Shena Crane

Tin Woman

Two a.m. and Vi, Annie’s mother-in-law, couldn’t sleep, so Annie, the family night owl, was keeping her company. Vi’s insomnia wasn’t a surprise. They’d buried Annie’s father-in-law, Murray, just twelve hours ago.

Annie and Vi were in nightclothes, sunken into the couch, sipping glasses of lukewarm white wine. Vi was reminiscing about Broadway shows Murray and she’d seen when they lived in Manhattan, and Annie was getting drowsy. Then Vi said, “Of course, our favorite thing was sex shows,” and Annie sprung upright without knowing it.

“Sex shows?” Annie said rather loudly, forgetting David, her husband, and Sophie and Lily, her stepdaughters, were conked out upstairs in her Laguna Beach home.

“You and David don’t go to sex shows?” Vi said, as if inquiring about trips to Costco.

“No,” Annie said, her voice measured now. “We don’t. I’ve never gone. With anyone.”

Yes, it was 1996, and at thirty-eight, Annie had a respectable dose of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll behind her. But no sex shows.

“Maybe you’d like them,” Vi said, pouring herself more wine.

Annie should put the bottle away. Vi rarely drank and she’d taken a Valium earlier. But curiosity overcame common sense. “Where’d you go?” Annie said.

“Everywhere we traveled,” Vi said. “Paris, London, Rome, Madrid. Closer places too, like North Beach in San Francisco. You and David like San Francisco, you should go.”

Annie tried to reply, but astonishment choked her throat and she coughed. “Your asthma?” Vi said, her mouth tightening. “I’ve been smoking outside.”

“I’m okay,” Annie said, reaching for her wine. Vi’s face relaxed and Annie said, “I don’t think I’d be comfortable at a sex show.”

Vi leaned forward with a confidential air. “If you’re too shy, you can get porno movies for your VCR. We did that.”

Annie stared at Vi. She and Murray didn’t have a VCR until Annie and David gave them one for Christmas a few years ago.

Vi gazed back, unperturbed, her eyes tired but steady behind her glasses. The creases in her face from eight years of Maui sun seemed deeper. Her hair, white since her thirties, was a bit limp, but still neatly styled. The opalescent polish always adorning her fingers and toes was flawless. At sixty-eight, she looked pretty good for someone who’d been widowed three days before.

“I guess David and I could get a video,” Annie said, not meaning it. Then, wanting to be done with sexual revelations, she stood up and said, “Let’s try to get some sleep.”

Vi looked disappointed, but slipped on her beige mules that added two inches of needed height. “Last cigarette,” she said, heading toward the patio. She and Annie murmured goodnights.

Annie slipped into bed, her mind churning. She didn’t know why Vi had shared her sex-show habit. Was it because she felt close to Annie, or was it to get a rise out of her? Either could be true. This was yet another conversation with Vi that left Annie off balance—a common occurrence in the six years they’d known each other.

* * *

It was Easter week, 1990, and Annie, David, Sophie, and Lily were in-flight, about to land in Maui. Annie and David were recently engaged—this trip would be the first time Annie met David’s parents. Annie was fidgeting in her seat. She had a good track record with her men’s parents, but Vi didn’t sound like an easy person. David said she’d always been tightly wound. When he was a teen she raged at him for minor misdeeds, screaming while upending his bureau drawers and dumping his clothes on the floor. She once didn’t speak to her sister for four years while living next door. David claimed Vi was milder now, but admitted she didn’t like any of her relatives except her husband, children, and grandchildren. Annie’s stomach, her emotional barometer, was in a knot.

“Look how cloudy it is,” she said, pointing out the window. “My hair’s going to frizz if it rains,” she said, aware she sounded like a teenager.

David laughed. “Mom won’t let it rain. She hates rain. And she’ll love you, frizzy or not,” he said. The girls, seven and ten, nodded. But Annie thought about overturned drawers and sisters not speaking. Her stomach stayed clenched.

Moments later they were on the ground.

Murray hugged the girls and David, then took Annie’s hands in his, saying how happy he was to meet her. Vi clutched the girls until they begged for breath, then reached up to encircle David’s neck with her arms.

