Claudia and the Sad Good-Bye Read online

  “No, ma’am.”

  “It’s okay, Mimi,” I said.

  “Oh, my Claudia. You here,” said Mimi, turning her head.

  “Yes, I’m here.” I squeezed her hand a little harder.

  “Dinner is not ready,” Mimi told me distinctly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s only lunchtime.”

  “And I never have enough money for payment. Car loan.”

  I almost pointed out that Mimi hadn’t owned a car in years, but decided not to. Besides, we’d reached the hospital.

  Here we go again, I thought.

  * * *

  Things were pretty much the same. Mimi got another private room and, by later in the afternoon, our entire family was crowded into it.

  Mimi was already better because, remembering her last stay in the hospital, the doctors had given her some new blood.

  “Vampire!” exclaimed Mimi, and we laughed, mostly because if Mimi could joke, that was the best sign of all that she was feeling better.

  I laughed, too, even though I was madder than I’d ever been. Not at Mimi, not at anyone else in my family, but at the doctors and nurses. Want to know why? I’ll tell you why.

  This is what happened when Mimi was first taken to her room. She had seemed to be okay in the ambulance and rolling through the hallways of the hospital on the way to her room, but as soon as the attendants transferred her onto her hospital bed which, really, they tried to do as gently as possible, Mimi screamed.

  “Oh! Oh!” she cried.

  Her entire body stiffened with pain. Dad and I were standing on either side of her bed and we each grabbed one of her hands and held on tight.

  “Will someone please get her some painkillers or something?” my father shouted to whomever was in the room.

  Everyone scurried out, but no one came back except a nurse’s aide, who took off Mimi’s dress and put on a hospital gown instead. She didn’t even bother to close the door to the room, so I gave her a dirty look and did it myself.

  Mimi’s pain seemed to have gone away by then, but Dad asked for the painkillers again anyway.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” the woman replied.

  But the next people who came in were Mom and Janine, Mom looking very upset.

  “Mother!” she cried, and ran to Mimi. She bent over her. “How are you feeling?”

  I think Mimi was about to say, “Fine,” when suddenly she went into another one of those awful spasms of pain.

  Mom burst into tears.

  Dad and I each grabbed one of Mimi’s hands again (it was all we could do), and I signaled to Janine to take Mom out of the room. The last thing Mimi needed was to see that she’d upset her daughter. I’m not sure she would have noticed, though. When the pain came, she would arch her back and squinch up her face, closing her eyes.

  That darn nurse’s aide hadn’t put Mimi’s hospital gown on very well, I soon realized. Each time Mimi arched her back, the gown slipped further and further down her chest until she was half naked. And Janine had forgotten to close the door behind her when she took Mom out. Anyone in the hall could see right into the room, see Mimi arching her back and squinching her eyes and crying out, with her gown around her waist. I tried to remember her other ways. I imagined her fully dressed, jewelry and all, smiling at me from across the kitchen table as we shared special tea.

  After three or four more spasms of pain, Mimi suddenly lay quietly on the bed. I fixed her hospital gown and drew the sheet up to her chin while Dad rang the bell for a nurse for the eighty-eighth time.

  “Hey, you guys,” I called to Mom and Janine in the hallway. “Come on in. And close the door.”

  My mother and sister reappeared, Mom with a paper cup full of coffee she’d gotten from a vending machine. She looked an awful lot calmer, even though coffee is supposed to make you hyper or something.

  Mom set her coffee cup on Mimi’s bedside table and peered over at her mother.

  Mimi smiled at her. “All better,” she said, and we laughed nervously.

  She wasn’t, of course. She was so weak she could barely move. When she tried to raise herself to a sitting position, she got dizzy and had to lie down. So we raised the bed for her.

  But the pain was gone.

  It seemed like hours before anyone bothered to do anything for Mimi, but finally doctors and nurses began showing up. Each time they did, I made sure the door to her room was closed. No more public indignity if I could help it. It was bad enough that our family was standing around while the doctors examined Mimi.

  Anyway, they finally gave her those pints of blood, and very soon she announced that she was feeling better. “TV?” she suggested. And not long after that, “Dinner?”

