The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (34 page)

I
LLA SCURRIES INTO
the all-night L&S drugstore, pays for Mama's Lantus prescription, and flies home, the paper bag scrunched tight in her fist. As she enters the house, she can hear the television going. When she sees the kitchen, she thinks they've been burglarized. Cupboards hang open, the fridge stands ajar. Peanut butter and mayonnaise jars sit lidless on the counter, knife handles sticking out of them. Half a loaf of white bread has tumbled out of its plastic bag, fanning across the counter. As she walks into the room, something crunches underfoot—a mix of Cap'n Crunch and potato chips. Behind the kitchen island, Mama is slumped against the wall, urine spreading in a clear pool on the tile around her. She's shaking as if palsied.

Illa drops her bag and crouches beside her mother, whose eyes are sleepy slits. Groping for the phone that hangs on the wall, she dials 911. As they wait for the ambulance, she cradles her mother's head to her chest, listening for each breath, imploring:
Please be okay, please be okay.

THE EMTS HEAVE
Mama's bulk into the ambulance bay. For a moment, her eyes flutter open, and she looks around, her gaze uncomprehending. Illa says, “I'm here, Mama,” but when her mother looks at her, her eyes are swimming.

“Did you pack your swimsuit?” Mama asks, her speech slurred.

“No,” Illa answers, as if this is an appropriate question.

“Well, hurry up, can't go to the shore without a suit.”

“She's disoriented,” one of the EMTs says. “That happens with hypoglycemia.” Gently, he brushes Mama's hair from her forehead, and Illa wonders how a person could summon such tenderness for a stranger. When did Illa stop letting Mama stroke her hair before bed, rub her back as they watched TV? Their touches are purely functional now—pinching flesh between fingers in preparation for a needle, arms crooked under armpits at bathtime.

The EMT pulls the door shut. As the ambulance moves away, the siren slashes through the nighttime quiet of Galvez Street. Illa follows in the car, trying to remember the last time they went to the beach, but it's been too long, the memories of their many trips sliding into a single golden day spent paddling in the bathwater-warm Gulf, watching Mama stretched elegantly on the sand in her black two-piece, slender legs bent into triangles, rib cage moving up and down with her breath, a paperback propped on her chest. When she gets too hot, she joins Illa in the water, diving under, keeping her legs pressed tightly together as she dolphin-kicks her way forward. For a moment, her mother is a mermaid moving through the sea.

When Illa arrives at the hospital, they've already wheeled Mama into the critical care unit and won't let her follow. “She had a seizure of some kind on the way over,” a nurse says. “She's in danger of a coma. I'm sorry, hon.”

Illa panics. “But she was awake when they left, she was talking to me . . .”

“I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything,” the nurse says.

Illa promises whatever overworked angel of mercy tasked with watching over Meg Stark that if her mother comes out of this alive, Illa will perform any caretaking tasks required of her, with no grousing.
Just please, give me a chance to be a better daughter,
she prays.
Give her a chance to be happy again.

While waiting for news, Illa sees a man pull up in a truck and stumble in, blood saturating a towel balled around his right hand. “Lost me a finger to the outboard,” he says with preternatural calm. He trails ruby dots on the hallway's white linoleum. It doesn't seem fair that some things are irrevocable, and that you never know which decision will lead to those things.

An hour later, the same nurse finds Illa and ushers her into her mother's room. On the room's muted television set, they're replaying footage of yesterday's basketball game. Mama, eyes closed, has half a dozen tubular tentacles springing from her arms.

As Illa sits down next to the bed, a doctor blows into the room, white coat floating behind him like a cape. He tells her accusingly that Mama's sugars were sky-high and that she nearly fell into a diabetic coma because of it.

“So she's not in a coma?” Illa asks.

“No, but she's going to be groggy for a while. Let her rest.”

He has secured his wavy hair into place with reeking pomade, as if he works in a nightclub and not a place where he might witness a person's last hours on earth. His name tag reads
Dr. Chet Bilikins.
Illa watches his eyes, full of reprobation, rove over Mama's body, and she wants to confess her part in the problem.
It was my fault, I left her in the house without any Lantus. I left her alone with her depression. For weeks. Years, even.
Instead, she says only, “She has a binging problem. She just . . .” She pauses. “It got out of hand.”

She can tell by the way the doctor looks at her mother that he's judging her, and Illa wants to say something cutting to him. But what right does she have to get defensive when she has registered the same callous thoughts countless times?

“Could she have died?” she asks quietly.

“She's badly dehydrated, but we've got her on fluids. Potassium and insulin, too. She might not have made it much longer if you hadn't found her when you did.” He looks at Illa for the first time. “She's lucky.”

“I don't know about that,” Illa says.

“We'll keep her closely monitored,” he says. “Has your mother been depressed lately, do you think?”

“No,” she lies, still feeling defensive. “She just has an issue with food sometimes.”

“Okay,” he says. “So she hasn't exhibited any troubling behavior? Difficulty getting out of bed, hopelessness, detachment . . .”

Oh, God,
thinks Illa. Is he implying that Mama tried to kill herself? In the years since the accident, her sadness has been static, a melancholy that could be managed. But perhaps their fight changed that, and Illa didn't notice because, in its affect, despair so closely resembled the status quo. She thinks about the report tucked in its manila envelope. Maybe, just maybe, the information it contains will be enough to bring her mother back from the edge.

