The Undiscovered Country: A Novel

Chapter One

Although the handwritten nameplate on the door read Elaine Marks, the woman in the bed did not look like my mother. One low-wattage light in the cold room leaked only enough illumination to reveal the woman’s undignified state. Her face, obscured by an oxygen mask, was gray as the worn pillowcase beneath her bony skull, and her steel-gray hair lay in sweaty disarray, unlike the perfectly coifed, jet-black hair of the mother I embraced the day before I went to prison. This woman was smaller. Much smaller. I could have switched on the bright overhead lights, but I didn’t want to alert the staff to my presence. I wasn’t prepared to see this scene any more clearly either.

I took the woman’s hand and recoiled at its coolness. In a panic, I leaned closer until I detected the weak flow of breath through the mask and the slight rise and fall of her shell-like chest. Then I checked the monitor on the wall above her bed. Heart rate: slow; blood pressure: low; respiratory rate: slow; blood oxygenation level: low. Slow, low, slow, low. Barely alive. Why weren’t the doctors and nurses crowding around her bed? A crucifix, half-hidden by the monitor, hung above the bed, a reminder that doctors didn’t have total control of this situation.

The insistent hum of pumps and monitors signaled technology’s effort to keep my mother alive. The smell of illness assaulted me. I retched. Out of duty, I bent to kiss her forehead. She shuddered, whether from an involuntary response or recognition that I was with her, I didn’t know. As a test, I whispered that I loved her. She did not react.

With a tired sigh, I sank into the clumsy overstuffed chair beside her bed. I remembered my promise to call Glenda, my daughter’s mother, but rather than wake her at this hour, I texted her: Made it safely. I’m fine. A lie. I was never fine in Augusta.

Overnight, I had driven from my home in Dolphin Beach, Florida, through Ocala, diagonally across the state to Jacksonville, then northward to Savannah, where I exited I-95 and transitioned from the New South to the Old South. Using secondary roads paralleling the Savannah River, I drove through small towns razed by General Sherman during the Civil War and past shotgun houses, plantation manors, and oak trees as tall as a house and magnolia trees as wide. Through shadows so dense my headlights could not penetrate them, I passed mile after mile of cotton fields where I imagined slaves had once toiled.

As the false dawn lit the horizon, I transitioned from Randle, the adult persona I had invented, to Jack, the child and the past I couldn’t seem to escape. Today was just the fourth day since I had been paroled, and already I had been forced to exchange one nightmare for another. For only a moment, I closed my eyes to erase the vision of my mother in a hospital bed from the video screen in my brain.

* * *

A firm hand shook my shoulder. Sir? Sir?

With two hands, I wiped sleep from my eyes, but I couldn’t touch the fatigue. A round face encircled by short blonde hair above medium-blue scrubs leaned to within inches of my face. Are you family?

I rocked my shoulders, stretched my legs. I’m her son.

The nurse backed up and smiled. Another son. Good. Can you give us a few minutes with her? We need to clean her up and get her ready for tests.

A dark-haired nurse swept into the room, went straight to Mom’s bedside without acknowledging me, and stuck a needle in her arm to take blood. With both hands I pushed myself out of the chair and noted that the clock on the far wall read 6:35 a.m. I had only been asleep for an hour. I looked down at my mother. Her eyes were open. I bent over her and said, Hello, Mom. It’s Jackie.

Her eyelids fluttered, closed and opened again, but she stared straight ahead. I thought her lips moved behind her mask. Draping myself over her bed, I said, It’s Jackie, Mom. I’m here to help you.

She nodded, but her eyes didn’t seem to focus. I waved a hand in front of her, but her eyes didn’t track. To the blonde nurse, working at a cart covered in needles and vials, I said, What the hell?

She stopped her tasks and said, She’s blind.

Blind! Blind?

Hands on her hips, she said, Not like Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder. I should have said, ‘She can’t see.’ Happens sometimes with strokes.

Good God. A stroke too? When Beth, my sister-in-law, had called the night before, she told me that Mom had suffered a heart attack.

Can she hear?

We think so. We need to prep her now, sir. Her doctor will be here soon.

Okay. I’ll go find a cup of coffee. I grabbed Mom’s hand and gave it a gentle pat. I walked around the bed, under the TV mounted high on the wall opposite Mom’s pillow, past the white board that listed nurses’ and doctors’ names and my brother’s cell phone number. On the opposite side of the room, a sink and a counter on which a small computer screen displayed the hospital logo filled the space between the bed and the private bathroom. There wasn’t a closet or a bedside table.

