The Thirty First Call From The Hospital

I am not telling you that to sound like a saint. I am telling you because I liked her. That is the part people never guess. I liked her better than I liked most people, and on a lot of days I liked her better than her son.

She was seventy-nine. She was five foot nothing and she had opinions about pie crust that she would have gone to war over. She taught me to make her sour cream raisin pie, and then she told everybody at Grace Methodist that mine was better, which was a lie, and a generous one.

Every October the church had its fall bake sale out on the lawn. Six years back, Evelyn sewed the two of us matching aprons out of red gingham, with rickrack on the pockets. We stood behind that folding table shoulder to shoulder every year, and people who didn’t know better would say, “Now is this your daughter, Evelyn?”

And she would tuck her arm through mine and say, “Close enough.”

That was the week of the bake sale. That is why I had the aprons in my car.

Keith had left on Monday. A dealer conference in Denver, he said, through Friday. He packed the gray suitcase. He kissed the top of my head in the kitchen and said, “Check on Mom for me, would you?” as if I had not checked on his mother every day for eleven years.

“I always do,” I said.

“I know you do. You’re the best, Trace.”

He was sunburned when I saw him next, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Wednesday afternoon I let myself in Evelyn’s back door at twenty past three with a rotisserie chicken and the aprons, freshly ironed, over my arm.

“Evelyn? I’ve got supper. And I pressed the aprons, so don’t you dare spill on yours before Saturday.”

The radio was on. The farm report. Nobody answered.

She was on the kitchen floor between the table and the stove. She had been rolling out dough. There was flour on her forearms, and the rolling pin had gone under the refrigerator, and the kettle on the back burner had boiled itself dry and was ticking.

I turned off the burner first. I don’t know why that is what my hands did, but they did.

Then I got down on the linoleum with her.

Her eyes were open. She knew me.

“Well, shoot,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, honey. I’ve made a mess.”

“You haven’t made any mess. Don’t you move. I’m calling for help.”

“The crusts aren’t done.”

“I’ll do the crusts.”

“You overwork them.”

“I know I do. Hush.”

I rode behind the ambulance down Ash and across Ohio Street with my flashers on, and I called Keith the first time from the stoplight at Santa Fe. It was ten after four.

It rang five times and went to his voicemail. “You’ve reached Keith. Leave me something good.”

I left him something. “It’s me. Your mom collapsed. We’re headed to the hospital. Call me back.”

I did not worry yet. He would be in a session. He would have it on silent. He’d see it at the break.

They took her straight back. A young doctor with tired eyes and a cowlick came out to me after about an hour. I remember he sat down in the chair next to mine instead of standing over me, and I knew what that meant before he opened his mouth.

“Are you her daughter?”

“Daughter-in-law.”

“Is there other family?”

“One son. My husband. He’s out of town for work. I’m trying to get him.”