“But you’re forty-three,” Cammy said. “Not thirty-seven. You’re two years older than my mom.”
My eyes were still closed. I knew what my belly looked like. Pale, shrunken, with leftover stretch marks (I put on sixty pounds when I was pregnant, grew as swollen and unmanageable as a tick). Some of the skin was still stretched out. The scars from my surgeries were a pale rosy pink, the shade of a lipstick I favored in high school. The scars inside me were adhering to the sides of my empty abdomen. I pressed down on them, tried to feel my way inside, pushed harder, even though it hurt. I wanted to reach inside and rearrange it all. Maybe I could fix this all myself.
Cammy looked over at me. “So how was it with Dave today?”
“Exhausting,” I said.
“Was it weird to see him?” asked Ross. “Did Jake like him?”
“Jake loved him,” I said. “It’s not hard to make a kid love you when you bring him enough toys to stock a toy store.”
“That was smart, bringing toys,” said Ross.
“What else?” asked Cammy, after a while.
“There’s not much more to say, really,” I said, only half-lying, because while someone more articulate in these arenas might have been able to explain my Jackson Pollack of feelings (rage, heartbreak, longing, sadness, patience, grief, sweetness, murder), I didn’t know how to even begin. “He was a nice guy then. He’s a nice guy now. Has more patience with Legos than I do. He seemed really into Jake.”
“Will you see him again?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure Jake will want to.” I wished I were more stoned.
“Well, it was nice of you to do that for him,” Ross said.
“What else could I have done?”
“Anything, I guess,” Ross said. “Right? You could have told him anything?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like his father had gone missing. Or that you tried to find him but you couldn’t.” Ross paused. “You could have said he was dead.”
“Ross,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “He’s going to have a dead mother soon enough. I don’t need to kill off his father too.”
“No, you know—” Ross said. “Just so that you wouldn’t have to see him.”
“I would never have done that to him.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re a good mom.”
I was a good mom. I was a good-enough mom. “Speaking of dads, how’s everything with yours?”
Ross groaned. “I just don’t think he can handle having an adult kid. He still wants me to be a baby.”
“That’s how it is for a lot of parents. It’s hard to face that your kid is growing up. That one day you won’t really need him anymore.”
“You’re not like that, though. You’re smarter than that.”
I smiled at the stars, flattered. But then, as though a glacier was carving through me, I froze from the inside. I was smart, maybe—but I wasn’t smart enough. How did it not occur to me sooner? What was wrong with me?
I was realizing that your father could sue me for custody. That was his job, suing people. He could figure it out. He could sue me and take you away. To have the kid his wife wanted. The kid he suddenly wanted. Jake, I know how this might sound—but that’s when I suddenly realized that your father might be a monster.
Was he? Underneath that nice-gee-aw-shucks persona, was your father a monster? He might have been. People changed.
“Guys, I need you to do me a favor.”
Of course, they said. Anything.
“I need you to keep an eye out for Jake,” I said.
Of course, they said. Of course they would.
“No, not just the big-sister, big-brother stuff,” I said. “I mean you need to keep him with you. Keep an eye on him. And you need to be very careful about his dad, okay?”
“Okay,” said Cammy, but she sounded confused.
“Like he cannot go live with his father. He cannot even spend too much time with him. Like he can see him maybe once a year for lunch or something. His high school graduation. But otherwise, nothing. Protect him.”
“Got it,” Ross said.
“Why?” Cammy said. “Why can’t he see him more?”
“Because those are my rules,” I said. Jesus, how could I not have seen it? I was the dummy. “Before I die. After. Especially after. His father cannot take him.”
They were quiet, absorbing this. “But I don’t think you’re really dying,” Cammy said. “I think they’re going to figure out a cure before and it’s going to turn out okay in the end.”
“In Guatemala, they see traditional healers,” Ross said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried that?”
“Ross,” I said, “in Guatemala they believe gourds are magic.”
