The Great Alone Read online

  “Doctor?”

  Dr. Prasher pointed to one of the images. “You see these large white areas? Here. Here. And here? You see this white curve? The shadow along your spine? It is all highly suggestive of lung cancer. We will need more tests to be sure, but…”

  Wait. What?

  How could this be happening?

  Oh, right. She was a smoker. It was lung cancer. For years, Leni had nagged Cora about the habit, warned her of this very scenario. She had laughed and said, “Hell, baby girl, I could die crossing the street.”

  “The CT scan shows a mass on your liver, which indicates metastasis,” Dr. Prasher said, and kept talking.

  The words became a tangle in Cora’s mind: consonants and vowels, a series of breaths taken and released.

  Dr. Prasher went on, using ordinary words in an extraordinary, impossible-to-grasp context. Bronchoscopy, tumor, aggressive.

  “How long do I have?” Cora asked, realizing belatedly that she’d interrupted the doctor in the middle of something.

  “No one can tell you that, Ms. Grant. But your cancer appears to be aggressive. Stage-four lung cancer that has already metastasized. I know that’s a hard thing to hear.”

  “How long do I have?”

  “You’re a relatively young woman. We will treat it aggressively.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s always hope, Ms. Grant.”

  “Is there?” Cora said. “There’s also karma.”

  “Karma?”

  “There was a poison in him,” Cora said to herself, “and I drank it up.”

  Dr. Prasher frowned, leaned forward. “Evelyn, this is a disease, not retribution or payback for sin. Those are Dark Ages thoughts.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well.” Dr. Prasher stood, frowning. “I want to schedule a bronchoscopy for this afternoon. It should confirm the diagnosis. Is there someone you’d like to call?”

  Cora got to her feet, feeling unsteady enough that she had to grasp the back of the chair. The pain at the base of her spine leaped out again, worse now that she knew what it was.

  Cancer.

  I have cancer.

  She couldn’t imagine saying it out loud.

  She closed her eyes, exhaled. Imagined—remembered—a little girl with wild red hair and chubby little hands and freckles like cinnamon flakes, reaching out for her, saying, Mama, I love you.

  Cora had gone through so much. Lived when she could have died. She’d imagined her life a hundred different ways, practiced a thousand ways to atone. She’d imagined growing old, growing senile, laughing when she was supposed to cry, using salt instead of sugar. In her dreams, she’d seen Leni fall in love again and get married and have another baby.

  Dreams.

  In a breathtaking instant, Cora’s life crashed into focus, became small. All of her fears and regrets and disappointments fell away. There was just one thing that mattered; how could she not have known it from the beginning? Why had she spent so much time searching for who she was? She should have known. Always. From the very beginning.

  She was a mother. A mother. And now …

  My Leni.

  How would she ever say goodbye?

  * * *

  LENI STOOD OUTSIDE the closed door to her mother’s hospital room, trying to calm her breathing. She heard noises all around her, up and down the hall, people hurrying on rubber-soled shoes, carts being rolled from room to room, announcements coming over the loudspeakers.

  Leni reached for the silver metal door handle, gave it a twist.

  She walked into a large room, separated into two smaller spaces by curtains that hung from metal runners on the ceiling.

  Mama was sitting up in bed, leaning back into a pile of white pillows. She looked like an antique doll, with eggshell skin stretched too tightly across her delicately crafted face. Her collarbone peered out above the neckline of her oversized hospital gown, the skin on either side hollowed out.

  “Hey,” Leni said. She leaned down, kissed her mother’s soft cheek. “You could have told me you were going to the doctor’s. I would have come with you.” She pushed the feathery gray-blond hair out of her mother’s eyes. “Do you have pneumonia?”

  “I have stage-four lung cancer. Only it’s a sneaky little shit and has invaded my spine and liver, too. It’s in my blood.”

  Leni literally took a step back. She almost lifted her hands to block her face. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, baby girl. It’s not good. The doctor was not particularly hopeful.”

  Leni wanted to scream, STOP!

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Cancer.

  “A-are you in pain?”

  No. That wasn’t what she wanted to say. What did she want to say?

