Beth Ann Fennelly

The Hug

Your musician friend was dear to you. You were dear to each other. You instigated his move to your town, in fact; the day you met, one glorious July afternoon on Martha’s Vineyard, he told you he loved North Mississippi Hill Country Blues and had always wanted to check out the area. You made a good case for him to visit. When he did, he decided he’d found his home.

Ever since, you’d met frequently for drinks or dinner, sometimes just the two of you, sometimes with your husband and your friend’s newest plus-one. Often you’d watch his band play, and you’d always end up dancing, and you could tell he liked that. His shows would go late, though, too late for you on school nights, so you’d slip out before the end. As you did, you’d see a little puff of air leak out of him, see his bravado wobble. Truth is, he was secretly sweet on you, but you never discussed it—you didn’t need to. You both understood that, in a parallel universe where you were both single and he wasn’t so much older, you’d have dated. Instead you were just good friends, a situation that worked fine for happily-married you, but maybe a bit less fine for him, which is why you always felt a smidge guilty when he confessed to being lonely. You tried setting him up with your most fabulous single friends, but it never took. Maybe if it had, you’d have felt jealous. It’s flattering, after all, being the object of someone’s regard.

One night you drank margaritas at a Mexican restaurant and he rehashed his latest breakup and you gave him a pep talk and you ended the night laughing, making plans for your group of friends to visit Napa Valley, a place he knew well. He walked you to your car and you hugged goodbye. This time, though, he didn’t release you after the usual quick squeeze. The hug kept hugging. The hug wasn’t creepy, he didn’t go in for a kiss, his hands stayed high on your back, but suddenly you became aware that in a tight hug you’re basically pressing your breasts against the other person’s chest. How have you never noticed that before? Maybe because, in a hug of normal duration, you don’t have time to identify body parts. In this hug, you had time—yep, those are your tits mashing his chest, all right—and just when you felt a distinct need to free yourself and tensed a bit, he dropped his arms, so everything was okay, and you didn’t need to discuss it.

Within months, he’d be dead. A stroke.

The earth keeps turning, sure, and you still love music and you still go to shows, but when you look up, nobody’s watching. Nobody smiles when you dance. Nobody’s downcast when you leave.

Pathetic, how badly you could use a hug.

Birthday

Even my earlobes look old. 

Fennessy

A successful writer friend publishes a new novel. My husband and I always read his novels, and this will be no exception. 

My husband reads it first. When he finishes, he sits me down. He wants me to know before I read it: our writer friend has kinda sorta used my sister’s name. He’s used her first name, and he’s used her nickname, and for her last name he’s changed one double letter into a different double letter. “The character isn’t based on your sister, though,” my husband says. “Everything besides her name is different.”

I take this in. “Why would he do that, do you think?” 

My husband lifts a shoulder, speculates, “He must have just needed a very Irish-sounding name.”

I nod. Our writer friend is a good guy. When my sister died, he sent me a Tiffany picture frame—to hold a photo of my sister, he wrote in the sympathy card. 

“Should I not read the novel?” I ask my husband.

“I think it’s okay,” he says. “I think you can handle it. But I wanted you to be prepared. It’s a bit of a shock, you know. Seeing the name.”

Thus forewarned, I’m able to read and even enjoy the novel. It’s true what my husband said. The character is not my sister. The character is murdered in the first chapter. The rest of the novel is the main character trying to figure it out. My sister was not murdered, and in the novel of my life, her death would occur maybe in chapter five or so. Though it’s true that the rest of the novel would be the main character trying to figure it out. 

It’s also true what my husband said about the name being a shock. Every time it strikes my eyes, I read my sister’s name, autocorrecting. The double “s” yanked into double “l,” shoelaces pulled taut.

In this way, reading the novel is like reading my life. The main character keeps tripping over the minor character, who exited early.

Who gets to decide who is main and who is minor? Who get to decide who exits early? Some joker who seemed like a good guy. Some joker gets to decide who ends up framed. 

Two Sisters, One Slicing the Cake, One Choosing First

Keeping meticulous score was our favorite girlhood pastime.

Adjudicating the dispersal of the cereal box’s plastic treasure.

Tallying who had more presents under the Christmas tree.

When given a piece of cake to split, one sister was handed the knife. The other got to pick her half.

Quadruple fanatical eyeballs pressing down on the blade, its slow, slow submergence through the             buttercream.

And then (poof) you rolled over and played dead.

Took yourself right out of the game, fancy that.

So now I get everything when mom dies. Everything! Where’s the fun in that?

Are you not rolling over in your grave?

Say Uncle, sister, I’ll let you up.

I miss my mirror enemy.

Without you to sharpen myself against, I’ve lost my edge.

Prepping to Teach O’Connor While Visiting My Mother-in-Law

1.      My mother-in-law has dementia, and my husband’s mother-in-law also has dementia. My husband and I are married. What, I ask you, are the odds?

2.      I’ve taught Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” a dozen times, but this time, sitting on my mother-in-law’s couch, worried about my mother-in-law who tried to cut her chicken with the wrong end of her knife, the words don’t penetrate. I skip over the story’s intrigue and horror, straight to the fashion. How much I’d love to be wearing, like Hulga, a “six-year-old skirt and a yellow sweat shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it.”

I am the child here. That’s what I’d like my clothing to broadcast. I am the   child here. Me, me, me.   

3.      My husband’s mother’s favorite treat is giving her little dog his favorite treat.  But because she has dementia, she forgets she’s already given him his treat. Thus, the dog is fat. So fat that he can no longer jump onto the couch.

During a recent visit, my husband noticed the dog had grown a strange ring around the base of his tail. We just knew it was a tumor. He took the dog to the vet. 

What’s that? my husband asked, pointing at the tumor.

That, said the vet, is fat.  

Fat?

Yes, fat. Fat! 

4.  Over the last twenty-three years, my mother-in-law has also given me many, many treats. 

5. Like Hulga, people with dementia see through to nothing. For instance, the last time I visited my mother-in-law, I was in the living room when she shuffled out of her bedroom and lowered herself onto the other end of the couch. Before us, on the carpet, her fat dog lay beached. She gave it the side eye, glanced away, then whispered, stiffly, from the corner of her mouth, “I don’t know what that thing is—” she jerked her head toward her dog—“but it’s not good.”

6. There are miracles that bring Christ and miracles that don’t. Remember that dog so fat it couldn’t jump onto the couch? When we’re packing up to go, we find him on the couch. 

“How did you do that?” I ask, but he can’t remember.

The other miracle does not come to pass. She does not return to us. This is one of those days when she doesn’t recognize her son. But this is the day we must leave. We must return home to care for my husband’s mother-in-law, who also has dementia. Also, I’m teaching tomorrow. But what story? I can’t remember. I’ve been reading it all morning, but I can’t remember what story. 

I wonder if, later, I will pinpoint this moment as the onset of my early-onset dementia.   

We tell her goodbye. We carry our suitcases to the car, crushing evil-smelling wild onion under our feet. Another of her children arrives soon, I remind myself, but it feels like we’re abandoning her. Without a crutch. Without a leg to stand on.