Things You Save in a Fire(8)

“That’s not how it works. I’d have to stay there several years and earn a promotion before I could find a new position.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means if I did what you’re asking, I’d give up my whole life. Everything.”

“When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound very appealing,” Diana said.

“That’s why it’s so simple. No.”

“I get it,” she went on. “I’ve been over and over it in my head. You didn’t want to move here with me when you were fifteen—”

“Sixteen,” I corrected.

“When you actually still needed me,” she continued, “and so why you’d be willing to come now, when you’re all grown up, and also pretty much hate me—”

“I don’t hate you,” I said, on principle. But I didn’t like her very much, either.

“You have less reason than ever to come, and I knew before I called that you’d say no. But I just had to try.”

I closed my eyes. “Why?”

“Because I need you.”

Something in her voice was off.

I’d talked to her maybe four times a year in the decade since she’d moved across the country—the obligatory calls on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays. But I still could read her voice—too well. I’d grown up with that voice. I knew its pitch, and its cadence, and its rhythms. That voice was the model for my own. I couldn’t unknow it if I tried.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m having a little eye problem, and I can’t see as well as I used to.”

“What kind of eye problem?” I asked. I knew a lot about eyes. And problems. “Are you going blind or something?” I asked.

A sigh. Like I was really demanding too much info. “Sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

“Only in the one eye. And not going, exactly. More like already gone.”

I mentally flipped through my medical knowledge of eyes. Cataracts? Macular degeneration? Diabetic retinopathy? “You’ve gone blind in one eye? Just one?”

“It’s glaucoma, or something. Some kind of ’oma. They did a surgery, and there was a good chance I’d lose my sight, and I knew that going in. It just turns out it’s harder to see with one eye than you might think. Especially when you’ve been spoiled for so long with two.”

I wasn’t sure I’d call having two eyes being “spoiled,” but okay.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

A sarcastic pause that read, Please.

“You let them do surgery on your eye, but you can’t even tell me what’s wrong with it?”

She gave a sharp sigh. “I’m not really a details person, Cassie.”

That flash of irritation in her voice gave me permission, suddenly, to be irritated, too. Was it really too much to expect her to retain the most basic details of her health situation? The woman was in her midfifties, and she was acting like a ninety-year-old biddy.

But I couldn’t keep the irritation going. Even though it’s so much easier to judge than to relate, I couldn’t help but feel empathy. It must be a hell of a thing to lose half your sight. For anybody—but especially an artist, of all people. Her entire professional life was about looking, and seeing, and perceiving. Of course she was irritated. Probably panicked as well.

“How is the other eye?” I asked then, more softly.

“Okay for now.”

It’s never a good idea to feel too much empathy for patients. But she wasn’t my patient, I reminded myself. She was my mother.

“Anyway,” she went on, “it’s not so bad. I just can’t seem to get a handle on spatial relationships. I keep pouring coffee and missing the cup. Tripping, too. Palms, knees—all scraped to hell. Fell down the stairs the other day. And there’s no driving anymore. I doubt that’s ever coming back.”

“You fell down the stairs?”

“I’m fine. Point is, I could use some help. Not forever.”

“A year at the most,” I repeated.

“Exactly!” she said, like we were getting somewhere. “While I adjust. There’s a therapy you can do to help speed things along. Learn to use the one eye like a pro. But it takes a while.”

“A year?”

“Nine months to a year. Then we’re done.”

You had to admire the optimism.

I pushed the empathy back. I was not going to feel sorry for her. People suffered worse things all the time. We’d just picked up a guy last week who’d severed his hand cutting boards to make a playhouse for his kids.

But my mind was on alert now. This was happening. She was really asking. A year. That was a lifetime. I didn’t have a year to give away. “Can’t you hire a caregiver?”

She burst out with a laugh, like I had to be joking. “Sweetheart, I’m an artist!” Then, like it went without saying, “I am dead broke.”

“Can’t Ted help you?”

“Why on earth would he even consider doing that?”

She had a point there.

I tried again. “But you have health insurance, right?”