by Liz Fenton
Love, Emily
Claire took a drink of her wine and started to tell Jessie about all the letters when her cell phone interrupted her. When she saw it was her father calling, her heart rate escalated, worrying as she always did when he called. “I have to get this,” she said to Jessie, taking a deep breath before answering.
“Claire?”
“Hi, Dad, everything okay?” Claire said hopefully, telling herself she was imagining the edge she heard in her father’s voice.
“It’s your mother. We’re at the hospital.”
As her father’s words sunk in, Claire felt her faith begin to falter. She squeezed the phone in her palm, still not understanding why, even though they’d caught the cancer earlier, her mom’s health seemed to be disintegrating faster, along with her resolve. Last time, she hadn’t gotten so sick so quickly. This time she was in bed more than she wasn’t, unable to eat, and literally shrinking away in front of them. The doctors had tried everything, even suggesting that Claire pick her up some medicinal marijuana. But even while high as a kite, consuming food was a battle for Mona. The doctors had warned Claire that inserting a feeding tube was next, and she knew her mom was going to fight them every step of the way. She’d pleaded with Claire to please not call the doctors and tell them her appetite was virtually nonexistent, that she’d do anything to be at home with her family, not in a sterile hospital with scratchy bed sheets. And so far, Claire and her father had acquiesced, but tonight he’d been forced to take her to the emergency room when he couldn’t wake her from her nap.
“What is it?” Jessie asked.
“It’s my mom, she’s at the hospital. I have to go.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jessie said, grabbing her purse and Claire’s hand as they hurried out the door, Claire squeezing it so tightly that Jessie winced, but she still didn’t lose her grasp.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
* * *
Gabriela inched away from Colin on the couch, hoping he’d think she was just adjusting. And in many ways she was. Adjusting to the reality she may never have a baby. Or be a bestselling author. Or have a solid marriage.
Even though she was deliberately putting distance between herself and Colin, her recoil from his touch felt involuntary. Gabriela had always considered herself emotionally independent, learning not to need others to fill the void she felt when her mother died. But she’d always had a strong appetite for Colin’s touch, slipping her fingers through his or curling up into him in bed, the warmth of his body bringing her comfort. He used to joke that she couldn’t keep her hands off him, and in many ways it was true, as if she had to remind herself that he was still there. Her therapist announced years ago her behavior was a by-product of losing her mother so early, but Gabriela believed it was much simpler than that. There was something in the way Colin’s skin felt under her fingers, the way his full lips brushed hers when she wasn’t expecting it, the way he’d wrap his arm around her tightly, like he wanted to let the world know she belonged to him. Being possessed by Colin had always brought her comfort. Until now. Her relationship with him was spiraling quickly. The worst part? She wasn’t sure she wanted to tighten her grip.
“Are you coming to my appointment tomorrow?” Gabriela asked, inching even farther away as she uttered the words, her body already anticipating his answer.
Colin grabbed the remote and paused the TiVo before turning to face her. Gabriela glanced down at her oversized V-neck and yoga pants and thought how often Colin must wonder what happened to the old Gabriela, who wouldn’t have been caught dead in a T-shirt. She couldn’t blame him, having contemplated the same thing several times herself.
“No, I won’t be going. And I don’t think you should be either.”
Gabriela turned her head toward the frozen figures on the screen, the ones they had been pretending to watch together, refusing to look back into his eyes, not sure if she’d see compassion or anger or even love in them. It was much easier to think Colin was numb toward her, that he’d abandoned her without a second thought. It made it less painful for the next words to spill out of her lips, the same lips that she used to run all over his body to wake him before her morning run each day. Before she’d used them to say things that could never be taken back, like she was about to do now. “I can’t do this anymore,” Gabriela whispered.
• • •
Jessie paused in the doorway as she watched Claire hurry into her mother’s hospital room and throw herself into her father’s arms. Jessie took the moment to take inventory of Mona, who lay with her eyes closed, the beeping of the monitor reassuring them that she was still with them. But the doctor wasn’t sure if she’d awaken from the coma she’d slipped into earlier. Emily was slumped in a chair, her body soft like a rag doll as she stared outside, raindrops aggressively pelting the window. As Claire and her father stepped into the hall to discuss Mona’s condition with the physician, Jessie tentatively took the open seat beside Emily.
“You doing okay?” Jessie touched Emily’s forearm gently, not wanting to come on too strong. She’d never been close to Emily before, her protective feelings toward Claire and how Emily treated her always creating a silent wall between them. But this time, Jessie noticed a marked difference in Emily. Everything about her seemed softer. Even her posture was relaxed and open—before she’d always sat with her arms wrapped tightly around her chest as if they were her armor.
“I’m not ready for her to leave yet,” Emily said as tears welled up in her eyes.
Jessie scooted her chair closer and wrapped her arms around her. “I know you aren’t. None of us are. But some things in life are out of our control.” She thought about how little control they’d had since returning. Jessie had assumed that she’d take back the reins of her life by making different choices. But all it had done was create new and different problems.