They both giggled a little, and then we were quiet. I waited until the glacier of ice receded from my insides. I took my hands off my stomach, reached for each of their hands. Behind us, someone flipped a switch in the house and cast a block of light down toward where we lay. Bruce, getting some water in the kitchen. Allison, popping an Ambien, wondering where we were. We were on their lawn, holding hands, paper dolls.
“Listen, I’m asking you guys to please protect Jacob when I’m gone. Please teach him his constellations. Please make sure he reads good books. Please see that he keeps up with his swim lessons. And please, don’t let his father manipulate him, or you. Okay? Don’t let his father worm his way in. His father wasn’t there before and he doesn’t get to be there now, just because it feels good to play Dad.”
They didn’t say anything.
“And even if it sounds like I’m being unfair, I don’t care.”
Cammy squeezed my hand. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” said Ross.
And we lay there like that, on the grass, for what felt like a long time, until Allie opened the back door of the house and yelled that for God’s sakes it was two in the morning and time to come inside.
And then we lay there for a while more, for even longer than that, but I could feel the ice inside me, preparing to return.
TWO
Manhattan
8
It was a strange and terrific thing, walking back into our apartment after so many months away. Mercer Island is big, spread open—the people there fetishize their space, claiming as much as they can of it for themselves, waste it on things like front lawns. New Yorkers, as I’m sure you know, are different: we like to squeeze into small places, make the most out of hidden corners. I’ve never met a Manhattanite, no matter how wealthy, who has a single empty kitchen drawer. My sister has an entire row of drawers containing nothing but packets of duck sauce.
As I turned the key in the downstairs lock, trudged up the stairs, turned the key in our door, kicked off my shoes by the door: I exhaled, finally. I remembered why I wanted to come home. The renegade heat enveloped me (closed windows, no central air, ninety degrees outside), and I dropped our suitcase and you scurried in, and outside a car alarm started to wail, but I was so happy I could sing, and started to. Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? For years, this was your favorite song.
“Mom,” you said, warning. Who? Who?
Our apartment, as you may or may not remember, was actually pretty big for Manhattan: nine hundred square feet, two real bedrooms (each with two closets), a bathroom and a half, and a roof deck we shared with our neighbors. We lived on the top floor of a four-story converted townhouse; I would tell you what I paid for these nine hundred square feet, but it might not seem like that much to you in the future, and therefore you will not be suitably impressed (God knows what this place will go for in the future, unless of course Manhattan’s underwater from global warming, in which case I guess it won’t matter).
Julisa was on vacation, closing out her summer in steamy Puerto Rico, but before she left she’d come by to dust, change the sheets, and return Kelly from her house in Rego Park to her rightful place in your room. You were so excited that even though the flight
was miserable and you were exhausted and Jesus Christ it was hot, you streaked across the living room into your bedroom, squealed loudly, and emerged having broken House Rule #1: Kelly Stays in Her Cage.
“Jacob,” I said wearily, “put Kelly back.”
You said, “Nuh-uh.”
I turned on the air conditioner full blast, but it was a window unit and capable of only so much. I turned on the fans too, one in every corner of the room.
“Did you miss me? Did you?” you asked, snuggling the rodent. You were sitting on the shag rug in the middle of the living room, a rug on which Kelly reliably defecated every time you violated House Rule #1.
“Jacob,” I said, over the whirr of the fans.
You ignored me, lay on your back, and let Kelly run across your face, which was disgusting. Then you picked her up and tossed her gently from hand to hand.
“Get her back in her cage,” I said.
“Look, Mom, she missed us!”
“I see.” She had missed us so much, in fact, that she had already urinated a tiny yellow dribble on your arm.
Jake, do you remember Kelly? How I let you pick her out for your fifth birthday from the pet store that used to be on Ninety-Sixth Street? You wanted a dog, and I think in happier days I would have let you get a dog, but I was weak from chemo and I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it. But now I wasn’t so sure—maybe a dog would be a good thing for you to take with you to Seattle. The co-op allowed pets under fifty pounds. Maybe I’d ask Allison, see what she thought.
