Authors: Matthew Quick
“Where are you going?” she says. “Yo!”
I ignore her and make my way down the steps, onto the street, and under the trestle so I can climb my way up the hill and out of here.
Portia follows, yelling, “All of these people showed up for you! You can’t just leave!”
“We had a deal,” I yell back over my shoulder. “And this was
not
part of it. You lied to me!”
“Some of those people in there took off work to be here—drove hours! Tonya Baker flew in from Ohio!”
“Not my problem,” I say, and attempt to escape.
“Hey!” she yells, standing in front of me. “At least have the guts
to tell me our showing up for you doesn’t rekindle the spark and—”
“It means absolutely nothing,” I say, looking her dead in the pupils. “It doesn’t change a goddamn thing.”
Portia Kane searches my eyes for a long time, maybe looking for the spark that is no longer there and never will be again, before she says, “I believed in you! You fake! You coward!”
And then she’s slapping me again, and I’m flashing on Edmond Atherton, feeling my bones break along with my pride and confidence and maybe everything that was ever good in my heart, and she’s no longer hitting me so much as crying into my chest and pounding my back with her fists, and then there’s a man with us and he’s yelling at Portia, telling her to stop calling me names, and restraining her, and so I try to escape once more, caning myself out of there as fast as I can, silently cursing my limp, thinking I can find a pay phone and arrange for a cab to drive me to the train station so I can get the hell away from here forever—or maybe I can just find some quiet place in South Jersey to end it all, because I am done, finished.
This woman has drained me dry.
There is nothing left.
And soon there will only be ash, this godawful cane, and the metal pins that once held my bones together.
I’m ready to follow Albert Camus’s good example.
February 15, 2012
To My Sweet and Good Son, Nathan,
It’s been some time since I last wrote to you.
Please know that I have prayed and will continue to pray for you every single day, multiple times, and ask my sisters to hold you up to God as well. There is an army of nuns praying for you always, and there is great strength in our prayers. I think about you with every breath I take. That will never change.
Then why have I not written to you for months? you might ask.
It is hard to write many letters and never once receive a reply. It’s like talking loudly to a brick wall, never knowing if the person on the other side hears a thing you say, or if the bricks merely bounce your words right back into your face like well-struck tennis balls.
And so maybe you will now feel I have a lack of faith and have failed you once again in some way that I cannot see? I fear this greatly, but I also didn’t want to be an overbearing mother, sending you so many letters that you didn’t want.
I didn’t want to become your equivalent of “junk mail.”
When a son doesn’t write back, it is hard for a mother to know what to do!
Nor did I want to upset you, and I began to feel as though God were telling me to give you space, that He would take care of you in His own way. That I was being asked to show my faith by doing nothing—letting go.
Trust and obey.
And I know you will find these ideas silly, because you don’t share my faith.
But I gave you to God regardless.
I hope you will understand that it was not an easy message for a mother to receive—that she had to let go of her only son—and it is even harder now that I believe I may have misinterpreted what God was trying to say to me, which is what this letter is about.
Two weeks or so ago, completely out of the blue, Mother Superior forced me to get a physical; she insisted that I see a doctor even though I hadn’t been to one in years, and my refusing to see any medical professionals had never been a problem before. I told her that God was the only doctor I needed, but she is a stubborn crab of a woman—albeit a strong wife of Christ—and she made the arrangements for me, and then when I refused to go, she threatened to take away access to our wine collection. An extra glass of red every once in a while is a comfort, so help me Jesus.
Long story short, they found a surprisingly large lump in my breast, which immediately prompted more tests—mostly womanly things you will not wish to hear about in great detail, I would imagine—and they ultimately concluded that I have stage IV cancer, which means that it has basically spread everywhere. It’s uncanny, because I had been feeling fine! I’ve heard others say, “If you want to be sick, go to the doctor,” and now, whether they are right or wrong, I finally understand why people say this.
Two days ago my doctor, a Japanese woman much younger
than you named Kristina, sat me down in a room to tell me the news, and she looked as though someone had already died, God bless her soul. She was trembling even. I wondered if this might be her first day as a real doctor, and if I were the first person she had booked on a one-way trip to heaven with her diagnosis.
She took my hand in hers, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Your breast cancer is terminal, Sister Maeve. We caught it too late, and it’s already spread, and rather aggressively at that. I’m sorry. There is simply nothing we can do for you at this point but make you feel as comfortable as possible.”
