Agape Manor Hospice Calgary, November
The impossibly shiny corridors. The worn plaid chairs in the family lounge. She’s sitting with a rolled-up copy of a magazine in her hand, willing her breathing to slow, willing her heart to quiet, willing that thick nausea back down down down —
Gray touches her shoulder, “You’ll be all right, Jay, you’re doing great.”
Not caring, ready to plead grief’s derangement, she merely smiles through tears. Then she rises, twists the Guardian magazine containing that supposed tribute that’s really just a long advertisement for Leland’s own brilliance, and tosses it in the garbage can (not rubbish bin!) before returning to Mara’s bedside.
London, November
Being so caught up with the pre-Christmas publishing rush, the frenzied round of readings, events, launches, Leland nearly misses Jay’s email, her sad but not unexpected news. She states very clearly that she does not want him to attend the funeral. She reminds him that he has already said his goodbyes when he visited Mara in the rest home last summer, and even then her mom didn’t know him, didn’t remember, kept calling him by the wrong name. “My biggest regret, of course,” Jay writes, “is that I dismissed her even more readily than she dismissed herself. And my greatest fear is that I was so intent on becoming exactly NOT-HER that, in so many ways, I became her.”
Leland tries several drafts of his response: “Whatever her failings, she gave me the most wonderful gift, she gave me you — ” No, too sappy. “Whatever her indecisions, her refusal to act or choose, she gave rise to you, she opened the door for you.” None of it works, though, and he books a flight.