Americana by Sarah Taylor-Foltz
“hazy memories of the funeral, the burial, and the aftermath”
Fiction by Sarah Taylor-Foltz
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The counseling offices at the Columbus YWCA quiet down in the afternoon. Charlene is at her desk when she gets the text from Tammy. “Mom’s going,” it says, “Doc says to bring in the family.”
Charlene pauses for a moment, looking down at the half-finished progress note on her desk. It is two o’clock. She has two more clients scheduled this afternoon. “I’ll be there by 8:30,” she writes on her phone and turns to finish her progress note.
At the end of the day, she walks down the brightly lit hallway to her boss’s office. She knocks on the open door. “Magda? I have to go to MacArthur tonight. My mom is dying.”
Magda looks up from her computer, her dark eyes knowing. She nods. “I can cover your sessions tomorrow,” she says.
Charlene shuffles her feet and bites her lip.
“Thank you.”
Magda gets up from her desk. She walks over to Charlene and pats her shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything. Be careful,” she says.
***
Charlene remembers being five or six and picking zinnias out back of the house, next to Uncle Frank’s dented old pickup. Mud was crusted all around her battered sneakers. When they visited Uncle Frank, she tried to keep to the yard, out of sight. Preston – a dirty, neglected German Shepherd – was chained to the very back of the yard. Charlene toddled through the grass, set her zinnias down next to Preston’s water bowl. She sat in the dirt next to him, stroking his neck with her grubby fingers.
Ruth Ann, Charlene’s mother, called to her from the back door, “Charlene! Get in here! Stay away from that nasty dog! He’s for hunting! He ain’t no pet!”
Preston looked at Charlene in quiet resignation. His brown eyes were gentle. She patted his dark head. “They don’t have to know that we’re friends,” she told him. She got up, brushed the dirt off her behind, grabbed her flowers, and ran toward the screen door.
Ruth Ann looked her over. “You’re filthy and you smell like a dog,” she said. “Go wash up.”
Charlene held out the zinnias. “I picked these for you, Mommy,” she said. “They’re yellow, your favorite color.”
Ruth took the zinnias gingerly. “They smell like that damn dog,” she said.
Charlene frowned. Ruth shrugged. “Fine. I’ll put them in water.”
***
It’s not far from Columbus to MacArthur, about three hours if she hustles. Charlene doesn’t drive like that; she is careful. The road stretches out in front of her straight to the horizon. The sky is magnificent, all pinks, reds, and oranges in the distance. Charlene taps her left index and middle fingers together seven times and takes seven deep breaths. She wishes for a cigarette.
Charlene keeps the Camry at 65 and tries to pay attention to the road. She removes her right hand from the steering wheel slowly and wipes it on her right pant leg, and then does the same with the left. If Tammy tries to start a fight, she tells herself, I will not engage. I am not throwing away fifteen years of therapy today. She inhales and exhales large, slow breaths. My Fitbit probably thinks I’m exercising, she thinks. She connects her phone to the aux cord. Hip Hop usually helps when she goes to MacArthur. She puts on M.I.A. and shouts the lyrics, banging on the steering wheel when the bass thumps. The road starts winding and the hills get larger. This is how she knows she is getting close.
***
Charlene was ten. She was going fishing that day with Uncle Frank. It was barely light out as she slumped down the threadbare stairs from her bedroom into the kitchen. Ruth Ann decorated the kitchen with roosters that winter. Yellow wallpaper with red roosters on the border, and framed pictures of painted roosters on the walls. The countertops were bare besides a red and orange cookie jar in the shape of a rooster. Ruth Ann sat at the kitchen table. A Virginia Slim burned between her fingers. She stared at nothing in particular. When Charlene entered the room, Ruth Ann took no notice.
“Mom, I have a sort of stomach ache. Can I stay home from fishing?”
Ruth Ann snapped her head up. “Now, why would you want to do a thing like that?”
“My stomach isn’t right. It’s really not.”
Ruth Ann pursed her lips. “Make yourself some cinnamon toast. It will settle you. You know that Uncle Frank likes to take you kids fishing. You’re his favorite. You’ll have a good time. He used to take me when I was your age, and I loved being outside all day.”
