Rose & Thorn Journal - Fall 2010
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Laury A. Egan’s work has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and has been featured twice as story-of-the-week by Short Story America. Her stories have appeared in Tryst, The Battered Suitcase, Conte, Up the Staircase, Paradigm, Broomstick Books, and other journals and will be published in forthcoming anthologies by Static Movement Press, Sephyrus Press, and Rebel Books (UK). Her full-length poetry collection was issued by FootHills Publishing in 2009. Visit her author website.
Laury A. Egan
Beth stood on the threshold of the hospital room and observed Celeste leashed to an IV line, heart monitor, oxygen, and catheter. There was something so vacant about the woman lying there that Beth’s glance was drawn to the more cheerful view through the window of sailboats scatting across a dark blue river, a far bank of emerald trees. For a second, Beth had the urge to escape this bleached room and return to color and sunlight, to regain herself, for hospitals always made her feel marginalized—as a visitor or as a patient—but she resisted the temptation.
When Celeste heard Beth, she turned and regarded her with pale brown eyes that briefly did not register recognition. Then Beth saw an expression of hope form, a subtle change from Celeste’s usual look of expectation. This made Beth feel needed, which, because it was a familiar weakness, provoked a secondary reaction of self-vigilance.
“Ah, there you are,” Celeste said. Her voice was musical, a Euro-blend of accents cultivated from her youth spent in Italy and France.
Beth placed a pile of magazines and newspapers on the side table. “Hi, I brought you some reading material.”
“Thank you.” Celeste tucked a stray wisp of white hair into her French twist, a gesture Beth had seen countless times over the five decades they’d known each other, ever since Beth was eight and Celeste was in her early thirties, and a close friend of Beth’s mother.
Beth negotiated the visitor’s chair through the tangle of tray table and bed legs. “Hospital rooms are always so crowded,” she remarked, as she sat on the orange leather seat and briefly pondered the inanity of her comment.
“Yes,” Celeste said. “Marcus always said the same thing.”
Marcus, who died from pneumonia when Beth was fifteen, was the first of Celeste’s two husbands. Although he had liked Beth, Marcus didn’t want children, which was probably why Celeste never had any. As a result, because Beth and her parents visited often, she became a casual surrogate daughter. After Marcus died, Celeste remarried but lost her second husband ten years later, at which point Beth recognized a change in Celeste’s attitude toward her. She began acting as though she had logged in years of dutiful maternal effort on Beth’s behalf, which she hadn’t. When Celeste needed Beth, Beth was supposed to be there. However when Beth needed Celeste, as she had on several occasions after her mother died, Celeste disappeared. This inequality left Beth feeling ambivalent toward Celeste and, though she was ashamed to admit it, somewhat resentful.
Aware that she had been silent, Beth covered by recounting a humorous story about Marcus, knowing that Celeste always liked to reminisce about him. Then, unsure what else to say, Beth observed that Celeste hadn’t eaten much breakfast.
Celeste waved a dismissive hand at the tray. “I asked for a soft-boiled egg. It came hard-boiled.”
“Well, this is a hospital,” Beth replied, amused. “It may have been soft-boiled when it left the kitchen an hour ago.”
Celeste shrugged, indicating she would treat the irritation with forbearance.
In the last few weeks, Beth had watched Celeste’s slenderness change into gauntness. Celeste had always held the philosophy that one should never eat more than was seemly, unless the cuisine was exquisite, in which case modest overindulgence was permitted because it was participation in an art form. Now, after a series of falls blamed on slippers or unruly rugs, ultimately leading to two hospital stays—this one for a broken leg, weakness, and abnormal blood work—her disinterest in food was worrisome.
“You must eat,” Beth said, as she observed how Celeste’s gold watch hung on her wrist.
“I do!” Celeste said, but then she negated this with a sigh.
Beth let it go because she was in tricky territory. She herself had never been thin, and now that Celeste was so emaciated, it felt as though every extra pound was a personal failure.
“How is the pain?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, about the same.”
“Was the doctor in this morning?”
“Yes.” Celeste paused to remember. “Both the internist and the orthopedic surgeon—what’s his name?”
