“The way they do it is they think of their testicles, they lock in the head, and they move their eyes like this.” He squinted sharply, for a split second. “It’s called wince. The American Wince. And it gives the Dick Tracy seed—travels through the woman’s eye, and mathematizes, drops down to the womb. You fill the whole body with the seed by math. And it drives in. That’s how children come rightly.”
When asked, Donald talked briefly about the priest he said molested him. “He was dastardly, and he was paid to hurt me,” he said. He said he did not know if the priest abused anyone else, and that it happened to him just once. He seemed pretty sanguine about it now. “I got damaged and scarred and got over it. Nature heals itself.”
He mentioned the medicine he must take, but that discussion spun off, too. “I’m appreciative of that,” he said. “The medicine’s for staph infections, for living in groups. Haldol is for living in the hallway with people. I’m a pharmacist. As an architect, I put nine thousand new pharmacies in America. So that’s why I get to be a pharmacist, taking the pills. The Chinese government has challenged me to take a chance with me on that, so we can have some world conquest and pharmacy for all people. That’s why I like China. I’m a neurophysiology chemist. That’s what I do in my scientific field, as a scientist.”
Donald smiled. So did Mimi, haplessly.
“Yeah,” Donald said. “Life goes on, doesn’t it?”
* * *
On July 13, 2017, Lindsay was in Colorado Springs for the day to help Matt. A few weeks earlier, he’d totaled his old truck, and now he needed a ride to his appointments. She took him to get his blood drawn, then to the pharmacist to pick up his clozapine, then to Matt’s clinic for the proper clearance for the prescription, then back to the pharmacy. And then more errands—deliveries to two disabled friends who had relied on him for help, as long as he’d had the truck.
After dropping Matt back at his apartment, Lindsay stopped by Hidden Valley Road to see her mother. Mimi never left her bed now. Today, she was having a horrible headache. Jeff, her caregiver, had tried Tylenol and a sedative called Lorazepam, but it was getting worse.
Lindsay felt it in her stomach. This was exactly how it had started the last time, with a bad headache.
“She’s having a stroke,” she said.
* * *
—
HER MOTHER WOULDN’T let Lindsay leave her side. Every time she tried to take a break and head upstairs, Mimi would cry out as best she could through her aphasia: “Mary? Where’s Mary?”
Over the phone, the hospice service told Lindsay to give Mimi more morphine than ever: 10 milligrams every hour. It took four or five hours for Mimi’s pain to subside. At about 4 p.m., Mimi had a full-blown seizure. Holding on to Lindsay, shaking and out of control, she managed to say, “I’m going now, I’m going now.” She lost consciousness.
Lindsay, Jeff, and Michael took turns sleeping and sitting with Mimi, administering morphine and Haldol. If they ever backed off the regimen, Mimi became highly agitated and uncomfortable. With it, her breathing was still loud but rhythmic. Through a baby monitor, they could hear Mimi’s breath filling the house like a bellows. Occasionally she would stop breathing for several seconds. Each time they were sure that it was the end. Then she’d start breathing again.
Three days passed. On Sunday, Lindsay drove to Pueblo to get Peter. He brought Mimi a big bouquet of pink roses and said a Rosary for her. She got Donald from Point of the Pines and Matt from his place in Colorado Springs, and they both also had their chance to say goodbye. Mark came, and so did Richard and Renée, who cooked for everyone. John was in Idaho, planning to come out in a week’s time. Margaret, on the phone from Crested Butte, said that she had made her peace with her mother already and would not make the three-hour drive to see her one more time.
* * *
—
IN THE EARLY hours of Monday, July 17, Lindsay administered a dose of painkillers to Mimi and went back upstairs to go to sleep. At 2 a.m., Michael heard the rhythm of Mimi’s breathing change on the monitor, and he got up to check on her. He stood over his mother, watching as she inhaled and exhaled deeply, about ten times.
Finally, there was silence.
Michael woke Lindsay. Neither of them could go back to sleep. Lindsay cried and they both stayed up for a few hours, lighting candles and incense, sitting on the back deck, listening to the rain. There was something comforting about the sound of weather all around them.
The next day, the rain was still falling. Lindsay opened the front door to the house. The sky was gray, but the sun was there somewhere, giving the rain clouds above a bluish hue. Lindsay walked out into the front yard. She stood out there for a long time, arms stretched out, gazing upward as the rain covered her.
She motioned toward Michael, and he joined her. Together, they got soaked, laughing in the rain. Giddy, she tried to get Michael to dance with her, only to learn that her brother barely knew a box step. “I’m a musician, I’m always sitting on the stage!” Michael said.
Lindsay laughed. And when he grabbed his sister’s hand, Michael froze. It looked just like his mother’s hand, the way he remembered it from long ago.
DONALD
JOHN
MICHAEL
RICHARD
MARK
MATTHEW
PETER
MARGARET
LINDSAY
CHAPTER 40
On the blazing July day before his mother’s funeral, Peter’s room at Riverwalk—a nursing home, a few blocks away from the state mental hospital in Pueblo—had a cheap boom box blaring classic rock and a big-screen TV going full blast, both of which Peter largely ignored.
“It’s wonderful,” Peter said, looking around, Lindsay standing next to him. “I got the Bible and everything.”
He showed off a photo album, filled with group shots of the Galvins. He pointed at faces and picked out names.
“Don, Jim, John, Brian, Robert, Richard, Joseph, that’s me, Peter, Mary’s in the chair,” he said, jabbing at the photo with a shaky index finger. “They’re wonderful. That’s my dad. He was a lieutenant colonel in U.S. Air Force. He flew the falcons at the Air Force football games. The Thunderbirds were at halftime….Don, Jim, John, Brian, Robert, Richard, Joseph, Mark, Matt, and that’s me, Peter. Margaret, Mary”—he smiled—“that’s my little girl, Mary. She’s wonderful.”