A Mother's Goodbye_A gripping emotional page turner about adoption and a mother's love

by Kate Hewitt

  My mouth is dry. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now it’s important that we start giving Lucy that help. We have a specialist on staff who has one-on-one sessions with children who are having similar struggles. So, with your permission, I’d like her to start attending these sessions as soon as possible.’

  ‘Okay.’ That seems easy enough, but I still feel deficient, as if this is somehow my fault. ‘Is there anything I should be doing…?’

  Mrs. Bryant proceeds to list all the ways I could and should be helping Lucy – reading to her as much as possible, helping her sound out words, using letter and sight word flashcards, modeling the ‘joy of reading’ myself. I stare and nod, numbly realizing how little of this I’ve ever done, or, if I’m honest, will probably do. Who has the time?

  ‘This is important, Mrs. McCleary,’ Mrs. Bryant says severely as we both stand. ‘Good reading skills equip a person for life. And of course the opposite is true, as well.’

  So if I can’t help Lucy to read, she’s screwed. I nod stiffly and say goodbye.

  When I get home things only become worse. Kev and Amy are having a standoff in the living room, and Emma and Lucy are hiding in the kitchen.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask even though I don’t really want to know. Amy’s body is vibrating with rage and Kev is standing with his fists clenched.

  ‘I caught her stealing money from my wallet,’ he states flatly. ‘And I told her she’s grounded for a week.’

  My stomach drops. ‘Amy…’

  ‘I was borrowing it,’ she sneers, not remotely sorry. My temples start to throb.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Kev sneers right back at her. ‘Sure you were.’

  ‘You never believe me,’ Amy shrieks. ‘You never think anything good about me.’

  ‘That’s not true, Amy,’ I say tiredly, even though it sort of is. I’m always suspecting her, always afraid, usually powerless. ‘But why didn’t you ask first?’

  ‘Because he wasn’t here—’

  ‘I was here,’ Kevin returns in an iron-hard voice. ‘I was in the can. You chose your moment well, but not well enough.’

  ‘That’s not fair—’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Amy, if your father says you’re grounded, you’re grounded.’

  She looks wildly between the two of us and then squares her shoulders. ‘Oh, whatever,’ she snaps. ‘I’m not listening to you.’ And before Kev and I can so much as blink, she is pushing past us and out of the house.

  Kev lets out a roar of anger and springs after her, but he’s not fast enough. By the time he gets outside she’s already run down the street, hair flying. She tears around the corner and then she’s gone.

  Kev slams back into the house, and everyone backs away, waiting. ‘We’re canceling her phone,’ he growls. ‘What else can we do?’

  I shake my head, speechless. I don’t know what else we can do for Amy. She defies us at every opportunity, even when she doesn’t need to. It’s like a challenge for her, either that or a compulsion. Fighting with her only makes it worse.

  Kev goes to the fridge for a beer, and I walk into the room Amy shares with Emma. Emma’s side is pin-neat, but Amy’s is a mess – clothes all over the floor, a spill of make-up across the dresser. I pick my way through the clutter and sit on the edge of her unmade bed.

  How did it get like this with her? When did it become so bad? When did mere naughtiness tip over into something darker and more volatile? I gaze disconsolately around the messy room and for a moment I long for those days when my girls were little, three beds crammed into a tiny bedroom, soapy angels in a tub, all elbows and knees. I thought I had problems then, and I did, but these feel more dangerous. I’m scared for Amy, and that feels far worse than being scared for myself.

  More out of curiosity than any real suspicion, I open the drawer of her bedside table, hoping for some clue into the complicated mind of my angry teenaged daughter. I blink down at a stash of make-up – expensive stuff, some of it unopened. I pick up a shiny red compact, a gold-plated lipstick. My stomach feels hollow. There’s no way Amy could have afforded all this. There are at least a dozen different tubes and bottles and boxes in this drawer – eyeshadow, lipstick, pencils, powders. I barely wear make-up, but even I know all this stuff must cost hundreds of dollars. Amy’s only money is from babysitting, and she does that rarely, because Emma is far more reliable. This stuff must be stolen.

