I let her go. I took her hands. “What am I going to do without you?”
“Nan,” she said sweetly, petting my hair, which I felt guilty for having. “You’re going to do whatever you want.”
I nodded, maybe a little too eagerly, like this was a direct order.
“You look good,” she said, her eyes going up and down me. “How much weight have you lost?”
“Fourteen pounds, maybe.” I didn’t know why I’d said the maybe because it was definitely fourteen.
“Good for you.” She put her hands on her waist, looked down at her body. “I’m probably going to lose a lot more than that.”
Movement behind her on the floor. Black and white and it was Portico, slithering under the couch. I was frantic. “Portico’s out!”
“I know,” she said. She seemed a little annoyed with me. I would calm down.
I was still waiting for her to invite me in and she still hadn’t. “Do you want to sit in the Jacuzzi? Would that make you feel better?”
“No,” she said, the sides of her mouth curling up. “Let’s go for a ride.”
?
We drove south. When I asked where we were going, she said, “Life is a journey, Nan, not a destination,” which was true, but also not an answer. I let it go. I wondered if I would have let it go if she weren’t dying.
I reveled in the feeling of being back in the Jeep. The purple hood, the air rushing all around us, the way the seat really cupped you. I wasn’t hungry but ate a Red Vine anyway, for old time’s sake.
I wanted to tell her about Chuck and the boys, but that seemed selfish now. She was dying. We should talk about that. “Ana,” I said, when we were going slow enough to hear each other over the wind, “are you scared?”
“No,” she said, “it’s interesting. I don’t feel scared anymore.”
I touched her bare shoulder. It was so bare without her wig hair on it.
“Last time I got cancer, there was bargaining. But now—now that I know this is really it, there is no more bargaining. Now I’m just pissed.” Without thinking, Ana made the gesture of tucking her hair behind her ear, which was the saddest thing I had ever seen. She seemed to notice this, too, because she shook her hand out as if to tell it to stop doing stupid things. “I am so angry, Nan. I could fucking kill someone!”
“I know,” I said, clutching my seat belt to make sure it was on because Ana was driving a little too fast now. A road to the left and we almost passed it and she said, “Wooooo!” and made a way-too-last-minute turn and my body pressed into the door and we might have only been on two wheels for a second. “Sorry about that,” she said when we’d made it onto the road.
It was a skinny dirt road with tropical brush growing at the edges and it was deserted. On both sides, coffee trees were all I could see. And then there was something in the distance. A little hut. Oh, it was a fruit stand, just a lone fruit stand with no person behind it, and Ana pulled over. HONOR SYSTEM, CAMERA ENFORCED, the sign said. Below was a list of prices. The avocados only cost a dollar. “I want everything,” she said.
I hesitated. “Okay,” I said, wondering why she wanted all this food if she had no appetite.
But I was helpful anyway. I didn’t question her. I was learning it was hard to question someone who was dying. I carefully placed all the bananas and the mangoes on the floor in the back. Ana was faster and more chaotic. She tossed the avocados in from afar, making a little game of it. “Bummer,” she said when one missed and hit the wheel then rolled under the car. I got on the ground to find it. There it was, but I couldn’t reach. So close—my fingers touched it—but still too far.
“Let’s go,” she said, and she sounded so sure that I abandoned the avocado immediately and got back in the car. I expected to find her counting out money to put in the box, but her wallet was right there and she wasn’t even looking at it.
“Oh, I think I have some cash,” I said, which was a lie. I hadn’t brought my wallet.
“We’re good,” she said.
I stammered, “Wait. No. What? Not good.”
Even as she peeled away, driving farther and farther from the fruit stand, I was still imagining us parked in front of it, fishing out bills. I kept expecting her to turn around. But she kept not turning around.
“Ana?”
“Yes, Nan.”
“They had a camera.”
“No, they had a sign that said they had a camera. There was no camera.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Oh, Nan.” She touched my hair. “I used to have this hair.”
Part of me wanted to pull away, but a bigger part of me didn’t. “Why?”
“Because, Nan,” she said sadly, or maybe she was just resigned. “Justice is the foundation of the Karma Factory.”
I had to laugh. “The Karma Factory? Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Obviously,” Ana said, “and if I weren’t about to die, I’d make it into a 501(c)(3).” She sighed. “If I’m being punished for my sins, then other people should be punished for theirs. The man who owns that fruit stand?” She took her hand off my hair and put it back on the wheel. “Has owed me fifty dollars for the last three years. So I feel like the least he can do is give me this bullshit fruit.” She glanced behind her. “It doesn’t even look that quality.”
“What does he owe you for?”
“A back massage, but that’s not the point. The point is I am being punished and other people are not. It’s not fair. It’s not fair and it makes no sense.” Ana slapped the dashboard. “Now is the time for justice. We must give these people what they deserve. Since fucking Celia is apparently sleeping up there!” She stuck her middle finger up toward the sky. Then she repeated the line she had said on the phone, and this time I understood it. “You can’t bargain with God, but you can sure as hell fight her.”
What I thought: Ana is angry right now. Anger is part of dealing with death—did that come before or after bargaining?—and at some point the anger will pass and it will become acceptance, which I knew was one of them.
Now was absolutely not the time to ask, but I had to. “Does this mean we’re not going to hand out sandwiches anymore?”
“I’m dying, Nan,” Ana said, angrily scratching the top of her head.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry I asked. I’m just—I’m sorry, it was selfish to ask that.”
“But Nan, punishing people who’ve behaved badly is a good deed. It’s for the”—her hand made a sweeping arc—“greater good.”
“I don’t know,” I said carefully.
“I understand how you might feel confused,” she said. “But things change when one knows death is imminent. You just have to trust me. When you’re near the end of your life, this will make sense to you.”