Authors: Megan McCafferty
forty-eight
M
y mom was fifteen minutes late in picking me up from the bus station. As I waited for her to show up, I watched a shimmering silver SUV pull into the parking lot. I mocked the anonymous driver of this immense and intimidating luxury export for being a status-obsessed, bigger-is-better, gas-guzzling idiot who was responsible for U.S. dependency on foreign oil from countries that harbor and abet terrorists…
Then the driver rolled down her tinted window and told me to get inside.
“Jessie!”
My mortifying ride had arrived.
“Sweet tank, Mom,” I said as I climbed up and into the passenger side. “I hear it gets three miles to the gallon. Where’s the ‘Support Our Troops’ magnet?”
But my mom didn’t hear me. She was finishing up a conversation on her hands-free headset.
“Remember, you have to speak the language of the interior,” she was saying. “Is it Rustic French? English Country? Tuscan Renaissance?”
I do not speak any of these languages.
“I’m dropping my daughter off at the hospital. Then I’ve got a three o’clock. Then I’ll swing by around four-thirty to approve the throws for the Thompson sale and…”
I still can’t get over how efficient and businesslike my mother sounds when she’s working.
“So your father will be in for another two hours or so.”
I was looking the dashboard, marveling at all the various controls.
“Jessie!”
“Oh! I didn’t realize you were talking to me,” I said.
“Of course I’m talking to you,” she said, though there was no change in tone or gesture that would indicate that her phone call had ended and our conversation had begun.
“I’m going to drop you off, leave for a couple hours, then come back and take you both home.”
“You’re not staying?”
“I have an appointment,” she said.
“With who?”
“The nursery,” my mom replied, “should have set aside the hardy mums for you to arrange on the front porch. Make sure you put them in the clay pots because the plastic planters are tacky and cheap.”
It took me a second to realize that she was back to addressing the headset. I turned my attention to semi-abandoned strip malls along the highway, suddenly remembering that the last time I rode along this highway was in January, in the Caddie with you. wasn’t supposed to be back in Pineville, on the road, in the Caddie with you. I was supposed to be in the rental car with Hope, headed for Happyland, Oklahoma.
“Why do developers keep building new strip malls for dry cleaners, banks, and bad Chinese restaurants when the old strip malls aren’t fully occupied by dry cleaners, banks, and bad Chinese restaurants?” I had asked you. “It’s depressing.”
forty-nine
I
wasn’t supposed to be back in Pineville, on the road, in the Caddiewith you. I was supposed to be in the rental car with Hope, headed for Happyland, Oklahoma.
“Why do developers keep building new strip malls for dry cleaners, banks, and bad Chinese restaurants when the old strip malls aren’t fully occupied by dry cleaners, banks, and bad Chinese restaurants?” I had asked you. “It’s depressing.”
“What’s depressing?” you asked. “Some people would call that progress.”
I was surprised that you had responded at all. It seemed as if everything I said lately was met with a silent chin-first nod, or a simple “Yes” or “No.”
“I don’t know,” I said, having trouble articulating the source of melancholy that usually set in whenever I left the city for Pineville. “All those abandoned storefronts are depressing. All that emptiness.”
When you contemplatively dipped the Beard, I thought the conversation was over. We passed through two green lights, then stopped at a red.
“Buddhists strive for emptiness,” you said.
“Really?”
“Shunyata. It means not so much ‘empty’ as ‘open.’ Without boundaries.”
“Really?” I said again, if only because it had worked the first time in coaxing more conversation out of you. You surprised me by obliging.
“Without getting all metaphysical, sunyata means that everything in this life is interconnected. There is no me that is separate from you.”
“Or anyone else, for that matter.”
“I suppose that’s true, too.”
That was a blustery afternoon in early January. Twenty minutes later, we huddled together on the boardwalk, our own bodies providing shelter from the wind. As the gray waves churned with sturm und drang, you revealed two things I had previously known nothing about: Your dad had been diagnosed with stage III prostate cancer. And he had insisted that you make good on the binding, early-action offer from Princeton University.
fifty
“M
y aesthetician,” my mother said in a sharp tone meant to get my attention.
“What?”
“I have an appointment with my aesthetician.”
“The Botox doc?” I asked. “Mom!”
“What? I have to schedule my maintenance visits months in advance,” she said. “If I miss it, I won’t be able to get in until next year.”
Now that she mentioned it, the smoothing effects of the Botox must have worn off because her face was able to wrinkle itself into detectable expressions of genuine human emotion, and at that moment, it registered annoyance.
