by L. J. Evans
The fact that, by some strange twist of life events, Ava hadn’t had sex before me made me appreciate the piece of herself that she’d given to me even more. I wasn’t old-fashioned. I didn’t expect a woman to be a virgin until she got married. It would have been incredibly hypocritical of me if I had, seeing as I’d lost my virginity at sixteen.
But I loved that I’d been able to be her first.
I loved Ava.
It was as simple as that. Our conversations may have been limited. Our time together may have been limited. But the time we had spent together had been full to the brim of moments that were seared onto my heart and soul.
Since joining the Coast Guard, my future had become my present. The goals I’d set had become a reality. Now, I was being forced to consider what came after in a way I hadn’t ever thought I’d have to do. The one thing I knew for certain was that, whether or not I got to keep my commission, I couldn’t look forward and not see Ava entwined in that future.
I waited, tired and impatient, for Truck to get home on Monday. Truck had barely gotten in the door and set his stuff down before I let loose with the news about Mom.
“Cancer…shit,” was his first response. My response had been the same, so I couldn’t blame him. “And she didn’t tell you? Us? That’s pretty screwed up.”
Truck was as close to his own mom as I was to mine. Both of us were raised by single moms who worried about their sons and the career path that put them at risk. It was probably why he’d been completely comfortable spending time with my mom and Leena when he’d been at the DCO school. They’d sort of adopted him as a second son, and now I could see the same hurt on his face that I’d felt because Mom hadn’t told us.
“You know Mom. She feels like anything she says to me that isn’t one hundred percent positive will somehow mess with my head and end up with me on a stretcher. Little did she know, I’d be stupid enough to end up there on my own.”
Truck was silent. What was there to say, really? Eventually, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m going to try to make it out there while you’re on leave. To see her.”
I nodded. “She’ll be happier to see you than me. Especially once I’ve worn away her anger at Leena telling me.”
I gave him our normal hug goodbye. I was planning on being up at the asscrack of dawn, so I wouldn’t see him.
As I walked down the hall, he called out, “It’s good to see you without the cast, Eli.”
I waved the cane in acknowledgment.
I was on the road by three in the morning. I didn’t want to deal with the New York traffic in commute hours. I’d timed the trip so that I’d be there after Mom’s alarm had gone off, but before she left for the bookstore—if she was even going into the bookstore.
When I drove up to the house I’d grown up in, parking behind Mom’s Chevy, my brain and emotions were dragged across the coals for a new reason. There was a “For Sale” sign in the yard. The first emotion that hit me was anger—yet another thing Mom had done without telling me. I didn’t have any right to stop her from selling our home, but the fact that she’d do it without even mentioning it cut me to the quick. It was the home that she and Dad had filled with love and memories. For me. For them.
After the anger worked its way into my heart, a new emotion joined it: fear. Fear that she really was worse than Leena said. That she was selling the house so that I didn’t need to later. Or so that she’d have money to cover the medical bills.
I looked at the house I’d grown up in, trying to see it as an outsider. A simple cottage from the forties. Someone had painted it recently. It was still white, but the shutters were now black instead of the dark red they’d been for as long as I could remember. My heart clenched at the thought of not coming back to it…of not coming back to Mom.
My leg groaned at me as I stepped out of the truck, stiff from the long drive and the position it had been stuck in. The physical pain was just another reminder of all the things going wrong in my life besides Mom and a “For Sale” sign.
I let myself in quietly. The living room was still dark, but the smell of coffee came from the kitchen. I could hear muted sounds coming from her bathroom with her bedroom door open. I was sure it was a podcast. She was addicted to them these days.
There was a stack of unassembled boxes against the wall by the entrance to the kitchen. The books, that had constantly been scattered everywhere growing up, seemed organized into piles that I’d never seen her do.
Our house had always been well-worn. Well-loved, I guess. The furniture squished down from use and was covered in so many blankets and pillows you could hardly see the cushions, anyway. The blankets and pillows were a hodgepodge of things that my mom fell in love with or others gave her as gifts.
A lot of the pictures that had always filled the walls and the tables were scattered and stacked in random places, the pictures of our lives being removed. It was painful. It made the anger flare inside me again that she could do all of this without saying one word.
As something to do, I made my way to the kitchen and made Mom’s coffee, adding the cream and sugar just like she took it. I heard Mom talking to the one cat that she had left living with her, Snickers. A cream-colored tabby with strange dark and light brown markings that had given her her name.
“I know, impatient one. I’m going to feed you now.” Her voice was its normal soft lilt. It normally soothed me. Not today.
As she came around the corner, she froze, a hand going to her heart because I’d startled her. All my anger turned back to fear once I’d seen her. My throat closed around the emotions that were threatening to overflow from me. She looked tiny. Frail. I’d never thought of my mom as frail. She’d never been a heavy woman, too busy—too into yoga and walks on the beach—to ever gain too much weight. Now, there was no escaping the word.
Her hair was short, buzzed close on the sides and barely longer on the top. It was colored a red that suited her, but that I’d never seen her wear before. It had always been dirty-blonde. The haircut had to be due to the chemo, or radiation, or both.
