by M. Billiter
When Branson smiled, his eyes practically disappeared. I was sure the same thing happened to me, but it wasn’t like I looked at myself when I smiled.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, and he laughed.
“True.” He glanced behind me. “Do you have any checked bags?”
“Nah, this is it.” I grabbed my bag off the floor and walked beside my brother toward the car. “She has no idea, right?”
“Not a clue.”
* * *
When Branson opened the door, my senses were already primed. My mom always made sure the house looked and smelled good, and I inhaled an inviting scent of cinnamon and vanilla that swirled lightly through the air like a warm embrace. My mom’s go-to scented candle was on the fireplace mantle, the flicker of the flame welcoming me home.
But as I stepped across the threshold, there was another smell that almost overpowered the candle. A strong, acidic, pine-scented ammonia burned my nose.
“What the…?” I waved a hand in front of my face.
Branson curtly shook his head like a warning and lowered his voice. “Mom still gets sick—a lot. It’s to cover the smell of puke.”
I stood in the foyer and stared at the candle’s flame. My mom’s candles could mask anything—her failed cooking attempts, the pot that Branson and I smoked in high school, our rancid football cleats. When did it stop working?
My bag fell off my shoulder to the floor with a thud.
“Who’s home?”
Her voice in the distance made my eyes water and my throat tighten.
Mom.
Branson elbowed me.
“It’s me, Mom,” I said but didn’t move.
The next sound I heard was the rapid rhythm of her feet on the hardwood floors. Tears fell down my cheeks. I tried to wipe them away, but suddenly someone who faintly looked like my mom appeared in the living room. My chest felt heavy and my legs wouldn’t move, though I wasn’t sure they’d hold me up anyway.
It was hard to see your icons, your heroes, have a weakness. At a solid five foot one, my mom was someone who was about as intimidating as a one-month-old German shepherd, but she always had one helluva bite. Any time anyone messed with any of her kids, my mom came out fighting. Tara Louise Lafontisee cared more about her children’s happiness than her own.
And now….
“Aaron?”
The knot in my throat felt like it was going to choke me.
My beautiful mom suddenly looked small and frail. Branson told me she didn’t look good, but I wasn’t prepared for just how different she looked. Granted, I hadn’t been home in almost a year, but how was this possible? Patches of red hair matted her head, and her normally healthy, full face had been replaced with sunken cheeks and deep, dark crevices under her green eyes. It was like someone had pulled a plug and drained the life out of her.
“How did you get here?” She looked from Branson to me. “Did you fly?”
I could only nod, because I realized the knot in my throat was my heart.
She touched the top of her head. “It’ll grow back,” she said as if reading my thoughts.
I didn’t know what to say or do. Mom. Oh, Mom.
“If I had known you were coming, I would have….” She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear and broke eye contact with me. “I don’t know, put on something nicer.” She was in a white thermal and charcoal-colored leggings that barely clung to her and sagged around her ankles.
“Are you kidding?” Carson walked into the foyer with the grace and poise of a seasoned dancer taking the stage. She gently rubbed our mom’s nearly bald head. “Mom’s a straight-up fox.”
My sister’s green catlike eyes fell on me. “Uh, hello?”
“Hey, sis.” My shock gave way to the reality that I was staring at my mom and my face most likely revealed everything I couldn’t seem to say.
Why didn’t Carson call me? Why didn’t she tell me how bad things were? Don’t they think I care?
I shook my head to snap out of the self-pity that suddenly consumed me when my mom walked toward me.
“Baby, it’s okay.” When she reached up and touched the side of my face, everything I’d kept so carefully safeguarded broke open.
“Branson said you passed the last two mammograms.”
“I did,” she said with a weak smile.
“Then….” I didn’t know how to ask my mom why she looked like death.
“My oncologist put me on an oral chemo medicine, which is an upgrade from being hooked to a chemo drip, but it seems to have the same effect.” She gently touched her head, and I felt like I’d break in two.
I gently wrapped my arms around her, but it was her arms that held me while I cried.
When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?
She slowly exhaled. “I never thought a once-a-day pill could make me look and feel as awful as the chemo drip, but”—she shrugged—“it is what it is.”
“You’re going to be okay, right?” I said in my mom’s ear.
But instead of telling me what I wanted to hear, what I longed to hear, what I needed to hear, she shook her head against me.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
I pulled away from her and wiped my nose with my hand. “Ma, you’re going to get through this.”
“That’s the plan.” Carson draped a protective arm around our mom’s shoulders and began to lead her away from me. “Mom’s a badass.” She glanced in my direction—glared, really. “But even badasses need to rest.”
My mom rolled her eyes. “Oh, Carson, I’m fine. Your brother’s home. I can rest when I’m dead.”
The morbidity of her comment made me laugh.
“Jesus, Mom,” Branson said, which made her smile. She always smiled at Branson.
I quickly looked around the living room. “Where’s Jack?”
“He’s at a birthday party sleepover,” my mom said before quickly switching gears. “I bet you’re hungry.”
I shrugged. “I could eat.”