“You’re leaving Dad alone in the hospital so you can keep your appointment with the aesthetician?”
“But I’m not leaving him alone,” she said. “I’m leaving him with
you.
You can handle it.”
When did I become the paragon of all things adult and responsible? I sleep in a
bunk bed,
for Christ’s sake.
“There’s so much wrongness going on here,” I said, “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I’m sure you’ll find your way,” she said drolly.
“Okay, first of all, I just don’t understand why you do this to your face. You’re beautiful for your age without all that artificial help.”
“See? ‘For my age.’ You mean I’m beautiful for an old lady.”
“You’re not an old lady,” I said. “You’re—” I stop myself.
“Forty-eight,” she said without batting a curled eyelash.
“Moooooooooom.”
“Whaaaaaaaat?”
she asked, mocking my tone as she flicked the turn signal.
For the record: I’m proud of my mom. I mean, how many women launch their own successful business in their fifties? But if she doesn’t stop shaving off the years, soon she will have to start telling everyone that Bethany is either (a) her younger sister, (b) the product of my dad’s first marriage, or (c) the first-ever baby conceived by a mother who was still in utero herself.
“Dad retired last year at fifty-five. You’re a year younger….”
She violently shushed me, lest occupants of other SUVs on Route 37 should hear.
“Are you saying you’re forty-eight because you don’t want to be fifty but you don’t want to say forty-nine either because that sounds like more of a lie than forty-eight? Which is crazy because you’re
fifty-four
!”
She took a sharp turn into the hospital parking lot and I was thrown into the passenger-side door.
“First of all, what I do to my face is my business, not yours. It’s not your place to criticize,” my mom huffed. “It’s an outpatient procedure that takes a minute. It’s not like I’m getting a face-lift….”
“Yet!” I blurted. “Botox is the gateway procedure….”
My mom wrinkled her forehead in disdain again, a gesture that she would not be able to execute post-“maintenance.” “Stop being so dramatic, Jessie.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t expect you, at all of twenty-two years old, to understand what it’s like to look in the mirror and not even recognize the old person looking back at you. Looking better makes me feel better. What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that…” What’s wrong with that, I thought, is that more and more women deal with emotional insecurities by fixing their physical flaws, all in the false name of self-love. What’s wrong with this, I thought, is that we’re reducing ourselves to a gender of firm flesh and unlined faces, empty heads and hollow hearts. It’s no wonder that my mom is getting maintenance, or that Bethany promotes the DONUT HO’ and refers to herself as a MILF.
“I don’t understand how you can be so cavalier,” I finally replied.
She pulled up to the orange cone that designated the drop-off zone. “I can be so
cavalier,”
she said, putting italics on my word because she wouldn’t use it herself, “because your father did this on purpose.”
“Did
what
on purpose?” The silver monster idled in the circular drive at the entrance to the hospital, creating a traffic jam behind us.
“Crashed his bike.”
“Why would Dad do something stupid like that?” I asked. I was eager to find out, then get out because a line of cars was honking at us to move on already.
“He’d do something stupid like that to get my attention.”
fifty-one
I
called my sister from the bright and antiseptic hospital lobby. As the phone rang, I watched keys pop up and down on a player piano programmed to play “feel good” music. I listened for Barry Manilow. Maybe a little “Can’t Smile Without You” or “Bandstand Boogie.” But he never came on.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“At the hospital.”
“How’s Dad?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t been up to see him yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
My phone
beep beep beeped:
low battery. In my haste I’d forgotten the charger.
“I’m waiting to recover from my ride with Mom,” I said.
“What did she say?”
And then I quickly recounted the conversation, including my mom’s accusation that he had crashed his bike on purpose.
“See?” Bethany asked.
“Please don’t mention the Signs,” I said.
My phone
beep beep beeped
again.
“Asserting her financial independence. Improving her physical appearance. Distancing herself from her spouse,” Bethany said with a certain smugness. “All three Signs in a single conversation….”
Just then a chubby girl around Marin’s age came and stood next to me in front of the piano. She wore a thin acrylic sweater, the pink pilled fabric barely stretching over her round belly. Her jeans were both too large and too small, with the elastic waistband straining against her stomach and cuffs dragging on the floor. Two pink butterfly barrettes were haphazardly clipped to either side of her dirty blond hair. Dirty in both senses of the word, as I detected a certain oily, unwashed scent. This girl existed in the real world of cheap fast food, unpaid credit-card bills, and trips to the ER instead of insurance-covered doctor visits.
