He leans in real close, the coffee still lingering on his lips. “We’re not open yet.”
“I know,” I say. “He’s leaving.”
“You know my number one rule here. No drama.”
I nod, my eyes on Kyle. He’s chewing his thumbnail, spitting the pieces onto the floor.
Vinny wraps his hand around the back of my neck and squeezes, pulls me into him like a godfather ready to off me. “Good. Because drama drives away business, and if business goes, so do you. Keep personal shit outside of those doors. Capeesh?” I nod again. He pats my neck, takes one last look at Kyle, and disappears to a place I can’t see. But I know Vin, and he’s always watching.
I rub my brows, pinch the skin between my eyes as if causing enough friction will erase what’s happening, and walk back to Kyle. “You gotta go.”
He walks backward into the door. My chest is puffed out, my arms swollen from the aggravation. He must see this transformation because this tall, cocky asshole is cowering suddenly. “Text me later, then,” he mumbles, tripping over his feet. I shove him into the cold outside air and lock the doors behind him before he finds one more way to slink into another part of my life and fuck that shit up without permission.
Hours later, after the rink rush of germy kids and couples trying to “keep the magic alive” comes and goes, I have only one thing on my mind. I can’t get to my car fast enough, and even as Vinny is shouting something at me through the doors, I peel out of the lot and don’t look back. That’s what gets most people—the looking back. I don’t believe in it. The tires grab the pavement and squeeze, screaming into the air. A black cloud spills from my tailpipe and follows me all the way to the side of town that holds both the dark (the thieves, the poor, the Bashes of the world) and the light (Ma).
* * *
She likes tiger lilies for their “courageous” stripes.
“I’ll never bring you those,” I always tell her, “because those courageous stripes mean wealth and pride—two things we ain’t never gonna have, ain’t never gonna be, and that’s a good thing.” She’ll usually grunt, make a comment about my posture, and we’re all good.
I stop in the floral department of the market, like I do when I have a couple bucks, and buy a single calla lily because it means splendid beauty—one thing she’s always had. Sometimes, when I’m real broke (always), I linger in other hospice rooms where flowers and plants are overflowing, make fake conversation, and if there’s somethin’ pretty, I’ll pull off a crisp stem or two and sneak it in. The recipients are usually on their last leg and don’t notice anyway. But I never show up empty-handed, or she’ll know something’s up.
I poke my head around the corner of her room, 318, with my hand behind my back. My knees buckle at the sight of her, but I hold myself together the best I can. For her, not me. She’s lying still, her arms crossed over her stomach, her eyes focused in front of her, and I wonder what she’s thinking.
“My little Picasso,” she says. “Get in here.”
She doesn’t use her hand to wave me over. They’re swollen, like her legs and feet. The edema has given her elephant trunks that are hard to lift. From here, I see she’s not even wearing any of her usual baubles and bangles around her small wrists. She loves things that sparkle and shine, the kind that make people stop and ask, awestruck, “Where did you get those?”
I walk over to the thin, frail ghost of my ma. She’s got a silk scarf knotted around her head where her hair used to be. Now, all that’s left are a few strands that were spared. Her long, beaded earrings dangle across the bare part of her shoulder where her shirt hangs loose, and her electric hazel eyes are dimmed by the discoloration in her skin. But behind those eyes, she’s still here, fighting the good fight others would have already succumbed to. It’s hard to believe it’s been only a year since the official diagnosis—Stage IV ovarian cancer—and in that year, Ma stopped working and had surgery that didn’t remove everything we’d hoped. So now here we are.
“Sentar-se,” she says, which is sit down in Portuguese. She flicks her eyes to the bedside chair. I show her the lily, place it beside the other things I’d brought in the last few weeks—a few drawings, a picture of us like the one hanging from my visor, and an old teddy bear I used to sleep with, to remind her I’m here, even when I’m not.
Before I sit beside her, I load up on the hand sanitizer that’s sitting next to her bed so as not to risk giving her an infection of any kind, slathering it through every crevice and ridge of my hands. Hers are ice cubes, colored in blue and purple swirls. Even though I see her every day, her gaunt face looks embarrassed at her appearance. Gently, I teepee my hands over hers to warm her. She smiles her trademark ruby-lipstick smile, her teeth looking more yellow than white, but that’s from years of smoking, not the cancer—a lesson I should recognize every time I light up, but purposefully choose not to.
