“You’re acting weird, Mom,” Cam said.
“Ah,” I said, “ah,” and I didn’t know what to say to that—I was laughing too hard to speak—but when I saw the house and felt the laughter change, I forced myself to say, “Meet you inside,” and the boys slammed the doors. Once they were gone I heaved and heaved—I couldn’t control it—and then I was sobbing, deeply and quietly, there alone in the car, right in front of my house.
20
I showed up to yoga with flowers and a whole pan of vegan carrot cake wrapped in tinfoil and a bow, but Ana wasn’t there.
“She asked me to fill in,” Kurt said. When he smiled, his veneers reminded me of her veneers.
Patty, who was still wearing her Marbles shirt and busy excavating something out of her molar, took her finger out of her mouth to say, “Maybe she has a new boyfriend.”
“Well,” Sara Beth stretched her skinny arms above her head, “if she does, I understand. It’s harder to come here so early when you’re leaving someone you love in bed, isn’t it?” She looked at me for assurance.
“Uh-huh,” I managed to say, and dropped my mat in the grass. I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay without Ana here, but I couldn’t just leave now either.
“Marbles used to sleep right on the pillow with me.” Patty stroked Marbles’s face on her shirt. “He kept it nice and warm.”
“I don’t think Ana has a new boyfriend,” I said, doing the same hands-up stretch as Sara Beth. It took me a second to notice I was copying her.
“That’s what happened last time she left us,” Patty said. “She fell in love and moved to Hawi for two years.”
“Right,” Kurt said, recalling the time with pursed lips.
“What?” Ana had never told me that. “She moved to Hawi?”
“We didn’t even know she was up there until Kurt ran into her at the mini-mart,” Patty confirmed.
“It’s true,” Sara Beth said. “She disappears sometimes.”
“Well, that’s not what’s happening this time,” I said. “Trust me.”
?
Kurt didn’t even have a gong bowl. He took us through the poses in a mechanical way, saying none of the inspirational things Ana would have said if she were here. He had looked up one quote on his phone, and he read it to us emphatically like we were in kindergarten. “This is from the Buddha,” he said. “?‘Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, or who said it. No matter if I have said it. Unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’?” He set his phone in the grass. He didn’t repeat it, and he didn’t expound. He didn’t tell us what kinds of things we might not believe or where we might read these things. He did not give us one example of how he had used his own common sense, or how we might apply this advice to our lives today. Kurt was a nice guy, but he was not a relatable yoga teacher. And he forgot so many things, even the simplest things, like “breathe.” He did not remind us that coming to our mats this morning had been a strong choice, or that we were here to cultivate compassion, or that even if nothing was okay, things were still okay because we were here in Hawaii in the morning light with the palm trees and the beach and the birds that never stopped singing.
Kurt’s adjustments were just what you’d expect from a dentist who was not really a yoga teacher. Clinical and tentative. My spine didn’t crack when he pulled my hips back in downward dog. When I hurt my elbow doing a jump back, I wanted to leave. Maybe this injury meant I could leave now. But it would be too much work to explain in the middle of class and it would be embarrassing, so I stayed until the bitter end, when we om’d a hollow om that wasn’t even strong enough to carry over the short rock wall.
?
I hadn’t been to the pink house in over a week. I felt a misty wave of longing as I pulled into the driveway, nostalgic for the past and then nostalgic for the future, when Ana wouldn’t be here anymore. My elbow hurt when I lifted the carrot cake off the seat, and the morning sun cast me in a long shadow when I got out of the car.
I knocked softly in case she was sleeping. I reminded myself to stay present, to stand on both feet equally. The crazy vines had made their way closer to the door, like they were trying to get inside. A green gecko, stilled by my presence, waited on a green leaf, pretending he wasn’t there.
I could leave the cake and flowers by the door; I could do that. But her car was here and she was here, only a wall away, or two walls if she was in the bedroom, and it seemed silly to just leave. I knocked harder, first with my knuckles and then with the back of my fist.
Footsteps. I told myself to remember their sound so that later, when she was gone, I could call upon the memory of their rhythm and compare it to the rhythms of other footsteps and other beats when I talked about Ana to the new friends I would eventually have to make.
As the doorknob turned, I told myself to wipe the lament off my face and replace it with good cheer. But all of this turned straight to shock when she opened the door. Ana was bald. Completely and totally bald.
“Oh my God,” I accidentally said out loud.
Ana was not surprised to see me. “I knew you’d come,” she said, her eyes flat and no longer glimmering, and this meant that she was gone a little already.
“Your hair.”
“Chemo,” she said. “From the breast cancer. It’s still trying to grow back.”
Well, it’s not trying hard enough! I wanted to scream. I was angry for her.
“See?” She touched her neck. “I wasn’t meant to live. My hair has known that all along.”
I swallowed the uncried tears in my throat as Ana took the flowers from my hand and simply said, “Flowers,” and took one passive sniff. “And what’s this?” She pulled at the orange bow on the cake.
“Carrot cake,” I said, the words echoing in my head. It seemed so stupid to be saying carrot cake at a time like this.
“I haven’t been hungry, but thank you.” She took the pan from me and set it on the low table by the door and plopped the flowers on top. On the table was a piece of paper, which she handed to me. “They gave me three to six months.”
The piece of paper was filled with writing—in a decorative font because everything in Hawaii was more beautiful, I thought. The important facts were in bold. PANCREATIC. 3–6 MONTHS.
“I bet I can make it nine,” she said, and there was a tiny glimmer in her eyes again, and I was very glad for that.
I comforted her. “I’m sure you can make it nine,” I said, although I didn’t know if I believed her over her doctors. I wrapped my arms around her, squeezed her tight. “Oh, Ana.” I felt her fake breasts press into mine, and thought of everything she had already lost.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I was saying, rocking us gently from side to side, remembering her coconut smell, which was faint today. The hug felt more intimate now that she didn’t have hair. Like she was a baby. Like she really needed me now. But I needed her just as much. What was I going to do without her?