“Good thing we still have leftovers,” Carson said over her shoulder as she led us toward the kitchen. “Branson took us all out to dinner.”
“That’s cool.” I flew from Ohio to Wyoming, but who’s keeping track?
The behemoth table was positioned in the center of the dining room and took up the entire space. It was the first piece of furniture my mom bought after her second divorce. It really wasn’t much to look at, just a long chunk of oak with pointy edges that hurt like fuck whenever I ran into one, but to my mom, it was everything. It was a mammoth pain in the ass for Branson and me to move whenever Mom got an idea to change the ergonomics of the room, but that was when we’d lived in Casper. In this old house in Cheyenne, once the table was centered under the overhead light, it stayed.
My mom insisted we all eat at least one meal a week at this table together. It was where she’d celebrated all our birthdays and left treats for us to find after school. It was where she’d told us about Branson’s diagnosis and the loss of her job.
I spent four years of high school with my ass parked at that table. Branson barely warmed a seat, but every night and on weekends, I sat with my laptop, my textbooks held open by yellow highlighters, and a stack of index cards beside me. It was the only way I absorbed all the crap that was thrown at me on a regular basis. From AP chemistry to AP geometry, index cards kept me solidly on the honor roll for four straight years.
Now it seemed like I barely cracked a book. College was infinitely easier. Or maybe after everything I’d dealt with in high school, my retention rate was gone. Besides, the crap the professors doled out no longer mattered. Or did it ever? At the end of the day, the most important things in life didn’t happen in a lecture hall, in a textbook, or on an index card but around this table. That was all I needed.
Now the table had tubs of colored paint, plastic gloves, poster boards, yellow yarn, and rolls of colored duct tape scattered across it.
“Your sister is running for school s
enate,” my mom said as way of explanation. “I’m so proud of her.”
She reached toward the pile, and her ribs showed through her thermal top. Jesus, Branson, you said she lost weight, not that Mom looked like a skeleton. What kind of fucked-up chemo pill do they have her on?
“Ma, I got it.” I quickly scooped the craft supplies with my arm and pushed everything to the far end of the table—hospital-grade gloves and all.
The heart of our home brought this table into our lives and created a safe space for us. Caught up in the moment, I wrapped my arms around her.
“Love you, Mom.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder, and I gently rested my chin on the top of her balding head. The floral scent of her perfume brought me back to my childhood, when the biggest worry I had was how to build the next Star Wars Lego set. A mix of emotions turned me inside out, but I vowed to hold it together for her sake. I was the strong one, after all. Always had been, always would be.
“You didn’t need to come home.” She patted my arm. “But I’m so happy you’re here.”
Her optimism couldn’t raise my sunken heart. It was clear from her weight loss that her nausea was constant, her hair was mere wisps at this point, and worst of all, Tara Lafontisee seemed weakened. Like watching Superman being slowly tainted by kryptonite, my mom was slowly becoming less of the strong figure I had once known. My hero was fading away in front of me.
Make it stop.
It was easily the hardest part of cancer from the point of an outsider, watching someone you loved show signs of weakness. Sure, my mom had the occasional emotional breakdowns when I was growing up, but she was always impenetrable. Nothing stopped her. Ex-husbands, her past, publishers who didn’t want a sequel to her book on education—none of that mattered, because nothing prevented my mom from moving forward. But now… she not only looked frail, she was. Cancer not only slowed her down, it seemed determined to win.
I kissed the top of her head, wishing I could kiss away the pain the way she had done for me countless times.
Please don’t die.
Branson held a chair out for her, but before she sat down, she hugged my brother.
“Thank you,” she said to my other half. My mom was always the great equalizer. If she hugged one of us, she made sure to hug the rest of us.
Carson took charge in the kitchen with the leftovers. So much had changed since I left. Carson was no longer the little middle schooler I remembered. She was now in high school and clearly didn’t take shit from anyone, whether it was cancer or an absent, clueless older brother. Carson was a mini version of our mom before cancer.
That’s a trip. When did our life move from before to after cancer? I knew the timeline, but my heart still couldn’t make sense of it. The “before” part I got, but “after”? The “after” portion seemed to keep being pushed further and further back. Then again, was there ever really an “after” to cancer?
All I knew was that my mom was fading away, and there was nothing I could do to stop the progression.
When she sat down, Branson took a seat on one side of her and I took my place on the other side. Carson did what my mom would have done in the past, busying herself in the kitchen, making sure we all had something to eat.
“So….” My mom placed her hands on the table in front of her. Veins crisscrossed her pale, tissue paper–like skin. “I’m thinking Branson or one of your siblings told you about the call from my surgeon.”
“Uh, kind of,” I said. “I really don’t know the details. I just knew I needed to be here.”
She reached across the table and took my hand.
“Oh, Aaron.” Her green eyes brimmed with tears, and I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t keep breaking down like a blubbering idiot. She needs me to be strong.
I cleared my throat. “So, what is happening?”
