The Lost

Chapter Twenty-Seven

In the waiting room, I draw sketches of her. Her, in the hospital bed. Her, at home with her plants. Her, at the kitchen table. Her, on the beach. Her and me with our toes in the ocean. In Maine. In California. In the woods. At the movies. The nurses keep feeding me paper, and I don’t look up except when I need the next sheet.

One hour passes, two, three.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a doctor enter the waiting room. William. He crosses to the nurses’ station, speaks to them, and then walks toward me.

I shoot to my feet, and the sketches scatter across the floor. I search his face for a hint. His face is kind, sympathetic, and my hands begin to shake. I clasp them together.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “There’s nothing more we can do. She’s not in any pain right now, but all we can do is keep her comfortable. It won’t be much longer.”

It feels as if the earth has quit spinning. Everything feels hushed, as if it’s holding its breath. Or maybe that’s only me. I can’t breathe. I nod as if what he’s saying makes sense, as if it even sounds like words.

“You had better go in now and say goodbye.”

I am still nodding, as if I’m a marionette and my head is on a string. Bending, I scoop up my drawings and clutch them to my chest, and then I feel my feet walking toward her door. I think William is beside me or behind me, but I don’t look. My eyes are only on her door, partially ajar. It feels both infinitely far and much too close. Like the void. It gapes at me. I reach it and push it open, and I walk inside.

Mom lies on the bed. Her eyes are closed. She has an oxygen mask on her face, and it makes her look shrunken around it. I focus on her chest, and I can’t see the rise and fall, but I hear the beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor. Each beep seems to wait a painfully long time until the next one. I drag the chair close to her bed, and I take her hand.

Her eyes flutter open. I see her smile under the oxygen mask as she turns her head and sees me. Her fingers curl around mine, but it seems as if that takes all her strength, because she releases and lets her hand simply rest in mine, limp.

“Hi,” I say.

It’s all I can think of to say. Hi.

“I drew you some pictures.” I fumble for the papers. I’ve been clutching them in my hand, and the edges are rumpled. I smooth them out and hold them up one after another so that she can see. She points to the one of her and me by the beach.

“Yeah, that’s my favorite, too,” I say. “Mom...” There are a million things I want to say, but only one of them is important. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Lauren.” Her voice is muffled under the mask, but I can hear it fine. She has tears in her red eyes. I stroke her hand and she stares at me as if drinking me in. Softly, slowly, she then says, “If I had any sense of timing, I would have died after saying that.”

I smile because I know she wants me to. I can’t make myself laugh, even for her. I lean forward so only she will hear me, though we are alone. “I wasn’t taking you home. We were going on one last road trip. You were going to come with me to Lost.”

“That would have been nice. Can’t make it right now. Pressing engagement elsewhere. Can I take a rain check?” Her words are staccato and breathy, so soft and light that they float like bubbles in the air.

This time, I do laugh, but it’s a choked strangled sob-laugh. I can feel the tears pressing against my eyes and heating my face. But if I break down in tears, I can’t talk, and I desperately want to be talking to her. “Can’t take a rain check in Lost. I never saw it rain. But the ocean is amazing. I told you about the dolphin, right?”

“You know it wouldn’t have worked, right?”

“I think it’s real, Mom. I know that sounds crazy, but—”

“I couldn’t have gone.” Mom smiles, the barest upturn of her lips, as if even that movement costs her. “I’m not lost. Even on the day your father left, and everything I’d planned and dreamed of went up in smoke, I was not lost. I had you. Knowing you, loving you...I couldn’t...I can’t...be lost.” Each word is slowly delivered, as if she’s wrapping and packaging them to give to me. “I told him that, too.”

“Who? Dr. Barrett?”

She beckons me closer. I lean in as she says, “You aren’t lost, either.”

I nod because she wants me to, not because I believe her. “I don’t know who I am without you.”

“Liar,” she whispers.

