with the help of a walker with a portable oxygen tank hanging over the side.
“I am very arthritic and have replaced joints,” she had said on the phone a few months earlier. “I’m like the Bionic Woman.” She waited for a laugh, then said, “Not funny, dear. Wait till you get there. Two hip surgeries, and I’m ninety, and they’d like to do it again, but I’m too old. I’m simply worn out.”
A clot in her eye made it hard for Mimi to read. “There’s nothing like the feel of a good book in your hand, either,” she said that day in the kitchen, “except that my hands are so bad now I can’t hold a book.” She had hearing aids in both ears that she fiddled with, struggling to understand people in groups. But she could still listen to a Salzburg recording of Don Giovanni. “When I’m here alone I can turn up the opera as loud as I want to, or a ballet, or whatever.” Her mind was as sharp as ever; she remained stubbornly herself—intelligent and very well read, strong enough to have endured any number of horrible tragedies, and yet utterly averse to self-reflection.
Both sisters knew all too well how smoothly Mimi could change the subject when she wanted to, redirecting uncomfortable conversations whenever possible to her experiences with the Federation—“I could almost write a book about the people we met through that, the wonderful nights…”—or her teenage years exploring New York, or Don’s military career. She took credit for the idea of making the falcon the Air Force mascot. “A lot of people have claimed they suggested the falcon first,” she said, “but that isn’t true.”
Gently, the sisters tried to move her on to more meaningful material, even if it meant making her uncomfortable. Though she did not raise the subject, she answered a few questions about Nancy Gary, and the years when she and Don and Nancy and Sam had socialized. “We were quite close,” she said. But she never had a one-on-one friendship with Nancy. “Nancy has never been a buddy-buddy person, as far as I can understand,” Mimi said coolly.
“Why would I have gone to live with them, then?” Margaret asked.
Mimi turned to her daughter. “Oh, because we had four kids in the hospital at one—”
“I know—I know that side of the story,” Margaret said. “But why would they have taken me in, had you not been good friends?”
Mimi waved off the question. “I really don’t know. Well, she saw Brian had died, and she called.”
* * *
—
THE MORE ON the spot Mimi felt, the more she leaned in to her old perfectionism. “I don’t paint anymore,” Mimi said, glancing at Margaret, “mostly because I can’t compete with my daughter.” Margaret had taken up painting, finally, with her own daughters older now, and she was good. She chose natural subjects like her mother’s old paintings, but bolder, more inventive—and was even getting a few sales, right away.
Then Mimi turned and looked at Lindsay. “She’s always doing something. She runs beautiful, big parties. But she lost that contract!” She chuckled lightly. “She was giving the Anadarko party for a million dollars at a clip.”
Lindsay kept a smile pasted to her face. As casually as possible, she listed a few of her recent events, for an investment company and a health care company.
“In twenty years, she’s built up quite a clientele,” Mimi said. “She said, ‘Mother, I won’t do this very long, it’s not very intellectual.’ But the pay was pretty good. She should have gone on to grad school!”
She turned to Lindsay. “Are you going to retire next year?”
“Hopefully,” Lindsay said.
“Hopefully,” Mimi echoed. “And then she’s going to open a bookstore so she can read!” She gazed at her daughters.
“We both—all three of us—like to read,” she said, beaming with pride. “We’re all readers.”
* * *
—
NONE OF THE boys lived with Mimi anymore. Donald moved to assisted living at Point of the Pines three years earlier, after Mimi, sidelined for several months by a stroke, was too frail to care for him by herself at home. This saddened