► Listen to this article. [5:49]

“Go down on Riverside Drive to 72nd Street,” she directs the driver.

He responds with something about traffic that she cannot hear. The driver and I agree that Broadway might be faster today, and I explain this to my mother who looks skeptical.

My mother insists on paying, but she cannot see the amount due on the backseat meter. I read it to her. She fumbles for her credit card and then can’t find the slot to insert it. I offer to do it for her, but she insists. I point to the slot. But when I point to the appropriate tip amount, she hisses at me that she doesn’t want to tip 15 percent or 20 percent. When she presses the numbers for $1.50 — 14 percent — only 1 and 5 respond to her touch and she tips fifteen cents. I jump out to get her walker, and I slip the driver two dollars from my wallet.

I bring the walker around and watch helplessly as she struggles to get out. We walk to the museum entrance, her face stern. “I really don’t like it when you interfere with my tipping. I tip how I want to tip and it’s my business. It’s humiliating to see you giving the driver extra money.” I explain about the fifteen cents and her face remains stern with the principle of the thing.

In the gallery, she points to a favorite painting, “Look at the patterned upholstery, gilded and ornate, velvety clothing, catching the light. But he painted gaunt, sad, empty faces.” She shows me her favorite: it’s an elaborate story requiring no words. There is a shift in our moods. I ask her more about the painter.

   The doctor’s office is a few blocks away. My mother describes an array of symptoms and concerns to the doctor. As they go over her numbers the doctor is upbeat—until my mother points out, correctly, that one number is not in the normal range. The doctor reconsiders and suggests an additional test. As we wait for the technician, my mother says she knew something was wrong. “Well, let’s see. Let’s not assume the worst,” I say, and she snaps, “Stop lecturing me. You are always making light of my pain and discomfort. Can you imagine what it is like for me? I can barely hear. I can barely see. I can barely walk.”

I retreat. “I don’t mean to minimize your pain. I wanted to be reassuring.”

“You don’t seem to understand how much I’m dealing with.”

  I think: I don’t? I’m here, aren’t I? You are ninety years old and you are still enjoying museums and teaching me about art. I think: I should just listen and empathize. Aging is hard. Loss is hard. What do I know?

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She looks glum and smug.

  I let her get in the taxi her way and negotiate the route with the driver. They mishear and misunderstand each other and repeat. We silently stare straight ahead. I decide that I should hold her hand. It feels outlandish. I reach over, and when my skin touches hers, she jumps and looks at me. I smile/grimace, trying to show concern, perseverance, empathy.

“I knew it,” she says sadly. I resist the urge to argue or reassure or repeat the more positive things the doctor said.

  She tips the driver 15 percent.

  I dread the rest of the afternoon. Her sense of doom and my commitment not to fight it have slowed the clock. Suddenly, she perks up. “Let’s go see that Polish movie!”

A relief, even if it means more taxis, more patience. It’s a fascinating movie, and we talk about everything afterwards: the music, the dresses, the politics, the love story. It is still warm out, and we walk to her favorite take-out pizzeria.

“Do you have any wine?” she asks. I am surprised by her question and surprised that they have wine in little plastic cups with lids.

“Let’s eat in the park!” she says.

I hold the pizza box and the plastic cups as we walk to a little park where Broadway meets West End. We sit on a bench by a fountain; I set the walker in front of her and the pizza box on top, like a table. I put a slice for her and a slice for me on top of the box and place her cup of wine to the right of her pizza slice. We look at our feast and smile.

She says, “People will think we are homeless!” She is overcome by laughter and I start laughing too. She has tears in her eyes and blurts out, “I am a millionaire!”

 ;

The Story That Must Not Be Told:
A Dead Woman’s Memoir

by Deena Metzger

    In 1974, a German student, Ina Andreae, comes to Los Angeles to study -- and, later, commits suicide. Fifty years later, her brother Wolfgang Andreae visits Deena Metzger, who was Ina’s teacher, to ask Deena what she knew of Ina. What follows from that alliance is this novella, a fiction that is not a fiction, an unfolding emergence of facts, events, and stories, showing us how wounds going back to Hitler still affect us, and their startling resemblance to the grim political dramas of today. "...A heart-breaking, heart-enhancing ghost story of whirlwind proportions, an incantatory, ethical thriller masterfully rendered by one of our great contemporary visionaries." – Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden and The Suicide Museum Available from Bookshop, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore. Learn more about Deena Metzger at deenametzger.net  

Find this and more in ArtsMart