“Conroy,” Beth reminded her, not for the first time. “And what did they say about why your white blood cell count is so low? And what kind of surgery you’ll have?” Beth had carefully coached Celeste the day before on what to ask.
“I forgot.”
This forgetfulness struck Beth like a tiny slap. “Forgot what they said or forgot to ask?” She realized this sounded like a mild rebuke—which perhaps it was. However, she held Celeste’s health care directive and was worried that should Celeste be unable to make a decision in an emergency, she herself would be required to determine an intelligent course of action.
“I didn’t ask,” Celeste replied, as if it didn’t matter.
“I see.” Beth knew she was personalizing her reaction, that Celeste most likely had simply forgotten. It was Celeste’s habit to think of herself as indestructible, able to live now and in the indeterminate future as effortlessly as she had in the past. Her blithe and privileged attitude was not shared by Beth, either about Celeste’s prognosis or her own, yet it was this detachment that allowed Celeste to sail serenely through life despite the loss of two husbands. Being raised into an aristocratic family and marrying well, thus accruing considerable wealth, had also eased her way.
“Am I having surgery tomorrow?” Celeste suddenly wondered.
“I assume so.”
“And how long after that will they keep me in the hospital?”
The very questions Beth had prompted her to ask the doctors.
“Why don’t I go and speak to the nurse?” Beth suggested, hoping for cooperation from the staff but knowing the nurses kept patient information tight to their chests, as if the physician’s notes and tests were state secrets. Additionally, they seemed biased against her because she wasn’t Celeste’s daughter or a family member despite the authority granted by the legal papers Beth had provided at Celeste’s admission and the explanation that Celeste had no immediate family.
Standing by a cart, exhibiting only the thinnest patience, the nurse explained that Celeste was scheduled for surgery at 11:00 a.m. to have screws inserted in the upper femur. The woman flashed a page of blood work results before Beth could don her glasses, saying the WBC, RBC, and electrolytes were still abnormal, then brusquely shut the notebook and hurried away to deal with a phone call.
Armed with more information than Celeste possessed or had remembered, Beth returned, took her chair, and reported the news, feeling as if she had adequately fulfilled her mission but not as well as she would have liked. She always preferred to have as much medical knowledge as possible, doing research on every test result, symptom, and treatment. This behavior had begun after her car accident when multiple orthopedic surgeries had been necessary. Because she was familiar with procedure, Beth explained to Celeste that the anesthesiologist would see her later today or in the morning and that most likely he would administer a spinal epidural block, although general anesthesia was possible. “I’ll be here before your surgery,” she said. “About 9:30.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Celeste replied. “You’re so busy.”
Beth knew this response was pro forma, a social nicety to disguise the fact that Celeste assumed she would be there, as she always was, no matter the inconvenience. And tomorrow was inconvenient.
“You need someone here during surgery,” Beth explained. “It’s no problem.”
At this point, an assistant nurse arrived to check blood pressure and temperature.
“How has your blood pressure been?” Beth asked Celeste, who was offering an arm covered in florid purple and blue bruises.
“Oh, normal,” Celeste replied.
But it wasn’t, nor had it been. One more indication that Celeste was existing in her favorite mode: denial.
“It’s 172 over 92,” said the nurse in response to Beth’s question.
Beth looked at Celeste and saw that this did not etch much of an impression. Concerned that perhaps Celeste was migrating into early stages of dementia, Beth hastened to ask about several of Celeste’s friends who were suffering from various ailments, traveling, or dealing with husbands whose health was failing. Celeste nattered on about each, fully cognizant of up-to-date details provided by phone or visit in the last few days. Beth nixed the possibility of dementia.
As she sat there listening, Beth’s thoughts drifted back nine years to when her mother, Roberta, lay in a hospital bed on this same floor before returning home to begin hospice care. At the time, Beth had displaced her anxiety by concentrating on clinical minutiae to avoid harsher truths about infirmity and death. Beth didn’t like this tendency in herself, though when her mother was dying, she could only manage by being diligent and constant, the same coping mechanisms she used for all the upheavals she’d faced: miscarriage, two difficult divorces, death scare from cancer, and chronic orthopedic problems after the accident. Now, with Celeste, Beth saw that she was falling back into the same behavior.
