You have an old soul.
You will help your dad take out the trash, won’t you?
Sebastian is engrossed by this act, asking a million questions, convinced she has all the answers. Viola absorbs each prognosis with skepticism, shaking her head. She knows something is wrong—they both do—just not what. They climb on her, study her intently, and run away again: exasperating, gorgeous creatures. Watching them is falling in love over and over and over.
But today is too hot for the act and the scarf. For months she has struggled to regulate her temperature. Now she has closed the door andis sitting in bed looking distantly at the beads of condensation on the lemonade Al brought her, ancient and bald.
They finished the chemo last month. Next week is her results appointment. No one except Al seems optimistic. Aggressive, a word that should be reserved for sporting events and wild animals. Metastatic, a radio program in another dimension. Stage Four—the lot in the studio where they filmed cooking shows, which occasionally sent over extra choux buns. No one has used the T-word yet. Not to her face. But she knows it’s coming.
Al’s positivity has been the one thing holding her together. He is unflagging. Even as he washes her in the shower when she can hardly lift her limbs and makes her food and takes limitless time off of work to bring her to appointments and keep her company, he has never indicated that this will be it. She needs his denial. It gets both of them through the day, through the distraction of not knowing what is going on inside her. It adds to her general irritation at not being able to do anything she wants to do. Physically, mentally, she is flagging. But she has to force herself to focus. To prepare—in case of the worst. She wants to write a letter to each of them. Something for later, some important day, in case she isn’t there.
Dear Lola,
You should know that most of what you do in life
doesn’t matter. All the petty disagreements and strains.
The rightness or wrongness of a decision.
That’s not what she wants to say. Only it’s all a bit of a fog; she is beginning to feel so small, trapped and invisible in the room, unimportant to anyone other than her family. Thank God she has her family. It’s her own fault—she told everyone else not to come, it wasn’t worth their precious time off. The show must go on and all that. Would it have been better for her to die with more people around? In California, where she could feel the sun on her skin every day? If she had fought harder, sooner, if they’d had another month, another year. If they’d gone—oh, what does it matter. You can’t think about it. The point is, she stayed forhim, for all of them, for their happiness. Maybe her friends all would have disappointed her anyway. Most people probably can’t stand being around someone so close to the end, watching the slow fall of the curtain.
The only things that matter are love and sincerity.
Write it down, get it right. There’s something she wants to say about the difference between sincerity and truth, but she can’t quite remember it. She has to do it herself, as best she can, empty her brain before everything is lost. Because there is no character called Susan that Rip is going to write who is going to say the right things to them in the moment, who is going to appear at every necessary juncture of their lives and tell them to trust themselves or put away their pride or be brave. She looks at the scrap of paper, its worthless aphorisms, and thinks:Oh my God. This is me.All the other things she might say, the people she might be, none of them are real. This is, for better or worse, the life that she has made for herself, the people by her side. You make choices and then the show is over. No retakes. So she better be a professional.
They are supposed to go to the fair tonight. “If you’re feeling good,” Al said. Good comes in unpredictable waves. But God, will she try. It’s been so long since she last went to the fair. And never with them. She wants to see their faces as they eat cotton candy, and try and fail to win a prize, and stop at the top of the Ferris wheel. She wants to do everything with them—she wants to see them at eight and twelve and seventeen. She wants to see them fall in love and have children and make compromises and learn about life. She wants them to believe that life is beautiful. Now she worries that they will grow up angry and afraid, skeptical of beauty. But maybe that is better preparation for life anyways.
None of it is fair. None of it is easy.
A click.
“Don’t—” she says, but not fast enough because the door is open and her daughter is standing and staring at her naked head. She walks so quietly, Lola, like a little ghost.
“I knew it!” she says. She looks like she could scream.
“Loli, please—”
Her daughter is checking behind her, like Sebastian might be right there, like she needs to report this to somebody.
“Come on, Lola, come here.”
Lola’s eyes are hard and untrusting, but she takes a step toward the bed. This child of exacting standards.This is not how she wanted to tell her.But in life, there are no retakes.
“Loli,” she says. “Are you scared?”
Her daughter nods. She cannot look her in the eye. It is as though she has become a stranger.Her body is so tired.
“Come sit.”
Tentatively her daughter finds the bed. She is studying the quilt, the diamond stitching. Her face is red and uncertain.
“I need to tell you something, Lola. Can you look at me?”
Her own eyes in a little face. There are a thousand things she wishes she could say, a thousand truths that might be possible.I love you, you’re so beautiful, you’re going to have such a good time at the fair tonight.None of them is the important truth, though, the fact of what’s happening.
“You know I’m sick, right?”
Her daughter nods. Still she is too far away.