  “Ah,” Mama said with a wave of her veiny hand. “I’m Alaska-tough.” She reached past Leni for her cigarettes.

  “I’m not sure they allow that in here.”

  “I’m pretty sure they don’t,” Mama said, her hand trembling as she lit up. “But soon I’ll start chemotherapy.” She tried to smile. “So I can look forward to baldness and nausea. I’m sure it will be a good look for me.”

  Leni moved closer. “You’ll fight it, right?” she said, blinking back tears she didn’t want her mother to see.

  “Of course. I’ll kick this bitch’s ass.”

  Leni nodded, wiped her eyes.

  “You’ll get better. Grandpa will get you the best care in the city. He’s got that friend who’s on the board at Fred Hutch. You’ll be—”

  “I’ll be fine, Leni.”

  Mama touched Leni’s hand. Leni stood there, connected to her mother by breath and touch and a lifetime of love. She wanted to say just the right thing, but what would that be, and how could a few flimsy words matter in a cancer sea? “I can’t lose you,” Leni whispered.

  “Yeah,” Mama said. “I know, baby girl. I know.”

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  It’s only been a few days since I wrote to you. Funny how much life can change in a week.

  Not funny ha-ha. That’s for sure.

  Last night, as I lay in my comfy bed, in my store-bought pajamas, I found myself with a lot of things I didn’t want to think about. And so I found my way to you.

  I don’t think we talked enough about your mother’s death. Maybe that was because we were kids, or maybe it was because you were so traumatized. But we should have talked about it later, when we were older. I should have told you I would listen to your pain forever. I should have asked you for memories.

  I see now how grief becomes thin ice. I haven’t lost my mom yet, but a single word has pushed her away from me, created a barrier between us that never existed before. For the first time ever, we are lying to each other. I can feel it. Lying to protect each other.

  But there’s no protection, is there?

  She has lung cancer.

  God. I wish you were here.

  Leni put down her pen. This time, the act of writing to Matthew was no comfort at all.

  It made her feel worse, in fact. More alone.

  How pathetic, that she had no one to talk to about this. That her best friend had no idea who she was.

  She folded the letter up and put it in the shoe box with all the others she’d written over the years and never sent.

  * * *

  THAT SUMMER, Leni watched cancer erase her mother. First to go was her hair, then her eyebrows. Next was the firm line of her shoulders; they began to droop. Then she lost her posture and her stride. Finally, cancer took away movement altogether.

  By late July, after cancer had erased so much, the truth was revealed by her latest CT scan. Nothing they had done had helped.

  Leni sat quietly beside her mother, holding her hand when they learned that the treatment had failed. The cancer was everywhere, an enemy on the move, hacking through bones, destroying organs. There was no discussion about trying again or fighting it.

  Instead, they moved back into the Golliher house, set up a hospital bed in the sunroom, where light flowed through the windows, and contacted hospice care.

  Mama had fought for her life, fought harder than she had fought for anything, but cancer did not care about effort.

  Now Mama slowly, slowly angled up in the bed to a slouchy sitting position. An unlit cigarette trembled in her veiny hand. She could no longer smoke, of course, but she liked to hold them. There were a few strands of hair on the pillow, running like gold veins on white cotton. An oxygen tank stood by the bed; clear tubes inserted into Mama’s nostrils helped her breathe.

  Leni got up from her place beside the bed and put down the book she’d been reading aloud. She poured Mama a drink of water and offered it. Mama reached for the plastic cup. Her hands were shaking so badly Leni placed her own hands over her mother’s, helped her hold on to the cup. Mama took a hummingbird sip and coughed. Her bird-thin shoulders shook so hard Leni swore she heard the bones rattling beneath the thin skin.

  “I dreamed of Alaska last night,” Mama said, slumping back into the pillows. She looked up at Leni. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

  Leni felt a shock at hearing the word mentioned so casually. By tacit agreement, they hadn’t spoken about Alaska—or Dad or Matthew—in years, but perhaps it was inevitable that they would circle back to the beginning as the end neared.