Celeste finished talking about her friends and was silent, then slowly slipped off to sleep. Beth observed how angular her cheekbones had become, how pale and thin her lips. These changes reminded Beth of the transformations to her mother’s face during the months before she died, the way her grandmother’s face had emerged as the flesh and muscle wasted away. Instead of Celeste, Beth now envisioned her mother lying on a hospital bed, the one hospice installed in her bedroom. She imagined sunlight casting leafy shadows from the philodendrons and ferns hanging from window baskets, the rattle of the old radiators and the scrape of holly branches outside, the faint smell of fireplace ash.
Her mother had been petite, still quite beautiful despite inoperable cancer, her blue eyes alert but unseeing all she wished to avoid—a trait she shared with her friend, Celeste. Beth closed her own blue eyes and visualized the scene that should have happened but hadn’t. It would be morning, as it was now, the breakfast dishes washed, the two of them alone. Perhaps she was sitting on the floral comforter beside her mother, handing her pills.
She might have opened with a metaphysical question. “Mother, what do you think happens when we die?”
Her mother would have answered vaguely, saying she hadn’t a clue, or tartly, depending on her mood. Her family had always given religion a wide berth.
Perhaps she would follow with something more difficult: “Are you frightened?” But it was inconceivable she could utter those words aloud much less that her mother would answer.
Safer ground might be: “What do you wish you’d done that you haven’t? Where did you want to travel that you never had the chance? What are your regrets?”
Her mother would have latched onto the travel question and also, perhaps, mentioned a few things she had never done. Admitting regret? Not likely.
“What have you learned that you can tell me?”
For years, in typical daughter-mother fashion, Beth had turned deaf ears to maternal offers of wisdom until finally they had stopped when she would have been receptive, and her mother would have had something of value to impart. As Beth neared sixty, alone, she missed her mother terribly but also grieved that she knew little of her mother’s experience, which might have helped her to understand her own. She also knew little of how her mother felt about her. Beth had never asked, “Do you love me?”
Realizing this, Beth’s throat closed. Neither of her parents had ever said “I love you” to her nor could she recall them saying it to each other. Indoctrinated in their reserve, she had never said “I love you” to either of them. Well, not exactly true. She had mumbled it first to her mother, then five years later to her father, when they were both dying, in comas, probably past consciousness. Like a significant fact buried in an end note no one will find, she had appended it to their last moments of life. Had this been the worst cowardice she’d ever shown? Very possibly. Did they die not knowing how she felt about them or had her actions communicated the unspoken words?
Beth glanced at Celeste as she slept. Instead of Celeste or her mother, she imagined herself, age 84, lying in a hospital bed with only a short while to live. Would she be alone then as she was now? Without family, children, or dependable and trustworthy friends? This thought filled her with unspeakable dread. She couldn’t think of anyone to hold her health care directive or to help if she became incapacitated, much less someone to support her emotionally. Certainly, if the tables were turned and Celeste were 58 and Beth were 84, Beth had little confidence Celeste would be there for her. The times when Beth had faced scheduled surgeries, Celeste usually decamped to foreign shores or had been mostly unavailable, such as she had been during the last months of her mother’s life when Celeste visited her mother at home only twice that Beth could remember. Celeste hadn’t offered to bring dinner, to assist in any way, but if the tables had been turned, Beth was sure her mother would have stepped in, much as she was doing. Beth had noticed Celeste’s behavior then, but because she was so frantically busy, hadn’t fully scrutinized her absence. Now, she saw it in a different light, as cold and selfish behavior, though it could have stemmed from fear of her friend’s impending death or the anxiety many people exhibit in its presence, as if death might be contagious. The bottom line, however, was that Celeste’s actions were hard to forgive.
Beth felt resentment simmering again, yet she also had to acknowledge she was upset with herself. Was she angry because Celeste had her to help, having done so little, and she had no one, having done so much? If so, she needed to let go of these toxic feelings. Her solo status was not Celeste’s fault. Celeste hadn’t forced her to work long hours at her marketing business or to make poor choices in husbands. Beth also considered that whatever relationship Celeste and her mother had tacitly agreed to, emphasizing only the positive, the celebratory—parties, birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries—all of which Celeste had dutifully been present for—and ignoring illness, death, and other losses—then the imperfections in this contract were between her mother and Celeste. Having suffered the consequences of these emotional inhibitions, Beth knew continuing this maladaptive behavior wasn’t wise.