Charlene knew better than to argue. She reached into the pantry for the Wonderbread.
Ruth Ann stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t be noisy. Your father isn’t feeling well, and I don’t need you waking him.”
Charlene looked across the kitchen. The lock was still hanging askew on the liquor cabinet. No surprises there, she thought. She wondered for a moment whether Ruth Ann had gone to sleep yet. She concentrated on making her toast.
“Make sure you wipe the counter and wash your plate,” Ruth Ann said. “I don’t want to have to deal with your evidence later on.”
Charlene wasn’t hungry, but she ate her toast.
Uncle Frank arrived around 10. Tammy was eating Golden Grahams in the TV room, watching reruns of Three’s Company, and Garrett had left for basketball practice. Charlene sat on the overstuffed brown sofa. She thought that the best thing about Three’s Company was Suzanne Somers’s thighs. Ruth Ann was at the kitchen table all morning, smoking, and pretending to read the paper. Charlene’s dad was still in bed.
Uncle Frank was Ruth Ann’s brother, older than her by thirteen years. He strolled into the kitchen through the back door. “Where’s my favorite sister?” he called. He had on old jeans, hip boots, and a checkered shirt. He was handsome, and many in town wondered why he never married. He kissed Ruth Ann on the head as he walked past where she sat.
“You ready, Charloo?” he asked. He was always coming up with funny names for the kids, especially the girls.
“Hush up, Frankie, you’ll wake Papa Bear,” Ruth Ann said. She usually loosened up a bit when Uncle Frank was around.
Uncle Frank rolled his eyes. “It’s about damn time he gets up,” he said, more loudly than he needed to. “Any kind of real man would have half a day’s work done by now.”
Ruth Ann shook her head. “He’s been working real hard and it’s paying off,” she told Uncle Frank. “He got me that dishwasher, and he’s going to get me a microwave oven for my birthday.”
“I guess he’s your problem,” Uncle Frank said, shaking his head.
“Damn tootin’,” said Ruth Ann. “He’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“I guess you coulda did worse,” replied Uncle Frank. Before Charlene’s dad started to make good money, before his big promotion over at the mine, Uncle Frank would argue with Ruth Ann and tell her that she ought to come and live with him, but Ruth Ann refused.
Charlene rolled up the bottoms of her jeans and pulled on Garrett’s old moss green
rain boots. “You ready-Freddy?” asked Uncle Frank.
“I guess so,” Charlene replied, looking down at the cracks in the rubber on her boots.
Uncle Frank considered this. “You know,” he said, “when I was your age, if I had an uncle that wanted to take me fishing, I would have been thankful, excited even.”
Charlene made her face smile.
When she got home at sun down, she put four gutted trout in the refrigerator for Ruth Ann, and locked herself in the bathroom. Thankfully, Tammy was at the movies. She ran the water and soaked until she was wrinkled, she scrubbed and scrubbed, but she could still smell fish guts on her fingers.
***
The cool April air prickles Charlene’s skin as she gets out of the car. Damn, she thinks, I left my sweater at the office. A faintly fishy odor rises in the air off of the river. She smooths her blond bob as she walks across the dim parking lot into the hospital. It smells of disinfectant, which she is glad for. She signs in and notices that Tammy, Bill, Garrett, Maggie, and probably their kids have been there for hours. She walks down the hallway to Ruth Ann’s room slowly, steadying herself.
When she opens the door, it’s just as she pictured. Ruth Ann is still there, still breathing, still hanging on. Her heart monitor beeps. The light above the utility sink is on. Charlene’s brother and sister and their respective families surround Ruth Ann’s bed.
Tammy sighs. “Finally,” she says.
Charlene meets her sister’s gaze. “Good evening,” she says. She is always more formal when she’s uncomfortable.
Garrett’s eyes are red. “Hey, lil sis,” he says, his body stiffening.
“We’re going to get something to eat,” Tammy says. “Can you stay with her, at least until we get back?”
“Of course,” says Charlene.
“Text me if she wakes up.”
Bill, Tammy’s most recent husband, taps Tammy’s shoulder. “You know she’s not going to…”
Tammy flushes and glares at him. “But what if she does? What if she does and I’m not here?”
