“Reggie was a salon owner who blew out her hair twice a week in New York. He was her favorite member of the family,” I inform Daphne, meeting her hushed voice.
“He was a relative?”
“He may as well have been, as much time as they spent together,” I reply, and release a sad laugh from behind my mother’s chair.
“Well, Callie, it might be nice for you to have a seat on Ms. Helen’s bed and catch up, isn’t that right, Ms. Helen? If you two need anything, let me know. I’ll either be making rounds or at the front desk.” Daphne closes her lids to half-mast as she smiles at me; her subtle gesture encourages me to hold patience in my heart today as I settle in for a couple of hours of reliving the past with my mother.
“Will do.” I kick off my shoes, grab a throw pillow to support my back, and shimmy onto my mom’s bed so I can sit comfortably up against the wall. I extend my legs out in front of me and forward-fold to touch my toes. I guess if I’m going to consider becoming a runner, I should first become a stretcher.
“Ms. Helen, you enjoy your time with your daughter, Callie.” Daphne pats my mother’s arm one last time. Though she’s trying to hide her intentions, I know by saying my name over and over, Daphne’s reminding my mom who I am. That my mother often forgets my name is a stinging reality to swallow, but reminding her is becoming more necessary to prevent her forgetting me altogether. I appreciate Daphne’s veiled efforts.
“Remember Quinn, my best friend from Princeton?” I ask Mom, instigating a past memory that is easier for her to recall than a more current one. She offers no response, but I proceed anyway. “I’ve talked to her a lot recently, and she had some big news for me. For us.” My tactic of inclusivity prompts my mom to turn her head toward me. Either that, or she was getting a kink from jutting her chin forward, staring straight ahead at the tree.
“Alice is getting married,” I continue, placing a second pillow over my lap so I don’t feel compelled to suck in my stomach in front of my mother. Old habits die hard. If anything will spark commentary from my mom, it’s the mention of a wedding, her favorite reason to celebrate.
Still silent, my mom points to a frame on her bedside and then waves the “gimmie” fingers so I’ll pass it to her. I hastily grab what shewants and place it on the armrest of her chair. Her knotted hands pick it up and run over the glass. A contented smile softens her face. “This is going to be a lovely wedding.”
I inhale and then blow out a hefty breath to engage the patience Daphne encouraged me to have.
“It sure was,” I respond flatly. My mom is holding my and Thomas’s framedNew York Timeswedding announcement from late winter 2002. When I packed up my mother’s apartment to move her out to Sacramento so she could be closer to us, rather than alone in a facility in New York, she insisted on bringing the announcement with her. I sold her artwork, shipped John some of her furniture for his first apartment, and packed away decades of pictures, but my wedding announcement, my mother insisted she carry with her on the plane. I could only suppose she wanted a reminder of her social status in New York upon the unfortunate reality of moving someplace where she would have none.
Calliope Steele and Thomas Kingman
Calliope Kincaid Steele, the daughter of Helen and Rhodes Steele of New York, New York, was married last evening to Thomas Oliver Kingman, a son of Ruth Kingman of Richmond, Virginia, and the late Governor August Kingman. The Reverend Dr. Samuel Clemens performed the ceremony at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, New York.
Mrs. Kingman, 29, graduated from Princeton and received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia. Her father is the Chief Medical Officer of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.
Mr. Kingman, 30, is in his first year of a two-yearcardio-oncologist fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. He graduated from Georgetown and received his medical degree from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
His mother is the chairwoman of the newly established Kingman Scholars in Richmond, Virginia. His father was Governor of Virginia from 1989 until his death in 1998.
When Thomas and I got engaged and at the outset of our marriage, my mother adored her son-in-law. His credentials were her ultimate conversation topic. She personally took my falling in love with him as a nod to her good taste in men because he mirrored my father. That lasted until Thomas took her only offspring and first grandchild cross-country, and not even to a locale she could attempt to put a positive spin on, like San Francisco or Beverly Hills. No oneshe knewknew anyone who lived in Sacramento, so according to Helen Steele, the city was populated by a bunch of nobodies.
Since Thomas is on her mind, I jump back into her favorite subject: hearsay.
“I got a text from Thomas a bit ago. Apparently, Alice begged him to come to her wedding, so I’m going to have to see the jerk in a few months.”
No response from my mother, so I try again. “Thomas is invited to Alice’s wedding. After all this time, I’m going to have to see him. And I’m going to have to be civil, since John and Andrew will be there too.” I pause to allow my mom the space to rip on Thomas, since her eloquence with scathing adjectives is not yet fully lost.
“Oh, good. I always liked him.”
Wait, what?My mother hasn’t liked Thomas for twenty-two years. I look again at the wedding announcement she is holding. Aha! She’s speaking of Hotshot Fiancé Thomas, the one who promised her, myfather, and me that we would live in a ten-block radius of my parents, always. She probably thinks we still do. “He has the nicest manners.”
Wow, my mom is really lost in time. Does she think Thomas is going to walk in her door any moment with a cheesecake from Zabar’s? It was the one indulgence my mom would take a spoonful of and then meticulously lick every last morsel off the stainless-steel utensil when her son-in-law stopped by with a ribboned box. I wonder if I should hit the call button for Daphne in case Mom forgot to take her meds. Or perhaps her brain might do well with a catnap.
“I so appreciated it when he got up early in the morning to claim my favorite chaise lounge at the pool so I could sunbathe. The resort could really use more chairs.”
Racking my brain, I can’t think of a single time that Thomas was at a pool with my mother. She enjoyed lots of beach time with the boys when we took them back east for camp in the summers, and we all spent a week with my parents in the Hamptons, but that was long after my mother refused to wear a swimsuit in public.
“Mom, Mom.” I nudge her elbow with my toe to get her attention. She turns slowly, taking her eyes off my wedding announcement to gaze in my direction but doesn’t look at me. Instead, she stares past me.
“You did not go to a pool with Thomas, only the beach. Maybe you’re thinking of John or Andrew and when we would take them to our tennis club when you came out to visit.” She could be confusing the young Thomas in our wedding-announcement portrait with one of her grandsons.
“Yes, I did,” she sternly insists.
“No, you didn’t, Mom.” I know I need to remain calm, but I get irritated when my mom loses grasp of the most basic facts and timelines of her life. I struggle, believing a woman who kept a meticulous diary of her daily comings and goings, referencing each appointment and event by the time, location, and what the appropriate dress would be, can’t keep the most important men in her life straight. I’m not urgingher to remember the butcher on East 73rd or the guru from her short spiritual stint when I was in sixth grade. I’m only trying to straighten out the memory of the father of her beloved grandsons.
“Yes, I did. Spring break. Bahamas.”
