The Moribund Moose Read online

  Clyde stepped back, placing the ruined brush next to the palette. “All done!”

  Ruth knelt down, kissed the child. “From Grandma Moses to Jackson Pollock in ten minutes… the abstract expressionists have nothing on you.” She put the paints away and went off to check the mail.

  When she returned, Clyde was in the living room admiring a picture in a beige frame - a print of the French actress, Jeanne Samary. Ruth had purchased it during a Renoir retrospective at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. “Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty woman!” Again the ingenuous certitude.

  The lustrous skin tones along with the artist’s clever use of chiaroscuro intrigued Ruth. She admired the seamless melding of impressionist and traditional styles, the artist’s ability to paint a single figure and make the subject infinitely interesting - aesthetically irresistible. “I went to the museum hoping to break through my creative impasse ...” Ruth knew that what she was doing - talking to a child this way - was foolish, but she couldn’t help herself. “To jump-start my moribund muse.”

  “Yes, I understand!” the young boy hadn’t a clue what his grandmother was talking about.

  “Now I’m feeling even less inclined to pick up a brush.”

  “Don’t be sad, Grandma,” Clyde urged with genuine sympathy.

  *****

  Ruth’s mother died the week before Easter. The day she passed away, Ruth drove through a blinding thunderstorm to Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence and rode the elevator to the third floor. In a room at the far end of the hall, an old woman with sunken cheeks lay sleeping. A feeding tube taped to the side of her nose hung limply on the pillow; another transparent catheter trailed alongside the mattress, draining its content into a half-filled plastic bag.

  “Good morning, mother.” She kissed the woman but there was no response. Her pale skin felt clammy. The silvery hair was rather long and lay neatly about her forehead. “Aunt Theresa stopped by last night and asked for you.” She scanned her face for any fleeting signs of recognition.

  Her mother’s metastatic liver cancer spread from a distant cancerous organ, and yet it was the recently diseased liver that was killing her. The disease was twenty times more common than hepatocellular liver cancer, four times more frequent in men than women - not that these obscure, oncological facts offered Ruth much solace. From November through March, her mother lost thirty pounds. When they brought her for testing the admitting doctor reported, “She’s quite anemic. Ascites are pooling in the abdominal cavity.”

  “Ascites?”

  “Serous fluids,” the physician explained. For all his technical expertise, the doctor’s tone was unnervingly dry, businesslike. “We’ll need an MRI and needle biopsy for tissue confirmation.”

  MRI. Needle biopsy. Ruth felt utterly wrecked inside. “You don’t seem terribly optimistic.”

  The doctor looked at her flatly. “Short of miracles, these cases don’t produce many happy endings.”

  A dark-skinned nurses aide entered the room. She took the woman’s pulse and blood pressure, scribbling some notes in a manila folder. “Was my mother awake at all today?” Ruth asked.

  “Earlier when we bathed her.” She fluffed the pillow and straightened the covers. “Doctor upped her medication so she don’t hardly feel no pain.” The aide disappeared out the door.

  “I brought some poems,” Ruth said, drawing a paperback from her raincoat. The spring afternoon was still light but with the false brightness that precedes a quick fading to dusk. She opened the book at random. “The one we read yesterday about the meadow mouse was awfully nice, don’t you think?” Ruth directed her words at the aluminum bed rail; a steady trickle of urine eased down the tube into the collection bag. “Of course, the second half of the poem, when the mouse climbed out of the shoe box and ran off, was a bit unsettling.” Her voice trailed away. Ruth momentarily closed the book, resting it on her stomach, and slumped in the chair.

  Yesterday, she read straight through for half an hour in a hushed, singsong voice. Had her mother heard, grasped the symbolism, the literary allegory, the author’s evanescent stream of consciousness? The presence of mind required to grasp a Roethke poem - had this been bartered away for so many extra milligrams of Demerol? Besides the bruised flesh, what was left of Ruth Ostrowski’s mother?

  The black aide stuck her head in the doorway. “I was going to bathe your mother, but if you’d rather I come back …”

  Ruth swallowed hard. “What’s your name?”

  “Andrea.”

  “Give me five minutes, Andrea.”

  “Okay.” She went away.

