Debra Every

DEENA UNDONE

by Debra Every

CHAPTER 1

Agatha stands at the edge of a lake staring at the water as she listens to the gentle waves lapping the shore. The ground is solid, the air thick with the peppery smell of a lone pine tree growing by the water’s edge. A gentle breeze brushes across her lined face. She no longer needs the cane she has been using since her seventieth birthday. The arthritis is gone.

What strikes her is the strangeness of it all. She’s still tethered to her hospital bed—feels the weight of her blanket, the hard pillow, the undercurrent of hospital white noise—all while standing alongside the water. She bends down and dips her cupped hands into the lake, bringing the water to her lips. It tastes sweet. Concentric circles gently ripple outward until they are absorbed by the water’s surface.

Agatha realizes that the extraordinary vibrance of her surroundings is real. She can feel it, taste it, smell it. What’s more, she senses a presence guiding her to a wellspring of darkness hidden below the surface. Clearly this is a way station of her own making. Why else would she feel a flush of warm anticipation?

She glances at her left hand with curiosity, wondering at the vibration in her fingertips. With a satisfying sense of release, she pulls off her fingers, one by one, and drops them into the lake, watching the blood turn the water black. As each finger sinks it expands, becoming a formless, irregular mass floating just below the surface. She gazes at them as a mother would her children, her need for a legacy finally satisfied. Naming them seems only right. Visu. Auditu. Tactu. Gustu. Odoratu. The embodiment of all that she is. Her five senses made manifest.

But something has been left undone.

Agatha turns away from the lake and prowls the barren landscape, searching. How wonderful to walk freely and without pain. In her wake, trees break through the hard earth, first as saplings, then as massive columns, celebrating her arrival. Leaves appear and unfurl like open palms. Soon she is surrounded by a towering forest, a carpet of moss and ferns under her feet. Seedlings beget shrubs beget bushes beget flowers. The citrus smell of lemongrass fills the air.

Agatha closes her eyes and summons an image of a woman from her memory. Not just any woman. Her. The woman carries a bundle in her arms as she makes her way around the edge of the newly formed forest. A spasm of resentment seizes Agatha as she watches her step onto a moss-covered path leading down to the lake. Agatha’s eyes narrow into slits and a smile slowly spreads.

“Deeeena,” she whispers. “There you are.”

CHAPTER 2

Deena Bartlett had been on the phone for more than twenty minutes, all while sitting next to her sleeping aunt at Wilshire Rehab Center. The stone ledge masquerading as a chair was every bit as uncomfortable as the one back at Hillcrest Hospital, where she’d spent the better part of a month watching Agatha descend into her final days on God’s green earth. She could sense the accumulation of despair infused in the chair’s fabric and frame from the hundreds, maybe thousands, of families who had been there before her, keeping watch over the dying. Maybe that was why she felt a growing unease. She was waiting for something to happen.

There had been a measure of hope during Agatha’s stay at Hillcrest, even with her refusal of medication. That all changed last week when the seventy-eight-year-old was moved to Wilshire—her final stop on the road to Hallelujah.

Deena’s current phone call wasn’t going much better than the half-dozen before it. Nobody seemed interested in visiting her aunt. Not even Agatha’s friend, Lucine, with her embarrassed refrain of umms, ers, and wells. Deena finally took pity on the woman and ended the call.

Lucine’s reaction was surprising. True, Agatha hadn’t seen her old friend in years, but the two women had known each other for decades. Loyalty ran deep in the Syrian community. Deena could only suppose that when it came to Agatha Haddad, loyalty wasn’t enough. Her aunt was difficult, and as old age had collected onto her cantankerous bones she’d turned from bad to worse. One by one the people in her life vanished, leaving Agatha alone on a sinking ship with only Deena by her side.

When the call ended, Deena sat quietly staring at Agatha’s four-foot-eleven-inch frame lying in bed like a nearly full sack of water threatening to undulate at the slightest touch. Her aunt’s face was round and bloated from years of too much food and drink, her chin-length gray hair lank and lifeless.

There was no family resemblance between aunt and niece. At fifty-eight Deena was a handsome woman with a small frame and a mass of gray-streaked curls falling over the collar of her tailored shirt. She brushed a piece of lint from her pinstriped trousers, straightened the man’s tie hanging loosely around her neck, and stared out the window . . . until a voice broke the quiet.

“How’s it going?”

Deena turned toward the door where her husband, Simon, was leaning against the frame with his hand in his pocket and his right leg crossed over his left. After twenty-five years she still loved the look of him—tall and lean, with just enough awkwardness to keep him tethered to his younger self.

“Lost?” she asked with a smile.

“I had a break at school. Thought I’d poke my head in. Any change?”

“Nope. Still sleeping,” said Deena. “I’m surprised to see you.”

“I didn’t come for Agatha. I came for you. But not without bearing gifts.” Simon brought a white bag out from behind his back as he strolled into the room. “Ta-da!”

