by Erin Zak
“Mom, Mom,” she shouts as she flies onto the bed next to her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“No, oh, God. I’m so happy you’re home.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Where’s Dad?” Gwendolyn feels her forehead, and she’s burning up. “What is going on?”
“I am in so much pain, and I think—”
Gwendolyn moves her hand from her mother’s forehead to her chest. Her skin is on fire. “Mom, what do I do?”
“Get me a pill, please.”
Gwendolyn does as instructed, moving to the bathroom. She finds the pain pills and fills a cup with water. “Here,” she says when she gets back. She helps her mother sit up and places the pill in her mouth. She drinks the water eagerly and takes a deep breath after she swallows. She groans as she lies on her side and curls into a ball. “This is so bad.”
“Where the fuck is Dad?” Gwendolyn climbs onto the bed to rub her mother’s back, her left shoulder blade where the pain is the worst. The tumor is so large, it’s pushing on a nerve along the underside of her mother’s scapula. Radiation is supposed to be shrinking the mass, but it’s also causing horrible burns in her esophagus and trachea, making her miserable. When the pain is managed, she can handle it. But if she misses one pill, it takes too long to catch up. Gwendolyn could murder her dad. Where the fuck is he, and why hasn’t he been home to help with the medication?
“Don’t worry about your father, Gwennie.” Her voice is strained, and Gwendolyn can hear the tears before she sees them. She has never seen her mother cry. Not even when she came out, not even when she left for college, not ever. Maybe she’s looked as if she might cry, but never have tears escaped. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“I’m going to throw up.”
Gwendolyn grabs the emesis basin and pulls her mother up so she can make it into the plastic pan. She continues to rub as her mother empties her stomach, which includes the barely digested pill that hits the plastic with a thud. “Fuck,” her mother says softly after a final heave. “The pill.”
“I’ll get you another one.”
“Gwen.” Her voice echoes against the basin. “I think you need to take me to the ER.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Please.” She coughs as more comes up. The sound is so awful, and Gwendolyn feels her own stomach start to twist. You stay strong. You asshole. You cannot get sick. Do not fucking get sick.
She waits a couple seconds, taking deep breaths while waiting for her mother to finish. Her life has taken this turn for a reason. Why the hell else would she be standing in her mother’s room in Vale Park on the Fourth of July watching her vomit everything in her system while struggling to handle the excruciating pain caused by a tumor the size of a softball? She cannot fathom what the reason is, but she starts to hope harder than ever that she finds out soon.
* * *
After a warm, long shower where the removable showerhead helped provide a lot of relief, Lila pulls out her journal. She opens it to the next blank page and stares at the lines. Weeks have passed since she scribbled her last entry.
And so much has happened. Yet so much of it isn’t good. And the good stuff isn’t really something she should consider good.
“This is so fucked up,” she whispers as she tosses the journal to the side. She leans against the headboard and stretches her legs. Her mind flashes to Gwendolyn, to her lips, to how badly she wanted to kiss those lips, to the restraint it took to not. It’s only a matter of time. And she assumes Gwendolyn knows it, too. But how do they deal with it when it does happen?
She looks at the journal, the worn edges, the frayed ribbon placeholder. The book has seen some wear and tear over the past few months. She often wonders if journaling helped at all or if it only caused her to be more a mess. She questions everything these days.
Did she coach her team correctly at the scrimmage the other day?
Is she ready to be the head coach when Carol can’t do it any longer?
Did she piss Carol off when she questioned her sanity for making her the stand-in?
Is watching Carol become weaker and weaker too much on her emotions?
What is Gwendolyn going to think when she takes over the head coach position?
Will Gwendolyn be mad?
Did she cross a line by kissing her on the cheek?
Everything feels as if it is spiraling out of control. She is missing Carol’s guidance at practice more and more. She is starting to fear the unexpected because what is going to happen next? If Carol makes it, is she going to be the same? Will she be able to come back? And when is Lila going to have to say good-bye to Gwendolyn?