But when Vi turned to Annie, she became the Tin Man before Dorothy oiled his joints. Her suddenly stiff arm held Annie a foot away from her equally stiff body as she gave Annie a single pat on the shoulder. Then, stepping back, she lowered her arm and dug out a cigarette from her purse. “Nice to meet you,” she said as she lit up.

Vi’s greeting stayed in Annie’s head as they drove to the townhouse Vi and Murray bought three years ago when he retired. “Welcome,” he said as he opened the front door. Annie smiled and found herself in an airy living room filled with contemporary furniture, and surprisingly modern art.

“Your home’s lovely,” she said.

“Thanks,” Vi said and laughed. “Usually the first thing guests notice is the view. Of course, maybe it’s not so special for you because you’ve lived in Laguna so long.”

The knot in Annie’s stomach tightened. She’d noticed the lush greenery and white-sand beach, but her mind had still been on Vi’s rigid-body reception. She needed to adjust her focus. “It’s gorgeous here,” she said. “I got so caught up looking—I forgot to say something.”

“Don’t worry,” Vi said, but Annie was relieved when Sophie and Lily asked Murray to take them to the beach to collect shells. He agreed and Vi immediately reminded him she was serving brunch in a half hour. He promised they’d be quick.

After they left, Vi turned to David and Annie. “Go rest,” she said.

“’No, no, I’ll help,” Annie and David said in unison and laughed.

“Thanks, but I’m very organized,” Vi said. “No help necessary.” David had told Annie Vi was fussy: every occasion scheduled on her calendar, every event prepared for in advance, everything always in its place.

“C’mon, Mom,” David said. “Let us do something.”

Vi reluctantly put them to work making a fruit salad, with instructions to “cut even chunks.” Then, as she began frying bacon, she said, “Annie, David told me you two met at work—you must have to work together a lot.”

Vi’s “have to” took Annie aback, but she smiled as she said, “I’m VP of Marketing and David’s VP of Sales so we do work closely. We got to be good friends before we dated.”

“So different when I worked before I got married,” Vi said. “Back then you would’ve been David’s secretary.”

David said, “Mom, Annie has an MBA, she—”

Vi cut him off. “I know what an MBA is,” she said. “I’m just saying in my day Annie would’ve had to be a secretary, a nurse, or a teacher.”

“All good careers,” Annie said. “But women have more choices now.”

Vi shrugged, and asked David why he’d told her and Murray he was looking for a new job if he and Annie liked working together.

Annie’s stomach tightened into a tennis ball.

“I told you,” David said. “Our company doesn’t allow employees to even date. One of us has to leave so we can get married.”

“Why you?” Vi said.

David explained that while Annie loved her job, he’d discovered he didn’t like managing Sales. Also, it’d be easier for him to find a new job than for Annie. “A lot of companies still don’t hire women for senior management positions,” he said.

“But Annie getting to keep her job makes a lot of trouble for you.”

Annie felt phantom steam pour out her ears. “David wants to change jobs,” she said.

“I got what I needed out of this job,” David said and Vi asked what he meant.

Annie and David smiled at each other. “I met Annie,” he said. “We were meant to be.”

“Damn. I burned the bacon,” Vi said.

Annie knew she needed a plan.

She made an announcement after brunch. “How about I clean up with Vi? I’m efficient too, we’ll be quick, and we’ll get to spend time together.”

David smiled, Murray nodded, but Vi’s face took on a bulldog-like scowl. Not an encouraging visage, but Annie didn’t care. It was time to figure out the woman behind her armor.

Once she and Vi were alone—Annie clearing the table and Vi putting away leftovers­—Annie brought up what David had assured her was a good topic. “I heard you and Murray have a business here,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

“We buy souvenir crap from wholesalers and sell it to the tourist shops,” Vi said. “It’s something to do a couple days a week. Murray likes it.”

“David told me you both like it,” Annie said.

“It’s nothing compared to what you do,” Vi said as she loaded the dishwasher. Annie’s mouth went dry. Vi wasn’t following the script. 

“David mentioned your ex is some kind of teacher?” Vi said instead. “Who you lived with?”

“He’s a professor at UC Irvine, and we did live together,” Annie said, glad David had told her Vi was okay with people living together. His brother Jack lived with his wife for years before they married.

“So he’s a lot older than you?” Vi said.

“Ten years,” Annie said.

