From where did she get the strength? I wondered, Was it that she never stopped being a competitor? She could even compete against Death? Or did she really mean,
It's too much for me, for us?
She walked around to Mama's side and put her hand on Mama's shoulder. Mama slowly raised her head and looked at her and then at Daddy.
"He's so peaceful." she said. "Maybe this was the best way."
"Not for us." Brenda insisted.
I knew what she meant. We all knew now Daddy's purpose for what he had done, but what he hadn't anticipated was how much we would hate ourselves for how we had reacted to it. We now knew the sickness had turned him into the monster. We now knew that the man both Brenda and I had called Daddy and Mama had called her husband had died long before he had begun this attempt to stop us from mourning his death so bitterly.
Mama took a deep breath and nodded. She rose, leaned over to kiss Daddy's cheek, and then turned sadly away. I was next. His cheek was still warm and soft to me. I wanted to whisper something. What? What could I say to him now? It came to me in a flash that began somewhere deep in my heart and my memory.
"Good-bye, Mr. Panda," I whispered.
Brenda heard it. I saw her eves flinch and saw the way she raised them quickly toward the ceiling.
"Let's go," she forced herself to say.
Wasn't she going to kiss him? Couldn't she find it in her heart to forgive him?
I waited. Mama started for the door. Brenda stood there. Staring
down, and then she went to his side, took his hand in hers, and lowered herself to whisper. too. I didn't hear what she said, but as we left the room. I asked her what it was.
"I told him he was doing this just to prevent getting his ass kicked on the driveway basketball court," she said.
I looked up in surprise. Was that it? Were those all her possibly last words to him?
"And then I told him I loved him," she added.
Ms. Luther was waiting for us in the hallway and hurried to escort us out.
"Where will you be?" she asked, showing some sort of remorse and understanding.
Mama looked stunned by the question and shook her head. "I don't know yet. I. . ."
"We'll stop at that motel we saw on the way here," Brenda suggested quickly.
"Oh, yes."
"Here's the number of your husband's attorney, and here is our number," she added, giving Mama a card with the numbers written on it.
"Weren't you at least given instructions to call us in the event of his passing?" Mama asked.
"That's why I'm giving you these numbers," she replied.
"Gee, how considerate," Brenda muttered loudly enough for her to hear,
"We do only what we are instructed to do," Ms. Luther snapped at her.
"Only following orders? Where have I heard that before?" Brenda mused aloud.
Mama turned her toward the front entrance.
"Let's just go," she said, and we walked back through the lobby and out the door.
We drove directly to the motel we had passed and got two rooms since there wasn't one big enough for the three of us. Brenda and I shared one, and Mama took the one adjoining. As soon as she settled in. Mama called the attorney and spoke with him. We sat on her bed and listened to the conversation.
"Well," she said, turning to us after she was finished talking. "you heard some of it. Your father's plan was to keep us away from all the horror and misery he was going through. He was diagnosed some time ago and given little hope. When his symptoms grew worst, he made a decision to get away from us before they grew severe. The condition did affect his personality, his tolerance level, and his ability to do things for himself. He didn't want us to witness all that degeneration. There are instructions for afterward that included us. I guess the theory was that we would have all the sadness in one blow rather than a prolonged period of it.
"I could never hate him for this." she added, looking more at Brenda than at me.
"I don't hate him. Mama. I hate what's happened to him," Brenda said.
Mama took a deep breath. "I'll just get some rest, and then we'll see about finding a nice place to eat. We should have a good dinner," she said.
Good food always brought some comfort, helped you to feel better inside, I thought.
Brenda and I went to our room to rest. too.
"Did he have to go and hide the videos and take all those pictures from us?" I asked her, still stunned by the events as they were unfolding.
"He didn't know what he was doing by then, I'm sure," Brenda said. "The disease made him crazy. Just forget all of it. It didn't happen," she said.
Didn't happen? How could I ever convince myself of that? How could she?
