LAURIE ANN DOYLE Roses and Formaldehyde

LAURIE ANN DOYLE | ROSES AND FORMALDEHYDE

Late at night I heard my mother cleaning: the roar of the Hoover, her quick footsteps, then chairs scraping across the floor. The smells of Lemon Pledge and sudsy ammonia wafted into our bedroom. “Zach, do you hear something?” “Not really,” my boyfriend grunted. “Maybe.” “What’s happening?” “Beats me.” He rolled over and fell back asleep. My mother died six months ago. She’d had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, doctor’s appointments all the time. Last January, she beat back double pneumonia and was her old self again. Calling me two, three times a day, wanting me to come over and fix the TV, check the checkbook, dust. The last time she phoned she asked me where the aspirin was. I told her in a not-very-patient voice. Then, feeling guilty, I offered to bring over chicken soup. She was my mother, after all. And I, her only daughter, my father long gone. She pulled in a raspy breath. “It’s nothing,” she said, not sounding very happy either. “I’m fine. Really.” That night my mother died in her sleep. Quickly, the doctor said. Now here she was furiously cleaning my apartment. I heard her rustling on the other side of the wall, humming “Stormy Weather” and talking to the furniture the way she always used to when she rearranged it. “Not bad,” she said. Then, “Old friend.” I didn’t want to go see. Maybe her face was decayed and half-crumpled in, maybe she was just a bodiless voice, a vacuum running through air. Or maybe she looked the way I remembered her as a child, just five foot three, but huge to me, with a long pale neck and eyes that turned from brown to green in bright sun. In life, cleaning had not been her thing. Rearranging furniture, yes, but never cleaning. She’d sponge the kitchen counter in big fast circles, leaving behind a thick trail of crumbs. Before Zach and I moved her into the senior facility, I had to scrub congealed blood out of the refrigerator meat compartment. Now I heard my mother washing dishes with a vengeance at three in the morning. Something crashed. Then something else.

I was out of bed in my pajamas and bare feet, heading into the kitchen. She had pulled out my garbage can and was standing next to it holding up a Blue Onion plate to the light. Soapy water dripped down her purple Playtexgloved thumb. “That’s my plate,” I said. She smelled like roses—her favorite scent—and formaldehyde. “Well, I was the one who gave it to you.” My mother flung it in the trash. “What are you’re doing?” “It’s cracked. And I can’t have you eating off cracked plates. For one thing, they might cut you. Another, they’re unsightly.” She looked at me long and hard. Her hair was back to its original dark red. Two spots of mauve stood out on her blue-white cheeks. She wasn’t wearing the practical blue pantsuit we had buried her in, but turquoise slacks and a bright gold sweater still covered with Esmeralda’s cat hairs. My mother dragged on her Pall Mall until it glowed. Apparently, she had decided in death she could start smoking again. The long ash tipped but didn’t fall. “It was just chipped,” I said. “Chipped is bad enough.” Her voice had that stubborn Fresno twang it could get. She dunked a juice glass in the foamy water with the same intense energy I remembered. Growing up, when my mother turned all her attention on me, life seemed magical. She’d take me to her office on Van Ness and introduce me around like I was the smartest kid in the world, then over to Golden Gate Park where we’d float silver balloons up into the eucalyptus until the treetops glittered. But long gray months also went by when she ignored me, babysitters picking me up right after school and staying way past dark. Even my mother’s toothbrush was missing, away at the office. As adults, we fought and made up on a regular basis. Did I tip the waiter at Lori’s Diner enough? Had she taken all her pills? Was this truly the best parking spot? But we shared a closeness, too, from hours spent in City Lights bookstore where she’d head off to history, and me, to art, and holidays ice skating in endless circles around the rink in Union Square.

“Why are you here?” I asked. After my mother died, memories kept coming out of nowhere: her fingers setting a warped picnic table in Yosemite, the salty smell of Rice-A-Roni, her red-lipsticked lips opening to the green olive in a martini. Sometimes I’d forget she was dead and pick up the phone. But lately, I don’t know, whole days went by when I hardly thought of my mother at all. I’ve finished grieving, I told myself. Her purple fingers held up another heirloom plate to the light. “Stop!” I reached out and touched her arm. My hand didn’t go through. Her skin felt cool and firm, something between damp clay and moist cement. Smoke drifted around her face. She put down the plate and stubbed out the cigarette in an old rosebud ashtray she must have dug out of a box somewhere. My mother reached into the cupboard and pulled out a mug with Emmie! and two green hearts that she’d painted for my eighth birthday. “Pretty good,” she said, “don’t you think?” Suddenly I was crying, tears spilling down my pajamas and staining my cheeks. “Oh, honey,” my mother said. She placed her cool hand in mine and pulled me out into the dark night.