A Hope for Emily

I texted her this afternoon to say I’d stop by after James came to the hospital, and it’s after six now, a time when she should almost certainly be up and about. Her car is in the driveway.

“Mom?” I call again, and then I hear a creak on the stairs.

“Sorry, Rachel,” she calls as she comes down the stairs and then into the kitchen. “I didn’t hear you come in. I was just upstairs.”

She smiles at me, but she seems distracted; her hair is rumpled and her cardigan is buttoned wrong. I watch her move to the kettle, the slump of her shoulders seeming more pronounced than I’ve ever noticed before.

“Is everything all right, Mom?”

A long, telling pause and suddenly I feel as if I could stagger. She hasn’t said anything, but I know from that pause that there is something she has to tell me, just as I know I don’t want to hear it. I’ve known it for weeks, sensed it since the last time I saw her, like something dark lurking in a corner.

“Tea?” she asks finally, her back to me as she rummages in the kitchen cupboards. “I’ve got chamomile or wild berry?”

“Wild berry, please.” I feel weirdly numb as I take a seat at the kitchen table. Everything about this room is familiar—the dark wood cupboards that were popular in the 1980s but not so much now; the Linoleum floor that is peeling up at the corners; the table I am sitting at, of solid oak, with its scarred surface and the pottery bowl of fruit in the middle, although right now there is only a single, browning banana resting there, forgotten. My heart lurches, like a drunk stumbling across the floor. I’m not ready for this. Whatever it is, I’m not ready. And yet even so, I tell myself it may be nothing. That I’m overreacting, as I always do, because of Emily.

That mole? Must be cancerous. That cough? It’s pneumonia. That unmarked letter in the mail? It must be bad news. I can’t help it; it’s become my default even as I struggle not to be so discouraged, such a downer. Who wants to be around someone like that? Not that anyone actually is.

“I was just having a nap,” my mother says as she gets out two mugs—a Boston College one, and another covered with Shakespeare quotations all over it in curly script.

“Are you feeling under the weather?” I ask. My mother doesn’t normally have naps. She’s always been go, go, go—a novel on the counter as she stirs the soup, an essay she’s writing on her laptop while browsing the newspaper. She is the queen of multitasking; I remember my dad saying he’d never met someone who could do not just two things at once, but six.

The kettle whistles shrilly, and my mother makes the tea. How many times have we sat here together, sipping tea, sharing confidences? It became a ritual for us, especially after my dad died in my junior year of high school. I’d come home from school, and we’d download our days over mugs of chamomile or peppermint or lemon. Always herbal, accompanied by something my mother had baked. I wonder now how she found the time, with her busy life, her career at the college, but she did. She always did.

Even when I was attending Boston University, I’d come home a couple of times a week to check in, to chat. I’ve never left the Boston area, and a big part of that is because of my mom. Because of how important she has always been to me. Now, as she comes to the table and hands me my tea, she gives me a tired smile. I don’t like it.

“Mom…” I trail off, letting that be enough. I place my palms around my cup, savouring the warmth, waiting for whatever it is she has to say.

She sits opposite me, her hands around her own mug. The silence expands between us, like something breathing. “This is hard,” she finally says, quietly, and I think, no.

No, no, no, damn it. I don’t want to hear this. Whatever it is, I know I can’t take it.

“Mom,” I say again, and my voice wobbles.

“Oh, Rachel.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand, her smile full of sympathy. “I haven’t wanted to say anything because you have so much on your plate already.”

No.

“But it’s not fair to either of us, to keep it from you.” She sighs, and it feels as if she’s not going to say anything more.

“Keep what?” I finally manage, the words squeezed out of my too-tight throat, because I still don’t want to know.

My mother sighs again, and the sound makes me think of someone laying a burden down. “I’ve been having some symptoms,” she begins and already there is part of me that is jerking back, the chair screeching across the floor as I stand up and walk out of the room. I don’t move, but that is what I want to do, what I am doing in my head. I can’t take any more symptoms.

“I went to the doctor,” my mother continues steadily. “I had some tests done.”

I know this story. I’ve been living and breathing this story for years. And I hate it. “And?” I manage, and to my surprise my voice sounds calm. Level.

“And I’ve been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. They think I’ve had it for some time.”

Neither of us speaks, and in the distance I hear the steady dripping of the kitchen faucet. A robin flits across the window, a flash of red and brown. The silence continues on, like a thread being pulled. My mind is blank; it’s as if what my mother said has just bounced off its hard walls. I can’t take it in. Some part of my psyche won’t let me.

“I’m so sorry, Rachel.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.?

?? The words come automatically.

“This is the last thing you need—”