  Coloreds - that’s what they called black people when Ruth was coming of age. You said ‘colored people’ - the connotation not nearly as nasty as it sounded at face value - and relatives smirked - not scornfully, not in deprecating rage, but rather, as though at some private joke to which young children were not privy. Now this soft-spoken black woman with a gracious smile was doing for Ruth’s mother what hardly anyone else in the family possessed either the stomach or presence of mind. Ruth opened the book again and thumbed through to the end of the slim volume. “Moss-Gathering… one of your favorites...”

  To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber

  And lift up a patch, dark green,

  the kind for lining cemetery baskets,

  Thick and cushiony like an old-fashioned doormat,...

  When the poem was done she regretted the unfortunate reference to cemetery baskets, but her mother never stirred, and Andrea had returned with an armful of towels and washcloths. A full two-thirds of the light had drained out of the late afternoon sky. The aide flicked the florescent lights on. Ruth placed the book of poems underneath her mother’s folded clothes in the nightstand and left.

  After the funeral, Ruth felt her mother’s absence like a phantom limb - a wedge of her soul gouged away, a brightness diminished. Forever. When you reached a certain age, Ruth mused, you didn’t replace such losses; rather, they reconfigured your life or what little was left of it.

  *****

  At six o’clock, Ruth gave her grandson a light supper, bath and put him to bed. Clyde rose to pee. Fifteen minutes later, the child came shuffling into the kitchen. “A bedtime story.”

  Ruth led him back to bed and tucked the child under the covers. “Don’t know any.”

  Clyde sat straight up and tugged at Ruth’s sleeve. His dark hair smelled sweetly of herbal shampoo. “What about the moose? The mori, mori ... moribund moose.”

  Ruth felt the breath momentarily snag like a jagged bone in her throat. Her features slouched in a self-effacing smile. “Yes, I’d almost forgotten.” Fluffing the spare pillow, Ruth eased down on top of the covers. “The moribund moose,” she turned the disjointed syllables over in her mouth like flat stones. “Once upon a time in a far away land over the mountains and beyond the river, lived a moribund moose, Natasha by name.”

  Clyde lifted up on pointy elbows. “I’ve a friend at school named Natasha.”

  Ruth put an arm around the child, pulling him lightly against her breast. “Yes well, same name different genus. One day an evil witch put a spell on her, changing the beast into a chronic worry wart and prophetess of doom.”

  Clyde shifted on his side. “Screwed-up moose!”

  “Complicating matters was Natasha’s cosmetic anomaly: an utterly shapeless, nondescript snout… a nose you wouldn’t wish on your worse, four-legged enemy. Not that the other animals in the forest particularly cared since, by nature, moose are solitary, reclusive creatures, and even the most extroverted hardly ever join civic organizations.”

  “You talk crazy!” Clyde tittered and rolled off the side of the bed. He fingered a spot on the flannel pajamas where the collar chafed his neck. “Something’s wrong.”

  Ruth lit the light. Examining the material, she got a pair of scissors and snipped the cloth tag. On the remnant in fine print was written:

  Hecho en Bangladesh.<
br />
  Ver Al Dorso Para Cuidado.

  Below the Spanish was the English translation. Ruth dropped the multiethnic tag into the wastepaper basket. “How’s that?”

  Clyde swiveled his neck back and forth. “Much better!”

  On the maple dresser lay two, triple-packs of children’s underwear - six T-shirts and underpants - plus a week’s supply of winter-weight socks. Two flannel shirts, a turtleneck pullover, corduroys and a wool hat. Melba might call in a day or so, but Ruth wouldn’t bother to tell her about the new clothes. Hecho en Bangladesh. Ver al dorso para cuidado

  “The story,” Clyde interrupted her reveries. “Did you forget the story?”

  Ruth turned the light off and returned to bed. “Natasha, the moribund moose, wandered the forest seeking a sorcerer, a fairy godmother, a benevolent sprite - a kind-hearted and gracious spirit with magical powers to break the witch’s spell.”

  A car turned the corner. A beam of light sluiced through the window, panning the far wall before the room faded black again. “Queen Frostine has a crown and magic wand,” Clyde said.

  Crooking her arm, Ruth peered at an imaginary watched strapped to the back of her wrist. “It’s seventy-nine, eleven. Very late.”