As I wound my way between the rolling medical carts, I asked where they had stored Mom’s things, her purse and clothes. The nurse pointed to a plastic bag on a shelf under the rolling bed. She was just wearing a nightgown when she was admitted. She didn’t have a purse.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, I returned from the cafeteria with a large black coffee to find Mom’s room overflowing with medical staff. Two males in lab coats and a male nurse had joined the blonde and the brunette. Fearing the worst, I barged through the crowd to my mother’s bedside and found her staring at the ceiling but still breathing. Relieved, I turned to the surprised medical staff.

The blonde nurse—I noticed now that her nametag read Shelby—announced, He’s another son.

The medical team relaxed. Shelby pointed to a heavyset man with rimless glasses and black lacquered hair streaked with a white stripe like a skunk. She said, This is the cardiac surgeon, Dr. Metzger.

I stuck out my hand to shake his. That seemed to surprise him as it took him an awkward moment to accept my hand with a reluctant grip.

The other doctor, less than average height and slender, proactively reached for my hand and introduced himself as Dr. Kaplan, the hospitalist. He smiled warmly beneath soft brown curls, soft brown eyes, and a long straight nose.

As though it was intuitively obvious, Metzger said, She’s emitting the enzymes that indicate a heart attack, but that’s not her only problem. He gestured toward Kaplan to add his comments.

Kaplan cleared his throat. Our first challenge when she was admitted was her arrhythmia. Fortunately, injections directly into her heart restored a normal rhythm. We don’t know what caused the arrhythmia, but we do know the arrhythmia caused her heart attack. She’s retaining fluid in her lower extremities, typical of heart attack victims, so we’re pushing Lasix to dry it up. The fluid did not get there overnight. It should have been a warning sign that her heart was failing.

He emphatically delivered a recap of service as though I were an intern on morning rounds. His hands moved constantly, sometimes pointing to my mother, sometimes chopping air. She has a serious case of stasis dermatitis on her legs, and for that we’ve applied a topical antibiotic. It doesn’t appear that was being treated either. We also suspect she suffered a stroke. Tests today will confirm it, but her loss of vision is a strong indicator. And she’s getting warfarin to prevent clotting and another heart attack or another stroke. He took a breath and spread his hands like the Jesus statue above the beach in Rio de Janeiro.

I sifted through his summation to find a silver lining. So, her heart is stable, we’ll find out today what caused her heart attack so we can fix it, and then you can figure out how to restore her vision. Is that about it?

Kaplan and Metzger traded warning looks. Metzger decided to play the bad cop. Your mother isn’t likely to survive all these problems, Mr. Marks. We don’t know how much damage her heart sustained. It could stop pumping at any moment. We have no evidence that she can speak or even think following her stroke.

She can think! She acknowledged me.

The doctors traded dark looks again. Kaplan volunteered, She has sores on her heels and her bottom that indicate she’s been bedridden for some time. She’s old and weak and malnourished. He gave me sad brown eyes and pursed lips.

Malnourished? What the hell? When I called her with the news that I would soon be released from prison, she had said she was fine. She had urged me to come see her as soon as possible, but not because of her health. All the air escaped my balloon. What are you going to do for her?

We’ll do an EKG to determine her heart condition, and we’ll do an MRI to survey the brain damage, Metzger said. Don’t get your hopes up.

She’ll be out of the room till late afternoon, Kaplan said. Noting my red-rimmed eyes and slumped posture, he added, You should get some sleep.

Put your mother’s affairs in order. Metzger glanced at his sympathetic colleague. Go to the chapel and say a prayer.

We had to step aside then as attendants rolled my mother’s bed out of the room. Metzger turned away and followed the patient without further ado, but Kaplan squeezed my shoulder before he left.

I wiped a tear from my right eye as I wondered if I’d ever see Mom again. Many times I had taken a knife to the ties that bound me to my parents, but I had always stopped short of slicing them all the way through. Whether I could admit it, their lives had been mooring lines lashing my little boat to origins I could neither embrace nor discard. When my father passed away, my little boat, tethered only by Mom’s lifeline, swung in an aimless circle, but it soon stabilized. Losing my mother wouldn’t be as easy a blow to absorb. Without her, my little boat would have no past— only an uncertain future.