Carol’s diagnosis is not something Lila understands how to deal with. She wants to always be there. She wants to help take care of the woman who has become a mother to her, the only mother she really knows.
The first signs of sickness happened in March. She went back and forth from a dentist, thinking it was a toothache, to her general practitioner, who found the lump in her lymph node, to a biopsy, to an original diagnosis of tongue cancer. Lila was over for dinner, manicotti and garlic bread and, of course, wine. Lots and lots of wine. Carol sure does love wine.
The conversation had been brief. There wasn’t a lot of time for questions. Carol wouldn’t allow it. She dropped the bomb and carried on with normal conversation, hardly allowing the shock to set in. In the next weeks, after visiting an oncologist, having a CT scan and PET scan, the diagnosis changed drastically from tongue cancer to lung cancer.
Stage IV. Inoperable.
The words dropped, and Carol didn’t flinch. Lila certainly flinched. She had questions. A lot of them. She made sure she was at every appointment. She wanted to make sure she understood, she had an arena for all her questions, and most importantly, she made sure she was prepared for every single thing that was going to happen in the coming months. Needless to say, when she drove home after the first oncologist appointment, she sobbed for hours. She was in her car, the windows fogged up, and the heat roaring. The end of April was unseasonably cold. The weather was fitting and seemed to match her mood.
Depressed wasn’t a word she kept in her vocabulary. Ever since high school, when Carol swooped in and saved her from yet another huge move, another school in another country, Lila worked as hard as possible to not let things get her down. Her life was never as bad as she made it seem. The phone calls to her parents always reminded her how much she loved them and cared for them. But Carol…saved her. Carol made her feel wanted and needed in a way her parents never had. Not that they don’t want her or care for her. No, that isn’t it. The inability to be everything they desired in a child is where Lila will never measure up. Being gay within a military family never works out well. And the constant moving was slowly driving her crazy. And they still lived abroad, even though both were retired. It didn’t bother her anymore, but the idea of losing the parent who helped her become the woman she is today…
Carol and David are so important. A life without either of them will be difficult.
“Too fucking much to handle.” Her voice is so loud in her tiny bedroom. She makes herself take a deep breath. Everything is going to be okay. Maybe Carol is going to beat this. And whatever happens with Gwendolyn, she will handle it one day at a time. Period. That is all she can do. Hope for the best. And as the memory of Gwendolyn’s smile appears, she feels herself dozing off.
Loud banging startles her out of a deep sleep. She jumps from bed, stumbles around a second, and looks around her bedroom, not sure where the sound is coming from. She squints at the clock on her bedside table: two in the morning. What the hell is going on? Is she dreaming?
She hears the knocking again, and it finally registers that there’s someone at her door. She pulls on a pair of sweats and pushes her hair from her face. She grabs her glasses, and when she approaches the door, she slides them on. She stands on her tiptoes as she moves the curtain covering the small window. Gwendolyn is standing there
, arms wrapped around herself.
Lila unlocks the door and pulls it open quickly. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Gwen, it’s okay. What is going on?” She opens the door farther for Gwendolyn to enter, but she continues to stand there as if she’s frozen. “Gwen? What happened?” No answer again. “Gwendolyn?” Lila holds her hand out, waiting. She takes a step closer and wraps her fingers around her wrist. “Come in, please. I don’t have a bra on, and I don’t want to stand here with my door wide open.”
Gwendolyn finally starts to move but as if she’s in quicksand, sticky and slow, and when Lila closes the door behind them, Gwendolyn almost collapses. Thankfully, Lila is finally awake and catches her as she starts to sob.
Lila’s heart is beating so hard. “Gwen, honey.” The term of endearment is a complete slip of the tongue, but she is beside herself. Gwendolyn is shaking as she cries, and she’s clinging as if Lila’s a lifesaver, and she’s seconds from drowning. The entire display is scaring her to death.