  Kev appears in the doorway, his beer already half drunk. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I close the drawer before he sees, not that Kev would know what it all was. But looking as shiny and new as it does, he might realize it has to have been stolen. I’m not quite ready for his explosion when he does.

  I rise from the bed and pat him on his arm. ‘We’ll talk to her when she gets back. Let me make dinner.’

  Amy doesn’t come home until midnight. Kev has taken his medication – he’s still on it, after all these years, for the low-level chronic pain he’ll always have – and I wait up alone, curled up on the sofa, the windows open to the spring night. I feel a heavy, dragging sadness about everything – Amy, Lucy, Grace. I meant to read to Lucy before bed tonight, but with Amy and everything else I forgot. I haven’t had time even to think of Grace… and of Isaac.

  Amy creeps in quietly, and then stops in the doorway as she clocks me. I muster a tired smile, fear outweighing any anger I might feel at her flagrant disobedience.

  ‘Welcome home.’

  Amy shrugs off her jacket without replying. I watch her for a moment, her tense body and defiant expression. ‘I know,’ I say quietly. She still doesn’t say anything. ‘About the make-up.’ I take a deep breath. ‘You’ve been shoplifting, Amy.’

  She turns to me, startled for only a second, and then she folds her arms, tilts her chin. ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ I stare at her, at a loss because she is so unreachable. ‘I didn’t raise you to be a thief, Amy.’ Too late I realize how accusing that sounds, and so I try again. ‘Amy, you’re better than that—’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Because you’re my daughter and I love you.’ I hear the tears thickening my voice. ‘Don’t you want more for your life?’

  ‘Than what?’ She’s so scornful. ‘Anyway, wasn’t this about having more?’ She turns away.

  ‘Amy, stop.’ My voice comes out hard and I press my shaking hands together. ‘You’re going to return that make-up.’

  She stares at me for a long time, her lips pressed together, her eyes narrowed. ‘And if I don’t?’ she asks at last, the same scornful note in her voice. I’m shocked at how cold she seems, how uncaring. Is it an act? Or has she really become that indifferent, that hardened?

  ‘Don’t push me, Amy.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice trembles and rises. ‘It’s a little too late to give me away, isn’t it?’ And with that parting shot she flounces to her bedroom.

  I sit on the sofa, an icy coldness stealing through me. Am I responsible for her rage, or was Amy just doing what she knows so well how to do, and saying what wounds me the most? I can’t bear to think that it might be true, that all of this might be my fault. That in trying to hold onto Isaac, I might have pushed away my daughter.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, feeling so cold inside, my knees gathered to my chest. Eventually I fall into a doze, and when I wake up grey dawn is filtering through the curtains, casting the living room in a shadowy light. My body aches. I drag myself to bed, hoping to sleep for a few hours, but it seems as if only a moment passes before Lucy is shaking me awake, complaining that her stomach hurts. Before I can formulate a reply, she throws up all over me. That’s Memorial Day weekend taken care of.

  By the time I head back to work on Tuesday I am feeling the strain of everything –Amy, who maintained a huffy silence throughout the weekend; Lucy, who is back at school even though she still looks washed out; Kev, who was grumpy all weekend because of everything; and Grace. Of course Grace.

  She is alwa
ys on the periphery of my thoughts, as is Isaac. I wonder how she is doing, if the chemo is still wringing her right out, if she is lonely or afraid. Kev’s remark about me being the last person she’d call twanged a raw nerve, because I know it’s true… which means Grace doesn’t have anyone else. Anyone at all.

  I end up checking my phone constantly to see if she’ll call again, knowing I’d drop everything if she asked, for Isaac’s sake. And maybe even for hers. I send a couple of texts, asking how she is, trying to keep it light and helpful.

  She never replies, and three whole weeks go by without a word. We’re coming up to the last Saturday of June, the day of Isaac’s visit, but I feel like calling her to ask if they’re coming would be insensitive. Still, I want to know, just as much as I want to know how she is doing. How Isaac is doing.

  Then, one Wednesday in late June, she finally calls. Her voice sounds tired, although she attempts to inject a bright note into it.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. You’ve probably been wondering…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say quickly. ‘I understand you’ve had a lot going on. How are you… how are you feeling?’