She broke my heart.
“By the way, how was Dr. Kate? Was she as incredible in person as she is on TV? When do—”
And then my phone
beep beep beeped
a final time before crapping out—thank God—for good.
The girl tugged on the hem of my T-shirt with grubby fingers half-licked of chocolate from vending machine snack cakes. “Who playin’ dat pee-an-nah?”
I glanced at the piano, then back at the girl. A Pinky the Poodle Band-Aid was stuck to her forehead, through which I could see a brownish dash of blood. As you might recall, Pinky had once been Marin’s favorite cartoon character. But that was a birthday or two in the past. Marin had already moved on.
One look at this girl and I felt like I could—and should—make a monumental difference in her life. I was overcome by an irrational urge to take her home with me. If I had the choice, I would have chosen to be
her
legal guardian, and not my own niece’s. I’m not under the illusion that money buys happiness, but not having to worry about life’s basic necessities certainly helps improve one’s general outlook. Marin was born into unfathomable wealth. Her parents can guarantee the basics, and so much more, no matter who assumes legal guardianship. But this girl, I thought, this girl needs me more…. I never thought it was possible, but I suddenly understood, with luminous lucidity, why celebrities indulged the egotastic impulse to adopt foreign orphans.
“Who playin’ dat?” she asked again.
If I couldn’t take her home, I wanted to take her away from her troubles, if only temporarily. I wanted to joke around, make her laugh.
“It’s a phantom,” I said.
“Phantin?” Her face scrunched up in confusion. “Whazzat?”
“A ghost.” I waggled my brows and wiggled my fingers.
“Spooooooky.”
I regretted it as soon as I said it. After all, I didn’t want to scare the poor girl. I waited for her eyes and mouth to stretch into a grotesque grimace, I waited for her to howl in horror and run back to the emergency room. “Maaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmaaaaaaaaa! Ders a
ghost
playin dat pee-an-ah!” I would have hurried in the opposite direction toward the west elevators before her mother could come after me.
How dare I scare the bejeezus out of her daughter? Doesn’t she have enough hardship in her life without having to worry about piano-playing ghosts?
Instead, she cocked her head to the side and glared at me through her bruised eyes. “Duhhhhhhhhh. It can’t be a ghost.”
“Why not?”
“A peeanah-playin’ ghost? That’s stoopid.”
“Why is that stupid?”
She exhaled deeply because I was trying her patience. “It’s stoopid ’cause ghosts got better things to do than play peeanahs.”
“Like what?”
“Like gettin’ ready for Halloween.” She shook her head disdainfully.
She saw me for the patronizing, bleeding-heart liberal asshat that I really am. Even this girl could see right through me. The phantom in the room was me.
fifty-two
R
ightfully chided, I dejectedly headed to the infusion room on the second floor, which is where I’m writing from right now. I was about to describe the infusion room for you, and how unnerving it is to roll back and pass through the privacy curtain and see my dad sitting upright in the hospital lounger, hooked up to the IV, looking as drained and tired and glassy-eyed as one would expect from someone who is “down four or five liters,” as the nurse put it. I was about to describe the nurse’s purple clogs and Hello Kitty scrubs and how these cartooniforms are probably meant to be cheerful but have the reverse effect on me. I was about to describe how difficult it is just to sit next to my dad while he’s intravenously rehydrated with salt water one drip at a time, pretending to watch a lame game show, as he strains to make conversation about the best game-show host of all time, straining to discuss Bob Barker, and how he will always be remembered as the host of
The Price Is Right,
but also for his mission to get all pets spayed and neutered, straining because everything I say is overheard by everyone else in the room because the privacy curtains provide privacy in name only, as proven by my unintentional eavesdropping, just now, of the conversation between the nurse and the patient on my dad’s right-hand side, a discussion that included clinical keywords such as
antiemetics, alopecia,
and
anemia,
but none as revelatory as
adjuvant chemotherapy.
I don’t need to describe the infusion room for you, or what it’s like to sit silently next to your dad looking as pale and frail and mortal as you’ve ever seen him, because this is the same room in which your dad endured six chemo cycles between this past January and June.
I only know this much because I called your mother and pled for information. Because after your beachfront confession, you barely spoke of your father’s cancer again. And when I asked, even begged you to unburden yourself to me, the person you professed to love more and deeper than you ever thought was even possible, you repeated the same mantra over and over again.
“There are no words,” you said. “There are no words for this.”