As Edith Tormey lies dying in her hospital bed, one thought looms in her foggy consciousness: she is going to die without ever having told a soul the biggest secret of her life.
Gladys Tormey looks down at her mother, a bony, grey-haired woman lost within the white sheets of the shiny hospital bed, and wonders about death.
It is her favorite pastime. From as far back as she can remember, she has wondered about death, wondered what it would be like to die by falling out a window, or smashing into a tree, or being burned alive at a neighbor's barbecue. Even her favorite nun from grammar school, Sister Mary Katherine, declared that Gladys was a morbid child with a penchant for the perverse.
``She seemed fascinated by anything that oozed,'' the nun said once.
In college Gladys was the only woman in her biology class to present a one-hour color slide show on Sudden Death Syndrome and Faulty Fallopian Tubes.
Now, thirty-nine, unattached, and the author of a rather obscure but weighty tome, The Unreality of All Waste Matter, Gladys stands over her mother's frail body and wonders what it would be like to strangle an old lady whose left arm is an infestation of plastic tubes, intravenous needles and black and blue marks.
For Gladys, it is a question inspired by the purest of intentions, something she holds in abundance.
It's nice to float, Edith thinks, circling the ceiling, rounding the walls, and bouncing off the floor, like a dust ball. At last I'm light as a sneeze. Free as Superman. Clear as a window pane.
Something inside her chest--Gladys perhaps, reduced to the size of a small mouse--is scurrying about, digging her sharp persistent feet into the squashy part of her lung, and nibbling away at the mucous membrane, but Edith pays little attention.
I'm beyond the eatable now. Beyond the small bites and big chews, the endless lies and vacant stares. Beyond the beyond the beyond.
Outside Edith's window, which faces an oil-stained parking lot, and a long row of brick tenements, people come and go talking of bladder problems, fallen arches and the six o'clock news.
``What's with the nutso visiting Tormey in 309?'' Nurse Toto asks, while Nurse Griswold administers an enema to a man in purple pajamas.
``Strange bird, isn't she? I hear she's the daughter.''
``God help the mother.''
``I'll say.''
``I'm minding my own business dispensing aspirins when she comes up and wants to know what it feels like to watch an operation. Asked me if nurses wear bras and panties under the surgical suits. Can you imagine?''
``Weird.''
``That's for sure. A real wacko if I ever seen one.''
``I think we better keep an eye on her. She may be dangerous.''
``No telling what she may do to that helpless old lady, poor thing. Imagine having a daughter like that?''
``Heaven forbid. I'd rather be dead.''
Beyond the moon, beyond the sun, beyond the damp dull sheets, the dying dreams ...
``Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Edith? This is Dr. Elk. Dr. Seymour Elk. Open your eyes. Open your eyes, Edith. Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand. Open your eyes.''
Beyond him, beyond her, beyond the empty rooms, the coming of the night ...
``She's a goner, Doc. I say we pull the plug.''
``Who are you?''
``Her daughter. Her only born. Caesarean section.''
``Well, she certainly doesn't look so good, but who knows. They can fool you.''
``She's been sick a long time.''
``How long?''
``All my life. All her life.''
``How sad.''
``First it was her breast.''
``Her breast?''
``Cancer. They had to cut it off.''
``Oh, yeah. I thought there was something missing.''
``Then they took the womb.''
``The womb?''
``Where I was.''
``Oh. I wouldn't know about that.''
``Now it's the heart.''
``If it isn't one thing, it's another.''
``But her brain's the real problem. It's gone, you know. Gone for the longest time.''
``Gone.?''
``I say we pull the plug.''
``The plug? What plug? There is no plug.''
The moment of madness when seasons vanished. Left alone with lies. All lies. Terrible lies.
She's smiling, Gladys thinks. She is smiling the icy grimace of the near gone, the almost there. The dead smile of cosmic decay.
--My little bundle of joy, they called her.
--My glad rag of abandoned love.
--Poison from him who once was and was no more.
Tell me what it feels like, Mama. Tell me. Tell me, please. Please talk to me, Mama. Please.
--I begged them to take her away, but they wouldn't.
--She's yours, they told me.
--All yours.
--Now they'll listen.
--They'll have to listen.
``Her brain went after her husband left.''
``No fooling?''
``That's when she really started to crack.''
``Doesn't take much nowadays.''
``I thought I could help her, but I couldn't. Nothing could help her.''
``Poor thing. Never had any hobbies, I bet?''
``No.''
``Just like my wife.''
--They'll realize she didn't belong.
--Never belonged.