Without Mom and her bed and the incessant hum of the machines that had been switched off, the room was barren, chilled, and deathly quiet. It was as gruesomely suitable for dying as for healing. I didn’t have a key to Mom’s house and no money for a hotel room, so I had nowhere to go. The chapel was an option, but God would recognize the hypocrisy. He knew I had a low regard for people who suddenly turn to Him when they are desperate and a low regard for institutionalized worship. My relationship with Him was consistent and continuous, but informal and private. Presumably, my brother and his wife would arrive soon, so I dropped into the ugly orange easy chair to wait for them.

Chapter Two

For the second time in less than two hours, a strange hand shook me awake.

Where’s Mom? my sister-in-law asked.

I looked around the empty room as though Mom could be hiding in a corner. Tests, I croaked through the cotton growing on my tongue. They took her for tests. Won’t be back till afternoon.

Is she going to be okay?

I don’t think so, Beth. Have you met the heart surgeon, Metzger?

No, just the emergency room people last night.

Sure, they expected Mom to pass during the night. Now they’ve had to assign specialists. He has the bedside manner of a Nazi camp guard. He told me to put Mom’s affairs in order.

With a sudden burst, Beth bawled like a child. It wasn’t a good look for Mary Beth Marks. She was a plain woman of average height and build, with shapeless brown hair framing a pale complexion and pale brown eyes. As she cried, everything turned as red as a boiling lobster. I felt sorry for my sister-in-law. She was the sweetest, gentlest soul in the family, and she was married to a man exactly like my father. I levered myself out of the ugly easy chair and took her in my arms.

There’s also a hospitalist named Kaplan. He’s more comforting but not a lot more optimistic.

Beth kept weeping.

Where’s Billy? I asked.

Between sobs, she said, Parking the car.

Good, he’d have a key to Mom’s house. I wanted a hot shower and maybe another hour of sleep. Is Katie on her way? My sister, Katie, lived in Atlanta, less than three hours from Augusta.

Katie can’t come yet. Brad says she has work commitments.

Bradley van Kamp was my brother-in-law.

It’s Saturday, Beth. Is she working the weekend?

I don’t know, Jack. Strident now, she leaned back in my arms but didn’t try to wriggle free. I didn’t talk to Katie. I talked to Brad.

Is he on his way?

Not yet.

Does he have work commitments too?

Exasperated, Beth blew air in my face. Why are you giving me a hard time, Jack? I’m just delivering the message.

Okay, Beth, but please call me Randle.

Everyone called me Jack as I grew up in Augusta, and my mother called me Jackie—an alternate form of my formal first name of John—but I symbolically erased that history when I began my professional career. My business cards and signature block read J. Randle Marks, and I asked my colleagues to call me Randle, my mother’s maiden name. Changing my name was only one of the many reasons I was the black sheep of the family. Before I left Florida for Augusta the night before, Glenda had said, You’ll always be Jack to those people. Don’t waste your energy trying to change them.

Sure, Beth said now. I can do that.

What about the grandkids?

Beth slumped against me again and talked into my chest. Joey is on his way. Brad is supposed to tell Nicki.

My siblings each had one child. Billy and Beth had a son, Joseph III, away at college. Katie and Brad had a daughter, Nicole, who was a couple of years younger than my daughter, Jamie. I had no idea what Nicole was doing with her life. I patted Beth on her back as she bathed my shirt in tears.

When William Tecumseh Marks marched through the door, Beth sensed his presence, pulled out of my embrace, and crossed her arms over her modest bosom. She did not go to her husband for comfort.

What’s going on? Billy said in a tone that implied he was worried more about his wife in my arms than he was about his mother’s status. Billy and I are opposites in every way. I’m an optimistic dreamer, while Billy is pugnacious and contemptuous. I have dark hair and brown eyes like our mother, while Billy has sandy hair—thinning—and steel-blue eyes like our father. I’m tall and lithe. Billy is short and square. I played college basketball. Billy was a power hitter in baseball and a running back in football. Unfortunately for Billy, he was one of those sad people for whom high school was the high point of a life that ran downhill after graduation.

Mom’s undergoing tests—heart and brain—and won’t be back till late afternoon.

Billy moved a few steps into the room. I didn’t expect to find you here.

I glanced at Beth and saw fear on her face. When she had called the previous night, she asked that I not disclose how I had learned of Mom’s hospitalization. I hadn’t seen Billy or Katie since my father’s funeral nearly three years ago, and neither of them had called me since my incarceration. The hospital called me. I’m on the next-of-kin list.

Billy looked doubtful; Beth looked relieved.

Still wearing my father’s watch? He pointed to the gold Rolex President on my wrist, my father’s retirement gift from the Savannah River Plant. He didn’t want to wear the symbol of his desultory career, so he presented it to me as we exited his ceremony. It was the only keepsake he had ever given me. My siblings had plundered his other possessions when he passed.

