3.

Pictures

 Right away I started pawing through old boxes, looking for suitable artifacts for Francine. I had one of Jane’s poems and two pictures of her to bring. In one photo she was sweet and preppy, in the other she looked ready to pull out a gun.

I circled my old trunk, packed with Mom’s papers and belongings, and then cracked it open. I’d quietly collected as much as I could after she died, when no one was looking, snapping up combs and lipstick, handkerchiefs, opera glasses, the remains of her Chanel No. 5, pocketing anything monogrammed, secreting her gardening shirts, appropriating her trademark penny loafers. I was the self-appointed keeper of my mother’s archival flame, and no one seemed to mind or notice.

I also had reels of 16 mm film, found by Dad in the recesses of a closet he’d never had cause to open before Mom died. As far as he knew, they were the only record of Mom in motion. In the same closet he’d found boxes of letters and assorted Mom memorabilia, and he turned that over, too. I took it hungrily, stacked it high in my room, and sorted through school records, calendars, letters, photographs, souvenirs, news clippings, and private journals. In these remains, I had hoped, lay my blueprints. Scattered clues to guide me on my own.

I took out the film strips and held them to the light. The reels began in Switzerland, 1904, when Mom’s father got his first camera. His wedding to my grandmother was there, with plumed horses and decorated carriages. I scrolled past their immigration to St. Louis and, frame by frame, the birth of an American family. Mom turned up as a toddler, serious faced and teetering on unpracticed legs. The films ended with her at seventeen, in long dark braids, rocking in a porch chair, nervously taking her first public sip of liquor.

I put the film aside and moved on, flipping through Mom’s school records, calendars, letters, souvenirs, and the curled yellow pages she’d written thoughts on.

I got caught up in the calendars—a lifetime of calendars that she’d kept. There were Smith College datebooks from the fifties, scattered hardbound calendars from the sixties, and, for most of my lifetime, the plain white spiral-bound variety, which had lived on her kitchen desk. Inside these volumes lay the fragments of my mother’s life, penciled before me like echoes in her familiar hand. There were early dates with my father, periodic piano lessons, trips abroad, and, eventually, three children born. Her married years were littered with volunteer activities, school events, and countless trips with children to the doctor. There were graduations, birthdays, vacations, and lists and lists of daily errands.

I opened 1983 and was struck by its emptiness. The blank weeks were a record of Mom’s emotional paralysis—her hideous trip into depression—and blank months followed when she had been locked behind hospital doors. Periodically Dad’s inscrutable handwriting appeared, showing his efforts to fill in as carpool driver, errand runner, cook, doctor’s appointment keeper, and social organizer. Mom’s first, temporary returns from the hospital were recorded in my teenage scrawl, with big balloons and exclamation points. I saw that Dad had taken over for her final return, writing simply, Mom home today. By then, if I had written it, there would have been question marks at the end and not balloons.

Of all Mom’s lists and notes, the most consistent entries appeared while I was in high school and college, prefaced by the restaurant name Bernards, where her Tuesday ladies group met once a month. I liked to call them her posse. They were a close knit group of women, several of whom had grown up with my mother in St. Louis, and a few who joined later as fellow new wives and mothers back in the early sixties. Without fail, these ladies gathered for their monthly Bernards therapy, and in the summers they also met on Tuesday mornings for doubles tennis. They volunteered together, went to the same parties, and shared family trips. They were an inseparable collection of intelligent, highly educated and independent-minded women, and as fixed an image in my childhood as winters by the fire, charged dinner table debates, or playing in the woods.

I checked my watch to make sure Jane would be away for a good while longer and then continued revisiting the calendars. I opened 1990 and looked for The Day, in early March. It was just before my birthday—“Dr. Owen, 3:00.”

I had been with my mother for that spring visit when, at her request, Dr. Owen had put specifics behind what I’d already been told—that the old cancer had come back and now had found Mom’s spine. This was not news by March. We had all been home for her Christmas Eve relapse, when Mom’s back was seized by such pain in the middle of the night that Dad took her right to the hospital. Since then, she had taken rounds of chemotherapy, but the chemo, Dr. Owen said, was to no avail.

Mom held my hand as I protested with the obvious—that she had done her part. She had lived past the two-year benchmark, which promised that recurrence was less likely than a fatal car wreck. And we had already celebrated. She had sent out letters telling her friends and family, and, I told Dr. Owen, she’d won her second chance fair and square.