  By the next day, Sunday, Mimi was even better — physically. But her mind didn’t seem to be working too well. She kept talking about her things at home, about giving them away, as she’d given Mallory the bird. Only she was subtler than that now. On Sunday afternoon, she said, “My Claudia, I would like please to move plants to room. You room.”

  “Plants?”

  “My plants.”

  “Oh, at home?”

  “Yes. Put in room.”

  “I’ll remember to water them,” I assured her. “I don’t have to move them.”

  “No. Not that. You have them. Put in room.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Later she told Janine she was afraid someone would steal her diamond earrings while she was away in the hospital. She told her to take them out of her jewelry box and put them in Janine’s jewelry box. Or preferably on Janine’s ears. That night, I moved the plants and Janine took the earrings.

  Mom and Dad asked me to stay with Mimi the following afternoon. So I went to the hospital, even though I had to miss an art class before our club meeting. Mimi was not the funny person she’d been when she’d made the vampire joke on Saturday, nor the anxious person she’d been the day before. On Monday she was confused and cranky. She wandered into the nurses’ station and complained that the price of kitty litter was going way up. Then, back in her bed (I practically had to drag her to it), she said crossly, “Turn on TV, Claudia.”

  I was startled. She hadn’t said, “My Claudia.”

  I turned it on.

  “Change. Change channel. No good.”

  It was a rerun of Wheel of Fortune, which is her favorite, but I changed it anyway.

  Soon her supper arrived. (It seems like hospital patients get supper around four-thirty.)

  “Mess!” said Mimi, scanning her tray. “Trash!” She actually threw a container of bright yellow pudding at the wall. (Well, I might have done the same thing. The pudding looked like a cup of melted yellow crayons.)

  Luckily, a doctor came in then to do some more tests on Mimi, since they still didn’t know what was wrong with her. I didn’t even care that he interrupted her dinner. I was glad for the distraction.

  I didn’t understand Mimi at all. Especially not when, after the doctor left, Mimi seemed to be her sweet self again and told me, “My Claudia, never believe what other people say. About you. Never unless you believe it, too. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Mimi,” I said, forgetting entirely that just a while ago I’d wanted to take her by her shoulders and shake her for being such a baby and throwing her pudding at the wall.

  * * *

  That night, Corrie called me twice. She didn’t really have much to say. I think she just wanted to talk. And I wanted somebody who needed my sympathy, since Mimi didn’t seem to want much of mine. When I’d left the hospital that afternoon, I’d said, “Feel better soon,” and she hadn’t even answered. I don’t know why.

  But guess what happened on Tuesday — the doctors said Mimi could go home the next day! They couldn’t figure out what was wrong and didn’t see any reason to keep her in the hospital. I was so excited, I called all my friends with the news. I even called Corrie, who said, “Oh, Claudia! That’s great! You must be so happy. I can’t wait to see you
on Saturday!”

  Mom and Dad and Janine and I ate a celebratory dinner that night. Later, as Janine and I were cleaning up the kitchen, Janine suddenly turned to me and gave me a hug. We hardly ever hug.

  “What’s up?” I asked her, smiling.

  “I’m relieved about Mimi. Aren’t you?”

  “Definitely!”

  I went to my room to work on my stop-action painting, and a few minutes later, my phone rang.

  It was Mimi!

  She sounded fine and we chatted for a long time. I told Mimi how the painting was coming along.

  At last she said, “Well, let you go now. Do not want to confuse the Muses.”

  I had no idea what she meant, so I just said, “See you tomorrow, Mimi.”

  “Good-bye, my Claudia.”

  On school days, our family gets up at six-thirty. So I was surprised, on Wednesday morning, to hear voices and people moving around, and to look at my digital clock and see that it read 4:52.

  Four fifty-two? What was going on?

  I had to go to the bathroom anyway, so I got up. But I never even reached the bathroom. The noise and commotion was coming from my parents’ bedroom. I stopped at their door. I know it isn’t nice, but I listened to their voices for a few moments. All I could catch were snatches of conversation.

  I heard Dad say, “… arrangements to make.”