“I’ll text you,” Charlene says softly, her eyes downcast.
The entire group gets up to leave, muttering goodbyes. Charlene looks down at Ruth Ann. The roots of her hair had grown out about an inch, but Charlene could see that Tammy had arranged their mother’s hair and probably lovingly combed it out, with her typical martyrdom. Ruth Ann’s face and limbs are gaunt; where she had once been sturdy and strong, she is now skeletal. Her breaths are shallow and infrequent, but noisy.
Charlene knows she should feel grief or longing, but all she feels is that she should not be here, like her presence in this room is wrong. She is still in her work clothes— plaid trousers and a navy jacket, which suddenly feel like they don’t fit. She has no intentions of having a deathbed confessional, or a deathbed absolution. She wants to be above melodrama. Instead, she sits down in a beige vinyl chair at her mother’s bedside and tries to empty her mind, listening to the high-pitched wheeze of her mother’s last few breaths.
***
Charlene was president of MacArthur High School’s student council and was running a prom committee meeting when Mrs. Webber, the dowdy, ancient school secretary came in to give her the news.
The door of room 108 creaked loudly as Mrs. Webber opened it. “Charlene Robbins? I need to see you in the hallway, please.”
Charlene, who had worked hard to cultivate a reputation for being a good girl, got up immediately and followed Mrs. Webber into the hall. She fumbled around with her penny loafers, taking one heel out of the shoe and then putting it back in, and then the other, while Mrs. Webber explained, as best she could, what happened.
Charlene only heard a few of Mrs. Webber’s words: “…. equipment failure…. killed instantly….” She never remembered the rest, and only had hazy memories of the funeral, the burial, and the aftermath. The thing she remembered was that she was secretly glad that this would be the last time her father did something that sabotaged her efforts or embarrassed her. Maybe she could have a friend spend the night on a weekend, since he would no longer get drunk on Friday nights and break apart the house. He would no longer piss the bed. He would no longer make tearful, awkward apologies on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It was over.
***
Charlene gets up and walks around the hospital room. Above the sink, there is a framed print of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He looks down at her mournfully. Charlene considers him for a moment. “Egotistical prick,” she mutters.
“Is she awake?” Tammy asks as she walks hurriedly back into the hospital room. It’s just Tammy this time; the others have gone home. Tammy holds a Styrofoam cup of gas station coffee. Charlene is glad that Tammy did not bring a second cup.
“No,” Charlene tells her, “she’s been the same since y’all left.”
Tammy sets down her coffee and her purse. “I know it’s wrong,” she says, “but I got a pack of smokes if you want to go outside and share one when the nurse comes in to do Mom’s vitals.”
Charlene looks at Tammy, bemused. “I’ll go out with you,” Charlene says.
When the nurse comes in, Charlene and Tammy excuse themselves swiftly and giggle in the hallway in anticipation of smoking. Charlene quit ten years ago, but Tammy still sneaks one here and there when her kids aren’t around.
The night air has chilled since Charlene arrived. The two walk to Charlene’s car, where she hopes she might have left a jacket. Her YWCA fleece is in the back seat. “Thank god,” she sighs as she pulls the soft jacket around her chilled body.
Tammy, who is already on cigarette number two, holds the pack out to Charlene, who pauses for a moment, but takes out a cigarette anyway. She lights it and inhales the smoke slowly.
“Mmmmmmm.” Charlene closes her eyes.
“I know,” Tammy says.
“So, how are you?” Charlene asks her.
“We’re fine. The kids keep us pretty busy with little league and band practices. I’m not working, but Bill’s job is enough for now. How about you? How’s life being a big-time city girl?”
Charlene bristles, but ignores the jab. “I spend most of my time at work these days. Our client list is usually pretty full, and I run some group therapy sessions in the evening. I can’t complain, I guess.” She shrugs, and then takes a long drag on her cigarette. She gives her sister a hard look. “Also, before you ask, I’m not seeing anyone.” She’s had a few girlfriends since she moved to Columbus, but nothing that lasted for more than a couple years.
Tammy shakes her head. “I wasn’t going to ask. Why do you always assume the worst of me? Of all of us?”
