Author: KarenPopeWrites

I picked up my cell phone and called Matthew to let him know.  How many people would have to be told? No tangible number popped into my head.  Matthew answered,  “It’s the Anne Archer.  How did you get my number?”

He always said the same thing when he answered my calls, referring to the actress Anne Archer. My stock response:  “Not the Anne Archer.  Just an Anne Archer.”  

“What?  Your mother hate you?  She gave you two first names.  An Anne.”  Also part of our ritual.

“Matthew, I have some very bad news.  It’s about Lillian.”

“Uh oh,”  he said to me.

“She passed on just a few moments ago.  I was… still am with her.”  I managed to say it without my voice cracking.  “The doctor said it was heart failure.”

A long pause followed.  Finally, Matt said,  “Hard to believe.  I thought the old dear was immortal.”

“As did we all.”  My voice sounded tired.

“How is Chris doing?”  Ever the older brother.

“He walked out of the hospital and went outside to smoke.”

“Stupid man.  When did he start smoking, again?”  

“About a half an hour ago.”

“At least Mom doesn’t know that.  Anne, I am so sorry.  I know Chris will make you take care of all the arrangements.  Do you know what she wanted?”  Matt asked me.

“She wants a wake.  Not a funeral or a church service.  She will be cremated.  Nothing too complicated,”  I said.

“How soon?”  Matt asked.

“The wake can be just about anytime.  We could do it today, if I could get enough people together.  What about you?  Will you be able to come to her wake?  I can schedule it around you.”

I could almost see him shaking his head.  “I’m not going to try it.  The drive to Virginia is at least a couple of days.  I can’t leave Barbara that long and there is no way she can make the trip.  Also, you know I won’t fly.”

“How is she doing?”  I asked.  Anything to get my mind off of Lillian.  

“Barb’s chemo is beating her up.  She can’t eat or sleep or even concentrate long enough to watch a TV show.  She has another month of this, then she will have to recover from the effects of the chemo.  We are hoping she won’t have to do this again.”

“I am so sorry, Matt.  Tell Barbara I love her. I will call you.”

“Righteo,”  he said and then he disconnected the call.

I waited for Chris to return to the hospital room and after a half hour, I realized that likely wouldn’t happen.  I walked to the nurses’ station and asked them what I should do next.  The RN told me a counselor waited for me in a conference room across the corridor.  

The woman in Conference Room F wore a mask of too much makeup, and her smile was thin and forced. She looked up from her tablet when I entered.  “Mrs. Archer, I am Sunny Rivers.  I am very sorry for your loss.”  Sunny Rivers? Really? I refrained from making a joke she had probably heard about ten thousand times.  

When I said nothing, she continued,  “First, I would like to inform you that this hospital offers a complimentary grief counseling session, if you are interested.  You can call me and I will set it up for you.”  I took the proffered card that she slid across the table.  She continued her rote speech that sounded hollow and rehearsed.  “Are you aware of any arrangements Lillian Archer may have had?”

“Yes,”  I said.  “She wished to be cremated.  She has a prepaid plan at the funeral home on Market Street.”

“Very good.  We will arrange to have her remains transported later today.  Is there anything I can do for you?”  What a question.  Her tone made it sound like she had no intention of actually doing anything beyond her basic job description.  For more than one reason, I welcomed Chris’s absence as I pictured his temper tantrum when he saw the shallow female in the room.  Chris worshiped his mother and could not honestly understand when someone else didn’t.

“No. There is nothing.”

Sunny Rivers stood from a white plastic chair that was one of six around a small table and hurried out of the room with a toss of her blond hair and a swish of her short skater skirt.  

I returned to the nurses’ station and requested the RN inform Chris that I left if he should return.  I didn’t try to call him or to text him.  Maybe he acutely felt the loss of his mother, but that was no reason to leave me entirely on my own to handle it.  Coward.  Besides, I assumed he went to find comfort in the arms of his co-worker.  Another tiny blond with short skater skirts.

“Maybe you’ll chain smoke yourself to death,”  I muttered while I waited for the elevator. Finally, I left the oppressive building, found my car and climbed in.  

The sun crept across the sky, a light breeze rustled leaves on the trees, cars came and went in the lot.  Still, I hesitated to start my car.  Nothing crossed my mind other than the sure knowledge that my life changed forever.  And I suspected not for the better.

I glanced at my watch. Time passed without my noticing.  Three hours since I sat in the room with Sunny Rivers.  Lily would be home from school in an hour and I couldn’t chance Chris telling her about Lillian. I started my car and drove toward our house.

