Mama was sitting up in bed, leaning back into a pile of white pillows. She looked like an antique doll, with eggshell skin stretched too tightly across her delicately crafted face. Her collarbone peered out above the neckline of her oversized hospital gown, the skin on either side hollowed out.
“Hey,” Leni said. She leaned down, kissed her mother’s soft cheek. “You could have told me you were going to the doctor’s. I would have come with you.” She pushed the feathery gray-blond hair out of her mother’s eyes. “Do you have pneumonia?”
“I have stage-four lung cancer. Only it’s a sneaky little shit and has invaded my spine and liver, too. It’s in my blood.”
Leni literally took a step back. She almost lifted her hands to block her face. “What?”
“I’m sorry, baby girl. It’s not good. The doctor was not particularly hopeful.”
Leni wanted to scream, STOP!
She couldn’t breathe.
Cancer.
“A-are you in pain?”
No. That wasn’t what she wanted to say. What did she want to say?
“Ah,” Mama said with a wave of her veiny hand. “I’m Alaska-tough.” She reached past Leni for her cigarettes.
“I’m not sure they allow that in here.”
“I’m pretty sure they don’t,” Mama said, her hand trembling as she lit up. “But soon I’ll start chemotherapy.” She tried to smile. “So I can look forward to baldness and nausea. I’m sure it will be a good look for me.”
Leni moved closer. “You’ll fight it, right?” she said, blinking back tears she didn’t want her mother to see.
“Of course. I’ll kick this bitch’s ass.”
Leni nodded, wiped her eyes.
“You’ll get better. Grandpa will get you the best care in the city. He’s got that friend who’s on the board at Fred Hutch. You’ll be—”
“I’ll be fine, Leni.”
Mama touched Leni’s hand. Leni stood there, connected to her mother by breath and touch and a lifetime of love. She wanted to say just the right thing, but what would that be, and how could a few flimsy words matter in a cancer sea? “I can’t lose you,” Leni whispered.
“Yeah,” Mama said. “I know, baby girl. I know.”
*
Dear Matthew,
It’s only been a few days since I wrote to you. Funny how much life can change in a week.
Not funny ha-ha. That’s for sure.
Last night, as I lay in my comfy bed, in my store-bought pajamas, I found myself with a lot of things I didn’t want to think about. And so I found my way to you.
I don’t think we talked enough about your mother’s death. Maybe that was because we were kids, or maybe it was because you were so traumatized. But we should have talked about it later, when we were older. I should have told you I would listen to your pain forever. I should have asked you for memories.
I see now how grief becomes thin ice. I haven’t lost my mom yet, but a single word has pushed her away from me, created a barrier between us that never existed before. For the first time ever, we are lying to each other. I can feel it. Lying to protect each other.
But there’s no protection, is there?
She has lung cancer.
God. I wish you were here.
Leni put down her pen. This time, the act of writing to Matthew was no comfort at all.
It made her feel worse, in fact. More alone.
How pathetic, that she had no one to talk to about this. That her best friend had no idea who she was.
She folded the letter up and put it in the shoe box with all the others she’d written over the years and never sent.
*
THAT SUMMER, Leni watched cancer erase her mother. First to go was her hair, then her eyebrows. Next was the firm line of her shoulders; they began to droop. Then she lost her posture and her stride. Finally, cancer took away movement altogether.
By late July, after cancer had erased so much, the truth was revealed by her latest CT scan. Nothing they had done had helped.
Leni sat quietly beside her mother, holding her hand when they learned that the treatment had failed. The cancer was everywhere, an enemy on the move, hacking through bones, destroying organs. There was no discussion about trying again or fighting it.
Instead, they moved back into the Golliher house, set up a hospital bed in the sunroom, where light flowed through the windows, and contacted hospice care.
Mama had fought for her life, fought harder than she had fought for anything, but cancer did not care about effort.
Now Mama slowly, slowly angled up in the bed to a slouchy sitting position. An unlit cigarette trembled in her veiny hand. She could no longer smoke, of course, but she liked to hold them. There were a few strands of hair on the pillow, running like gold veins on white cotton. An oxygen tank stood by the bed; clear tubes inserted into Mama’s nostrils helped her breathe.
Leni got up from her place beside the bed and put down the book she’d been reading aloud. She poured Mama a drink of water and offered it. Mama reached for the plastic cup. Her hands were shaking so badly Leni placed her own hands over her mother’s, helped her hold on to the cup. Mama took a hummingbird sip and coughed. Her bird-thin shoulders shook so hard Leni swore she heard the bones rattling beneath the thin skin.
“I dreamed of Alaska last night,” Mama said, slumping back into the pillows. She looked up at Leni. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”
Leni felt a shock at hearing the word mentioned so casually. By tacit agreement, they hadn’t spoken about Alaska—or Dad or Matthew—in years, but perhaps it was inevitable that they would circle back to the beginning as the end neared.
“A lot of it was great,” Leni said. “I loved Alaska. I loved Matthew. I loved you. I even loved Dad,” she admitted quietly.
“There was fun. I want you to remember that. And adventure. When you remember, I know it’s easy to pull the bad up. Your dad’s violence. The excuses I made. My sad love for him. But there was good love, too. Remember that. Your dad loved you.”
This hurt more than Leni could bear, but she saw how much her mama needed to say these words. “I know,” Leni said.
“You’ll tell MJ all about me, okay? You tell him how I never sang the words to any song right and how I wore hot pants and sandals and I looked good in that shit. You tell him how I learned to be Alaska-tough even though I didn’t want to, and how I never let the bad stuff kill me, how I kept going. You tell him I loved his mother from the moment I saw her and that I’m proud of her.”
“I love you, too, Mama,” Leni said, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, but all they had now was words—too many of them—and too little time.
“You’re a good mother, Leni, even as young as you are. I was never as good a mom as you are.”
“Mama—”
“No lies, baby girl. I don’t have time.”
Leni leaned down to smooth the few hairs back from Mama’s forehead. They were fine as goose down, wispy. This whittling down of her was unbearable. With every exhalation, it seemed, Mama lost a little more of her life force.
Mama reached slowly for the nightstand. The top drawer glided open with the soundlessness of expensive crafting. With a shaking hand, she pulled out a letter, folded crisply into thirds. “Here.”
Leni didn’t want to take it.
“Please.”
Leni took the letter, unfolded it carefully, and saw what was written on the page, in a scrawling, barely legible handwriting. It read:
I, Coraline Margaret Golliher Allbright, shot my husband, Ernt Allbright, when he was beating me.
I weighed his dead body down with animal traps and sank it in Glass Lake. I ran away because I feared going to prison, even though I believed then—and now—that I saved my life that night. My husband had been abusive for years. Many Kaneq residents suspected the abuse and tried to help. I didn’t allow it.
His death is on my hands and on my conscience. Guilt has turned itself into cancer and is killing me. God’s justice.
I killed him and hid the body. I did it all alone. My daughter had nothing to do with it.
Sincerely, Coraline Allbright
Beneath her mother’s shaky signature was her grandfather’s signature both as an attorney and as a witness, and a notary seal.