“So you like older men? David’s only thirty-three,” Vi said and Annie answered she liked David being only a year older than her.

“How come you and your ex didn’t get married?” Vi said. Annie felt a flash of anger. She’d expected questions, but not an interrogation. She vowed to stay calm.

“Living together worked for us,” she said, not saying she and her ex had thought themselves too cool for marriage. She’d changed her mind when she and David fell in love—the public declaration of their being a committed couple felt right.

“So no kids, right?” Vi said. Annie nodded. “What about now? Sophie and Lily wouldn’t be happy if David had another child.”

Enough was enough. In a steady voice, Annie told Vi her father had been schizophrenic and often institutionalized before he died. Annie was fine, but schizophrenia could be inherited and she hadn’t wanted to pass it on.

Her disclosure didn’t slow Vi down.

“So you’re not used to having kids around. Think you’ll be okay with Sophie and Lily?” Vi said. “David’s very close to them. Even with all the driving now.” David’s ex-wife had recently moved herself and the girls to the San Fernando Valley to live with her boyfriend, putting ninety miles between David and his children.

Annie felt her phantom steam explode again into the room. “I love that David’s such a caring father,” she said through tight lips, and added that she went with David on the weekly 180-mile round trip between Laguna and the Valley to have dinner with Sophie and Lily, as well as the long drives to bring them to Laguna and back every other weekend. And she didn’t mind the miles because she loved them and her affection was returned.

“Oh,” Vi said, and Annie decided she wasn’t answering another question. The kitchen was clean, she was done. Hanging up her dishtowel, she excused herself to unpack. “Thanks for helping,” Vi said.

“You’re welcome,” Annie said and climbed the stairs to the guest room where she fell back on the bed.

So much for David’s “she’ll love you” assurance and Annie’s ridiculous plan to tame Vi by bonding over dirty dishes. It wasn’t only Vi’s Tin Man embrace that was rigid, her worldview seemed equally inflexible. Annie had conquered and charmed difficult people before, but they hadn’t been her future mother-in-law.

* * *

Four months later, Sophie and Lily were on summer break and spending two weeks with Annie and David, who were taking alternate weeks of vacation so one of them could always be with the girls. Vi and Murray were flying in to visit, and since Annie had the first week off, she was at LAX with Sophie and Lily, picking them up. She wished David was with them. In Maui, after Vi’s first-day inquisition of Annie, Vi had been markedly polite to Annie, too polite, like strangers forced to travel together. They hadn’t spoken since then and Annie worried how they’d do now.

Her trepidation was immediately realized. “That’s crazy,” Vi said after Annie told her they all couldn’t stay together because the house she and David had bought wasn’t ready yet. They still had their two small Laguna Beach apartments and Murray and Vi would stay at David’s while he and the girls stayed at Annie’s.

“No. The girls are staying with us,” Vi said. “It’s on my calendar.”

She looked down to get a cigarette out of her purse as Lily and Sophie sent Annie alarmed glances.

Vi didn’t know the girls didn’t want to stay with her and Murray. They loved Vi, but she made them crazy, always insisting they must be hungry or needed to put on a sweater. Annie held the girls’ secret inside as Vi looked up, her face contorted into its bulldog scowl. A smoking bulldog.

Annie’s armpits dampened. “I’m telling you what David decided,” she said to Vi. 

“Murray, did you hear Annie?” Vi said, as she lit her cigarette, ignoring the “No Smoking” signs posted everywhere.

Murray couldn’t hear Vi, he was at the noisy baggage carousel. “Murray,” she said louder, exhaling through pursed lips. “Annie says the girls can’t stay with us.”

David had told his parents, more than once, they never should’ve moved to Maui if they wanted to see their grandchildren easily, but Annie wasn’t bringing that up.

“Your bag is here, let’s go,” she said as Murray pulled a large suitcase off the carousel. 

The sixty-minute drive on the 405 to David’s apartment felt like forever. Murray included Annie in the conversation, but Vi talked only with Sophie and Lily. Annie tried not to mind—she was the messenger and she’d been shot.

* * *

Almost a year later, it was July 18, 1991, David and Annie’s wedding day. They’d kept it to a casual event in their home, with thirty-six people attending. Murray and Vi had arrived the day before. They were staying at the house and would take care of Sophie and Lily while David and Annie honeymooned in Santa Barbara for a few days. Today they were helping with last minute errands and Annie had her fingers crossed that everything would go smoothly.

