by Wendy Mills
“Hey, Rinnie,” she says tiredly. “Sorry I’m late. How was school?”
“Unreal.”
She takes off her glasses and puts them absentmindedly on the foyer table. “I’m going to change. I was thinking Dino’s tonight? I don’t feel like cooking.”
This isn’t unusual, but something’s off.
“What’s wrong?” I look at her more closely. “Are you tired again?”
She hesitates, then looks away. “No, everything’s fine. Let’s go grab a pizza and you can tell me all about your day. Maybe later we can watch The Princess Bride? I’m in the mood for a good movie.” She picks up her briefcase and heads for the kitchen. I am still standing in the middle of the foyer.
“What is it?” I do not even recognize my own voice. It sounds hollow and crystal, like something fragile that might break.
She turns to look at me. I read the lines and furrows on her face as easily as words on a page. I know her that well, and I know this is bad, whatever it is.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Let’s go get some pizza, and we can talk about it.” She brushes a strand of hair out of my face.
I begin to shake my head back and forth. “Tell me, just tell me, please?”
She sighs and looks over my shoulder for a moment. Then she looks back at me.
“I have cancer,” she says simply.
And my life cracks into before and after just like that.
Chapter Three
Mom insists we go get pizza after dropping her bombshell. Like I have any desire to eat pizza after she tells me she has cancer. But I can tell Mom doesn’t want to cook, that she wants to be doing something, anything, so I agree.
In the car, I babble questions.
“How’d you get it? No wait, that’s stupid. I mean, what kind do you have? How’d you find out? Have they told you, you know, like, if you’re going to—” I can’t go on. I can’t say if you’re going to die? But that’s the question, isn’t it? And I don’t want to know. I really, really don’t want to know.
“I have breast cancer.” Mom’s hands are gripping the steering wheel like it is the last absolute thing on this planet. “I found a lump, and I went in, and they did a biopsy and some tests and …” She pauses, and swallows hard. “It’s cancer. I wanted to tell you sooner, but …” She shakes her head. “Anyway. I have surgery next week, a … a mastectomy.”
“Wait a minute. Wait. A mastectomy? You mean, they’re going to cut off your … breast?”
She nods. “Yes. It needs to be removed. Right now, that’s all I know.”
I can tell it isn’t though. Not when her hands are tight on the steering wheel, her knuckles white, Memaw’s sapphire ring she always wears looking like it’s about to bite through her skin.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I whisper. “Don’t you know how much worse it is for me to think you’re hiding something from me? I’m almost seventeen years old, I can take it. I need to know. I need to know everything.”
Mom uses one hand to give me a calm-down pat.
“I had breast cancer about eight years ago. I had a lumpectomy, and radiation, and they got it all. I didn’t tell you because you were only nine at the time, and you were already going through such a hard time with your dad’s death, and with school and all, so I didn’t want to pile anything else on you. Later … I didn’t want to think about it.”
“Is that … is that why Memaw came and stayed with us for a little while? I remember that.”
I remember sweet-potato pies, big, soft hugs, and no-nonsense words when I started on my I-don’t-wanna-go-to-school-today whine.
Mom’s throat is working, like she is trying not to cry. A hot prickle of tears stings my eyes. Mom always gets emotional about my memaw, who died of ovarian cancer when I was twelve. Mom still hasn’t gotten over it. The funny thing is, they never seemed to get along all that great when Memaw was alive. They were so different, Memaw with her big country accent and flowery housedresses and high school education, and then there was Mom with her doctorate and nice house and manicured hands. It was like Mom set out to be as different from her mother as possible, but in the end, when Memaw was dying, Mom realized how much she loved her. I miss Memaw—a lot—and I know Mom does too.
Is that the way it’s going to be for me? If Mom dies, will I ever be able to think about her without wanting to cry? I’ll be crying for the rest of my life.
I hiccup a sob and Mom reaches over and grabs my hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispers.
But it isn’t. It is never going to be okay. Never, ever again.