"Yes, it’s my father’s watch. The metal band wore out, so I changed to a leather strap."

Billy sneered. Never understood why he gave it to you. He thought you were an idiot.

The feeling was mutual.

Then why wear it?

To remind myself to prove him wrong.

Billy shook his head and edged closer to us, creating a conversation circle. What have the doctors told you?

Ignoring Billy, I spoke directly to Beth. What happened? I talked to Mom a week ago. She said she was fine.

She told us you called, but she wasn’t really fine, Randle. You know how she sugarcoats everything.

I did know. Mom never wanted anyone to worry about her.

Tell me about yesterday, I said. How did you find out? How did she get here?

Beth flushed. Without asking Billy for permission, she said, It started Thursday night. Mom had pain in her legs and couldn’t sleep. Could hardly walk.

The fluid buildup, Billy said.

The symptoms of a heart attack are different for women than for men, I said. It was about to happen, and she didn’t know it.

Beth nodded. Friday around lunchtime, she used the bathroom but then she couldn’t stand up. She was paralyzed. She had to crawl to the bedroom to get to a phone.

Took her four hours, Billy added.

She called me at home, Beth continued. Billy was at work, so I called 9-1-1 and met the first responders at her house. It was terrible, Randle. Her panties were still around her ankles. She was so embarrassed.

I could imagine the scene: the prim Southern Belle in shocking disarray. It made me very sad to think this might be the messy end of my mother’s neat and proper life. Could she see?

I guess so. She crawled to the phone, dialed my number.

That implied she had the stroke while she was in the hospital, under a doctor’s care. That puzzled me. I paused to think about the ramifications.

So they transported her, but then they didn’t do anything for her.

They gave her shots that saved her life, Randle. They put her on oxygen.

True, but they didn’t assign a cardiologist and hospitalist until she proved she could survive the night.

We were here all night, Billy said.

I knew that wasn’t precisely true, but I didn’t challenge him. Is she still paralyzed? They never mentioned it to me.

No, Beth said. She regained movement after they treated her in the emergency room.

That’s a relief. Now that I had the background, I recapped for Billy and Beth what Metzger and Kaplan had told me. They were shocked to hear that Mom couldn’t see. I had more pressing matters to pursue.

Why is she malnourished?

Billy constructed an innocent expression. She’s not. She gained weight, ballooned to a hundred sixty pounds at one point.

She’s a skeleton now. Do you guys check on her?

Billy’s nostrils flared like a wounded bull in a fighting ring. "We live in Martinez, not around the corner. Why didn’t you check on her?"

I’ve been occupied.

With that hocus pocus you call science? How’s that worked out for you?

You know where I’ve been.

Yeah, making license plates. He snorted in derision.

I had to change the subject before I strangled my baby brother. When was the last time she’s been to the doctor?

Billy shrugged. Not long ago.

Was she being treated for water retention?

Sure, she has pills.

What about the infection on her legs?

She takes steroids. We took care of her while you were ‘occupied.’

I’m here now. I’ll look after her.

Billy shook his head. Too late, Jack. You can go back to your ex-wives and your boats and your houses—all the things that have been more important to you than family.

Randle.

Huh?

You need to call me Randle.

Billy waved a dismissive hand. Go home, Jack. Leave the dirty work to us, as always.

I’m staying until Mom is well. She doesn’t need you, I said.

Billy’s fists curled into tight balls, and his sinewy arms flexed over and over. He wanted to hit me in the worst way, and that’s what I wanted too.

Beth broke the tension, asking me, Where are you staying?

Billy and I relaxed and moved slightly apart. The routine logistics for family visits, established decades ago for no explainable reason, were that Katie and her family had first dibs on Mom’s house while my family and I stayed in hotels. Of course, that protocol assumed Mom was in her home as well. But right now, I had no money for a hotel.

Since Mom is in the hospital and Katie’s not here, there’s room at Mom’s, I said.

"You always stay in a hotel. Our house was never good enough for you," Billy said.

Give me the keys. I stuck my hand in front of Billy.

Like a kid who won’t share his candy, Billy smirked and shook his head. You’re not welcome in our house.

Beth gave me a sad look. Reluctant to reveal my penury and give Billy a reason to feel superior, I made a show of hugging my brother’s wife before moving to the doorway. I pointed at Billy and said, See if you can keep Mom alive until I get back.