As Beth reached for the newspaper, Celeste awoke and brightened when she saw her. “You’re still here. That’s nice.”
Beth smiled, realizing she meant it.
“I was just dreaming of my mother,” Celeste said.
Beth was amazed that they both had been thinking about their mothers. “You’d probably like to have her here.”
Celeste nodded.
Beth pictured the fiery Sofia and laughed. “She’d have this place running right in no time.” Sofia had been a dominating woman, used to servants, and although she was kind and fair, she also expected them to work hard.
“Yes, she would,” Celeste agreed, amused at the thought.
“There aren’t many people left who knew your parents,” Beth said.
“No, not many.” Celeste studied her with interest. “Not many left who knew your mother, either.”
This was true and spoke to the long connection with Celeste, the history that she shared with no one else. Beth realized this was precious to her, as it probably was for Celeste.
“I wish my mother had lived longer,” Beth said, half to herself.
“I wish she had, too. She was a wonderful friend. You know every Christmas I go to the cemetery and place pink carnations on her grave. They were her favorite flower—she told me that once.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
Celeste smiled. “Oh, yes. And do you remember her magnificent garden with all the colors? White phlox, blue delphiniums, purple lobelias, and pink snapdragons.” She thought for a moment. “Pink and white petunias in the flower boxes. And hydrangeas—she always had great luck with them.”
Listening, Beth vividly recalled her mother watering the plants, weeding, dead-heading, and bringing bouquets indoors for the living room.
Celeste sat up higher in bed. The memories seemed to invigorate her. “You were so little then,” she said. “Such a beautiful child.”
This surprised Beth. She never thought of herself as beautiful, either as a child or as an adult. She felt a small glow of pleasure. “We’ve known each other for so long,” she replied, realizing this response didn’t adequately convey her feelings.
“Yes, we have.”
Celeste held Beth’s gaze, as if she wanted to memorize her face or perhaps she was seeing some trace of her friend, Roberta, in Beth’s expression.
Just then, an orderly arrived to transport Celeste to the radiology department for a chest X-ray. Beth felt sad to end their conversation. Thinking back to her regrets concerning her parents, she stood and leaned over Celeste, giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Take care,” she said, “and don’t worry…I’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
The Caregiver
Beth stood on the threshold of the hospital room and observed Celeste leashed to an IV line, heart monitor, oxygen, and catheter. There was something so vacant about the woman lying there that Beth’s glance was drawn to the more cheerful view through the window of sailboats scatting across a dark blue river, a far bank of emerald trees. For a second, Beth had the urge to escape this bleached room and return to color and sunlight, to regain herself, for hospitals always made her feel marginalized—as a visitor or as a patient—but she resisted the temptation.
When Celeste heard Beth, she turned and regarded her with pale brown eyes that briefly did not register recognition. Then Beth saw an expression of hope form, a subtle change from Celeste’s usual look of expectation. This made Beth feel needed, which, because it was a familiar weakness, provoked a secondary reaction of self-vigilance.
“Ah, there you are,” Celeste said. Her voice was musical, a Euro-blend of accents cultivated from her youth spent in Italy and France.
Beth placed a pile of magazines and newspapers on the side table. “Hi, I brought you some reading material.”
“Thank you.” Celeste tucked a stray wisp of white hair into her French twist, a gesture Beth had seen countless times over the five decades they’d known each other, ever since Beth was eight and Celeste was in her early thirties, and a close friend of Beth’s mother.
Beth negotiated the visitor’s chair through the tangle of tray table and bed legs. “Hospital rooms are always so crowded,” she remarked, as she sat on the orange leather seat and briefly pondered the inanity of her comment.
“Yes,” Celeste said. “Marcus always said the same thing.”
Marcus, who died from pneumonia when Beth was fifteen, was the first of Celeste’s two husbands. Although he had liked Beth, Marcus didn’t want children, which was probably why Celeste never had any. As a result, because Beth and her parents visited often, she became a casual surrogate daughter. After Marcus died, Celeste remarried but lost her second husband ten years later, at which point Beth recognized a change in Celeste’s attitude toward her. She began acting as though she had logged in years of dutiful maternal effort on Beth’s behalf, which she hadn’t. When Celeste needed Beth, Beth was supposed to be there. However when Beth needed Celeste, as she had on several occasions after her mother died, Celeste disappeared. This inequality left Beth feeling ambivalent toward Celeste and, though she was ashamed to admit it, somewhat resentful.
