The Reluctant Daughter Part 16

"Yes," my mother whispers, holding up her left hand.

"How's your finger? Is the clip bothering you?" My mother scrunches up her face in an expression of pain, and Alec takes her hand tenderly in his, looking deeply into her eyes as if he is about to propose. "Would you like me to move it for you? I can put it on your ear." Alec removes the clip and my mother holds her hand straight out in front of her, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the sight of her middle fingernail, which unlike her nine others is naked and unpolished.

"Mom, you can get a manicure as soon as you get home," I a.s.sure her.

"They had to take the polish off that nail in order to get an accurate reading," Alec says, gently tucking a strand of my mother's hair behind her ear and fastening the clip to her lobe. He is still playing the suitor, only now he is wooing her with an expensive earring. "How's that?" he asks.

"Stunning, I'm sure," my mother squeaks out. I smile, thrilled that her sense of humor is back. Sitting down next to my father, I poke him in the arm and insist that he pay attention as Alec teaches my mother the finer points of inhaling and exhaling, something he says we all need to learn.

"n.o.body really knows how to breathe correctly," Alec tells us. "n.o.body uses their lungs to full capacity." He shakes his head as though he thinks this is a crying shame. "Now, Mrs. Pinkowitz, this is a little breathing test." He holds up a round plastic contraption with a tube sticking up on one end. "You breathe in here-in, in, in-just like you're sucking on a straw. You've just about finished your milkshake and you want to get every last drop." He demonstrates and as he inhales deeply, a little ball rises to the top of the apparatus. I think of the first summer that Allie and I were together, when she took me to the Paradise County Fair, determined to win me a stuffed animal at the "Test Your Strength" booth. She raised a heavy mallet with both hands and brought it down hard on a small lever that sent a metal weight racing up a vertical track toward the bell hanging high overhead that taunted her, waiting to be rung. It took Allie several tries but she finally choked up on the mallet and did it, winning me a stuffed animal we named Amelia Bearhart and still display proudly in our living room.

My mother has far less luck than Allie, though. Despite several attempts, which I can tell are an effort for her, she is hardly able to move the ball in the breathing test device at all. After only breathing into it three times, she offers the apparatus back to Alec. "I'm done."

"For now," Alec says, taking the instrument from her and putting it on a shelf near the bed. "We'll try again later. Meanwhile, I want you to take deep, deep breaths, to exercise your lungs. Like this. In...out. In...out." Alec's whole body puffs up with pride as he inhales, and sags with exaggeration every time he lets out his breath. "Got that?" he asks my mother, and then without waiting for a reply, he launches into an explanation about the various inhalers he's brought for her to use, both of which contain medicine which will cut down on her inflammation and open up her lungs. One needs to be used twice a day, one puff each time; and the other needs to be used four times a day, three puffs each time. Or is it twice a day, three puffs each time; and four times a day, one puff each time? I ask Alec to repeat everything he says while I write it all down.

"I'll be your secretary, Mom." I show her the notes I've taken on the small pad I keep in my pocketbook. "I'll help you keep it all straight."

"Now for your nebulizer," Alec says, springing off the bed. He hums a wordless tune as he makes some adjustments on a machine attached to the wall. "This might feel a little strange," he says, "but it will really help you. I'm going to take you off your oxygen and put this mask over your face. It's going to fill with mist and I want you to breathe it in as deeply as you can. It will last for about twenty minutes and then when you're through, I'll put you back on your oxygen again."

Alec approaches my mother mask-first, but before he can hold it up to her face and stretch the elastic band over her head, she grabs it from him and does it herself. He nods in approval and then steps back to turn on the mist. My mother breathes in once, coughs violently, and whips the mask away.

"Mrs. Pinkowitz, you have to keep it on," Alec insists. "Be a good girl, now," he pleads, tilting his head in what I'm sure he thinks is an adorable angle. "Please, Mrs. Pinkowitz?" He slaps his palms together and holds his hands up to his chest, his long skinny fingers pointing at my mother in a beseeching manner. "Please," he begs again, staring at her with his big brown eyes. "Do it for me?"

