Chapter 44: Best possible outcomes.
Four days later — Friday
I bring fresh flowers with me — pink tulips from my mother’s own garden — when I arrive at the hospital a few days later. She’s there with my father for her radiation appointment, and although I wasn’t going to join them, I decided at the last minute to go. Gerry’s holding down Soul Mountain and it’s late afternoon, anyway — that interminable lull between the end of the lunch rush and the beginning of the dinner rush.
My father rises when I walk in, surprise etched on his face, and takes the flowers from me when I extend them in his direction.
“Look, rani,” he says, showing them to my mother. “Your tulips are blooming.”
She gives a pained nod, says nothing. Dad hands them to her gingerly and rubs her back.
As always, his love for my mother is as plain as the fucking sun in the spring sky, which is a bittersweet thing to see. It’s heartening and hopeful that two people can be together for so long and still love each other so much, but it underscores my feeling of being a complete fucking failure in the relationship department.
It underscores my loneliness.
Jenny and I haven’t talked since she signed the paperwork that puts the Phoenix house solely in my possession. And that’s probably good. It’s probably what needed to happen, but now that she’s stopped pursuing me and has given me the space I asked for, I find I miss her even more than I did before.
Amy and I, meanwhile, haven’t talked since the disastrous wedding reception. I don’t think she’s even still in town anymore. I could swing by the B&B to see if her rental car’s still there, but why? If it’s there, it’ll just hurt, because it will mean she still hasn’t forgiven me. If it’s not there, it’ll still hurt, because it will mean the first girl I had actual fucking feelings for in a long time is long gone.
My mother gazes at the tulips. “They’re from my garden?”
I come back to the present, nod.
She rotates them, inspecting, brushes a bit of dirt from a soft pink petal with an index finger. “Why didn’t I notice they were in bloom already?” she says, mostly to herself.
It’s hard seeing her like this, pale and grey from the chemo, hollow and wasting away from the radiation. The strongest woman I’ve ever known has finally stepped into the ring with an opponent she might not be able to beat.
She looks up, and my mother and I stare at each other in silence for a moment.
“How’re you feeling?” I ask. It’s a stupid question, but what the hell else am I supposed to say?
She shrugs noncommittally. “I’ve felt better.” She nods towards the flowers. “Did I ever tell you how your father courted me with flowers when we first met? Used to bring me fresh ones every single day.”
The mention of the story I’ve heard a million times before makes my eyes sting with tears. “Yeah. You might’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
She smiles at this. “That’s right. We’ve told you kids that story, haven’t we?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My dad gets up. “Maybe I can find something to put the flowers in?”
Momma hands him the flowers. “Cut the stems down while you’re at it,” she says, pointing to the place she wants them cut.
He heads for the nursing station.
I sit down. Clear my throat. “Momma? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Hmm?”
“I put my house in Phoenix on the market. The one Jenny and I lived in? Only listed it on Wednesday, but we’ve already had a few bites. I think I should make a nice profit on it.”
My mom knows me way too well. She frowns and cocks her head. “Why you sellin’ the house? You need money? I thought you had it rented, and you were making a profit from the rent?”
“I was making money from it, yeah. But listen, I’ve thinking… With your… hip, and with Dad spending so much time taking care of you… and…” I bite down hard on my tongue right before I say with the debt the restaurant’s in because she already made it clear once that topic isn’t up for discussion. “And with you guys getting close to retirement age anyway… and given that this was probably my last season playing basketball…”
Her frown gets skeptical as I trail off.
I’ve never been good at asking things of my parents. I love them. I know they love me. But it’s like Gerry told me when I came back to town — I’m not exactly the black sheep, but I’m pretty dark fucking grey. Positive communication, especially with my mother, hasn’t always been my strong suit over the years.
“Spit it out, girl,” is what she says. She’s giving me a real stink-eye now. “What you need to sell that house for?”