I said, “I do not fear death, child. I know where I’m going when I die, so you don’t have to worry about me. You also don’t have to make that miserable sad face. Have you been sucking on lemons for lunch?”
Dr. Kristina squeezed my hand and said, “I admire your faith. I really do. But it’s my job to inform you of what’s to come, and I’m afraid it’s not happy news.”
She went on to describe at length all of what I will inevitably endure, and then she spoke of medicines that she could offer to help with the pain.
“How about some medical marijuana, Doc? Can you get me any of that good wacky tobacky stuff?” I said, just to break the tension, thinking the idea of a nun who smokes “reefer” would make her laugh. I had recently heard something about the legalization of marijuana on the news.
But she took me seriously. “We can certainly look into that, Sister, if that’s the route you wish to pursue.”
“It was a joke, Doc,” I said. “I’m a red wine girl. Always have been. Always will be. Although vodka’s good too.”
She looked at me for too long before she finally said, “Sister, it’s my job to make sure you understand the gravity of the situation here. You are going to die. It’s amazing that you haven’t already felt the effects of the cancer more strongly. These effects will be severely debilitating. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
“Are you a religious woman?” I asked her, knowing full well the answer before I posed the question.
“No,” she said—at least telling the truth. “I’m sorry. There are people here who can talk to you about religious matters. I can get Father Watson if—”
“No need to be sorry. I’ll pray for you,” I said. “And no need for a priest just yet. Do you know who my husband is? He’s quite famous.”
“I didn’t know nuns were permitted to have husbands,” she said, appearing very confused in her fancy white doctor coat with the stethoscope around her neck and one of those things they use to look into your ears sticking out of her breast pocket along with a few tongue depressors. She was so young, her outfit almost looked like a Halloween costume.
(Sin though it may be, I envied her thick mane of hair that was like the tail of a beautiful black stallion.)
“We nuns all have the same husband—his name is Jesus Christ,” I said. “And I’m going to trust in Him to sort this out for me. Just like always. He’s had much more practice than you have had and can heal without the help of a medical degree, no offense. He’s been doing it for thousands of years.”
“Sister,” the doctor said, a bit more sternly this time, “I would be remiss if I didn’t make it abundantly clear that you may only have a few weeks left. How you are not already in remarkable
pain is a mystery to me, I admit, but you need to know that you don’t have a lot of time.”
“With all of your education and expensive medical equipment, it’s still a mystery to you, eh?” I said to her and then had myself a bit of a chuckle. “Well, my husband just so happens to traffic in mystery quite a bit.”
“I don’t think it wise to believe that you will be miraculously cured,” the doctor said. “Statistically speaking, you have already received a bit of a miracle, making it relatively pain-free this far without any interruptions to your life. Science cannot explain—”
“We all die,” I said to young Kristina. “And I’ve actually been looking forward to heaven, where I can finally spend some quality face time with Jesus.” I winked, but she didn’t laugh at my joke, maybe because she was one of those serious big-brain types, so I got back to business. “Exactly how much time do I have?”
She took a deep breath and said, “There’s no gentle way to break this to you.”
“Just give me a number,” I said.
“You will most likely go downhill very soon, and rather quickly. If there is anything you need to take care of, you should do it immediately. Maybe a few weeks at the most. That’s the best-case scenario. Again, you should already be failing. You’re living on borrowed time, so to speak.”
I nodded and thanked young Kristina for all of her good work, told her I was going to pray for her, ask my husband to work a little harder on saving her soul, and she smiled politely and wished me luck, because she didn’t know that I have no use for luck. I have the awesome power of God—who created her science and the entire universe—in my corner.
Mother Superior was waiting for me, reading her iPad in the waiting room. She claims to read the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek on that gadget. “It’s much lighter than carrying the actual paper Bibles,” she says. Every year, on her birthday, her brother sends her the latest computer product, which she shows off ostentatiously every chance she gets. I often wonder if she actually reads the Bible on that thing, or just wastes her time watching secular movies and playing mind-numbing Internet games. She never lets me see the screen.
“So?” Mother Superior said.
“I’ll be with Jesus Christ within weeks and maybe sooner, according to Little Miss Doctor Kristina in there.”
“There’s nothing to be done?”
“Medication for the pain.”
