What remains of Constance Burgess lies shuddering in Room 128. The lights in her apartment are mostly off, a complement to her inner dimming. A table lamp's glow skims the plateaus of her face but not the valleys. Her bare arms are bruised and bandaged. Her knobby hands gather and grip the sheets. Her withered legs and feet are buried beneath institutional linen.
Nancy enters without knocking.
Constance is where the nursing assistant left her, upper torso elevated to prevent fluid buildup and a fresh pad beneath. She is dessicated. Her closed lids are taut, draped over retreating eyes.
Nancy has brought her mother’s dinner in a styrofoam cup: ice chips. Constance barely chews anymore, but she continues to swallow. Nancy scrapes together a bite.
“Sorry about that. I got hung up chatting with Meredith. Her daughter’s turning 11 Saturday. Are you hungry? I brought you something.”
She extends a plastic spoon to Constance's mouth. The ice is not granted admission. Nancy tips cold water into the thin gap, and it goes down. Nancy dabs at the corner of Constance's chapped lips.
Constance moans. She strains forward as though she would rise.
“Where’re you going, Mom?”
Nancy offers futile reassurance. She gently pushes Constance’s bony shoulders to ease her backwards.
“That’s better. Relax.”
When what passes for a last meal is over, what passes for her mother is motionless. Nancy strokes Constance’s matted hair. Nancy’s back aches from leaning over a bed rail so much this week. She reclines and keeps watch. Constance takes three shallow breaths, then pauses. She takes three more, then pauses. The end is near.
Yesterday, Constance spoke her last words.
“Nancy.
Nancy.
Nancy. Nancy.
Nancy.”
When her daughter answered, Constance spoke over her.
“–Nancy. Nancy.”
Wherever she was, Constance was unreachable.
Nancy was within reach even when vacationing in Raleigh or Dublin. For years, calls from Springhurst disturbed normalcy with grim updates. A UTI, a fever, a fall in the bathroom, a dispute in the dining hall: the reports were never good. Tuesday, Nancy received a call from Maria, the hospice nurse. She described Constance as transitioning.
“Transitioning into what?”
“We call it active dying. It sounds strange but… Every living thing transitions from life to death. Just like it had from nothing to birth. The bud to the flower–”
“–the grape to the raisin.”
Soberly, Maria framed Nancy's expectations. The dying often experience incontinence and a loss of appetite. As blood pressure decreases, their skin becomes mottled and cool to the touch. Autonomic function persists but they are often unresponsive. She referenced Cheyne-Stokes breathing, as though naming were taming. The terminally ill are rarely in pain. If they are, staff can do something about that. She had spoken with Dr. Wong. He signed a script for morphine.
“It’s hard, I know, but this is a completely natural process.”
“That's the worst part,” Nancy said.
***
In her day, Constance made many things: beds, children, meals, coffee, a stiff drink, her mind up, herself clear, insensitive remarks, others laugh, travelling salesman quake, money on the side, mountains out of molehills. For every family function over which she presided, Constance made pies. From scratch, she made them. Long after filling came canned, she preserved fruit. Long after margarine's advent, she rendered lard.
She made pies rather than sweet declarations. If she ever once expressed affection for someone, that sufficed. She would repeat herself regarding the evils of nonfat anything but not her love. She preferred to let lattice tops and shortcrusts do the talking.
Doing says more than saying, she would say. She did most of her cooking from memory. She baked without pastry blenders and measuring cups. She baked without cooking blogs and Cool Whip. She only needed a bowl for mixing, two knives for cutting in, a fork for crimping, and a Hubbard scale she bought in 1948 and toted with her over three continents and sixteen residences.
Blackberry, blueberry, gooseberry, strawberry, cherry, peach, rhubarb, pumpkin, pecan, sweet potato, buttermilk, shoofly, and chess: Constance made them all. For birthdays, she made the celebrated’s favorite. For Nancy, Constance made black bottom pie. The name made Nancy snicker; the flavor made her swoon.
The key ingredient was Evan Williams bourbon. Constance's unwritten recipe called for a half cup: a quarter cup for the pie and a quarter cup for the cook. Nancy watched her mom work, from a stepstool to tippy-toes to over her mom's shoulder. Nancy learned to freeze the shortening, add a splash of milk to the egg wash, and use dried beans for weights.
More than the wrong turns, forgotten names, misplaced items, or tumbles down the split-level, the omitted pies heralded Constance's demise. Rather than rely upon Marie Callender, she skipped parties. The assembled began moving on before their matriarch was gone.
***
In her day, Constance saw many things: tornadoes, eclipses, her mom drop dead, Jim Crow, Elvis, a big hit on a Reno slot, her baby turn blue, firebombing, the sunrise over the Sea of Japan, walls erected and felled, a president assassinated, passion dissipated, the Civil Rights Act, countless gadgets invented, her husband embalmed, and her granddaughter clad in white. The last thing she'll see is Nancy's face, dark and blurred beneath the popcorn ceiling.
As Nancy looks down, she begins to think of her mother in the past-tense. Constance was more than her 88 pounds, more than what she did and saw, more than the surrounding souvenirs and photographs memorialize. She was more than her estate, more than the credit given to and grievances born against her.
Nancy knows she must extricate her hand from the one her mother formerly commanded. She must stand up, notify the nurses, and make final arrangements. She must call kin, fill trash cans, and dab tears. Nancy will return to clean out the closets and empty the cabinets. For now, she will tuck the Hubbard scale under her arm and slip the stowed miniature of EW into her pocket. Both still work.
