There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Fourteen


It was past five when Evie stepped off the bus in front of Bronx Metropolitan Hospital. The building was covered in white brick and, typical of so many big buildings that had gone up in the 1960s, tiered like a wedding cake. A broad cantilevered canopy covered the entrance. A siren flared as an ambulance drove off, then fell silent when the glass door slid shut behind Evie.

She made her way through the crowded lobby to the information desk, where she got her mother’s room number. As she walked to the elevators a pale woman with reddened eyes stumbled past with her cell phone to her ear. Another woman rushed across the lobby, carrying an enormous gift bag and a bunch of pink helium balloons.

Hospitals ushered people in and out, and hosted all manner of crises in between, she thought as she rode a crowded elevator to the eighth floor. But no amount of intellectualizing could ease the anxiety that built in the pit of her stomach the closer she got to her mother’s room.

She exited the elevator onto a hushed floor, the only sound the metal clatter of a hospital cart and the shush of elevator doors closing. Room 8231. Evie stood for a few moments outside the door to her mother’s room.

Brace yourself. Ginger’s words came back to her.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Evie barely recognized her mother. Thin and haggard, she was propped up in the hospital bed nearest to the door. Her once lustrous auburn curls had turned a flat slate gray and stood out from her skull like the puff of a ripe dandelion.

Another patient was sleeping in the bed by the window. Evie drew the curtain between the beds and pulled over a chair.

Her mother seemed to be asleep, too. Her cheeks, flushed with broken blood vessels, gave the illusion of robust health. Her eyes were closed, but the lids trembled as if she were dreaming. One arm was taped to her chest. Her other hand rested on the bedcovers, the nails stained yellow with nicotine. Evie winced at the dark bruising on the back of her hand where an IV line fed into a purple vein.

It’s just a movie. That was what Evie used to tell herself whenever things got ugly, when her mother woke her and Ginger in the middle of the night, transformed into the banshee that she became when she and her father were fighting drunk. On nights like that, Evie and Ginger hid under their beds and tried to sleep. When it was warm enough, they crept outside with their blankets and pillows and slept in the backyard. Or in the car. They’d occasionally take refuge in Mrs. Yetner’s garage.

Evie’s mother had never, ever copped to having a drinking problem. Maybe she didn’t remember her bouts of drunkenness; maybe she simply chose not to. Perhaps pride kept her from admitting, even to herself, that she could behave so monstrously.

What Evie felt now, looking at the much diminished figure in the bed, wasn’t pity, and it certainly wasn’t rage. How could it be? After all, her mother had so utterly defeated herself.

Evie leaned forward, resting her head in her arms on the side of the bed. She felt sad and completely exhausted, and she let those feelings wash over her, barely aware of voices and footsteps from the hall, the snoring of the woman in the other bed, announcements that came over the loudspeakers.

The next thing she felt was a light touch on the side of her head. Her mother was stroking her hair, the same way she did when Evie was a little girl. For a few moments, Evie surrendered to it. Then she raised her head.

Her mother was looking across at her, smiling. “You came.” Those once clear dark brown eyes seemed cloudy. Without another word, her mother pushed herself to a seated position with her good arm and swung her thin legs off the bed. Evie took her mother’s arm and steadied her as she got to her feet and slid her feet into slippers that were sitting by the bed. Evie rolled the IV rack along after as her mother took one shuffling step after another to the bathroom. The thin hospital gown hung loose. Her silhouette was like those starving children she’d seen in photographs, belly distended and arms and legs stick thin. Through the open back of the hospital gown, Evie could see that her mother’s back was mottled with bruises.

Her mother waved off Evie’s offer to come into the bathroom with her. Evie waited outside the door. And waited. And then helped her mother back into bed.

“Water?” Evie asked. Her mother nodded. Evie poured water from the plastic pitcher on the bedside table into a glass with a straw in it. Her mother sipped. The water level had barely receded before her mother made a face and pulled away.

Evie put the water back on the table.

Her mother held her gaze for a moment.

“How are you feeling?” Evie said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

Her mother shook her head and closed her eyes.

Evie said, “Your neighbor, the man from across the street? He stopped by the house.”

Her mother gave her a startled look.

“I didn’t know you were friendly with him. He offered to repair—”

“Did you let him in?” her mother asked, anxiety flaring in her eyes.

“No,” Evie said, glad that she hadn’t. “I told him thanks but no thanks.”

Her mother started to say something more, but a nurse came into the room. As the nurse wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around her arm, her mother said under her breath, “So he knows I’m here?”

“Mom, everyone in the neighborhood knows you’re here. The ambulance—remember?”

Her mother winced and let her head drop back on the pillow, her lips a thin tight line as the nurse pumped air into the cuff. The nurse released it slowly, gave the cuff a puzzled look, and pumped it a second time. This time she seemed satisfied. She checked the IV, wrote something in the chart hanging on the end of the bed, and left.

“God, what I wouldn’t give for a smoke,” her mother said.

Evie realized that the nurse had left a wake of cigarette-scented air in the small room.

“Mom, the health department is threatening to condemn the house.”

“The house?” Her mother blinked several times, like she was absorbing this information.

“It’s an awful mess. I’m going to need money to get the house cleaned up and repaired.”

“I can take care of it. There’s money,” her mother said with a vague wave. “Plenty of money. When I get home.”

“When you—?” Evie wondered if Ginger could have been wrong about how sick her mother was. “The doctor told you when you can go home?”

“Soon. When I’m ready.” With her good arm, her mother pushed herself up straighter. Her face turned pink. “I’m not a child, you know. So don’t think you can just move in and take over.”

Evie wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “What?” she asked. “Mom, I—”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Her mother’s face reddened some more. “Boss everyone around. Take charge. Oh yes, Evie knows what’s best for everyone. Everyone except herself. As if you care a twig about what happens to me.”

Whiplash. That’s what she and Ginger had called it when the switch flipped. Only she couldn’t be drinking. Not here in the hospital.

Her mother grabbed Evie’s wrist and squeezed so hard that it hurt. “Stop looking at me like that. I can’t stand it when you talk down to me. ”

Her mother’s breath was sour, but there was no alcohol on it, Evie thought in a disconnected corner of her brain as she tried to yank her arm free. But her mother’s grip had frozen like a vise. “I was only asking so—”

“I was only asking,” her mother mimicked.

Evie was speechless with fury and bottled-up hurt.

“I . . . don’t . . . need . . . you or anyone else,” her mother said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you even think—” The final word died on her lips as she shuddered. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her body went rigid with spasms.

“Mom?” Evie jumped up. “Mom? Mom! Help!”

She groped for the emergency call button. Over and over she pressed it. Her mother lay there quaking. Was anyone coming to help?

Evie ran out in the hall and headed for the nurses’ station. A nurse met her halfway. By the time they got back to the room, her mother had gone slack. Heart pounding, Evie watched the nurse take her mother’s pulse.

A moment later, her mother’s eyes blinked open. A sheen of sweat coated her forehead and her gaze wandered about the room, across the nurse, until it fastened on Evie.

“You came!” she said.