“Are you in pain?” Mother Superior said.
“Not yet. It’s apparently coming, and in a big way, she said.”
“We will pray,” Mother Superior said.
“We always do,” I answered, and then we made our way to the convent’s trusty old Dodge Neon.
As she drove me home, I asked, “Why did you make me go to the doctor? What brought that on? You never made me go before. Did you notice something about my health that I missed? What aren’t you telling me, old woman?”
She scowled—she is ten years younger than me, and hates to be called “old woman.” Then she said, “My husband told me to make you go.”
“Why would my husband tell you such a thing?”
“Mysterious ways, perhaps.”
“Oh, bullshit!” I said to Mother Superior, whose face had turned to stone as she drove with her precious iPad resting on the console between us.
“Jesus Christ came to me in a dream again, Sister Maeve,” the Crab said, without taking her beady little black eyes off the road. “He said it was the first step of many necessary steps. Taking you to the doctor would set in motion a grander plan, He told me. But let’s not tell the other sisters about that, shall we?”
Mother Superior may be a crustacean, but she also has the visions, like I do, so she is an ally and a confidante, albeit an extremely ornery one.
Not all nuns have the visions—in fact, most don’t.
And it is best to use the visions without making the other nuns feel jealous or lesser because they have no eyes to see, nor ears to hear.
“The first step toward what?” I asked her.
“He didn’t say. But He obviously wanted us to know that your allotted time to put in motion His divine plan was . . . as we now know . . . extremely limited.”
Back at the convent, I prayed my afternoon prayers and then ate dinner with the sisters, who all kindly inquired about my trip to the doctor. I told them the findings were inconclusive, although I wasn’t sure why I misrepresented the truth at the time. Mother Superior raised her eyebrows at me from the head of the table, but said nothing to contradict what I had told my sisters in Jesus Christ.
When I retired to my room that night, I prayed the rosary, read my scriptures (in good old American English!), and then I thought about what to do with my remaining time. What unfinished business did I have in this world?
Of course, your name was first in my thoughts—my beautiful sweet boy.
After you were attacked, in the hospital, you yelled at me and told me never to contact you again, and have since
refrained from answering my many letters now for years, making it painfully clear that you have cut me out of your life for good—just like your father did to both of us, I might add—but I had also stopped writing you, and I didn’t want you to think that I could ever relinquish the possibility of having you in my life again.
With my last breath I will wish for your forgiveness.
My life here at the convent has been bliss, except for the rift that my faith has created between us—that is my one regret, or maybe I should more accurately say it is my one source of suffering.
I thought about you for hours, wished I could have called you on the phone even, but I have no number for you, and because I had searched for one many times and found none—not even a trace of you in any phone book or Internet website Mother Superior could find—I came to believe that you might not even have a telephone, but have removed yourself from the world, as you threatened to do so many times before.
My greatest fear is that you are no longer even alive. I worry so much about you, and on this night my worry was intensified one hundred thousand times.
Late in the night, and after some wine, God found it in his heart to calm my mind, and I went to sleep, which was a minor miracle in itself.
Soon I was dreaming, and I was in a warm vacation-type place—somewhere south where the sun shines bright and you can smell salt water in the air—and across the street was an impressive modern corporate-looking building covered in large rectangular windows that reflected like mirrors. Standing out front was a crowd made up of many different people of all backgrounds, some fervently praying the rosary, and when I
followed their gazes, I saw reflected in nine window panes the Blessed Virgin Mary, appearing like a gas rainbow in a puddle on the giant mirrored windowpanes. She looked beautiful and so full of love and grace, her bust glowing some thirty feet tall maybe, as if she had taken Noah’s rainbow and bent it into her own form.
“Come,” I heard Mother Mary whisper to me in my dream. “Come, Sister Maeve, to this place, and you will have your closure. Have faith. Come.”
Then I sat up in bed, wide awake, knowing that God had sent me another vision, so in my slippers and nightgown I tiptoed through the halls of the convent to the old Crab’s palace of a bedroom—with her own bathroom even!—knocked lightly, and entered.
Mother Superior was snoring like a drunken bear.
I turned on her bedside lamp, but the light did not wake her, so I pinched her nose shut and covered her mouth with my palm. She was wide awake in fifteen seconds or so, swatting at my hands, gasping for air, and even letting out a little swear disguised as a prayer.