Her gray eyes widened and then squeezed shut at the sight of me.
“No hug for your son? I even made your coffee.” I tried to keep the utter terror out of my voice. Terror at seeing her look so not like herself. Terror that had masked the anger, but it still burned in me, too.
“I’m going to kill her,” was what she said in return, but then she was hugging me, and I hugged her back as tight as I dared, afraid to hurt her, or break her, or just make her cry.
“I love you, Mom,” I said, kissing the top of her head and not letting go, because, even hurt and afraid, it was the emotion I felt most.
She wrapped her arms around me and put her face on my chest. “I love you too, but you shouldn’t be here.”
That just pissed me off again. So when she pushed away and took the coffee cup that I had sitting on the counter for her, I let her go without a word. I tried to get control of all the emotions pouring through me before I spoke.
She sat at the old oak table in the kitchen alcove with its built-in bench. I followed her with my own coffee, sitting in one of the chairs across from her. “I think I should have been here months ago.”
“Why? What would you have done?” she asked.
“Taken care of you. Helped you,” I said, trying to keep the frustration and hurt out of my voice but not being able to help the waver that came anyway.
She looked up at me, her own eyes full of tears. “They probably wouldn’t have given you leave. Then, you’d just have been worried…and you know I don’t like to be coddled.”
“Mom…you have cancer. I think some coddling is in order.” Snickers jumped up on me, meowing pitifully because Mom had gotten sidetracked from feeding her. I got up, carrying the cat with me, and filled up the food dish by the sliding glass door to our backyard.
The light was starting to break over the fence, and I could see the wild herb and flow
er garden of Mom’s that had felt fairylike when I was growing up. It was even more wild. Unkept. She’d not had the energy to take care of it.
“I’m okay, Eli. I promise,” she said quietly.
“If you’re okay, why are you selling the house?” I demanded.
She looked into her coffee cup and stood. “I don’t have time for this right now. I have to be at the bookstore.”
“Goddamn it, Mom. Stop avoiding me.”
“Don’t swear.”
I stared at her, correcting my language like I was some adolescent. Maybe that was the problem. She couldn’t ever see me as the adult I was.
“Then just tell me the truth. Are you really okay?”
“I will be.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
I’d done lots of Google searches on stage one cancer. I knew the odds were good because they’d caught it early. I also knew that it had been a rough go. The pain and nausea had probably been unbearable. She’d probably spent more days throwing up food than eating it. But I bet she hadn’t stopped going into the store. I bet she’d kept moving.
She moved past me into the kitchen, looking for her travel cup. She poured the coffee in it and added more. After, she stopped and hugged me again, saying, “I’ve missed you.”
The loneliness in her voice got me, melted my anger a little, forced back the words that I wanted to say. They’d wait. It must have been hard, going through the cancer with just Leena. If I’d been there, she could have had at least two of us going through it with her.
She was also right, however. It would have been unlikely that the Coast Guard would have granted me leave just to take care of her. For the first time, I wanted to bless the stupid harbor seal instead of gut it. Being hurt meant I was there.
“I missed you too,” I told her, squeezing her again, feeling the fragility of her bones. “But for the record, I haven’t forgiven you yet.”
“I’ll see you tonight?” she asked as she moved toward the door.
“Give me a second to put my bag in my room and use the facilities, and I’ll drive you in.”
“I can drive myself, Doodles.” She was trying to soften me up by using my nickname. It wasn’t going to work, not right now.
“Can’t drive yourself unless you want to back into my truck to do it. Give me thirty seconds.”
I grabbed my cane on my way past where I’d left it propped against the side of the fridge. I could feel her eyeing my limp and the brace that was over my jeans.
“You going to be okay, too?” she asked me.
I nodded. “It was just a break. I don’t have cancer.” I was going to keep needling her until she acknowledged that she should have told me.
“Have you been before the medical review board yet?” She was a Coast Guard’s wife. A military wife. She knew how these things went. She knew that I may not have cancer, but that, in many ways, my life was ending.
“Not yet. I had to come see my mom…who has cancer, instead.” It wasn’t true. I wouldn’t be before the board until I finished my PT.
I was halfway down the hallway, but I still heard her mutter, “I’m going to kill Leena.”
It lightened my heart just a little. At least her attitude was the , even if she didn’t look the same.
♫ ♫ ♫
We spent the day at the bookstore, with me helping her unbox new inventory. Mom had a new girl helping her at the store. Some woman about my age named Jersey who was so pale and quiet she almost blended in with the whitewashed bookshelves. Jersey brought in pastries, said a hello I could barely hear, and faded into the fabric of the store.
By around three, Mom looked worn out. Exhausted. Like she needed to be wrapped up in bed. But she sat behind the counter, on a stool that had never been there before, going through receipts.
I eyed her from my place stocking the comics. Jersey flitted past like a ghost, and I almost didn’t catch her words as she spoke. “She’s never here this late anymore.”
Then she drifted away again.
I texted Leena.
ME: We’re still at the bookstore. The girl here says Mom doesn’t stay this late?