  Grace lets out a shuddery sigh. ‘A little better. Well, I still feel like shit, but I’ve had some good news.’

  ‘Oh? That’s great.’

  ‘Relatively speaking, of course. The tumor has shrunk enough so my doctor can operate. I’m scheduled for a double mastectomy next Friday.’

  ‘Oh. Wow.’ I’m not sure what to say. Congratulations doesn’t seem right, even though it’s obviously good news, just as Grace said.

  ‘I’ll be in the hospital for at least two days,’ she continues. ‘Recovering. And I was wondering…’

  My heart lurches with an awful hope. ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’d be able to stay with Isaac. In my apartment. I know it’s a lot to ask, and it would probably be easier for him to come to you, but I want to keep things as normal for him as possible…’

  ‘I understand.’ My mind is racing. Two whole days alone with Isaac. With my son. It will be hard on Kevin, on the girls, and I’ll have to take time off work, but I don’t have to think about it for a minute. Not even for a second. ‘Of course, Grace,’ I say. ‘Of course I’ll do it. Anything you want or need, just say.’

  Twenty-Three

  GRACE

  The relief I feel when Heather says she can be with Isaac is palpable, a shudder through my body. Something I once would have dreaded has now become my salvation. Because the truth is, I have no one else. Heather is my last resort, my only hope, especially after Yelena went and quit on me with absolutely no notice.

  She didn’t even have the decency to tell me to my face. She texted me while I was at work, saying she was going to California to be with her boyfriend and wouldn’t be able to pick Isaac up from camp that day. I ended up having to take a half-day off work to do it, and then cobble together desperate childcare until my operation. I miss Stella, who left for France a month ago, oblivious to my illness and need. I’ve thought about calling or emailing her a dozen times, telling her the truth, but I’ve always held back. I tell myself by the time she gets back, I’ll be better. Yet I know she would have jumped to help if she’d been able to, but of course she’s four thousand miles away.

  After the surgery I’m taking six weeks unpaid leave, to recover. The fact that I’ll be watching Isaac while I recover is something I’m trying not to think too hard about yet.

  ‘When is your surgery exactly?’ Heather asks.

  ‘Next Friday. I need to be at the hospital at nine.’ I’ll drop Isaac off at camp beforehand. ‘If you could pick Isaac up from camp at one forty-five, that would be perfect.’

  ‘Okay.’ Heather pauses, and I can tell she is thinking about saying something else. I wait, hoping she’s not going to suggest Isaac go with her to Elizabeth. I don’t want him to have to cope with something that is still, even after so many years, unfamiliar.

  ‘Do you want someone to go with you to the hospital?’ Heather asks. ‘I mean, me?’ I’m so surprised I don’t say anything and she rushes on, ‘Sorry, just say no if you don’t. I don’t mind. I just thought, you know, it’s kind of a hard thing to go through on your own.’

  My throat is too tight for me to speak. Yes, it’s a hard thing to go through on my own. It feels like the loneliest thing in the world. And I am humbled and honored that Heather is willing to share it with me, even as part of me – a large part – cringes at the thought of her seeing me in such a vulnerable and exposed state. That’s not how I’ve ever lived my life.

  ‘Grace?’ Heather asks uncertainly, because I still haven’t said anything.

  ‘Sorry.’ I clear my throat. ‘Sorry, I was just…’ I can’t think of anything to say, so I decide on the truth, painful as it is to admit. ‘That’s kind of you, Heather. It… it would be really nice if you came with me. Thank you.’

  As soon as I disconnect the call I am already regretting accepting her offer. Heather and I aren’t friends. We barely tolerate each other, if we’re truthful. If it hadn’t been for her insisting on an open adoption, I would have been happy never to see her again seven years ago. I would have been thrilled. And yet she offered, and I accepted, because I’m scared and lonely and right now there literally is no one else.

  I spend a couple of weeks trying to get my life in order. Dr. Stein assured me that the surgery isn’t too risky, but I’ve never gone under a general anesthetic before and it pays to be careful. So I spend a morning with my lawyer arranging all my financial affairs, updating my will. The one thing I don’t do is change Isaac’s guardian; Dorothy might no longer be the most obvious option, but she still feels like the best one. Changing it is an avenue I’m not ready to explore. Not when I finally have a chance at beating this thing and getting my life back.

