Sweet Water(15)

It wasn’t just her death but how she died—terminal cancer, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that’d infiltrated her bone marrow and every lymph node in her body by the time they found it. I remember feeling like she’d just been taken from me. I watched as she faded away in a hospital room, in a wing with one other patient with the same rare disease.

That woman had disappeared from the hospital before Mom did, and I’d assumed the worst. Only she’d been flown to Switzerland for an experimental treatment that was still in clinical trials. The doctor had talked to my father about it, but we didn’t have the money for that kind of travel, and the hospital couldn’t provide it. Not that the doctors promised a better prognosis even if we had, because the therapy’s efficacy was unknown.

When my mother died, there were so many gorgeous flowers thrown on top of her coffin, I agonized over the fact that she’d never have the opportunity to see them. It was so unfair. Mother was special in that she always enjoyed the magic in the present, not worrying too much about tomorrow. She could treasure the beauty of a flower even though it would die in a week. People said these things at her service and how lovely she was in the brief time she was here, her life like that of a flower, too short. I loved the metaphor, but I was also saddened at seeing the mountain of plants she’d never grow in her own flower shop she’d wanted so badly, in a house up the hill with better landscaping.

But nothing had upset me more than the fact that the woman, the other patient who’d flown to Switzerland, had attended my mother’s funeral. I almost didn’t recognize her until she introduced herself to me and hugged me, because she had all her hair back, and it was actually down to her chin by then. And she wasn’t bony like I remembered; her embrace was firm and healthy.

I was shocked. She’d survived. The treatment had worked. And she was in remission.

It was only then that I truly understood what money could buy. My father was happy to see her and whispered to me, “She got lucky. And God bless.”

I wanted to be one of the lucky ones too.

Years later, I researched the price of an airline ticket to Switzerland and determined that I could’ve possibly saved my mother’s life for $800, and I cried. And no one would ever understand that pain, so I chose my friends carefully, because if they couldn’t understand what I’d been through, I didn’t think they could really know me.

One kindhearted soul here who gained my trust was Camille Sugarman, a fellow member of the PTA, and I’d hated the thought of leaving her when Martin got a bid for opening a London office.

But if I’m being honest with myself, my true angst about moving came from leaving my house. When the deal fell through and Martin wasn’t charged with opening the new satellite location, he was disappointed, but I was so happy that the next afternoon, I opened a bottle of wine and drank the whole thing by myself as I quietly cried tears of joy beneath my pergola.

Just another Sewickley SAHM (stay-at-home mom) day-drinking under her trellis, I thought to myself, snickered, and cried some more, patting the cement bench and letting it know I’d be around for another summer.

All the parties we’d had right there in that same outside entertaining space. B. F. Jones, the steel tycoon, had built this Gatsby-era English Gothic residence as his summer home, an offshoot to his mansion, a present to his wife for their anniversary. I could feel the energy in the walls. It was special. I forgot the moments with Joshua when I was younger. I tried to, anyway, but we were happy here, Martin and me and the boys. Who would ever want to leave?

Why does Yazmin despise my house? It makes me instantly despise her.

The front door opens and shuts, and I know it’s Martin, but I can’t focus on his arrival, my eyes seared to the stained-glass windows. The old ones complement the newer ones fine, and she was just being terrible.

“Honey?”

Martin stands before me with his suit jacket draped over his arm like he always does when he comes home from work.

“Hi,” I peep.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I shake my head, signaling nothing, but I don’t make a habit of staring blankly at the walls, so I know I’m not fooling my husband, a man who practically came out of the womb cum laude.

“Oh, Sarah, did you lose your glass slipper again?” Martin asks.

I crack a smile.

In any other household, his comment might sound derogatory, but it isn’t. It’s a phrase Martin uses often when I complain about something trite or nothing at all and he doesn’t have any other way to console me. He wraps his arms around me and kisses me gently, my prince. He’d find my glass slipper and return it even if I didn’t know it was missing. The only problem is he’d also take someone else’s slipper to make me happy, and that’s where our lines sometimes got crossed.

“No, that’s not it.” I can’t collect my thoughts to describe what has just transpired in my home. I’m probably overreacting, but something deep in my soul feels fractured, and I’m not sure why. “How was your day?” I ask, trying to deflect.

“Oh . . .” He sighs. “Still trying to work out the zoning on the riverfront property. There’re some people who think that area is designated specifically for Pittsburgh sports arenas and their corporate companions.”

“Hmm . . . maybe you should dip your pen in black and gold, then.” Even though Martin’s attempt to branch out overseas hasn’t been successful, he’s opened a few other regional locations. His latest venture is some property on the Allegheny Riverfront in downtown Pittsburgh, but zoning has been a bear.