“You smell like smoke,” she says. “Tell me my nose is wrong.”
I sniff my jacket, pretend to be shocked. “Vinny smokes, Ma. I told you.”
She looks me over with one big eye, the other squinted. I know that look, because nothing gets by her, never has. “You’ll ruin your perfectly pink lungs.”
I laugh, nervously. “I know, I know.” She holds her stare as if to scare me out of doing it again. It kind of works. I clear my throat and compose myself. Don’t give it away, Bash.
“So,” she says, “how was school? Tell me everything.”
I hesitate. Everything? As in hit-a-kid-who’s-now-in-critical-condition everything? I stutter, try to form a whole sentence without saying too much.
Little lines web out from the corners of her eyes like cobwebs. “Don’t slouch. Makes you look angry.”
I pull my back straight, roll my shoulders, and shake a loose hair from my eyes. “I, um … had a meeting with the guidance counselor today.”
Her smile sours, and my heart cracks. “Said I’m top of the class. Might be a candidate for valedictorian.” I say the words, and all I can think of are the times she’d say, Don’t lie to me, Sebastian, her eyes lasers that cut to the core of every fib I’d ever told. I challenge her stare and swallow. Her smile lengthens, and I know what I have to do.
“Yeah,” I continue, “said I should think about running for prom king, too. Might do that after I pick which college I want to go to in the fall. Scholarships are lined up. Now I just need to make some decisions.”
She nods, pleased with my lies. “How’d you manage to go from flunking out to valedictorian without me there to crack the whip?”
I shrug.
“Maybe I should’ve gotten sick sooner,” she jokes.
It’s a Band-Aid. It fixes things for now, but I know eventually I’ll have to rip it off. I’m hoping it won’t come to this, accepting the truth, until she’s passed.
“That’s wonderful,” she manages. Her voice is raspy. “Glad to know you don’t need me.”
“I’ll always need you.” My voice is rough.
She squeezes my hand just enough to let me know how much it hurts to let me go. I swallow a wave of tears that want to erupt. “How’s the rink? You work today?” she asks.
“Mmm-hmm. It’s great,” I lie. “Vinny promoted me to assistant manager, today actually, so I’ll be making more money. I’m pretty stoked about that.”
Her smile disappears, and I feel the air leave the room. “You didn’t mention Layla a couple of days ago. Was afraid to ask.”
I swallow again. Thought she’d have forgotten about the demon who wanted all my attention, every second of every day, followed me here to see what I’d been hiding, and when she finally saw my mother lying in this bed, sleeping with an apnea mask on so she wouldn’t suffocate and die in her dreams, told me the relationship was too heavy and bailed. The next night, she started dating that new dude. And, well, the rest is history.
I feel the tears building, change the subject. “She’s not you.”
Her lip quivers. “You’ll have girls lined up fo
r miles. Forget her. How are Kyle, Jeff, and the grand wench of Clifton?”
I know who she means, but because of the bad blood, she won’t mention her by name. It’s conjuring bad juju, Ma used to say. I shuffle in my seat. “Fine.”
“I wonder what kind of man Kyle’s gonna grow into, if he ever grows up. With all that money and no responsibility, I feel like he’s probably looking for any trouble he can get into. For attention, because he can. Do you remember when he was little and used to steal money from my wallet? The little shit didn’t need it—we did—but he knew there wouldn’t be consequences, and there weren’t. I don’t miss watching him one bit. I hope he doesn’t cause you any trouble, because God knows you don’t need any more of that.”
I’m quiet. I move my eyes away from her and try to avoid the topic, but she continues. “Does he ever drop by? To see how you’re doing?”
“Who—Kyle? We’re together all the time. Too much.”
“No. Jeff. Does he know I’m sick?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Should he?” Her question is weird. For years she’s cursed his name for letting Linda kick us out onto the street. I wonder, Why now?
