The Grown Ups Read online

  When she returned after six months it was not an understatement to say that she was an entirely changed person. Instead of spending the summer before her senior year at home in Bedford with her parents, she took a share in an apartment on Bank Street in Greenwich Village with two girls she had traveled with. She got a job in the library at NYU, where she met Bella’s father, then in his second year of law school.

  By the time she returned to Vassar that September she knew she was going to marry him, which she did, five days after her graduation, in the backyard of her parents’ home, in the center of the heirloom rosebushes her mother so carefully tended and in view of her childhood bedroom window. One hundred guests drank and ate and danced beneath the tents well into the night.

  Bella knew the story of her parents’ wedding so well she felt as if she had been there. She supposed her friends would think it was weird to be envious of the romantic life of her parents. But it was all Bella had. Bella’s mother’s pregnancy with Bella was what had inflamed her illness, and afterward her body never recovered. Bella’s father and her two older brothers had known a different wife and mother. Bella had only her mother’s stories, the diary, and the photographs.

  There were boxes and boxes of photos of her parents, the extras that didn’t fit into the many albums Bella’s mother had carefully curated. There they were in Central Park on a plaid blanket, her father reading a thick law text and her mother reclining next to him smoking a cigarette, her ankles crossed, one hand resting on his knee. In another her father was asleep, the tent of the book open on his chest. And later, that same day, her mother lay curled on the blanket, her head resting in the crook of her arm and her eyes closed. There were pictures of her mother feeding a carrot to a horse in front of the Plaza, of her perched atop a low stone wall, looking away from the camera. Her mother was long and lean, and wore classic clothing that didn’t age. She favored V-neck sweaters and slim skirts, cropped pants and flats, scarves tied around her head or her neck. In some of the pictures she was wearing what looked to be Bella’s father’s dress shirts, knotted at the waist, sleeves rolled to the elbow.

  There were honeymoon pictures from a week in Maine, where her father’s parents once had a house. Bella’s parents standing at the water’s edge with fishing poles, her mother squinting at the camera. On clay courts surrounded by ocean, dressed in tennis whites. In one, her father was bending over a pile of empty crab shells in the center of a table.

  There were too many years of memories: her mother blowing a kiss to the camera, her mother with a fat barn cat on her lap and a faraway look in her eye, her parents at their wedding laughing and linking arms like the joke was on everyone else, her mother in an impossibly slim sleeveless shift dress and a small hat, her father in a dark suit, a small clutch of flowers between them. Then Bella’s mother was hugely pregnant with Bella’s oldest brother. She wore a black turtleneck and pants, and her face was soft and round, her hands resting lightly on her distended belly. She looked surprised that she had been caught by the lens, but happy.

  In recent years her mother had stopped writing in the diary. She no longer kept track of her own doctors’ appointments, let alone Bella’s, and especially not her brothers’ now that they had families of their own. The social engagements, the invitations, the dinner parties, the to-do lists, the shopping lists, and the birthday notations had disappeared. The diary was a record of before, while Bella had been living in the after for almost as long as she had been alive. There were only a handful of years in the beginning of Bella’s life when her mother had tried to keep up the pretense of running the home and their lives, but eventually the entries stopped.

  Bella kept it all tucked between her mattress and box spring. She wasn’t sure if her mother would even care that she had it, but still she said nothing. Sometimes when she came home from school and the house was too still, Bella would make herself a snack and curl up on her bed and pull out the book. She studied the rhythm of her mother’s days, memorized the cooking instructions for a roast beef dinner. Bella assumed her mother had cooked this dinner for her father, since there was a sloppily drawn open-ended heart next to the ingredients list, but she had never asked. Asking felt like an acknowledgment that one day her mother wouldn’t be able to answer.

  In a few weeks Bella would turn eighteen and graduate from high school, and in the fall she would be going to Vassar just like her mother. She knew that had made her happy, that Bella would be attending her own alma mater. It had actually been an easier decision than Bella had led her parents to believe. She liked that she would be a train ride away from home, far enough but not too far. She also liked the proximity to the city, and the English department was regularly visited by an impressive roster of writers, allowing Bella to visualize a sort of utopian college life in which she would spend her days reading great literature and having intellectual conversations.

  But graduation and college really weren’t on her mind. She had become one of those girls who worried what would become of her high school relationship.

  Bella knew that Sam had been a virgin when they first slept together. She had finally grown tired of waiting for him to make the first move, so she surprised herself by reaching for his hand as they walked to the dance. The weight of his hand, the warmth, the way he stroked her palm with his thumb, made her sorry she had waited so long. At the dance they had stood side by side, bumping into each other as they swayed to the music, laughing and talking to their friends. But when he brushed up against her she felt her skin tingle all over.

  In her mind that night, as Sam buried his face in her neck, sighing against her ear, the weight of him pressed against her, there had never been anyone else. All those awkward kisses, the fumbling beneath clothing, the push and pull of what she would or wouldn’t do, no matter the desire, no matter how sweet the boy, had led her here. Sam was someone she had been waiting for her entire life, even if neither of them had known it before that moment.