“You have to tell me what happened. Is Carol okay? What is going on? Please tell me.” Gwendolyn still doesn’t answer, but her crying is so hard, she probably can’t speak if she tried. Lila smooths her hand over Gwendolyn’s back, softly saying, “Shh, I got you,” as she continues to cry. After a few minutes, she seems to calm. Her shaking is subsiding, and her breathing is returning to a regular pace.
“I’m sorry,” Gwendolyn whispers, almost hiccupping the words. “I don…don…don’t…Fuck.” She takes a deep breath. “Give me a min…min…minute.”
“Take your time.” Lila loosens her hug and pulls away so she can look. “Do you need a tissue?” Gwendolyn nods. “Here, sit down.” She leads her to the couch. “Stay.” Her tiny chuckle makes Lila feel a bit better about whatever the fuck is going on. She grabs a box of tissues from the table where she keeps her mail, keys, and a small African violet Carol gave her years ago. It started to look a little peaked a few months back, so she repotted it. A couple days later, Carol told her she was sick. It seemed too strange, but as the days ticked by and the plant continued to droop, she started to wonder if the connection was real.
When she sits next to Gwendolyn, she places the box of tissues on her lap. “Take as many as you need.” She smiles. “Not that I’d ever ration your tissue supply.” It is small again, but Gwendolyn lets out a soft laugh.
“I’m really sorry,” Gwendolyn says after she blows her nose. She keeps the used tissue balled in her hand, which warms Lila’s heart for some ridiculous reason. Maybe because Gwendolyn doesn’t toss them carelessly on the couch or ottoman. It shows how considerate she is, even in her time of need.
“You don’t have to apologize. We all have breakdowns.”
“You haven’t.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Mom is in the hospital.”
The words cause Lila’s breath to catch.
“I came home from the fireworks and…” She grabs another tissue. “Her pain level was off the charts. And of course, my fucking dad was nowhere to be found.”
Lila swallows once, twice, licks her lips, and opens her mouth. No words come out, and she isn’t sure if it’s because she’s upset about Carol or because she knows what has been going on between David and Carol for the past ten years.
“Her pain was…I have never seen her like that.” Gwendolyn turns her head. Lila needs to respond. She needs to say something, anything. “Are you okay?”
She nods. “Is she okay now?”
“Her doctor scheduled a blood transfusion for the morning. They gave her IV pain meds.”
“Do you need to be there?” She looks at her hands. They’re clasped tightly, and she squeezes them even harder in hopes of snapping her out of the moment.
“She made me leave.” Gwendolyn sighs. “Told me I am no good to her if I don’t rest. You know you still haven’t answered me, right?”
She finally turns her head. How can someone who was sobbing minutes earlier, who has mascara smeared down her cheeks, who has blown her nose five times so loudly it could wake the dead, look so fucking beautiful? Her resolve softens. Honestly, her everything softens. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” She brushes a strand of her hair from Lila’s face. Her fingertips brush Lila’s jawline, and she feels it deep in the pit of her stomach. There’s a moment when she’s sure Gwendolyn is going to start crying again because her eyes are still so red and so wet, but the small smile that appears causes her to think twice.
“I’m sure,” she whispers. She wants to kiss her so badly. She’s holding herself back by gripping the cushion. She can’t do this right now. It’s not a good time. It’s a horrible time. Seconds earlier, Gwendolyn was a hot mess and now, although composed, she’s vulnerable, and the wrong move could ruin everything, but Jesus Christ, her eyes are so blue, and her lips look so kissable. Lila leans back and places her hand on Gwendolyn’s back. “What are you thinking?”
“I should probably go.” Gwendolyn pulls her bottom lip into her mouth. She bites down hard enough to make the skin turn white from the pressure of her teeth.
“You don’t have to.” She hears her words seconds before she talks herself out of saying them. She’s so lonely, and Gwendolyn is everything, and how does she deal with these emotions when all she wants is to get lost in every single thing concerning this amazing woman sitting in front of her?
“Are you sure?”