LEENA: What? You’re still there? I’m on my way.
As soon as Leena entered, I could tell in a way I hadn’t been able to tell on the FaceTime call that mom’s illness had taken a toll on her, too. Her hair was grayer, and her face held more lines. She looked tired, but she smiled when she saw me, hugged me tight, and whispered, “I’m so glad you’re here, kiddo.”
Her Japanese accent on my nickname warmed my heart. I hugged her back and said, “Thank you for telling me.”
My mom had seen Leena come in as soon as the bell on the door jangled, but she’d studiously gone back to the receipts and not said a word to her.
Leena stepped away from me and went up to the counter. “We’re going to the Crab Shack, right?”
She said it to my mom, but Mom continued to ignore her. The Crab Shack was our tradition. Every time I came home, we went there on the first night. It had always been a place we celebrated at while I was growing up. It was nothing fancy, mostly picnic tables outside with a few tiny tables shoved into the well-worn building, but it was good food. It was our food. It meant home.
Jersey came over and exchanged a look with Leena that let me know they’d been handling Mom together while I’d been gone. One more person who’d been able to look after her besides me. I loved it and hated it. It made me hurt.
“Let’s go, Mom,” I said.
“I’m still finishing up.” Mom was being stubborn. Something I recognized. It was in me, too. That stubbornness. I’d gotten it from her.
“I can do it,” Jersey said in her whisper voice.
Mom looked at her in surprise, as if she hadn’t expected Jersey to gang up on her like that.
“Mom, it’s tradition,” I told her.
“Fine.” She got up and went to the back to get her purse.
She didn’t say a word to either of us as we drove to the restaurant. She didn’t even say anything when we got there. She just went to grab a picnic table while Leena and I ordered. She didn’t need to tell us what she wanted. We knew. It was tradition.
My phone buzzed while Leena and I were standing waiting for our order. It was Ava. That morning, I’d texted her to let her know that I’d made it home, but I hadn’t texted again as I’d had my head wrapped in Mom, and the house, and all the things she wasn’t saying.
MY LIGHT: Does your mom know I’m coming? Is she okay with it?
ME: We haven’t talked about it yet. She’s barely speaking to me at the moment.
MY LIGHT: Maybe I shouldn’t come.
ME: They’ll be thrilled that I’m bringing a girl home. It’ll give them an excuse to buy me extra boxes of condoms this Christmas.
MY LIGHT: I…I don’t even know how to respond to that.
I chortled and looked up to find Leena watching me.
“You’re smiling,” she said, like it was a surprise, like I never smiled. Which wasn’t true, but I knew the goofy smile that I usually wore around Ava these days was probably one she hadn’t seen in quite some time.
“I smile,” I groused, but it wasn’t a real grouse.
“Well, there was that one time you came home after dropping off Becky Anderson.”
I groaned. “Don’t start.”
At sixteen years old, I’d been unable to keep the smile from my face after Becky and I had had sex for the first time. Mom and Leena had taken one look at me and known exactly what had gone down. From that point on, they’d started giving me condoms as birthday and Christmas presents. All different kinds of condoms. It was just wrong to have your mom and her friend buying condoms for you. But they’d also made their point: keep it covered.
“Who is she?” Leena asked.
“You’ll see for yourself on Thursday. She’s coming up for spring break.”
“A college girl?” Le
ena frowned. “She’s too young for you.”
In Rockport, when Ava had been nineteen and I’d been twenty-two, our age difference had been the main thing on my mind. Her age, her underage drinking, her dad’s reaction to her being underage. But since seeing her in New York, I’d never really stopped to think about it once.
I didn’t get a chance to respond to Leena’s jab before they called my name. Leena and I grabbed the trays and headed out to where Mom sat watching the waves. It had dropped to somewhere close to cold, and she was bundled up in a jacket, a beanie, and mittens. The beanie was just like the one on my own head with the Coast Guard emblem on it. I wondered if Mom’s was actually Dad’s, and that made my throat close up again for the hundredth time that day.
My phone buzzed again.
MY LIGHT: Seriously. I don’t want to come if I’m going to be in the way.
ME: If you stay in New York, you’ll make me drive six hours round trip to come get you and bring you back.
MY LIGHT: Don’t go all alpha male on me, oh Captain, my Captain.
ME: Then just show up like you promised. I need you here.
She didn’t respond, and I was afraid that maybe I’d overstepped some unspoken boundary that she’d raised and I hadn’t noticed.
ME: I’m at the Crab Shack with Leena and Mom, so I’ll call you later?
MY LIGHT: You’re at dinner?! Don’t text during dinner with your mom. It’s rude.
ME: Are you lecturing me on table etiquette now? This is the exact reason why my mom and Leena will love you.
MY LIGHT: Go. We’ll talk later.
“Seems like Eli has a new girlfriend,” Leena told my mom.
This had Mom gasping and turning to Leena to say the first words she’d said to her since she’d entered the bookstore. “What? How do you know?”
“Look at his face. Just like when he came home from dropping Becky—”
I put a hand up to stop the story from going further, but I was still smiling when I texted one last reply to Ava.