“I want to — I want to use the money to buy Soul Mountain,” I say in a rush, my stomach exploding with unexpected butterflies. No one but my mother has the power to turn me into a stammering, nervous idiot. “If you guys would be open to it…”
My dad picks that moment to walk back into the waiting room, tulips cut down to size and drooping out of a plastic cup he’s filled with water. Picking up on the tension immediately, he glances from me to Mom.
“Open to what?” he asks.
Momma heaves a big sigh, reaches for the tulips. She takes them and sticks them right under her nose, inhaling their fresh scent deeply before placing them on a stack of health and women’s magazines on the end table beside her. She pats the seat next to her.
“Sit down,” she orders.
I take a step forward, prepared to fit my big awkward body into yet another hospital waiting room chair, but she waves me off.
“Not you. Your father.”
Chastened, I retreat a few steps, make room for Dad. Clearly he’s wondering what’s up, because he sits down in the chair slowly and carefully like there’s a frigging bomb beneath it that he might set off if he moves too quickly.
My mother turns to him. “Our second daughter just offered to buy Soul Mountain.”
Dad looks up in surprise, from me back to her. “Buy the restaurant?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You guys deserve a real retirement, and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but with the shape the restaurant’s in now, you’re not going to be able to afford to retire until you’re both, like, fucking ninety or something.”
“Watch your language,” Momma says, lips puckering into a sour frown.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“I am surprised you would ask, Anika,” my father says. “You’ve never particularly liked Soul Mountain.”
I anticipated this question, so I already have an answer ready. “I’m surprised, too. But over the last week… I’ve realized a few things. I’ve missed being part of a family. Seeing the progress that Gerry’s made… seeing how big Sherry’s gotten…” I pause. “Seeing you guys. Seeing how much you love each other — and your kids, and this town, and…” My mind flashes to Jenny, to the daughter named after me, to the things I opted out on that now I have second thoughts about. “I haven’t been a part of this family — or had a real home, actually — in a really long time. And life’s short. So… I think I should do something about that. While I still have a chance.”
My last sentences fall into an abyss of pained silence, a silence that contains within it my mother’s unknown future. A future that might be shorter than any of us wanted it to be.
She’s the first one to speak. “And what if you change your mind? What if you start running the restaurant, only to realize it’s not what you want to do after all, hmm? Owning a restaurant… that’s not the same as a normal job, Ani. You do something like this because just you feel obligated, you’re settin’ yourself up to be unhappy later. And then Soul Mountain suffers.”
“I know it’s not like a normal job. But basketball’s going to be over for me soon.” I shrug. “I have to do something. But it’s not — I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like I want to own Soul Mountain just because I don’t have any better options. Being back here this week, it made me realize… there’s something special about Soul Mountain. It’s a part of this community, of Marcine. It gives something to people. And it should stay in the family. Gerry’s going back to school, Dutch is busy raising her kids, and PJ… PJ could do it, but he’d have to manage it from afar. So that leaves me. And… I’ve thought about it. A lot. It’s what I want to do. Really.”
Instead of responding to me, my parents meet eyes, stare at each other for a long few seconds in silence. After a lifetime of watching them do this, I know they’re having an entire, complicated conversation in those few moments of subtle eye flickers and twitched lips. But I’ve never been a part of their psychic inner circle, so all I can do is stand there and wait for an answer.
Momma turns back to me. “We’ll think about it.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing that We’ll think about it was the best possible outcome I could’ve hoped for, and much better than the outright No I halfway expected.
It ends up taking them two weeks and five more radiation treatments before they give me a definitive answer. By then, Mom’s losing weight rapidly. She has no appetite, and what Dad’s able to force into her she often throws back up, anyway. Life in my basement room is punctuated by the sound of my father’s words drifting down from the kitchen —
“But you have to eat, rani.”
When they get home from the hospital after the fifth treatment in six days, they call me at the restaurant.
“Anika?” my father says. “Your mother and I have thought about your offer on Soul Mountain. We agree. We will sell it to you.”