“But we aren’t done yet,” she whispered, and nodded in the direction of a book on the nightstand that Jessie realized was Gabriela’s debut novel. She had dropped off copies of all of her books after Claire told her Emily had been reading them to her mom. “She really wants to know how it ends.”
Jessie eyed the book, knowing exactly how it ended, that the daughter and her mother were finally able to forgive each other after years of fighting over a terrible secret that had been revealed. Jessie smiled sadly. It was her favorite of Gabriela’s novels. And she wondered in the wake of yet another failed IVF attempt if Gabriela would be able to find her voice again, bring magic to the page again. Everything about her seemed heavier, not just her physical body, but her spirit as well. Jessie felt terrible. Out of all of them, it seemed as if Gabriela was having the hardest time.
Jessie glanced at Claire and her father, who stood nose to nose in the hallway speaking in hushed whispers. Claire seemed to sense Jessie’s gaze and looked over, shaking her head slightly as if to say, things aren’t good.
Jessie turned back to Emily. “You know, they say that people can hear you, even if they are in a coma.”
“They can?”
“Yes,” Jessie continued. “I had a cousin who slammed her car into a tree and was in a coma for six weeks.”
“Six weeks?”
“Yes. And I would visit every few days and read from all her favorite gossip magazines. Oh man, how that girl loved her celebrity scandals!”
“You’d just sit there and read to yourself? You didn’t feel stupid?”
Jessie laughed. “Maybe a little bit, at first. But then it became really comforting, like I was doing something to help.”
“What happened to your cousin? Did she ever wake up?”
“She did. And to this day, she swears she was awake each night I came to read to her. She even remembers most of the articles, and in her own mind, was responding to me.”
“Seriously?” Emily’s eyes widened and she stole a look at Mona. “So you think my grandma will do the same thing. That she’ll hear me?”
“I do.” Jessie smiled. “And it can�
�t hurt, right? Don’t you want to discover the ending together? I hear it’s really good.” She walked over and picked up Gabriela’s book, running her thumb over the cover before placing it in Emily’s lap. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
Emily held the paperback tightly for a moment before sliding her chair closer to Mona’s bed, lifting her hand gently and kissing it before beginning to read quietly.
“What’s that all about?” Claire asked as she hovered in the doorway watching Emily while her father went to find a cup of coffee.
“Emily wants to make sure your mom gets to the end.” Jessie nodded at the book, her voice cracking slightly, both of them knowing she probably wouldn’t. Jessie was sad that Claire was on the brink of losing her mother—again. But there was a part of her that also felt joy because Claire and Emily were finally finding each other. And as Emily’s soft voice read the words aloud, Jessie felt sure that Mona was listening to every word, her heart bursting that she had been the conduit.
• • •
“What are you saying?” Colin asked Gabriela.
“I’m done. With this,” Gabriela said, and made a sweeping gesture. “Us.”
“Gabs,” Colin said in the tone he usually reserved for her when she had too many mojitos and spoke loudly at parties. “Be reasonable. Are you honestly saying you’re choosing in vitro over our marriage?”
“No. I’m choosing a child over this marriage. And that’s the whole problem—you just see this as a process, like it’s a business transaction.”
Colin flinched at her words and wrapped his hands around hers. “Listen, I get how hard this has been for you. And whether you believe it or not, it’s been hard on me too. You aren’t the person you were a year ago. Can’t you see that?”
“Yes,” Gabriela admitted. “I just thought this time things would be different,” she said more to herself than to Colin.
“What do you mean, this time?” Colin asked, Gabriela quickly realizing her slipup.
“I just mean that last round of in vitro. I did everything right. I don’t know why it didn’t work.”
“Have you ever thought it’s just not meant to be?”
“No,” Gabriela said definitively.
Colin looked down. “I still don’t get why you had the change of heart. You didn’t want a child for so long, and then suddenly you did. And you want one so much you’ll let everything else in your life fall by the wayside, including us?”
Gabriela sighed, thinking back to their wedding day, how light and free she’d felt as they swayed on the dance floor, the rest of her life ahead of her. Now it seemed there was more behind her than in front. She knew Colin was right. She hadn’t been herself, she wasn’t writing, she couldn’t be a wife to Colin, and she’d hardly been there for Claire, whose mother was dying. All that seemed to matter was this baby. It was impossible to explain everything to Colin without telling him the truth. And of course he’d never believe that. “Look, it will work. It has to.”
“And what if it doesn’t?”
“It will.”
“But what if I don’t want to go through it again? What if you are more important to me than a baby I’ve never met, I may never meet?”
Gabriela shrugged. She didn’t have an answer for him. Not one he’d want to hear anyway.
“So you’re willing to sacrifice me for this baby?” Colin brushed her knee with his knuckle as he said it, his eyes downcast. Gabriela already knew the answer, but she was afraid to say it out loud.