Aware that she had been silent, Beth covered by recounting a humorous story about Marcus, knowing that Celeste always liked to reminisce about him. Then, unsure what else to say, Beth observed that Celeste hadn’t eaten much breakfast.
Celeste waved a dismissive hand at the tray. “I asked for a soft-boiled egg. It came hard-boiled.”
“Well, this is a hospital,” Beth replied, amused. “It may have been soft-boiled when it left the kitchen an hour ago.”
Celeste shrugged, indicating she would treat the irritation with forbearance.
In the last few weeks, Beth had watched Celeste’s slenderness change into gauntness. Celeste had always held the philosophy that one should never eat more than was seemly, unless the cuisine was exquisite, in which case modest overindulgence was permitted because it was participation in an art form. Now, after a series of falls blamed on slippers or unruly rugs, ultimately leading to two hospital stays—this one for a broken leg, weakness, and abnormal blood work—her disinterest in food was worrisome.
“You must eat,” Beth said, as she observed how Celeste’s gold watch hung on her wrist.
“I do!” Celeste said, but then she negated this with a sigh.
Beth let it go because she was in tricky territory. She herself had never been thin, and now that Celeste was so emaciated, it felt as though every extra pound was a personal failure.
“How is the pain?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, about the same.”
“Was the doctor in this morning?”
“Yes.” Celeste paused to remember. “Both the internist and the orthopedic surgeon—what’s his name?”
“Conroy,” Beth reminded her, not for the first time. “And what did they say about why your white blood cell count is so low? And what kind of surgery you’ll have?” Beth had carefully coached Celeste the day before on what to ask.
“I forgot.”
This forgetfulness struck Beth like a tiny slap. “Forgot what they said or forgot to ask?” She realized this sounded like a mild rebuke—which perhaps it was. However, she held Celeste’s health care directive and was worried that should Celeste be unable to make a decision in an emergency, she herself would be required to determine an intelligent course of action.
“I didn’t ask,” Celeste replied, as if it didn’t matter.
“I see.” Beth knew she was personalizing her reaction, that Celeste most likely had simply forgotten. It was Celeste’s habit to think of herself as indestructible, able to live now and in the indeterminate future as effortlessly as she had in the past. Her blithe and privileged attitude was not shared by Beth, either about Celeste’s prognosis or her own, yet it was this detachment that allowed Celeste to sail serenely through life despite the loss of two husbands. Being raised into an aristocratic family and marrying well, thus accruing considerable wealth, had also eased her way.
“Am I having surgery tomorrow?” Celeste suddenly wondered.
“I assume so.”
“And how long after that will they keep me in the hospital?”
The very questions Beth had prompted her to ask the doctors.
“Why don’t I go and speak to the nurse?” Beth suggested, hoping for cooperation from the staff but knowing the nurses kept patient information tight to their chests, as if the physician’s notes and tests were state secrets. Additionally, they seemed biased against her because she wasn’t Celeste’s daughter or a family member despite the authority granted by the legal papers Beth had provided at Celeste’s admission and the explanation that Celeste had no immediate family.
Standing by a cart, exhibiting only the thinnest patience, the nurse explained that Celeste was scheduled for surgery at 11:00 a.m. to have screws inserted in the upper femur. The woman flashed a page of blood work results before Beth could don her glasses, saying the WBC, RBC, and electrolytes were still abnormal, then brusquely shut the notebook and hurried away to deal with a phone call.
Armed with more information than Celeste possessed or had remembered, Beth returned, took her chair, and reported the news, feeling as if she had adequately fulfilled her mission but not as well as she would have liked. She always preferred to have as much medical knowledge as possible, doing research on every test result, symptom, and treatment. This behavior had begun after her car accident when multiple orthopedic surgeries had been necessary. Because she was familiar with procedure, Beth explained to Celeste that the anesthesiologist would see her later today or in the morning and that most likely he would administer a spinal epidural block, although general anesthesia was possible. “I’ll be here before your surgery,” she said. “About 9:30.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Celeste replied. “You’re so busy.”
