Free A Matter of Mercy by Lynne Hugo Page B

or over to Newcomb Hollow beach on the ocean side and walked until she was so tired she worried about making it back to the car. Not thinking about him, not rebuking herself, was fairly simple at home because her attention was so much on her mother. But when she was out of the house, however briefly, there was no neutral or restful place for her mind.

    * * * * 

    October. Some days the offshore wind unsheathed its blade, but others were butter-soft, shining. The first two weeks offered a late Indian summer with beach grass gilt and silver shining in the Cape’s crystal light, waving under a topaz sky. Whitecaps. A symphony of gulls swelling overhead. Bluefish running. One warm Friday afternoon, Caroline opened all the windows in the living room and raised the head of the hospital bed, trying to bring the day to her mother, bring her mother to the day.
    Elsie had bathed Eleanor in the morning, a process Caroline intermittently forced herself to watch and couldn’t bear. Afterward, the sublingual morphine finally won and Eleanor was asleep, but it had taken much too long. Now Caroline and Elsie were in the yellow kitchen. The light beyond the window was an insult to what was happening indoors, a day Eleanor would have called an ode to joy. Instead she was oblivious to it, only able to focus on an argument with pain, and the recognition broke Caroline’s heart. Even visits from Eleanor’s friends had become difficult, the effort leaching her, leaving her worn and pale. Caroline had started putting visitors off when she could get away with it, trying not to give offense, sometimes accepting a homemade soup or pudding on the porch and saying that Eleanor was sleeping when she wasn’t. Otherwise they lingered, like a nice cake going stale from too much air, and her mother’s face looked like a snow sky when they left. Sometimes, though, when it was Eleanor’s best friends, like Noelle or Sharon, Karen or Carol, it was Caroline who couldn’t bear their presence, how they took what Eleanor had to give when it was Caroline who needed it most.
    “Your mother should have the drip now,” Elsie said, as she organized a late lunch for the two of them. She was making tea, practiced and efficient in her motions. Her sable hair was cut in a child’s straight bob, hardly a bit of gray in it though she looked to be in her late fifties. She definitely wasn’t the sort to color it, Caroline was sure; she didn’t wear a speck of makeup and her clothes were utilitarian, without a discernible style.
    Caroline slumped against the refrigerator, her face in her hands.
    “If you can be ready, you’ll help her be ready.” Caroline felt Elsie touch her shoulder and she lowered her hands from her face, which felt sticky. There was pressure over her eyes.
    “I’m not. How can I pretend to be?”
    “Don’t pretend. Can you start to accept it?”
    Caroline felt a flush of anger. “Easy to say.”
    “I don’t mean it to sound that way. Is there something that would help?” Elsie leaned toward Caroline, her brown eyes intent and direct.
    “When my father died, I felt cheated—you know? He died at his desk at work. He’d stayed late, the secretary had gone home. Mom finally went to the office to look for him when he didn’t answer the phone. A massive heart attack and we didn’t even know there was anything wrong with his heart. A little overweight, a little high blood pressure, no big deal. No goodbyes. No nothing. But in comparison to this? In retrospect, it seems a mercy.”
    Elsie crossed to Caroline, took one of her hands and led her to the kitchen table. She pulled out a chair and sat Caroline down, as if she were a child. The table was set, a turkey sandwich and a cup of tea at Caroline’s place. The tea, in one of Eleanor’s mother’s bone china cups, had a translucent round of lemon studded with cloves split on the rim like a slice of sun. The sandwich, too, was on the good china and had a pink cloth napkin folded next