Precious Girls

by Antonio Aiello

Mother told me she wanted to die. I’ve been married twice, she said. One husband was an asshole. The other was your father. Guess which one I loved? Then she sold her Buick. She hired round-the-clock hospice nurses. She wrote out thousand-dollar checks for each of my three kids and sent them in Monet thank you cards. No note, just her signature. She said she was ready to die. But I knew she wasn’t.

It was late in the afternoon when I let myself into Mother’s studio apartment—the same one she moved into after her second husband ended his addiction to prescription pills by taking two dozen Vicodin with half a liter of Crown Royal. The apartment was dark except for the iridescent flicker of a television and a white band of light seeping out from underneath the bathroom door. I dropped my purse on the coffee table and switched on the lamp by the blue velvet sofa, the only piece of furniture she held onto from our old house on Lynwood Street. On the wall behind the sofa were dozens of pictures of my half-sister Nikki and me when we were kids.  There I was taking a bubble bath; there was Nikki running through the sprinklers in a pink tutu and ballet slippers.

Are you tinkling?

The respirator at the foot of her bed crackled and hummed to life.

I brought you some prime rib from the club. I dropped the doggie bag on the dining room table and walked into her sleep alcove. I followed the respirator’s clear plastic tube down the side of her rented hospital bed, over the swivel-top nightstand with its city of ointments and remote controls, prescription bottles and empty pillbox organizers.

Mother? I tapped softly on the door. When she didn’t answer, I turned the glass knob and stepped into the white glow of her bathroom. There she was on the toilet. Her head was resting against the vanity and her purple nightgown was pulled up around her waist. She was a heap of periwinkle and ivory spilling off the toilet seat. Both hands dangled at her side, hovering just inches above the tile floor wet with scotch and littered with little pills and the tiny shards of a broken crystal tumbler. This wasn’t the first time I’d found her like this. Mother popped pills. Ambien for insomnia, Lipitor for cholesterol, Advil gel caps for inflamed joints; there was Valium for her nerves and Prozac for her moods. She took Ex-Lax for constipation and calcium supplements to prevent osteoporosis. Then there were her pain pills: Vicodin, Darvon, Demerol.

I knelt down and ran my hand across the soft creases in her forehead and down the smooth slope of her cheek. For her sixtieth birthday, she bought herself a facelift and chin-tuck. Twenty years later, her skin was wrinkled again but soft and silky. I always wanted skin like hers. Even passed out on the toilet, she looked good for her age.

Mother?

I pinched the respirator tube and stopped the flow of oxygen. She coughed. Her lips curled down. She lifted her head off the vanity and it bobbed unsteadily on her neck. I reached out to help her.

God damnit, Nikki. She swatted at my hands.

It’s not Nikki. It’s Sue Anne.

She stared at my feet. Of course you’re Sue Anne. Who else would wear pumps with that sundress? She looked up at me then, her eyes softening into glassy amber pools. She ran her hand down my dress.

Silk the color of honey. Is it new?

It was a good girl present to myself for putting up with you.

Mother smiled. She lifted her arms above her head and fingered the storm of gray roots and brown tips. What do you think of my hair? Such a mess and I have so much to do before Douglas’ party. She looked at the door. Is Douglas back from the office?

Douglas was Mother’s second husband and Nikki’s father. When I was two, Mother knocked out her right incisor jumping off the high dive at the country club. Douglas was the dentist who made her a new tooth. It was love at first sight. That’s what Mother always said. My dad moved out of the house and within a year, Douglas moved in.

Douglas is dead.

Mother leaned forward and reached for her underwear, a beige puddle pooled around her alabaster ankles and varicose veins.  She stopped halfway down and looked up at me. She reached out with both hands—aged and weathered, smoker’s hands, the hands of an eighty-year old woman—and cradled my face.

Oh, Suzie.

