Driving out to her mother’s place from the hospital that morning, Liza had measured the distance on the odometer. She had been surprised to realize that the hospital was a mere four miles and her apartment only another mile beyond that from her mother’s squalid farmhouse. Somehow, in all the intervening years, she had imagined the distance to be much greater. She had always told herself that she would never go back, no matter what, and she hadn’t—not until today. Not until a social worker had tracked her down at work and given her the bad news.
Selma had evidently fallen. Unable to get up, she hadn’t been found for a number of days. A postman had finally notified someone that her mail was piling up in the mailbox at the end of the driveway, and a uniformed deputy had been dispatched to do a welfare check. Selma had been found unconscious on the floor of a room that bore no resemblance to a living room. Revived at the scene, she had been forcibly removed from her house and taken by ambulance to the hospital. Selma was currently in the ICU where doctors were doing their best to rehydrate her with IV fluids and nourishment. Liza had been told that Selma was in stable condition, but the social worker had made it plain that the outlook wasn’t good. Despite her relatively young age—Selma was only fifty-seven—her emphysema was much worse, and her next stop would most likely be a bed in the hospice care unit of the Sunset Nursing Home. The end might come in as little as a few days or a few weeks at the most.
Hearing the news, Liza tried to feel sorry for her mother, but she could not. The woman had brought it on through years of chain-smoking and neglecting her health. Liza had always told herself that as far as her mother was concerned, she was done; that if Selma ever needed help, Liza wouldn’t go—wouldn’t cross the street or lift a finger to help her mother, but when push came to shove, Liza had caved.
The social worker had come by the diner to let Liza know. Before the social worker had finished telling her what had happened, Liza had her phone in hand and was dialing her boss’s home number to let Candy know that she was going to need someone else to cover her shifts for the next few days. Within forty-five minutes, she had turned up at the ICU, as dutiful as any loving daughter. She rushed down the polished corridor to Selma’s room as though there hadn’t been a lifetime’s worth of bad history and eleven years of total estrangement between them.
And what had Liza expected for her trouble? Maybe she hoped the long-delayed reunion with her mother would turn into one of those schmaltzy Hallmark moments, with Selma reaching out to embrace her daughter and saying how precious Liza was; how much she had missed her; how glad she was to see her; how sorry she was for all the awful things she had said those many years ago. Of course, that wasn’t what happened—not at all.
Selma Machett’s eyes had popped open when Liza warily approached her mother’s bedside.
“Where’ve you been?” Selma demanded. “What took you so long? I told them not to do it, but those stupid jerks in the ambulance brought me here anyway. And when I told them I needed my cookbook, they couldn’t be bothered. You know the one I mean—my old Joy of Cooking. I need it right now. I want you to go to the house and get it—you and nobody else.”
No, not a Hallmark moment by any means. Liza understood full well that her mother simply issued orders rather than making requests. Please and Thank you weren’t part of Selma’s vocabulary. Liza also knew that her mother had a vast collection of cookbooks, moldering in her filthy kitchen. Not that she’d ever used any of them. In fact, Liza couldn’t remember her mother ever cooking a single meal. All the while Liza was growing up, they’d survived on take-out food, burgers and pizza that her mother had somehow managed to pay for. Afterward, the wrappers and boxes, sometimes with stray pieces of pizza still inside, were left to rot where they fell.
Even though Liza knew it to be a futile exercise, she attempted to reason with her mother. “Look, Mom,” she said placatingly. “They have a very good kitchen here at the hospital. You don’t need a cookbook. When it’s time for you to eat, they’ll bring your food on a tray.”
“I don’t care about that,” Selma snapped. “I want my cookbook, and I want it now. The key’s still where it’s always been, under the mat on the back porch. Go now. Be quick about it.”
Which is exactly how Liza came to be here. When she lifted the mat, it disintegrated in her hands, falling in a brittle heap of disconnected rubbery links on the top step. After inserting the key and turning it in the lock, Liza stood on the far side of the door for the better part of five minutes, trying to summon the courage to venture inside.