Mom’s oncologist spoke bluntly, as he knew my mother insisted, when he explained that in spite of this interim victory, the present ache in her back would continue to grow and spread. He said it would kill her, most likely within a year.

Mom was mute beside me after he said this, which was never her style. The only indication she gave of being present was her tightening grip on my hand and then a slight nod when Dr. Owen asked if she was all right.

Mom and I were quiet for most of the ride home. As we drove through our town, glass walls seemed to lower all around us, separating the life of the world from our suspended cocoon of silence. We drove past our grocery store, where Annie waved her broom at us. We passed a row of firemen sitting in T-shirts and suspenders outside the firehouse, past the high school tennis courts where my mother had won so many victories, then down our lane, vibrant with spring life. The rising hum of cicadas signaled the evening’s approach, and as our house came into view—white clapboard with black shutters, lined by my mother’s gardens—a long, low wail rose within her. It was deafening. It didn’t seem human. I remembered feeling her anguish ripple through me like thunder.

Like all memories, that car ride and my mother dissolved too soon, and I found myself with a tight jaw and moist palms, back in San Francisco, surrounded by a pool of calendars. I realized I had been sitting in the dark, probably for some time, and I closed the calendars and slid them into the box.

The afternoon had dropped quickly into dusk, which was a dreaded, lonely moment for me. It told me I should be surrounded by family, setting five places for dinner, and competing with my brother and sister for parental attention. It left me vaguely unsettled and slightly worried.

As I reached for a light, the phone suddenly rang. I jumped and lifted the receiver, expecting to hear Jane’s voice. Instead, a maternal hello carried across the line. It was Helen Burns, charter member of the Tuesday Group, checking in.

“Is this a good time?” she asked.

Still half inside the car with my mother, I gripped the phone and offered a pathetic squeak.

“Oh dear,” Helen said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Helen was at our house often, but especially in that spring of 1990—the first spring after I’d graduated from college and the last season that my mother would see. We lived in a state of surreal suspension then; everything had an air of The End. We held our collective breath, and had it not been for Helen and the Tuesday Group, I believe we would have all expired from the tension alone. That spring I had a hard time leaving my mother’s side. When she napped, I lay in my father’s spot beside her and waited for her to wake up. And when she did, I was grateful. I pretended not to notice when she cracked an eye open and watched me for a while. Her hand would eventually drift over to my head and stroke my hair. We had lots of conversations that way, unspoken games that grew into a sort of telepathy.

Because of my mother’s health, various substitute fourths rotated into the Tuesday morning tennis games. One day my mother put me on the phone with Helen, who’d invited me to be their fourth the next morning. And since my mother’s expression looked final, I said yes. Mom loaned me her tennis dress and racket, and as we cooked dinner that night, she described what I was in for. Helen would be the first on the scene, she said. She’d have a thermos of water, and she always remembered to bring the balls. And I should watch out for Frances Lipp; she was the lefty ringer of the group. I shouldn’t be lulled by her gentle smile, which would disarm me right before a backhand whizzed past my ear and down the line. Joan Kelly, she added, had more energy than the group combined but a little less accuracy with her strokes.

“Joan’s gift is in retrieving,” Mom said. “No matter where the ball goes, her little legs will get her there, and the ball always comes back. So don’t underestimate Joan,” she warned, throwing carrots into a pot, “she’ll drop it an inch over the net.”

The group assembled early the next morning, and since my mother was still asleep when I left, I couldn’t confirm that the dress she gave me was supposed to reveal my underwear. I marched bravely up the hill to the court, feeling the chill of late March air, tugging at the dress, and wishing the whole thing were over. The ladies were warming up when I arrived, embroiled in debate.

“You want to buy a horse?” Helen was saying as she fired a volley at Joan’s feet.

“You think it’s a bad idea,” Joan said, tapping the ball miraculously back over the net.

“Well, I think you might examine what the horse represents,” Helen said, ducking a zinger from Frances Lipp. “I mean, a horse, Joan? Really.”

“I don’t understand,” Joan said, breathing hard.

“Well, it’s obviously a replacement for something,” Helen said.

“Oh, Helen,” Frances groaned.

Joan made a ppfft sound and waved to me. I waved back, pretended I hadn’t heard a thing, and trotted onto the court, feeling younger by the second.

