Mattie wasn’t sure if her mother had any idea where she was going with this.

“Oh yes, I remember him. Roger Zaslow, no, Michael Zaslow, I think his name was. And you’re right—he was on
Guiding Light
. It used to be
The
Guiding Light, but they changed it. Never understood why, exactly. They said they wanted to make the show more modern, bring it up-to-date. I don’t see how dropping an article—”

“Mom—”

“I read about him in
People
magazine,” her mother continued, one word running into the next. “They fired him. Said what good was an actor who couldn’t say his lines, or something like that, according to
People
magazine anyway. He was very bitter about it, I read. Can’t say I blame him. Terrible disease,” she muttered, looking away, biting down on her lower lip, refusing to acknowledge the obvious, to ask why they were talking about this.

“I’m sick, Mom,” Mattie said, answering the unasked, unwanted question. She watched as her mother stiffened in her chair, her eyes beginning to glaze over, the way they always did when she was confronted with unpleasant news. She’d barely begun, and already her mother was retreating, Mattie realized, leaning forward on the sofa, forcing her mother’s eyes to hers. “You remember when I was in the hospital after my car accident?”

Her mother reacted with an almost imperceptible nod of her head.

“Well, the hospital ran some tests, and they discovered I have the same condition as that actor from
Guiding Light.”

Mattie heard a slight gasp catch in her mother’s
throat, although her face remained immobile. “The doctors say they’re very close to finding a cure, and hopefully—” Mattie stopped, cleared her throat, started again. “Realistically,” she said, “I have maybe a couple of years. Confidentially,” she added, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I don’t think it’ll be that long. New things are happening every day. It’s like the disease is starting to pick up the pace.”

“I don’t understand,” her mother said, staring past Mattie to the window overlooking the street, her long fingers purposefully stroking the dog on her lap. “You seem perfectly fine.”

“Right now, I’m still functional. My arms and legs are working okay, for the most part, but that will change. The magazine that flew out of my hand before—things like that have been happening more and more often. Pretty soon I’ll lose the ability to walk, and I won’t be able to do anything with my hands. I won’t be able to speak. Well, you know the rest.” Mattie tried to read the look on her mother’s face, but her expression had altered very little since she first sat down. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m not all right,” her mother said, her voice low. “My daughter has just informed me she’s dying. Did you really think I’d be all right?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I knew it was something,” her mother said, eyes staring resolutely into space. “I mean, why the sudden change of heart about letting Kim have a dog? And when was the last time you called and said you wanted to come over? Never. So I knew something was up. I thought maybe you were going to tell me that you
were moving to New York or California, now that Jake is such a big shot, or that he was leaving you for another woman. The usual. You know. Something. Something else. Not this. Not this.”

“Mom, look at me.”

“It’s never what you think it’s going to be,” her mother continued, as if Mattie hadn’t spoken. “Somebody says they have something to tell you, and you try and guess what it is, you consider all the possibilities, and they still pick the one thing you didn’t imagine, the one thing you forgot to consider. That’s always the way it is, don’t you find?”

“Mom,” Mattie repeated, “I need you to look at me.”

“It’s not fair of you to do this to me.”

“This isn’t about you, Mom,” Mattie said simply, leaning over to take her mother’s square chin in the palm of her hand, forcing her eyes back to hers. The dog in her mother’s lap began a low growl. “I need you to listen to me. For once in my life, I need your complete, undivided attention. Do I have it?”

Wordlessly, her mother lowered the still-growling dog to the floor.

“Right now, I’m in the early stages of the disease. I’m coping pretty well. I can still work and do most of the things I did before. I’ve given up driving, of course, so I take a lot of cabs, and Jake and I have started going grocery shopping together. Kim helps out as much as she can—”

“Kim knows?”

Mattie nodded. “It’s been very hard for her. She puts on a tough front, but I know she’s having a difficult time.”

“So you bought her a dog.”

“We hoped it would ease her pain, give her something to focus on.”

“She’s a good girl.”

“I know she is,” Mattie said, fighting back tears. It was important to get through the rest of her agenda without tears.

