Chapter 4

Chapter 4

12/05/1999  

Letter #21

I don’t think your final, fatal prognosis was the hardest thing for me to face. First hearing the words ‘brain cancer’ wasn’t the worst part either. Working as a hospice nurse for my entire adult life probably made me numb to those things, at least on the surface. I never imagined my line of work would come in so handy.

For me, the hardest part was learning that your type of brain tumor was slow-growing. That it had been inside you for years. Probably most of your life.

You sat sandwiched between me and your dad in the consult room, I remember, fidgeting with the black snake ring you always wore on your middle finger and looking like you couldn’t care less about the neurologist’s breakdown of the myriad ways your tumor was likely affecting you.

Based off where it was seated in your brain, the doctor suspected that any fear or inhibition a person might normally feel would be completely repressed in you. She also listed a handful of other symptoms, like dysregulated emotions, headaches, and muscle spasms, but I couldn’t hear much past the sudden buzzing in my ears.

Those things about you that I loved so much, that inspired me to be braver and worry less what others thought...they weren’t really a part of you at all? It was all just a...a tumor? I suddenly realized why they’d wanted you to be in the other room for this consult.

I’d ignored their advice, insisting they didn’t know you like I did. But I hadn’t considered how badly I might react. Try as I might to be stoic and not let anything show, tears streamed down my face. I knew it was ridiculous to react this way. But I couldn’t help it.

The neurologist paused her monologue to hand me a box of tissues. Your dad reached across your lap and squeezed my hand, patiently explaining how this was good news. If the tumor was slow-growing, it meant you were going to be okay.

He didn’t understand. The doctor didn’t get it either. But you did. I still remember your precise words:

You looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Mom...you’re forgetting that the tumor is me, not some outside thing. After the surgery, the doctors need to give it back because I grew it for a reason. We have to take it straight to the beach.”

I looked over at your dad to see if he knew where this was headed. But from his expression, it was clear he was as confused as me.

“Dad will build a fire in our usual spot,” you went on. “while you and I look for a long, straight stick. And you know what we’ll do with that stick, Mom?”

I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself.

Your eyes gleamed with mischief. “We’re gonna use it to skewer that tumor like it’s a fucking--”

“Evy!” I’d cut you off with a scandalized shriek. It cracks me up, thinking back on the silly little things I thought mattered, even then. But you went on, undaunted.

“Ahem. Skewer it like a fucking marshmallow, and we’ll roast it until we’re sure it really is dead. Then I’ll walk out into the waves and use the stick to chuck that puny part of myself far into the ocean. Because that’s what I grew it for, Mom. Fish food. Just doing my part to tackle world hunger.”

Your dad guffawed and said something about terrible puns being his purview.

You rolled your eyes but they were red and wet. “After that,” you continued, your voice softening, “when I know it’s really gone, I’ll come back to you. And I’ll still be me. I promise.”

I believed you could do it too. All of it. God help me, I did. I threw my arms around you. Your dad wrapped us both in his and you clung to me, so tight your chewed-up little nails dug into my back. It surprised me, feeling how much your body shook; you’d sounded so calm. Then I remembered what the doctor said about muscle spasms and wondered how I could know the difference.

I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger. I’m so, so sorry. But I was never the strong one. You were.

On an impulse, I decide to print out Evy’s words from that day. Not all of it, just the last part. As the printer screeches out the text, I scan the room for a frame. The nearest one sits on a bookshelf a few feet away. It holds an old photo of Joshua and I, laughing together inside some forgotten friend’s house. We weren’t much older than Evy when this was taken. I don’t recognize anything in that couple that carried over to our current selves. Tracing my fingers along those baby faces, I try to remember.

The printer’s scratchy yowling halts abruptly. I tear the sheet off and rip it along the outside of the text so that it’s just smaller than the frame. Stuffing it in front of the old photograph,  I head to my bedroom, set the frame on the nightstand, and read the words aloud:

I’ll come back to you.

And I’ll still be me.

I promise.

A smile tugs at the sides of my mouth. The expression feels so foreign. Somehow I still believe her, though I can’t begin to say what those words could mean now.