After Vi and Murray’s visit last summer, Annie had decided, for the sake of family harmony, that she needed to build a workable relationship with Vi. David dutifully called his parents weekly and Annie could tell when a call was winding down. These lulls, she decided, would be a good time for her to relieve David and get on the phone.

The handoffs were awkward at first, but Annie, by nature chattier than David on the phone, used her best tool—news about Sophie and Lily. David talked to the girls every day so Annie always had stories to tell. Vi couldn’t resist the lure. Soon Annie was talking to Vi longer than David, and eventually, Vi even asked how the wedding plans were going. But Annie didn’t know if their long-distance goodwill would hold up face to face.

This morning they were in Annie’s car to check the wedding cake before it was delivered. It was a French croquembouche—individual cream puffs stacked like a Christmas tree, and drizzled with spun honey. Vi had quite a sweet tooth and had asked if she could come along. Annie said “of course,” but was leery. She expected Vi to say the cake was “kooky,” a word Vi had voiced on the phone about David and Annie’s decisions to send handwritten wedding invitations and play the Beatles’ “Till There Was You” at the start of the ceremony.

“You’ll love the croquembouche,” Annie said, trying for confidence. “The sample David and I tasted was scrumptious.”

“I will,” Vi said, startling Annie with her quick agreement, “but there’s something else I want to talk about.”

Annie’s stomach contracted. Vi must have an eleventh-hour complaint about the wedding. But Vi said, “I had the gold bracelet I wore at my wedding on my packing list.”

“Did you lose it?” Annie said. This was no day for a treasure hunt.

“No,” Vi said. “I thought you could wear it for ‘something borrowed,’ if you were doing that thing. But then I figured your mother or a friend would loan you something.”

“I’d love to wear it. Even if I wasn’t doing that thing, which I am,” Annie said, parking the car. “I’ll try it on as soon as we get back.”

“You can’t. I left it at home,” Vi said as she got out of the car and lit a cigarette.

“Why?” Annie said, completely flummoxed. “Wearing it would’ve been special.”

The bulldog look emerged as Vi said, “You and David told us you two were taking care of everything.”

Annie wanted to look like a bulldog too, but said, “Thanks for thinking of me.”

“Welcome,” Vi said, taking a last drag on her cigarette before they entered the bakery.

Annie decided Vi wore her passive aggression well.

* * *

It was 1995 and Murray had brain cancer. Glioblastoma Multiforme. He was at Kaiser Sunset Hospital in L.A. for stereotactic radiation, a treatment not available in Hawaii.

Annie and David were visiting, sitting with Murray and Vi outside on the hospital patio so Vi could smoke. “I want to go back to bed,” Murray said, getting up from his wheelchair before anyone could stop him. He tottered, started to fall, and David and Annie dove to get him before his bald, shiny head hit the concrete. It was the second time he’d almost fallen in ten minutes.

“The nurses will put restraints on you,” Vi said, her lips trembling. Murray looked away.

As soon as he was back in bed, Vi had a cigarette between her lips. Moving her mouth around it, she said, “I can’t handle this. I’m going back out to smoke.”

Annie wished she still smoked.

The doctors said Murray’s treatment was going well, but he looked awful. Steroids had puffed his thin body into a bloated Humpty-Dumpty, and his once blue eyes were a faded, murky gray.

Vi looked equally bad. When she got off the plane ten days ago, her tan was a pasty yellow and her laugh a bark. Now there were dusky hollows under her eyes and her smile barely worked.

David and Annie were taking turns driving up during the week, parsing out their vacation days. When Annie came, she took Vi out to lunch, sat with Murray so Vi could take a break, and brought her romance novels like the ones she’d seen in the Maui condo.

Annie knew Vi wrote her hospital visits in her calendar, but she didn’t know if Vi, who still greeted her with her Tin Man clasp, looked forward to seeing Annie, or if she was just happy to have a break from the fraught monotony of the hospital.

Perhaps Vi wished Annie was someone else, although Annie didn’t know who that would be: Vi never had close women friends; Sophie and Lily were too young to get to the hospital by themselves; Vi’s now widowed sister, with whom she’d reached an uneasy reconciliation, lived in Las Vegas; and Vi had long ago whittled away any other relatives. But Annie knew Vi needed support. So she came.

