Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [71]
“Saul?” I said.
His eyes came to rest on me.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m eternally visiting deathbeds,” he said. “Even more than other preachers.”
“You do seem to go to a lot,” I said.
“Maybe it’s because I’m so poor at them.”
“You are?”
“I don’t know what to say at them. And I don’t like dying people.”
“Never mind,” I told him.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I believe we’re given the same lessons to learn, over and over, exactly the same experiences, till we get them right. Things keep circling past us.”
I thought of a merry-go-round, little dappled horses. To me, it seemed soothing. But Saul clamped his Bible shut and leaned toward me, looking into my eyes. “Till we get it straight,” he said. “Forgive, or settle up, or make the proper choice. Whatever we failed to do the first time.”
“Well, maybe so,” I said.
“I keep telling myself that.”
“I see.”
He made me uneasy, a little. Maybe he sensed it, because he relaxed suddenly and sat back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “that’s what I wanted to say to you.”
“I see,” I said again.
“Will you come home with me, Charlotte?”
“I can’t.”
“You know she won’t wake up. You heard what Dr. Porter said.”
“Saul, I just can’t,” I said. “You go.”
And he did, after a minute. The rustle he made while getting himself together was an irritation. I waited, keeping my face turned aside, wondering why he paused so long at the door. But finally he was gone.
Then I had my mother to myself. For I couldn’t let loose of her yet. She was like some unsolvable math problem you keep straining at, worrying the edges of, chafing and cursing. She had used me up, worn me out, and now was dying without answering any really important questions or telling me a single truth that mattered. A mound on the bed, opaque, intact. I was furious.
Around midnight, she said, “There is too great a weight on my feet.”
I bent forward to look at her. In the bluish glow of the nightlight I could make out her small, dazed eyes. I said, “Mama?”
“What is this on my feet?” she asked. Her voice was parched and broken. “And my arms, they’re all strung up to something. What’s happened?”
“You’re in the hospital,” I told her.
“Take that blanket or whatever off my feet, please, Charlotte.”
“Mama, are you all the way awake?”
“My feet.”
I stood up and searched my skirt pockets, my blouse pocket, and nearly panicked, till I remembered my cardigan. “Mama,” I said, “look.” I turned on the reading lamp at the head of her bed. She flinched and closed her eyes. I held the photograph in front of her face. “Look, Mama.”
“But the light.”
“It’s important,” I told her. “Who is this a picture of?” She rolled her head back and forth, protesting, but opened her eyes a slit. Then closed them. “Oh, me,” she said. “Who is it, Mama?”
“Me, I said. Me as a child.”
I took the picture away and stared at it. “Are you sure?” I asked.
She nodded, uninterested.
“But … I thought it would be your true daughter. The one they mixed up in the hospital.”
“Hospital?” she said. She opened her eyes again and let them travel in a slow, frowning arc across the shadowy ceiling. “I never gave my permission to be brought to any hospital.”
“The one you had a baby in, Mama. Remember you had a baby?”
“A surprise,” my mother said.
“That’s right.”
“Like a present. A doll in a box.”
“Well …”
“I can’t imagine how it happened, we hardly ever did much.”
“Never mind that, Mama; the baby. You didn’t think it was yours.”
“It?” she said. She seemed to pull herself together. “It wasn’t an it, it was you, Charlotte. The baby was you.”
“But you said they mixed me up in the hospital.”
“Why would I say that? Oh, this is all so … it’s much too bright in here.”
I turned the light off. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You never thought that I was someone else’s. The notion never occurred to you.”
“No, no. Maybe you misunderstood,” she said. “Maybe … I don’t know …” She closed her eyes. “Please