Saying Goodbye is a remembrance by Jack Rusher, published here Monday, March 15, 2004. It is part of Memories.
A conversation.
Mise en Scene
We are standing together in the kitchen while I make lunch. My mother says, “if only I had a little more money I could preserve my dignity.”
“How so?”
“Well, I have some money from my benefits check, enough to get me back to Baltimore, but not enough for a hotel room. I don’t want to do it outside, in the cold, like an animal.”
She is asking me for money without asking me — a passive aggressive game wherein she perseverates aloud until I offer her whatever it is that she wants. She desires not only the thing itself, but proof of my love in the form of my offering her what she desires without her asking for it. This game is an old family favorite that we’ve played since I was a boy.
“Hm,” I say, focusing on the vegetables I am chopping, “that doesn’t sound very pleasant at all.”
I am so tired of this game that I’ve started playing my own game, one in which I ignore her entreaties and pretend not to understand what she’s saying. She finds my game as maddening as I do hers.
“No. Not at all. But I guess I don’t have any choice...”
“That is unfortunate. However, I would say that you’re making a choice in your decision to do whatever it is that you have in mind.”
“You know what I’m going to do. As sick as I am, it’s my only choice.”
“I’m not sure how returning to Baltimore is going to make you feel any better.”
She darkens a few shades, starts to breathe harder and speak louder.
“I want to go back to Baltimore because I have the connections to get what I need there and because I don’t want to do it your house. I don’t want you to find me the way I found my father.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking of doing?”
Nearly shouting, “you know what I’m talking about — the way I found my father.”
“No, I really don’t understand.”
She leaves the room without another word, which is the victory condition in my game — I win by not giving in to her.
Denouement
I gave her the money as she was boarding the bus to Baltimore. She was never able to ask me for it, only to reiterate how terrible it would be if she didn’t have it.
When the bus left the station I went to my girlfriend’s apartment, relinquished the hardness that had allowed me to the win the game, and, resting in her arms, wept uncontrollably for hours.
Upon arriving in Baltimore my mother checked into a hotel, bought a large dose of heroin, injected it into her left arm, and went to sleep for what she hoped would be the last time.
The hepatitis C virus had been at work on her liver for years, slowly diminishing her body’s ability to process poisons, heroin included. She no longer had the capacity to metabolize the drug fast enough for it to kill her. Her attempted suicide led to fifteen hours of deep sleep followed by a two day headache and a renewed desire to live.