  Bella made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Her father was in the city for a late meeting with a client and her mother’s evening nurse’s aide would be late due to car trouble or a missed bus, her excuse something Bella couldn’t quite make out when she answered the phone. Bella had a graduation party to go to that night, but she wasn’t in a rush. While the end of high school was bittersweet, there was a sameness to these parties that was mind-numbing. She knew Sam and the other boys would drink too much and act stupid and she and Mindy and Ruthie would leave early, go to the diner, pile into their usual booth in the back, and order way too much food. The boys would stumble in later, smelling like booze, only to fall on the half-eaten plates of greasy leftovers as if they were attending their last meal.

  Bella carried the tray of food into the room, set it down on the table at the end of the bed, and parted the curtains so she could open the windows. Her mother’s room always smelled like cold cream and menthol, the menthol likely from the balm for the bedsores that the aides were constantly wrapping and rewrapping, afraid of infection or worse. The television was on low, turned to the local evening news, a recitation of burglaries, attempted assaults, and accidents. Bella thought she might like to write a poem like that, a roll call of crime headlines taken from the news. She turned back to the bed and glanced at her mother.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” Her mother winced, her eyes large and liquid, magnified behind her thick glasses.

  Bella nodded. She knew, they both knew, that if her mother used the bedpan it would be easier. But she also knew that her mother must have waited until the last possible minute, hoping she wouldn’t have to ask Bella to help her get out of bed. Bella didn’t blame her for holding on to what dignity she had left. She brought the wheelchair close to the bed and pulled back her mother’s blankets, then helped her swing her legs over the side of the bed. Her mother’s legs were atrophied from the disease, red and scaly where the skin was dried. Her calves had shrunk to the size of Bella’s forearm, her toes were perman
ently flexed upward, and her legs spasmed every so often in an uncontrollable bicycling movement. Bella tried to think of anything but what she was about to do as she brought her mother to the bathroom. They avoided eye contact as Bella helped her mother onto the toilet. She left the room, taking the wheelchair with her and pulling the door shut behind her.

  “Are you okay?” she called through the door.

  “Yes,” came her mother’s faint reply as Bella turned and walked a few steps away, attempting to give her more privacy. When she heard the toilet flush she waited a few minutes before she knocked and her mother gave her the go-ahead to open the door.

  Bella wet a washcloth, squirted soap into the folds, and handed it to her mother, who washed her hands. Bella took the cloth and wrung it out under running water before handing it back again so her mother could rinse.

  “Thanks, honey,” her mother said into Bella’s shoulder as she leaned against her and they did the dance again, into the chair, out of the bathroom, and back into bed. Bella tried to fix the blankets and pillows but her mother held up a shaky hand. “It’s fine.”

  By the time Bella remembered their tray of dinner the soup was congealed and the toasted cheese was dry and hard.

  “I’m not very hungry anyway, Bella. Don’t worry.”

  Bella picked up the tray. “It will take just a few minutes, Mom; I’m going to heat up the soup again and make new sandwiches.” She walked past the bed and out of the room before her mother could stop her. If her mother weighed one hundred pounds it was a miracle. They were always trying to get her to drink milkshakes or the little cans of high-protein drinks, but it was hard to tell if any of that was working or if it even mattered. She wasn’t going to get better. Sometimes Bella thought it was crueler to keep her mother like this, this insistence on maintaining the semblance of a life.

  When Bella brought the food back she was surprised to see her mother sitting up against the pillows, her hands folded in her lap, alert and waiting. The television was still on, the news replaced by Jeopardy! “Changed your mind? My cooking skills swayed you, didn’t they, Mommy?”

  Bella was rewarded with a smile as she set the food down on her mother’s tray table. She handed her mother a cloth napkin and then helped her tuck it in at the neck of her robe. Then she slid the bowl closer to her mother and handed her a spoon. “Do you want me to cut your sandwich?”

  “Yes, please.” Her mother picked up her spoon and dipped it into the soup. “Looks good.”

  Bella smiled. “I’m in with those Campbell’s Soup guys, you know.” She crossed her middle finger over her index finger and held it up for her mother to see.

  Her mother brought the spoon to her lips slowly, careful of the slight tremor in her hands. After she swallowed she said, “Cooking is overrated. That brain of yours is what matters.”

  Bella thought of the roast beef recipe in her mother’s handwriting. ”Did Grandma tell you that?”

  “Oh no, my mother thought the ‘wifely arts’ to be very important. How to run a house, care for your husband and children, that sort of thing.” She hesitated. “Not that there is anything entirely wrong in that, Bella. But you, my fabulous girl, you can do so much more, I’m sure of it.”

  “Did that make you mad? What your mother wanted?”

  “Mad?” Her mother cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know. Times were different. Expectations were different. This is going to sound awful to say, but I never gave much thought to any of it.” She paused. “Until I had a daughter.”

  Bella felt shame for dismissing her mother as just her physical body. There was so much she should be talking to her about, and she didn’t. “My mother the feminist,” she half joked, wondering what her mother would have done with her life if she hadn’t been chronically ill.

