RAV4

The RAV4

Her father read Alice in Wonderland to her nightly until she was eight, and Deidre often imagined herself as ten-inch-tall Alice following the rabbit down the passage through the tiny door. Now, climbing the outside front stairs of her mother’s vast 1820 Federal Colonial, she felt herself truly shrinking. 

“Darling, I was worried.” Deidre had to blink. Of course, her mother wouldn’t be flinging open the paneled front door. She wouldn’t be standing on the threshold, arms crossed in her single-breasted, white, Alexander McQueen suit, one hand dangling a drink that looked like Alice’s cherry-tart elixir. “I saved one for you.” 

Her mother was not on the threshold.

Earlier that week, after her fifth and final fall, two handsome (may have been her mother’s last word) EMTs had deposited her frail body into the hospital bed that replaced their late father’s armchair in his library. Her mother was surrounded by her father’s law books, in the same room where she had refused to let him die thirteen years earlier.

 The night Deidre’s father passed away, her mother hadn’t wanted anyone to stay in the hospital; she wanted her daughters and their families back for dinner as if it were some gala event. Deidre’s husband, Sean, had run interference, distracting her mother just enough for Deidre to stay behind. Although, in her heart of hearts, Deidre believed it was what her mother wanted all along – her sister Karen by her side, Sean to herself, Deidre out of the way.

Now, her mother was refusing to die. She hadn’t had food or water for days.

Friends told Deidre that the final days would be tough. As expected, she had shut down, compartmentalizing tasks – robotically administering pain meds, mediating between the Russian hospice nurse and the Lithuanian aide, writing the obituary. Her sister, Karen, on the other hand, had become an emotional tsunami. Peter, their much older half-brother from their father’s first marriage, was obsessed with the notion that some childhood relic would be thrown out, even though he had never lived with them.

“Normal,” said Tatiana, the hospice nurse from Moscow. “You’re all grieving in your own way. Your sister needs to be in charge of your mother, so let her. They were closer – am I correct?”

Deidre nodded, wishing she had a little tsunami in her, the nurse’s comment about her sister gnawing at her.

It was Karen’s idea to spend the week-long death watch cleaning out closet after closet of their mother’s designer clothes.

Climbing the front staircase, Deidre recalled sliding down the mahogany banister, enveloped in her father’s cherry pipe smoke, his hand at her back. As she passed by the floor-to-ceiling mirror along the wall, Deidre swore – for just a moment – that she saw her mother in the reflection. “Your sister’s ripping upstairs apart,” she seemed to say with a conspirator’s wink.

“Stuck in traffic?” The chill in her sister’s voice was muffled as she rummaged through the beaded drawers of their mother’s Hepplewhite chest.

“Funny, I was checking on mother,” Deidre replied, jarred by her sister’s iciness.

    “Already did that,” she snapped. “There must be a hundred cashmere sweaters.” Karen held a chartreuse cable in one hand and a vermilion cardigan in another.

“We’ll be heroes with Goodwill,” Deidre said.

“I want to keep some of these,” Karen said, clutching a cardigan.

Deidre felt a funny twist in her stomach as she stared at her own empty hands.

Her mother had appeared again, yawning and sitting in a Lucite chair in the corner. “Throw it all out. He loved to collect junk.

“Dad even recorded my first day at Southport Academy,” Deidre said, leafing through a calendar book.

“It’s a good thing I got you out of that public school. No control. Kids were out of hand,” her mother said, enunciating the last word.

“And you think private school was any better? It was just as wild with more money.” She could see her father’s penmanship, the small, stiff cursive letters introverted like him.

“You’re both so unappreciative of the sacrifices your father and I--”

“He hated paying those bills.”

“You didn’t know your father. You girls had no idea how hard –"

“Mother, be real, you wanted us in that school for the caché -- something to talk about at cocktail parties,” Deidre said, unwilling to let it go. She carefully placed the notebooks in a half-filled box on the edge of the smokey grey settee as if to preserve some small remnant of her father.

