She smiled sadly and patted my hand. “Honey, if there’s going to be a miracle, it won’t be because of any treatment.”
In the last couple of weeks before she died, I was by her side almost all the time. One afternoon, I stood outside thedoor to her room, tears coming down my cheeks as I heard her laughing with an old friend.
“Are you scared?” I heard the friend ask.
“Oh, heavens no,” Mom replied. “When you have lost a child, death comes as a relief.”
I couldn’t stay after that. It was childish, I knew, but I was furious. She had confirmed what I had thought all along. Instead of wanting to fight to stay with us, she was practically choosing to go. She had left me. And Wagner. She hadn’t even tried to do anything to save herself. She didn’t know it, but she had left us when we needed her the very most.
“Mom,” Wagner said, breaking me out of my thoughts. I looked down. I was still squeezing him to me.
“Oh,” I said, laughing. “Sorry, bud. I wanted to tell you that we have someone new staying with us. Her name is Diana, and you are going to love her.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“She’s making fried chicken and macaroni and butter beans and biscuits for dinner.”
He brightened. “Yes! I like her already.”
“Hey,” I said. “You doing okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, Mom. I’m good.”
“Is it weird? Being with Dad and Brooke?”
He shrugged. “Nah. Brooke’s cool. Dad too.”
In the land of eight-year-old boys, that was a pretty deep talk. I would take it.
“All right, cutie. You know Dad and I both love you more than anything in the world, right?”
He smiled. “I know, Mom.” Then he said, “I’ll be down as soon as I finish putting this stuff up,” gesturing to postcards and trinkets he’d collected from the trip.
That meant:Get the hell out of my room, old woman.
I smiled. In the doorway, I turned to look at him another moment, my baby who was growing up so fast. That familiar fear, that terror at the thought of losing him, rushed through me. I thought of my mom again, of her joy over having another boy in the family, as though Wagner were going to be the reincarnated soul of my brother, Steven.
As I walked downstairs, I felt my phone buzz in my hand.Does Wagner by chance go to bed at six?
I smiled. And I realized that I was really looking forward to that good night kiss.
diana: cliché for a reason
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. It’s a cliché because it’s the truest damn thing of all time. Doesn’t matter if he’s five days or five years or a hundred and five years, a man will love you more if you can feed him well.
I knew that Wagner probably wasn’t going to be all too thrilled about some strange woman taking up residence in his guesthouse, so the importance of this dinner wasn’t lost on me.
“Did Mom tell you that fried chicken is my favorite?” Wagner asked.
He startled me. I guess I hadn’t expected him to walk right up without his mom and start chatting with me.
“She might have,” I said.
“My grandma’s fried chicken was the best in the whole world.”
He was wrong, but I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.
“Well,” I said, “no chicken can replace your grandma’s chicken. But sometimes when we can’t have the real thing, something kind of like it will do.”