Deena’s stomach gave a tug. “Big Belly’s?”

“Nothin’ but the best.” He dropped the bag onto the overbed table, reached in, and pulled out a double-fist-sized bundle wrapped in butcher paper, along with two cans of Coke. When he unwrapped the butcher paper, the heart-stopping smell of pastrami filled the room.

“You’re a lifesaver.” Deena hurried over to the table and grabbed one of the halves. She removed the top slice of caraway-studded rye, heaped a mound of coleslaw onto the pastrami, and then a healthy slathering of Russian dressing. For years she and Simon had argued about the perfect hot pastrami. Simon insisted that anything but spicy brown mustard was sacrilege. Not Deena. She liked her pastrami sloppy. Big Belly’s may not have been Katz’s from the Lower East Side, but it was damn good considering it was in Upstate New York.

Simon caught Deena eyeing him as he fastidiously spread mustard onto his half—edge to edge on the bread, never on the pastrami. Before she could denigrate his choice of condiment, he said, “Please, you’re sullying my culinary experience.”

She raised her eyebrows with her head pulled back as if to say, “Who, me?” and then focused her full attention on her sandwich, wiping drips of dressing off her hands and around her mouth. After not being hungry for days, Deena couldn’t get it down fast enough.

With nothing left but the wrapper, she dragged her finger through an errant drop of dressing and popped it into her mouth. She then took a thirsty pull from her Coke, leaned back, and said, “I could use a shower.”

Simon laughed. “Feeling better?”

“A bit.”

He gathered up the empty wrappers, jammed them into the bag, and made a perfect trash basket three-pointer. With that done, he settled back into his chair and together they sat listening to Agatha’s breathing, the only sound in the room. Lunch may have given Deena a welcome break from the day’s heaviness, but it took less than five minutes for their extravaganza to be overtaken by the swirl of life’s passing with a dying Agatha as guide.

Simon reached for Deena’s hand and gave it a squeeze. But his smile quickly faded as he examined her face. “There’s something going on. Spill.”

Deena would have preferred not answering. Conversations about her aunt were dotted with land mines. It had always been best to avoid them. And in the spirit of all-roads-lead-to-Agatha, Deena lumped the rest of her family into the no-talk zone. But when a person sits day after day watching someone from their family die, the rules of the game change.

“I can’t stop thinking about Mom,” she finally said. “The way she took care of my grandmother.”

“Understandable, considering where you’re sitting.”

“You should have seen the two of them. Mom never left that woman’s side—all while Teta served up complaints like candy. I mean, this was her mother-in-law, for God’s sake. Yet here I sit, with all manner of ungenerous thoughts rolling around in my head as I care for my own mother’s sister.”

“I suspect even your mother had her moments. It’s easy to remember a person through a nostalgic lens.”

“Oh, please,” said Deena, shaking her head. “I was twenty-five when my parents died. I remember them both very clearly.”

“You’ve got to give yourself a break. I may not have known your mother, but it seems to me that what you’ve done for Agatha is right out of her playbook.”

“Maybe,” she mumbled, turning toward her sleeping aunt.

Simon rubbed his face. “Deena, I’m worried. The past year has taken its toll. I’d hate to see you have a relapse.”

And there it was. The first land mine. Simon’s favorite axes to grind were Deena’s mental health and Agatha, but combining the two into a creative ball of scrutiny was new. Agatha had nothing to do with Deena’s years in therapy.

She stared at Simon with as steely an expression as she could manage.

“Okay,” he said, with obvious disapproval. “A topic for another day.”

“Look, once I get back to work, everything will be fine.”

“I hope so. There are people who miss you. I saw Kayla Madden crying in the guidance counselor’s office this morning.”

Simon always knew which buttons to push. Deena felt a grab of conscience.

“Poor kid. I’ll give her a call on Saturday.”

“A call would be nice, but sessions with her acting coach would be better.”

“We have all summer to focus on monologues. Her first audition isn’t until November.”

Simon narrowed his eyes, clearly waiting for more.

Deena added, “I’ll figure something out.”

“Good,” he said, nodding. “So what do you think? Does she have a shot?”

“Juilliard or Tisch would be a stretch but, yeah, definitely . . . as long as her mother doesn’t sabotage her. I think Kayla’s got the goods for a bigger career than I ever had.”

Simon checked the time on his watch and stood to leave. “I’d better get back. And I may be home late—it’s my turn for study hall.”

“Oooh. So my boyfriend can stay a little longer.”

Simon laughed. “Have at it.”

He reached her in two steps, bent down, and straightened her loosely knotted tie. Deena smiled up at him and delivered a good-bye kiss.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “It means a lot.”

After Simon left she settled back into her book. Before long, Larisa Goodwyn’s latest novel had grabbed her by the unmentionables as Deena waded knee-deep through the mayhem in The Devil Beside Her. But the book’s mounting tension was interrupted by a quiet “Help” coming from Agatha as she struggled awake.

