Early morning, Sunday. My first full day without Nick. I go downstairs to get Jake his breakfast of kibble, a half slice of bread, and low-fat milk. I make coffee, measuring out the grounds, then pouring the boiling water methodically over them.
Quiet. I open the living room blinds to a gray, empty street, nothing moving outside. Then, coffee mug in hand, I ascend the stairs, old Jake behind me, so that I can work.
I pull out the notes for my novel, but I’m not inspired. Again, I give myself permission to write absolutely anything. Free associate, see what comes up. As the Buddhists say, turn off my judging mind.
When I teach creative writing, I tell my students that they should write their passions. If the writer doesn’t care, the reader won’t. I ask them to open themselves, to be present, discover their hearts, feel everything, judge nothing. No taboos.
I rise from my laptop to stroke Jake, already asleep on my study futon. I think back to when we adopted him. He was about eighteen months old. Will, then around eleven, found him on a Golden Retriever rescue site. We traveled three hours to Charlotte to meet him and his foster family and fell in love. Now he has benign tumors all over his body. A lumpy old dog. I pet his head; Jake wags his tail. Thump, thump against the cushion.
My cell phone rings, and I think about not taking the call. But when I see it’s Mom, I answer, sitting down now on my desk chair.
“Dennis has to have surgery,” my mother launches in. But the connection isn’t good. Her voice crackles, and I lose her next few words. I hear road noise, a truck, a car horn. She’s probably walked out of the apartment.
“What happened?” I stare at the Word screen, a rectangle of white pixels.
“They found a small mass in his groin, below his stomach. They’ve got to go in. His doctor called yesterday, Saturday afternoon, after he received the test results.”
“What about the chemo?”
“On hold,” she says. If this conversation had happened twenty years ago, I’d hear her drag on a cigarette. But she finally gave them up at sixty-two, after her own cancer scare.
I think of her leather glove with its hole in the finger. The smell of it, the smell of my mother—hair spray, cologne, cigarettes.
“When?” I ask. Jake slowly gets off the couch, heads to the bathroom, where he likes to drink water from the toilet bowl. In moments, I hear his lapping.
“Thursday. Pre-op on Wednesday, bloodwork on Monday or Tuesday, I think. Not sure. Dennis took the call, and I might not be remembering right.” I hear her sigh. A truck rattles in the Florida distance. A moving truck, I imagine, and we’re silent for a moment until it passes. I invent a Hispanic couple sitting in the front seat. They’re in their late twenties, a bit tired, but happy to be leaving their rental apartment and moving into their first house. The woman is pregnant; she wipes her sweaty brow, smiles.
“Rae. You still there? Mom asks.
“Of course,” I answer. “Keep me posted about the surgery.” Then I add, “How are you doing? How are you holding up?”
“Fine. You know. It’s harder on Hannah because she’s young.” Pause, more traffic, then, “I’ve got to go. Wanted to let you know. I’ll call again soon. Love you.”
“Okay. Love you, too, Mom. Remember, call.”
“Of course.” Click.
I hang up and think of Hannah, Dennis’s younger daughter, whom I’ve never met. She must be twelve or thirteen by now. I’ve heard she’s smart, does well in school, but I don’t know much about her.
It’s light now but overcast: a steel-colored sky with the promise of rain. In front of me, the computer screen beckons, and I find myself quickly back at work, typing:
Mary Jo left the room after the argument. Sal, who’d become violent, had slammed his fist through the sheetrock wall by the door where she’d stood. He didn’t hit her. He never hit her, just broke furniture, damaged walls, shattered Mary Jo’s best china, the set her grandmother had given her as a wedding present.
But then I stop. My well-planned novel dissolves. I have no energy for Mary Jo. She was going to work today at the middle school cafeteria, planning to confide in a female co-worker. Eventually, she will leave her abusive husband, find love elsewhere. But I no longer like her nor feel sympathy for her rotten marriage.
What was I thinking? How can I write this story? How can I create this character and write about her life? I delete a sentence, add another. But it’s no good. My words stare back at me, stale, dull, mocking, inauthentic. I delete all that I’ve written.
I get up to pace. Then sit down again and write about my mother. I see her, smell her hair. I think about putting my hand in her glove, then notice it’s with me, on my desk. I must have carried it upstairs.
When I return to the keyboard, I’m typing a description of her. She’s in her thirties. Her dyed black hair is teased away from her face. It’s stiff with hairspray, and I’m not allowed to touch it. She stands in black leather high-heels and wears a well-coordinated outfit: black slacks, a lavender blouse, purple earrings in the shape of small flowers.
Now, I imagine my mother is with me in my study. Her heels tap against the hardwood floor as she crosses the room to pet Jake, who wags his tail at her. She’s no longer in her thirties, but ageless—she’s all women, and the woman I can never be.
“Mom,” I say. But she won’t look at me. So, I turn to the keyboard and type her name: Edna Bloom.
A sentence, then two. A paragraph, a page. Words fly from my fingers. I tell my mother to talk to me. She does. I ask her what went wrong, and she begins to tell me.