by Randy Kadish
CHAPTER 5
But not all was perfect that summer. Grandmother refused to take more chemo, in spite of my father’s pleading.
“I can’t stand the nausea anymore,” she said. “Besides, I want to enjoy whatever time I have left.”
Strangely, she rallied like a champion boxer. Her energy surged. Her hair began to grow back; though usually she still wore a grey wig. Right before Labor Day she promised me that we would travel upstate and fish the legendary Ausable River, but about a week before we were to leave, her cancer counterattacked. Grandma went back into the hospital. She insisted, “No more chemo!”
The doctors gave her some more painkillers and sent her home. She rallied again; and I was sure that she had scored, against her cancer, a late-round, knockout win. Often she went with me to Vernon’s spot on the river. As the gold and red leaves fell around us, she taught me how to make curve and wing casts, and taught Vernon, who stopped drinking, how to make a basic fly cast. Then, one cold November day, she taught me how to execute the double-haul cast. Two hours later, I got the hang of it, so to speak.
“That’s enough for today,” my grandmother said.
“Are you tired, Grandma?”
“There’s nothing more I can teach you about casting. Besides, it’s getting close to dinner time, and tonight I want to cook.”
She cooked one of our favorites: chicken in a mushroom sauce.
After dinner we went into the living room, turned on the TV and watched Jeopardy. Using spoons for buzzers, we played along. My father was in first place when the first round ended. After some commercials, the second round started, but my grandmother didn’t answer any of the questions. I turned to her. She slept. A peaceful expression was on her face. Not wanting to wake her, my father and I stopped playing. When the game ended I again looked at Grandma. She hadn’t moved. She was dead, I knew. Inside me something surged that felt like ice.
It took about a week for me to feel strong enough to go into my grandmother’s room and sit down at her desk. I decided to tie the first fly she had taught me after that almost unbelievable day on the Junction, an Adams. I opened her top drawer and saw a note in her handwriting. It read:
June 21st,
To my son and granddaughter:
Some things in life we can choose, others we can’t. God has chosen me to die soon. I’m not going to try to understand why. Instead, I’m only going to thank Him for all the blessings He gave me in life. But there is one thing I still want: to die without suffering, and where I want. That’s why I went to the river today, to fish one more precious day, and then to take my life and pass into eternity right where my beloved husband did.
I’m just so sorry that we fought that morning, and that when he left to fish I didn’t say good-bye.
I pray that this is the right time, and that now you’ll both be able to put your hurt behind you and enjoy the flowing, twisting, and sometimes fast, rocky river of life.
That’s the ultimate choice we’re all left with.
Your loving mother, your loving grandmother.
Crying, I read the note over and over again, then showed it to my father. He read it, folded it slowly, but didn’t say anything.
I said, “Maybe it doesn’t really matter if Mom ever comes home.”
My father hugged me. “We’ll always have each other.”
We cried together, for the first and last time.
The next day after school, I went to the hardware store and bought a small piece of wood, a narrow brush, a can of green paint and a can of varnish. I went home and painted, as neatly as I could, my family’s last name, and then the word Pool. When the paint dried I varnished the wood. A week later, my father got his stepladder and hammer. He, Vernon and I went the pool my grandfather had died in. Vernon and I held the ladder as my father nailed my sign on the trunk of a tree.
My father climbed down the ladder.
I said, “I bet you this pool was always waiting for a name.”
“Yeah, it probably was.” He kissed the top of my head.
I looked into Shana’s brown eyes. “One day I’ll name a pool after you.” Shana barked as if she understood what I said. I kneeled down, and she licked my face the way she did the first time we met. I hugged her. You’re such a good girl, Shana. Yes, one day you’ll have to leave me and go to doggie heaven. That’s the way it has to be, but I’ll always be grateful for the love I gave to you, and the love you gave to me.
That night, after I finished my homework, I went to my grandmother’s room and tied about twenty flies. I took them down to the local fly shop and sold them. In fact, all through high school, college and law school, I earned pretty good money selling flies and teaching fly casting. My small business, it turned out, helped my father, who struggled to pay my tuition, almost as much as it helped me.
Did I ever see my mother again?
About four months after Grandma died, I came home from school and saw Mom sitting on the porch. I didn’t know if I should run to her, so I didn’t. Numb, I climbed the steps. My mother wore a lot of makeup—too much, I thought, for someone so naturally beautiful—and a fur-collared wool coat, the kind I thought women in New York City wore. Her fingernails were well manicured and polished bright red. I wondered if her boyfriend had a lot of money.
She said, “Let me hug you.”
“No. Look here, if you came back to live with us I’m going to tell Dad we can get by fine without you.”
“I can’t say I blame you, Amanda.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“You’re my daughter, a good, good daughter.” She closed her eyes, and then covered her face with her hands. She cried uncontrollably. Suddenly, I cried, too. I fought back my tears the way I had fought trout.
The tears won, and soon I didn’t care that they had. Crying, I learned, could feel really good.
My mother pulled her hands down from her face. Her makeup was all messed up. “Amanda, I love you. We don’t always get what we want. I’m … I’m so sorry for the way—all I ever wanted was to be in love. Does that make me weak? Does that make me—there are things—”
I interrupted, “Yes, are things I can’t understand.” For some reason I thought about Vernon, the bad man in the woods, and then my grandmother. The strange events of June 21st fast-forwarded through my mind, compressing, somehow, into a few vivid seconds. I was thankful that something that had once looked bad—Shana going after the swans—had turned into something that now looked good. Though I still didn’t quite believe in God, I felt the 21st had happened for a reason.
Yes, I decided. I want to be more like Vernon and my grandmother than like the bad man. Yes, today a part of me still loves my mother, and I hope tomorrow all of me always will.
I walked over to my mother. I put my hand on her shoulder and said, “Okay. Let’s go inside and I’ll introduce you to my beautiful girl, Shana.”
She grabbed my hand. “Thank you, Amanda. Thank you.”