My mother gives him a look that says, You've got to be kidding, but nevertheless brings the mask up to her face once more. I know she wants to get well, but I'm sure she never thought it would require this much work. She takes a hesitant breath, and tolerates the mist better this time, not coughing as much as before. When the twenty minutes are up, Alec takes the mask from my mother and helps her place the p.r.o.ngs of her nasal cannula back into her nostrils before he adjusts her oxygen, and lopes out the door with a friendly wave, letting us know that he'll be back again later.

"Is that a promise or a threat?" I ask my mother, who holds both of her hands up to the sky, a gesture which means, Do I know? and acknowledges my attempt to make her laugh at the same time.

We have just settled back for a little rest, my mother lowering her bed so she can lie flat and my father and I perched in our seats, when someone new bounces through the doorway.

"Hi, I'm Cathy," the young woman sings out as if this is the best news we've heard all day. "I'm your physical therapist." She is so perky, I half expect her to do a cartwheel and a handspring as she makes her way across the room. "Are you ready to get up, Mrs. Pinkowitz? I bet you're tired of lying there," she says, gesturing toward the jumbled sheets on my mother's bed with a heavy-looking white cloth belt she holds in both hands.

"I'm Lydia, her daughter," I introduce myself and help my mother stall for time. "And the gentleman in the corner is her husband."

"h.e.l.lo there," my father says, taking in Cathy's athletic good looks. She is a real California girl: tanned, bleach blond, and blue-eyed, her figure boyish and leggy. Dressed all in white with a terrycloth sweatband encircling her non-sweaty forehead, she looks like she just leaped over a net, shook hands with her opponent, and stepped off a tennis court. "Sunny" is the word I'd use to describe her.

"Have you been out of that bed at all, Mrs. Pinkowitz?" Cathy asks.

"No," my mother says. "I'm not ready."

"Sure you are," Cathy argues. "I'll get something to help you." She drops the white cloth belt onto my mother's bed, leaves the room, and returns a minute later carrying a folded metal walker. "You might need this for a few days," Cathy says, pulling out the legs of the walker, which have bright green tennis b.a.l.l.s attached to their ends. "We'll see if you can manage a few steps. If not, you can just stand and lean on it."

"Not today," says my mother.

But her lack of motivation does not discourage Cathy in the least. She reaches across my mother for the b.u.t.ton that controls her bed's position and presses it so that my mother has no choice but to sit up. "There. Very good." Cathy praises my mother as if she's already accomplished something. "Now let's just move your legs so they're dangling over the side of the bed. Can you do that for me?"

My mother does not move.

"Mrs. Pinkowitz." Cathy places her hands on her nonexistent hips in an attempt to appear stern. "You have to work with me here. Okay?"

"It's Shabbos, " my mother states. "The Jewish Sabbath. We don't work on Sat.u.r.days."

"Nice try, Mom," I acknowledge. "But we're not exactly religious."

My mother frowns at me for betraying her and looks to my father for support.

"C'mon, Doris," he says. "How am I going to take you dancing if you don't get out of bed?"

"What about if you just sit up by yourself, without leaning against your pillows? Try that for a minute," Cathy suggests.

"That's a good idea, Mom. If you can sit up for a little while, I'll be able to shampoo your hair. With the dry shampoo that Margarita brought us."

My mother nods and considers her options. She looks at all of us in turn and I imagine she's thinking, Three against one. What choice do I have? Plus she knows she's going to have to get up sooner or later. With great effort, she wiggles herself around until she is facing my father and me, and then drops her legs over the side of the bed.

"Doris, pull your s hmatte down." My father points to my mother's lap. Her johnny is all bunched up, exposing her pale white knees.

My mother shrugs, not bothered by this. "Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it," she says. My father puts his hands in front of his own knees and pantomimes covering them with an invisible blanket. "Don't worry, Max," my mother says, nonplussed. "They've seen it all, believe me. They've seen things you haven't even seen," she tells him, her words making my father turn red with embarra.s.sment. Still, Cathy helps my mother straighten out her johnny and then steps back to watch how she does, sitting up and breathing.

"How are you feeling?" Cathy asks after a moment.

"Swell," pants my mother.