  “The Candyland queen can fix everythingl” Clyde insisted.

  “Queen Frostine,” Ruth said. “Really?”

  “Yes, of course,” the child cooed soothingly. “Queen Frostine has a magic wand; she’ll break the evil witch’s spell and everything will be super-duper in the morning.” He wriggled his rump burrowing deeper into the mattress.

  *****

  At three in the morning, Fred rose to pee. Ruth waited until her husband settled himself back under the covers and leaned closer. “When Melba was still a baby, I bought a children’s edition Lives of the Saints. Do you remember?”

  “A slim paperback,” Fred confirmed, “with an ecstatic nun on the cover.”

  Turning over on her side, Ruth fluffed her pillow. “So many wonderful stories to choose from: Christopher, the Christ bearer and patron saint of travelers; Edward, the first Christian king of England; the scholarly Jerome, who lived in a desert cave; Stanislaus Koska, the nobleman turned beggar turned Jesuit novice; Saints Philip Neri and Mathew and Louis and Robert and Augustine.” Ruth thumped her husband playfully on the chest. “As I remember, Melba favored Sebastian, the Roman army captain tied to a tree and shot full of arrows by his fellow soldiers.”

  Fred chuckled, a hollow, rasping sound. “A saintly pincushion.”

  Two doors down, Clyde whimpered, a soft, keening sound. “What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t know.” Fred put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Melba’s hopeless, but, if we could cut our losses and save the boy, that would be something.”

  After a while, Ruth could hear her husband’s regular breathing. In the spare bedroom, Clyde let out mournful yelp like a mortally stricken animal and the house fell silent. “Save the boy,” Ruth murmured. Save the boy. Save the boy. Save the boy.

  *****

  A week after Clyde’s arrival, Ruth sat down with her lawyer. “I want sole custody of my grandchild.”

  “Which implies you share custody presently with your daughter,” the lawyer replied.

  “Unfortunately, that’s not the case.”

  “You want to become the child’s legal guardian?” The lawyer drew an elaborate daisy on his legal pad with a gold-nibbed fountain pen. “Tell me about the mother.” Ruth told him everything. As Ruth listed her concerns, the daisy gave way to a carpeted lawn with trees, verdant shrubbery and an assortment of wildflowers. “Melba’s soliciting and prior drug arrests count for nothing,” the lawyer observed. “Clyde is Melba’s biological child and, as such, you have no legal claim or status.”

  Ruth glanced out the window. A squirrel was foraging its way haphazardly across the spring grass in the direction of a scraggly alder. “She’s an unfit mother,” Ruth blurted out, continuing to follow the squirrel’s higgledy-piggledy journey.

  “That’s not for you or me to say,” the lawyer replied tersely. “A worse-case scenario: you report your debauched daughter to DCYF; they investigate, take the child away and put him in a foster home more disagreeable than his present living arrangement.”

  “I came here for help. This isn’t what I expected.”

  By way of reply, the lawyer simply drew another ornate flower. Leaning back in the chair, he threw the fountain pen aside. Ruth waited for the lawyer to signal the meeting’s end. Instead, he smiled glacially and rubbed his jaw. “Melba’s erratic… out of control. Your best course of action may be to let her self-destruct three thousand miles away then move ahead opportunistically.”

  Ruth felt a fierce clamoring in her chest. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  The lawyer rose, as though his last remark was the anticipated farewell, and ushered her out the door.

  *****

  Later that night, Ruth was prodded awake by an insistent, bony finger. Clyde stood quietly beside the bed. “I had a bad dream.”

  Hardly a night passed when the boy didn’t cry out in his sleep - rebukes, recriminations, justifications and denials of wrongdoing. But mostly, he repeated the same two words - ‘not bad’ - an unconscious act of contrition for his ravaged childhood. “A nightmare,” she confirmed.

  “Uncle Ralphy was yelling and calling me names.” Ruth lifted the covers and gathered him onto the bed. “When Uncle Ralphy comes to visit, he don’t wear no pajamas to bed.” The boy shook his head, confirming the utter truthfulness of his reportage. “He’s a noodis. Even goes around naked in the morning, too.”

