Yvonne the Information Lady smiled as if this were the sweetest thing she had ever heard. Give her a nice hug and kiss, she said. Seeing you will send her off to sleep better than any of the pills the doctors have. She pointed. The elevators are over there, around the corner.
With visiting hours over, I was the only one waiting for a car. There was a litter basket off to the left, by the door to the newsstand, which was closed and dark. I tore the button off my shirt and threw it in the basket. Then I rubbed my hand on my pants. I was still rubbing it when one of the elevator doors opened. I got in and pushed for four. The car began to rise. Above the floor buttons was a poster announcing a blood drive for the following week. As I read it, an idea came to me . . . except it wasn’t so much an idea as a certainty. My mother was dying now, at this very second, while I rode up to her floor in this slow industrial elevator. I had made the choice; it therefore fell to me to find her. It made perfect sense.
The elevator door opened on another poster. This one showed a cartoon finger pressed to big red cartoon lips. Beneath it was a line reading our patients appreciate your quiet! Beyond the elevator lobby was a corridor going right and left. The odd- numbered rooms were to the left. I walked down that way, my sneakers seeming to gain weight with every step. I slowed in the four- seventies, then stopped entirely between 481 and 483. I couldn’t do this. Sweat as cold and sticky as half- frozen syrup crept out of my hair in little trickles. My stomach was knotted up like a fist inside a slick glove. No, I couldn’t do it. Best to turn around and skedaddle like the cowardly chickenshit I was. I’d hitchhike out to Harlow and call Mrs. McCurdy in the morning. Things would be easier to face in the morning.
I started to turn, and then a nurse poked her head out of the room two doors up . . . my mother’s room. Mr. Parker? she asked in a low voice.
For a wild moment I almost denied it. Then I nodded. Come in. Hurry. She’s going. They were the words I’d expected, but they still sent a cramp of terror through me and buckled my knees.
The nurse saw this and came hurrying toward me, her skirt rustling, her face alarmed. The little gold pin on her breast read anne corrigan. No, no, I just meant the sedative . . . She’s going to sleep. Oh my God, I’m so stupid. She’s fine, Mr. Parker, I gave her her Ambien and she’s going, to sleep, that’s all I meant. You aren’t going to faint, are you? She took my arm.
No, I said, not knowing if I was going to faint or not. The world was swooping and there was a buzzing in my ears. I thought of how the road had leaped toward the car, a black- and- white movie road in all that silver moonlight. Did you ride the Bullet? Man, I rode that fucker four times.
Anne Corrigan lead me into the room and I saw my mother. She had always been a big woman, and the hospital bed was small and narrow, but she still looked almost lost in it. Her hair, now more gray than black, was spilled across the pillow. Her hands lay on top of the sheet like a child’s hands, or even a doll’s. There was no frozen stroke- sneer such as the one I’d imagined on her face, but her complexion was yellow. Her eyes were closed, but when the nurse beside me murmured her name, they opened. They were a deep and iridescent blue, the youngest part of her, and perfectly alive. For a moment they looked nowhere, and then they found me. She smiled and tried to hold out her arms. One of them came up. The other trembled, rose a little bit, then fell back. Al, she whispered.