Mama pats the bed and I lie carefully down next to her. It is her, but not her. Not how I remember her anyway. She is as delicate looking as a piece of blown glass. She strokes my cheek, and says, “You have been so brave. So independent.”
The nurse who is still standing at the door, says, “Do you need any help getting ready, Laurie… I mean, Mrs. Carmody?” but then she throws her hand to her mouth and runs off. I can hear her shoes for a long time.
Sam stands and says to all of us, “I’m going downstairs to tie up a few loose ends. Take it easy on her, Shen.”
“But…,” I say, still unsure, shaky and like I’m seeing all this through a kaleidoscope.
“I’ll answer your questions soon enough. Help your mother get her things together, please. I brought some clothes.” Sam points behind the door where they’re hanging. It’s a pale yellow blouse and pleated tan slacks, exactly the kind that Mama would like. Simple and to the point-not frilly. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
A million questions are rolling around in my brain, too many to settle on just one. At the same time, I don’t really care how Mama has miraculously come back to us, risen from the dead like Lazarus. I’m stroking her forehead, rubbing her velvety earlobes between my fingers, running my finger down her satiny cheek, making sure she’s not an optical illusion. I even pinch myself. Satisfied, I look over Mama’s shoulder and say to my sister, “This has got to be the best boomba of all times, right?” and then, I don’t know why, I start bawling like a baby.
After time spent cuddling and using up a whole box of tissues to dry my eyes, which is exactly what my twin must’ve done before I got here, Woody and I help Mama out of the bed and get her dressed the way Sam told us to. She is as wiry as a coat hanger. Her new clothes just drape off her. We take turns brushing her hair, which has split ends and is not as shiny as it used to be. I butterfly kiss the nape of her neck and then Woody does, too. We spruce her up the best we can and then I say, “I have so much to tell you… I’m sure you’ve figured it out already, but the reason Woody is not tellin’ you how beautiful you look like she usually would is because she can’t talk anymore. She stopped after you… and she does some real peculiar things now, but don’t worry. It’s still Woody. I did my best to take care of her while you were gone, but sometimes I didn’t do such a good job and I’m sorry.”
Mama hugs me and so does Woody and that’s all it takes. I feel like a lily blooming in our field after a long winter.
As we’re leaving the room, Alice returns red-eyed and pulls me aside. She tells me, “Your mother is going to need some time. We gave her some powerful medications. We… we didn’t know. When Doctor Keller admitted her, he told the staff that her name was Laurie Smith and that she was suffering from schizophrenia. She told us over and over again who she was, but… a lot of the patients in here… there’s a woman who thinks she’s Marie Antoinette.”
I’m not sure that I have ever witnessed a living Act of Contrition, but that’s exactly what Alice looks like when she goes to my mother’s side and says, “I don’t know what else to say, but I’m so very sorry, we all are. Good-bye and God bless.”
Mama, being so forgiving like she is, takes Alice’s hand in hers and says, “You were always sweet to me. Take care of yourself.”
And then I tell the bony nurse, “‘To err is human.’” It’s all I can think of to say that would make my mother feel proud of me, but my heart? It feels like a cannonball dropping to the bottom of the ocean. It has sunk in. All this time spent searching for Mama, thinking she’d been nabbed or had amnesia or ran off with the carnival, but then coming to grips with her death. I don’t feel so forgiving. I don’t care how repentant she looks. I want to throw Alice out of the window.
My sister and I are taking turns pushing Mama’s wheelchair down the sidewalk in front of the hospital. Sam thought it might be a good idea to have her stay one more night and leave bright and early the next morning, but Mama told him, “No,” and like he always has, he respected her wishes.
At the curb, the sheriff is leaning on the fender of his car. Doc Keller is in the backseat now. He’s handcuffed. I am practically knocked to my knees when it comes to me that Sheriff Andy Nash is not at all what I thought he was. He has not been bought and sold by the Carmody men. I don’t understand his part in all this yet, but if he was on my father’s payroll, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be pushing Mama towards the car. I’d be up in that hospital room taking my medicine.
Sheriff Nash takes off his police cap and says to Mama, “How do, ma’am.”
She tilts her chin up at him. “Thanks to you, Andy, I’m doing a lot better than I have in quite some time. Without your help, your integrity…”
The sheriff says bashfully, “Good to have you back, Evelyn.” And then, like it’s all in a day’s work, he sets his hat back atop his head and gets in his car.
I lean into his window and whisper to him, so my mother can’t hear me, “Ya might wanna go to Lilyfield and pick up Gramma Ruth Love. She confessed to me that she murdered Clive Minnow with one of her pies. And you already know she tried to do away with Mama, right?”
The sheriff doesn’t seem real surprised when he says, “Sounds like you got out of there in the nick of time, Shenny,” and then drives off. Like the Lone Ranger, I think. Only Doc Keller isn’t his faithful companion, Tonto. He’s a bad man who I’m certain will get exactly what he has coming to him, if Andy Nash has any say in the matter.
Sam picks Mama up in his arms and carries her to Beezy’s beat-up brown Pontiac that’s parked nearby. He says, “Evie, this is the man I’ve been telling you about.”
Curry, who I have completely forgotten about, scrambles out to open the back door. My mother says, “I… thank you.”
I don’t know what part he played in Mama’s rescue either, but he must’ve been heaven-sent because Sam is looking at Curry like he’s an angel. I glance back up at the redbrick hospital one more time. Thinking what could’ve been, I throw my arms around Curry’s Italian waist and say grazie over and over again until he pulls me off him. “You’re welcome, Shenny,” he says. “What say we blow this pop stand?”
I stare into his mysterious eyes. “Ya know, I have absolutely no idea what that means, but if it’s something like let’s hightail it out of here… I got your backside.”
Chapter Thirty-three
We’re on our way home the same way we came.
Through our beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Well, not exactly the same way. Sam is sitting beside Curry in the front seat, Ivory between them. Mama is wedged between Woody and me in the back. We each have one of her hands and I think that I will never let go of her again. I understand now how Papa couldn’t bear letting her out of his sight.
The mood in the car is being set by the sultry night and the song that Sam found on the radio. It’s not a show tune. It’s something sad, but sweet. Hoagy Carmichael? Yes, it’s “Stardust.” That makes me think of my father again.
I have no idea how long Mama’s been up at the Colony and why she never wrote or called to say, “Come get me,” and how… well, just everything. I big-wink at my sister. “You ready to explain now, Uncle Sam?”
Woody’s laugh reminds me of our barn door during a storm. It really does sound rusty.
Sam turns and grins at the Carmody girls with those beautiful headstone teeth that he inherited from my grandfather. He must be almost as happy as me and Woody to get Mama back. “If that’s all right with your mother.”
“Mama?” I ask. I am still having a very hard time believing she is here by my side and not in the ground buried six feet deep.