  When Uncle Ralphy comes to visit, he don’t wear no pajamas …

  Uncle Ralphy - prematurely bald, with the letters D-E-A-T-H and P-R-I-C-K etched crudely in India ink across his hairy knuckles was clearly one of God’s less perfect creations – a botched effort. As though a search light had suddenly flooded the room, Ruth mashed a hand over her eyes and stifled her teacherly instinct to correct the double negative. “And your mother?”

  Clyde yawned and draped an arm over her neck. Ruth removed his hand and kissed the palm. Fred stirred; he was awake but resting quietly with his eyes closed. “When Uncle Ralphy visits, she’s noodis, too.”

  Ruth felt her husband flinch, an involuntary gesture. Before dozing off, Fred would digest this latest abomination: the image of his beloved Melba flouncing au naturel around the cramped, two-bedroom apartment like an extra in a low budget, porn flick. He would digest then excrete the image from his body, mind, and universe.

  “You ought to know,” Ruth spoke deliberately as much for her husband’s benefit as the child’s, “that nudists go about naked for reasons of health, never convenience or crass laziness.”

  *****

  A week passed. No word came from Melba - not so much as a picture postcard of the body builders, roller-skaters, musicians, dancers, jugglers or nutcase firewalkers on the Venice boardwalk. Ruth found day care - the same one she used the last time Melba ran off on short notice - to take Clyde. She rose an hour early and prepared omelets with mushrooms and onions which she sautéed separately and folded into the thickening egg batter along with grated cheddar cheese. On weekend she heated the waffle iron, moistening the lumpy batter with yoghurt or kefir. She cut the waffle into bite-sized nuggets, slathered it with whipped butter and maple syrup before handing Clyde a fork. Evenings, sometimes she fixed oatmeal - the original, steel-cut, coarse-grain not the quick-cooking variety. The oatmeal burping like a volcanic lava pit, she splashed a quarter inch of milk into the bowl; to this she added a generous dash of light cream, brown sugar and sliced banana.

  Joyful. Sorrowful. Glorious. For Melba’s sake, Ruth prayed the rosary nightly, focusing on the solemn mysteries of Christ’s life. On the fifth bead following ten Hail Mary’s, she always added the Fatima Prayer:

  O my Jesus, forgive us our sins,

  save us from the fires of hell r />
  and lead all souls to heaven,

  especially those who have

  most need of your mercy.

  The Fatima Prayer was optional, but she favored the inclusive language and, in spiritual matters, it always paid to hedge one’s bets. At the end of the rosary on the gold-lacquered medal that connects the beads, Ruth recited the Hail Holy Queen, the perfect counterpart to the more pragmatic Fatima Prayer. The Blessed Mother would accept the sinner’s misdeeds, forgive and cleans.

  Saturday morning Melba called. The trip had hit a snag. “Ran out of money and the creep kicked me out.” Ruth bit her bottom lip. Where Melba was concerned, she always felt like the attendant with a short-handled broom trailing the elephants during a parade. “I spent last night at a homeless shelter and need cash to fly home.”

  “Want to speak to your son?”

  “Clyde’s not the issue.”

  “Clyde’s never the issue,” Ruth muttered. “I’ll consider your request.” She hung up the phone.

  Ruth took Clyde to the Capron Park Zoo. They watched the zookeeper feed the smelly, unkempt lamas, then craned their necks in the tropical rain forest and studied fruit bats dozing in the artificially mist-shrouded trees. In the playground just outside the park, Clyde pulled himself, hand over fist, up a rope ladder to a platform with a corkscrew-shaped slide. His legs still bowed rickety like a cowboy’s with too much saddle time, but the upper body was filling out nicely, the face less gaunt. Twenty feet in the air, he hurried into the mouth of the plastic slide and reappeared shortly at the bottom.

  Ruth pictured her daughter sleeping in a homeless shelter surrounded by winos, welfare types, runaways and mental defectives. In the morning a simple, no-frills breakfast, if she was lucky, then back on the street until sundown. The image produced a sharp surge of regret but no guilt. Clyde came running up breathless. “I want a white shark sherbet.”

  Twenty feet away, a Hispanic girl with a runny nose was slurping on a frozen treat shaped like a fish on a Popsicle stick. “A white shark sherbet,” Ruth repeated as they headed off in the direction of the snack bar.