How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet Page B

actually worked in the hospital but an ideal nurse, capable, courteous, modest. He wondered how she came to have this capacity for appropriateness wherever she went.
    But mostly he went alone, not wishing to overwhelm her. They sent in orderlies to bathe the patients, and on the day his mother came out of her coma the orderly had secured her hair to the sides of her head with a pair of pink barrettes. He went to the bathroom in her room, wondering idly why there were plastic butterflies affixed to his mother’s
    temples, and when he came out her eyes were open. She blinked several times.
    “Mother?” he asked, and fumbled to press the call button. “Can you hear me?”
    Her face still did not move and he picked up one of her hands, pressed it gently.
    “It’s me,” he said, “T. You’re in the hospital.”
    Finally her mouth worked dryly and he put down her hand. He ran to the bathroom and filled a paper cup with water.
    “Here,” he said. “Here, drink this.”
    He spilled the water over her chin and down the sides of her face, trying to tip it into her mouth.
    “Can you talk? Do you know me?”
    “Tell me your name,” said a nurse, cutting in beside him. “Angela,” said his mother.
    “And can you tell me what year it is?” “1990,” said his mother.
    “OK,” said the nurse. “Just lay back there, honey.”
    “I died,” rasped his mother, after a long pause. “I died.” He leaned in and clasped her wrist.
    “You almost died,” he said. “You had a stroke. But here you are.”
    “Thirsty,” she whispered, and he poured more water into her mouth. He could hear her gulping, and the nurse raised the head of the bed so that his mother sat up.
    “You don’t need to talk,” said the nurse. “Just relax. You’re doing great.”
    “I died and went to another place,” whispered his mother, straining to lift her head off the pillow. “But it was nothing like what I expected, T. It was nothing like it.”
    “You can tell us all about that later,” said the nurse. “OK? Right now we need you to just lay back and relax.”
    “You believe me, don’t you,” whispered his mother, reaching for his face. “You believe me.”
    “Of course I do,” he whispered back.
    “I was surprised. I thought it would be heaven, T. But it was bad, very bad,” said his mother, and moved her feet suddenly beneath the sheet. “It was the International House of Pancakes.”
    “I’m surprised too,” said T.
    “I thought it would be more expensive than that.”
    He studied her face to see if he could detect humor but there was nothing, only a vague and yet urgent concern.
    “We’re just glad to have you here with us,” he said, and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
    “I don’t want to go back there again,” she said, and closed her eyes. “I must have done something wrong, T. Something very wrong to go there.”
    “I’m going to get the doctor now,” said the nurse. “And you best be letting her get some rest. Visiting hour’s almost done anyways.”
    “Sure,” he said.
    Before he left he reached over and removed the barrettes.

    He found her a small apartment, on the first floor of a yellowbrick building a block away from him. She would convalesce there and T. could check in on her easily. It was pleasant and airy, modest and clean; the windows of the large living room gave onto a common garden whose grass was a deep green, with white plastic lawn chairs and a kidney-shaped pool. The doors were wide enough for a wheelchair and the inside smelled of lemon.
    He and Beth furnished the apartment on the day his mother was to be released, drinking coffee and watching as men from a furniture rental company rolled in the chairs and
    sofas on dollies. They brought over her few belongings from T.’s apartment and Beth put daisies in the window.
    “Oh T.? I think we forgot something,” she called from his bathroom when they were getting ready to leave for the hospital. She came out holding the Bo Peep