The First Time (48 page)

“Thank you,” Mattie said, opening her mouth like a baby bird, feeling the warm tickle of the liquid as it slid down her throat. “Thank you for everything.”

“Don’t talk. Eat.”

Mattie allowed Lisa to spoon her the remaining contents of the bowl, saying nothing until not a drop was left.

“Somebody was hungry,” Lisa observed, her lips struggling valiantly with a smile.

“You’re a good friend,” Mattie said.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Lisa reminded her. “We’ve been friends for a long time. It’s got to be, what—over thirty years?”

“Thirty-three,” Mattie qualified. Then, after a moment’s careful thought, “Do you remember the first time we met?”

Lisa took a moment of her own. “No.” She shook her head guiltily. “Do you?”

Mattie smiled. “No.”

They both laughed.

“I just remember you were always there,” Mattie said simply.

“I love you,” Lisa said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Mattie knew. “I love you too,” she said.

•   •   •

“Thanks for coming,” Mattie told her mother. It was obvious her mother had taken considerable effort with her appearance. She was wearing a lavender-colored blouse tucked into neat gray trousers, and a hint of color was brushed across lips that were curled into an uneasy smile.

“How are you feeling?” her mother asked, looking restlessly around Mattie’s bedroom before fixing on the small dog curled up against Mattie’s feet on the bed. “You’re looking well.”

“Thank you. So do you.”

Her mother patted her hair with a self-conscious hand. “George seems to have found a friend.”

“I think he likes it here.”

Her mother reached out and petted the puppy’s back. Immediately, the dog rolled over, exposing his stomach, his front paws making small arcs in the air, beckoning her closer, asking for more. How easily he makes himself understood, Mattie thought, watching her mother gently rub the puppy’s delicate underside. How effortlessly he makes his wishes clear. “It was nice seeing Lisa again,” Viv was saying. “It’s amazing. She has the exact same face she had when she was ten years old.”

“She never changes,” Mattie agreed, realizing how comforting this was.

“Hard to picture her as a successful doctor.”

“It’s all she ever wanted to be,” Mattie said, remembering. “When Lisa played doctor, she really meant it.”

Her mother laughed. “You’re sounding so much better,” she said with obvious relief. “Your voice is nice and strong.”

“It comes and goes,” Mattie told her.

“So it’s important not to give up, not to lose hope.”

“There is no hope, Mother,” Mattie said, as gently as she could. Her mother stiffened, backing away from the bed, retreating to the window. She stared without focus at the growing darkness.

“The days are getting shorter.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Be closing the pool soon, I guess.”

“Another few weeks.”

“Kim says she’s become quite the little swimmer.”

“Kim will do well at whatever she sets her mind to.”

“Yes, she will,” Mattie’s mother agreed.

“You’ll look out for her, won’t you? You’ll make sure she’s all right?”

Silence.

“Mother—”

“Of course I’ll look out for her.”

“She loves you very much.”

Mattie’s mother looked toward the ceiling, her chin quivering, her lower lip swallowing the one on top. “Did you see the picture she took of me with all my dogs?”

“It’s a beautiful picture,” Mattie said.

“I think she has a real talent. I think it’s something she might consider pursuing.”

Mattie smiled sadly. “I think you need to listen to me now.”

“I think you need to sleep for a while,” her mother insisted. “You’re tired. A little rest will do you a world of good.”

“Mother, please, listen to me. It’s time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.”

“No.”

“Please, Mother. You promised.”

Silence.

Then, “What is it you want me to do?”

Mattie closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, releasing a deep breath of air. She opened her eyes, looked toward the bathroom. “The bottle of morphine is in the medicine cabinet. I need you to grind up twenty pills and mix them with water, feed them to me a little bit at a time, until I’ve swallowed them all.”

Her mother gasped, held her breath, said nothing.

“Then maybe you could just sit with me until I fall asleep. Would you do that?”

Her mother nodded slowly, her teeth chattering, as if she were cold. “In the medicine cabinet?”

“There’s a spoon by the sink. And a glass,” Mattie called after her, although her voice was fading. She said a silent prayer, although no words formed, even in her head. She was doing the right thing.

The time for hesitating’s through
.