“Really, Deidre, you make me sound so shallow.” Her mother reached for a file to work on her nails.

“What’s so funny?” Karen asked, dropping unwanted sweaters on the bed.

“Nothing, just thinking about some of the outrageous things mother used to say.”

Karen shrugged.

Deidre began to sort the sweaters on the snow-white comforter. She dug her toes into the grey-speckled shag rug -- the original wide-pine floor now hidden. The week after their father died, their mother erased all traces of the husband she had shared the room with for over fifty years. Gone were the sage-print wallpaper and the heavy drapes. Deidre glanced at the 1940s Hollywood grey-and-white motif with coffered wall panels painted to resemble marble. Her mother had called it “her sanctuary.”

Deidre grabbed a garbage bag and began throwing out dozens of inexpensive perfumes cluttering the vanity by her bed. She paused as several crystal bottles caught the window light, refracting it into rainbow prisms across the mirrored top.

“What are you doing?” Karen’s voice was strained.

     Deidre shrugged. “Thought the light was cool.”

      “I mean with the perfume.”

       Deidre wrinkled her nose as she sniffed a frosted bottle. “Smells like cleaning fluid to me.” She offered it to Karen, who snatched the perfume away.

“It reminds me of Mom. I’m keeping it,” Karen said as she slipped it into a box in the hall that contained pieces of their mother’s costume jewelry. Deidre felt slightly annoyed that they hadn’t discussed the box’s contents. She peered inside, pulling out an ashtray from the country club.

      “Why the hell would you want that? You don’t even smoke,” Deidre asked.

       “I liked the club.”

Her mother was back, stretching her neck to reapply lipstick in the ornate mirror over the fireplace.

“Throw out your father’s shoes, unless Sean wants them. I miss Sean. Bring him next time, and I’ll take you all to the club.”

“I hate that place,” Deidre had said, reaching for her father’s old tennis shoes. The club was where Sean first met her mother, when she whispered creepily in his ear: “I’m not as old as you think I am, and you’re not as young as you think you are.” Why was she always so inappropriate? Sean had almost died from embarrassment.

“You loved it in the day,” her mother said.

“You’re kidding. The summer I was eleven, you volunteered me to babysit for the four Bassett kids at the pool every day so you could hang out with their mom.”

“You weren’t eleven, honey,” she said, snapping the lipstick shut. “Besides, you had them all hypnotized with your stories. My little storyteller,” she said, patting Deidre’s hair.

Of course, she was eleven. The Bassetts went on vacation the last two weeks of August, releasing her from her babysitting duties. During the first week, Deidre had turned twelve. A day after her birthday, her mother sent her to New York to stay with Aunt Stella as if being out of sight might have stalled Deidre’s breasts from budding and her hips from curving – developments that clearly unnerved her mother.

        “You dreaded going to the club in the day,” Deidre said, putting the ashtray back. “She basically farmed us out to get in good with those pretentious women.”

“You wanted to babysit,” Karen said, placing a few of their mother’s scarves in the box.

Deidre clenched her jaw. “Come on – you know she was perfectly happy offering me as a babysitter in exchange for an invitation to something ridiculous like a bridge game or garden club.”

“I just don’t remember it being that bad.” Karen pulled a paper-clipped collection of yellow pages from a drawer. She flipped a page. “Dee, you have to see this. It looks like a short story Mother wrote for some class: “Mr. Fops.”

“Let me look,” Deidre said, reaching for the papers.

Her mother was back once again, stretched out on her bed, leaning against her oversized dove-grey pillows. “You aren’t the only one who can write,” her mother was saying, staring at the ceiling.

Deidre was tempted to correct her – could write, but that would only indulge the delusion. She tried to remember whether she had ever seen her mother sit down with paper and pen. Deidre had a vague memory of her father being upset that he had to take care of them at night – wholly ill-equipped to manage the bath and bed routine.

