“She’s ill,” he said.
My mother had never been sick a day in her life. My brother always said even viruses were frightened of her.
Ben had never even attempted to hide his resentment of our mother. He refused to forgive her for those things that had happened years and years ago. He even blamed her for our father’s suicide.
As an adult, I had defended her to my brother. I reminded Ben that our mother’s own trauma and alcoholism were behind that behavior—that raising two kids on her own after such a tragedy had been difficult. I believed she’d loved us in her own way and done her best.
“You should give her another chance,” I told him. “She’s changed. She’s sober now.”
Ben was quick to tell me I was a fool for forgiving her. That I needed to stop making excuses and see the truth: our mother was manipulative and cruel, and what she deserved was something closer to the nine circles of hell.
“Ill in what way?” I asked Paul now. I clicked back through the calendar in my brain, trying to remember when I’d last spoken with her. Texts were always easier for me—the last time I remembered actually speaking to her was back in July, when I got a little tipsy on my birthday and called, askedher if she even knew what day it was. And she’d laughed, said of course she did, then told me the story of her twenty-hour labor.
I blinked, phone pressed against my ear.
July.
Had it really been that long since we’d spoken?
“She has cancer,” Paul said. There was a pause. “Pancreatic cancer.”
The room seemed to sway. I lowered myself onto one of the stools at our breakfast bar. “That sounds bad,” I said.
“It is,” he said. “It’s kind of a worst-case scenario, Alison. It’s stage four. The doctors…” Paul’s voice faded. “They say there aren’t a lot of options at this point, other than keeping her comfortable. We’ve been to every specialist. The best of the best. They all agree—it’s just spread too far for surgery or chemotherapy to make any difference.”
In the other room, a singer warned,He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake.…
“Did they say how long she has?” My voice came out wispy and meek.
Paul took in a breath, then exhaled. His voice was shaky. Was he crying? “Not long. A matter of weeks maybe. A month or two at the most. She’s in bad shape, Alison.”
I felt the walls closing in around me, the whole world pressing down, making me feel small and crushed.
“Where is she?”
“Columbia Presbyterian. I’m with her now.”
I sucked in a long shaky breath, trying to get my head around all of this, to let it sink in.
I looked up, saw Mark there, holding a string of tangled Christmas lights, watching me. I must have looked bad, because he set down the lights and came toward me, concerned, mouthing:What is it?
The old steam radiator in the living room clunked and hissed. I glanced over at the refrigerator, covered in the bright, cheerful drawings Olivia had done, a photo of Olivia and Izzy holding hands and jumping off the dock at the lake last summer. The house smelled of balsam fir and the gingerbreadcookies Mark had been baking. It felt warm and safe and like a place where nothing bad could touch me.
“She’s asking for you, Alison,” Paul said.
I closed my eyes. Just like that, I was five years old, holding her hand in mine as she walked me into kindergarten. I was crying, begging her not to leave me there, to please, please, please bring me back home.
She got down on her knees, there in the hallway in front of the kindergarten classroom. She looked me in the eye and said, “You won’t be away from me. Not really. You’ll be here at school, making friends and learning, and I’ll be home painting, but really we’ll be together. Do you know why, Ali Alligator?”
I’d shaken my head, tears dripping off my face onto my good first-day-of-school dress.
“Because we’re connected, you and I,” she’d said. “Close your eyes. Can’t you feel it? There’s an invisible thread going from me to you, so we’ll never be without each other. Not really.” She wiped the tears from my eyes. “So go on. No more crying. Be my brave trouper. And if you get sad, if you miss me, close your eyes and remember the thread. No one can break it. Not ever. Not even one of us. We’re bound.”
“WHAT IS IT?”Mark asked again in a whisper as he moved closer, put a hand on my back.
I clutched the phone to my ear, listened to Paul breathing, to the background hospital noises behind him.
“Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I promised.
