Summer Stories: ‘Will There Be Any Unusual Side Effects?’

The last time I saw my mother alive she hadn’t been entirely, well … alive. My auntie had conveyed this with an authority risen from experience, having taken care of other people through their ends of life. She was no stranger.

“She’s already gone. She’s not there.” Auntie Lana said. Except my mother’s eyes were open, messaging distress. And her limbs kicked and flailed as if she was capsized in water, splashing from the depths aiming for purchase.

But she was not really there, Auntie Lana had insisted.

Whatever the case may have been, whether consciously present, or already gone, her body a shell reduced to mere electrical synopses, I had thought without question: this is the last time I’ll see her living. And then they removed her from the machines, and she wound down like an old watch, the hands ticking slower and slower until at last they stopped. So, some five years later, when I trundled half-asleep into the kitchen at 3 a.m. for a drink of water from the faucet and saw her sitting calm as you please, playing solitaire and nursing a cup of stale coffee at my dining room table, I’ve had to revise my understanding of “the last time I saw my mother alive” to “it’s complicated.”

Mother never felt at home in the Pacific Northwest. She missed the big, wide-open of the Montana and North Dakota plains, the way the skies went on forever. She’d felt hemmed in by all the trees, the forests, of Washington state. She couldn’t see through to the horizon. Except of course on the Sound, on the Pacific Ocean. She’d made compromises just for those days spent on the beaches. She collected white stones on those beaches – Moclips, Ruby Beach, Ocean Shores – she collected sand dollars, installed hundreds of them along the south end of her house, along the driveway. Her good luck charms, she called them, her riches.

The morning after talking to my dear departed mother I reluctantly and against my better judgment told Gavin. “You were just dreaming, Jesse!” He said.

“I think I know when I’m awake or dreaming.” I said.

“Of course, you were! C’mon, honey, that’s just not possible. You’re telling me that you had a whole conversation with a ghost? Your mother’s spirit found its way from the other side, or … wherever, to our kitchen and the two of you talked about what dress you should wear to your cousin’s wedding?”

“No. I said Lila’s wedding, my sister’s, remember? This June? And Mom felt strongly about the lavender floral one with the bell sleeves. We looked through a bunch of them online together. And then she helped me clip coupons.” I gestured to the pile of coupons, the two pairs of scissors.

Gavin rubbed his face, taking a beat to measure whatever shock or awe he thought he should react to. “This is beside the point, but did she think it was a good idea to go to the wedding?” Gavin asked, fishing for a possible out. He and Lila had weirdness between them. I tried to stay out of it.

“She did, actually.” I said. “She said as long as it was outdoors, and we wore masks, it would be fine.”

“Oh, she did, did she? I guess she would know, right?” Gavin said, smirking.

“You don’t have to believe me. I know it’s a lot to take in.” I said.

Gavin looked searchingly out the window as if he thought he would find a definitive answer in the way the wind blew through the leaves. It was still before nine and we were having our morning coffee. He shifted in his chair to look directly at me, “Wait a sec, Jesse, is this some kind of Indian thing?” He corrected himself. “I mean La-koh-taah thing?” His elocution on “Lakota” sounded hollow, forced.

“Whaaht doo you meean?” I asked, hard enunciating, drawing out the vowels. It didn’t register.

“You know, I meant…”

“No, what?” I lied. I knew what he was trying to get at, but I wanted to watch him put his foot in his mouth.

“Don’t La-koh-taahs have a special access to the dead? Or I mean, to those who have passed?”

“You mean making the journey?” I said.

“Yeah, yeah.” Gavin seemed relieved.

“From the Happy Hunting Grounds?” I offered.

“Sure, OK, yeah, that’s what I mean, I guess.” Gavin said.

I laughed a little bit covering my mouth. “Gavin.” I said looking him straight in the eye. “I don’t know if clipping coupons and talking about contact paper for the kitchen cupboards with the ghost of my dead mother is an ‘Indian thing,’ or not. My mom wasn’t spiritual in that way, per se. Spiritual in the way you might assume. She loved to tell me whole plotlines to Lifetime movies she’d watched. She collected teddy bears. Miniature teddy bears. And she gave them all special names and occupations. Her favorite book was ‘The Thorn Birds.’ Her idea of a spiritual experience was having hash browns and eggs at Beverly’s Café in Old Town. She loved that place.”

“Well, sure, they make a good fried potato. Their egg Bennies are tip top, too. But the fried potatoes, they get that perfect crisp…” Gavin trailed off thinking about breakfast plates. “So, OK.” Gavin said. “Not a La-koh-taah thing.” He didn’t notice my grimace as he got up to refill his cup.

I had received my first Moderna shot just a few days before my mother’s … re-emergence? The vaccinations were set up in the tribal casino’s event center. I asked the nurse administering my dose whether there’d be any side effects, but I should have asked, will there be any unusual side effects? If I’d had any inkling about what would happen later, I might have asked: And can I expect my dead mother to swoop down from the afterlife and appear in a plume of smoke like Endora from Bewitched? Will she want to play Canasta and try out paint samples in the dining room? Will she feel compelled to fuck with Gavin? Turn him into a toy poodle?