She leaned toward me like she wanted a hug. Her eyes rolled back and she folded forward into my arms and passed out. I waited a minute to see if she would wake up and then I smacked her—gently, of course—the way people do in the movies. She didn’t wake. I leaned her back against the water tank and propped her head on the vanity the way I had found her. I ran some cold water on my hand and splashed a little on her face. Nothing.  Mother wasn’t tall. Petite is what she liked to call herself. But over the last year, she’d gained a little weight and I knew I couldn’t lift her on my own. I made sure she was stable enough not to fall forward again and then I went into the living room to call for help.

I didn’t know who to call: ambulance, Daddy’s nurse or my half-sister Nikki. I was supposed to play bridge with a group of girls at the country club later. Now I’d have to cancel. The setting sun had left a thin ribbon of orange stretched tight across the horizon. I dialed Nikki.

My kids liked to tease me about how my life in Wichita was more complicated than a soap opera. Nikki didn’t help. L.A. house wife, EST disciple, born-again Christian, two marriages—two kids from each, all four living on their own and not talking to her—two terriers that never stopped yapping, too-slow metabolism, and a fashion sense too dependant on velour exercise suits: that was Nikki. She had mother’s hairstyle, a Dorothy Hamill cut. At fifty-five, she had come back to Wichita for a certificate degree in adolescent counseling—Mother paid for her moving expenses—and then legally changed her name from Nicole to Ninon. Said she needed a fresh start. We weren’t even French.

I was first to move back to Wichita. When Daddy’s fourth wife—Mother was his first—passed away from breast cancer, I came home for the funeral. He was a train wreck waiting to happen. Every morning he got up, piled his clothes at the foot of his bed, walked bare-ass through the living room, past the nurse’s den, into the kitchen and out the back door to pee on the neighbor’s rose bushes. The night after the funeral, I walked into Daddy’s den and found his nurse sitting on his lap with her blouse unbuttoned. She was running her hands through his hair. Scalp massage, she said to me real business-like. I could tell he was terrified. I didn’t know if he was afraid of what I might do to him or what was happening on his lap. I fired the nurse. Wife number five? Not on my watch. I decided I would take care of him.

Nikki’s line rang and rang and when I was about to hang up and call Daddy’s Nurse, Nikki finally answered.

Suzie! I was just thinking about you.

The false joy in her voice struck a nerve and I was sorry I called.

Mother’s passed out in the bathroom again.

No! Nikki said. Her little terriers erupted in the background and washed out the rest of what she said.

I can’t hear you over all that racket.

There’s a squirrel on the porch. Hold on, Suzie. Brittany, Christy! Mommy’s on the phone. No! Down!

Right around the time Nikki and I moved back to Wichita, Mother diagnosed herself with terminal emphysema. Her doctor said she wasn’t dying. That didn’t stop her from hiring hospice care and ordering a marble marker for her spot in the Davidson mausoleum. That’s my inheritance, was Nikki’s reaction when I told her how much everything cost. Nikki fired the nurses. She told Mother we would take care of her ourselves. Then she called and insisted that I take part in her plan. What Plan? I said. And she said, I can’t tell you unless you say you’ll do it with me. I said, Do what with you? And she said, I can’t tell you unless… We went around and around like that until I finally hung up on her.

Brittany! Outside! I heard the sound of newspaper whacking fur.

Those dogs. It’s Douglas’ birthday, you know. Nikki was out of breath. Mother called me last night.

You should get them fixed.

She’d been drinking.

Why didn’t you call?

She told me not. You know how she is when she drinks.

Did you go over there?

No!

What did you give her?

Vicodin.

So you did go over there.

Nikki fell silent.

I could just smack you. How much did you give her?

There’s no reason to be hurtful.

I slammed the phone down. I tapped out a cigarette and lit up. The phone rang. I took a drag off my cigarette and picked up. Are you coming over or what?

Are you smoking, Suzie?

I hung up the phone again.

Smoking wasn’t allowed at Mother’s because of her oxygen—fire hazard. The first week we had the respirator hooked up, I caught Mother a dozen times sitting up in bed, oxygen tube clipped under her nose and a Menthol 100 smoldering away between her lips as she watched Judge Judy.

