Five Days Left

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  When Neerja realized she was being watched, she swung her head away from the picture and made a very poor effort at wiping her eyes without detection. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just a sentimental old woman.” She laughed. “It’s just seeing that girl in her costume—”

  “It’s not that, and we both know it.” Mara crossed to her mother, hugged her. “You get to be upset, Mom. And you get to be upset in front of me.”

  Her mother didn’t respond and Mara led her to the couch. When they were seated, she took her mother’s wrinkled hand in hers, turning it over and running her fingers along the older woman’s veins, as she used to do as a child. “I know what we should do. Come with me.” She led Neerja to the guest room and pointed to the narrow bookshelf in the closet that held the family photo albums. Neerja clapped her hands and reached for the five thick albums on the top shelf, carrying four of them back to the family room while Mara trailed behind her with the last one.

  They sat on the couch and Mara indicated the stack of albums on the coffee table in front of them. “The complete life of Mara Nichols, volumes one through five, ages three months through forty-two years.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Neerja asked, a hand on Mara’s knee.

  Laks had asked about looking through the albums recently and Mara declined. When Laks pushed, Neerja ushered her away, distracting her with toys in her room. “I understand, Beti,” Neerja told Mara later. Mara nodded, and they said nothing more about it.

  It was too painful to watch herself growing up on Kodak paper, knowing what was waiting for the girl blowing out the candles, opening her presents, graduating from college, walking down the aisle, making law review, making partner. Knowing that in each moment, the girl wasn’t enjoying the occasion as much as she might have had she realized how finite the cakes and ceremonies and celebrations would be. Instead, she was thinking ahead to the next big goal, telling herself she was one step closer, telling herself not to bask too long in the moment but push harder. If she’d had some warning . . .

  Mara shook the thought away, put her hand on her mother’s and nodded toward the stack. “In order, or random?” she asked, reaching toward the books. “In order, I think.” She took Volume 1 from the pile as Neerja laughed. Mara joined her. As if random had been a legitimate option for Mara.

  They had made it to her junior high prom when Tom came home. He took one look at the weeping pair on the couch and said, “Not sure any man is safe in here.” He bent to kiss them both, then spotted his father-in-law and daughter in the backyard, took two beers out of the fridge and escaped out the door to join them.

  By the time they were into her McGill days, he was back inside, asking about dinner. “Laks says your parents are staying, which is wonderful. Want me to just come up with something, or do you two ladies have a plan?”

  Mara and Neerja stared blankly at him before Neerja blew her nose and Mara wiped her eyes.

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll grill some chicken.” After rooting in the freezer and fridge for a minute, he left again, with an armful of white packages from the butcher and bottles of marinade. “I suggest we take our time out here,” Mara heard him say before the glass door sealed off his voice.

  “So many memories,” Neerja said, smiling through her tears. She took a fresh tissue and wiped her nose again.

  Mara considered all they’d seen—trips to the Rockies, the Maritimes, the Grand Canyon. Birthday cakes in the shape of castles, dragons, books. New bikes, roller skates, record players. Sleepovers with ten or more giggling girls in their small Montreal living room. “Did you and Dad get any sleep those nights?” she asked her mother.

  “Not one minute,” her mother confessed. Yet they’d allowed her to do it countless times, from sixth grade through twelfth.

  “You’ve done so much for me, you and Dad,” Mara said, taking her mother’s hand again. “Without a thought about yourselves. You’ve put me first since the day you brought me home from Hyderabad. Before then, even. Since the day you decided to go rescue me.”

  “It’s nothing, for someone you love.”

  “It’s everything, Mom. I’ve had a lovely, lovely life because of the two of you. How can I ever thank you for everything you’ve given me? Everything you’ve done for me? And now for Tom and Laks, too?”

  “You just did.”

  “No. I mean really thank you. How can I really thank you for all of that? How can I really show you how much you mean to me, how much I love you, how lucky I feel to be your daughter?”

  “I don’t need really. I need this.” Neerja patted Mara’s leg, which was pressed against her mother’s, then nodded toward the albums. “Only this.” She tilted her head and rested it on Mara’s shoulder, and in that moment Mara felt like something between them opened up. For her entire life, her mother had looked after her. Even more since the diagnosis. Never once had her mother revealed uncertainty or anxiety about any aspect of parenthood.

  Neerja had cried about the diagnosis, of course, but other than that, she’d never shown fear or vulnerability or weakness where her daughter was concerned. She had been Mara’s capable, self-assured mother. She had everything under control at all times, including her emotions, because she never wanted her daughter to worry about her. And here she sat, head on her daughter’s comforting shoulder while she allowed her own to quake with noiseless sobs. Allowed Mara to put an arm around her, pull her close and say, “I know. It’s okay. I’m right here. Let it out,” as she had done for Mara so many times.

  Mara kissed her mother’s soft, dark hair before tucking it behind her ear the way she did for Laks each morning. “I love you.” She spoke into the top of her mother’s head, where her lips remained. “I love you.”

