The Mother Garden Read Free

These things are now as normal as tea in the afternoon, wind over the sea. We’ve gone from hoping for miracle cures to just hoping the sandwiches are good.
    â€œThese are good,” I say. They are good. Salty and creamy with a nice, crisp snap when you bite into the cucumber.
    â€œI love your nails,” Gracie says, leaning over to inspect my mother’s hands. My mother has kept up her biweekly manicure. “That color looks so good with your skin tone. You’ve got such pale skin, like a doll’s.”
    â€œI have this woman in Eugene,” my mother says. “She’s a miracle.”
    When we’re finished eating, my mother invites Gracie onto the deck. Gracie stacks some plates and hands them over to me. My mother slides open the door.
    â€œAren’t you tired?” I ask her. It sounds like an accusation. Usually, after she sits upright for a while, she has to lie down and use the breathing machine in the bedroom.
    â€œI’m fine, Nina,” she says, putting her hand on Gracie’s back as they step outside.
    From the window above the sink, I can see my mother and Gracie. Gracie’s hair blows sideways. My mother stands near the railing. She says something. Gracie laughs and puts her hand on my mother’s shoulder.
    Gracie hasn’t even glanced at the phone. Doesn’t anyone need to know that she just washed up from a foamy sea, that she’s wearing a dying woman’s blush in a house full of hissing tubes and battered green canisters?

    My father sits on the sofa, reading the paper. Pico rests near his legs, Lila near the empty fireplace. I get on the floor and put my head on Lila’s wiry chest. She lifts her head to glance at me, deeply exhausted, the white hairs around her nose spreading out toward her eyes. Then she puts her heavy head back down.
    â€œWhat do you think the deal is with that Gracie character?” my dad says, putting the paper aside.
    â€œI know,” I say, rolling off the dog’s chest. “Where’d she come from?”
    â€œIsn’t there a play about this?” my father asks. “She’s going to fool us all into thinking she’s one of us, then she’s going to steal the dogs. Or the cars.”
    â€œOr something,” I say. “Mom seems to like her.”
    â€œYeah,” he says, gazing at the lamp in the corner of the room. “She does, doesn’t she?”
    When my mother likes something, my father is amazed. He’ll buy raspberry soda and she’ll slink off to finish the bottle and he’ll come into my room to report that she liked it! She liked it!
    But maybe this is the right way to deal with the dying: She likes cream puffs? We’ll bring her cream puffs. She wants to yell at us for renting another movie with a dying woman in it (it didn’t say it on the box, we checked!), then yell away! It’s her world; we’re just hanging around, trying to keep it turning.
    My father puts the newspaper down. Pico stares at him, his eyes little machines of want.
    â€œPico’s so passionate,” my father says, looking back at the dog. “I love Pico.”
    The glass door opens. My mother slowly moves over the threshold, Gracie behind her.
    â€œI’m going to take the dogs out,” my father says.
    â€œI’m going to lie down for a bit,” my mother says, making her way down the hallway. I follow her and shut the door. She sits on her big turquoise bed.
    â€œCan you hook up the bipap?” she says, lifting the mask. Once she straps that monster on, she’ll be unable to talk.
    â€œHow are you?” I ask. She hates being asked this. She’s told me this over and over again. “I’m peachy keen!” she’ll say. “Never better! Why? Do I look sick?”
    â€œFine,” she says. “Tired.”
    â€œThe sandwiches were good,” I say. She fiddles with the dial of the bipap machine. “So