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember Mr. Fops,” her mother was saying, turning on her back and crossing her delicate ankles. “You wouldn’t play with toys, too busy with your pretend friend. You described him so vividly, I could see him – hence the story. I loved that creative writing class. Had to twist your father’s arm to let me do it. The man hated his nightly routine disrupted.”

Deidre skimmed the story; Karen read over her shoulder. “Do you remember Mr. Fops?” her sister asked.

Deidre shrugged.

“The ending was good – her telling you to go play and leave your pretend friend home, only to see a puff of smoke as she closed the door – cute.”

Deidre put the papers carefully back in the drawer. Cute was demeaning. Her mother had worked hard on the story, and it wasn’t half bad. She had written it with no encouragement, no hope of publishing.

Karen checked her watch. “Time for the pain meds. She hasn’t been moaning, so I’m giving her Tylenol.”

“She hasn’t had morphine for four hours. She should get that – stay ahead of the pain,” Deidre said emphatically.

Karen was halfway down the stairs. “You’re too quick to medicate.”

Her mother screamed most of the night. The hospice nurse put her on a strict schedule of morphine every four hours.

When she wasn’t cleaning, Deidre sat beside her mother.

“It’s time to go, mother,” she whispered. “You need to make sure Dad isn’t eating or drinking the wrong things. Uncle Todd has gotten things ready for you.”

Her mother didn’t react. There was only a twitch of her cheek when Karen came into the room, touching her face as she whispered, “I’m here, Mommy.”

It was her mother’s seventh day without food or water. The hospice nurse said she’d seen people last for two full weeks. Deidre was taking a break after emptying her childhood bedroom when Aunt Stella, her mother’s first cousin from Florida, called. Stella was considered an aunt because her own mother had died in her thirties, and she and her brother had grown up in a crowded Brooklyn apartment with their mother.

“How are things going?” she asked, her 96-year-old voice raspy from heart failure.

“Aunt Stella, she’s not going to get better.”

“Go now, hug her for me. Don’t wait. Go now.”

Deidre held her hand.

“Mother, you can go. You don’t want to live like this. You want to be free. No one will tell you what to do.”

For a moment, Deidre could see her mother driving down the road in her Mustang convertible, with its black folding top and galloping pony emblem on the grille—the ruby-red exterior a perfect match for her lipstick. Just then, her mother’s eyelids fluttered, and she was gone. Deidre found it ironic that telling her she’d be in control again seemed to do the trick. Deidre didn’t know what to do with her own hands – it was as if she was waiting for her mother to squeeze them, as if they were in the middle of an unfinished conversation.

Karen arrived a moment later. Deidre was worried that her sister would be upset she wasn’t the one sitting there, but Karen surprised her by hugging Deidre tightly.

    Someone from hospice needed to declare her dead. Deidre called the emergency number. Tatiana, the RN, was not available, so a young nurse arrived instead. Her hands shook as she lifted one arm and then another. She placed a stethoscope on her sunken chest.

 The nurse checked her mother’s wrist for a pulse. Deidre and Karen both held their breath. With a flick of her wrist, the nurse slid her mother’s wedding rings off her bone-thin finger. The young woman held the jewelry in her small hand, her eyes assessing the sisters’ fingers. Without a word, she slipped the engagement diamond on Deidre’s right hand, while the wedding band was placed on Karen’s. The sisters stood there speechless, shoulders touching as Karen eyed the larger diamond. Deidre examined the three-carat stone, overpowering her small hand – the ring had never left her mother. Now, Deidre’s finger was the only place it fit. She slid her arm behind her back. There was no way she was giving up the ring.

The nurse was ransacking her medical bag; she had misplaced the paperwork they had filled out for the funeral home.

     “Would you like me to call the funeral home?” Deidre asked.

      The young nurse nodded, relieved.

          Fifteen minutes later, a handsome twenty-something boy knocked on the door. Karen, not wanting to see their mother taken away, was about to leave to light a candle in the church across the street.

