‘There is something else, Sofia.’
‘Gómez has already told me.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘That he’s refunding the money.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He is a very good doctor. He doesn’t have to do that.’
She continued talking. At first I thought she was saying Sophocles. She repeated Sophocles about three times. I realized she was saying ‘oesophageal’. Oesophageal.
And then she told me the results of the endoscopy.
A long time passed. Her gangster watch ticking. The waves breaking on the sand.
I rested my head on her shoulder. ‘It can’t be true, Mum.’ Is it easier to surrender to death than to life?
I turned to look at her.
She held my gaze for a long time. Her eyes were dry.
‘You have such a blatant stare,’ she said, ‘but I have watched you as closely as you have watched me. It’s what mothers do. We watch our children. We know our gaze is powerful so we pretend not to look.’
The tide was coming in with all the medusas floating in its turbulence. The tendrils of the jellyfish in limbo, like something cut loose, a placenta, a parachute, a refugee severed from its place of origin.