“Mom, Kelly peed!” you said, delighted.
“Wash your arm,” I said, “and put her back,” but we both knew better than to expect you to listen.
Anyway, besides a little hamster piss the place looked good—noisy, off-smelling, hot, but good. Our kitchen bled into our living room, where we’d stashed a dining table, a coffee table, a pullout couch, a television, your video games, our family desktop, three bookshelves, your bike, your soccer balls, your backpack, your board games, and again it astonished me how much space my sister had on her Mercer Island compound: three different structures for five people. The guesthouse we lived in was bigger than this apartment.
“Can we order dinner?” you asked, immediately a city kid again. Generally speaking, you and I used to get takeout at least every other night. When I asked you what you wanted you said Carmine’s, so I called and ordered a platter of rigatoni with broccoli, which would feed us for the next three nights. I thought about how great a shower would feel, wondered if I had time to take one before the food got here, and yelled at you one more time to put the hamster back in her cage.
“Five minutes, Mom.”
Five minutes.
I sat down on the shag rug, opened our suitcase, and started to remove the dirty laundry—we traveled light, having left most of our stuff at Allie’s. Dirty underwear, socks. I had my laptop; while you played with Kelly, I typed some notes. It felt good to be industrious. And then suddenly the pain in my side hit me so hard I gasped.
“Mom!” You flew to me and I wanted to tell you not to worry, but I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t do anything, I felt like I was being ripped apart, shredded, by something unspeakably hot and sharp.
“Mom!” you screamed, and I motioned to the phone—I wanted you to call 911, but instead you attempted to call Julisa in Puerto Rico. Allie was right—even lifting that pathetic little suitcase was too much. Dragging it up four floors. For what? Socks and underwear and a cheap laptop.
“Mom, what should I do?”
There was codeine in my purse—I managed to gasp the word purse, and you brought it to me and I motioned to you and you dug through it and found the pill bottle. You knew it was what I needed, I wasn’t as secretive as I thought I was, and then I realized I was on the floor and my six-year-old was finding my codeine and my eyes welled up, but still I couldn’t speak. “I’ll get you water,” you whispered. My six-year-old got me water. You got me water, Jakey. You got me water and helped sit me up, but you could not open the childproof pill bottle, which was, I guess, a good thing—but I was too weak to do it. Another spasm sent me down, my face against the shag. I wondered if my bowel was perforating. I wondered if this was my punishment for my hubris, my stubbornness: to die in front of my son.
“Mom!” you said, and then you disappeared and I could not scream after you—I only lay there, wondering when I would shit myself or when I would die. I would almost certainly foul myself, the floor, the apartment I hadn’t seen in so long. Kelly had gone somewhere. You had pee on you and I was almost certainly going to shit myself. Where had you gone? Where had you gone? Would I ever see you again?
Despite what they said, I’d thought the surgery and the medicine would keep me alive forever.
(Jake, from the hospital room where I’m recollecting my memory of this night, it occurs to me that it’s possible I got it all wrong. Perhaps the night went differently, perhaps you weren’t gone for hours, perhaps you remember it in another way. I wonder how you remember that night, and the look on my face. What I looked like. You were more and more conscious of what I looked like as I got sicker and were always gauging my color, my hair, what I was wearing. You liked it when I wore my old semistylish clothes. You hated it when I wore sweatpants. For my forty-third birthday you colluded with Allison and had three-hundred-dollar boots delivered to our doorstep.
Anyway, that’s how I hope you remember me. You will not remember me in a hospital gown, you will not remember me like this.)
“Mom!”
On the floor of the apartment, I closed my eyes. I was hot and cold at the same time. My head was swimming, but I felt strangely at peace. It was okay if it was over for me. I decided that it was okay. I’d lived a longer, better life than most people had ever have lived in the history of this awful world.