Cathy beams, oblivious to my mother's sense of irony. "Let's try standing up," she chirps, moving the walker closer to my mother's bed. Before my mother can gather up the strength to protest, Cathy has tied her thick white belt around my mother's waist and used it to pull her to her feet.

"Hold on, Mrs. Pinkowitz. Hold on to the walker," Cathy instructs, as she holds on to her.

"Doris, you're up. Hooray." My father cheers and claps his hands. Briefly, I wonder if he had the same reaction the first day I managed to stand on my own two feet. I doubt it; most likely he was working at his office when the momentous event occurred.

My mother's body is trembling, and I'm afraid she's going to faint. "Don't you think she should sit down?" I ask Cathy. "She looks pretty unsteady."

"She's doing fine," says the unrelentingly upbeat physical therapist, who I'm beginning to think has a streak of sadism running underneath that peppy cheerleader facade. "We're going to take a few steps now."

My mother shakes her head and looks at Cathy. Translation: maybe you're going to take a few steps, but I'm not.

"One step, Mrs. Pinkowitz? Just one?"

"No," says my mother. Clearly Cathy's bubbly charms do not work as well as those that belong to the handsome Alec. "I want to sit down."

"Okay. Let me help you." Cathy guides my mother off her feet and back into bed. "You did very well, Mrs. Pinkowitz. Your oxygen didn't fall below ninety percent and that's a very good sign. I'll be back after lunch to work with you again. Okay?"

"Don't hurry," my mother tells her as Cathy packs up her walker and her belt and waves good-bye.

"Lunchtime," Margarita says, gliding into the room.

"It's like Grand Central Station in here," my father notes, dazed by the constant activity.

"I have to test your blood sugar, Mrs. Pinkowitz," Margarita says, showing her the small, square machine she is carrying. "That means I have to p.r.i.c.k your finger."

"Why?" my mother wants to know. "I'm not diabetic."

"I know, honey. It's because of all the steroids you've been on. That can throw your sugar off. I'm sorry I have to do this." She lifts my mother's hand, swipes her middle finger with an alcohol swab, and then jabs it quickly, making my mother, my father, and I all jump. "I'm sorry," Margarita says again, smearing a drop of my mother's blood on a slide and inserting it into her contraption. "This will just take a minute. Let's see. Your blood sugar is ninety-eight. That's normal. I'm going to tell them to bring you some solid food for lunch. Okay?"

My mother brightens at the prospect. She hasn't had a real meal in more than a week.

"What's the last thing you remember eating, Mom?" I ask her after Margarita leaves.

My mother thinks for a minute, then looks to my father for the answer.

"We both had lamb chops at that nice restaurant, what was the name of it? You know, where we ate dinner right before the lecture. They had that really good salad dressing with the poppy seeds in it that you like. You remember." My mother stares at him blankly. My father sits up and leans forward. My mother is like an elephant: she never forgets. Anything. Least of all the details of a meal. "You don't remember, Doris? They brought us that delicious cheesecake for dessert, with all the different toppings. Strawberry, blueberry, raspberry..."

"It sounds good," my mother says. "But I don't remember."

"Do you remember the lecture, Doris? They were talking about all the Broadway shows , Fiddler on the Roof, Funny Girl, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, h.e.l.lo Dolly ..."

My father glances at me for a split second, letting me know how much this concerns him. I tell my parents I'll be right back and leave the room heading for the nurse's station. Behind the desk sits my old friend, Dr. Harte. When I tell him my latest worry-that my mother has lost her long-term memory-he a.s.sures me again that this is normal. "She'll be sharp as a tack in a day or so," he tells me. "I'll go in and see her." He rises from his chair and follows me back into the room. "Mrs. Pinkowitz," he says and much to my surprise, my mother smiles at him warmly. I guess she's already forgotten how she called him a liar and told my father to stiff him. "How are you today?"

"Better."

"Good. Let's take a listen." The doctor plugs the ends of his stethoscope into his ears and places the round metal disk against my mother's chest. "Breathe in for me as deeply as you can. Now breathe out. Again. Very good." Dr. Harte nods, detaches himself from his stethoscope and steps back. "You're doing very well, dear. Now you have to get stronger. Has the respiratory therapist been in?" My mother nods. "The physical therapist?" She nods again. "Excellent. You'll be out of here before you know it."