The fact that her aunt had said even one word was surprising. For days she’d been in and out of consciousness, too weak to speak. It wasn’t just the one-two punch of COPD and heart failure that was draining the life out of her. Sepsis had handed Agatha a front-row seat to nevermore, with her denial of medication acting as the coup de grâce. It was a surprising choice from such a selfish woman, but strength and control meant everything to her. Agatha would rather die than be sick. Wish granted, thought Deena.

She took her aunt’s hand and said, “I’m here, Aunt Agatha. What do you need?”

“Help me up.”

“I think maybe we should get your mind going first. Get you talking.”

With that, Agatha smiled. Happy? Sarcastic? Hard to say. But her eyes struggled to become more present, more self-aware.

And then a switch turned on. Agatha’s face regained its characteristic hard edge. With great clarity, enunciating each word so as not to be misunderstood, she said, “If all I need is to get my mind going, why the hell would I . . . need . . . you?”

Perfect, thought Deena. Agatha Haddad, my family’s contribution to universal kindness.

As quickly as Agatha had delivered her words of appreciation, she dropped back off to sleep. Her aunt had always viewed whatever situation was at her disposal as an opportunity to score a criticism or denigration. Dying was clearly not cramping her style.

Deena leaned over the bed to fluff her aunt’s pillow and give her sheet a tug. Then she got up from her chair and stretched the kink from her back. The days seemed to be getting longer and longer.

She walked over to the window and looked longingly outside, wishing she was in her living room laid out on the couch with a glass of wine. Deena combed her fingers through her hair and massaged the back of her neck, hoping this small relief would get her through another hour of sitting . . . when a woman’s whisper floated into the room.

“Deeeenahhh.”

Deena’s shoulders flinched at the hushed sound of her name. She shot a look at Agatha but her aunt was still asleep—and there was no one else in the room.

Damn, she thought, shaking the whisper from her head. Larisa Goodwyn knows her business. Her new novel had clearly hit its mark. Then again, the whole morning had felt as if something was hanging in the air. It was time for a break.

With a just-in-case glance over her shoulder, she left for a cup of coffee. When she got to the lounge, she sat in a chair on the far side of the room, with coffee in hand, and resumed her current pastime: staring out the window. She was doing that a lot lately; staring out windows wishing she was someplace else.

After ten quiet minutes, she stood with a shrug, topped off her coffee, and reluctantly left. When she was a few feet from Agatha’s room, she noticed a woman with a cleaning cart standing in the doorway, looking at her sleeping aunt. She was short and ample, with thick socks and sneakers, wearing a smock over a faded floral dress. The woman turned toward Deena at the sound of her approaching footsteps. When she did, the glare from the overhead fluorescent light cast her wrinkles into deep shadows and highlighted a slight drooping on the right side of her mouth..

She focused her milky eyes on Deena and motioned for her to come closer. When Deena was at arm’s length, an arthritic hand darted out, grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her in so close, a smell of decay coated Deena’s throat. Was it her imagination, or did those milky eyes suddenly clear?

“Take care,” whispered the woman in an accent she couldn’t place. “She is coming for you.”

Deena’s chest tightened as the woman turned and wheeled her cart away, leaving Deena just a little stunned. What the hell was that?

Then, for the first time in years, her right hand began twitching. She quickly grabbed it with her left and stole a glance at the nurses’ station, even though she knew nobody had noticed. The reflex was a holdover from darker days.

She turned into her aunt’s room, fighting the urge to close the door.

Just a crazy old lady. Forget about it.

But as the afternoon wore on, she found herself feeling the roughness of the old woman’s hand with its swollen joints and gnarled fingers clamped onto her wrist like an ancient, twisted vine.

***

That night she had a dream.

She was walking along the edge of a lush forest, carrying a baby swathed in a blanket, frayed and threadbare. The air was filled with the fresh scent of citrus. Eventually she came to a moss-covered path flanked by ferns quivering in the light breeze.

Deena stepped onto the path and headed toward an ink-black lake in the distance. When she reached the shore she noticed five floating objects swirling lazily in the water, but try as she might, she couldn’t make out what they were.

She leaned over for a closer look, and as she did a small hand from her bundle reached out. Deena looked down at the baby, but the hand was gone. The baby was gone. In its place was a rotting, maggot-infested piece of meat. The stench rose up into her face, watering her eyes and making her gag. Deena threw it into the water where the rotting meat transformed into a likeness of her mother.

“Deena!” her mother screamed. “Help me!”

Before Deena could get to her, the water—no longer water now—the thick, black, viscous liquid oozed into her mother’s mouth and nose, with her mother’s screams struggling to escape the mire. The oily bog took the last of her with a final, horrific groan as her mother’s unblinking eyes slowly sank below the surface and out of sight.

Deena heard someone laughing behind her and, wheeling around, came face-to-face with her aunt holding a cigarette. Agatha dropped her jaw and a cascade of maggots flowed from her mouth while a voice in Deena’s head whispered, Ready or not . . . here I come.