“Praise the Lord, she’s here,” Joan said. “I’m all warmed out.”

“Caroline’s on my team,” Helen announced. “Young legs,” she added, patting me on the back.

I eyed Frances at the net and felt a surge of competitive adrenaline.

“Shouldn’t Caroline get a chance to warm up?” Frances asked, smiling at me. Mom was right, she had a sensational smile.

“Nope,” said Joan, “too late.” And with that she served one hard to my right.

The ladies talked about their children and summer plans, tuitions, politics, and hot flashes as I hurled myself around the court in a desperate attempt to keep up. They never seemed to move, just a poke here and a swat there and I was on the ground, panting.

After one particularly daring dive, I remember Helen looking down at me and shaking her head.

“It’s not that serious, sweetie,” she said, plucking the ball from my hand. “Did you take lessons from your mother?”

I smiled. That was a compliment.

“When you get older, you learn to econ-o-mize,” Helen continued. “You realize you’ll get there whether it’s at top speed or a turtle’s crawl, and the result is exactly the same.”

“Helen,” Joan called, “if you had twenty-two-year-old legs, we’d be looking at a puff of smoke right now.”

“Whatever,” Helen said, marching back to the baseline.

I brushed myself off.

“Just for the record,” Joan said to me, “your mother beat Helen on this very court—with one lung.”

Helen chuckled, then seemed to lose her concentration. She bounced the ball to serve, and after a while she said, “What is it, five to three?”

Frances and Joan didn’t answer. I fixed my eyes on the ground.

“It’s four all, you cheat,” Joan finally said. And before I could blink, a ball whizzed past my ear.

“Water break!” Frances announced after the first set was over. “Let’s change sides.”

“I don’t know what you think you’ll gain by changing sides,” Helen teased, opening her thermos and taking a long drink. “We’ve already beaten you on every side.”

Frances shrugged, eyeing the water with anticipation.

“How are Madeleine and Grant doing?” Frances asked. She tossed her racket in the air and missed catching it. Helen snickered as it clunked to the ground.

“Fine,” I said.

My brother and sister were fine as far as I knew, which wasn’t very far at all. Madeleine was swallowed by the demands of medical school and living in another part of St. Louis. Grant was a busy lawyer in Washington, D.C.

“How’s your dad?” Joan asked, twirling her racket. She caught it fine and grinned at Frances.

“He’s all right,” I said cautiously.

“He has a lot on his shoulders,” Joan observed.

She was right. My father spent his days spotting cancers under his microscope and his nights caring for one of its victims. He was, by then, a renowned figure in pathology. A side effect of his trade was that he usually got the task of telling family and friends exactly what disease they had and most likely how it would claim them. For years he had dutifully counseled people he loved—his mother and father, his in-laws, his closest friends. Then one day he slipped a slide under his microscope and saw his wife’s disease, its familiar, awful cells marshaling their forces against her.

“Speak of the angel,” said Frances, waving toward the road. My father drove past us, on his way to work.

He waved back.

“Is your mom alone now?” Helen asked.

“There’s a nurse,” I said. “Dolores.”

“Dolores,” they repeated in unison.

Frances dropped her racket and took a seat on the court. “Hand me that damn water, Helen, or I swear I will expire,” she said, then added a smile.

“Does your mother like her?” Joan asked.

“God help Dolores if she doesn’t,” Helen remarked, passing the thermos to Frances with a matching smile.

“Oh, they have their battles,” I said. “Dolores watches TV.”

“Is that bad?” Joan asked.

“Good God in heaven,” said Frances, finishing off the water.

“Poor Dolores,” Joan sighed. She took a seat beside Frances and started to stretch.

I nodded. Behind my mother’s back, Dolores was also fierce. One day when I’d skipped coming home from my first bookstore job for lunch, Dolores took me aside, finger raised to my nose. “Your mother got dressed for you,” she hissed. “She waited.”

I didn’t tell her that it was hard to get home and back in the hour I was allowed or that I’d been getting flak for coming back to work late. In a moment like that, you don’t look in the eyes of someone like Dolores and speak at all. You just make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Helen pulled a pack of cookies from her gym bag.

“Energy,” she said, passing them to me.

I took a seat, wondering what had happened to the tennis game.

“I wish someone hadn’t killed the water,” Joan said loudly, taking a bite of cookie.

