Her Declining Years

The bloodroot and butterfly weeds had grown thicker in Her declining years. The wildflower garden had always had one vine-like tree lounging on the great oak, which had overspread its canopy and had become a hiding place for observant owls and rust colored squirrels alike. How had I not noticed this uncultivated plot as the burial place for her secret? A secret that was mine as well despite my lack of awareness. But it was there entwined in the roots of the great oak nourishing it like a bastardized Tree of Knowledge, tempting with its stolid acorns growing in falling clusters. And it was there coursing within the helix of my shared DNA. A more observant daughter or perhaps a less dutiful one would have questioned her grey eyes staring intensely, and her wrinkled, creped hands clutching at the truth her lips would not form until it no longer mattered.

Less than three months after the harbinger of aging, dementia, I was confronted with her bitter betrayal. Dusk had spread its muslin cloth upon the landscape of our cottage home when she looked at me with pleading yellowing eyes that suggested she was about to reveal something important, perhaps the most significant declaration of her devastating life. This is how it surfaced, the drowned truth bloated with years of algal denial.

¨Alma,¨ she summoned in a weak phlegm-filled voice. ¨Audrine,¨ she corrected herself. Alma was my sister who had disappeared more than twenty-two years ago to never resurface.

I entered the old-fashioned mauve stained living room with its floral decor and she looked up at me with a fearful glance from her low sitting sinking sofa .   

¨"Yes, mom,” I responded dutifully. I was used to being the servant to her needs. After Alma vanished, a guilt overcame me, along with a resentment of being her only present relative. Dad had wasted away of a failing liver only a few months after Almaś departure. I always assumed she left because, in her mind, dad had given up on his family for his mistress, alcohol.  She had been his favorite and she couldn't handle the abandonment, even if it was not a conscious decision but rather an addiction.  

¨"Where is Alma?” she questioned in a flitting moment of confusion coupled with anxiety. She grasped my arm with her arthritic claw, ¨Where is your sister? We need to visit the doctor. I do not want you to take me; you are always distracted by your own vanity,¨ she scolded in a voice searching for the authority her dementia had stolen. She had confused us, her daughters, once again. Ever since Alma disappeared, she had rebuilt her in her mind, like a paradigm of whom she had wished Alma to be and that was, unfortunately, me. But she also resented me for it. And I resented her for burying me, her second daughter, only to replace me with the phantasmic memory of Alma. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and saw Almaś knowing amber eyes looking back at me and pleading to find her, my breath causing my own image to distort. Often, I could not face the vision of her at all and blocked it from my mind by remaining busy–focused at work, industrious at home, even creating complications of daily life to form a quagmire in my mind.

¨Mom,¨ I said patiently, ¨Alma has been gone for several years.¨

"¨Thatś right,¨ she responded with mournful acknowledgment. She looked at me again, too intently, as if she wanted to unburden herself. But her mind was becoming more hazy of late, and whatever ponderous contemplation was suffocating her, my momś jumbled brain had the stronger chokehold.

"¨Mom, letś take a walk and look for cardinals and squirrels,¨ I offered. ¨"Your neurology appointment was last week.¨

She said nothing, but her body arose on shaky unsteady legs inflamed with the red tightness of phlebitis. Mom acquiesced, allowing me to delicately lead her outside into the cool evening breeze. She pulled her olive knit sweater more tightly around her bent shoulders and shivered, even though the weather was clearly past the prime of winter cold and approaching the renewal of spring. I nodded to the neighbor, Mr. Aliass, who gave me a cursory glance back and then disappeared behind his protective metal fence. Seconds later a kitchen screen door creaked open and slowly shut as if crawling to the peeling frame on which it would be locked tight.

For a brief moment, mom looked more cognizant, more alive, as her oversized blue polyester pants danced in the breeze. The woman before me was not the mom of my youth; rather, she looked pathetically comical, a thinning skeleton of her former self. I let out a brief smile to reassure her before traitorous tears slid from my eyes.  

¨ What is wrong, Alma?¨ she asked as I looked at her quizzically. ¨I am sorry sweetheart,¨ she smiled while hitting herself in the forehead. ¨The old noggin´ isn't working anymore. How long has she been gone? Seven, eight years now?¨

¨"Twenty-two mom. Twenty-two years,¨ I replied, losing my patience once again. 

¨"Why don't we gather some wildflowers,¨ I suggested. ¨You have always enjoyed a lively spring bouquet on the dining room table.¨ As I suggested this, a flash of a blush crossed the liver spots on her cheeks and her eyes darted from mine to the vegetative growth of bloodroot and butterfly weeds. Her arm jerked from my guiding hand and she tripped falling to the ground with a crunch stemming from what sounded like the fracturing of her tibia. Then mom let out a cry of pain more haunting than the raspy high pitched scream of a red fox in the night.  

¨"Mom,¨ I cried, starting to punch in 911. 

¨"No, do not call the police. You cannot. Your father. . .¨

"Dad has been dead for years,¨ I interrupted, continuing to look at my phone, shocked that she was talking about my father when she had clearly just fractured her already oozing and painful infected leg.

¨Audrina, you don't understand. You cannot bring them here. They will find you, I mean her. They will know he did it. It was an accident. A sad, devastating accident. Let her rest.¨

I looked at my mom, hoping, praying that her dementia was surfacing. She could not be saying what I thought she was revealing. Could my sister, Alma, vain beautiful lively Alma be resting under the entangled bed of wildflowers?  

¨Mom, you aren't making any sense. Alma ran away. She left home because she could not deal with losing dad to booze each day,¨ I cried, the phone escaping my grasp and the voice of a 911 operator echoing from its speaker.

¨Audrina, I am so sorry. He didn´t mean for her to die. Alma fell and hit her head breaking her neck on the formica counter. It was an accident. She shouldn't have tried to stop him from drinking. He did not know what he was doing. It was an accident.¨

I picked up the phone to the voice of the 911 operator, ¨ Are you okay, ma´am? Is anyone in danger? What's your emergency?¨

¨She is dead?¨ I stated and questioned simultaneously.

¨ Who is dead? We have your location. We are sending an ambulance.¨

I dropped the phone and a few minutes later the wail of sirens assaulted my ears.

When the police arrived, they found mom on the ground with a fractured tibia and a deadly traumatic brain injury already causing her head to bleed and swell. They assumed she had hit her head on the rock during the fall. Only Mr. Aliass knew the truth and he wasn't speaking behind his metal fence and locked screen door. A cardinal flew from the butterfly weeds to the mighty oak, perched briefly and alighted to the clouds.