The phone rang again. I finished my cigarette and went into the kitchen. I grabbed the 409 and a roll of paper towels, and as I passed back through the living room, I picked up the receiver.

Suzie! Suzie!

And I set it down on the table.

I went into Mother’s sleep alcove to tidy up. Since Nikki had fired the nurses, no one cleaned up anymore except for me. Collected around the empty prescription bottles on Mother’s swivel-stand were cotton handkerchiefs crusted with spittle, crumbs from breakfast muffins Nikki had brought earlier that week, and Princess Di’s biography covered with half-a-dozen crescent stains from juice glasses.

The photograph of Nikki and me I liked to keep on the swivel-stand was face down again. Such a darling picture. Nikki and I are dressed in bathing suits for one of Douglas’ private little beauty pageants. We have tinfoil tiaras and little high heels. I was eleven and Nikki eight. Douglas had crowned me Miss Bubble Bath. What a hoot, Mother’s friends had said. Miss Bubble Bath, where’d he come up with that? The picture was taken in our old living room on Lynwood Street, the curtains drawn tight, on a Saturday morning while Mother played tennis at the club.

Douglas was a dentist, but he liked to think of himself as an amateur photographer. It started with him taking pictures to document his patients’ oral disorders: sores rotting away cheeks and gums, cavity-riddled teeth and hairy tongues. He had lights and tripods and different format cameras. Nikki and I were his favorite subjects, his girls. The two of us would be twirling our hula-hoops in the driveway and Douglas would appear, a Contaflex dangling around his neck. He would circle around us and then glance up into the sky as if spotting an airplane. Then he’d say something like: The light’s a perfect 5.6. You girls keep swinging your hips while I get a few shots off.

I sprayed 409 on Mother’s nightstand and wiped it clean. I set the picture up right again, facing the bed so Mother could see it from her pillow. I arranged her remote controls and took her empty pill organizers and prescription bottles into the kitchen. I cleaned the cover of Lady Di’s biography and put it on the writing desk in the living room. After eating, Mother liked to be read to. She liked poetry best. I have longed to move away from the hissing of the spent lie / and the old terror’s continual cry… Biographies were my idea. Zelda, Joan Crawford, Jackie O. The lives people lead.

As I stripped her bed, I found more tissues and crumbs and a hidden cache of Vicodin tucked away in one of the pillowcases. When I pulled the sheets out from against the wall, I found her stash of Douglas photographs. The Polaroid on top had been rubbed raw and smudged with Mother’s fingerprints. There was Douglas lounging in bed. No Shirt. Just pajama pants. He had a smirk on his face like he was some kind of dentist playboy. There were half-a-dozen other prints: the Chamber of Commerce portrait Mother used for his obituary, the four of us on our last Christmas before I smacked Douglas so hard he fell down the stairs; before I moved in with Daddy.

Mother’s respirator crackled and hummed to life. My heart skipped a beat. I felt like I was fourteen again and I had just heard the whine of floorboards outside my room.

Mother?

Her eyes were still closed when I peeked in on her in the bathroom. She hadn’t moved. I took the stack of photos and put them next to my purse on the dining room table. Buried in the linen closet I found a set of daisy-white linens. They were soft and crisp like a man’s shirt just back from the cleaners. When I finished her bed, the sheets were tight and smooth and wrinkle-free. I folded a corner back so Mother could slide right in. Everything looked clean and neat. Peaceful.

I was about to have a good-girl cigarette when I heard Mother cough. I walked into the bathroom and found her staring at her ankles, wheezing. She looked up as if seeing me for the first time that day.

Isn’t that the most darling sundress? She looked down at my feet and coughed. No shoes?