It was time.

And suddenly Mattie’s mother was standing at the foot of the bed, the bottle of morphine in one hand, the glass of water in the other. “The spoon,” Mattie reminded her.

“Oh, yes.” Viv put the glass of water and the bottle of pills on the nightstand next to Mattie. Then she walked back to the bathroom, her movements slow yet jagged, like an automaton. She retrieved the spoon,
returned even more slowly to the bed, as if she were a wind-up toy taking its last awkward steps.

“It’s all right,” Mattie told her. “You’ll put everything back where it was in a few minutes. No one will ever know.”

“What will I tell them? What will I tell Jake and Kim when they get home?”

“The truth—that I’m fine, that I’m asleep.”

“I don’t think I can do this.” Viv’s hands were trembling so badly, she had to lock the spoon between both palms to secure it.

She looks almost as if she’s praying, Mattie thought. “You
can
do it,” she insisted. “You have to.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I can.”

“Damn it, Mom. You did it for your animals. You understood about not letting them suffer.”

“This is different,” her mother pleaded. “You’re my flesh and blood. I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can,” Mattie insisted, her eyes forcing her mother to look at her, directing her to the night table beside her bed, instructing her hands to lay down the spoon and open the bottle of morphine tablets.

“I know I wasn’t a very good mother, Martha,” her mother said, tears accenting the deep red blotches staining her cheeks. “I know what a disappointment I’ve been for you.”

“Don’t disappoint me now.”

“Please forgive me.”

“It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay.”

“Forgive me,” her mother repeated, pulling away from Mattie, backing away from the bed. “But I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.”

“Mom?”

“I can’t. I’m so sorry, Martha. I just can’t.”

“No!” Mattie cried as her mother fled the room. “No, you can’t leave me. You can’t do this. Please. Please, come back. Come back. You have to help me. You have to help me. Please, Mother, come back. Come back.”

Mattie heard the front door open and close shut with a terrible finality.

Her mother was gone.

“No!” Mattie screamed. “No! You can’t go. You can’t leave. You have to help me. You have to help me.”

And then she was coughing and gasping for air, flailing about on the bed like a fish flopping around on the bottom of a fisherman’s boat, her body a series of useless twitches, as the dog barked with growing alarm at her side. “Somebody help me,” Mattie shouted at the empty house. “Please, somebody, help me.”

Mattie hurled herself toward the end table, knocking over the glass of water and the bottle of pills, watching them bounce to the floor, her own body tumbling after them, as she landed with a sickening thud on her left shoulder, the taste of the carpet filling her mouth and nose, the dog whimpering by her side.

Mattie lay that way for what felt like an eternity, as the air slowly returned to her lungs. The dog lay beside her throbbing shoulder, every so often licking the side of her face with his eager tongue. The morphine lay less than two feet from her nose, but she couldn’t reach it. Even if she could, what good would it do her if she couldn’t open the bottle?
Mattie looked toward the window at the darkness beyond, willing it inside the room, praying for it to wash over her, end her suffering once and for all. Then she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, approaching, drawing nearer.

She opened her eyes.

“Oh, God, Martha,” her mother cried, gathering Mattie into her arms, rocking her back and forth like a baby. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You came back,” Mattie whispered. “You didn’t leave me.”

“I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I opened the front door. I heard you crying. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t,” her mother said, her breath trembling into the space between them. “Let’s get you back in bed,” she said, somehow managing to get Mattie off the floor, to lift her back into her bed.

She arranged the pillows at Mattie’s head, gathered the blankets around her, then slowly, wordlessly, retrieved the empty glass from the floor and carried it into the bathroom. Mattie heard the water rushing from the tap, watched her mother’s slow trek back across the room, the glass of water in her hand. She put the glass on the night table beside the bed, then bent to the floor, secured the bottle of pills, opened it, and quickly crushed twenty pills into the waiting spoon, dissolving them in the water. Then she cradled Mattie’s head in her arms and brought the glass to Mattie’s lips, gently guiding the solution into Mattie’s mouth.