      “Thank you for coming so quickly. I’m Deidre, and this is my sister Karen. Our mother is in the library,” she said as if inviting a guest into one of her mother’s lavish parties.

       “Thank you, Ma'am. I’m Curt,” he said, fumbling with the red sack in his hand.

        “We are so happy to use Foreman Brothers again. They were wonderful when our father died,” Deidre said.

         The boy said nothing.

          “Is your father, Kyle, still the director?” Karen asked.

           The boy blushed. “Ladies, I am not from Foreman, but I am happy to drop your mother there.”

           Karen gasped. Diane peered out the door at the boy’s RAV4.

           “Are you even from a funeral home?” she asked. “Where’s your hearse?”

           “Sure am. Seventh generation. Spellman,” he said proudly. “Hearses are out – gas guzzlers.”

           “You called the wrong funeral home?” Karen asked in disbelief.

            Deidre noticed that Peter had pulled his phone from his pocket and was starting to record the interaction.

              “Appears so. Mother would have been thrilled to go with him, don’t you think?” Deidre whispered, suppressing a nervous giggle. Her mother would have been the only one, besides herself, to see the humor. Karen shook her head, her eyes set on the church. Deidre stepped aside to let Curt pass, almost colliding with Peter.

“What the hell are you doing?” Deidre hissed.

“We don’t know these people,” Peter said, still looking through his lens as the boy went into the library and unzipped the body bag.

“It’s not like there’s going to be any organ harvesting.” Deidre rolled her eyes as she watched the young man load her mother into the car, shutting the back of the RAV4.

              Deidre had pulled her SUV to the front door and opened its back. Sixty bags of their mother’s clothes sat ready for donation. She suggested they stop at the gigantic drive-in Goodwill on their way to dinner. Karen looked at her in disbelief.

“A little soon -- don’t you think? She was only just taken away.” Karen’s eyes welled with tears.

“Would you rather face all of this tomorrow? I thought you wanted everything cleaned out,” Deidre said, organizing the bags in the back of her SUV.

“It’s just that things are happening so quickly.”

Deidre put an arm around her sister’s shoulders and squeezed, before shutting the trunk.

Deidre, Karen, their husbands, and Katrina, the aide, caravaned down the Post Road in five SUVs. The Post Road Goodwill was a vast, modular building, sprawling over the pavement like octopus tentacles.

             The young boy, receiving the goods at the Goodwill entrance, opened his eyes in amazement.

             “That’s quite a haul,” he said, wheeling the cart towards the first car.

             “Our mother just died this afternoon,” Deidre said, opening the back of her SUV.

             “My condolences,” the boy said, lowering his eyes.

             “She was in a lot of pain,” Karen said, putting a bag in the cart.

             The five of them methodically lifted bag after bag, filling the carts as fast as the boy could empty them. Deidre held the last bag, oversized and oddly shaped from pillows and bedding.

             “That the last one?” the boy asked out of breath.

              Deidre paused, a small smile growing on her face. Karen stood to her side.

              “Yup, and here she is,” Deidre laughed, heaving the last bag in the cart.

              “Ma’am, wait a second, we don’t do that sort of thing,” the boy said, unable to hide the panic in his voice.

              “Good luck,” Deidre sang out. She stopped, catching a glimpse of their mother’s red wool overcoat in one of the bins. Deidre blinked at a dark shadow near the bin. Her mother emerged, standing near her coat. “You loved dressing up in that old thing.”

Deidre wanted to go over and hug her, but her mother was fading.

“Better get to dinner.” The voice was far away. “Have a Negroni for me.”

Deidre started after her, tears racing down her cheeks, but the image had vanished, replaced by the young employee. As the boy wheeled the bin into the facility, the arm of the red jacket flopped over the edge – a limp farewell. Karen reached for her hand.

“So strange,” Karen said as they stood side-by-side, their newly ringed fingers entwined. “I could have sworn I just smelled a whiff of her perfume?”