After Murray fell asleep, Annie, David, and Vi tiptoed out. Vi was hungry and wanted to eat across the street at the Hard Rock Cafe—she’d developed a yen for their bacon avocado burgers that overrode her distaste for the loud music.

“You can’t always get what you want,” Mick Jagger wailed as they were seated, and Annie silently agreed. After their orders were taken, Annie excused herself to the restroom.

When she returned, David had a tiny smile on his face. Annie tilted her head in question, but he said nothing.

Later, in the car on their way back to Laguna, David said, “When you went to the bathroom? You won’t believe what my mom told me.”

Annie’s stomach twisted. “The last time you said that, Vi was mad you hadn’t asked her and Murray what they thought of me before we decided to get married.”

“You know I told her I didn’t care,” David said. “This is good news. Really.”

“Let’s hear it,” Annie said.

“After you left, my mom said, ‘Annie’s been great, coming up to visit. Helping me with Murray. She’s a good person, I’m glad you married her.’”

A bittersweet victory, Annie thought. “Pretty sad it took your dad getting cancer for your mom to like me,” she said.

David reached over and rubbed Annie’s shoulder. “Vi’s one of a kind.”

“Let’s hope so,” Annie said and regretted her response. David had always been upfront about Vi being difficult. Murray was very sick and probably dying. Prickly as she was, Vi needed compassion—Annie would accept her approval regardless of what it had taken.

* * *

It was 1997, and David, Annie, and the girls were in Las Vegas, seated at the deli in Caesars Palace with Vi, who’d moved here to be near her sister after Murray died. Everyone except Vi’s sister, who was at her mahjong group, was eating lunch. The meal was not a happy one. It was an intervention—Annie and David had recently learned Vi had gambled away $45,000 in the year she’d lived here.

“So you’re saying you’d let me end up with a shopping cart? Like a bag lady?” Vi asked David, slamming down her coffee cup as her face assumed its bulldog countenance.

“I will if you don’t stop gambling,” David said.

“Your brother wouldn’t talk to me like this,” Vi said. Annie knew she was right. Jack would’ve taken a softer approach, but he was in Tahiti on vacation.

“Jack might not use the same words,” David said, “but he’s just as concerned.”

“Why? None of you know what I do with my money. You only know what that financial advisor guy, Howard what’s-his-name, told you. He had no right to call you, I’m his client.” Vi’s voice rose and the people at the next table looked over.

“Howard was right to call,” David said. “You put Jack’s and my name on your accounts.”

“I never would’ve if I’d known what you’d try to pull.”

“It’s a good thing you did. Hell, Mom, you’ve lost a huge chunk of your money. At the slots. I’m surprised you can move your arm.”

“I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this. In front of my grandchildren. I can’t believe you brought them,” Vi said, looking at Lily and Sophie who were now fourteen and seventeen.

The girls had been quiet, but now spoke up. “Grandma, I don’t mean to be rude, but maybe you have a gambling problem,” Lily said.

“You do,” Sophie said, even more forthright. “It’s hard to say, but you’re addicted, Grandma. You can’t live here.”

“So now my grandchildren know better than me?” Vi said. She shoved her plate away and turned to face Annie. “So what do you think, Ms. Career Woman? Whose side are you on?’’

Annie knew Vi was out of control but her words still stabbed. “This isn’t about taking sides,” she said. “It’s about getting you out of a bad situation.”

“What’re you going to do?” Vi said. Her voice spiraled up and the people at the next table asked for their check. “Drag me out of here kicking and screaming? None of you can do anything.”

Annie’s stomach cramped. She didn’t do well with anger this bright.

“That’s not true,” David said. He spoke calmly, but Annie saw his jaw tighten. “We can do a lot.”

“Like what?”

“If you won’t move to Oregon near Jack or to New York near us—”

“I’m not living in East Coast weather again,” Vi said, snarling.

David continued as if uninterrupted. “If you stay in Vegas and don’t let Jack or me manage your money, we’ll take you to court to have you declared incompetent. If that doesn’t work, you’re on your own. Once a year, I’ll try to track you down and see if you’re still alive.”

