nanowritmo 15 / in this town

Revenge / Eurythmics









Although the next day on the phone she promised she would, and then later promised she did, Mother never gave permission for people at the hospital to talk to me. Still, it appeared my visit had set me back into her good graces, despite the cold reception I had gotten through most of it.



By the end of the first week Mother reported back on what the doctor’s had said: She had cancer. At that point, the word I was getting from Mother was that she had lung cancer, but that it had metastasized, so the full diagnosis wasn’t clear. They did not have a treatment plan as she had to see specialists and go through more tests. Of course it was terminal, but the true time frame she didn’t know. She thought she would be home with in a week and was planning on it. Especially if she had a fatal illness there were things she simply HAD to get done. She seemed in surprisingly calm spirits about this news.


As nonchalantly as Mother presented things to me, her friends were not so calm. In the same week I received another upset phone call from JP. She knew I had heard the news from mother, but was checking in with me too. I thanked her repeatedly.


JP told me Mother was happy I’d come and had said I did a lot of work. I had, but it would have been nice to have been thanked by Mother, not a third party through the grapevine. To hear JP talk, my mother was not expected to live through the month. I sensed that she was getting annoyed with me that I did not seem appropriately upset.


“Mother said she was going to be coming home…” I fished, and while JP agreed, her agitation didn’t relent. I tried hard in this conversation to get a gauge on things. Had my mother downplayed things to me? Had she played up things to JP? Was this hyper concern coming from JP? Mother? Doctors? What was real?


JP also had said Mother was planning on coming home the end of the week and had a long list of things she wanted to do. JP had told me she could help some, but wasn’t sure she could do all that Mother was asking. This seemed to be the real cause of her concerns. I tried to reassure her that at least I didn’t think that was an issue. But my attempts at getting real medical information and confirmations as to prognosis and details was fruitless.


It was around that time that I received phone calls from two others, as well. First was G., the one person whom I did consider Mother’s friend, but I barely knew. Of course over the years I had seen the woman on occasion and I had heard stories, but I don’t think until that point we had ever said more than five words. Still, I knew G. as a straight shooting, tell it like it is personality. Mother some times complained of her, that she would not take no for an answer and given her strong opinions there were at times no discussion, one could only acquiesce. G. was also the only one in the mix who had after two weeks refused to work in Mother’s office, saying it was too ‘crazy.’ These things had always made me wonder about G. and on some level like her.


G. was hearing the same versions of stories as I had. She had called me hoping for a straighter answer about both Mother’s diagnosis and prognosis and did not seem surprised when I said not only did I not know, but had no way to find out. When I carefully danced around the subject trying to communicate the fact that my mother often didn’t talk to me and when she did I couldn’t trust what was being said, it was not met with the shock, horror and denials that I received from most. Instead, G. was understanding and we both promised to keep the other informed.


The other call was from W. W. was a voice from my past. We had been neighbors in an apartment building for several years when I was in Middle School. Then he was a newly graduated Middle School teacher, transplanted from Kansas. A rotund, nerdy young man he was a practical joker who always made life interesting.


At one point he hid a box full of Styrofoam peanuts between my mattress and box spring. Like many pre-teens, cleaning my room did not happen with frequency and actually making the bed, even if I did change the sheets was rare. Several months later, I wandered into the kitchen, puzzled at how peanuts had gotten into my bed. He and mother were having coffee. Soon he was literally rolling on the floor with laughter.


“You are not a princess.” He teased and explained they had been there for almost a year.


A few months later I got revenge, calling him at his second job: night clerk at the only motel in town. I asked to book 8 adjoining rooms in the name of S. White.


In my mind, W. was the brother I never had. He took me to my first PG-13 rated movie, handed me tissues as I cried about the injustices of being twelve, gave me an awkward talk about what not to believe when boys said…. While he watched me grow up, I watched him get married, buy a house, have kids and move on from teaching to administration. W. gave me my first high school job, babysitting and my second, housecleaning. It had been a dozen or more years since we had spoken, but in my mind he was family. It didn’t matter. In W.’s case though, I knew that any suggestion that Mother might not be forthright would be met with scolding. She was still my mother. And since Mother was not great about keeping in touch with W, it was he who made me promise to keep him informed as he assured me if there was something he could do I only needed to ask. I assured him I would.