34.
“TINIEST,” MY MOTHER STARTED WHEN I STEPPED INTO her room. “Matea tells me it’s Passover. We have to prepare a Seder. The leg of lamb. All the dishes. The bitter herb. Maxito can ask the questions.”
I shook my head, set a cup of herbal tea on her bedside table. “First of all, Mom, we’re not Jewish. And anyway it’s too late to do a Seder.” We sometimes celebrated Passover when I was a kid, but it was already past 6 p.m. and we didn’t have any matzo. “Listen,” I said. “Easter’s in a couple of days. Let’s do Easter. The chef wants to cook for you again. Anything you crave. Traditional or not.”
“Okay,” my mother smiled. “Sit down with me. We’ll make the menu.”
MY MOTHER WANTED leg of lamb with mint jelly and gravy. She wanted red wine, some good pairing. Did the chef know about wine pairings? Of course. My mother wanted fancy ginger ale. Had I tried Q Ginger Ale? No, but I’d get it. She wanted salad, rosemary potatoes, roasted asparagus, carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.
“What else should we have, Tiniest?”
“I think it sounds perfect,” I said. “We can get a plane ticket for Leslie to come too.”
My mother brightened. “And Maia?”
Maia had already missed too many Monday classes with her weekend visits. “She has midterms,” I said. “She’ll come again soon.”
“And Maxito?”
“Yes. Maxito.”
“We’ll make him an Easter basket,” she smiled, tears in her eyes. “With real flowers.” She pressed her morphine button.
“Yes. Let’s.”
THE CHEF AND I made the grocery list and pushed through the aisles of Healthy Wealthy. Early afternoon on Easter and we stood in the chef’s little kitchen organizing ingredients. I recognized the nurse Matea’s number on my cellphone. She worked for both hospice and Milagro Home Care now. “Hello?”
“Are you in town, Ariel?”
“Yes?”
“You should come up to the house,” Matea said. “You should come now.”
I swallowed hard. “What’s up?”
But Matea just said, “Your mother isn’t doing that well.”
4/8/12
8:00 a.m. Eve woke happy, washed up in bathroom, ate toast & fruit & yogurt with tea. Had her meds.
10:00 a.m. Matea arrived to change the dressing on the bedsore, new sores starting where adhesive is. Matea went for more bandages. Eve sat for an hour at breakfast. New red patches began to appear. Will encourage her to sit only for short periods.
11:25 a.m. Eve is happy, animated, wants to get up and check the guest room to make sure it’s ready and clean for Leslie.
THE CHEF FOLLOWED me into my mother’s kitchen, set down the bags from Healthy Wealthy.
Matea stood with a woman I’d never seen before, started crying. “Ariel,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
The new woman started crying, too. She was thin, with desert-colored hair. “I tried to resuscitate her. I know she was DNR, but it’s Easter. She was so looking forward to her feast.”
I glanced out the window. All those living crows had taken flight. I wondered how deep we’d have to dig to reach well water, wondered that just then for no reason.
What does it mean for life to bear witness to death?
I stepped into my mother’s room alone.
She wore her silk leopard-print robe. Lay there as if asleep, mouth slightly open, some peaceful portrait of herself. And even I couldn’t help but notice then that she was beautiful.
I sat in the chair next to her hospice bed, sat there with her for just a few minutes, thought to take her hand and then didn’t. “Well,” I finally said to her, “I think we did all right in the end, don’t you? Behaved in a way we can be sorta proud of? I mean. You built a beautiful kitchen. And I didn’t kill you.”
MY MOTHER’S CROW watched silent from the wall as Matea and the new woman washed her body.
I stood for a long time in her closet, forgetting and remembering my task: to pick out the clean white Mexican cottons she would wear to the incinerator.
The women dressed her, placed a red glass heart on her chest and flowers by her arms. They wrapped her head and jaw in a white scarf to keep her mouth closed, turned the heat down in the room to ward off the smell of death.
The undertaker would come for her body in the morning.
THE CHEF UNWRAPPED the leg of lamb, peeled russet potatoes, cut asparagus.
I crept in and out of my mother’s room, bringing white candles, half-expecting to notice the subtle rise and fall of her chest, half-expecting her to sit up suddenly and demand an omelet. But the sunlight waned into evening as it does, and my mother’s skin looked only paler, her body ever still.
IN THE CUSTOM kitchen, the chef sprinkled rosemary on the potatoes, tossed radicchio in lemon-mustard dressing, melted butter, opened the wine.
Leslie landed at the Albuquerque airport, would catch a shuttle.
Abra crossed the Colorado border on her way home from Spring break.
Maia cried on the phone, made plane reservations for the following weekend.
I left a message for Sol not to bring Maxito after all.
AND I SET the table with my Gammie’s silver, set a place for my mother, too, poured her a glass of red Zinfandel, let the chair sit empty the way we used to at our un-Jewish Seders – a place for the prophet Elijah, should he happen to stop by.