I closed the door to Eli's silver Grand Am. I could still see his face through the glare on the window. He grinned and blew me a kiss and then his car exited the lot of Quiet Village and sped down the street.
I stood on the sidewalk and stared at the entrance, my gloved fingers touching my lips. A young couple was coming out the revolving door. The woman hunkered her shoulders and dug her hands into her pockets and the man wrapped his arm around her. Maybe it was just the brisk winter air. The man and woman hurried through the parking lot, smoky puffs of breath hovering above them. A debilitated grandmother, I wondered. A failing father? Maybe a close family friend? It didn't matter. Not really. Few Quiet Village residents left other than by hearse.
At the doorway a man in a black overcoat met my eyes. He gave me a quick nod and gestured that I should go in ahead of him. I gave him a half smile in return but shook my head. I wasn't quite ready.
Ma had been here for two weeks. Before that she was in the hospital across the street hanging on to life. Now she was still hanging, just not as critically. But she was dying. A lifetime of smoking had destroyed her lungs. I took a deep breath. A sudden gust of wind rose up and slapped my face. I had to go in.
On the ride up in the elevator I thought how things might have been different if when I was eleven my father hadn't skipped town with a girl half his age—an aerobics instructor with firm abs and perky breasts. Maybe if he'd chosen someone from his own generation Ma could have got over it and not let the humiliation gut her. Maybe then she would be more apt to smile. But probably not.
When he first left, I was angry. Later, I was simply disappointed that my father's relationship goals didn't include his daughter. Nowadays I hardly ever thought of him except when Ma ranted on about how his deceit had sucked the life out of her. As the years went by her tantrums abated a little, and I'd heard from someone—a second cousin—that his aerobics instructor had ballooned. Two hundred pounds of irony. Meanwhile, Ma maintained her weight at an exact one hundred fifteen. Until her illness.
As I walked down the corridor, the familiar odor of old mixed with dying burned my nostrils. Like sulfur or skunk—you recognized the smell, the thick feeling in the back of your throat—but it's difficult to describe it. I wished I could wear a mask.
Outside Ma's room I peeked around the doorway, half praying Ma might be sleeping, any excuse to postpone this visit. But there she was sitting upright in bed, pillows at each bony shoulder, elbows propped upon the bedside table that crossed in front of her. Her hair was mashed to one side with silver and white spikes escaping. Her make-up was garish—bright pink lipstick overflowing her lips, cheeks rouged to circus clown standards.
"Oh, Gigi, you're here."
I stepped to the side of her bed. She gurgled.
"Hiya, Ma. How ya feeling?" I finger combed her hair and bent to kiss her. She quickly turned her face so my lips grazed her ear. I settled for kissing the top of her head. Ma hadn't willingly kissed anyone in several years. She wasn't going to change now.
"This damn oxygen tubing," she wheezed. "I have to take it off any time I want to smoke. The nurse said it could explode." She yanked the tubing off her face and tossed it aside.
"Ma, you need the oxygen."
"What I need is..." She stopped. The coughing began. She jerked forward, grabbing a tissue and filling it with blood flecked sputum. I waited. She'd been doing this for weeks now. "What I _need_ is a _smoke_."
I turned off the flow of oxygen and walked over to the window, wishing I was outside again where the air was clear and lungs only burned from the cold.
"Ma, I..." She didn't hear me. She was struggling with the butane lighter. I could have helped, but I didn't. Instead I leaned back and waited. White knuckled, her fingers gripped the base of the lighter. A flame flickered. She greedily stuck the end of her cigarette in the blue heat and sucked down the first drag. The lines around her eyes and mouth smoothed. She nearly smiled. She settled back, almost calm.
Now was the time. "Ma," I said. "Eli asked me to marry him."
"And what did you say?" Her tone was accusatory. The lighter rolled over and over in her palm.
"I didn't say anything, yet." I thought about telling Ma how Eli had arranged the whole proposal—the dinner, the candlelight, the carefully placed ring in my glass of Riesling, and how he'd got down on one knee, but lost his balance, and pulled the tablecloth, contents and all, to the floor. But Ma would just say it was a waste of good wine and expensive food.
She stared at me, glassy-eyed, almost placid, the unfiltered cigarette smoldering, quivering between her fingers. Any hope of congratulations I may have had spiraled away with the rising smoke. Years of lectures regarding the malevolence of love and marriage had prepared me. I didn't have to wait long.
"Marriage is a hoax and love is like this cigarette." Ma slid the white cylinder between her dry, cracked lips. Her eyes drifted shut. She inhaled, letting the nicotine float along its familiar path before she spoke again. "It gives you a high you can't live without." She held the burning stick upright in the air, balancing ash like a cheerleader holding a partner. A faint line of pink lipstick kissed the thin paper.