She waited several beats before saying the words she couldn’t hold back any longer. “I want a baby. And if you don’t, then this isn’t going to work.” Gabriela bit her lip, waiting for Colin to look up and see that she didn’t want to hurt him, that she loved him and wished they could do this together. But he never did. He got up slowly from the couch and walked out the door without saying another word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
Claire stood stoically at the end of the receiving line at Mona’s funeral. She bobbed her head up and down and curved her mouth into something between a smile and a frown for each one of them—the woman who had worked beside her mom for years in the superintendent’s office, the man who had delivered her mail and looked forward to Mona’s famous holiday fudge cookies, and the gaggle of fit elderly women who had religiously Zumbaed with her until her diagnosis.
As Claire felt one clammy hand after the next grip her fingers, her mind drifted to earlier that morning. She’d spent the night with Mason, after weeks of making excuses for why she couldn’t sleep next to him, not able to articulate why it was easier to lay her body on the stiff mattress on the pullout couch in her mom and dad’s guest room each night than to drive over to Mason’s house to curl up next to him. That she wanted to be just a room away from her dad in case he needed her; that she liked the smell of her mom’s afghan that she wrapped around her shoulders as she looked through old photo albums remembering the years she hadn’t appreciated; that she felt safe between her mother’s walls, seeing herself as a kid, riding her bike or her mouthful of braces, in her old school pictures staring back at her; that if she wasn’t at the hospital sitting at Mona’s bedside, Claire felt she should be at her house, doing something, anything.
But a week after Mona died, her father found Claire sobbing into a pile of laundry she’d discovered in the dryer, her nose buried in her mom’s favorite orange sweater as she wondered how she would be able to get through the funeral, which was the next day. Her dad told her she should get out of the house, maybe see that Mason fellow. He’d arched a gray eyebrow at her and there was a twinkle in his eye. He knew she cared about Mason, despite how hard she’d tried to hide it. Claire had started to argue, to ask her father what he was going to do without her help—who would make his dinner or iron his shirt for the memorial service? Her dad had stopped her midsentence and said that he was okay, that he could take care of himself, that after forty-two years of marriage to Mona, he could still feel her with him, and that right now she was probably scolding him from above for forgetting to take his blood pressure medication.
“What about Emily?”
“She’ll be just fine. Believe it or not, we know how to take care of ourselves when you aren’t around.” He smiled and squeezed her arm gently. “I insist. Fussing over me isn’t going to bring her back. And as much as I love having you here, you need some fresh air.”
Claire shook her head again. How could she leave her family now?
“Mom.” Claire turned toward Emily’s voice. “Grandpa’s right. There’s no more laundry. The refrigerator is sparkling. The floors are shining. There isn’t one more thing to do here.”
“Don’t you need me?” Claire asked in a small voice.
“Of course I do. But Grandma would want you to make some time for yourself. And she’d want you to go see Mason. We’ll be okay, I promise.”
“I’m planning on kicking Emily’s butt in Uno the minute you walk out the door anyway.” Claire’s dad smiled and pointed toward the kitchen where there was always a deck of cards on the kitchen counter. “And I don’t think you want to be here to see that. It’s going to be ugly.”
Claire finally acquiesced, because the truth was she missed Mason, and it frightened her how much she was struggling to remember the love she’d felt for Jared, which now felt so far away. So she’d left Emily with her dad and shown up on Mason’s doorstep, her simple black dress for the funeral in her bag. When he opened the door and squeezed her hard, blinking back tears in his eyes, she decided waking up next to Mason on the day she would bury her mother was going to make it a little less awful.
Mona had woken only once before she slipped away. Her eyes had flown open with purpose on a crisp morning last week, Claire jumping up from her chair in surprise. The doctors had told them not to get their hopes up that she’d wake again, but Claire had been praying nonstop for a chance to have one final conversation with her, bargaining (agreeing to attend church every Sunday) and
pleading (closing her eyes and begging until she fell asleep) and even demanding loudly that God give her an opportunity to say a proper good-bye, the nurse turning her head politely as she walked by the room, having seen it all before.
“Mom.”
“Hi,” Mona said simply, as if she’d just returned home from Costco, not awakened from a three-day coma.
“Hi,” Claire said. “You’ve had us pretty worried.”
Mona had moved her hand to Claire’s head, running her hand through her dirty hair. “I love you,” she said, her voice low but strong.
“I love you too,” Claire had replied, and wished her father and Emily were there. They’d finally gone home to take showers and sleep, the exhaustion having begun to take its toll. She glanced at her phone sitting on the bedside table, wanting so badly to call and have them rush back, but not wanting to break the moment of clarity with Mona.
Mona motioned to the water pitcher, and Claire quickly poured her a glass and helped her take a few sips, her lips dry and patchy. “Mom, I have to tell you something,” Claire let the words slip from her mouth before common sense could stop her.
Mona took another sip of water and nodded to give Claire permission to go on. “You may not believe what I’m about to tell you. Hell, I still don’t believe it sometimes. But you’ve always been honest, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. And right now, I need that candor more than ever.”