I take a deep breath and then let it out. It’s never calmed me before, but it helps now. My mom watches me breathe as if I’m doing something alien and interesting. Her breaths are shallow and ragged, as if through a crushed straw.

“You will be okay,” she tells me. “Maybe not at first. Maybe not for a while. But you will. And if you ever feel lost again...promise me one thing.” Her voice is very, very faint. Her words are carried on her breath, the slightest bending of her breath. “Kiss that tattooed boy of yours for me.”

I laugh. A real laugh. But then her eyes flutter closed. “Mom?”

“Talk to me,” she whispers. “Tell me about Lost, about your Finder, about the Missing Man.”

I tell her everything, every detail I can think of, every word that was said. I tell her about the red balloon that always floats over town, about the buttons and socks and keys and glasses that overflow the gutters, about the stacks of luggage, about the houses, about the diner and the motel, about Claire and Peter, about Victoria and Sean, about the barn with the lost masterpieces. Sometimes nurses come in. Sometimes William. Every time one does, I pause talking and Mom murmurs for me to continue. So I do. When I run out of stories about Lost, I switch to my memories of us, the times we shared in both California and Maine, childhood memories and teenage memories and recent memories, happy and sad and embarrassing and silly and good and bad. And she listens with a smile on her face and her hand in my hand.

She dies at 2:34 in the afternoon.

Her hand is limp in mine. Her breath falls and doesn’t rise. The beep becomes a shrill, steady alarm. Doctors and nurses rush in. I back away as they try to revive her. Her body arches as the paddles shock her, and I turn away and focus instead on the sketches that fill the wall until my ears blur. After a while, I hear the monitor shut off. And silence.

I feel a hand on my shoulder.

I cover William’s hand with mine.

There isn’t anything to say. I’ve said it all.

I arrange for the funeral on a Saturday, and in the obituary I list her favorite flowers so that the funeral home will be full of them, and it is. I throw away any fake flowers. I hang the sketches of her on the wall between the peonies and lilacs and irises and gerbera daisies and roses, along with some of our favorite photographs.

I stand next to the casket and greet people: far-flung cousins, my condescending uncle, her coworkers from the library, my coworkers Kristyn and Angie, our neighbors, a few of her childhood friends, a few of mine, some of the kindest doctors and nurses. I’ve put a blank book by the door for them to write a memory of her if they want, and a lot of them tell me a memory as they shake my hand or hug me. Some of them are stories that I’ve never heard, and I drink them in.

Outside, in the cemetery, I read poems that she liked. My voice doesn’t crack. Afterward, my supervisor from work is the first to hug me. “Take as much time as you need. Your position will be waiting for you.”

“I won’t be returning,” I say, “but thank you.”

She clearly doesn’t believe me, but I mean it. That life is done for me. A few of our family friends and cousins speak to William, assuming that he’s with me. He accepts their sympathy gracefully. I’m grateful that he’s there to deflect some of the people, especially the aunts and uncles whom I’ve never met and the uncle whom I never liked. Theoretically, I’m grateful that they came for Mom’s sake. In reality, I’m tired inside and out.

As the line of well-wishers dwindles, I glance around me to see how many people remain. Only a few are left. A man with white hair in a suit is walking away from the gravesite. He carries a suitcase and a cane with a black handle. My heart begins to thud faster. “Excuse me,” I say to William. “I’ll be back.”

I walk after the man.

He looks as if he’s only walking, but the distance between us lengthens. I sprint after him. “Missing Man? Missing Man, wait!” His stride lengthens and he doesn’t look back. “Please, stop!”

He rounds the corner of a mausoleum near a grove of trees. Catching up, I race around the corner, and he’s gone. I skid to a halt beside a gravestone, and I look across the cemetery. There’s a curl of dusty mist around a few of the gravestones, and then it dissipates.

Gasping from the chase, I sink down into the grass.

And I let myself cry.