The image of my mother in her baggy T-shirts and lumpy sandals wrestling in midair with Miss Scace, still possibly with her umpire’s whistle around her neck, was too much for me. I was tempted to laugh, but that would have been cruel. “Maybe you should call it quits,” I said. “Declare a truce.”
“She’d never do that. Venomous old hag.”
“It’s bad for your health,” I said.
“I know, my pet.” She sighed. “For myself I wouldn’t care. But I’m doing it for you, as I always have. And the girls, of course. My granddaughters. I wouldn’t want her to harm them. Maybe one of them has inherited the talent, so it won’t be wasted.”
It was high time we returned to so-called reality. “Have you paid your heating bill?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t need any heat,” she said. “I’m immune to the cold.”
Her decline was now rapid. Shortly after this, she broke her hip—falling out of the air onto a chimney, she whispered to me—and had to be taken to the hospital. I tried to consult with her about her future: after they fixed the hip she’d go to a rehab place, then to a nice assisted-living facility . . .
“None of that will be needed,” she said. “I won’t leave the hospital in this body. It’s all been arranged.”
The arrangements included congestive heart failure. Final scene: I’m at her hospital bedside, holding her fragile, thick-veined hand. How had she become so little? She was hardly there at all, though her mind still burned like a blue flame.
“Tell me you were making it up,” I said. Now that I was asking directly and not in anger—a thing I’d never exactly done before—surely she would admit it.
“Made what up, my treasure?”
“The hair burning. The pointing. All of it. It was like my father being a garden gnome, wasn’t it? Just fairy tales?”
She sighed. “You were such a sensitive child. So easily wounded. So I told you those things. I didn’t want you to feel defenseless in the face of life. Life can be harsh. I wanted you to feel protected, and to know that there was a greater power watching over you. That the Universe was taking a personal interest.”
I kissed her forehead, a skull with a very thin covering of skin. The protector was her, the greater power was her, the Universe that took an interest was her as well; always her. “I love you,” I said.
“I know, my treasure. And did you feel protected?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did.” This was somewhat true. “It was very sweet of you to invent all that for me.”
She looked at me sideways out of her green eyes. “Invent?” she said.
And so I come to the end. But it’s not the end, since ends are arbitrary. I’ll close with one more scene.
My eldest daughter is now fifteen, the talk-back age. A tug-of-war is going on: she wants to go running, in the dark, with some jock I’ve barely set eyes on. Running! Girls didn’t used to run, except at track and field. They ambled, they strolled. To run would be undignified and lollopy; who knew about sports bras back then?
My daughter is wearing skintight pants and a stretchy top; her arms are bare, with three tattoos on each, all of them birds and animals. I’d explained the difficulty of removal should one change one’s mind later, but to no avail.
“No running in the dark,” I insist. “It’s too dangerous. There are prowlers.”
“You’re not the boss of me! There are streetlights, for fuck’s sake!”
No use at all to say, “Vulgar language” or even “Potty mouth.” That horse bolted long ago. “Nevertheless. And with your, your friend . . . Boys can get carried away.”
“Carried away, fuck! We’ll be fucking running! It’s not like he’s a rapist! I mean, he can be a bit of a dick, but . . .”
Bit of a dick? I sometimes need a dictionary. “I’m saying no.”
“You’re such a bitch!”
“Don’t make me point,” I say. I’m beginning to get angry.
“What? Don’t make you point?” She rolls her eyes, laughs. “Fuck my life! What’s pointing?”
“It’s a hex thing,” I say, straight-faced. “You wouldn’t like the results.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she sneers. “A hex thing! Are you insane?”
“Your grandmother was a witch,” I say, as solemnly as I can.
This brings her up short. “You’re shitting me! You mean, like, really?”