Beth knew this response was pro forma, a social nicety to disguise the fact that Celeste assumed she would be there, as she always was, no matter the inconvenience. And tomorrow was inconvenient.
“You need someone here during surgery,” Beth explained. “It’s no problem.”
At this point, an assistant nurse arrived to check blood pressure and temperature.
“How has your blood pressure been?” Beth asked Celeste, who was offering an arm covered in florid purple and blue bruises.
“Oh, normal,” Celeste replied.
But it wasn’t, nor had it been. One more indication that Celeste was existing in her favorite mode: denial.
“It’s 172 over 92,” said the nurse in response to Beth’s question.
Beth looked at Celeste and saw that this did not etch much of an impression. Concerned that perhaps Celeste was migrating into early stages of dementia, Beth hastened to ask about several of Celeste’s friends who were suffering from various ailments, traveling, or dealing with husbands whose health was failing. Celeste nattered on about each, fully cognizant of up-to-date details provided by phone or visit in the last few days. Beth nixed the possibility of dementia.
As she sat there listening, Beth’s thoughts drifted back nine years to when her mother, Roberta, lay in a hospital bed on this same floor before returning home to begin hospice care. At the time, Beth had displaced her anxiety by concentrating on clinical minutiae to avoid harsher truths about infirmity and death. Beth didn’t like this tendency in herself, though when her mother was dying, she could only manage by being diligent and constant, the same coping mechanisms she used for all the upheavals she’d faced: miscarriage, two difficult divorces, death scare from cancer, and chronic orthopedic problems after the accident. Now, with Celeste, Beth saw that she was falling back into the same behavior.
Celeste finished talking about her friends and was silent, then slowly slipped off to sleep. Beth observed how angular her cheekbones had become, how pale and thin her lips. These changes reminded Beth of the transformations to her mother’s face during the months before she died, the way her grandmother’s face had emerged as the flesh and muscle wasted away. Instead of Celeste, Beth now envisioned her mother lying on a hospital bed, the one hospice installed in her bedroom. She imagined sunlight casting leafy shadows from the philodendrons and ferns hanging from window baskets, the rattle of the old radiators and the scrape of holly branches outside, the faint smell of fireplace ash.
Her mother had been petite, still quite beautiful despite inoperable cancer, her blue eyes alert but unseeing all she wished to avoid—a trait she shared with her friend, Celeste. Beth closed her own blue eyes and visualized the scene that should have happened but hadn’t. It would be morning, as it was now, the breakfast dishes washed, the two of them alone. Perhaps she was sitting on the floral comforter beside her mother, handing her pills.
She might have opened with a metaphysical question. “Mother, what do you think happens when we die?”
Her mother would have answered vaguely, saying she hadn’t a clue, or tartly, depending on her mood. Her family had always given religion a wide berth.
Perhaps she would follow with something more difficult: “Are you frightened?” But it was inconceivable she could utter those words aloud much less that her mother would answer.
Safer ground might be: “What do you wish you’d done that you haven’t? Where did you want to travel that you never had the chance? What are your regrets?”
Her mother would have latched onto the travel question and also, perhaps, mentioned a few things she had never done. Admitting regret? Not likely.
“What have you learned that you can tell me?”
For years, in typical daughter-mother fashion, Beth had turned deaf ears to maternal offers of wisdom until finally they had stopped when she would have been receptive, and her mother would have had something of value to impart. As Beth neared sixty, alone, she missed her mother terribly but also grieved that she knew little of her mother’s experience, which might have helped her to understand her own. She also knew little of how her mother felt about her. Beth had never asked, “Do you love me?”
Realizing this, Beth’s throat closed. Neither of her parents had ever said “I love you” to her nor could she recall them saying it to each other. Indoctrinated in their reserve, she had never said “I love you” to either of them. Well, not exactly true. She had mumbled it first to her mother, then five years later to her father, when they were both dying, in comas, probably past consciousness. Like a significant fact buried in an end note no one will find, she had appended it to their last moments of life. Had this been the worst cowardice she’d ever shown? Very possibly. Did they die not knowing how she felt about them or had her actions communicated the unspoken words?
