7/22/04
Thursday
After dinner and his customary red clover tea (to ward off cancer), he had told her how much he'd enjoyed his meal, so it couldn't have happened because of the food. During the night, which was hot and airless, they both tossed uneasily in bed. She was troubled by his odd behavior. He kept moving his arm up and down in a strangely uncharacteristic way and wanted, after several hours, to go sit in his big chair so he could breathe more easily. Then while she looked on, he began to choke on the fluid that pooled upward in his lungs. After several tortuous hours had passed she apologetically phoned the neighbors; they urged her to call an ambulance immediately.
It all feels like a bad novel, but there are all these weird elements to the story, and it seems surreal, as if we're unwitting players in someone else's bizarre dream. The three generations of dysfunctional mothers, and the tensions between us as we try to sort out our individual dramas. The chaos. And the moths.
My mother certainly brings out the worst in me--pettiness, irritation, guilt, and cold insensitivity. She avoids everything, above all, responsibility (and by extension, blame). I can't seem to bring myself to maintain eye contact with her.
Mémé has been quite upset with all this change to her routine. She is mulishly resistant to the idea of coming home with us. It's been a real point of contention between her and my mother, and understandably so, since we don't want to leave her here alone, 300 miles away up the California coast, when we take Papa with us. She is oddly avoidant of acknowledging anything that's going on here and has refused any part of Papa's care. She won't let us move the livingroom furniture to accommodate his hospital bed ("I don't like the sofa under the window"), and she insists that we keep his teeth-cleaning stuff in her bathroom, where we must ask her to go get it for us each time we want to use it, since her bedroom is off limits. Our trying to cut up a cantaloupe for breakfast this morning upset her, so we let her fix breakfast for us. She'll be serving the cantaloupe as an hors d'oeuvre at lunchtime, which will be a company affair complete with multiple courses and the good china.
Food has been a running theme in Mémé's stories since we've been here. Food and shit, oddly enough. And trips back and forth, by water and air, between old and new, then and now. Food in the hospital in New York. On the boat (my father told the ship's captain it was much better than what he was served at home). On the plane (Francine curled her lip when describing it as "infecte"). The time when Lily opened a can of tuna and plopped it in the middle of the table for her surprised guests. The time when Céline forced Mémé to drink coffee and it kept her up all night. Low fat diet for the heart. Butter and privilege. Clogged arteries. Sluggish toilet. A mirthful (on her part) and embarrassing (on mine) recounting of my grossly audible attack of traveler's diarrhea when we were at Alain's house for dinner. Shitting in solidarity with her best friend Suzanne on a mutual enemy's doorstep. Even Court got in on the surreality. When I spoke with him on the phone last night, he told me he'd been to a place called Chickendale's for dinner. La soupe. Les nourritures. Déssert. Le thé.
All these weird things.
Some moths took up residency in Mémé's cupboards, which were jammed with a pharmacopeia of healing teas and herbal remedies of every type and variety. The night before my dad went home, he jumped and flailed and chased the moths fecklessly around the kitchen. The next morning I ferreted them out, ruthlessly and systematically destroying their nesting places until finally there seem to be no more moths to kill. Maybe some larvae will still hatch from eggs I missed. Maybe Papa will get better, despite the the bare shelves in the now empty cupboard.
I see Mémé now, older and closer to the end than I had ever imagined. Papa struck us both as so thin, so frail, when he had once been so strong.
And yet, he still is strong, is Papa under the layers of his illness... unable at present to open his eyes and assure us in that way. But incongruously, when he gathers his energy to speak, he does it with the same vitality and upbeat tone of voice that we recognize and love.
Love is an odd, unmentionable thing in our family.