  They sat that way, while outside, on the other side of the glass doors, Tom marinated and grilled the chicken and Pori pushed Laks on the swing, then watched her show off her “spider guy” method of climbing up the slide. They sat that way while Laks climbed the monkey bars and called to her father and grandfather, who sat in lawn chairs, lazily sipping their bottles of beer. They sat that way until the sliding glass doors finally whooshed open and a “starvingsostarvingsostarving” Laks raced through to her bathroom to wash her hands for dinner, calling as she ran that she’d decided on the pink plate and the yellow cup, please.

  “Photo albums!” Pori leaned over to flip one open. “I haven’t seen these pictures in years.” He turned hopefully to the women on the couch, widening his eyes in surprise when he realized they were both crying.

  “Not tonight,” Neerja said, sniffling. “We’ve just been through them all, and you know it’s not Mara’s favorite thing. Wait for another time, Puppa.”

  Mara kissed her mother again, then gently nudged her a few inches to the left to make room on her right. She smiled at her father, patted the space beside her and reached for the first album.

  36.

  Mara

  At two thirty in the morning, Mara gave up the pretense of waiting for sleep to come and slid out of bed. In the doorway, she turned back to regard her husband. A bit of moonlight shone through a gap in the blinds, illuminating a strip of Tom’s sleeping form. Another contented slumber after another lovely session in bed together—that was one thing she hadn’t stopped being able to do.

  He had to be a little suspicious about that, she thought. Not since their thirties, twenties maybe, had she been this assertive. She took in the rest of the bed; the sheets were a tangled mess and her pillow was missing. He didn’t seem to have been pretending. But then, when someone’s eyes were closed, they could be thinking anything. She turned quickly, picking her way carefully through the dark living room to Laks’s room. The girl had thrown her covers off and they lay in a heap on the floor. Mara covered her and reached to the foot of the bed for BunnyBunny, the large white stuffed rabbit Laks had slept with every night since she was two. She must have kick
ed it away with the sheets. Mara lifted the furry toy to her face, pressed it close and breathed in deeply. Morning body.

  With BunnyBunny tucked under one arm, Mara tiptoed around the room, running her free hand over everything she could reach—the smooth wood of the gliding chair, the cold ceramic piggy bank on the bookshelf, the silver-framed picture of infant Laks in proud Pori’s lap. She traced her fingers slowly over the edges of everything, trying to commit the contents of her daughter’s room to memory.

  Her throat closed when she saw the music box Tom had brought home a week after they returned from Hyderabad. “I have a little girl,” he announced to Mara, “and every little girl needs a music box.” Mara longed to pick up the box, feel the weight of it in her hands, but she didn’t trust herself not to send it crashing to the floor. She slid a palm over the smooth surface of the lid, hearing its melody in her head. “Beautiful Dreamer.”

  She lifted a small ball cap from its hook beside the closet and ran her finger along the embroidered red R. The cap was a prized souvenir from the Rangers game Pori and Neerja had taken their granddaughter to one weekend. Smiling, Mara thought about 2boys and MotorCity and their ongoing debate about the Tigers and Yankees. She wondered what they thought of the Rangers. She would ask them tomorrow, if she remembered.

  She held the inside of the cap to her face and inhaled, then returned it to its hook and opened the closet. The door creaked and she turned to the bed quickly, worried, but the sleeping form didn’t stir. Mara looked from side to side, a burglar checking to see if neighbors were watching, then stepped into the closet, closed the door behind her and pulled the thin chain to switch on the light.

  The mayhem on the closet floor made her suck in a breath and let it out in a noiseless laugh. Ever organized, she had set up a system of plastic bins in the closet and trained her daughter to store her toys in an orderly fashion. Each container was meant to hold a different category of toys: dollhouse furniture, puzzles, Barbies, dress-up clothes, plastic kitchen utensils. But Mara hadn’t supervised a room-cleaning day in a long time, and the potpourri of toys in each bin defied any single category or unifying theme. Barbies were folded into plastic pots for the kitchen. A miniature cradle held a handful of puzzle pieces. Inside a purple dress-up purse was a collection of pocket-sized soft plastic dolls.

  An old doll stroller held, of all things, schoolwork, and Mara shook her head as she leafed through it. There were counting worksheets, a classroom newsletter, crumpled bits of artwork whose glitter had long since trickled off and now lined the bottom of the stroller. A colored folder caught Mara’s eye and she lifted it out. “Poems—by Lakshmi Nichols—Kindergarten.” Laks had talked about their poetry unit and had shown some barely legible and largely nonsensical poems to her parents. It was an ambitious project, Tom commented, teaching poetry to kids who could barely read or write on their own.

  Mara flipped through the first few pages, taking in the careful printing, pressed so hard in some places the letters went through the page. She could picture Laks taking her time to make each letter perfect and she felt a pang of sadness. She didn’t want her daughter to be as intense as she was. Maybe she should arrange for Laks to spend time each week with Harry. The thought made her throat burn.

  “Mara?”

  Her heart thudded to a temporary halt as the door opened and a drowsy Tom stood in the opening in boxer shorts, his head cocked to one side. “Love?” Tom whispered. “What on earth—?”

