The Next Read online

  They’d moved to the Titania five years before, and there were still unpacked boxes in basement storage, mostly her grandparents’ things, or things in limbo from their old life that her mother hadn’t been ready or willing to sort through. Laney had brought up a few boxes to go through, a project, something to distract her mother and herself from the exhausting mix of drama and tedium that is caregiving. She started with cartons that looked the oldest, liquor boxes advertising brands she never heard of, marked “Loretta,” her grandmother’s things.

  She took up a spot on the floor at Joanna’s bedside, slit through yellowed tape, opened cardboard flaps, unwrapped glass, ceramic, porcelain vessels and dishes, plaques and ashtrays, figurines, once precious, now useless, stopping now and then to smooth and read from crumpled newspaper. Laney, at least, was diverted by the treasures, and thought it would lift her mother’s spirit to see Loretta’s porcelain cup and saucer show up in rotation. Joanna had given Laney one dip of her head to acknowledge, days ago.

  Laney wanted more. More Mama. She was finding it tough to stay connected—to stay kind—to this person, sunken in pillows, agitated or absent, in sleep or drugs or a private darkness all her own.

  Anna felt it was their duty to make their mother’s final days the experience Joanna said she wanted when she’d lobbied to leave Sloan Kettering: a tranquil passage at home with loved ones nearby. No fear, no worries, everything understood, everything absolved, and with luck, eyes would close, and she would sigh with acceptance, and simply stop.

  Laney thought, Like in the movies, like Beaches. She was conflicted. It was Mama, after all, not an erratic stranger messing up the choreography of some big dying-with-dignity plan. Laney was trying to hold on to her, respect her, by keeping more strangers and equipment from encroaching, more indignities from accumulating.

  It was hard to argue with Doctor Know-It-All, as Laney was coming to think of her sister. But Anna did not know it all. Laney knew and Anna did not, that the phone expedition was not random. Joanna was technically still there, still with them, still alive, but she was secretly—secretly!—preoccupied to the point of online obsession with Ned, so much more compelling than food or daughters or her own life ebbing away. Laney could see it was a fierce force keeping Joanna going. But the force was overtaking her, hijacking her, which is why Anna, who thought Ned McGowan long out of their mother’s life, assumed there was something wrong with her brain.

  Laney was surprised her sister had not yet figured it out. She could tell Ned was back on the scene last summer by Joanna’s voice on the telephone, girlish. She knew he was gone again a couple of months later, when her mother’s voice fell heavy and flat. Laney hadn’t shared this observation with Anna, who loathed Ned from the start, who’d never considered Ned anything but a hijacker. Now, once again, he had stolen their mother.

  The room was dim but not dark. Laney could feel her mother’s eyes slide, watching through the split of swollen eyelids. Tom lay against her and his eyes followed Laney, too, as she closed up the boxes as quietly as she could and set them in a corner for another day, another attempt at reclaiming something of her mother.

  “Hey, Mama, hi.” Laney sat at her mother’s side. “You awake? You hot?” She reached to remove the beanie. Joanna moved away from Laney’s touch.

  “Okay, I’ll leave it. What do you need? Tea? I brought some, fresh.” She poured. “Can you try and sit up a little?” She reached to adjust the pillow. Joanna shut her eyes and turned her head.

  “How about some water, then?” She went to the bathroom and filled a mint-green plastic hospital pitcher from the tap. She thought, I need to get rid of this hideous pitcher. She must hate it. Rejected, guilty, and angry all at the same time, she checked herself, Then again, why bother? She can barely look at me.

  She knew it was ridiculous, but she was pissed at her mother. Where was the cancer-movie version, selfless and dying in a way that made everything okay for her kids? The three of them had watched Beaches enough times to know there was protocol, there was supposed to be a good ending, with cozy sweaters and cups of tea and looking out to sea, the three of them, their best, loving selves.

  This was not that.

  Laney pulled aqua sheets with white ruffled edges, her mother’s favorites, up under Joanna’s chin. She straightened and tucked. “It’s Valentine’s Day, Mama. Anna reminded me.” She leaned down, touched her cheek to her mother’s forehead. She couldn’t judge Joanna for not dying according to Hollywood movie standards. Laney was twenty-two, it was the hallmark of her generation to not judge. And death, it was so heavy, so personal. Was it even possible to die wrong? On the other hand, it wasn’t only happening to Joanna. Their mother’s death was happening to Anna and Laney too. Chasing down an ex-boyfriend? Ignoring your kids?

  Her mother was definitely not dying right.

