A Mother's Goodbye

Eileen’s mouth drops open and her eyes crinkle up. ‘Oh, my dear. My love,’ she says, and then, to my surprise, she opens her arms. Even more to my surprise, I walk into them.

Her bosom is soft and pillowy and she smells old, like lavender and mothballs. She pats my back and after a few seconds where I feel unbearably comforted, I step away and sniff.

‘Thank you.’

Her smile is both sad and understanding. ‘My dear, when did this happen?’

‘I started chemo a few weeks ago.’ It feels like a million years.

Eileen shakes her head sorrowfully. ‘What kind of cancer is it?’

‘Breast cancer. My mom had it. She died when she was forty-five.’ I’m holding on to my matter-of-fact tone with effort. Eileen nods again, and I wonder if she knows that I’m forty-six.

A few days later Heather calls and leaves a voicemail, sounding accusing and annoyed, and I realize I completely forgot about our meeting, the all-important meeting that was going to determine whether Isaac and I kept visiting. I finally dredge up the courage to call her back, and my lack of excuse makes her even more irritated. When she asks about our visit next Saturday, I want to both laugh and scream: I can’t face a trip to Elizabeth, not on top of everything else.

But I don’t tell Heather I have cancer. I don’t even know why; it feels like a self-protective instinct that doesn’t make sense. But still I stay silent.

After three weeks of chemo, I go back to Dr. Stein for a re-evaluation and discover the tumor hasn’t shrunk enough to operate. Disappointment drags through me in a leaden wave as she explains, with a cheerful optimism that I don’t share, that for a tumor of this size, with this stage of cancer, she would expect two or three rounds of chemo before she was able to operate.

I keep from saying that she could have told me that before, because I know why she didn’t. Hope is the single biggest factor in cancer treatment. There’s no substitute for it. I’m trying to hold onto it, but it’s hard when I face at least three more weeks of the drip, the vomiting, the feeling that I am nothing more than a bag of aching bones and screaming joints. And maybe another three weeks after that. Maybe this is what the rest of my life will look like. That’s how it was for my mother, and there’s no reason I should be any different.

I’ve thought a lot about my mom as I’ve lain in that stupid reclining chair and watched the poison enter my body. I feel sad and guilty that I don’t have more memories of her, that for seven years she seemed to me nothing more than an inconvenient invalid, but I don’t think she actually was. She drove me to school sometimes, I remember, and she came to some of my piano concerts, and she tested me on my French vocab.

No, the truth is, I realize now, I don’t have many memories of her because I chose not to. Because as an eight- or ten- or twelve-year-old, her illness, her cancer, bored me. I didn’t like how tired she got, the wan, apologetic smiles she’d give me, the endless naps she took. I hated the wigs she wore; my father bought her several, all in wildly different styles.

Looking back, I see how brave she was, picking me up at my swanky girls’ school wearing a fire engine red bob, but at the time I was embarrassed and annoyed. I was so petty, focusing on such small, stupid things, and I didn’t even realize it until now.

And so I find I can’t be hurt by Isaac’s occasional impatience with me when I have trouble getting off the sofa, or when I’m not up for another game of Hungry Hippos, as much as I wish I were. He doesn’t understand. Illness is an irritant. Children are, by their very nature, selfish, and they’re allowed to be. Sacrifice and self-restraint take time to develop and grow.

At least I’ve managed to hire a nanny – a twenty-four-year-old woman from Croatia named Yelena. She was friendly enough with Isaac, in an overly bright sort of way, but with me she had a bit of attitude, assuring me that she doesn’t do any cooking, cleaning, or laundry.

Since I have a housekeeper, Maria, who comes in twice a week, whom I never actually see, I tell myself this doesn’t matter, but Dorothy did do a fair bit of tidying, and all of Isaac’s laundry. Still, I don’t have much choice. I need someone to start now, someone with a driver’s license, good references, and flexibility.

I don’t tell Yelena I have cancer. Maybe that’s unfair, bringing her into such a fraught and volatile situation, but I have a feeling it would be a dealbreaker for her and I’m too desperate to risk it.

The second round of chemo starts, and it feels twice as bad as the first. I thought I was prepared, but I soon discover I wasn’t. The first day is manageable, just, but the second day feels like I’ve been felled and then flattened.

I take the day off work and lie in bed, groaning softly, while Yelena huffs around in the living room, clearly not pleased to have me at home, cramping her style. God knows what she gets up to when I’m not here. She works from two until seven even though Isaac doesn’t need to be picked up until three thirty. It was the only way I was able to get her to agree, and as I lie on bed, I realize how weak I’ve become in every respect, to agree to pay this woman to mooch around my house for an hour, refusing to cook or clean.

I end up composing an email to Lenora in HR, invoking FMLA and taking two weeks off work. I don’t say the C-word, just mention health issues. I don’t know what the legality of the situation is; can she force my hand? Is she allowe

d to ask? Should I talk to an employment lawyer? I’m too tired to care.

Another week passes, in a blur of nausea and pain and exhaustion. Is chemo this hard on everyone? I read stories of people who kept working through their treatments but on a day like today, when I have eaten nothing, still thrown up twice, and wince every time I move, I can’t imagine it.

Stella calls and texts a couple of times, and I fob her off, saying I have the flu. I don’t know why I don’t tell her; I know she’d help me in a shot. I know she’d hug me, which is something I feel like I desperately need. And I also know she’d look at me differently, that I would become a cause, a charity case. Maybe that’s just in my own head, maybe it wouldn’t be that way at all. And yet still I say nothing.

I do end up, out of necessity, confessing to Yelena that I’m undergoing some treatment. She stands by the sink, peeling an orange with brightly polished nails, her eyes narrowed, her hair pulled back into a high, tight ponytail.

‘Treatment? What is this treatment?’

I look at her and feel a welling-over of dislike. She’s so young and pretty and cold. She doesn’t care about me at all, but why should she? I’ve known her for all of two weeks.

‘Cancer,’ I say flatly, and she recoils as if I’m contagious.

‘You should have told me,’ she says haughtily, and I have no reply because I know she’s right.

‘It doesn’t affect anything,’ I say, which is a joke. I can barely stand up straight. ‘Your hours or…’ I trail off as I feel tears gather in my eyes. I do not want to cry. I have never been a crier. And I certainly don’t want to start bawling in front of pert-bottomed, Lycra-wearing Yelena, who will merely wrinkle her nose at me.