“Here! You can’t wipe your eyes with that! It has salsa on it.” It was Dee Dee’s voice, firm and businesslike. “Take these!”
Elise sniffed. “Thanks.”
Carmen’s hazel eyes bored into hers. “What’s wrong? What is it?”
She wanted to answer, but nothing coherent came out as the words disintegrated into fragments like the pasta letters in alphabet soup. But one image came in strong and clear, and it bludgeoned her. Her mother, Marie, stretched out on the hospital bed, wearing a necklace of tubes, her eyes closed, and her face waxlike.
“I-I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be . . . a downer.” The yoga teacher’s words broke through her thoughts: “Ujjayi breathing, class.” She inhaled. “My mother died ten months ago. And I . . . still feel as if it was yesterday. I . . . I didn’t mean to blank out like that.” She sniffed and then sighed. “Or send everybody into depression. I seem to do that a lot these days.”
For a moment, all three of the women were silent and the lively music had the floor to itself.
“I know how you feel,” Carmen said, studying the dregs of her Corona as she rotated the beer bottle slowly on the table. “You feel as if someone took your liver out using a sharp rock and no anesthetic.”
“Or like you’ve been sideswiped by a Metro bus, T-boned by a semi, and run over by a freight train.” Dee Dee’s eyes were moist. “Twice.”
Elise stared first at Dee Dee and then at Carmen.
Carmen extended her hand across the table. “Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Carmen Bradshaw. My mother, Joan Bradshaw, died last year as well. And I still wake up in tears thinking about her.”
Dee Dee held out her hand too.
“I’m Deanna, Dee Dee Davis, attorney, wife of Lorenzo, mother of Satan’s spawns, and daughter of . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Daughter of Laura O’Neill, artist, writer, free spirit, who died fifteen years ago.” Dee Dee paused again. “I hardly knew her. She was . . . sick a lot when I was growing up. But it still hurts. And it still feels as if it was yesterday.” Dee Dee took a tissue from the packet she’d passed over to Elise and blew her nose.
Carmen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and picked up her Corona bottle. She held it up.
“I hereby call to order the first meeting of the Daughters of Dead Mothers Club. Our first order of business is to devise a punishment for those well-meaning folks who tell you that God never gives you more than you can handle.”
“If I had a dollar for every time I heard that . . .” Dee Dee murmured.
“I like the Red Queen approach myself,” Elise said, taking a sip of her drink. “Off with their heads.”
“Drawing and quartering,” Dee Dee countered, a wicked grin lighting up her face. “It sounds so clever.”
“But messy,” Carmen commented. “What about boiling in oil? That’s more hygienic.”
Elise nodded. The idea had merit.
“Firing squad,” Dee Dee said in an ominous tone.
“So moved,” said Carmen.
“I second.” Dee Dee smiled. Her eyes were gleaming with moisture.
“But which one?” Elise asked, a smile curling her lips upward.
“All of them,” Dee Dee said firmly.
Two glasses and one bottle touched together with a clink.
Chapter 2
Elise
Friends are formed out of shared experiences by people who, sometimes, have similar interests: who attend the same class at school, who enjoy the same music or art, or who have grown up together and enjoy the contentment of memories across the landscape of their pasts. Elise had friends from all of these categories, but she had not thought she could bond so instantly or deeply with two women, outside of a weekly yoga class she hadn’t attended in two months, she barely knew. She hadn’t been sure of their names before tonight. But that didn’t matter. Because Dee Dee and Carmen were more familiar with her inner feelings than anyone, feelings she hadn’t felt safe sharing until now. Their mothers, too, had left them feeling both bereft and empty. Like the orphan Paddington Bear, Carmen had commented as they walked out of Margaret Rita’s that night, they’d been left on a train platform with only a worn-out suitcase and a jar of marmalade for company. Lots of people had mothers who’d died. So why hadn’t Elise “gotten over it,” “gotten on with it,” or “moved forward”? And why hadn’t Dee Dee and Carmen?
“It’s un-American,” Carmen had said earlier in the evening while rotating a tortilla chip around in her hand. “That Puritan thing about not showing emotion, the work ethic, about moving forward, and, you know, eminent-domain thinking. Bored? Sad? Conquer somebody!”
“We don’t know how to cope with expressions of grief. It makes people uncomfortable,” Elise said. “I mean, it’s okay to cry—”
“A little,” Dee Dee interrupted.
Elise smiled. “Yes. A little. Cry a bit at the wake. Sob if you must at the funeral—”
“And you know black folks can perform at a funeral!” Carmen said, chuckling. “I’m a preacher’s kid—I should know.”
“But once that’s all finished. Put your tissues away, get out of the black clothing, and move on. Outward expressions of grief make people squirm.”
Elise had said this, had uttered the words aloud, although she hadn’t intended to. She thought about the expressions on her sons’ faces when she got teary-eyed. She heard the words of her ex-husband, Bobby, in her head: “Now, Lisee, you need to get over this. You can’t keep this up. It’s not good for you.”
What you mean is, it’s not good for you, she remembered thinking viciously.
The grief counselor’s comments had been illuminating. “It’ll be over when it’s over. There’s no stopwatch marking the time you need to grieve for a loved one. Get that concept out of your head. There’s no formula, protocol, or rule. It’ll take as long as it takes.”
But if Elise was honest with herself, there were times when even she thought it had gone on too long. The problem was: she didn’t know what to do about it.
After pushing the MUTE icon on the car radio, she drove home from the dinner in silence, let herself into her house, ignored the blinking light on the answering machine, and, contrary to habit, left the TV remote exactly where it was: on the arm of the couch. She put away her clothes, turned on the taps of the tub, and sat on the edge of the bed while it filled, her mind a thousand miles away.
It was strange, even sad, to think that she’d gotten more out of this evening sharing her pain and loneliness with her new friends than she had in all the months since Mom had died, but that was the way it was. They had laughed, cried, vented, and shared anecdotes about their mothers: Joan, the minister’s wife; Laura, the artist; Marie, the globe-trotter. Elise felt better than she had in weeks.
She lit candles and set them beside the tub, but she didn’t turn on the music that had filled her head today: Valerie June, Emeli Sandé, Tony Bennett, the energetic thump-thump of her favorite Beyoncé tune, the song that always got her going in Zumba class. No, now was the time for silence; it filled the emptiness just fine. Kashmir, her ageless Siamese, padded into the bathroom on ghost feet and settled himself next to the heater vent. Elise took a deep breath, inhaling the gentle, exotic scent emanating from the candles, and sank into the water until it covered her shoulders. The warmth was delicious and soothing. She closed her eyes.