  “How about some drops?” Laney separated the sliver-thin skin of her mother’s eyelids, easing them open. Joanna’s eyes were blue and black, much darker than Laney’s. The whites were yellow and the rims were flaked with dried tears.

  Laney said, “This will feel really good,” and carefully let a drop fall into each eye. Joanna squeezed them shut against this comfort, and again pulled from her daughter’s touch. Weary tears ran. She coughed for a full minute, and Laney’s heart raced for twice as long.

  She dabbed at Joanna’s eyes with a tissue. She murmured, “Oh, don’t cry, Mama, don’t cry. You’re making it worse. I’m here.” She used the same soggy tissue to dab at her own eyes.

  Tom wriggled closer to Joanna on the bed, and dropped his heavy head onto her thigh. “No,” Joanna rasped. “No.” She shook her head.

  Laney grabbed the dog’s collar and dragged him away. “Come on, Tom, you gotta get off. You’re too heavy. Come on, off now.”

  Joanna shook her head again.

  “What is it, Mama? What are you trying to say?”

  Joanna twisted under the mask.

  “Are you in pain?

  No, no. She shook her head. No.

  “What do you need?” Laney adjusted the mask. “I can’t take it off right now. You don’t sound good. Try to relax a little bit, and then I can give you a break from the mask. Should I press the button?”

  Again, Joanna shook her head, this time forcefully. She said, “Phone,” and Laney stalled and pretended not to understand, an attempt to heed Anna’s admonition, but she and her mother had made a wordless pact. It had become routine, when Anna wasn’t around, to give in about the phone. What did it matter? Wasn’t it better than leaving Joanna to struggle to find the phone again?

  “You need to try and slow down your breathing. Concentrate on the oxygen.”

  Joanna said, “Elena,” and grasped Laney’s hand.

  Tom watched as Laney-the-accomplice delivered the charged phone to Joanna and said, “Just for a few minutes.” She brought Joanna her sunglasses, because the bright light and colors on the small screen hurt her mother’s eyes. She pulled Tom along by his ruff and stepped out to give her mother privacy and to give herself a break. As she shut the door of the bedroom, she looked back to see a shadow of her mother, an apparition of her mother, surrounded by machinery, sprouting tubes, the white beanie with the black skull pulled down low on her brow, behind sunglasses, bent over the phone, Joanna DeAngelis, Mama, a stranger acting strange.

  3

  I fall into a morphine dream. We are in the Met, our old haunt. We circle a sculpture, the Kouros, the big, nude boy. I press my fingers along the cool, stone phallus, the round bulk of shoulders, the torpedo thighs. Marble calf and ass muscles undulate under my touch. I am turned on. I need Ned inside me, but he is gone, striding the way he does, down impossibly long hallways. Is he leading me or running away from me? I push through a door into an empty auditorium. Ned is onstage. A television camera circles, a woman blots his shine away, another tries to tame his famous hair. I want him and I am on him and he tries to fight me off. I get stronger and stronger and I tear at his clothes. I pull at the bristle of premature white that strafes his black mane, and it rips away from his scalp. I hold a handful. The camera circles. The auditorium is full. Hundreds of students, nineteen, twenty years old, film too, with their phones. I force Ned inside. My skin is tagged and mottled and rippled. It sways as I move. My breasts have broken off, leaving flat, rough stone where they had been. My hair, everywhere, is gray. An artillery of cell phones aims. I don’t care. I move up and straddle his mouth. I bear down. He struggles. The students film.

  I wake up hot, aroused, just like the old days, with a pulse between my legs. I don’t want to move. I want to stay alive inside the dream. Traffic motors along on Riverside Drive. It must be rush hour. I hear the hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen. NPR plays on the radio in the living room, an unstoppable current of events. It all keeps going, even as the dream dissolves, even as I disintegrate.

  “Tch tch tch.” I attempt clicking sounds with my tongue for Tom. Laney slipped me the phone but forgot to bring the bedpan close. I need Tom for my trip to the bathroom, and then I can use the phone again, that’s the important thing. I need to check in on Dr. Trudi and her boyfriend—my boyfriend. Tom noses in and puts his long muzzle along the bed, ready to be of service.

  “Let’s go, man.” He positions himself, and stares intently at me as if to say, Really? This didn’t go so well last time we tried it.