  Then I heard Mom say (and did she sound as if she were crying?), “I can’t believe it.” (A pause.) “… have to tell the girls.”

  I drew in a deep breath, knowing something was very wrong, and knocked on their door.

  My father opened it. He was dressed except for his socks, which he was struggling to put on, hopping around on one foot, and at the same time, reaching for his wallet and stuffing it in his pocket.

  Behind him, my mother was hurriedly pulling a blouse on over her slip. A pair of stockings and her pocketbook had been tossed on the bed, which was unmade.

  Maybe I’ve made a mistake, I thought. Maybe the clock actually said 9:52 and we were all late for work and school. But no. Mom and Dad’s clock now said 4:54.

  “Mom? Dad?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  I realized then that my mother was crying. She sank into a chair and opened her arms to me, inviting me to sit in her lap, which I hadn’t done in years. But I did it then anyway.

  Mom took my hand and said, “Claudia, Mimi died during the night. Just a little while ago.”

  I think my heart stopped beating then. I really do. I think it missed two beats. When it began working properly again, I felt my stomach turn to ice.

  “I don’t believe it,” I whispered. “She was fine last night.”

  I felt my father’s hand on the back of my head. He stroked my hair. “No, she wasn’t,” he said, and choked on the words. “She wasn’t fine, honey. Not really. She was old and she was sick. I think she just wore out.”

  All I could do was nod my head.

  After that, the morning was pandemonium. The early morning, that is. I had to get out of Mom’s lap because she and Dad had to finish dressing and rush to the hospital to do whatever you do there when someone you love dies. But first they had to wake up Janine and tell her, so there were more tears and hugs.

  When Mom and Dad finally drove off, Janine and I sat at the kitchen table with cups of tea. We did not use Mimi’s special cups. In fact, before our tea, I closed the door to Mimi’s room so we wouldn’t have to look at her things.

  Janine and I had been told that we could stay home from school, so we just sat at the table. After a very long silence, I said, “I talked to Mimi on the phone last night. You know what her last words to me were? I mean, before she said, ‘Good-bye, my Claudia’?”

  Janine shook her head. “What were they?”

  “She said she’d let me go now. She didn’t want to confuse the Muses.”

  Janine smiled. “Were you working on a painting or something?”

  I nodded. “The stop-action painting. I was telling Mimi about it.”

  “Mimi meant to say that she didn’t want to disturb the Muses.”

  “I don’t get it. What are the Muses?”

  “The Muses are, well, they’re creative forces. They’re spirits or powers that are supposed to inspire artists and musicians and writers. Disturbing the Muses means interrupting a creative person at work. Mimi just got the phrase mixed up.”

  “Oh.” I knew Janine would have an explanation. She always does. But I was really thinking about Mimi. She was the only one in my family who had understood about my art and how very important it is to me, and how serious I am about it.

  And now she was gone.

  Suddenly, I felt alone and abandoned, like Corrie waiting on our front steps for her mother. It’s funny to feel abandoned with your own sister sitting across the table from you.

  Janine looked at her watch. I looked at mine. Mom and Dad had told us that at seven o’clock we should begin phoning relatives and close friends to tell them what had happened. The funeral would be on Saturday, in just three days, and there was a lot to do before then.

  So at seven, Janine took over the phone in the kitchen to call our relatives, and I went upstairs to my own phone to call my friends. I knew that if I called just the families of the Baby-sitters Club members, word would travel fast (it always does in a small town), and soon anyone else who should hear the news, like the Newtons, would hear it.

  I sat on my bed with my back to the windowsill so I wouldn’t have to look at Mimi’s plants.

  I called Mary Anne first. That was going to be the hardest of the calls because Mary Anne had been almost as close to Mimi as I’d been. Growing up without a mother, she had come to Mimi with skinned knees or for advice or to learn a new knitting stitch.

  “Mary Anne?” I said when she picked up the phone, sounding not quite awake. It was 7:03.

  “Claud?” she replied. “Is anything wrong?” (Mary Anne has emotional antennae.)

  “Mimi died last night.” I had to say it that way. I couldn’t hedge with Mary Anne. “She died in the hospital. Mom and Dad are over there now,” (my voice broke), “getting her things and — and —”

  Mary Anne was already crying, so I didn’t see any reason to keep talking.

