(That’s more little-girl thinking, Red, and no wishing and pretending is going to make it so)
Red started unpacking everything in Mama’s pack and sorting it into “keep” and “leave” piles. “Mama, you can’t carry all this. And you haven’t got any food in here, either.”
“Red, about this walk—” Dad started.
“Don’t say we’re not going,” Red said, not looking up at him but continuing with her task. “Don’t say that we’re going to stay here or wait until a patrol comes by because we all talked about it, we decided, and we’re going.”
“Cordelia,” Mama said.
Red had to look up then, because Mama never ever called her Cordelia unless she was really serious.
“Cordelia,” Mama said again, but softer now. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got the sickness. You know it, even if you’ve been trying to pretend that it’s not true.”
“We don’t know for sure,” Red said.
“Yes, we do,” Mama said. “I’m not going to make it to Grandma’s house. I’m not going to make it more than a night or two, if the reports are true. And the longer you all stay here with me the more likely it is that you’ll catch it, too.”
“Don’t tell me to go without you,” Red said, and she was surprised by the fierceness of her voice. “Don’t even try to tell me that.”
“Cordelia,” Mama said for the third time, and three times for anything makes it a spell, a curse, a whisper of magic that can’t be undone.
Red felt her Mama saying her real name deep in her heart, felt all the love and longing of it, the promise that a name was when a parent gave it to her child.
“I know you always hated that name,” Mama said, and she smiled a little. She was speaking slowly so she wouldn’t cough, and Red saw the lines of effort in between her eyes. “You wanted a pretty name, like the girls in your class, and Cordelia was fussy and old-fashioned. But I named you that because Cordelia was strong. She held fast, even when her father banished her for refusing to lie to him. She stayed true, and came to liberate Lear from her sisters even though he’d cast her out. She’s not around much in the play, but she made an impression. Just like you. Even when you were a newborn you made an impression.”
“She dies at the end,” Red said.
“We all die at the end,” Mama said. “What we do before the end is what counts. And you are strong, my Cordelia. You’re a fighter, and I know you’ll get where you want to go because you won’t have it any other way. But I won’t get there just because you want it to be so. I’m going to die right here in my house, Delia, in the place where I loved your father and raised you and Adam and built my life. My happy, happy life.”
Red’s fingers stopped moving over the objects on the table, clenched into fists. “I knew we shouldn’t have gone into town. I knew it.”
“Red, if your mother was going to get sick it could have happened anywhere,” Dad said.
“Don’t give me that hand-of-God bullshit,” Red said angrily. Mama winced, because she didn’t like swearing and she definitely didn’t like anything close to taking the Lord’s name in vain. “I don’t believe in any God guiding all this. We could have avoided this. We could have kept her safe.”
“Red, I know how you feel . . .” Dad said.
“No, you don’t,” Red said. “She’s your wife but she’s my mother, do you understand that? She’s my mother. I’m not going to get another mother. And I could have kept her safe if I’d insisted we stay here. We should have stayed here but nobody ever listens to me. It’s just paranoid Delia talking crazy talk about the government and killer bacteria.”
“Delia,” Mama said. “You have to let me go. You and Adam, you have to take your things and go because I am not going to make it. But you still can.”
“And you’ll stay here, too. Is that how it is? The two of you stay here and die while Adam and I go skipping into the woods like in some fairy tale, hand in hand with our bread crumbs,” Red said to her father, and she hated the way she sounded, so accusing.
If this was the last time she saw her parents, this should not be how they spoke to each other, but she couldn’t help it. It felt like they were giving up and that made her so angry, because they had a plan and they weren’t supposed to give up. Giving up was something for other families, not hers.
“How can I leave her?” Dad said, his face long and tired. “I don’t want to live without her.”
“I don’t want to either,” Red said. “But you’re telling me to do what you won’t do. You’re telling me and Adam to go on living and abandon you.”
“Do as I say, not as I do,” Dad said, with a little half-smile. “Isn’t that what parents always say? And I’m probably going to be sick soon, too.”
Red gave him a long, steady stare. “And what if you’re not? Are you just going to stay here by yourself and desiccate slowly? Or are you going to follow us?”
“No,” Dad said.
“No to which?” Red said.
“No to both.”
The unspoken hung there in between all of them, binding Dad and Red and Mama together. After Mama died, if Dad wasn’t sick, he would kill himself.
“This was not supposed to be how it would go,” Red said. “I knew the rules. I knew, and we were going to avoid all the stupidity that kills people in a story. We were not going to be like those people. We were all going to get to Grandma’s house safely. We were all going to live.”
“You can’t write this like a story, Red. This is life, and it doesn’t follow your rules.”
“‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’” Red said.
It just came out, a thing she had unconsciously memorized. She’d always liked Macbeth the best. She liked horror movies, and Macbeth was a proper horror story, with ghosts and witches and blood.
“I didn’t know you read Shakespeare, Delia,” Mama said, a little wonder in her voice. “But I would be hurt if that’s what you really believed—that life is worth nothing. Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean my life is worth nothing. I had you and Adam, didn’t I? You’re the piece of me that goes on.”
“Of course I read Shakespeare,” Red said, ignoring the rest of Mama’s statement. She didn’t want to be the one to go on. She wanted her mama to live. “My mother is a distinguished Shakespeare professor. How could I not?”
She’d read several plays in secret, because she wanted to understand her mother, but she didn’t want Mama the Professor quizzing her about it.
Mama put her arms around Red, crying now. “I always thought there was so much space between us, and as you got older it seemed the gulf got wider and wider. But you were always trying to close the gap, weren’t you? I see that now. I wish I’d seen it sooner.”
Red didn’t say anything, couldn’t, because all her tears were choking her and she didn’t want to weep, not now. And she realized that Mama must have been just as certain as Red that Red wouldn’t get sick, or else Mama wouldn’t have put her arms around Red’s neck like that and breathed so close to her face. Red was going to live, and instead of triumphant victory it suddenly felt like a horse she’d have to drag with her all the rest of her days. The only consolation in being a survivor was that you’d survived.