“What do you want me to do? I’d be happy to take her for a few weeks. Kim tells me that you and Jake are planning a trip to Paris in April. I’d be happy to take her then,” her mother said, deliberately ignoring the larger picture, her traditional method of coping. Focus on an irrelevancy, enlarge it until it blots out everything else.

“We can talk about that later,” Mattie said. “
I
need you right now, Mom. Not Kim.”

“I don’t understand.” Again, her mother’s eyes returned to the window. “Do you need me to run some errands?”

Mattie shook her head. How could she make her mother understand what she was about to ask? A medium-size black dog leaped onto the sofa, making itself comfortable on the cushion beside Mattie, regarding her suspiciously through heavy-lidded eyes. “Do you remember when I was about five years old, we had a dog?” Mattie asked. “Her name was Queenie. Do you remember Queenie?”

“Of course I remember Queenie. You used to throw her over your shoulder and hold her upside down, and she never complained. She’d let you do anything.”

“And then she got sick, and you said we had to put her to sleep, and I cried and begged you not to.”

“That was a very long time ago, Martha. Surely, you still can’t be angry at me for that after all these years. She was very sick. She was in pain.”

“And she looked at you with ‘those eyes,’ you said, those eyes that told you it was time to put her out of her misery, that it would be cruel to keep her alive.”

Her mother fidgeted restlessly in her chair. “I wonder how Kim’s making out with George.”

“Listen to me, Mom,” Mattie said. “There’s going to come a time when
I’m
going to look at you with those eyes.”

“We should get back to the others. It’s not right—”

“I’m going to be virtually immobile,” Mattie persisted, refusing to let her mother rise from her chair, “and I’m not going to be able to move, not my legs, not my hands. I’m not going to be able to do anything to put an end to my suffering. I’m going to be helpless. I won’t be able to take matters into my own hands.” Mattie almost laughed at her choice of words. “The way this disease works,” Mattie backpedaled, “is that the muscles in my chest are going to get weaker and weaker, resulting in breathing that’s shallower and shallower, leading to shortness of breath.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“You have to hear this. Please, Mom. Lisa has prescribed morphine for when that starts to happen.”

“Morphine?” The word shook in her mother’s mouth, wobbled into the space between them.

“Apparently morphine relieves the distress of being breathless. It acts on the respiratory center to slow the breathing down. Lisa says it’s remarkable in its ability to remove anxiety, control panic, and restore calm. But
there’ll come a time when the morphine will be on the table beside my bed, and I won’t be able to reach it. I won’t be able to measure out the right amount to end my suffering. I won’t be able to do what has to be done. Do you understand, Mom? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Twenty pills, Mom. That’s all it would take. You grind them up, mix them with water, pour it down my throat. In a few minutes I drift off to sleep. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I slip into a coma, and I don’t wake up. Within a few hours, I’m gone. Easily. Painlessly. My suffering is over.”

“Don’t ask me to do this.”

“Who else can I ask?”

“Ask Lisa. Ask Jake.”

“I can’t ask Jake to break the law. The law is his whole life. And I can’t ask Lisa to risk her whole career. And I certainly can’t ask Kim.”

“But you can ask your mother.”

“This isn’t easy for me, Mom. When was the last time I asked you for anything?”

“I know you think I’ve been a lousy mother. I know you think—”

“None of that matters now. Mom, please, you’re the only one I can ask to do this. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. And I’m asking you now because, chances are, I won’t be able to ask you when the time comes. All I’m going to be able to do is look at you with ‘those eyes.’ ”

“This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.”

“No, it’s not. None of it is fair,” Mattie agreed, her
hands still gripping the sides of her mother’s chair, blocking her escape, although her mother had grown still. “It’s just the way it is. So I need you to promise you’ll do this for me, Mom,” Mattie told her. “You’ll know when it’s time for me to go. You’ll know when it would be cruel to keep me alive, and you’ll help me, Mom.”

“I can’t.”

“Please,” Mattie insisted, her voice rising. “If you ever loved me at all, promise you’ll help me.” Mattie held her mother’s eyes with her own, refusing to let her turn aside, to look away, to hide from the choice that had been made for her. Around them, the dogs panted in unison, as if they too were awaiting her decision.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to.”

Mattie watched her mother’s shoulders collapse, her eyes fall to her lap in silent acquiescence.