The nurse gave their stock answer – there might be soreness in your arm, take a couple of Tylenol or Advil, hydrate and rest if you feel like you’re getting a cold, it’ll pass.

Had I hydrated enough? Was that the problem? Maybe I’d resurrected Mom because I was non-compliant, just like always! That’s Jesse for you, always screwing up, always so selfish. Isn’t that why Gavin wants to dump you? Why you can’t get pregnant?

It’d been a few weeks since the night I saw my mother, since we talked, since we looked at dresses online for Lila’s wedding. I was positive that my mother would revisit after my second Moderna dose. But she didn’t. And Gavin was so certain I only dreamed it. That I was only trying to stir up drama, or sympathy.

When Lila and I were little, our Grandpa George lived with and took care of us. He loved to keep us entertained with old rez stories. Stories about graveyards and thunder beings, about heyokas playing leapfrog in the hay fields, about highway fatalities and the boy with no eyes. I asked Lila about her memory of Grandpa over brunch one Sunday afternoon. Since she was two years older I thought her recollections might be more reliable. “You know he talked to Grandma Hope, right?” Lila said.

“But she died, decades before.” I said.

“He talked to her. When he was alone in his room, when the house was quiet. Do you remember how he used to sit in the dark?” I nodded, I remembered. He used to spend hours sitting in the dark, sipping from peach schnapps or apricot brandy.

“That’s when he visited with her.” Lila said. “I could hear them talking. They laughed. A lot. Some nights it was a regular ‘Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ in there!”

“Did Mom know?” I asked.

“I have the impression that it was common knowledge, but we didn’t openly discuss it. I guess I want to say that it was normal.” Lila said.

“Do you think this is connected to my seeing Mom that night after my vaccination? Like it’s a family trait or something?”

“Maybe. But just so you know, I didn’t have any unusual side effects after my shot,” Lila said. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m cracking up. Gavin thinks I am,” I said.

“Gavin is a jackass. You shouldn’t put up with him. He’s so unsupportive,” Lila said. And she was right. But, usually, I let it slide.

Grandma Hope and Grandpa George had been high school sweethearts on the rez. They married young, at 16 and 17. I used to imagine them dancing at a high school sock hop. Pink Ladies and the T-Birds, “Summer Lovin’,” and “Greased Lightning,” like something out of “Grease.” Or “Fry Bread Grease,” rather. Grandma was a cheerleader. Grandpa played on the basketball team. When Mom turned 9, Grandma Hope died in a car crash. Hit by a drunk driver. I remember that Grandpa kept a box of their old letters. Love letters. He often sat with the shoebox of letters on his lap, reading through them like they held some kind of spell over him. I loved looking at the old postmarks, the old stamps. Their meticulous and looped cursive. It makes sense that Grandma Hope visited, talked to Grandpa George in his room at night. They had a special connection, Mom used to say that their love was deep, that I shouldn’t settle, that I should wait for a love like theirs. It would be worth the wait. It sounded romantic, but also tragic. I wasn’t sure I was up for it.

Lila’s and Lorrie’s wedding had been lovely. It was held outdoors, in the gardens at Cedars Lodge near Puget Sound. It had taken place in the window between COVID-19’s Alpha variant and the Delta variant – the Alpha and Delta variant sounds like a spy novel – so most of the guests didn’t wear masks. She served salmon and asparagus with wild rice. The seating and altar had been decorated with yellow and white carnations with cedar boughs and eucalyptus. They read out vows they’d written for each other and were wrapped up together in a wool blanket from Eighth Generation. The only thing noticeably absent, the one person I wished had been there, was Mom. Although, there were moments when I for sure thought I’d seen her some distance away, waving a handkerchief, or standing near the cake table waiting for a slice. But then she’d vanish like smoke. It was a comfort seeing her.

Gavin did not attend. I had asked him to move out. Lila was glad, she said that I must have had the spirit of our mother to have collected the courage. But really, it was all me. She might have pushed me a little, though.

I had stood up and shared two stories with all the attendees for the wedding toasts:

Some years ago, my mother and I had been helping Lila choose a wall color to paint her dining room. We’d been trying to persuade Lila to choose earthy-orange colors, adobe or clay, but she liked the various beige colors – not colors at all in our estimation – with names like ecru, buff and putty. We brushed the selections onto the wall, our sample colors, and because paint dries to a different hue, we had to sit back and wait for them to dry. That’s when Mom burst out laughing. We asked what’s so funny? And after she managed to stop laughing and collect herself, she goes, “Our lives are just too exciting, here we are sitting around – literally – watching the paint dry.”

The other story: Lila and I were still just little, spring had arrived, the sun was heating things up, and it was time to plant the garden. Mom wanted to put in yellow beans, a type of bean she’d never planted before. She carefully read the instructions out loud, her eyeglasses balanced at the end of her nose. Only plant in full, direct sunlight. She looked up from the seed packet, surveyed the sky, the incoming clouds, it was nearing sunset and soon it would be dark. So, Mom got up, brushed away the dirt from the knees, took off her gardening gloves, and put away the packet of seeds to plant for the next day.