I didn't think I would fall asleep when we both lay down to take a short nap. but I did. Emotional exhaustion was harder and greater than physical. I decided. Brenda actually had to wake me to get ready to go to dinner. Mama had woken and called our room. but I didn't hear the phone ring. She had already located what the motel manager described as a good Italian restaurant nearby.
"Italian food is your father's favorite food. actually," Mama told us on the way there.
It was strange to hear her talk about him as if we didn't really know him. Of course, we knew that was his favorite food.
Also, it was almost as if she were expecting he would meet us at the restaurant. He would have waken from his coma, gazed around, and thought. What am I doing here? He would have gotten dressed, found out where we were going, and gotten there ahead of us. I dreamed he was sitting at the table. smiling.
"I'm sorry, gang," he would begin. "I put you through all this unnecessarily. Let's just have a great dinner and all go home. okay?"
Oh, how okay that would be.
Maybe Mama was dreaming a similar sort of dream. In her mind, he would be up and ready when we visited him again. She was in what I would call a faux happy mood. She had a cocktail before dinner and talked incessantly, remembering happy times she had with Daddy. She talked about their courting days, their dates, their vacations before we were born. Recalling these joyful events invigorated her. Every memory was another brick in the wall to keep the tragedy and the horror about to befall us away for a while longer.
Unfortunately, that wasn't much of a while. Mama had called the facility and spoken with Ms. Luther. She gave her the phone number at the motel, and two hours or so after we had settled in for the night, the phone rang in Mama's room. Brenda told me she could hear it ring through the walls and woke up as well and could hear Mama's wail.
I was in a very deep sleep, burying myself in it as someone would bury herself in a few warm blankets. I didn't wake up until I heard sobbing and turned, wiped my eyes, and looked at Mama and Brenda holding on to each other.
I
dropped my head to the pillow and cried myself.
"At least we got here to see him," Mama said through her tears. "He waited for us. I know he did."
Even Brenda looked as if she believed that was what had happened.
In the morning, we headed back home. Daddy, in his careful preparations to lessen the impact of his death upon us, had made all the arrangements for his funeral and burial. We literally had nothing to do but dress and attend the church service and the
internment,
Uncle Palaver had been calling us and reached us the day after we returned. Mama said he didn't seem all that surprised about what Daddy had done. He said he, too, had felt there was something unreal about it when he first learned of Daddy's leaving us but soon realized it was all true, terribly true. Now that he knew the whole story, he saw it as just another kind of sleight of hand. It would take him too long to drive back, so he flew back on a small commuter airline and was there at our side throughout. I wondered why he didn't bring Destiny, but Brenda thought he had decided it just wasn't the right time to make new acquaintances.
"She would be too uncomfortable. I know I would be,' Brenda said. Of course. I agreed.
I was sure that people, friends and some distant relatives who came, all thought it strange that we cried little at the services. The truth was, we had already cried out our tears. That was why we were so still and vacant-eyed at the funeral. I knew people wouldn't understand. They all thought we were still angry about his running off. perhaps. I could see it in their faces when they offered their condolences. They disapproved, and that disapproval diminished their sympathy. Daddy never thought of that either, I realized.
In one sense, he certainly did make things easier. The transition to life without him had already taken place. After Uncle Palaver left to resume his touring with Destiny, both Brenda and I returned to school as quickly as we could. Teachers and friends offered sympathy. but Brenda barely acknowledged it. If anyone thought she walked about with a chip on her shoulder before, they were convinced that chip had grown now. The anger that festered inside her continued to emerge in her athletics. She was far more aggressive on the courts and always looked like a bomb about to explode.
Mama again talked about returning to work but never made a real effort to do so. She was shrinking inside, and she lost more weight. When I voiced my worry, she told me it was expected after the loss of a loved one and not to worry. She would get on her feet soon. Why didn't I have the same reaction? Why didn't I lose weight? I think I ate more out of depression and sadness and gained more weight.
I moaned and groaned about myself as if
I
were talking about someone else.
"You'll change," Mama assured me. "Soon."