Beth glanced at Celeste as she slept. Instead of Celeste or her mother, she imagined herself, age 84, lying in a hospital bed with only a short while to live. Would she be alone then as she was now? Without family, children, or dependable and trustworthy friends? This thought filled her with unspeakable dread. She couldn’t think of anyone to hold her health care directive or to help if she became incapacitated, much less someone to support her emotionally. Certainly, if the tables were turned and Celeste were 58 and Beth were 84, Beth had little confidence Celeste would be there for her. The times when Beth had faced scheduled surgeries, Celeste usually decamped to foreign shores or had been mostly unavailable, such as she had been during the last months of her mother’s life when Celeste visited her mother at home only twice that Beth could remember. Celeste hadn’t offered to bring dinner, to assist in any way, but if the tables had been turned, Beth was sure her mother would have stepped in, much as she was doing. Beth had noticed Celeste’s behavior then, but because she was so frantically busy, hadn’t fully scrutinized her absence. Now, she saw it in a different light, as cold and selfish behavior, though it could have stemmed from fear of her friend’s impending death or the anxiety many people exhibit in its presence, as if death might be contagious. The bottom line, however, was that Celeste’s actions were hard to forgive.
Beth felt resentment simmering again, yet she also had to acknowledge she was upset with herself. Was she angry because Celeste had her to help, having done so little, and she had no one, having done so much? If so, she needed to let go of these toxic feelings. Her solo status was not Celeste’s fault. Celeste hadn’t forced her to work long hours at her marketing business or to make poor choices in husbands. Beth also considered that whatever relationship Celeste and her mother had tacitly agreed to, emphasizing only the positive, the celebratory—parties, birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries—all of which Celeste had dutifully been present for—and ignoring illness, death, and other losses—then the imperfections in this contract were between her mother and Celeste. Having suffered the consequences of these emotional inhibitions, Beth knew continuing this maladaptive behavior wasn’t wise.
As Beth reached for the newspaper, Celeste awoke and brightened when she saw her. “You’re still here. That’s nice.”
Beth smiled, realizing she meant it.
“I was just dreaming of my mother,” Celeste said.
Beth was amazed that they both had been thinking about their mothers. “You’d probably like to have her here.”
Celeste nodded.
Beth pictured the fiery Sofia and laughed. “She’d have this place running right in no time.” Sofia had been a dominating woman, used to servants, and although she was kind and fair, she also expected them to work hard.
“Yes, she would,” Celeste agreed, amused at the thought.
“There aren’t many people left who knew your parents,” Beth said.
“No, not many.” Celeste studied her with interest. “Not many left who knew your mother, either.”
This was true and spoke to the long connection with Celeste, the history that she shared with no one else. Beth realized this was precious to her, as it probably was for Celeste.
“I wish my mother had lived longer,” Beth said, half to herself.
“I wish she had, too. She was a wonderful friend. You know every Christmas I go to the cemetery and place pink carnations on her grave. They were her favorite flower—she told me that once.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
Celeste smiled. “Oh, yes. And do you remember her magnificent garden with all the colors? White phlox, blue delphiniums, purple lobelias, and pink snapdragons.” She thought for a moment. “Pink and white petunias in the flower boxes. And hydrangeas—she always had great luck with them.”
Listening, Beth vividly recalled her mother watering the plants, weeding, dead-heading, and bringing bouquets indoors for the living room.
Celeste sat up higher in bed. The memories seemed to invigorate her. “You were so little then,” she said. “Such a beautiful child.”
This surprised Beth. She never thought of herself as beautiful, either as a child or as an adult. She felt a small glow of pleasure. “We’ve known each other for so long,” she replied, realizing this response didn’t adequately convey her feelings.
“Yes, we have.”
Celeste held Beth’s gaze, as if she wanted to memorize her face or perhaps she was seeing some trace of her friend, Roberta, in Beth’s expression.
Just then, an orderly arrived to transport Celeste to the radiology department for a chest X-ray. Beth felt sad to end their conversation. Thinking back to her regrets concerning her parents, she stood and leaned over Celeste, giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Take care,” she said, “and don’t worry…I’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