“Okay, what, it’s back?” I ask when I can talk around the baseball in my throat.
“The lump is in the other breast. So, no, this is a new cancer.”
The word sounds awful. I can’t comprehend it. It’s like she’s speaking another language.
Mom squeezes my hand so tight Memaw’s ring cuts into my palm, but I don’t care. The pain feels good. The pain feels real, and nothing else does.
“I’m sorry, sorry,” Mom says. “I never meant to do this to you.” Like she did it on purpose, but I can tell she’s thinking about Memaw dying on her.
Losing Memaw was awful. Dad, too, though I only remember the pain in a fuzzy, six-year-old way.
Losing Mom … that’s unthinkable. She’s all I have left.
Dino’s is our favorite pizza joint, but we try to save it for special occasions, because otherwise we would eat there every night. Now I wish we hadn’t come. Now I will forever think about this place as where Mom told me the news.
There is a line, like always, and I get stuck in the doorway, awkwardly holding the door open with my foot while people come out and we inch forward. Signs cover the door, and because I am a compulsive reader, I stand and read them while my mom continues to die in front of me.
Dino’s, a Great Place to Have a Party! Pictures of happy, clueless Little Leaguers chowing down on pizza and wings.
Lost Cat. Black and White, Answers to Sherlock. I stare at the picture of the fat, long-haired cat, trying to figure out why someone would name him Sherlock. Is he good at finding things? Like his owner would lose a shoe, and presto, Sherlock would show up with the shoe in his mouth and sit there looking all aw shucks, it’s nothing? Would he know just by looking at me that my heart is breaking?
The line inches forward some more, and I study an orange flier with a picture of a man and an airplane. Planes always remind me of my dad, and my heart twists a little.
The flier says: Learn to Fly! Lessons for people from 16 to 100.
Funny. The old fart standing unsmiling in front of his plane doesn’t look suicidal. I probably don’t look like I just heard the worst news of my life, either. I wonder how many people are walking around with a big bruise where their heart is and no one even notices. It feels bizarre. It feels like the whole world should be talking quietly. I want to go over and smack the kids at the birthday party. Don’t you know my mom has cancer? Be quiet! Look sad, for God’s sake.
Then we are inside, and making our way to a table.
“What do you want?” Mom asks brightly, like Dino’s is going to make it all better, like pizza will save the day.
“I don’t care.” I’m angry, for some reason, but I don’t know why. My head is buzzing. Everything seems so unreal I want to stab myself with a fork to see if I can still feel anything.
“Erin,” Mom says after the waitress leaves carting our menus and our order.
I look at her.
“It’s okay to feel things. It’s okay to be sad, to be angry, to want to kick something. I want you to know you can always come to me with any questions you have. And …” She looks away, sees someone she knows, and flashes a quick, meaningless smile. Then she’s back to me. “I made you an appointment to meet with the school counselor. You’ll be meeting with him every week for a while, so you have an outlet for your feelings.”
“Are you kidding me?” I say it too loud, and the emo girl sitting
behind my mother turns and gives me a dirty look. I glare at her, and she shrugs, like, What you going to do, huh?
“I think it’s important that you have someone to talk to, someone other than me. I mean, I want you to talk to me too, but you need someone else you can say anything to. Someone safe.”
“I can talk to Trina.” Trina. She’s going to be devastated. Trina and her mom don’t get along, so Trina has sort of adopted Mom as her own.
“I want you to go to counseling. Will you do it for me, Erin?” Mom asks quietly.
Already, she is playing the cancer card.
“Okay.” I look down at the table and Mom sighs.
We eat some pizza and Mom tells me more about what is going to happen. Surgery definitely, chemotherapy, maybe radiation. “We’ll know more about the treatment after the surgery,” she says, picking at her pizza.
“Will your hair fall out?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
That scares me. If she doesn’t know what to expect, how can I?
I don’t notice the popular kids until I’m walking out. Faith is there, darkly effervescent, holding court among the best and prettiest of our school.