Lila nods and lets herself study Gwendolyn’s jaw, the line of her neck, the hollow where her neck meets her chest, her breasts, which under her clothing look the most wonderful size. She is failing at not getting lost. “I’ve never been surer about someone in my entire life.” Gwendolyn’s left eyebrow arches. “I know. I shouldn’t say that.”
“You make me feel better, though.” Gwendolyn leans back and sighs. “I think tonight really freaked me out. As much shit as my mom and I have been through, the idea of losing her slammed into me tonight. I don’t want to lose her.” Her voice cracks, and she takes a deep breath. The gentle curve of her breasts rise and then fall. Get your mind out of the gutter, Machowicz. “Here I am finally not hating her, and I could lose her. How fucked up is that?”
The words hang heavy in the air. Lila doesn’t know what to say because truth be told, it’s severely fucked up and unfair and a real punch in the gut for both Gwendolyn and Carol. “I know what you’re saying, but if I could offer some words of wisdom?” Gwendolyn turns. “I think it’s really important to keep thinking positive. She’s going to be okay. She’s going to pull through. She’s going to beat this. She doesn’t typically lose battles, so let’s both try to remember that.” She watches the emotions wash over Gwendolyn’s face as she digests the words. “I mean, it’s gotta be better than constantly worrying.”
“What did I do to deserve you in my life?”
Lila lets out a laugh and shakes her head. She props her legs on the coffee table. “I mean, a few weeks ago, you hated me.”
“I was so stupid for that.”
“No,” she says softly. “You weren’t. But I’m glad you changed your tune. Otherwise, this would be real difficult.”
Silence falls between them. All Lila can hear is the ticking of the clock on the mantle above her small fireplace. She wishes the battery would die because the tick-tick-tick is almost deafening. As if the clock is counting down to something. What, she isn’t sure, but the anxiety flaring in her chest is enough to cause fear in her stomach.
“Lila?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Hmm?”
“Do you still think it’d be a bad idea if I kissed you?”
The question is adorable for no other reason than the innocence with which it is asked. “Yes, it’d be a very bad idea.” She smiles, and Gwendolyn’s eyes light up. “But I still think you should…y’know, so we can both know for sure.”
The couch dips as Gwendolyn licks her lips, cocks that left eyebrow, and smiles. “Stop me if it’s ba
d,” she whispers before she brushes her lips lightly against Lila’s. “Don’t forget to breathe.”
She chuckles as she places a hand on Gwendolyn’s neck. “Shut up and kiss me already.” When their lips finally connect, Lila can barely comprehend how this could have ever been a bad idea. Everything feels right on a level she never knew existed. Gwendolyn’s lips are full, soft, and they fit so exquisitely with her own. And when Gwendolyn’s tongue slips into her mouth, she hears a moan before it registers that it came from her. Kissing Gwendolyn is like an awakening. She has searched her entire life for the right person to spend the rest of her days with. She has always been defeated, too, thinking that what she wants doesn’t exist. But meeting Gwendolyn changed everything. She had a feeling that if she crosses the line neither of them should cross, everything would click into place. She tried to push this woman’s magnificent soul away. She didn’t want to ruin anything, but this kiss? This kiss is changing her entire life.
How can Gwendolyn’s lips feel like home when Lila feels as if she’s been home for years? In so many ways, the family she found with Carol and David is everything she was searching for. But something has always been missing.
Not anymore. She has finally found the puzzle piece.
Maybe she is being dramatic; it is only a kiss, after all. But as Gwendolyn pulls away, breathless, and says, “Holy shit,” before lunging forward for more, Lila is pretty sure she isn’t the only one living a revelation.
Chapter Thirteen
Gwendolyn can no longer handle it when her dad traipses into the house around nine. He’s been absent for the past twenty-four hours, and she is furious. She flies down the stairs and heads into the kitchen. Her socks slip on the floor as she rounds the corner, and she braces herself on the wall. He’s standing at the fridge, bent over, staring at its contents. “Where the fuck have you been?” She whispers because her mother is finally sleeping after getting home from the hospital, but she is seconds away from yelling.