A figure emerged from the house overlooking the court and waved. “What are you guys doing?” she called.

Helen waved the cookies in the air and beckoned.

“Bring water!” Joan called.

Mrs. Reese, the owner of the tennis court, disappeared into her house and returned with lemonade.

“Who’s winning?” she asked, winking at me. “They pooped out, didn’t they.”

Helen withdrew her cookies, indignant, and said, “Did not.”

“Well, fine,” said Mrs. Reese, taking a seat on the court. “What are we talking about?”

We never did play a second set that day, and if my mother’s friends had anywhere to go, they didn’t show it. They reclined at my feet and talked, and, slowly, they pulled me from the shadows. I remember realizing that these women had known my mother long before I came into the world, and some even before she met my father. They had circled their wagons when Mom’s depression struck and pulled them tighter, years later, when the cancer came. They had chased down doctors, healers, and alternative bookstores, looking for cures. For a while my mother ate pounds of carrots, put crystals in her pockets, and listened to visualization tapes at their insistence. Throughout, my father held his tongue, knowing that the reality of the disease, and the improbability of miracles, made no difference to these women.

I thought of Mom propped up in bed at home—just a hundred yards away—probably cursing Dolores.

“Let’s go see Monny,” Helen said.

“Righto, exactly what I was thinking,” said Joan, creaking to her feet. After a stop inside Mrs. Reese’s kitchen to collect bags of food, I followed the Tuesday Group down the hill to our house and hoped with some anxiety that my mother would be in the mood for company.

“Monny!” four voices called as we entered.

Dolores froze at the sight of us and disappeared.

“Well, that was easy,” said Joan, striding into the kitchen.

With military precision, the women unloaded milk, bread, fruit, and packages of cooked food.

Helen pulled a bouquet of cut flowers from her bag. “They’ll perk up,” she said, pulling a vase from Mom’s cupboard and filling it with water.

The ladies formed a single line and headed past Dolores into my mother’s bedroom. I was about to enter, ready to help if she didn’t want company, when I heard a hearty, unmistakable laugh that rarely sounded in our house anymore. When I peeked around the corner—nose to nose with Dolores—I saw my mother surrounded on her bed by three sweaty women. They were wearing handmade crowns with the title TUESDAY GIRLS printed across them.

“So did Caroline put up a good fight out there?” I heard my mother ask.

“She threw herself all over the place, if that’s what you mean,” Helen replied.

“That is what I mean,” Mom said proudly.

There was a long silence.

“So then … what’s the news?” Mom finally asked.

She spotted me then, in the doorway, and held me in her eyes. When I felt myself suddenly wanting to cry, I turned away with Dolores and followed her to see what the kitchen fairies had brought.

Mom died a few months later, on a Tuesday morning. I was supposed to be a fourth that day, and when I didn’t show the ladies might have sensed it. They would have been warming up on Mrs. Reese’s court when the ambulance came down our lane, followed by Dr. Owen’s car, then my aunt’s, my sister’s, Reverend Michael’s sedan, and the hearse. They must have gathered then, eyes fixed on the road to our house. I imagine they stood there for some time.

I know that when I finally emerged—after the minister had said his words, after I had seen my mother’s body for the last time, and after our family had finished colliding in grief—three ladies stood in our driveway, waiting. They were shouldering tennis bags full of soups and flowers, and they were holding on to each other for dear life.

Almost two years later, when Helen reached me that evening in San Francisco, she must have heard the weight of the world in my voice.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you in trouble?”

I took a deep breath.

“I … No. I’m okay.”

“Not convincing,” Helen said.

Just then I heard a car horn outside and saw Jane parking. I drifted in thought, until Helen called me back. “I don’t mean to be rough, Caroline,” she said, “but no one hears from you. You’re like a ghost out there.”

I leaned my forehead against the window and my heart sank as I watched Jane sing along with her radio.

Helen’s voice returned. She seemed worlds away.

“Hey? Are you there?” she asked.

If one can experience a feeling of combined dread and love, I felt it then, hearing Jane’s keys find our door and then her searching voice calling me as she entered.

I pushed the box of calendars into my closet as her feet came padding down the hall.

“I’m sorry, Helen,” I said.

Jane poked her head in and winked at me, pulling pizza and a video from behind her back.

Helen’s silence on the other end was not a good sign.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. And without hearing her good-bye, I hung up.