  “I’m sorry, Claud,” she said, between sobs.

  I began to cry again, too. “So am I. I know how close you were.”

  When Mary Anne calmed down a little, she offered to call the other members of the club for me, which was very nice of her. I let her call Dawn (so Dawn could console Mary Anne) and Jessi and Mal. But I wanted to call Kristy and Stacey myself.

  I called Stacey first. Stacey hadn’t been close to Mimi at all, but she’d known her and liked her, and besides, Stacey was my best friend. I had to call her.

  Stacey was getting ready to leave for school when the phone rang in her New York apartment. She was supposed to be out the door twenty minutes from when I was calling. But she stopped and talked anyway. She knew, as soon as she heard my voice at that hour on a weekday, that something was wrong.

  “Mimi died early this morning,” I told her flatly. Each time I said that, the words came a little more easily — but they didn’t seem any more real. I was calling people, telling them Mimi was dead, and not believing it myself.

  Maybe that was because I suddenly realized that I didn’t know what “dead” meant. Oh, sure, I understood that it meant not breathing or thinking or moving or feeling; the opposite of alive. But what did it really mean?

  Stacey was comforting at first, and then began asking questions. “When is the funeral? What time? Which church?” She and her parents were going to come, of course, she said, before we got off the phone.

  The call to Kristy was easier than the others had been. Kristy is not a crier. She’d known Mimi for as long as Mary Anne and I had, since the three of us had grown up together (at least before Kristy moved), and she loved Mimi, but she wasn’t as close to her as Mary Anne and I had been. I guess she hadn’t ne
eded her quite as much as we had. Besides, she has Nannie, her own wonderful grandmother.

  Still, Kristy was shocked, and after all the “I’m sorry’s” and “What can I do’s?” she said, “Our club meeting this afternoon is canceled, of course. I’ll tell the rest of the members in school today.”

  “Oh, no! Please,” I said hurriedly. “Don’t cancel it. I want to see you guys tonight. Don’t stay away from me. I need you. I mean,” I babbled on, “even if we don’t conduct an official meeting, please let’s just all be together. Mom and Dad won’t mind. I don’t think. We’ll stay up in my room.”

  “Wow, okay,” said Kristy, sounding breathless, even though I had just done all the talking. “I didn’t mean for you to think we’d, you know, shut you out. We wouldn’t do that. I just figured today would be sort of a private one for your family. But if you want us there, we’ll be there.”

  I felt a little better by the time we hung up.

  But not much. Before I left my bedroom I took this framed portrait of Mimi that I had once painted down from the wall and slid it under my bed. Then I decided I didn’t want Mimi under my bed, so I put her in my closet. But I didn’t want her in my closet, either, so I moved her to the attic and left her there.

  * * *

  Kristy had said she thought that day would be a private one for us. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Word about Mimi’s death spread fast (as I’d thought it would), and people began coming over to our house around eleven o’clock. And everyone who dropped by brought food. Why? Because Mimi had been the cook in our family? That didn’t make sense. The rest of us could cook, too. Anyway, our relatives came (with food) and helped Mom and Dad make funeral arrangements and write Mimi’s obituary. Our neighbors and friends dropped by to console us.

  It was the longest day of my life. If I hadn’t believed it before, I became more and more certain, each time the doorbell rang, that Mimi really and truly had died. (Whatever that meant.)

  I wished everyone would go away and leave us alone and let me think that a big mistake had been made.

  But at five-thirty, my parents left to meet with our minister, all the visitors left, too, and my friends came over. We held a strange meeting. For one thing, Janine sat in on it because she didn’t want to be alone. For another thing, it wasn’t really a meeting. Kristy didn’t conduct business. She didn’t wear her visor. She didn’t even sit in the director’s chair. And no one called because all our clients knew what had happened and figured we wouldn’t be holding a meeting. They didn’t want to intrude, anyway. So the seven of us sat on the floor. We barely spoke because no one seemed to know what to say after, “I’m sorry,” and, “We’ll really miss her.”