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MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONFinal Dispositions
LINDA McCULLOUGH MOORE is doing headstands and sending up flares to herald the publication of her new collection of stories, This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon, a book that she says comes highly recommended by the author. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
http://lindamcculloughmoore.com/
MY FAMILY is deciding what to do with me. I am the oldest sibling. Always have been. I thought the years might mute the effect of that, but nothing so far. I have been, and I remain, the reason why the siblings take each new birthday with some measure of aplomb: Well, I’m still four, seven, fourteen years younger than her. My age, their comfort.
They hold disposition meetings. I am not invited, but during the phone calls that follow each conclave I read the minutes of the meetings in the awkward silences and odd questions: “How do you feel about Texas?” “Do you mind the cold?” “Do you have any special friend who lives in a big house [pause] with a trained nurse?”
I don’t mind this actually. I am quite pleased at their level of involvement. I think there were decades when they forgot I was alive, or, if they remembered, they forgot I was their sister — or sister-in-law, a friendlier affiliation by a mile.
“Invite me to the meetings,” I say to my brother Paul. “I promise not to voice opinions or spill my drink anywhere it will show. I’d like to know just what sort of arrangement might be under consideration.”
“No,” he says.
I like his style. My brother Freddie would have said, What meetings? Paul got whatever integrity was floating in our gene pool.
“I might be able to help,” I say, encouraged by his candor.
“I don’t think so,” Paul says.
“ARE YOU SURE you’ve save no money whatsoever?” This would be my sister Irene — I mean, Eileen — on the phone. I like it that I can never keep her name straight. It gives me hope.
“Zero money?” she says.
“Oh, no,” I say. “I saved a bundle. It’s. Just. That. I. Spent. It. All.”
Each word seems worthy of its own personal sentence. “Tom is coming over Tuesday morning. Please write that down. I’ll wait,” Eileen says. She pauses. Tom is her husband.
I mime writing, “Toooosday, Doomsday,” on the palm of my hand.
“Tom’s taking you for a ride.”
“I’ll be ready,” I say. “Don’t tell me what time. I like to be surprised.”
“Ten o’clock. Wear stockings, Margaret,” she says. “Wear shoes.”
“Okey-doke,” I say. “Okey-dokey.”
People think that crazy is achieved when one day the gale-force wind makes a final, violent tear, and your little craft slips its mooring. Oh, no. It is achieved by you, who, one knot at a time, untie the tethers, whimsically at first, and then with some — or sometimes no known — purpose. You write a shameless letter to a friend who has blown you off once and for all and say, with no shame, “Why don’t you like me? Did you ever?” You offer up tidbits that will be the stuff of ridicule for certain, and you pass them out to members of your family on a tray like peculiar, worrisome hors d’oeuvres.
MY BROTHER-IN-LAW Tom rings the doorbell. My siblings would have done the same. To walk right in would signify an affinity they neither feel nor seek.
“Would you like any sort of carbohydrate?” I ask. He is still standing on the porch. He never comes in unless it is a national holiday, and then it must be one celebrated across the board, not just by Jews or Christians or the tree people.
“I’m good,” Tom says.
“I have no doubt,” I say, “but are you hungry?”
“Oh . . .” The question catches him off guard. He clearly doesn’t know the answer. It is most often decided for him by Eileen.
“Why did you marry her?” I say while he is still busy with the last question.
“Who?”
“Oh, yes,” I say. “I had forgotten. You were married once before Eileen.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking of her either. You never talk about her.”
“Well, we should be on our way.”
“Maybe I could go live with her — your first wife. Let’s see: I’d be the sister-in-law of her ex-husband,” I say. “Stranger things happen every day. A lot of them to me.”
“Do you want a coat?” Tom says.
“No,” I say, “I’ve got a closetful of them. But thanks.”
He gives me a frightened stare. The man would not know humor if it wore a name tag.
“Well,” he says, clearly with no heart whatsoever for this project, “we should be on our way.”
He is so dutiful it makes his skin sag.
“Why are you doing this, Tom? This is your life. You could be dead by nightfall. A lot of people will be, and you could be one of them, as easy as the next person. Let’s forget about wherever Eileen wants you to take me. It will only be a waste of time. They won’t admit me. It will turn out they only take retired Presbyterian clergy. Or Paul won’t want to pay for it. Or they’ll have a waiting list. Or at the last minute I’ll kick the bucket. If this is the last day of your life, trust me when I tell you, you will want to have spent it some other way, no matter if you end up in hell or heaven.”
“I don’t believe in hell.”
“Well, there you go.”
It’s the first nearly interesting thing I’ve heard him say since he met my sister.
“What was she like?” I say.
“Who?”
“Wife One. Eileen’s predecessor.”
“I don’t remember,” Tom says. I’ve been married to Eileen for nearly thirty years.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I am, too. I always thought he was born this way, never thinking what it might do to a person to be married to Eileen.
“Why did you marry her?” I say.
“Oh, I was young.” He makes it sound a rather unusual thing to be. “And she was beautiful.”
“Eileen?”
“Janet Moyer.” His voice is just above a whisper. “Janet Helen Moyer. Look, we really need to go. Eileen has made an appointment for you.”
My sister is forever making things for people: appointments and decoupage; Rice Krispies treats and bright fabric snakes you’re meant to keep your plastic-bag collection in.
I grab my pocketbook and slam the door behind me.
“You want to lock that?” Tom says.
“I do not,” I say.
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