Page 1 of Your Soul to Keep

1

Lace and Lipstick

Withthepassingofeach day, she deflated a little more. By this point, she was barely more than a scrap of lace and a bad attitude.

Propped up against the headboard of the heavy, mahogany, sleigh bed and stripped of her legendary energy, she appeared even smaller. Hair that used to be as blond as my own settled around her wrinkled face like wisps of smoke. Even still, she was fiercer than I’d ever been.

Staring me down, she plucked and smoothed the lace cuffs of her nightgown.

She taught me a woman never leaves the house without her lipstick. Though confined to her bed, at the first hint of company, her lips blushed like a wild Irish rose. She was, in her words, ‘going out in style.’

She reminded me of this often, usually after making a disparaging remark about my favored uniform of jeans and t-shirts.

When her rant went on too long, I threatened to bury her in an open casket wearing her Kerry green ‘Proud to be Irish’ sweatshirt.

No lipstick.

She promised she’d haunt me.

I wasn’t completely opposed if it meant I wouldn’t have to let her go. She was all I had left in the world.

I shook my head as if to dislodge the thought. The time for facing the truth would come, but not today.

I smoothed the wedding ring quilt she painstakingly stitched together decades ago across her lap and tucked it around her legs.

Plants lined her windowsill, their trailing leaves arching toward a sun that was valiantly trying to usher in the spring.

One of the nightstands that bookended the head of her bed staggered under a huge stack of books. The other held an ever-growing collection of prescription bottles clustered around a China teacup and saucer that had served to hold her wedding band for as long as I could remember.

Candles flickered on the matching dresser, their light reflecting off the antique mirror attached to the back while rock music streamed through her speaker.

She was cherry lipstick and Carrickmacross lace, Galway crystal and the crashing waves of the stormy Irish sea, the pot of burnished gold at the end of every rainbow and all the sparkle of Christmas. Full of piss and vinegar with just enough honey to sweeten the harshest of truths, she held me through all my worst days.

What was I going to do without her?

I pulled her quilt up higher over her chest.

She patted my hand. “Muriel is on her way over for a visit. Would you put the kettle on for us?”

“Of course, Nan.”

She looked out the window, her lips compressed in a thin line. “I was sure I’d outlive that old bird.”

“Nan!” I laughed but she only rolled her eyes and grinned in response.

At the sound of the doorbell, I ran downstairs to open the door for Nan’s cantankerous neighbor. She proudly wore a prickly mantle of irritability and impatience, but the cackles of laughter coming from Nan’s bedroom whenever she visited told the truth.

“Tea, Mrs. Wemberly?”

She nodded as she hung her coat on the hook in the hall. “A splash of milk and a half teaspoon of sugar. And don’t skimp this time!”

I smiled. “Of course not.”

She carried an enormous carpet bag wherever she went. Like Mary Poppins but not nearly as spry.

Or smiley.

And she certainly didn’t sing.

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