The Vanished Man

staff beautician had done it up in a stylish bun. “Anyway, Mum, some friends’ll be there and it’d be great if you could come too.”
    “I’ll try.”
    Kara, now sitting on the very edge of the armchair, realized suddenly that her fists were clenched, her body a knot of tension. Her breath was coming in shallow sibilant gasps.
    I’ll try. . . .
    Kara closed her eyes, filling with slivers of tears. Goddamnit!
    I’ll try. . . .
    No, no, no, that’s all wrong, she thought angrily. Her mother wouldn’t say, “I’ll try.” That wasn’t her sort of dialogue. It might be: “I’ll be there, hons. In the first row.” Or she’d say frostily, “Well, I can’t tomorrow. You should’ve let me know earlier.”
    Whatever else about her mother, there was nothing I’ll-try about her. Balls-out for you, or hell-to-pay against.
    Except now—when the woman was hardly a human being at all. At most a child, sleeping with her eyes open.
    The conversation Kara had just had with the woman had occurred only in the girl’s hopeful imagination. Well, Kara’s portion had been real. But her mother’s, from the Just fine, darling. And how’s life treating you? to the glitch of I’ll try, had been ginned up by Kara herself.
    No, her mother hadn’t said a single word today. Or during yesterday’s visit. Or the one before. She’d lain beside the ivy window in some kind of waking coma. Some days she was like that. On others, the woman might be fully awake but babbling scary nonsense that only attested to the success of the invisible army moving relentlessly through her brain, torching memory and reason.
    But there was a more pernicious part of the tragedy. Once in a rare while, there’d be a fragile moment of clarity, which, brief though it was, perfectly negated her despair. Just when Kara had come to accept the worst—that the mother she knew was gone forever—the woman would return, just like in the days before the cerebral hemorrhage. And Kara’s defenses vanished, the same way an abused woman forgives her slugging husband at the slightest hint of contrition. At moments like that she’d convince herself that her mother was improving.
    The doctors said that there was virtually no hope for this, of course. Still, the doctors hadn’t been at her mother’s bedside when, several months ago, the woman woke up and turned suddenly to Kara. “Hi there, hons. I ate those cookies you brought me yesterday. You put in extra pecans the way I like them. And heck with the calories.” A girlish smile. “Oh, I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to tell you what Mrs. Brandon did last night. With the remote control.”
    Kara had blinked, stunned. Because, damn, she had brought her mother pecan sandies the day before and had stocked them with extra nuts. And, yes, crazy Mrs. Brandon from the fifth floor had copped a remote and bounced the signal off the windows next door into the nursing home’s lounge, confounding the residents for a half hour by changing channels and volume like a poltergeist.
    There! Who needed better evidence than this that her vibrant mother, her real mother remained within the injured shell of a body and could someday escape.
    But the next day Kara had found the woman staringat her daughter suspiciously, asking why she was there and what she wanted. If this was about the electric bill for twenty-two dollars and fifteen cents she’d paid it and had the canceled check for proof. Since the pecan-sandy/remote-control performance there’d been no encores.
    Kara now touched her mother’s arm, warm, wrinkle-free, baby pink. Sensing what she always did here on her daily visits: the numbing trilogy of wishing that the woman would mercifully die, wishing that she’d come back to her vibrant life—and wishing that Kara herself could escape from the terrible burden of wanting both of those irreconcilable choices.
    A glance at her watch. Late for work, as always. Mr. Balzac would not be happy. Saturday was their busiest day. She drained the coffee cup, pitched it out and walked into the hallway.
    A large black woman in a white uniform lifted a hand in greeting. “Kara! How long you been here?” A broad smile in a broad face.
    “Twenty minutes.”
    “I would’ve come by and visited,” Jaynene said. “She still awake?”
    “No. She was out when I got here.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry.”
    “Was she talking before?” Kara asked.
    “Yep. Just little things. Couldn’t tell if she was with us or not.