There was that word again, that word built on a foundation of promises: soon. It had been following me all my life. In the next weeks and months. little_ if anything. changed. however. I went to a party but felt I was being invited out of sympathy and not desire. Even the girls who were not very popular avoided me. In the food chain. I guess I was the lowest of the low, and their disdain for me helped them feel a little better about themselves. If any boy looked at me. I quickly looked away, afraid that all I would see in his eyes would be either disgust or pity. Here I was nearly sixteen. and I hadn't as much as held hands with a boy, much less kissed any.
That summer. Brenda decided to take two of her senior year's required courses in an advanced study program the school had created. Her grades were just high enough for her to qualify. It made her eligible for early graduation. There were college scouts and representatives vigorously inquiring about her now, and before the high school year had ended, she had received two offers of full scholarships. If she completed her summer courses successfully, she would receive her diploma in mid- August and be able to leave and go to college in time to play for the girls
.
basketball teams. It was only a matter of deciding which one she wanted to attend.
The very thought of Brenda's leaving home so quickly depressed me. How hollow and empty the house would become without her, even though she spent so much time outside. During the Summer, she also gave me more attention.
"You have to get hold of yourself. April," she said, finally echoing Daddy's warnings, the ones he made during his Mr. Hyde days. "Daddy wasn't all wrong about that. It is unhealthy for you to carry so much weight. You're acing to start running and exercising with me," she commanded.
I was afraid I would look too foolish, but she was more tolerant and patient with me than ever. I had the sense she had decided she owed this to Daddy, more than she owed it to me. One day, she even ransacked our kitchen pantry, emptying it of what she called high-calorie, low-value foods. She got Mania to stop making rich desserts after dinner, and she constantly cross- examined me about what I had eaten while she was away at school.
Before the summer had ended. I had gone a good ten pounds below my weight since Daddy had died. Brenda had me take tennis lessons, made me carry her golf clubs when she played golf with two of her teammates at a country club one of them belongs to, and nightly put me through a series of stretching exercises. We did some yoga together as well.
For the first time ever. I felt more like her sister. I think that motivated me more than my own desire to look better and feel better. It was important to please Brenda, to keep her interested in me, believing her efforts with me were worthwhile. With her going off to college. I wondered if I would just slip back into my couch potato rut and regain all
I
had lost.
"You better not." she told me before she left when I wondered about it aloud. "You have to take better care of yourself so you can look after Mama better, too," she warned..
Mama needed looking after. She had withdrawn into herself so deeply we both thought it would be difficult, if not impossible, to bring her back out.
"We're all she has now." Brenda said, "You've got to get her to think about herself. Be cheery, upbeat. Join something like the drama club, if not one of the teams. Make her come out to see you do things. You understand. April. It's going to be up to you now,"
I nodded, terrified of the responsibility.
"Maybe Uncle Palaver will be back soon." I said.
"He won't, and besides, he won't be here long if he is. That's not the solution. April. Mama is our problem."
She smiled.
"You'll be all right. You'll see," she said. "I'll call often, and you'll come visit me when you can." "Really'?"
"Of course," she said. "I'll want you to bring Mama to the big games. too."
I didn't think I would cry the day she left. I was older now, not only because of time but because of what we had experienced. I
wanted to be more like Brenda. I wanted to have her strength and her steely eves and stoic face when I would most need it.
Mama had given Brenda her car, since we had Daddy's car now, too. I watched her pack and helped her load the car. When it was time for her to go. Mama and I walked out to the driveway to hug and kiss her good-bye.
She glanced at the basketball net and
backboard. She squinted. and, like her. I could hear Daddy's laughter.
"I'11 tell you both a secret," she said, still looking at the net. "It didn't matter that he wasn't there at the end, that he didn't come with you to the games and cheer with you."
She looked at me. Her gaze was firm, her eyes assured and focused the way she could make them when she put her whole heart into what she would do or say.
"He was always there. I saw him." "Yes," Mama said, nodding and smiling.
"Don't you go gaining back a single ounce. April. I'm warning you," she said.
"I won't. I promise."
She got into her car and started the engine.