On Friday after work, I finally give in and tell Mom what I’m looking for.
She blinks a few times, like she’s thinking really hard. There’s a Sandra Bullock movie paused on the TV. It’s not The Lake House. “And the one you found has a checked box next to Mabel’s name?” she repeats.
“Yeah. Why, you know something about it?”
She shakes her head. “No. What did it say?”
I tell her what the first journal revealed, and she says, “I’m not surprised.”
“What do you mean? What are you not surprised about?”
“That she wanted to have the baby even though she knew she might not make it.”
“What?”
“It makes sense, Ry. Think about it. She wanted to feel like she had done something important with her life. That’s how I felt when I was pregnant with you, even after I knew your father wasn’t going to be around to help me. Suddenly it was as if my life was so much bigger than just me. And I can only imagine how much stronger that feeling must be when you don’t think you have much time left.”
I drop my head back against the couch and stare up at the ceiling. “But she didn’t tell anyone she didn’t think she had much time left! She kept saying how she would go back to treatment after the baby was born. She made me believe she thought everything would be fine! She lied, Mom.”
Mom doesn’t say anything. She’s probably trying to figure out what she could possibly say that won’t make me more upset.
I shake my head. “So you’re saying you haven’t seen any journals around anywhere.”
Mom sighs. “No. I’m sorry.”
? ? ?
“Want to play a game?” Joni asks me at work on Saturday.
“A game?”
“A game. You know, for to have fun?” She crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out at me.
I laugh. “Um. Sure.”
“Right this way, sir.”
I walk beside her as she walks slowly up and down the aisles. She seems to be paying more attention to the people in the store than the items on the shelves, which is kind of the opposite of what we usually do at work.
I lean forward and whisper in her ear. Her hair smells like Sour Patch Kids. Weird, but oddly appealing. “What are you doing?”
“Just wait for it.” We see an old, white-haired man in a mechanical wheelchair. “Okay. See that guy?” she whispers to me as we pass him. “He’s ninety-four years old, and he has a twenty-three-year-old wife. Her name is Brenda, and she’s had not one but two breast enhancement procedures. She married him for his money, of course, but he doesn’t care. Today’s his birthday, and he has big plans for tonight, involving whipped cream and chocolate syrup.”
Sure enough, the shopping basket on the old man’s lap contains whipped cream and chocolate syrup, as well as a container of cherries.
I turn to face her. “How the hell did you know that?”
She laughs. “I didn’t. I made it up. The guy’s probably making ice cream sundaes with his grandkids. But that’s not nearly as much fun as my version, is it?”
I feel a smile spreading across my face. “This kinda reminds me of this game I play with my mom. She creates customized event invitations and shows me her materials, then I try to guess the kind of people who’ve ordered the invitations.”
Joni raises her eyebrows. “I’ll have to meet this mom of yours. She sounds like my kind of chick.”
I’m about to say, “Oh, sure, anytime,” but that wouldn’t work, would it? She’d find out about Meg and Hope in about a second and a half.
I give a noncommittal shrug instead.
“This game is a little different though,” she says. “The point is to come up with a ridiculous story, not try to guess the truth.”
I nod.
“Give it a try.”
“I don’t think I’ll be very good at it.” Especially the way my brain’s been lately.
“I’m not taking no for an answer, buddy.” A lady walks past pushing a cart filled with nothing but tofu. Joni nods at her. “Perfect. Go.”
“Umm…she was just diagnosed with heart disease and her doctor told her she needs to eat healthier.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Try again.”
“What do you mean, ‘nope’? There’s no correct answer—I thought the point was to make something up.”
“The point is to use your imagination. Try again.”
I study the woman. She’s got frizzy, gray-streaked hair and is wearing a lot of clunky metal jewelry that looks like it was made with a hammer. Actually, it’s a lot like the top of Joni’s stepbrother’s tree sculpture.
Got it.
“She’s an avant-garde artist,” I whisper, watching the woman push her cart toward the checkout. “She spent the ’70s and ’80s in New York City but had enough of that scene and moved to New Hampshire after Andy Warhol died. She’s semiretired now but has been commissioned to create a sculpture made solely out of tofu for a PETA fund-raiser.”