  “Oh. Um, hi,” Mara whispered back, struggling for an explanation as to why she would be in her daughter’s closet in the middle of the night. “I, uh . . . couldn’t sleep . . . and I thought maybe I . . . could get a head start cleaning in here. I was going to do it on Sunday morning when she’s at my parents’. Get rid of some things while she’s not here to protest, you know? And I thought I’d come in and see what lay ahead—”

  “At three in the morning?” He leaned into the closet. “Are you—? Why are you crying?”

  She slid fingers over her cheeks to erase her tears. “Oh, it’s nothing. I—”

  He pointed to the folder in her hand. “What?”

  She held it out to him.

  “Oh, I remember this,” he said, still speaking softly. He flipped to the last page and held it up to her.

  A Haiku by Lakshmi Nichols

  No one is as strong.

  My mom will never give up.

  I’m a proud daughter.

  He nodded, as though agreeing with the sentiment in the poem. “Nice portrait,” he whispered, pointing. There was a picture beside the haiku: Laks and Mara, holding hands, Mara a female Popeye with giant, bulging muscles. “Good haiku, too,” he added. “I always loved that one.”

  “You’ve read this before? I found the folder in the stroller she’s using as a filing cabinet.”

  He shrugged. “I helped her work on it. Although mostly I counted syllables and fixed spelling. ‘Daughter’ was d-o-t-r for the first few drafts, until I convinced her my way was correct. The idea was all hers, though. You were . . . I don’t know where you were that night. Out with Those Ladies, maybe? She had to do a haiku about a characteristic—you know, honesty or strength or loyalty. She settled on strength, and I asked her what she thought of when she thought of strength. She didn’t even think, she immediately said, ‘Mama.’”

  Mara sniffed and dragged the sleeve of her robe across her face. “She thought of me for strength?”

  Tom knit his brows together. “Who else would she think of?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . you? The marathon man who logs twenty miles before breakfast and can still chase her around the yard all afternoon?”

  “Pffft. Not the same kind of strength. Nothing I’ve ever done is the same kind of strength. You don’t know that?” He tilted his head toward the bed. “Your ‘proud daughter’ over there is smart enough to know it.”

  “She’s not so proud anymore. Not after the fiasco at school.”

  “She’ll get over it. Remember how embarrassed you were of your parents’ accent? ‘Mortified’ is how you described it, as I recall. And how long did that last? Not even a school year, right? And then you decided ‘different’ didn’t mean anything but different.”

  “This is a little worse than a thick Indian accent.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s being embarrassed by your parents. Accent for you. Public drunkenness for me. Huntington’s for Laks. It’s all the same. We all go through it, we all get over it.” He held a hand out to her. “Come to bed.”

  PART V

  Saturday, April 9

  ONE DAY LEFT

  37.

  Mara

  When Mara walked into the family room early Saturday morning, she found her five-year-old curled on the couch, staring catatonically at the TV.

  “Good morning, sweetie,” Mara said.

  Laks, engrossed, didn’t respond. Shaking her head, Mara regarded the girl and wondered if Tom was right: Was Mara’s condition no heavier an albatross for Laks than Pori and Neerja’s accent had been for Mara, or Tom’s parents’ alcoholism had been for him? Lying on the couch, ignoring her mother in favor of the asinine show on TV, Laks certainly seemed like any other child in America.

  If her mother hung around, and got sicker by the year, or even the month, there would be disadvantages to Laks’s life, the same as there were in the lives of every other child in the country. Every other child on this very street, for that matter. Right now, down the block and throughout Plano and in every state, kids were lying on couches, engrossed in cartoons while their parents yelled at each other, or one of them moved out. While their older brothers moved home, having flunked out of college, or their teenage sisters confessed to being pregnant. Did Laks’s particular disadvantages really stack up so much higher than every other child’s?

  Mara took one last look at her daughter and sat at the table, peeling the sticky
note from the bottom of her laptop. She could continue this debate while she attended to her task list. There was no harm in getting through the rest of the items, even if she decided to abort the mission.

  She put a fingertip on one of the items not yet struck through: letters to Tom and Laks. It was the perfect chance for her to finalize them. Tom was running and wouldn’t return for another hour. It appeared the walls could fall down around her daughter and she would remain glued to the screen.

  Mara clicked open the letters, reminding herself she was permitted to scan them only. She had no time this morning for the kind of wholesale rewrites she had done so many times the last few nights. She still needed to get herself ready to meet Those Ladies for lunch, feed Laks breakfast and supervise her getting ready for dance class. The ponytail alone—a requirement of the teacher—could take thirty minutes of negotiating and rearranging. And anyway, she would never be satisfied with the letters, no matter how many more times she revised them. How do you sum up the contents of your heart in a single document?

  She read each letter twice and re-saved them. She would print them tomorrow, put each in its own envelope and set them on Tom’s pillow after he left for his run. She would leave a third envelope for him, too—the list of helpful tips she’d compiled to assist him in the task of raising their daughter. She opened that list now, scanning it to see if there was anything she had left out.