Faith looks up and right through me.
I follow after my mother, feeling as if suddenly I can’t walk right. I bend my neck so my hair hides my face. My legs feel robotic and my arms don’t seem to know how to swing like they should.
When I get to the door, I hesitate, and then rip off one of the little tabs attached to the Learn to Fly! sign. I don’t let Mom see, because I don’t even know why I’m doing it.
But somehow, flying away suddenly seems very appealing.
Chapter Four
Mom’s surgery isn’t until Monday, and she seems intent on getting back to life as it was before. Life isn’t like it was before, but with Mom doing a pretty good imitation of an ostrich (Do they really stick their heads in the sand? Why?), I can’t really say anything.
On Saturday, I start obsessing about my breasts. More specifically, that there is a lump in the right one. Not that they are so big that a lump wouldn’t stand out like a bunion on your big toe, but still. Still. Something is there. I am sure of it.
“I think I have a lump,” I announce when Trina answers her phone.
“You do not,” she says.
“Seriously. I can feel it. Round and hard like a pebble.”
“I’ll be right there.”
She comes over, and feels my breast.
“No lump.”
“Are you sure?”
“No lump and you are seriously going insane.”
“Like you wouldn’t if your mom had cancer.”
Her eyes well up. When I first told her the news, she rushed right over and hugged my mom and sobbed. Mom loves Trina, but I could tell all that emotion made her uncomfortable. But she was real nice about it, holding Trina and patting her back until she stopped crying.
“Her surgery’s Monday, right? I can’t believe they’re going to cut off her breast.”
“Evidently they wanted to cut off both breasts, but she said no. I heard her talking to Aunt Jill and she said she can’t see cutting off a healthy breast just to be safe.” (“What, I’m supposed to cut off my head if I get a headache?”) “Jill’s coming tomorrow, and I’m trying to talk Mom into letting me skip school Monday, but she’s really not embracing the idea.” Like I could go to school and concentrate while Mom is getting her boob hacked off.
“I’ll ask my mom if I can come too,” Trina says, but we both know she’s already missed too much school this year. She always seems to find something more important to do than go to school. “Uh … so do you still want to come with me and Chaz tonight? Honestly, I get it if you don’t. It’ll be okay.” She sits crisscross-applesauce behind me and uses her fingers to dig into my shoulders. I roll my neck and she massages the tense muscles.
But I can tell she wants me to go really bad. She can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t actually a date, and now she’s worried if she shows up without me it’ll make her look stupid. And desperate.
“Of course I do,” I say, though all I want to do is curl up in a ball and howl.
“Do you want to talk about what to wear?” She’s hesitant, and I feel bad, like she has to tiptoe through a verbal minefield to talk to me.
“Sure.” I try to sound enthusiastic.
“Good!” She jumps up and bounces to my closet. “I don’t know who he’s bringing, but you need to wear something awesomely sexy so Mystery Guy says, ‘Wow, I want to hit that.’ ” She deepens her voice and tries to sound masculine, but it comes out echoey and creepy.
“If he talked to me like that I think I’d get up and run,” I say. “That sounds like someone wanting to show me his puppy inside a white-paneled van.”
“Seriously, though. Clothes?”
“I thought maybe jeans and a T-shirt,” I say, knowing it won’t be good enough for Trina. I have no desire to dress to be noticed, while Trina seems to think her clothes will distract attention from her face.
“How ’bout this?” She holds up a white lace dress with a heart on it. She found it for me at a thrift store, but I’ve never worn it. “It’ll show your cleavage.”
I push my boobs together, and we both look at the disappointing result in the V of my shirt. I think of my mother. She’s losing a breast, and I’m worried about what mine look like in a stupid dress?
“Jeans’ll be fine,” I say. “I might even wear my new tennis shoes.”
“Jeans … ,” she says. “Oh, Erin.”
“Look, what’s wrong with jeans? Jeans say, ‘I don’t care what you think of me, but have you noticed my butt?’ ”
“Dorkster Twins activate,” she says resignedly, and we touch our knuckles together.
