Chapter Twenty-Seven
ANN MARIE
Chicago, 2008
Christmas is a week away, and it’s evident that my mother feels like she’s dying. She’s asked me to grab the boxes of journals from my garage and is insisting we go through them.
“You refused to discuss my father and my past for decades, and now I’m supposed to sit and reminisce? You realize the doctor hasn’t started your countdown clock,” I remind her and remain hopeful. So desperately hopeful.
She swallows. Her throat is always dry. “You’re going to argue with your mother who has cancer?” The words come slowly.
I smile. “Please stop. I don’t care about any of it. I love you and just want to focus on you. You can barely talk as it is. Let’s not waste your breath on this right now,” I say, yet I’m eager for more clarity. There is a part of me that feels I deserve to know everything, and part of me that is scared of the discovery. But after reading about their time as newlyweds, I’ve been able to find comfort in the fact that my parents were in love once. I hope my kids will one day feel the same.
I’ve been trying to keep things light and humorous as she would want her life to be, but the truth is that I simply want to do anything to help my mom. She’s all I have besides my boys, and the thought of losing her has prohibited me from focusing on anything else. My attorneys got Todd’s attorneys to agree to let me take the house off the market for four months while I concentrate on Mom, but soon it will have to be sold, and according to Todd, “Buyers aren’t going to want to see a cancer patient on her deathbed in what could be their child’s bedroom.” Prince Charming has nothing on him.
She doesn’t want anyone’s pity; she’s never been that person. She dresses every morning as she always has, which makes it that much more difficult. To look at her, she’s not a sick woman, and she doesn’t deserve any of this. She deserves to travel, to experience being a grandmother and watch me eventually grow up and find happiness. To see a man look at me with love in his eyes again. She deserves affection and hugs and tennis games and happy hours and many more years on this earth. I can’t even fathom not being able to pick up the phone and hear her voice whenever I need to and just know that she’s listening on the other end. No one will ever listen to me like she will. No one will ever love me like she does, and I can’t bear the thought of that loss.
I try not to burden too many people with how I’m feeling, because it is a burden. People don’t mean for it to be, but it’s an uncomfortable topic. You can see the resistance in their faces and body language. Nobody has the perfect thing to say, and that’s OK. I’ve learned in a very short time that those perfect words simply don’t exist. I’ve taken to reading cancer blogs online and finding solace in similar experiences of strangers courageous enough to write about it. Misery loves company.
She waves to me to come to the couch where she’s sitting in our family room. Snoopy is at her feet and never more than an arm’s reach from her. He’s very sweet, but we’re still getting to know each other, Snoopy and me. Last week he ate three Baby Einstein DVDs and two pairs of Luke’s shoes, targeting the weakest in the house. There are overturned boxes of LEGO bricks—always so many—and Disney figurines all over the floor. On the table in front of her is a cardboard box filled with more journals and newspaper clippings, articles from her days as a writer for the Greenwich Times. Snoopy follows me with his eyes as I approach and scoot by him.
Mom taps the box.
“Are you sure?”
She rolls her eyes at me, and I think the minute she stops doing that, we’re in real trouble.
“I’m feeling good today, and I want to tell you more things about your father and what happened when you were little. You deserve to know.” She takes a breath. “It may help you understand what you’re going through with Todd.”
I kiss her cheek. “My father was a son of a bitch who left you when you were twenty-five and didn’t pay child support. Grandma told me years ago in her bedroom with a pitcher of martinis on her dressing table.”
She slaps my leg.
“I’m kidding. I know it will help me. Thank you for doing this.”
“He was a son of a bitch, but he also loved me once, very much,” she says. “This is important. If I leave this world before my time, I will regret not being here to answer these questions for you.” She looks at me and then turns away. I notice the nervous way she rubs her hands together.
“I love you, and I’ll do anything you want,” I say.
“I would like you to call him and tell him I’m sick.”
So many years have passed since the last time I spoke with my father that I’ve lost count. Fifteen? Eighteen? It was in high school. My history class was studying ancestry, and I was hit with a pang of persistence. I remember coming home—Mom and I lived in Greenwich at the time—and telling her that I wanted to speak to him. She’d laughed and brushed it off as she had over the years, but I was relentless—angry, even—at both my parents. How dare they have this history between them in which I was at the core, and not allow me to know about it? When I saw the conversation was upsetting her, I’d backed off for a day or two, but I didn’t give up until she agreed to help me get ahold of him with the help of his sister, my aunt Serine. My parents never spoke to each other. Serine and a team of attorneys were their only source of communication.
“Hello?” His voice had been deep and gruff.
“Hi, it’s Ann Marie,” I’d said. The connection had been a little crackly. He had moved from Beirut to Rome, and Mom heard a rumor that he’d remarried. We didn’t know if he had any other children at the time, but I learned later that he did.
“How are you?” he’d said after a pause.
“I’m good.”
I remember he’d asked what grade I was in and where we were living, but Mom forbade me to tell him or disclose our phone number, even though Serine knew how to find us. And then he asked me a question that I didn’t know how to process.
“Do you miss me?”
I’d had to think about it for a moment, which made me feel bad because I should’ve missed him, but how can you miss someone you don’t know? “I’m not sure,” I’d responded.
“I miss you very much. I mean that, Ann Marie. More than you will ever know.” He took a breath. “Thank you for calling. I have to go now.”
I’d had high hopes for that call. Even canceled an ice-skating lesson because I assumed I’d be on the phone for hours. “OK,” I’d said and looked at my mom, who had been reading a magazine at our kitchen table, doing a horrible job at pretending she wasn’t listening. We’d exchanged a look. “Well, I’ll talk to you another time. Bye.”
Mom had placed the magazine on the table and held her arms out for an embrace, but I’d walked right past her and slammed my bedroom door. That was the last time I’d talked to him.
I let out a sigh. “Why do you want him to know you’re sick?”
She crosses her legs at her ankles and scratches Snoopy’s head. “I just want him to know. I’ve been going through these books, and I would want to know if Gabriel were dying.”
My heart hurts. “Please stop saying that.”
She reaches for my hand. “Please stop denying it.”
That night when Mom and the boys are in bed, I yearn to be with her at happier times again and grab the journal I had read to Monica and pick up where I left off.
December 25, 1970
I was able to talk to Margaret this morning and made sure they were still doing the jelly-bean trail in my absence. I know how much Mother loves that tradition. We all do. No better way to find our Christmas stockings than at the end of a jelly-bean trail! I wish I could be there with them, chasing each other and kicking candy all over the floor for poor Jessie to clean up. I miss everyone terribly.
I feel a little sad as I turn the page.
I’m exhausted. The party was a lovely affair, and they had all of my favorite foods, which was a great treat. My feet were sore from dancing, and Gabriel rubbed them in the car on the ride home. He looked so handsome in a sport coat and tie, and I had to wear a frumpy long blouse because I can’t button my dress pants anymore. Time for some maternity clothes. Almost forgot! He bought me the most stunning emerald necklace. I nearly fell over backward when I opened it. It’s a piece I will treasure forever, and so many people complimented me on it this evening.
Lastly, I just met the most awful woman on the planet named Yasmine.
I shut the book and smile, craving jelly beans.