I took a towel and brushed aside the crystal and pills on the floor. I wet a washcloth and rinsed her face, her hands, her arms and legs. As I did this she closed her eyes as if luxuriating in a warm bath. When I’d finished, she opened her eyes and studied me a moment as if she was deciding whether or not she could trust me. Then she reached out and took my hands in hers and let out a deep sigh. I pulled her gently off the toilet seat. We struggled a little as she steadied herself. Then we took baby steps toward the door. As I guided her out of the bathroom she glided her shaky hand along the wall for balance. When we reached the door, the plastic respirator tube caught on the doorknob. Mother’s head jerked back and she stopped walking. We stood there holding hands in the doorway.

I unhooked the tube. I walked her to her bed, sat her down and helped get her legs under the covers. After I pulled the comforter up to her chest, she patted and smoothed out all the wrinkles. She smiled and then surveyed the alcove. Her glance lingered over the clean swivel stand. Her lips curled down.

I should probably get a new frame for that picture, the way it’s always falling over. I just love that picture. Miss Bubble Bath. What a hoot.

We stared at each other a moment and I thought she might say something.

Oh, look, she said, Wheel of Fortune is on. Turn up the volume, Suzie.

I stepped in front of the television and my body cast a long, dark shadow across the bed. I couldn’t help myself.

Fluoride and scotch. I teased. That’s what it smelled like when he was working on me in that dentist chair of his.

Mother shifted to the side like she was engrossed in Wheel of Fortune. A scotch would be lovely, and maybe something for my head. I have such a terrible headache.

It’s called a hangover, I said. Isn’t there anything else you want to say?

Oh, Suzzie. I’m so sorry for being such an awful mother. There, I said it. Now can we talk about my head?

You’re the one giving me a headache, I said.

I turned around and went into the living room. I dug through my purse until I came up with a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol. I went back in to Mother. I set the Tylenol on the swivel stand.  She sized up the pills and groaned. She turned on her side and began rooting around in the pillowcase. I let her look. When she didn’t find her stash, she sat up and straightened out her pillow. She patted down her blanket.

I’ll just wait until Nikki gets here. She closed her eyes and that was that. I was excused. I stood in the archway and waited for her to say something else. She didn’t. Then I turned off the television, knelt down at the foot of her bed, and turned off the respirator.

Outside the night sky had turned black and bottomless. I sat down at the dining room table and lit another cigarette. I looked over to Mother’s sleep alcove. She had fallen asleep again and was breathing fine without her respirator.

When I moved back to Wichita, I had this romantic idea that the three of us would be best friends. We had survived Douglas, had lived our own lives and all ended up in the same place: Wichita. This should have made us close again. I pictured the three of us playing bridge and going out for girls only lunches at the club. Time heals, I thought. Nikki and I would work out together; I would help her loose weight. Together we would break her addiction to sweat suits. We would sit around and do each other’s nails. We were going to have closure.

I took a drag off my cigarette. Ash dangled off the end and sprinkled the table. I picked up Mother’s stack of Douglas photos, pulled the Polaroid off the top and tapped cigarette ash onto his bare chest. You’re not my daughter. He said that to me once. I was fifteen. He was adjusting my braces. I lined the pictures up on the table in front of me. There he was: Douglas the dentist; Douglas the family man on Christmas with his girls; Douglas the goddamn playboy.  I took the last drag off my cigarette and rubbed it into his bare chest. The plastic blistered and Douglas melted into a swirl of smoke. I ran my thumb over the blackened plastic. I lit up another cigarette and began to singe him away one photograph at a time.

I was burning the Christmas picture when the apartment door slammed open and Nikki walked in.

What’s that awful smell?

Nikki had on a baby blue velour exercise suit that made her look pale. She dropped her beat up black leather purse onto the couch. She walked over to where I was sitting at the dining room table and kissed the top of my head.

Look who made it.

She took the cigarette out of my hand and went into the kitchen. I heard her turn on the faucet. Nikki came back in and picked up one of the Polaroids I had singed.

You are going to be in so much trouble.

With who? I tapped out another cigarette.