Charlene exhales her exasperation with the smoke of her last drag. “That’s not it,” she says. “I… just… whatever. It’s not worth trying to explain.”
“Why did you even come here? It’s not like you care about Mom or want to see any of us anyway. You might have just stayed in Columbus, like you did when Uncle Frank died.”
Charlene stamps her cigarette butt into the pavement with the heel of her shoe. She’s lightheaded and dizzy from the nicotine. She leans against the Camry to steady herself. The very mention of Uncle Frank makes her stomach churn. Sweat runs down the small of her back and down her thighs.
“This. This is exactly why I don’t visit.” Charlene wants to walk away. She wants to get into the Camry and speed off, but she feels frozen. She thinks that she can smell fish.
Tammy steps toward her. “Why? Because of your ugly stories about Uncle Frank?”
Charlene looks Tammy in the eye. She steadies herself. The left corner of Tammy’s mouth twitches. “Just because you don’t believe something doesn’t make it untrue,” Charlene says carefully.
“You disgust me,” says Tammy. Her face is red and her hands are shaking.
“Do what you need to do, Tammy,” says Charlene. “It doesn’t change anything. But I’m done talking to you about it.”
***
Charlene did not ask Ruth Ann for money when she left for Ohio University. She had been working weekends at the Burger Shack downtown and saved up to buy herself an old yellow Datsun. She packed her things into a secondhand brown leather suitcase.
Ruth Ann was in her teal housecoat, smoking at the kitchen table when Charlene came down. “I’m leaving, Mom,” she called into the kitchen. Ruth Ann did not get up.
Charlene set down her suitcase and walked over to her mother. “I’m leaving, Mom,” she said, louder. Ruth Ann stubbed out her cigarette.
“Be careful,” Ruth Ann told her.
“I will.”
Ruth Ann got up from her chair and walked her mug over to the sink. “You ought to stop in and say goodbye to your Uncle Frank on your way out of town,” she said with her back turned to Charlene.
“I don’t think so.”
“He’d be glad to see you. You know you’re his favorite. I was his favorite when I was a girl.”
Charlene felt bile rushing hotly into her throat. She swallowed hard. “’Bye, Mom.”
She wanted to cry when she got into the car, but the tears would not come. Instead, she turned the radio in the Datsun as loud as it would go and shouted along with every song she knew.
***
Tammy and Charlene go back into the hospital together, silent. The hallways are wide and the sisters keep to their opposite sides. Tammy goes into the room first, and makes a point not to hold the door for her sister.
Ruth Ann’s breathing is even slower. Tammy sits next to her mother in the beige vinyl chair. Charlene stands on the other side of the bed. Tammy strokes her mother’s hair. Charlene shifts her weight from one foot to the other and then the other.
After an hour or so, Ruth Ann’s breathing stops. Her heart monitor stops. Charlene taps Tammy’s shoulder almost tenderly. “I’ll go get a nurse.”
The hospital staff check Ruth Ann’s body over and pronounce her deceased. Charlene had planned to stay at the Super 8 over on Route 50, but she decides to go back home tonight. The drive is dark and the roads are nearly empty.
When she gets to her apartment, Charlene runs herself a bath and soaks until she is wrinkled. Her bathroom smells of eucalyptus. She sleeps for half of the next day, thankful that Magda agreed to do her sessions.
***
Charlene does not get a message from Tammy or Garrett about the funeral arrangements. Instead, she reads her obituary online in the MacArthur Post-Gazette: “Ruth Ann Robbins, loving mother, passed away Thursday night at 11:46 pm at Saint Luke’s Hospital. She was surrounded by her family. Services to be announced in the future.” Charlene doesn’t check the website later to see about the services.
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Header image courtesy of by Maha Alasaker. To view more of her work, go here.
Sarah Taylor-Foltz is a writer and English teacher. Her work has appeared in Prometheus Dreaming, Rogue Agent, and Quail Bell. When she is not teaching or writing, she enjoys painting, fabric crafts, and hanging out with her large brood of rescue animals. She dreams of a radically positive future, but is unsure whether she is a good witch or a bad witch.