"When?" I ask, moving out of the way as an orderly brings in my mother's lunch tray.

"Not until she gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom by herself. And we're sure that everything is stable. Oh, and you'll need to call the airlines about the oxygen she'll require on the plane."

" I need to do that?"

Dr. Harte raises his eyebrows, letting me know that he's certainly not going to spend his precious time on hold with the airlines, listening to Muzak and waiting for an actual person to come on the line and speak to him to set this up. "You'll have to call the oxygen company, too, eventually. But don't worry about that now. That all comes later." Dr. Harte turns back toward my mother. "You're doing beautifully," he tells her.

"Thank you, Doctor," my father says. "You know, my daughter's a doctor, too."

"Really?" Dr. Harte stares at me with new respect in his eyes. "What do you specialize in?"

"I'm not a medical doctor," I rush to clarify. "I'm a professor."

"She has her Ph.D.," my father brags. "She holds a doctorate in Jewish Studies."

"That's wonderful," Dr. Harte says, just as his pager goes off. "Excuse me," he says, hurrying away.

"Um, Dad." There are some things I can let slide, but this is definitely not one of them. "I'm not a professor of Jewish Studies. I'm a professor of Women's Studies."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am." How can he argue this with me? "Where did you even get that idea?"

"From you. You told me you were teaching Jewish Studies."

"I never said that."

"Yes, you did, Lydia, don't you remember?" My father's question implies that my memory, like my mother's, is suddenly on the blink. "You told me that you were teaching a course about women and the Holocaust. A few years ago. Remember?"

"Of course I remember," I tell my father. "But that cla.s.s wasn't taught through the Jewish Studies department. It was taught through the Women's Studies department. Because I am a Women's Studies professor. Because I got my doctorate in Women's Studies." Can I be any clearer than that?

"What's for lunch?" My mother, who has always had a knack for changing the subject whenever the conversation gets too unpleasant, points to the tray sitting on her bedside table. I bring it over to her and lift the metal cover off her steaming plate.

"It looks like some kind of stew." I study the food, which reminds me of past high school lunches that I always took one bite of and then threw in the trash. "It's like chicken pot pie without the pie. You want some?" I unwrap my mother's plastic utensils and hand her a spoon. "Why don't you try feeding yourself?" My mother is game, but when she lifts the spoon halfway to her mouth, her hand begins to shake like someone with Parkinson's Disease. I take the spoon from her before she spills its contents all over her lap and pull up a chair to feed her. She eats everything on her plate-chicken, string beans, and chocolate pudding-and I am encouraged that her appet.i.te has returned. But she is so weak. The effort of all the morning's tasks has exhausted her and soon after her meal, she closes her eyes and falls asleep. Watching her, I wonder how in the world she will ever have the strength to fly from California to New York, an arduous trip for anyone, even those of us in perfect health. Will the Holy Family Hospital ever loosen its clutches and release my own holy family from its tight, unyielding grasp?

MOE, LARRY, AND CURLY. The Three Musketeers. Three Blind Mice. Snap, Crackle, Pop. The Pinkowitz Trio has taken Los Angeles by storm and it looks like we are a huge success. Every day my mother grows stronger. A lot stronger. Dr. Harte attributes it to the fact that she's now getting a good night's sleep-her room is much quieter than her ICU cubicle-and she's eating well, too. Still, the speed of her progress amazes me. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, with the aid of a walker, she surprises herself by taking her very first step, and by Sunday morning she makes her way across the entire room. Jack's chair has been replaced by a commode, a subst.i.tution that amuses me no end and horrifies my mother so much that she makes it her business to be able to use the bathroom by Sunday afternoon. On Monday, my mother feeds herself breakfast, lunch, and supper, and in between all her various therapies, she is able to sit up in a chair for over an hour, making it possible for me to brush out her hair and wash it with dry shampoo. And while she is long overdue for an appointment with her colorist and stylist, much to my relief, she is finally beginning to look like her old self.

Inside my mother's body, things have gotten better, too. She's been using her inhalers faithfully and practicing her breathing, and is now able to make the ball in the breathing test apparatus rise halfway to the top of its plastic container. Her oxygen has been lowered to four liters per minute, her blood pressure only has to be checked once every four hours, and her last IV has been removed.