  “A lot of it was great,” Leni said. “I loved Alaska. I loved Matthew. I loved you. I even loved Dad,” she admitted quietly.

  “There was fun. I want you to remember that. And adventure. When you remember, I know it’s easy to pull the bad up. Your dad’s violence. The excuses I made. My sad love for him. But there was good love, too. Remember that. Your dad loved you.”

  This hurt more than Leni could bear, but she saw how much her mama needed to say these words. “I know,” Leni said.

  “You’ll tell MJ all about me, okay? You tell him how I never sang the words to any song right and how I wore hot pants and sandals and I looked good in that shit. You tell him how I learned to be Alaska-tough even though I didn’t want to, and how I never let the bad stuff kill me, how I kept going. You tell him I loved his mother from the moment I saw her and that I’m proud of her.”

  “I love you, too, Mama,” Leni said, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, but all they had now was words—too many of them—and too little time.

  “You’re a good mother, Leni, even as young as you are. I was never as good a mom as you are.”

  “Mama—”

  “No lies, baby girl. I don’t have time.”

  Leni leaned down to smooth the few hairs back from Mama’s forehead. They were fine as goose down, wispy. This whittling down of her was unbearable. With every exhalation, it seemed, Mama lost a little more of her life force.

  Mama reached slowly for the nightstand. The top drawer glided open with the soundlessness of expensive crafting. With a shaking hand, she pulled out a letter, folded crisply into thirds. “Here.”

  Leni didn’t want to take it.

  “Please.”

  Leni took the letter, unfolded it carefully, and saw what was written on the page, in a scrawling, barely legible handwriting. It read:

  I, Coraline Margaret Golliher Allbright, shot my husband, Ernt Allbright, when he was beating me.

  I weighed his dead body down with animal traps and sank it in Glass Lake. I ran away because I feared going to prison, even though I believed then—and now—that I saved my life that night. My husband had been abusive for years. Many Kaneq residents suspected the abuse and tried to help. I didn’t allow it.

  His death is on my hands and on my conscience. Guilt has turned itself into cancer and is killing me. God’s justice.

  I killed him and hid the body. I did it all alone. My daughter had nothing to do with it.

  Sincerely, Coraline Allbright

  Beneath her mother’s shaky signature was her grandfather’s signature both as an attorney and as a witness, and a notary seal.

  Mama coughed into a ball of tissue. She drew in a phlegmy breath and looked up at Leni. For a terrible, exquisite moment, time stopped between them, the world caught its breath. “It’s time, Leni. You’ve lived my life, baby girl. Time to live your own.”

  “By calling you a murderer and pretending I’m an innocent? That’s how you want me to start a life?”

  “By going home. My dad says you can pin it all on me. Say you knew nothing about it. You were a kid. They’ll believe you. Tom and Marge will back you up.”

  Leni shook her head, too overwhelmed by sadness to say anything more than, “I won’t leave you.”

  “Ah, baby girl. How many times have you had to say that in your life?” Mama sighed tiredly, gazed up at Leni through sad, watery eyes. Her breath was wheezing, labored. “But I am going to leave you. It’s the thing we can’t run from anymore. Please,” she whispered. “Do this for me. Be stronger than I ever was.”

  * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER, Leni stood just outside of the sunroom, listening to Mama’s wheezing breaths as she talked to Grandma.

  Through the open door, Leni heard the word sorry in her grandmother’s trembling voice.

  A word Leni had come to despise. She knew that in the past few years Mama and Grandma had already said what they needed to say to each other. They’d talked about the past in their bits-and-pieces way. Never all at once, never one big end-up-crying-and-hugging moment, but a constant brushing up of the past, reexamining actions and decisions and beliefs, offering apologies, forgiveness. All of it had brought them closer to who they were, who they’d always been. Mother and daughter. Their essential, immutable bond—fragile enough to snap at a harsh word a long time ago, durable enough to survive death itself.

  “Mommy! There you are,” MJ said. “I looked everywhere.”

  MJ skidded into place, bumping her hard. He was holding his treasured copy of Where the Wild Things Are. “Grammy said she’d read to me.”