  “An excellent title for your first book,” her mother laughed. “Tell me, did you get a dress for graduation yet?”

  Bella arranged the slivers of grilled cheese sandwich on the napkin next to the soup. “I have one. It has to be white. I can wear this sundress I bought last summer.”

  “But you should have something new! You only graduate from high school once. Linda or Ellen can take you shopping.”

  Bella shook her head. As much as she liked her sisters-in-law, an outing with them meant their babies came as well, turning the event into a large, messy affair with enormous strollers and crackers and bottles and diaper bags bursting with baby paraphernalia. She’d rather wear what she had than spend a day trailing them around with a bag of animal crackers to keep the kids quiet.

  “I’m sorry, Bella. You know . . .”

  Bella nodded and took a large bite of her sandwich to avoid answering. Her mother was eating mechanically, dipping the long pieces of sandwich into the soup and bringing them shakily to her mouth. There was a crime scene dribble of tomato soup on the cloth Bella had placed on her mother’s chest.

  When they were done eating Bella cleared the dishes and carried them back into the kitchen. She set them in the sink under running water and stared out the windows. The day had been warm but slightly overcast, the clouds swollen and low. But now the sky looked silver in the early-evening light. Bella got a lump in her throat and suddenly she needed her mother to see the sky.

  Bella walked back into her mother’s room. Her face must have betrayed her because her mother looked alarmed. “What is it?” she said in a shaky voice.

  Bella moved to the bed and picked up her mother’s hand. “I want to show you something. Outside.” Bella couldn’t remember a time her mother had been outside for anything other than a doctor’s appointment. There had been an aide once who insisted on what she called the fresh air cure, but she hadn’t been employed long enough for her methods to see results.

  “Bella—”

  “I can lift you into your chair. I just did it. Please?”

  Her mother looked around the room as if someone else would speak on her behalf, talk sense into Bella, and allow her to stay in bed watching television.

  Bella moved the wheelchair close to the bed. She straightened the oval of foam and the lambskin in the seat and she grabbed a blanket, even though the temperature had to still be in the seventies. She looked at her mother. “Trust me.”

  Bella navigated through the house slowly. Theirs was a one-story house, low and modern and open. Her mother peered at the rooms in a detached, polite manner, as if she were visiting a museum.

  At the sliding door to the deck Bella struggled, slightly tipping the wheels over the track and onto the wooden floorboards. But it was only a moment, too short for her mother to protest, before they were out the door. Bella pushed her mother toward the railing and carefully put on the brake. When she looked at her mother her eyes were closed.

  Bella touched her arm. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Her mother opened her eyes slowly and blinked as if she had woken from a sound sleep. “Yes.”

  Bella pulled a chair up next to her mother and sat down. “This is nice, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Are you warm enough? Do you want the blanket?”

  Her mother shook her head. “No, I’m fine, honey.”

  Bella exhaled. From inside the house she heard the phone ring. She ran through the possibilities: the night nurse, again, with another explanation, or Ruthie or Mindy wondering when they were going to Frankie’s, or her father checking in. She waited for the beep of the answering machine and then she heard a click. Her bet was on the night nurse. Her father or Ruthie would have left a message.

  Her mother seemed not to have heard the phone. “You know, when we first moved into this house that line of trees wasn’t there.” She nodded toward the back edge of their property, where a column of towering pines swayed almost imperceptibly. “We planted them ourselves and they couldn’t have been more than five feet back then. Your father thought it would be easier to put in a fence. But I really wanted those trees. I had a vision.” Her mother laughed. “And that was the extent of my
green thumb.”

  Bella jutted her chin out in defense of her mother’s ambition. “I like the trees. They used to be a great hiding place when I was little.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished she could take them back. The more incapacitated Bella’s mother had become, the more a much younger Bella had retaliated by going places her mother could never reach her, testing to see if her mother was really wheelchair bound or if she could get up and walk if she wanted to. Bella recalled not only the shelter of the trees but also the top of the jungle gym and the maple tree, which had been lost to rot years back but where the tire swing had provided a boost up to the branches and beyond.

  Bella’s mother laugh turned to a cough, a cough that quickly turned into an uncontrolled fit. The dry mouth was a symptom of one of the many medications she took, and Bella had forgotten to bring along some of the lozenges her mother sucked on all the time. As her mother’s face turned bright red and her entire body shook with the effort, Bella jumped up and ran inside, returning with a glass of water and a handful of lozenges.

  She tilted the glass at her mother’s mouth so she could get a drink, repeating the action several times until the high color in her mother’s cheeks slowly receded and her cough was only a raspy tickle.

  Bella unwrapped a lozenge and slipped it into her mother’s palm. She watched her pop it into her mouth, then sat back down, unsure of what to do next. Bella knew how to perform the simplest of tasks for her mother, but it scared her to imagine anything worse than a coughing fit if they were alone.

  They sat in silence for a while until her mother said in a weak voice, “It’s Friday night. Don’t you have plans?”