When her life was celebrated in an exuberant memorial months after she died, nobody bragged that Catherine Scott collected Martha Stewart Living magazines dating back at least to 1999. They were stacked, waist high, on the bookshelf in the parlour which had been converted into her boudoir. To fetch the magazines for Catherine, I had to manoeuvre around her hospital bed, then slide those high-gloss publications featuring upside-down lemon meringue pie and Martha up close and personal off the shelf. One glance at the domestic do-it-yourself doyenne herself was enough to make me cringe.
But not in front of Catherine.
She was too in love with stylish homes and lush gardens for me to argue with her about the dubious iconic status of Martha Stewart. Not when Catherine could hardly swallow her tapioca pudding.
One day when I was spending an afternoon with Catherine, her daughter emailed with a request for a whole-wheat apple cake recipe. She thought it might be in a back issue of Martha Stewart Living, the one with African violets on the cover. I volunteered to help find it. The search would give Catherine and me a goal to achieve in the timeslot after her mid-morning nap. As soon as we had finished thumbing through one magazine, she’d point in the direction of the others.
“Mo-r-r-r,” Catherine crooned in a raspy Darth Vader sounding voice. Her stiffened fingers clawed at the silky magazine pages like a predatory bird, either an osprey or an eagle, hunting for dinner. Only recently had she stopped wearing fashionable hats to cover her denuded scalp.
In the late afternoon, I prepared to leave as the next friend in our circle of care arrived. Catherine fumbled to light a cigarette.
“Go-o.” She waved us away with a flick of her weakened wrist.
“I’ll stay,” I said.
Catherine pointed to the front door, determined to be the boss in her own house. I was scared to abandon her. I worried that she would fall when she went to the bathroom or choke on the phlegm clogging her throat. I wanted to believe that she would always be in control, as independent as ever. Eleven years after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I still saw her as the supreme hostess, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, serving them on her Noguchi coffee table. But I followed her orders. For the sake of Catherine’s dignity, I left. She died about a week later.
If someone had asked me to write her obituary, I would have stretched the truth. “Catherine Scott,” I would have stated, “died on November 2, 2006 while flipping through Martha Stewart Living to find a lost recipe for whole-wheat apple cake and a paint colour for her next home decorating project. She settled on a vibrant Chinese red.”
But I wasn’t asked.