Free Habit by Susan Morse Page A

open cockpits, and he used to cause a sensation landing them on the polo field at the Penllyn Club—very Errol Flynn, with the goggles and the scarf and everything. Grandsir had a treasure trove of stories to explain his collection of physical defects: He was missing two fingers (shot them off in a hunting accident, age twelve) and he couldn’t straighten one arm (got it sideswiped driving too close to another car on a narrow country road). When Ma and her younger sister, Bobs, were little, they lived with their parents on army bases in Long Island, Virginia and Honolulu. Ma had a patchy on-again off-again relationship with her father after he and her mother finally divorced, but she wanted to be there for his health crisis.
    Ma felt it was important to acknowledge the obvious, and pointed out to Grandsir that he was dying. He responded indignantly that he was not . When he eventually did die, Ma was the only one in the hospital room with him. She swears that she saw a transparent thing of some sort float out of her father’s body. She says it looked like the logo for Philadelphia’s ice hockey team, the Flyers: an orb shape attached to a large wing, similar to the snitch in the Harry Potter books. She is positive she saw this thing waft upward and disappear into the ceiling above him. The point she makes now is that Grandsir had an instinctive, unschooled faith in the afterlife and, for some reason we may never know, Ma was there to see real evidence: her father’s very soul on its way to the next destination.
    I didn’t see Grandsir float off to heaven myself, but it’s interesting. This morning, I did think I sort of smelled the roses in the Holy Oil. I know it started out as ordinary olive oil because Ma wouldn’t allow it to be anything but . I’d bought the refills for her myself.
    I arranged a visit from Michael (the reassuring administrator of the local Home Health Care service) for Ma to fill out her profile sheet and learn what they offer. Michael has an aide ready to come in anytime. The interview went like this:
    Michael: I have a very nice, competent woman named Miriam who can come on Sunday morning.
    Ma: Is she dark-skinned?
    Michael: Um, yes she is. Why?
    Ma: Is she light-fingered?
    But the whole thing ends up with Ma moaning like an animal in labor, and me on the phone with the doctor on call at Huntingdon, trying to reach into the receiver and shake him ( she’s not TALKING anymore, Doctor, she’s just grunting on her hands and KNEES, rocking back and FORTH, so I don’t think the milk of magnesia is really HELPING, Doctor ). They have no openings but want us to meet them in the ER—then poof, they call. A bed has been made available, which may or may not have something to do with the rose-scented Holy Oil, depending on who you talk to.
    Ma insists all this makes perfect sense: The Holy Oil is why it is possible for her to even consider trying to take this trip without an ambulance. There’s some confusion as to how to get her downstairs, highlighted by Felix and me debating the merits of using some bungee cords from the back of his mud-spattered Subaru to rig up one of the dining room chairs on a mover’s dolly. Luckily, we scrounge a spare wheelchair in the Mills House. Ma is maneuvered into the Subaru, clutching her phone book with the priests’ numbers and one of those bicycle water bottles with the pop-top I’ve filled with Holy Oil for the trip.
    The doctor puts her on massive doses of laxatives, and Felix and I get to look at pictures of the tumor, which is behaving like an airtight cork and will continue to do so until they can get the treatment under way. We cancel Miriam. Ma’s going to be in the hospital for a few days.
    The winds appear to have shifted, and the musky lion scent has died down. I even get enough time to think of stopping at the liquor store to reward the monkeys with wine to go with our pizza dinner, before