“Well, I was in some discomfort, so I had an MRI, which is when they saw this spot on my right ovary. My surgeon called because they were concerned with it.” She squeezed my hand. “They took a biopsy of it and….” She shrugged. “Damnedest thing, it came back as a low-grade malignant tumor.”
“Malignant.” The word made me shiver. One fucking word that held so much power and despair. How could this happen again?
It was August 20th when my brother and I got the email. After my mom lost her job at the university, the community college in Cheyenne offered her a teaching job. I assumed the email was about her upcoming class.
Boys, my students will find out about this on Monday, but you’re not my students, you’re my sons. My doctor called today, and I have ductal carcinoma, which is a form of breast cancer.
My mother, a woman who went through years of abuse and two divorces, now diagnosed with cancer. Reading her email was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Even harder than finding out my twin brother was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. At least when Trevor tried to take over my brother’s thoughts, I felt like there was someone to fight.
But ductal carcinoma? Cancer? How did you fight that? Tara Lafontisee was this unstoppable woman with no weaknesses, and to hear there may be a flaw to this perfect person stopped me on a dime. It was unbearably hard to hear that word used to describe an inherent flaw I had overlooked. Her email focused on the upside of the cancer—as if there was one. But my mom was good with the spin. She spun her diagnosis like it was a minor blip on the radar. She told us the cancer was in her milk ducts and hadn’t spread, which was all positive.
Still, cancer? It was the one word I wouldn’t have associated with my mom, ever. And I never thought there was another word in the English language that would hold such power over me until now.
Malignant.
When it was ductal carcinoma, it was all I thought about for months. It consumed me. I was a sophomore in college at the time, and I tried to think of ways to make my mom’s life easier so she could focus on herself for once. I applied to be a resident advisor in the dorms, which would cover most of my living expenses in college. But I bombed the interview, so that hope was shot to the ground. I worked at a fast-food chain on campus to pay for textbooks, but I still ended up overdrawing my account. For some stupid reason, I stopped keeping track of what I earned compared to what I spent and ended up with a negative balance. My mom had done so much for me, and when it was my turn to return the favor, I shit the bed. Nothing I did to help ended the way I anticipated; I only created more stress in her life. The more attempts I made, the worse I seemed to make things for her.
I couldn’t do that to her again, but I didn’t know what to do to make things better. I wanted to take the cancer from her and put it on myself. But what I wanted even more than that was to be held by my mom and told everything was going to be all right.
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop from crying.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
She tried to smile away my question, but I knew.
“Ma?”
Her eyes glistened, and she barely nodded. “It feels like bad cramps,” she said finally.
“Mom, who are you kidding?” Carson stood in the kitchen and shook her head. “Cramps don’t make you double over and almost pass out.” She glanced at Branson and then me. “She’s in a lot of pain on a pretty frequent basis.”
My mom said nothing to refute my sister.
What the fuck? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Just because I live in Ohio doesn’t mean I don’t care.
“When did this happen?” I heard the defensiveness in my voice. “No one told me you were still in pain.”
“Sweetheart, I told your sister and brother not to bother you with this when you’re so far away. And this happened so suddenly that we thought it might be a reaction to the oral chemo, so there was nothing to tell you until we knew more.”
“So what are they going to do?” I asked when what I should have asked was how I could help.
“My oncologist and surgeon both agree that a total hysterectomy is the best course of action. They’ll remove
everything—the uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes, which will also remove all the visible cancer.”
“Visible? What about what they can’t see?” I asked.
“That’s a very good question,” she said, and despite myself, I smiled. My mom was the consummate educator. “After the surgery, I’ll start another round of chemo, and they’ll take me off the oral chemo, which may just be a good thing.” Her voice was upbeat, but the fight was gone from her eyes.
There’s no upside, no spin, is there, Ma? The cancer, which wasn’t supposed to spread, had. The ache in my body felt like I was being split in two. How much longer will you be here? How much time do I have left with you?
“What stage is it?” My voice was barely recognizable.
When her lip trembled, I had to look away or I’d lose it. And I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t be a burden. I had to keep it together. I wouldn’t let her down.
“We got lucky. It’s only at stage one, but with my history….” She swallowed. “Well, that’s why they’ve prescribed such an aggressive postsurgical treatment. You know, to ensure we get everything.”
“But then it’s done, right?” Branson said.
My mom gently smiled. “That’s the idea.”
I couldn’t stop thinking of all she’d already been through. Years of physical and mental abuse from my father, followed by a shit show of a second marriage, and now this? The next thought came out of my mouth unbidden. “It’s not fair.”
She shifted her attention to me. No one’s eyes had as much impact on my life as hers.
“Sweet boy, it is what it is.”
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s bullshit. You don’t deserve this.”
“Shit, brother, if we got what we deserved, I’d be in Hell right now,” Branson said.
My mom redirected the conversation off malignant ovarian tumors, surgery, and chemo to my twin.
“No,” she said in that tone. It was the tone my mom had when shit was about to get real.
Ah, damn. Branson stepped in it.
“Do you think someone who has diabetes deserves to be in Hell?” she asked.
Branson raised his shoulders. “What?”