While Mama dozes, Illa slips outside to the car to get the report. She will give it to Mama as soon as she seems ready. On the way back into the hospital, Illa stops before the plumeria tree planted by the entrance. Ducking under the low branches of the tree, she stands near the slender trunk, hidden within a chamber of fragrant white blossoms. Pressing a cheek to the smooth bark, she inhales the honeyed scent. When she's had her fill, she gently plucks a dozen of the snowy blossoms from the branches. She wants to take something beautiful to Mama to counterbalance the ugliness of the report.

When she enters the room, her mother is sitting upright, sipping water through a straw.

“Mama!” she exclaims, rushing to her bedside.

“What's the occasion?” Mama asks, pointing to the flowers. Her voice is weak and scratchy, but it's the loveliest sound Illa's heard in years.

“Can't a girl do something for her mama without raising suspicion?” she says, voice thick with tears.

“Doctor said there was no damage because you found me so quick.”

“Oh, Mama.” Illa drops the flowers on a chair, kisses her mother's cheeks, her forehead, her chin, burying her face in Mama's neck. Today she is glad for every part of her mother's body.

“We used to be great friends, you and me,” Mama says. She tries to wipe at her eyes, but her arms are so densely intubated that she can't raise them. To respond that they are still friends would be false, Illa knows that. They are mother and daughter, nurse and patient, housemates, none of which amounts to what they were before.

“We can get back there,” Illa says, and she believes it. Giving Mama the report won't guarantee change. But with the manila envelope burning beneath her fingertips, she feels rankled by something close to hope. Mama will be vindicated, and there's tremendous power and relief in that. “Mama, I know I forgot your Lantus, but I got so caught up in what was happening to Mercy . . . By the time I got home with it, it was too late. It was my fault . . .”

“You stop right there,” Mama says. “I was headed down a bad road. I've been binging a lot, not just that time you caught me a few weeks ago. When you didn't show with the Lantus, I got to feeling so sorry for myself, I decided not to take the NovoLog, either. And to eat all the food I'd been stockpiling.
I'm
the fool.”

“I should have been there for you,” Illa says. “Not just tonight but all the other nights.”

“I read those letters out of jealousy,” Mama says quietly. “I was jealous of how much attention you paid that girl. I thought maybe by reading them, I could feel Mercy's pain in getting left, that it might make me feel better or dislike her less.”

“I love you, Mama, more than anyone.”

“I know you do,” she says. “I leaned on you too hard.”

“All I want's my mama back.”

“I love you, my Lilla,” she says, calling Illa by a nickname she hasn't heard in a long time. “And I'm sorry. Especially for this.” She raises her chin to indicate the hospital room.

“We'll do better.”

“We will.”

With that, Illa opens the manila envelope and pulls out the report.

“What you got?”

Illa says: “You were right, Mama.”

Then she reads the report aloud, glancing up from time to time to gauge her mother's reaction, which is oddly tranquil. When Illa finishes reading, Mama says, “What a waste. What a terrible waste.” Pause. And then: “I've wanted blood for so long, but now that I have proof, I don't know what to do. What should we do?”

“See if we can shame the shameless,” Illa says. “I know a guy who's been waiting years to break a story like this.”

A nurse appears in the doorway. “Your sister is here to see you,” she says.

Mama raises an eyebrow. “But I . . .” Charmaine's entrance silences her midsentence. The nurse leaves. “I'll be damned.”

“Meg,” Charmaine says, tugging at the hem of her denim jacket. If she's shocked by the way Mama looks, she doesn't show it, and Illa is grateful to her. “Your neighbor told me I'd find you here.” Charmaine hovers by the door as if uncertain of her welcome. “How you feeling?”

“Better now you're here.”

“You mean that?”

“I was mad over your going away, why would I be mad at you for coming back? Like getting run over by a car twice, no thank you.”

Charmaine smiles, and Illa sees Mercy in every detail of the expression, down to the dusky rose of her lips. “Fair enough,” she says.

“How's your girl doing?”

“Always trying to change the subject away from yourself,” Charmaine says. “But I came here to say something to you, and I'm going to say it. I figure while I'm on my knees begging forgiveness from just about everyone, why not you, too.” She smiles, though it's the kind of chagrined smile a cheating husband gives a wife before confessing. “I ought not to have blamed you, Meg.”

Neither woman speaks. Mama just stares out the window. When the women's silence becomes too much, Illa blurts, “For what? Blame her for what?”

Mama looks sharply at Charmaine, as if to say,
Let me tell it.
And she does: “I'm the one that set her up with Witness Louis.” Chin drops to chest. “I used to rib her something awful for being a prude and not having any fun. I pushed her to go on that date, said it'd be good for her. He was handsome and keen on Char, so I set them up.” Pause. “Gave her a puff of her first joint when she came to me crying afterward, told her it'd help take the edge off. I . . .”

The silence of tears being choked down, and Illa is reminded how tough her mother can be when she sets her mind to it. In the years since the accident, she's never seen Mama cry, only heard her from time to time, late at night from behind a closed bedroom door. And yet for so long she has believed in her mother's whole and total weakness. How easy it is to ignore contrary evidence when you've already made up your mind about a person.