Trina isn’t going to change, and neither am I.
After Trina leaves to get dressed (she’s keeping her outfit tonight a secret—I’m a little scared), I go downstairs. Mom is sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice and a science journal. Spaghetti sauce is bubbling on the stove, and I turn it down. Mom burns more meals than not.
“Are you wearing makeup?” she asks.
“Can you tell? How’s the zit?” I started with some concealer, and before I knew it, I was up to lip gloss and eyeliner. Trina will be ecstatic.
I try to see if the zit is visible in the reflection of the stainless steel refrigerator. And there it is. Wonderful. I step back and look at myself in the distorted reflection: a girl, me, on the shortish side, a little pudgy around the middle, round face, chunky glasses, and medium-length curly black hair.
“What zit?” Mom says. “Push your hair back. Stop hiding your beautiful face. Are you and Trina doing something? Invite her back over, if you want, and we can eat spaghetti and watch Sixteen Candles.” Mom is a complete eighties-movie buff, and Trina and I get a kick out of making fun of the big hair and shoulder pads.
“Remember, I’m supposed to go with Trina and meet some people? But I don’t have to. Really. It’s no big deal. I’ll call her and tell her I’m staying here.”
“No, no! That sounds like a lot more fun. Where are you going?”
“I have no idea. Evidently it’s a surprise.”
Mom frowns. She doesn’t like surprises.
Me either.
I wonder then whether she needs me here so she won’t think about her surgery on Monday. My chest starts feeling funny, like maybe I’m not getting enough oxygen.
Mom reads me instantly. “Erin, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.”
“But you don’t know that!” I cry. “You say that, but you don’t know!”
“You’re right, I don’t.” She takes me in her arms and rocks me back and forth like she did when I was a little kid and I’d wake up screaming from the nameless, ferocious nightmares.
This time, though, the nightmare has a name.
Cancer.
“What do we do now?” I whisper.
&
nbsp; “We go on. We live our lives. There’s nothing else to do,” she says, and I start crying again.
Chapter Five
Chaz pulls up in my driveway a little after six. He’s driving an old Mustang, all decked out.
“Nice car,” Mom says, peering out the window.
I give her a quick hug and say, “See you later, alligator.”
“After a while, crocodile,” she answers. She started this when I was little and petrified to go to school because I was afraid she was going to up and die while I was learning addition, like my dad did. “We don’t say good-bye because we know we’re going to see each other again soon, right, Rinnie? Go to school, and when you get done, I’ll be waiting for you.”
For some stupid reason it stuck. We still don’t say good-bye.
Trina gives me an oh-my-God face when she gets out to let me in the back. She’s relatively sedate tonight, in white bloomers that come to her knees, a green spidery-thin shirt she’s belted with a piece of rope, and her hair in a bun. She’s wearing the big green glasses she always wears when she’s feeling shy.
“Hi, Chaz, nice car,” I say as I climb into the empty backseat.
“You like it?” Chazs peers over his shoulder at me with his gray, caught-in-the-headlights eyes.
“Well, sure, it’s a 1966 Mustang Pony Coupe. What’s not to like?”
“Erin’s got a thing for old cars,” Trina says as Chaz pulls out of my driveway.
Not really, but it’s easier than explaining the truth. My dad’s 1965 Mustang convertible is parked in our garage. It doesn’t run, and lately Mom has been talking about selling it to free up the garage for her potting table. Every time she says anything about it though, I change the subject. Last year, as I neared my sixteenth birthday, I started researching old Mustangs to see how expensive it would be to fix. My birthday came, I got a Corolla, and somehow I stopped thinking about fixing it. But I can’t see selling it. When I was little I used to take off the cover and sit inside and pretend my dad was still alive. I would close my eyes and say, Yes, Daddy, ice cream sounds really nice. Maybe then we can go to the airport and watch the planes fly? Please? Oh, silly Daddy, of course I love you too.