It tasted bitter, and Mattie had to fight to keep it
down. The taste of darkness, she thought, embracing it. Slowly, determinedly, she watched the liquid drain from the glass until there was nothing left. “Thank you,” she whispered as her mother returned the glass to the night table, then fitted her body awkwardly around Mattie’s, laying Mattie’s head against the loud banging of her heart.

“I love you, Mattie,” her mother said.

Mattie closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that her mother would stay with her until she fell asleep. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me that,” she said.

For a while Mattie lay still in her mother’s arms, but gradually she felt the air around her start to swirl, felt the loosening of her arms and legs as they began to unfold and straighten. Her fingers and toes stretched and flexed, and soon her hands were swooping out in front of her, her legs kicking from behind. She was swimming, Mattie thought with a silent laugh, swimming out of darkness toward the light, her mother watching after her, ensuring her safe passage.

Mattie thought of Jake and of Kim, how beautiful they were, how much she loved them. She threw both of them silent kisses and then slipped quietly behind a cloud and disappeared.

M
attie was smiling.

Jake stared lovingly at the photograph in his hands, his fingers tracing the line of Mattie’s curved lips as she smiled at him from her chair in front of the Tuileries. “C’est magnifique, n’est-ce pas?” he heard her ask, as he moved to the next photograph, this one of Mattie leaning happily against a bronze nude statue by Maillol. “Magnifique,” he agreed softly, glancing toward the window of his den, watching the still-green leaves of the outside trees dancing in the surprisingly warm October breeze. He looked back at the stack of photographs in his hands. Had it really been six months since their trip to Paris? Was that possible?

Was it possible that almost three weeks had passed since Mattie’s death?

Jake closed his eyes, reliving the last night of Mattie’s
life. He and Kim had left the baseball game at the bottom of the eighth inning, picked up some milk and apple juice from a nearby 7-Eleven, and returned home a little earlier than expected. Viv’s car was still in the driveway, and he heard her shuffling around upstairs for several seconds before she made her delayed appearance. “How is she?” he asked. “Sleeping peacefully,” Viv replied.

Sleeping peacefully, Jake repeated now, watching himself approach their bed, his hand reaching out to smooth some hairs away from Mattie’s face, careful not to disturb her. She felt warm, her breathing slow and steady. He watched himself undress and climb into bed, his arm falling gingerly across Mattie’s side. “I love you,” he whispered now, as he’d whispered repeatedly as he lay beside her, his eyes struggling to stay open, to keep watch over her, to carry her safely into the light of day. At some point, he must have drifted off to sleep. And then, suddenly, it was three o’clock in the morning and he was wide awake, as if something, or someone, had tapped him on the shoulder, shaking him gently until he opened his eyes.

His first thought was that it was Mattie, that she’d somehow regained the use of her arms and was poking at him playfully, but then he saw her, still lying in the same position she’d settled in hours earlier, and he found himself holding his breath. It was only then he heard the profound and utter silence that filled the room, and realized it was this awful stillness that had shaken him awake. He sat up, bent forward, grazed Mattie’s forehead with his lips. She felt unnaturally cool, and he automatically secured the blanket across her shoulders, stubbornly waiting for the steady rise
and fall of her breathing. But there was none, and he understood, in that instant, she was dead.

Jake glanced back at the pictures of Mattie in Paris, tears blurring his vision, as he watched himself gather his dead wife in his arms and lie beside her till morning.

“What are you doing?” Kim asked from the doorway, her voice tentative, as if she were afraid of disturbing him.

“Looking at pictures of your mother,” Jake replied, swiping at his tears while making no attempt to disguise them. He smiled at the small dog glued to Kim’s left ankle. “Trying to decide which ones to frame.”

Kim sank down beside him on the sofa, leaned against his arm, George immediately jumping up, curling into a little ball on her lap. “She looks beautiful in all of them.”

“Yes, she does. I guess that’s what makes it so hard to choose.”

“Well, let’s see.” Kim lifted the photographs from his hands, sifting through them with care. “Not this one,” she said, straining to sound objective, although Jake noted the slight quaver in her voice. “It’s not focused. And you didn’t frame this one properly. Too much sidewalk. But this one’s nice,” she said, stopping on a picture of Mattie in front of Notre Dame cathedral, her hair attractively tousled, her eyes bluer than the clear Parisian sky.