Gone & Gone

The Bad Gene

52 The Bad Gene for Madeleine Parker, 1921-1987 The things you thought would be there always ended with a mom. But she would get “the depression,” the black kernel that popped in her brain & then there was no telling. The ground opened at your feet & all that was known slid in. • It was a good day to be living— it was a good day to breathe the air & know there was something inside it. We carried your mother in our car & took her places that made her happy, poked among the strategic plaids & mad stripes at Jordan Marsh, blueberry muffins in hand & a robe that no one really wants. Purchases, you know, the chorale, the hallelujah of those voices raining down like all the credit cards of the world come to bless her in wildness, in safety. We forgave her everything, because we realize finally she may deserve it. 53 All that she made you swallow doesn’t matter anymore, there’s a reptilian sloughing off that scrapes but cleanses & braces like a fish knife that recognizes its scales; like a shower at the end of a long, long day. • At lunch, her crazy face summoned forth the angels— her spare, deserted smile measured the light in the room & found it wanting. So what could we do, unbalanced on the scale of whoever she had to be. She said that their gluttonous faces stared with distaste & that the room then closed in a darkened jury, an injury, a bruise. We took her home where she told us of the triumphant train ride & mixed Moxie with ice cream— a dollop of peace. 54 • Some nights she could not get to the oasis of dreaming that would help her forget. So she stalked through the rooms— or waited out the dark, perseverent yet prone. • “I think I understand you with your sweeping arms, my head shifted up to the sky as smoothly as you, coming down less drastically, less vertically. Yet I come back to this picture from our wedding; as you tell me that you will check on me, that you will swoop over our house to make sure I’m taking care of your daughter. & your daughter understands. That I am here now. That I know. Then you hug me, ecstatic & already air-borne, your heart-heavy lungs freed long enough.” 55 • She had some better months & took herself off before they could spoil. In the hospital she kept repeating good good good though nothing was—in those last weeks I like to speak French was her only complete sentence. At the end, as the background voice clawed “help me help me help me” in its unsufferable metronome, you placed your hand on her forehead & stroking repeatedly helped lift her out to the other place where nothing is known— that sweet & silly breath come clear at last. ...