  While I wait for the surgery I also do some odd jobs I hadn’t got around to doing, framing photos that had been left in drawers, ones I meant to frame years ago: Isaac as a chubby-cheeked toddler picking apples at an orchard in New Jersey; Isaac at six years old, grinning on the beach at Cape Cod.

  I don’t think we’ll go to the Cape this year. We normally go the first week of August but I’ll still be recovering from surgery, and who knows how I’ll feel? I hate the thought of missing that week. It tethers me to my old life, my old self, when I took so many simple pleasures for granted. It also would be good for Isaac, a semblance of normalcy amidst all the cancer chaos.

  Those two weeks before surgery I also spend a lot of time thinking about my parents – my mother’s cancer, my father’s last days. I remember how I’d lie next my mom in bed when she was really sick, and she’d rest one hand on my shoulder, as if anchoring me to her. So often I’d wriggle away, impatient to be doing something else, but sometimes I’d stay and listen as my mother spoke in a soft, faraway voice about me as a baby, about her and Dad dating. Giving me memories, I realize now, because she knew she might not be able to give them to me later.

  I think of my father in his hospital bed, the way he withered so quickly, but how his smile was still the same. I remember how poignant it was when he made a joke, even though his body was literally decaying, and how upsetting it was when he suddenly became fretful or querulous, so unlike himself, pushing away the Styrofoam bowl of chicken noodle soup I was trying to feed him, or fiddling with the oxygen tubes hooked to his nose. Even then, in the midst of my aching loss and endless love, I sometimes felt impatient with him, and I hated myself for that.

  Even now I fight annoyance with Isaac for leaving his sneakers in the middle of the hall, and at the same time I want to grab him into a hug so tight it steals his breath, and never let him go.

  A few days before the scheduled surgery I sit down with Isaac to tell him the truth, or at least a version of it. He looks at me worriedly, and I realize I am adopting the same too-serious expression and tone my parents took with me. I try to smile, but everything feels fragile. I’m full of hope, optimistic now that I’ve m
ade it to the next stage, and Dr. Stein has always been positive, but still. Cancer. My child. The memories are thick.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Isaac asks, and his voice wobbles. ‘Why are you looking like that?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I say quickly, perhaps too quickly. ‘But I need to talk to you for a little bit, Isaac. In a couple of days I’m going to have to go into the hospital overnight.’

  His fair brows draw together. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know how I haven’t been feeling too well?’ He nods slowly. ‘I need to go to the hospital to help me feel better. It’s a good thing, but I’ve got to stay overnight.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘So who’s going to stay with me?’ He looks even more anxious. ‘Yelena?’

  ‘No, not Yelena. She quit, remember?’

  ‘I didn’t like her.’

  ‘I didn’t like her either,’ I admit. I don’t feel guilty tarnishing Yelena’s memory. She was a terrible, if competent, nanny, all told. ‘No, actually, Heather is going to be staying here with you. Aunt Heather.’ The words feel awkward and forced. I never call her Aunt Heather if I can help it, even though she asked, right at the beginning, while she cradled Isaac in her arms.

  ‘Heather?’ Isaac wrinkles his nose, and then he nods again, accepting. ‘Okay.’

  Two days later I am waiting for Heather in front of New York Presbyterian Hospital, having dropped Isaac off at the 92nd Street Y for camp. He clung to me, and I clung back, because as each hour has wound down I’ve become increasingly terrified.

  I’ve tried to be reasonable about my fears, which is ridiculous, because fear isn’t reasonable. I don’t even know what it is I’m afraid of, not exactly. The unknown? The pain? The ugliness of the operation? Dr. Stein is hoping to do an immediate breast reconstruction after the surgery, but she won’t know if she can until she’s opened me up, a fact I find fairly horrifying.

  I tell myself this is all progress. After the mastectomy, I’ll have several rounds of radiation to zap any lingering cancer cells and keep them from getting ideas. And then, God willing, I’ll be well. Healthy and whole, ready to take back my life and live it to the full. Healthy by the time school starts.