  “I don’t know, baby boy—”

  “She promised.” On that, he pushed past her, moving into the sunroom like John Wayne looking for a fight. “Did you miss me, Grammy?”

  Leni heard her mama’s quiet laughter. Then she heard the clang and squeak of MJ hitting the oxygen tank.

  Moments later, Grandma exited the sunroom, saw Leni, and came to a stop. “She is asking for you,” Grandma said quietly. “Cecil has already been in.”

  They both knew what that meant. Yesterday, Mama had been unresponsive for hours.

  Grandma reached out, held Leni’s hand tightly, and then let go. With a last, harrowingly sad look, Grandma walked down the hallway and up the stairs to her own bedroom, where Leni imagined she let herself cry for the daughter she was losing. They all tried so hard not to cry in front of Mama.

  Through the open sunroom door, Leni heard MJ’s high-pitched, “Read to me, Grammy,” and Mama’s inaudible reply.

  Leni glanced down at her watch. Mama couldn’t handle much more than a few minutes with him. MJ was a good boy, but he was a boy, which meant bouncing and chatter and nonstop motion.

  Mama’s thready voice floated on the sunlit air, bringing a flood of memories with it. “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another…”

  Leni was as drawn to her mother’s voice as she’d always been, maybe more so now, when every single moment mattered and every breath was a gift. Leni had learned to submerge fear, push it down to a quiet place and cover it with a smile, but it was there always, the thought, Is that breath the end? Is that the one?

  Here, at the end, it was impossible to believe in a last-minute reprieve. And Mama was in such pain, even hoping for her to survive another day, another hour, felt selfish.

  Leni heard her mother say, “The End,” and the words carried a sharp double meaning.

  “One more story, Grammy.”

  Leni entered the sunroom.

  Mama’s hospital bed had been placed to take advantage of the sunlight through the window. It almost looked like a fairy-tale bed in deep woods, lit by the sunlight, surrounded by hothouse flowers.

  Mama herself was Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, her lips the only place left to have any color. The rest of her was so small and colorless, she seemed to melt into the white sheets. The clear plastic tubes looped from her nostrils, around her ears, and went on to the tank.

  “That’s enough, MJ,” Leni said. “Grammy needs a nap.”

  “Aw, crap,” he said, his little shoulders dropping.

  Mama laughed. It turned into a cough. “Nice language, MJ.” Her voice was a whispery sound.

  “Grammy’s cough is bleeding again,” MJ said.

  Leni pulled a tissue from the box by her mother’s bed and leaned close to dab the blood from her mother’s face. “Give Grammy’s hand a kiss and go, MJ. Grandpop has a new model airplane for you guys to put together.”

  Mama’s hand fluttered up from the bed. The whole back of her hand was bruised from IVs.

  MJ leaned close, banging the bed so hard it jostled her mother, clanging a knee into the oxygen tank. He kissed the bruised hand carefully.

  When he was gone, Mama sighed, lay back into the pillows. “The kid is a bull moose. You should get him into ballet or gymnastics.” Her voice was almost too quiet to hear. Leni had to lean close.

  “Yeah,” Leni said. “How are you?”

  “I’m tired, baby girl.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m so tired, but … I can’t leave you. I … can’t. I don’t know how. You are it for me, you know. The great love of my life.”

  “Peas in a pod,” Leni whispered.

  “Two of a kind.” Mama coughed. “The thought of you being alone, without me…”

  Leni leaned down, kissed her mother’s soft forehead. She knew what she had to say now, what her mother needed. One always knew when to be strong for the other. “I’m okay, Mama. I know you’ll be with me.”

  “Always,” Mama whispered, her voice barely heard. She reached up, her hand shaking, and touched Leni’s cheek. Her skin was cold. The effort it took for that single motion was evident.

  “You can go,” Leni whispered.

  Mama sighed deeply. In the sound, Leni heard how long and how hard her mother had been fighting this moment. Mama’s hand fell from Leni’s face, thumped to the bed. It opened like a flower, revealing a bloody wad of tissue. “Ah, Leni … you’re the love of my life … I worry…”

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