Thankfully, I didn’t see Chris’s car, so I could tell Lily, myself, knowing Chris generally made a mess of things.

The house looked exactly the same as when I left it earlier.  My coffee mug sat on the kitchen counter, the magazine I threw at Chris that morning lay with wings spread open like a dead bird on my living room floor.   Dirty breakfast dishes cluttered the sink and the dog’s food bowl stood empty. She looked up at me and her tail slowly flopped back and forth.  “Snow, I didn’t mean to forget you,”  I told the solid white German Spitz.  Snow was only two years old and I loved her dearly.  Her manners were impeccable and her disposition very sweet.  As a bonus, she completely adored me.

I poured some dog crunchies into the ceramic bowl shaped like a Chinese take-out box and freshened her water.  Oblivious to the human emotions around her, she crunched the food noisily.  

“You’ve got it right, Snow.  Just ignore everything except food and water.  In the grand scheme of things, what else do we truly need?”  I made another pot of coffee and waited in the kitchen while it brewed.  Before the carafe filled completely, I poured coffee into my mug, sat at a bar stool and settled in to wait for Lily to come in from school.

Chapter One  Hampton Virginia

The hospital smelled antiseptic and felt cold and lonely, like an unlived-in house with dusty sheets thrown over all the upholstery. Three ward clerks, two elevator rides, and I finally arrived at Lillian’s room.  Private accommodations resembling the five star hotel of your choice.  Chris sat in a chair beside her bed, dejected as a lost toddler.

No one told me anything prior to my arrival so I didn’t know what to expect.  Chris’s text sent less than an hour ago said, simply, “Mom’s in the hospital.  It’s bad.”  Because of my anger, I didn’t try to call him to find out more details.  Punishing him by punishing myself.

The text surprised me for two reasons.  Chris and I argued terribly for the past three weeks and just this morning, he stormed out of our house yelling through the slammed front door, “I will never set foot in this hell hole, again.”  An hour later, I received the text about his mother, a woman with a presumed lifespan roughly equal to a bristlecone pine.  Two shocking events to shatter my already shattered day.

Lillian’s frail body, grey skin, and multiple tubes and wires told a horrible tale.  “She collapsed in the grocery store,”  Chris said.  “The doctor said it is heart failure.”

“Chris, I’m so sorry,”  I whispered. Sorry for what?  Of course, I felt sorrow for his mother, but did the sentiment mean I forgave his behavior?  Not time for that, yet.

“She isn’t going to make it.  She is going to die.”  Chris dabbed the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.  “What am I going to do?  I can’t lose my mother and my wife in the same day.”

“You haven’t lost me.  I am just…”  Just what?  I wondered for several moments while Chris watched me expectantly.  He waited for my answer.  “I am just angry.”

He looked relieved.  “I know what I said this morning, Anne, but I need you.  Can I come home?”

“Yes.  You can’t sleep on a park bench.”

“Technically, I could.  I just don’t want to.”  He tried to smile.  Chris stood and said,  “Have a seat.  I’ll find another chair, plus I feel the need to smoke after all these months completely smoke free.”  

Are we to share anything?  Even this?  I watched his back as he left the room. Leaving me alone with his dying mother.

I turned my attention to Lillian, a woman I had grown to love deeply over the past seventeen years.  Lillian gave birth to Chris at the age of forty-seven. She and her eldest son, Matthew, raised Chris together because Chris’s father died on the day of his birth.

Lillian told me about Chris’s father shortly before our wedding. “Mr. Archer hung on as long as he could, actually waiting until he saw the baby before he fell into a coma and died about four hours later.  Late stage lung cancer from smoking five packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes every day for over forty years.  Stupid old bastard.  Left me and Matt to raise Chris and I think we did a good job.  You must think so, too, if you are planning to marry my son.”

Lillian was already seventy-seven when Chris and I married.  Seventeen years later, the ninety-four year old woman lay in a hospital, life rapidly slipping away.  Before her collapse, she lived alone in a grand old house that she cared for herself.  She even mowed the grass herself and repaired her dishwasher just two weeks ago.

“Oh, Lillian,”  I said as I gripped her hand hard enough to make my hand ache.  “Don’t leave us alone.  We need you something fierce, Chris and me.  We won’t make it as a couple without you.  Don’t go.”  And the tears wet her hand and mine.  The woman seemed as solid as Mount Rushmore the previous week when I visited her.

NOTE:  A couple of notes about this story.  First, the title is just a working title and may change.  Character names may change.  In fact, at this stage, anything can change.

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