“Well then, as long as Kyle’s a good friend and doesn’t drag you into becoming a mess with him, I can die in peace.” Her glare slices me in half. We sit in this uncomfortable silence until her eyes grow weary. They told me she might be in and out of conversation, might fall asleep and wake, forgetting everything we’d talked about, or that I was even here at all. I already told her about the Layla breakup. She forgot. I’ve already lied about school and my job—last week—she doesn’t remember. Her mind is going, fading faster than I’m ready for. They said this could happen toward the end; they told me to be prepared.
I’m not.
I force another smile, but I know she can see behind it. At least before she got sick, before the cancer spread to her lungs, she could have. Now, I don’t know.
Nurse Kim breezes in, closing the thin curtain behind her. “Hey, Bash,” she says.
Mom interrupts. “He’s top of his class, Kimmy.” She’s beaming a light so beautiful, it brightens the whole room. “No money, no nothing, but somehow I managed to raise a good boy.”
Kim looks to me, one deliberate eyebrow raised because she knows better. “He is one of the good ones, isn’t he? Must’ve done something right, Ms. Camilla.”
I look at Ma and nod.
Kim raises Ma’s bed, fluffs her pillow, and administers more pain medicine through the IV drip. The liquid slithers through the long plastic tube that’s connected to her hand. She told me before that sometimes it burns when it hits the entrance, so I can’t help but flinch as it inches closer to the open wound that’s blistered and swollen from the needle attached.
Moments later, Ma’s eyes relax. Kim looks at me with a curious smile, half-cocked. “I’ve got to drain some of that fluid from your hands and feet, Ms. Camilla,” she says. She opens a sterile syringe and needle and stuffs her hands into a pair of latex gloves.
“I’ll wait in the hall,” I say. This process, the needle, things leaving her body so it can deflate to a normal size … I can’t watch. Watching means it’s happening, so if I turn my head or linger in the hallway, maybe Ma will reemerge into the woman she once was.
As I stand, Ma grabs my wrist, tighter than she has in a long time, and pleads with her big eyes. “Don’t go. Please. I don’t want to be alone.”
I see a fear I haven’t noticed before, or maybe I have and didn’t want to, so with a nod, I sit back down and look away as Kim removes Ma’s socks and pushes the needles into the thick skin on her feet. “You’re ice cold,” she says. “I’ll be quick so we can get those fuzzy socks back on. Want me to turn the heat up?”
Ma’s trying to nod, but her movements are slow. “Bash”—her lips are weighted now—“can you lay your head on mine? I want to feel you close.”
I look to Kim. Her eyes well, and she silently agrees. Our heads touch and Ma is quiet now, the medicine fully immersed in her veins, filling her body with a freedom she desperately needs. Kim is sitting on a chair on the other side of the bed, and as Ma’s eyes drift to a close, she looks up at me, wipes a tear from her eye, and focuses hard on the needle in Ma’s foot.
“She’s proud of you,” she says with a quiet voice. “Talks about you all the time when you’re not here.”
“Wish I could be more for her. You know, like all the things I tell her I am.”
She pauses. “Bash, you can be anything—a valedictorian, the president, a bum under the highway bridge—she wouldn’t give a damn. She’s proud of the person you are, not the things you accomplish.”
I’m quiet, maybe because I don’t believe her. “Doesn’t matter. She won’t live to see if I make it or not.”
“In her eyes,” she says, “you’ve already made it. Let her die with that.”
We lock eyes as she sticks another hole in Ma’s foot. Now my eyes well as I linger on the words.
“I’m surprised she was coherent that long. It’s been coming and going.”
“How long do they—” I stop myself.
She pauses, looks up at me. “It’s hard to say, but she probably won’t be here come Christmas. I’m so sorry.”
I hold back the flood of tears prickling the backs of my eyelids and gently drop Ma’s hand to pull out my spare drawing pad and a block of charcoal from the drawer. My fingers move freely, faster than my brain can keep up.
“Whatcha drawing?” she asks.
