The world could be as small as it was cruel. She wondered at God sometimes, his schemes, his plans, his plots, his sense of order. Maybe he was just like the Bible—beautiful and overwritten and redundant and badly in need of editing.
Andrés Segovia and Dave Duncan. It made so much sense, now. Not that anything made any sense.
She walked outside in her bare feet and searched her garden. The century plant would bloom this year. It hadn’t bloomed since Mister was a boy. The green stalk was reaching out to the morning sky. She shut her eyes. She vaguely remembered her dream and wondered if it had come to her last night. Perhaps it had. She couldn’t tell—a sure sign that the dream was too familiar.
She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head of everything that was in it—Andrés and Dave, her work, the lingering smell of cigarettes on her skin.
At morning mass, she prayed for Mister. It wasn’t fair to put him off. She would have to tell him about her conversation with her doctor. She wondered if it would be easier to tell him if they got along better. Not that getting along had anything to do with the measure of his love. She knew that Mister loved her, knew he would do anything for her—if she asked. That was the problem; she had always hated to ask. Would telling him that she had cancer sound too much like she was begging for affection?
She tried to picture his face as she told him. He was, in the end, a good man. Every ounce Sam’s son. He would object to her early exit. He would demand to know why she was already waving the white flag of surrender so soon after the first shot had been fired. Already you are counting yourself among the dead. Already you are casting yourself into the bin of history. How can you let death take you so easily? Even the roots of a dying tree cling to the soil that it loves. That is what he would say.
He would object to the way she had decided to handle the whole matter. He would demand that she go to another doctor, and assure her that the other doctor would expose the ineptitude of the first. He would debate and object and look for loopholes. He would argue with her—and for once, the argument would be a beautiful thing.
He would shout at the unfairness and randomness of this whole scenario. He would say that they were in this fight together. He would say that together they could defeat anything. Cancer was a puny, unworthy enemy. They were sure to conquer it. He would urge and cajole and beg her to roll up her sleeves, Get in the ring Grace, fight, damnit! He would volunteer to be her manager, her trainer, her anything she needed him to be. And they would be close again, mother and son—closer than they had ever been.
But how would she phrase it? There had to be an aesthetic to this. She would tell him over a glass of wine. Your mother is dying. Or she would invite him and Liz to dinner—finally she would have them both over to her house. And over dessert and a cup of coffee, she would tell them. Delicately. Matter-of-factly. Flippantly. Serenely, like a nun taking final vows. I’m going to buy the farm. I’m going on a long cruise over the river Styx. I’m going to see Sam. I’m leaving the country and I’m packing light. And really, the air’s gotten so bad that I’ve decided I simply don’t want to breathe anymore. I’m going to see Sam. God is honking out front. Look, Mister, I have cancer. I’m going to see Sam. I’m walking into the light. I’m going to see Sam. I’m going to see Sam. I’m going to see Sam. No matter what she said, it would sound horrible and trite and sad and self-pitying and theatrical and sincere and moving and melodramatic and manipulative all at the same time. Sam had been right. Words were a great poverty when confronted with the pleasures and the limitations of the body. A touch said more. A look. But she knew her son better than to communicate the news with a look—though she had no doubt she was capable of communicating just about anything without the use of words. But hadn’t she and Sam taught Mister that words were salvific? Hadn’t they used that exact phrase? It was too late to tell him that they had been mistaken. He had learned his lessons well, their Mister.
I thank you for this son of mine, whom I know and do not know. She looked up at Jesus. She stared at the flames of the sacred heart. My heart is hard. Can you make it tender?