Hilary
I slide it back to the guard. “Can I get into the visitors’ room? I just need something from the vending machine.”
She holds out her hand. “What do you need?”
I fish in my pocket and hand her a dollar. “An Oh Henry!”
She nods and brings the bill to the door, where she hands it through to the guard inside and mutters something that I can’t hear. A minute later, the guard is back with an Oh Henry!, passing it through the door. The guard at the desk hands it to me and I wrap my note around it.
“Can you make sure she gets this?” I ask.
She nods. “I’ll have someone bring it right in for her.”
“Thanks,” I say, turning for the lockers.
“She’s really proud of you, you know.”
I look back at her. “What?”
“She talks about you all the time . . . says you’re going to be a big Broadway actress. She’s even petitioned for a furlough for your opening night.”
I just stare at her. She’s got to have Mom confused with some other inmate. “My mom is Roseanne McIntyre.”
She squint-smiles, like she thinks she’s said too much. “I know.” She holds up the Oh Henry! wrapped in my note. “I’ll make sure she gets this.”
I collect all my stuff and turn for the door in a daze. Mom has cancer. I knew she looked bad over the last few months, older every time I saw her, but cancer? My insides pull into a hard knot.
Mom has cancer . . . and she’s proud of me.
I walk back to the train station thinking about my audition on Tuesday. If I get this part . . . if they give Mom the furlough, will she be around to come to my opening night?
I have to get this part.
“You want me. I know you do,” I say, deciding to rehearse my lines again.
I pause where my male counterpart will respond that, yes, he wants me, and mime unbuttoning the top button of my blouse.
“Then take me,” I say with an air of desperation.
Mime unbuttoning another button as he responds that it’s not right for us to give in to our desire. There are other people we need to consider.
A tear in my eye. “Who cares what’s right. We need each other like oxygen. I can’t live another day without you.”
Unbutton. We must exercise restraint, he responds.
“No! I can’t! I can’t wait for you another day. Tomorrow will swallow us whole if we let it.”
Unbutton.
“We can either live life scared,”
unbutton,
“or live life.”
Unbutton.
“There are no other choices.”
Slide shirt off shoulders.
Mom has cancer.
I hang my head and blow out a long white breath that trails behind me in the cold December air. Last time I was here she said something about if I loved her I’d have brought her cigarettes. I remember thinking that I didn’t. I was wrong. Pretending I didn’t really care—that I was just visiting out of some family obligation—felt safer, I guess. But the truth is, regardless of everything, she’s my mother and I love her. I feel the threat of tears and swallow them.
When I make the train station, I have a half hour till the next train back to the city. I go over my lines again, but I can’t focus.
Dev blasts out of my bag and I grab my phone, thinking it must be Mom, but when I look at the screen, it’s Jess. I press the call button, and even before I say anything Jess is already screeching in my ear, “Igotthepart Igotthepart Igotthepart!”
“Wow, Jess! That’s fabulous.” And I really am happy for her. Really. “Tell me the whole deal.”
“Well, you know how we auditioned for those chorus spots, right?”
“Yeah.”
“One of the secondaries bagged out . . . got offered something else off-Broadway, so they offered me her part!” She squeals the last word.
My heart leaps out of my chest. It’s what every one of us hopes for, some fluky thing that will be our lucky break. “Holy shit, Jess! That’s amazing.”
“I know! I have lines and everything!”
“Solos?”
“Only one small one as part of a bigger piece, but it’s something.”
I breathe out a breath and sink deeper into my seat. “That’s a hella lot more than something, Jess. That’s huge. Holy shit.”
“I know!” she shrieks, and I can almost see her jumping up and down, her ponytail swinging behind her.
If I were there, I’d be jumping with her. “So what’s the deal? When do rehearsals start?”
“After Christmas, and we open in February.”
“We’re going out this week to celebrate.”
“Definitely! I’ve got to go call my mom, but we’ll talk later, okay?”
Something in me warms at the realization she called me first, even before her mom. “Yeah, sweetie. Talk later. Congrats.”
“Bye, Hil!”
I take a breath as I lower the phone and hang up. “Break a leg.”
My mom has cancer.
Damn.
IT’S OVER TWO hours later, and I’ve made all the transfers and am standing at Mallory’s door, but now I find myself hesitating.
She doesn’t even know I’ve been going to see Mom. How am I going to do this?
But she needs to know. If Mom’s dying, Mallory needs to get over herself and go see her before it’s too late. I’ve been stalking my phone, hoping to hear from Mom, but so far, nothing. I don’t even know what the deal is. Maybe she’s fine. Maybe it’s, like, a mole or something that they hacked off.
. . . too weak from the chemo. . .
That sounds like more than a mole.
I press the bell. When no one answers, I pull out my key and let myself in. I’ve no sooner settled into the couch and turned on the TV than I hear the garage door. A minute later, Henri and Max come tumbling through the door into the kitchen, fighting over some Happy Meal toy, with Mallory just behind them.
“Auntie!” Henri squeals, running across the family room and tackling me.
“Hey, buddy. How was school?” I ask, ruffling his sable mop.
“Jeremy Timmons brought his tarantula and we watched it eat a cricket!” he says as Max disappears up the hall.
My stomach squirms a little and I lower myself back onto the couch. “Cool. Was it gross?”
“It ate the whole thing! No guts left over or anything!” he says, clamoring onto the couch next to me.
“I don’t know whether eating the whole thing, or left-over guts is grosser,” I tell him.
Max appears a minute later with a laptop and settles onto the floor on his stomach.
“To what do we owe the honor?” Mallory says, coming out of the kitchen with a sliced apple and peanut butter for the boys.
“We need to talk.”
She looks up at me as she set the plate on the coffee table, and concern flits over her face. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Mom, Mal—”
But that’s as far as I get before her hand goes up and her face turns to stone. Her whole posture changes at the mention of Mom, stiffening into something hard and unforgiving. “Henri,” she says, “take your snack and you and Max find something to play with in your room, okay?”
“Are you okay, Mom?” Henri asks.
She nods and tries to smile, but it’s pinched. “I just need to talk to your auntie for a minute, ’kay baby?”
“ ’Kay,” he says. He picks up the plate of apples and tugs at Max’s shoulder.
Max grabs his laptop and Henri gives me a concerned glance over his shoulder as they make their way down the hall.
“Is she trying to get ahold of you?” Mallory hisses the second their door closes. “Because if she is, don’t fall for it. Don’t call her back. She’ll tell you some fancy story to suck you in, but she’s a liar, Hilary. You can’t believe anything she says.”