She wiped off the ash and shook her head like she was really disappointed in me. She plucked the cigarette from my fingers before I could light it and threw it on the table.

You had no right, she said.

Please.

Nikki coughed out a laugh like I was blind or an idiot. She gathered the pictures from the table and flipped through them. Her hands shook. She threw the whole stack back on the table.

Burn them if that’s going to make you feel better.

Burn one with me.

She held up her hands. Don’t get into this with me now. She started toward the sleep alcove and then stopped. You don’t get it.

Then explain it to me.

Who went away and lived with their daddy?

That’s not fair.

Who’s talking fair? She turned around and walked to the sleep alcove and switched on the respirator. Mother was asleep with the covers pushed down around her waist. Nikki stood in the archway watching her sleep.

I tapped out a cigarette and lit up. I looked at that wall of photographs hanging over mother’s couch. There I was at thirteen, sitting on my bedroom floor in a formal dress, pulling on stockings before my first cotillion. There was Nikki sunbathing by herself in the back yard, smiling uncomfortably at the camera. My eye settled on a picture of Nikki and me sitting with Douglas on the front steps outside the Lynwood house. Douglas sat in-between us. I had passed by this picture a thousand times and never seen it. I was fifteen and it was the summer before I moved in with Daddy. Nikki and I were both tan from swimming at the club. Mother must have taken the picture. One of Douglas’s hands was on my knee, real casual as if it just happened to fall there. He had his arm wrapped around Nikki and she was leaning into him. I took a long drag off my cigarette and then went into the kitchen and put it out in the sink.

I walked to the sleep alcove and stood next to Nikki and watched Mother. Nikki and I didn’t say a word. Not about Douglas. Not about the pictures. Not about Mother and what she tried to do last night. When I put my arm around her, Nikki’s shoulders stiffened and she tried to nudge me away. I held on and pulled her close. Slowly the tension in her body eased. I kept my arm around her and as we stood there watching Mother sleep, Nikki’s weight shifted a little. Then I felt her body leaning into mine. I leaned into her too and we stood like that for a long time. I knew this moment was only temporary. It wasn’t going to erase all the anger. It wasn’t going to fix either one of us or make us whole again. But it was the closest we had been since we were kids and I was okay with that.

I’d like to get her into a clean nightgown before she wakes up, Nikki said. Will you give me a hand?

I opened Mother’s closet and pushed through her old dresses and housecoats and found a pretty nightgown, a pink one Nikki and I got her for her last birthday. I always thought she looked good in pink. Nikki and I rolled the sheets down to the foot of the bed. Once we had her gown off, Nikki rubbed her legs and arms and hands with lotion. When we were finished and pulling the sheet up around her waist, Mother woke up.

Oh, Nikki, she said. And Suzie, too. How lovely.

Nikki kissed Mother on the forehead.

Maybe Suzie will put some pudding on the stove for you. Wouldn’t you like that, Mother?

That would be lovely. Mother smiled.

I left Nikki sitting on the bed with Mother. I grabbed one of the dining room chairs and dragged it into the kitchen where I had put all of Mother’s medications in the cabinet above the refrigerator. I pulled down her Vicodin and Darvon and Demerol. Where did she get all of these prescriptions? I went into the living room and set them on the coffee table. Nikki came in and sat down across from me.

Mother and I decided she’s going to take more pills.

Behind Nikki was that wall of photographs.

They’re all here. I said. I got them all down.

She took the bottles of Darvon and Demerol and went into the kitchen.

I poured Mother a tall scotch, neat, and in a crystal tumbler just the way she liked it. I grabbed Princess Di’s biography off the writing desk. Nikki sat at Mother’s side and I sat in the reading chair by the bed. Mother simply glowed in her pink nightie. Her skin was so beautiful. While Nikki counted out pills, I handed mother her drink and opened up Princess Di’s biography to where we left off the week before.

Open up, Nikki said. Mother opened her mouth and Nikki placed five pills on her tongue. She had more in lap. Suzie is going to read to us while you fall asleep.