And then the next thing I knew our neighbor from downstairs, the lady who was always in yoga pants, I forgot her name, she had my face in her hands. “Karen, Karen, are you okay? Karen, I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“Medicine,” I sputtered, or something like it, and she took the codeine bottle and twisted off the top for me and handed me a pill and the water. I had to sit up to take the pill and I could not sit up.
Yuki, her name was Yuki. I’d known her for years. “I’m okay,” I exhaled. I looked around; I hadn’t shit myself. And the pain wouldn’t have been receding if I actually had torn my bowel. So I thought I was going to be okay again. I could feel it, the relief, which felt something like ecstasy. Of course, I was still on the ground.
“I have an emergency list on the wall.”
“Karen, I’m going to call 911, okay?”
“On the wall by the fridge—”
“I’m calling now, Karen.”
“Kyle’s mom—her name is Ann—she’s my backup when Julisa’s away. They’re two floors down—”
“I’m calling 911,” and I tried to say no, but she had already dialed, and while I could fight with Allison, I couldn’t tell this neighbor I hardly knew to go away. Across the floor darted something: Kelly the hamster. We’d broken House Rule #1 within minutes of getting back home. We would never see Kelly again. And that open suitcase, full of dirty underwear and socks. Your backpack spilling open, your iPad, your gourd. And me on the floor, sweating, so sweaty my T-shirt was translucent. I could smell myself: I smelled like a New York City trash bin in the sun. I wanted to sit up, but I couldn’t sit up.
Jacob, where had all my dignity gone?
Yuki was holding my hand. Suddenly I didn’t see you anywhere. Yuki was kind-looking, pale skin, a smattering of freckles on her nose. I had assumed we were the same age, but I could see that she was younger. “Babe, everything all right?” A male voice at our open door.
Babe? Was it for me?
“We’re fine,” Yuki said, not turning, not looking at him. “An ambulance is coming.”
“I’ll wait outside,” said the man. He must have been Yuki’s boyfriend, I hadn’t known she had
a boyfriend. I’d been away for too long. Did my neighbors know I had cancer? Had I told them? Did they remember me in my scarf, in my wig? Could she see it now in my short fried hair and my yellowed skin and the lines around my eyes?
“Mommy?” you said. There you were: sitting next to Yuki, cross-legged. “I put Kelly back in her cage.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, and soon enough the ambulance arrived, followed closely by the delivery guy from Carmine’s. Just before I passed out, I heard Yuki’s boyfriend pay the guy, tell him to keep the change.
FORTY-EIGHT HOURS LATER, I was still in the stupid surgical center of stupid Memorial Sloan Kettering, and I wouldn’t be allowed to go home until—you ready?—until I farted. There’s just so much farting involved in ovarian cancer. My guess is that you’ll think that’s just as funny when you read this as you did then. Twice Kyle’s mom brought you to see me and twice you asked, “So, Mom, fart yet?” and then fell down on the floor with hysterics (which seemed, frankly, a bit too hysterical to me—which seemed like the gestures of a boy who thought his mother was going to die in front of him just a few nights before).
My adhesions, it turned out, weren’t yet perforating the bowel, but they were blocking about half of a section of my intestine. Evidently this was a situation most medical professionals wanted to fix quickly. Evidently this could cause the sort of pain that even codeine couldn’t mitigate very well. In fact, the next morning the surgeon said he was surprised I’d managed to keep a normal routine with the agony I must have been suffering—this, of course, made me feel like a hero. The doctor was young, handsome, a resident I think, although capable-sounding. He said that from the looks of things inside, there weren’t any new tumors in any unexpected places. From the looks of things, anyway, he said. He wore a wedding ring on a chain around his neck. “So I think that’s some good news, Karen,” he said, and I admit I felt elated.
Our Short History Page 13