Andrea Marcusa
The Slide
As the cluster of greying dowagers shift uneasily in the reception hall after Mom’s funeral, their muffled chitchat rises beside the photos I’ve gathered and displayed of my mother. Few notice them—not the wedding picture, the framed articles about her gardening awards, or the ancient snapshots of her, the paper curled and faded, images showing her gliding across the town pond with yellow pom poms on her skates. Two women shuffle towards me, seize my hands and say, “Peg, we’re so sorry to lose Joan.” They’ve got my name, which is Maggie, wrong. I smile and thank them, not bothering to correct them. There’s no Mom nearby to laugh with later about this mix-up. Just a hall which feels very large and echoey, save for the refreshment table, the few chairs, and three gigantic bundles of helium balloons cheerfully bobbing in the corner. I study a photo showing Mom digging in her bed of tea roses, pink, always pink. The image is so vivid I can almost smell the blooms. This picture hurts the most. And I miss her all over again.
Some guests pick over the plates of Linzer cookies oozing with jam and delicate tea sandwiches—exactly the kind of treats that Mom would have nibbled on guiltily, the raspberry filling hitting her tongue and making her eyes glow. But there’s not a glimmer of this same delight in the guests. They look beat down, spent. So unlike Mom who possessed a spirit I could never get enough of. Next to her, I always felt dull, staid, measured. She used to say it was as if I’d been born wrapped in gauze. Where I saw muted shades, bright jewel tones greeted her day.
Except when Mom’s mood turned dark and ugly, and her temper flared scorching everything around her. That’s what drove Dad away. I’m more like him, preferring being understated to the dramatic. But my mother? When it was good, there was nothing else like it in the world.
As I watch the guests and their obvious unease, they are no comfort for my grief that sits like a cold granite boulder lodged in my gut. I’d always understood the idea of loss. But standing here, holding my appreciative smile in place, hearing their bland condolences, I feel them needing something from me that I cannot give. My thoughts jump to a photo I didn’t include, one showing Mom’s impish smile while riding a camel in the Sahara, the smile that she managed to beam at the end, through decay, age and cancer. The smile that said, “Maggie, it’ll be okay. Perhaps death is like a new adventure to an amazing place no one can comprehend.”
But it isn’t okay.
The vibrant helium balloons, all eighty-six of them (her exact age), stretch to the ceiling. She’d asked for them, "Something different, something not sad,” she had said, as we discussed her inevitable end, her blue-veined hands and arms as thin as twigs. She always planned everything—part of her lived in the future until she was left with none. "Who doesn't love a helium balloon?” she’d said, laughing. I watch the colored orbs drift to and fro, waving at me, in the slight breeze from the open side door. Suddenly, I’m striding towards them, seizing the three bunches, the boulder inside me dissolving, as I maneuver them outside where I lift off, my only witness is a dog who barks madly below from an open window in a pickup truck in the parking lot. I giggle as I rise, relieved to leave behind the platitudes, the fumbling as faces and names I don’t recognize as they reach out to me, my mother’s only child. It’s easy to hang on to the balloons, as if I’m weightless. I rise above the church, the cemetery, the railroad tracks and float East towards the Sea Break Amusement Park. I don’t know what is steering me, only that something tugs me along. When I arrive at the park, I descend toward the top of the giant slide, where I spot Mom, her eyes aglow, flashing her smile, and waving to me, because she’s found a new exploit. “You Hoo! Maggie!” I touch down beside her, tie the three balloon bunches to a stanchion, while Mom arranges the small square of rug beneath her and hands another to me. “Quick get on, there’s no crowd!” She’s right, the entire park pulses with jellybean lights and movement, where we are the only patrons. She motions to me to sit, and I do, slipping behind her, my arms clasping her waist. She feels warm and strong, and I sink into her, nothing like the icy hands and bony ghost of a few days ago. I’m speechless, giddy and choked up simultaneously. Together, we gaze out at the merry-go-round horses bobbing, the Tilt-O-Whirl spinning, the Ferris wheel turning, feeling the sea breeze blowing off the harbor. The rollercoaster clatters, the calliope um-pa-pas. We rest there, on top of the world, one last moment together, a proper send-off. Neither of us speaks. We inch towards the slide’s steep incline, and as we draw closer, our laughter rings out, bright and wild, like teenage girls on a high dive. I dig in my heels for a few seconds, holding us at the top, drinking in the colors, the music, the warmth of her back against my chest. Over the water, a day moon peeks out from behind a cloud, and then she pushes off.
Andrea Marcusa's writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, River Styx, River Teeth, New Flash Fiction Review, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, New Letters, and Southampton Review. She's on the faculty at The Writer's Studio and also a member of the school's the Master Class where she studies with Philip Schultz. Andrea’s chapbook, What We Now Live With, was recently published by Bottlecap Press. For more information, visit: andreamarcusa.com or see her on Blue Sky: @andreamarcusa.bsky.social