“Don’t bother. I won’t see you.” Vi’s cup clattered on the table as she pushed her chair back. “I need a cigarette,” she said and walked out.

“We can’t leave things like this,” Annie said, her stomach aching.

“I can’t talk to her when she gets this angry,” David said. “If I lived at home right now, she’d be dumping out my drawers.”

Annie groaned and stood up.

Outside the deli, she found Vi struggling to light her cigarette with shaking hands. Annie put her own hands over Vi’s and together they got the lighter to work. “So you’re the only one with the nerve to come talk to me?” Vi said.

“One tough chick talking to another,” Annie said.

“But you didn’t take my side.”

“How could I?”

Vi sighed. “Tell everyone to stop worrying,” she said. “I’ll move. To Oregon.” Annie’s stomach relaxed a little. “But tell David, later, not in front of the girls—he can’t ever talk to me like that again.”

Annie nodded and the two of them stood together while Vi finished her cigarette.

* * *

It was 2002 and Vi and Annie were sitting on the couch across from Cindy Something-or-other, Vi’s new hospice nurse, in Jack’s living room in Portland, Oregon. Cindy was Vi’s third hospice nurse. She’d burned through the first two in a week, and Cindy was struggling to establish rapport as she worked through her list of questions. “Do you think about what will happen after?” she said to Vi.

“You mean after this cancer kills me?” Vi said with her bulldog sneer. Annie knew Vi hated these conversations. She’d offered to leave the room when they’d heard Cindy at the door, but Vi patted the spot next to her on the couch, “Sit. I can’t stand these visits.”

Five years ago, after the Las Vegas intervention, Vi had moved to Portland, near Jack and his wife. Here she could occasionally get to a Native American gambling casino on a seniors’ group outing. She’d had her own apartment near Jack until two weeks ago, when her last treatment failed, and she moved into his house. She was getting home hospice care now, care for pain and comfort only, nothing to slow her lung cancer.

“Yes,” Cindy said from her perch on the edge of an easy chair. “Do you wonder about after you die?” Annie thought Cindy seemed soft: soft voice, soft limp-fingered handshake, soft hair, soft dress. Only her charts and clipboard had hard edges. She was no match for Vi.

“I used to believe in reincarnation, but now I think we’re just dead. Dead and gone,” Vi said. “Why? What do you believe in?” Cindy’s brows shot up and Annie smiled inside. Vi was giving Cindy “the business.” Good for her. She didn’t get to have much fun these days. “Why are we even talking about this crap?” Vi said.

“People in your situation,” Cindy said, sitting more erect, “have difficult things to think about, things they may not want to discuss with their family.” She looked at Annie.

Vi shook her head. “Annie can hear anything,” she said and Annie scooted closer to her. 

“Okay. I just want you to know you can talk to me or anyone from hospice about anything,” Cindy said.

Vi sat up straighter. Cindy had opened the door. “I’ll tell you what I want to talk about,” Vi said. Her words were fast, almost too fast for her faulty breathing. “I want to know when. When will it happen? When am I going to die? That’s what I think about. Can you tell me? I’d feel better if I knew.” She shook her head. “Waiting around is making me crazy.’’

“Vi’s very organized. She likes everything planned out,” Annie said, knowing her words were foolish.

Cindy sighed and began what must be the hospice litany: “I can’t tell you when, but…”

Vi asked this question every day, of everyone she saw—her family, her doctors, her social worker, the hospice nurses. It was the headline of her news, the current event of her day, the question she asked almost as often as she detached herself from her oxygen and shuffled out to the patio with her cigarettes, bitterly grateful it didn’t matter anymore if she smoked. If anyone followed her out and sat down, the question pierced the smoky miasma surrounding her. “When?” she’d ask. “When will I die?”

She wanted, Annie knew, a real answer. A date and a time. Like an appointment. Like another notation she could add to the calendar where all her meds, hospice visits, and shrinking comings and goings were recorded. A hospice visit on Tuesday. A shampoo and set on Wednesday if she was up to it. Death at three p.m. on Thursday. Preferably when it wasn’t raining. Like the Tin Man, she still hated the rain.

