Good Family by Terry Gamble Read Free Book Online

bridge? Martinis at lunch?
    I then added what I already believed to be true: that my mother simply lacked interest.
    That’s very sad, Dr. Anke had said.
    “It’s very sad,” one of the women from hospice says in response to Dana. “But death is a natural part of life. Without death, life would have no meaning.”
    I want to dispute her on this point. What about work? The meaning of friends? But her statement carries the finality of one of my mother’s needlepoint sayings.
    “It’s all about contrasts,” the other woman says. “Letting go. It’s quite beautiful, really.”
    Let go and let Betty.
    Dana says, “So you think you can help her?”
    “Normally, we work with people who are terminally ill with cancer. But in this case…because she is terminal, according to Dr. Mead…we can help you cope. At least, we can tell you what to expect.”
    One of the women begins to hand out brochures. These, she tells us, will explain the process of dying. An infection may occur, taxing the lungs. Or, in the case of a stroke, brain capacity shuts down, compromising organs. “The body dies slowly,” she says.
    I want to tell her she is wrong. The body can die in an instant, that it can be breathing one second in the nursery upstairs, the fontanel pulsing with life, and in the next moment, cease to breathe. Simply stop.
    “Ultimately,” the hospice woman goes on, apparently having read my mind, “the breathing simply stops.”
    I look at the woman sharply. She is older than I, maybe fifty. Her hair is gray, while her friend has dyed hers assertively red. The gray-haired one keeps putting on her reading glasses as she cites passages in the brochure, then taking off her glasses and staring at Dana and me. She earnestly wants us to get it. She is an interpreter of death. Like my father’s secretary, when I turned twenty-one, laying before me spreadsheets and columns, interpreting the numbers of what my grandmother had left me, making sure I understood. It meant nothing to me at the time. A number, fixed in ink, nothing plastic that could be reshaped or adapted. A sentence, not a choice.
    “So,” I say. “How long?”
    The two women exchange glances. I have the feeling my question is predictable, unenlightened. And like Dr. Mead, they look at me a little regretfully. If they pat my hand, I’ll scream. But they do not touch me. Instead, they say it will happen in time—in the body’s time, in Evelyn’s time. We will see the changes, though. The subtle blue in the extremities, the irregular breaths, the fixed stare. Things will become very focused. Our world will become small.
    Don’t tell me about small, I think. Don’t tell me about death. I’ve been there, ladies, and I’m not thrilled to go again. I ignored the baby monitor,and Sadie stopped breathing—and now you’re asking me to sit and wait and gauge my mother’s breaths as she creeps out of life on her own damn time?
    “Well, then,” says Dana. “We’ll just have to keep her comfortable.”
    Leaving their brochures spread all over the coffee table, the two women ask to look in on Mrs. Addison.
    “Certainly,” says Dana, rising.
    “Go ahead,” I say. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
    After they leave, I pick up a pamphlet, but I can’t concentrate. I want to believe my unspoken declaration to Miriam that I’m not of this place, but the letters in my grandmother’s hand say otherwise. Her letters from the time the house was completed in 1887 up until 1890, the year of Elizabeth’s death, are demure examples of Victorian optimism. They never speak of money. They never mention my great-grandfather’s surreptitious drinking. They are sunny letters that begin with cozy and familiar wording such as Let me tell you about the house.
    But in the summer of 1890, after Elizabeth’s death, the tone of her correspondence changes. Curling up in a wicker chair, I read the letter she wrote to her father, the one-eyed Presbyterian:
    Weeks have passed, and