I don’t look up or tell her I’m sketching a frail, motionless bear. His body lies on a pile of crisp, dead leaves in the center of a barren field that once occupied a lush forest. I don’t say his lips are pale as ice, eyes nothing but slits, and there’s a dark, gaping hole to symbolize the place where healthy organs should be. I don’t mention, through all of this sorrow, there’s another bear—one full of life, with soft, plump lips; big, hopeful eyes; and a whole, complete body etched lightly—who hovers above the corpse like a wild spirit set free. I don’t say a word about any of this, and maybe she knows I won’t, because she doesn’t ask again. When I’m finished, I sign my name in the lower right-hand corner and set the drawing upright on the bedside table. I stare at it. Seeing it for the first time.
I’m letting her go. Or at least I’m trying to.
birdie
Instead of braking up the slope of our driveway with caution, I tap the gas in short bursts.
Eyes focused, fists clenching the steering wheel, I plow right over that wooden SOLD sign, and all the vibrant flowers and depressing teddy bears around it. Amidst my destruction, the pile of flattened trinkets are no longer a reminder of all that’s happened. Now, they’re roadside litter for the garbage truck to claim.
Maybe I should be sorry, but I’m not.
When I finish surveying the wreckage, I navigate the car up the hill, into the garage, and walk inside the house. Sarge is on the couch popping a roll of bubble wrap—something he does a lot when he watches old war movies. You’d think the sound would make him cower, scare him into remembering the bloodier times in his life, but it seems to comfort him instead, like some weird Pavlovian experiment gone horribly right. It’s a sound that took us a long time to tune out after Nan passed and he moved in with us, but now it comforts me, too.
Dad and Brynn are in the kitchen, slinging their coats around their shoulders. “You guys leaving again?” I ask.
He nods. “Last night was rough on Mom.”
“Then the news segment today,” I say.
He pauses. “Yeah, that too.”
“Mom looked so bloated,” Brynn says.
“Shut up, Brynn,” I say.
She looks offended. “What? That’s what Mom said—I didn’t say it first.”
Dad’s eyes move to Brynn. “Go to the car.”
She sighs or grunts or something Brynn-like and stomps off into the living room to sit with Sarge instead of to the car. Her underwear pokes through the top of her jeans
where her shirt rises. I can’t help but laugh to myself. What a tool. I can only hope that at thirteen I was, at most, half the tool she currently is. Then I glance down to my math tee, which isn’t much better. I’ll settle for three-fourths the tool. Brynn helps pop the bubbles a few at a time. She likes to do it in clusters; this annoys Sarge. He calls it wasting. I look to Dad, wait for him to say anything about anything but he’s hyperfocused on folding Mom’s clothes perfectly. It’s all I can do to get a glance from him.
“Dad?” I urge.
“He made it through surgery and they’ve got him in the PICU for observation, but he’s still not breathing on his own.” And with a shiver in his tone, he pauses again, but this time it makes my chest hurt. “I don’t think he’s gonna make it, Birdie. It’s bad.”
I feel a sour kind of pain rise from my stomach, up into my throat, that I can’t swallow down. Dad sees this, intervenes as he wipes his own eyes. “Why did you go to school?” he asks. “We needed you.”
I begin to sort the file in my mind of all the ways they don’t need me. “Twelve years, not an absent day. I can’t just throw that away.”
“Mom tried to make arrangements.”
“I don’t want arrangements.”
He leans close enough to whisper. “We all know Brynn won’t be valedictorian. She still has those damn feathers in her hair from last week. But, and I mean this with all the love and support in the world, there’s a bigger battle to be won right now, Birdie. School can wait.”
My gaze drifts to the space behind him, where the wallpaper strip is full of ninety-degree angles, much like the diamonds on the floor. Hundreds of them. And we’re just ignoring them, flat-footed, unappreciative of all the perpendicular glory amongst us on the walls.
My hearing grows fuzzy while Dad says words like irreversible brain damage and 10 percent chance of recovery. All things I previously concluded on my own, before he ever went to the hospital. Only now it’s real. Then he throws in this word IF. That is, if he wakes. If is such a sucky word. It implies a reaction can only happen after variables collide. Maybe I don’t want to wait for if. Maybe I want when. Like, when he wakes.
The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash Page 9