Then Again - Diane Keaton [88]
She knew one thing: It all boils down to family. One day you end up having spent your life with a handful of people. I did. I have a family—two, really. Well, three if you think about it. There are my siblings, and there are my children, but I also have an extended family. The people who stayed. The people who became more than friends; the people who open the door when I knock. That’s what it all boils down to. The people who have to open the door, not because they always want to but because they do.
A Balloon
Four days have passed since our band of caretakers decided to hang in for the duration. Sometimes we sleep on the couch downstairs or in the storage room with Mom’s old file cabinets. Sometimes we share our parents’ king-size bed. Sometimes Suzy D spends the night, other times Anne and Irma too. The hospice nurses come and go, carrying little vials of morphine in their handbags. Yesterday the kids came for a visit. Robin and I were watching them play at the shoreline when we heard Anne screaming. Robin grabbed my hand. We rushed past Don Callender, heir to Marie Callender pies, propped in a wheelchair. He made a gesture not quite capable of being called a wave. Running past, I thought of all those frozen pies sold to all those millions of American consumers. Money couldn’t help him now. He tried to speak. What was he saying? Robin gripped me. “Diane, come on. Hurry.”
Inside, Dorrie, Suzy, Irma, Anne, and Riley were gathered around the hospital bed. Mom’s breathing was irregular. Charlotte, the nurse, checked her stopwatch at every inhalation. Mom would take a breath, hold it for thirty-five seconds before exhaling to take another, hold it for thirty seconds, then take another for fifty. Having had asthma, I knew how hard it was to work for so little air. Inhale, hold for thirty. Exhale. Inhale, hold for forty. Exhale. Inhale, hold for thirty-eight. We looked for a pattern. We waited. When she took a breath and held it for sixty-five seconds, Dorrie started to cry. Robin pressed her face against Mother’s cheek. Duke, with a towel around his shoulders, came running in. “Mommy, don’t cry. Don’t cry, Mommy.” I hugged him tight and kissed his seven-and-a-half-year-old body. Was this the end? Duke untied a helium balloon at the end of the bed and pushed its words, GET WELL, close to Mom’s face. “Get well, Grammy. See, it says ‘Get well.’ ” Mom, as if hearing his plea, didn’t die. But it made me think of the others who already had.
Some Deaths
First Mike
Mike Carr, my cousin, died in 1962. He was fourteen. Mom, Dad, Randy, Robin, Dorrie, and I piled out of our Buick station wagon and entered the mid-century A-frame church still standing on the outskirts of Garden Grove, California. We sat in a pew close to Auntie Martha. She wasn’t crying, but her face looked unfamiliar. It was as if she’d been dealt a blow too hard to assimilate. Martha Carr was never the same, not ever, ever, ever. Something was broken that could never be repaired. The minister’s message was filled with Bible quotes chosen for funerals. There was no mention of the allegations that Mike accidentally shot himself with a rifle during an acid trip in Seattle.
Then Eddie
Aunt Sadie’s husband, Eddie, went next. Grammy Hall hated Eddie. After thirty years, she finally convinced Sadie to kick him out of the duplex. According to Mary, “men don’t count for much.” Eddie and George were weak; why else would they cling to women with means like her? When Eddie died in his cabin up in June Lake, there were no hard feelings between him and Sadie; he left all of his paint-by-number landscapes to her and their son, Cousin Charlie.
Then George
One thing about George, Grammy’s boarder: He never failed to give us kids the best birthday cards. They always pictured different kinds of trees filled with a dollar’s worth of dimes in the branches. We called them the money-tree cards.
George was a painter, a housepainter. He was also a member of the painters’ union. Every Christmas,