The Winter Sister(27)
Still, it was only when they led us into the chemotherapy room, sat Mom down in what looked like a dentist’s chair with a small TV attached to it, and threaded the needle into her vein that she finally said a word to me.
“That person you were talking to on the phone yesterday,” she said. “Was that your boyfriend?”
I snapped my eyes to the few other patients in the room, as if they would share my surprise at Mom’s bizarre question. No one even glanced my way, though, and the nurse making adjustments to Mom’s IV bag only smiled at me and offered a look that said, “Oh moms.”
“No,” I said. “It was Aunt Jill.”
Mom nodded. “I see,” she said, holding her arm out as the nurse strapped another piece of tape over the IV. “Have you spoken to your boyfriend yet?”
I opened my mouth to answer and then closed it again. Had Aunt Jill, for some inexplicable reason, told her I had a boyfriend? Or was she working off old information? Maybe she was thinking of Robbie Silano from a couple years back. Maybe Jill had mentioned that she met him one time when she came to visit me, and Mom just assumed we were still together.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I told her.
“Oh.” Mom folded her hands together in her lap. “Well, you better hurry up, then,” she said. “You’re almost thirty.”
The nurse—Kelly, she’d told me when she’d introduced herself—gave a quick, throaty chuckle, but I was too taken aback to respond myself. Almost thirty—even though I’d been thirty for four months. It shouldn’t have bothered me—I hadn’t received so much as a birthday card from her in years—but still, something heavy gathered in my chest.
“Oh, Annie, don’t give her such a hard time,” Kelly said, gently flicking Mom’s shoulder with her hand. “She has plenty of time to find someone.”
Kelly winked at me and I managed a smile.
“Easy for you to say,” Mom replied. “Your wedding’s in March, right?”
“March twentieth,” Kelly said, nodding. “Good memory! I haven’t even seen you since—when was it? November?”
“Good memory yourself.”
Kelly smiled, leaning forward to press some buttons on Mom’s TV screen. “Just don’t be expecting an invitation to my wedding. I don’t want Owen to take one look at your pretty face and then leave me at the altar.”
“That’s probably wise,” Mom said. “I’ve been cultivating a new look lately that will be sure to drive men wild. I call it cancer chic.”
I stared at the two of them in disbelief. As they joked together, Mom seemed so normal. With just a couple of sentences and a wave of authentic laughter, it was as if she hadn’t spent most of the last sixteen years in self-imposed isolation, as if she hadn’t just lost track of her daughter’s age, and hadn’t shut herself in her room at the mention of Ben Emory two days before.
“So I’m sure you remember the drill,” Kelly said, “but since it’s been a little while, I’ll give you a quick refresher. This is your TV, and you can press these buttons on the side to change the channel. I’ll be in and out to check on you, but you can press this other button over here if you need me at any time. We’ve got bottled waters in the little fridge over there—you’re welcome to one as well, Sylvie—and there are some books and magazines on the bookshelves in the corner. Just have Sylvie get them for you if you want anything. Your job now is just to sit and relax.”
Mom leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes as if she were going to sleep. “Ahhh,” she said, “a regular day at the beach. Just bring me a pi?a colada and I’ll be all set.”
Kelly laughed, met my gaze, and pointed at Mom. “I love her,” she mouthed, and then she turned around and left us there, Mom stretched out in her modified dentist’s chair, hooked up to a bag and a machine, and me sitting down slowly, uncertainly, in the seat beside her.
As I glanced around the room, I realized that it looked nothing like I’d anticipated. I’d been picturing a small, dim space with a smell like a damp basement and a feeling of dread pushing down from the ceiling. This wasn’t like that, though. It was bright and modern and clean, smelling faintly of citrus, and there were vases of fresh flowers throughout the room.
“Wow,” I said, “this is a pretty nice place, huh? For—a treatment center, I mean.”
Mom shifted her eyes toward me. “Oh yeah. It’s a real five-star resort.”
There was that acidic tone again.
“Well,” I replied, “it just looks, and feels, a lot better here than I expected. It’s—actually—how are you able to afford this, Mom?”
She shrugged. “I have health insurance. Jill nagged me to get it.”
“So Jill’s paying for it?” This made sense. Jill had paid for everything else that had kept Mom alive and comfortable over the years—food, carbon monoxide detectors, a new furnace when the one that was original to the house broke down and Mom barked, “Leave it, Jill. I don’t mind the cold.”
“No,” she said now. “I’m not her child, you know. I pay for it myself.”
“But how?” I pressed. “I mean, growing up, we lived paycheck to paycheck, and now you’re just—”