My ears prick up. The faint ringing of a phone drifts from downstairs, followed by Joshua’s voice. His tone is sharp.

Careful to avoid the squeaky parts of the floor, I sneak across the room, into the hallway, and down the stairs until I can hear him clearly.

“...don’t call here again...no, I didn’t say that. Just don’t...hello?” He lets out a heavy sigh. There’s a loud clack as he hangs up the phone. Only now do I notice the heavy, almost painful thuds inside my chest. For a second, I consider sneaking back upstairs. Forgetting what I just heard. But I’m so sick of running from things. Just this once, I need to face something.

I let my feet land hard on the floorboards as I walk down the hallway and into his study. The afternoon sunlight streams through the stained glass, coating everything in kaleidoscope vomit. I keep saying we should put up curtains.

Joshua is at his desk, head down, grading a tall stack of papers.

“Don’t you have aides for this sort of thing?” I ask, leaning my arm on a bookshelf, an awkward parody of nonchalance.

He looks up at me, blinking quickly. His eyes, framed by his cheap drugstore reading glasses, are black and owlish. He rests an elbow on the desk and leans his cheek along the length of the pen in his right hand. “I was just thinking the same thing. I still like to go over the final essays though,” he squeezes his eyes closed, pushing his glasses up as he pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. When he moves his hand away, his glasses tilt to one side but he doesn’t seem to notice. “At least, in theory I like to.”

“So…” I try to sound casual. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Huh?” He looks confused for a second. “Oh. A student,” he waves his hand, dismissively. “I keep telling them not to call me at home anymore but a few of them just won’t listen. Their questions are always inane too. It’s like the only part of the syllabus they bothered to read was my contact information. It’s driving me nuts.”

“Maybe it’s a hazard of being a philosophy professor? I mean, you’re basically giving these kids the toolkit they need to justify almost any reading of a text. Who are you to say that the syllabus wasn’t just some excuse to give your number out to a bunch of 19-year-olds?” It was meant as a joke but my insecurity added an involuntary edge to my words.

He squints at me for a second as though confused about why I’m so out of focus. Grimacing, he tosses his glasses onto his papers. He fixes me in his gaze, his expression so guileless that I’m suddenly embarrassed about feeling suspicious. I hate how paranoid I get. I hate how hard it is for me to know when I’m getting that way.

He gets up and walks slowly around the desk. Somehow, I know exactly what he’s going to do. First, he’ll cup my face in his hand and play his thumb along my cheek, then he’ll wrap me up in a hug, exactly the way he always used to whenever I got upset. My stomach flip flops in giddy anticipation of melting into his huge, solid warmth; of breathing him in.

When he’s within arm’s length of me, though, he stops. His eyes flicker with some emotion I can’t quite detect. “I’m sorry I can’t stop all the calls,” he says. “I wish we could just disconnect the phone but...”

“Oh, I know we can’t,” I say. My arms hang limply at my sides, still buzzing in pathetic anticipation of his touch. “It’s fine, really. It was only hard to take for that first month or two, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

Suddenly, I remember the calendar. “Hey, so,” I fumble for words. “What’s your note on the calendar about?”

“Note?” He looks confused.

“You wrote ‘remember’ on the last day of the month.”

“I did? Just the one word?”

I nod.

“Sounds like a pretty useless note. I’m sure I just got distracted before I could finish. It was probably just something stupid like ‘remember to get a new calendar’ or ‘remember to brace for Y2K and the impending apocalypse.’” He widens his eyes in mock fright before breaking into laughter that only sounds a little forced.

“Good point.” I nod solemnly. “We can’t be those guys who miss the Rapture because they forgot to put it on the calendar.” I try for a sarcastic grin but the attempt feels more like a grimace.

He’s pulling this off far better than I am, but even his humor is a frail, ghostly thing. Easy to see through. Looking at him now, I see how tired, how broken he is, and I feel a wave of guilt. I wish, so much, that I could just fix him, fix us...fix everything. But some things can’t be fixed. They just hobble, broken, for as long as they can.

Chapter 5