* * *

A month later, home hospice care was no longer enough. Vi had moved into the hospice facility and she and Annie were out on the veranda despite the chilly evening air. The rest of the family was at Jack’s taking a break. Vi, still a stickler for planning, was taking great satisfaction in showing Annie a photo of the bronze starfish-shaped urn, in remembrance of Maui, she’d bought for her eventual remains. After Annie admired it, Vi sat back in her wheelchair, opened the Ziploc baggie in her lap, and tapped out a cigarette from the pack inside. “Can you move that ashtray?” she said.

Annie slid it over as Vi cupped her cigarette and flicked the lighter.

Vi looked emaciated in her navy sweats and red windbreaker. Annie tucked the ugly mustard afghan Vi liked more tightly around her legs. Her feet peeked out below, clad in slippers but no socks. Annie had begged for socks, but Vi refused.

“Your feet must be freezing,” Annie said.

“I’m good,” Vi said, taking such a deep drag on her cigarette that Annie saw the red tip retreat as she watched. “Go inside if you’re cold.”

Annie shook her head. “We came here to see you.” 

Vi smiled. “So stay.”

Annie smiled back and they fell silent, smoky ribbons floating out of Vi’s mouth, chilled puffs of air out of Annie’s. Annie knew this was the last trip she and David would make to see Vi. The hospice nurses said it was a matter of days now.

Vi’s sigh broke their silence and Annie noticed her cigarette was down to the filter. Vi took one last drag and mashed the butt out in the ashtray. “I guess we should go in,” she said.

“We can stay out longer,” Annie said. “You can have another one.”

“Nah, they’ll be looking for me,” Vi said with a mock smile.

“Okay. Probably should get your oxygen back on.”

Vi handed Annie her cigarette pack and lighter, both back in the baggie. Annie sealed it shut, holding it as she wheeled Vi in, and then handed it to the young woman at the front desk.

“Don’t lose that baggie,” Vi called over her shoulder as Annie wheeled her away.

“They’ll keep it safe,” Annie said. “The hospice doctor said you can smoke. Just not in your room.”

Vi knew. When she was first admitted, the staff let her keep her cigarettes because she promised to let an aide bring her outside to smoke. She did, but then stoned on pain meds, rebellious, and ever the bulldog, she smoked in her bathroom. She thought it’d work with the fan on and the door shut, but forgot about the smoke alarm. Three nurses burst in. She raged as they lectured her, shrilling curses as they confiscated both cigarettes and lighter.

“I worry they’ll lose them,” Vi said, and squirmed in her chair. Annie didn’t know if her restlessness was fear her last pleasure would be lost, or if the morphine was wearing off.

“Need more medication?” Annie said. Vi shook her head.

Annie steered Vi down the chintz-papered hall, the air smelling of dinner. But Vi started to cough as they entered her room. A wet, hacking, pneumonia-driven cough. Her body shuddered as her lungs struggled to get air through the tumors. Annie brought her water and the coughing fit gradually subsided. Neither of them mentioned it, but Annie’s stomach was a fist. She had pneumonia once, and could barely move. She wondered how Vi could be up and around as she helped her into her nest of blankets on the couch and reattached her oxygen cannula.

“Want the TV on?” Annie said.

“It’s all crap, but I guess so.” Vi looked at her watch. “You should get back. Jack said he’s making brisket tonight.”

Annie shook her head. “I can eat later.”

“You don’t want to miss Jack’s brisket,” Vi said.

“You’re right,” Annie said and offered to come back with some for Vi.

“No appetite,” Vi said. 

“How about I check with you later?” Annie said.

“I won’t be hungry.”

Annie sighed. “I guess I’m going.” 

“Go. You should eat.”

“Bye,” Annie said, and leaned down to hug Vi as gently as possible.

Vi stiffened and put her usual Tin Man arm on Annie’s shoulder. Then, as Annie was about to step back, Vi’s whole body softened and she wrapped both arms around Annie’s neck, pulling her close. “Have a nice dinner,” Vi whispered.

“Thank you,” Annie whispered back, motionless.

Hospice called early the next morning. The nurse making hourly room checks had just found Vi unconscious, black clotted blood, like coffee grounds, oozing from her mouth. Annie and the family rushed to her. An hour later, Vi was gone, and all Annie’s thinking she was ready vanished. She walked to the window and looked outside. Smoke-colored clouds raced across the sky, but the rain refused to fall.