And finally, in addition to her physical improvement, my mother's mental capacities have made their own show-stopping comeback, too. Clever girl that I am, I've discovered a way to test how well her brain cells are functioning, by asking her to help me out with the crossword puzzles I've torn from my father's discarded day-old newspapers. The first time I asked my mother for the solution to a simple clue, a five-letter word meaning "pancake," the answer crepe eluded her, though she did come up with blintz which, while one letter too long, was a perfectly logical guess. But a few puzzles later, she was able to provide me with a six-letter word for "no longer reliant on mother" (weaned); a ten-letter word for "non-human" (mechanical), and the name of the actress who played Nora Charles in The Thin Man (Myrna Loy). She was even able to figure out the answer to a clue that I should have known but had me stumped, "Sappho's last letter."

"Wasn't she Greek?" my mother asked as I sat across from her, pencil poised above a little white square.

"Yes, Mom. She was a poet. She lived on the island of Lesbos," I told her, as if my mother and I talked about such matters all the time.

"Then her last letter would be omega," my mother said just as matter-of-factly, and lo and behold she was right.

On Tuesday morning, Margarita bustles through the doorway, having been off duty on Sunday and Monday. "How is she?" she asks, nodding her chin at my mother.

"Coming along fine," says my father, lowering his ever-present reading material.

"Why don't you ask her yourself? These days she's a regular habladora, " I say, and then inwardly wince, horrified that I've behaved just as badly as my father by casually tossing around Spanish words when I have no business doing so. But Margarita surprises me with a hearty laugh; I had expected her to bite my head off. " Habladora? Where did you learn that?" she chuckles.

"My spouse is Puerto Rican," I remind her, though of course she has no way of knowing this. My father didn't specify whom his Puerto Rican daughter-in-law was married to, and for all Margarita knows, my parents have a son somewhere who is blissfully married to the aforementioned Alicia.

But Margarita is more concerned with her patient than with the ethnic makeup of my family, and rightly so. "How are you, Mrs. Pinkowitz?" she asks my mother directly. The nurse has obviously spent some, if not most of her time during her two days off having an extreme makeover at a trendy salon. Her hair, while still auburn, has been lightened several shades and is now woven into dozens of braids that hang down her back, many of them decorated with brightly colored beads and sh.e.l.ls that clack together musically whenever she turns her head. And her formerly blue, square fingernails are now shaped into ovals and polished a deep magenta, with a tiny glittering jewel embedded in the middle of each one.

"I like your nails," my mother says, leaning forward to get a closer look.

"I like yours," Margarita counters. "How are you feeling? Better?"

"Much better." My mother's voice is just about back to normal. "My daughter washed my hair yesterday."

"It looks nice." Margarita compliments her again. "Would you like me to braid it for you? Like mine?"

"Yes, but not so many." My mother wriggles herself across the bed to make some room. Margarita climbs aboard, kneels behind her, and weaves her hair into two French braids, which she joins together with a purple scrunchie at the back of her neck. Finished, she hops up to admire her handiwork. "Very glamorous," she says with approval. "I think you're going to be ready to go home soon."

"What do we have to do to make that happen?" I ask.

"The doctor will tell you," Margarita answers. "Let's go see if we can find him."

Margarita and I step out into the hall and locate Dr. Harte sitting at a desk behind the nurse's station, slurping coffee out of a white Styrofoam cup and scribbling notes on a patient's chart. Out of respect for his position, Margarita stands quietly with her hands clasped behind her back, waiting for him to look up and acknowledge her presence before she speaks. "Doctor, Lydia would like to speak with you about the steps she needs to take to get her mother home."

"Ah, yes." He puts down his pen and studies me as if he's a.s.sessing whether or not I am up to the task. "You'll need to call the airlines and ask them the maximum amount of oxygen they can give her on the plane. You'll need to call the oxygen company to set up oxygen for her on the way to the airport, at the airport, on the way home from the airport, and at home. You'll need to have an appointment set up with her primary care physician within a week of her return. I'll make a copy of her chart for you to bring to him."

"Or her," Margarita and I chorus automatically and then laugh.