Chapter Three

Since Billy didn’t want me to stay at Mom’s house, I was determined to do exactly that. Two months ago, while I was still in prison, Mom had written me a letter in which she requested my advice about a family estate issue. She hadn’t elaborated on the matter but asked me to visit her after my release. She also asked me not to discuss her request with my siblings. I assumed my brother wasn’t managing her finances effectively, but I hadn’t considered it an urgent matter. I had intended to enjoy my new freedom for a while before braving a trip back home, but now I feared she wouldn’t be able to communicate her concerns. I wanted to see if she had left me any clues. Then there was the pragmatic matter of money—I had none.

Mom’s house—our childhood home—stood on Lumpkin Road, just five miles from the hospital. The two-story white colonial sat one hundred feet back from the roadway and ten or fifteen feet above it. The property, five acres of lush lawn with a border of mature trees, was zoned commercial because the original owner had had a row of small cottages for rent at the back of it. My father bulldozed those cottages when he bought the place for the princely sum of thirty-five thousand dollars. Today the property was easily worth ten times that much and had long been clear of any liens.

As I looked around the yard, two memories came to mind. In the first, I was an adolescent watching my attractive mother cut the back lawn with a riding mower while wearing a bikini. She only did that while my father was at work. In the other memory, I was a preteen hiding Easter eggs for Katie and Billy to find. I always cheated so Katie would find more eggs than Billy.

We had joked that our home was the Church of Marks, as it was situated beside the Cliffwood Presbyterian Church and across the street from the Lumpkin Road Baptist Church. Whenever we returned to the house, we would say we were going to church. Of course, our church was a rare phenomenon in Augusta—a Catholic church.

On the small back porch, I searched the usual places for a spare key—under a planter, the underside of the railing, the ledge above the door—but couldn’t find one, so I moved around the far side of the house. Opposite the driveway and sheltered from the street, I found myself staring at the windows to Mom’s master bedroom. The first one I leaned into and pushed up on didn’t budge. Neither did the second. For as long as I had lived in this house, Mom had cracked a window at night for fresh air, but now the windows were sealed as though it were a mausoleum. At my feet lay a row of decorative rocks bordering the flower bed. I picked up a large one and, without hesitation, hurled it through the window. I had learned an abiding lesson in prison: I had a license to be disinhibited. I could do most anything to survive. Everyone in prison learned the same lesson.

After picking glass shards out of the sill, I levered myself through the opening and dropped into Mom’s bedroom. It was the first time in my life that I had entered my parents’ room unaccompanied and without permission. Mom’s bed was unmade, and a telephone handset lay on the floor. I tossed the rock out the window, replaced the phone in its cradle, and walked through the country kitchen to the back door. Beside the door, an alarm keypad flashed the word unsecure in iridescent green letters that would be visible in the dark. I had never known the house to have an alarm. I wasn’t sure Mom would know how to operate one. Thankfully, it had not been set. Below the alarm, a rack held about a dozen keys of various shapes. I tried each of them in the kitchen door, but none worked. Once upon a time, Mom had kept a spare on that key rack, but things change.

I didn’t relish the idea of coming and going through a broken window, so I walked through the house, looking for her purse. I spotted it on a side chair in her bedroom and unzipped one of its pockets, which revealed a keyring holding two keys. A silver key, its fingerhold wrapped in dirty white tape, unlocked the back door. Smudged black numbers, 0125, could barely be distinguished on the tape. I had heard about dementia patients who pin their addresses to their shirts or blouses so they can remember their address when they are away from home. Mom’s house number was 1927, so that wasn’t the significance of 0125. I figured the numbers were the passcode for the alarm system.

I carried my bags into the kitchen and began a quick inspection. There were no dishes in the sink. The pantry contained a couple of lonely cans of soup and stale bread. The refrigerator had only butter, eggs, and milk. My mother had not been eating regularly.

The living room—Mom called it a drawing room because she received guests there—looked like a furniture showroom that no shoppers ever entered. The hardwood floor was waxed and covered by the same Oriental rugs I had seen three years ago, when my father passed. My father had used the drawing room as a family court to hold his wayward children to account. Although he had died three years ago, his spirit permeated the large space. He hadn’t believed in corporal punishment, yet he had effectively communicated his displeasure with neglect, disappointment, shame, and ridicule. For me, in particular, he set unattainable expectations to crush my spirit and erode my confidence. Although I had attended Georgia Tech as he wished, I chose not to become the nuclear engineer he had hoped I’d become. Instead I became a data scientist, a profession he neither understood nor respected. I had made the basketball team as a walk on, but I