That Arab Spring
*
That night: “Adrian, Adrian.” Bedroom doors opening, the three of us shuffling out to her bed edge. But that is the end of it. After quietly waiting to see if there is more, there is not, and we shuffle back to our beds.
In the morning, between spoonfuls of tomato soup, she says, “I had dream about your father last night.”
My sister says, “I know. I heard. We all heard.” A red line of tomato soup slowly zippers down her chin, and my sister expertly reaches and wipes.
She starts, but she is not really talking to us but to someone somewhere else—a long-ago Texas in the middle distance. “We were in Texas, on Daddy’s farm, in the dream. But on the farm, listening to Daddy tell us all about oil and mineral rights. And your father was standing in the middle of the cotton field with Daddy and me, smoking his cigarettes, holding his cigarette the way he does, like one of those Frenchmen. Something he learned in the war. But smoking and holding his cigarette and nodding and not saying anything, but letting Daddy go on and on about the farm and all its mineral rights. Daddy stomping his foot to show us that the minerals were right there, and someday, if we played our cards right, we’d all be rich.”
Wiping away another line of tomato soup before spooning in more, my sister says, “I see.”
Chewing tomato soup and then opening her eyes wide, she says, “What do you mean you heard me?”
“Last night, you called out his name, twice, maybe three times. ‘Adrian, Adrian.’ Clear as a bell.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
“What time was it?”
The three of us look at one another, then up at the wall clock. “Two-thirty, maybe three o’clock. Something like that.”
Her eyes grow soft, smaller, and she nods. “Oh.”
Later that afternoon, she remembers people she has not remembered in years. That’s what she says, “I haven’t thought about him in years—ages, no reason to. Isn’t that something, after some twenty, twenty-five years. Isn’t that something. Wonder what it means?” First there is Charlie Emerson at the hardware store, whose son died in the Vietnam War, but then not really because someone made a mistake, the wrong dead Marine. But it was too late, they had already dedicated a tree to him on Main Street. “Remember that?” Or how about Hank Cold, Mr. Cold, the neighbor two houses over. Everybody called him Mr. Cold, like some cartoon character. “Mr. Cold is here. I saw Mr. Cold today. Jake Cold? You mean Mr. Cold?” Nothing special about Mr. Cold except his name. Sold insurance, mowed his lawn every Sunday, had that green house up against Weber Creek. Nobody could ever describe him—everything was just medium or average with him. “Why do I remember him?”
And how about that Peggy Weaver, who knew all there was to know about cleaning and dusting and washing and how to get stains out? Peggy, who had one ear missing, because “I was born that way.” But just looking at it, you could see it was something else, something that had nothing to do with birth, something unfriendly and ragged and painful. But never mind, one ear or not, she knew how to clean and mop, and her whole life was about keeping other people’s houses clean and bright. Nobody could figure out why she wouldn’t let her hair grow out, cover up that missing ear. “Seems like you’d want to do that.”
*
Lynn from Hospice is young and professionally cheerful. For forty-five minutes every other day, she washes and combs and arranges my mother. Lynn talks and smiles; if she has to, she answers her own questions. Her first visit, my mother watched her closely, like she was watching a magician and, if she watched long and hard enough, could see how the trick was done. Lynn has white teeth and a black mole between her eyes. When she laughs, her mole quivers. After that first day, Lynn waved good-bye whenever she stepped out of the house, got in her car, and smoked a cigarette.