Stone Arabia. Dana Spiotta
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were complex cakes, you had to bake sheet-pan cakes and then make stencils so you could cut them in the right shapes. Then you had to decorate them properly. According to the instructions.”
“Yes, that must have been so much work. They were great, we loved them.”
“You decided you were too old for funny-shaped birthday cakes, remember? You said that was for babies. But I knew you still wanted a cake, you just couldn’t admit it. So I went in your room and I found a picture on your bulletin board—”
“Aladdin Sane! Of course! How could I have forgotten that? You made me a beautiful Bowie birthday cake! It was amazing, with the frosting lightning bolt across his face. I forgot all about that. That was amazing!”
We both were so thrilled that she remembered something I had forgotten. She beamed at me, nodding. Then she started to laugh, and she looked like my full, young mother for a moment. She reached for my hand and squeezed it. Her hand felt cool. Her skin looked old, but it felt soft and delicate. It wasn’t smooth and fat like a child’s skin, but it was almost softer.
“I have to go to work,” I said. I could hear my voice quake and jerk. Usually I was fine when I was with my mother. Usually I didn’t start to cry until after I left her, when I was in the car, driving. But there I was, hard-swallowing and sniffing. “I’ll be late. Mama, I love you.”
“I love you,” she said, and we hugged. I didn’t let go for an extra second. Pay attention to this. Hug tight, this could be one of the last hugs. I had been making myself think this way since I’d turned forty. My mother was not that old, but she had diabetes. She was overweight. She was not healthy. And even if she didn’t die in the next few years, her mind was rapidly slipping away. Maybe one day soon the hug won’t be with my mother, but with her body and what remains of her. One day she’ll hug me and mistake me for someone else, and so these current, somewhat intact moments were fleeting. I noted that, marked it in my mind. Don’t forget what it was like to embrace her, all of her, and don’t let it be replaced with what will come, soon, a certainly diminished future, or at least a wholly different future, because, as her doctor said without exactly saying, it will only get worse.
I have always been the sort of person who is easily panicked about how quickly time passes, but in the past this was mostly related to Ada. I would remind myself not to get too distracted, because four would soon be five would soon be ten and then her childhood would be gone forever. I remember frantically looking for the dimples on the backs of her chubby hands, convinced I would be so sad the moment I noted their certain replacement by knuckles. I would kiss those dimples—and as much as I missed them, I loved the beautiful hands that emerged. But this current accounting with my mother was so much darker: she would be less and less and then she would be gone. A memory. Ada became an adult with all of her baby brightness intact, fully realized and elaborated. And I wouldn’t have to witness her unwinding and diminishing. That would be her daughter’s burden.
But I knew this was not even true. I knew other horrors awaited. I knew that just as I was starting to fall apart right in front of my mother, just as I knew my mother must note my sad middle-aged visage, I knew I would live long enough to see Ada start to grow old. Already when I see her I notice how she looks more tired in tiny ways. I would live to see her get crow’s-feet and gray hair and hands that showed veins. I would see her feet and her neck change. I would see the perfection of her body be undone by time. I might live to see her lonely, divorced, unhappy, and a hundred other disappointments. What you don’t think about or plan for (as if that helps) is watching your children get old. The privilege of a long life is you live long enough to see your perfect child also submit to time and aging.
So, on my forty-seventh birthday—if that was truly my middle age—what did the second half of my life hold for me? I would watch my mother and her friends and siblings die, one by one, but also all at once, a flurry of funerals, then watch my brother and my friends as they speedily replaced them as failing beings on the way out. Everyone knows that is just how it goes. I’m not the only one, right? And let’s not forget I get to experience my own dwindling vitality, which will surely accelerate and reach critical mass in the next fifteen years.
I stood in my mother’s doorway and scanned the room. Soon she would have to move from this apartment—it went in-home aide to assisted living to a full-care facility to a hospice. I was just waiting for the thing to reach the next level. Whenever I visited, I was vigilant in looking for signs of new deterioration. Was she wearing pajamas in the afternoon? Did she smell clean? I expected to find rotten food in the refrigerator, a carton of old milk congealing in the cupboard. But her routine—and I made sure it was always the same for her—could stay intact for the moment. I checked in with her most mornings, and her home health aide came in the afternoon to help her with dinner. Once a week we went shopping and had lunch together. She appeared to hold at this point, but I couldn’t stay where she was—I waited and watched for what came next.
I think on some level I always imagined Nik would never make it into old age, how could he? He didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. I knew he would die of cigarettes and drinking long before I would finally die. I just got to witness and witness and stupidly survive. The second half of my life was just the bill due for the pleasures of the first half. And Nik would get to escape payment.
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