--Not to me.
--Not to him.
--They'll take her away.
--Finally, they will take her away.
``She got more and more depressed. Some days she wouldn't even look at me.''
``An acute reaction, I'm sure.''
``One day she tried to kill me.''
``How awful.''
``With a butcher knife. I was eleven.''
``Oh, my!''
``No one believed me. They told me I was crazy. They told me I was making the whole thing up, but I knew she knew it wasn't a lie.''
``Well, children do have a way of elaborating. You must understand ... ''
``Oh, I understand, Doctor, and I've forgiven them, all of them. Even her. All I want now is for her to have the best.''
``I'm sure.''
``Think there'll be an autopsy?''
``An autopsy? Now? But she's not even ... ''
``I just want to make sure it doesn't run in the family.''
``What?''
``Mental decay. Arterial rot.''
``Oh, I wouldn't worry about that.''
``You don't think so?''
``No. You look just fine to me.''
Time for your pill, Mrs. Tormey. Open wide. That's a good girl.
--Gone. All gone.
--Pigeon droppings from a polluted past
--Swept away by death,
--My death,
--The death that has to be.
--The death I waited for,
--Planned for,
--Sweet secret of endless imaginings.
``One day she stopped washing.''
``That's bad.''
``Then she stopped eating.''
``That's awful.''
``Then she stopped talking.''
``That depends ... ''
``She hated me, Doctor. Her own daughter and she hated me.''
--Late afternoons
--sunlight dying red and black against the wall,
--the days, the endless days,
--the years,
--Somewhere, a child crying ...
``We always had a communication problem.''
``Now look, I want you to know I'm no psychiatrist.''
``I don't like psychiatrists.''
``No. Why? Some of my best friends are psychiatrists.''
``They're dangerous.''
``Really? Why?''
``So I'm emptying the bedpan when all of a sudden she pops up behind me in the john.''
``Jeez.''
``She wants to know how I feel about organ transplants.''
``No fooling? In the john?''
``I tell her: look, I got no opinion one way or the other. I'm only the nurse.''
``What'd she do then?''
``She looks at me real funny and says, `You gotta have an opinion.' Look, I don't even work this floor, I tell her. Now leave me alone, O.K.?''
``What nerve!''
``Then she closes her eyes and mumbles something about waste being recycled. I don't know what the hell she's talking about.''
``What a kook.''
``This place is walking with them.''
``They think everything you say is a lie. A delusion. They're always looking to commit people. To Lock them up.''
``Well, sometimes it pays to keep your mouth shut when you're talking to a shrink.''
``I went to one once. In the beginning our conversation was going fine. He really seemed interested in all my theories.''
``Your theories?''
``My recycling theories.''
``I see.''
``Which brings me back to my mother.''
``Yes, of course.''
``I'd like her remains to be kept, Doctor.''
``Kept? Kept where?''
``Here...there...everywhere.''
``But she's not dead yet.''
``I know. I mean, after you pull the plug.''
``What plug? I keep telling you there aren't any plugs.''
``Perhaps, but surely, you can't let her linger in that condition. All her life she suffered. I suffered. Now she's a vegetable.''
``Well, still. I wouldn't jump the gun.''
``I know she won't last. I can tell by looking at her.''
``You can tell? How?''
``Look at her eyes.''
``They're closed.''
``Certainly. That's one of the first signs.''
--From out of a cloud of dust, faster than a speeding bullet...
--A mistake reimagined
--Forty years too late.
``Nothing should be wasted though.''
``Wasted?''
``I want her whole body to be recycled.''
``At her age? That's impossible.''
``So death does not triumph.''
``Now see here ... ''
``I want to give my mother immortality.''
``You should check with the hospital first.''
``I'll check about pulling the plug, too. O.K.?''
``Now see here...you must understand ... .''
Something is moving against Edith's right foot. A roach? A rat? A bedbug perhaps?
It's me, Mama. Gladys, your daughter, your only born.
Lies. All lies.
``Soon you'll be out of your misery, Mama, just like you've always wanted.''
Voices within a skull screaming under thick glass ...
``I'm keeping our promise, our little secret. You said I wouldn't but I am.''
Through the years, the long, long years
``Your vegetable days are over, Mama. You're through being a lettuce leaf. Now lie still. Lie very still, just like you said you would.''
Patricia Flinn is a writer and college English teacher in New Jersey. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in several little/literary reviews and journals, but she doesn't give specific names. This story is as close to poetry as we ever get in Sign of the Times.
For more stories by Patricia Flinn,
click here.
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