  I take the oxygen mask off and detach the line embedded in a vein on the back of my hand. My poor veins. I’m covered in bruises in bloom, purple and green and gray and yellow. Lifting the quilt is an event. I am frustrated to the point of tears as I untangle my legs, so pale and thin they look like someone else’s, from the bedding. Finally, I have feet on the floor, but I am sweaty and freezing and nauseated from the effort.
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  I sit a minute. Tom waits. I put a hand on his back, his long, strong back, ninety pounds of poodle covered in chocolate-brown curls, and I feel him shift to take my weight. He knows what to do. This, a couple of times a day, our little secret. This, the way his body braces for me, releases fresh tears. Tom. My friend.

  I rasp out, “Thank you, buddy,” and off we go, fifteen feet that might as well be fifteen miles. I am only half-upright, bent around the burn in my bones. I grip Tom and shuffle forward, shuffle again, two steps more. I have to gasp back a cough, I don’t want Elena to come running.

  Laney is the weak link. She’s lying to Anna. Not only is she slipping me my smartphone, she knows what I’m doing with it. She’s suspected about Ned since last summer. She will cave under pressure if—when—Anna exerts it. Allegiances are fluid right now.

  Shuffle, cough, rest. Shuffle, cough, rest. Tom pants, too, with anxiety. It’s not easy for a dog to measure his steps, it’s awkward, he has to step and stop, step and stop. He presses—not too hard—against my leg for constant contact, to feel what I need from him. I lean against the wall to rest, and he noses my hand to ask if I’m okay. Not really, buddy.

  I struggle to position myself properly on the cold bowl. I am queasy, I can feel a sheen of perspiration on the back of my neck. An awful essence rises up from inside me into my throat, a mouthful of foamy fluid, and I worry that I should be crouching instead of sitting.

  Tom waits politely with his head turned away.

  I pull myself up, I hang on to Tom for the trip back to bed. I rush a little, queasiness abated, I’ve got the hang of walking again for the moment, I’ve got the phone, and I’m busy. The phone’s days are numbered, or mine are. Either way, I need to see. Swipe. Tap. Scroll.

  Swipe. Here we go. Tap to parties, clubs, galleries, charity events. Scroll and score: new images. Last Night’s Events. A red carpet. He’s half a step behind her, with his arm extended and a hand on the small of her back.

  I follow a Twitter trail of betrayal to The Cut, The Gloss, Style, the Style Section, the New York Social Register. It’s incredible how intimate you become with strangers by following them online. I check Instagram to see how Trudi is doing, I interpret her emojis, I note her LOLs and exclamation points, I know what they are up to for the weekend. I’m familiar with her OMG besties, selfies, fancy plates, lush flower arrangements, wine labels, boutique shopping bags, her trending nail color.

  Like the old song says, they gavotte. They cavort, they preen. I pinch my fingers and expand the screen to examine Ned’s two-faced face. To see if I can find the taut upper lip, the tension that wires his smile when he is only pretending to be happy. Pinch, expand the screen. Ah, she’s got a fresh mani-pedi. I know her fingers and her toes. Ah, there’s the ring.

  My boyfriend. I sound crazy, I know. Look, I’m sick, I’m on drugs, I don’t know whether it’s night or day, I am not feeling anything good, except good ol’ pain over every inch of my ruined body, and from the corkscrew to my heart. I am hurting my daughters. Of course Anna wants to enforce lockdown. Of course Elena is terrified. But I’m not crazy.

  I’m righteous.

  I’m struggling to let go and move on, and I don’t mean from the relationship. I mean from life, my life, mine, the version that began again last July when he knocked, again. He’d had a dream. He had to come. Of course I let him in.

  Just last summer.

  Here we go. Down the hole. I can’t prop the pillows. My chest tightens.

  Just last summer, only I knew I was sick and only I knew I was not getting better. Keswani showed me the film and I nodded, polite down to my radiant backlit bones, and I nodded at the luminous ghostly shapes gathered in my lungs, I nodded, understanding nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, I just nodded, and Keswani gave me options—“It’s your choice”—and none of the choices suggested a life worth living, the options being not-bad days and bad days and very bad days in a fight to the finish, more chemo, more hospital, more strangers and machinery with increasing authority over my body and my mind, more iterations of not-dead-yet, stops along the way, stops along the way. Caregiving. Submission.

  That was me, just last summer. Alone, dying, dragging it out. No partner “in sickness,” no partner “for worse.” I thought about Anna and Laney, building their lives, interrupted, detoured, dutiful. For who knew how long. It felt immoral. I had dark thoughts of swift exits pursued to save us all.

  Then there was Ned, in my in-box. He’d had a dream, he had to come. You can’t make this stuff up. Can you imagine? I did not resist.

  Just last summer. He still loved me, not her.

  So yes, Doc, come in, come in, of course, yes, it’s the beginning of the end of me, yes, come back, yes, come home and love me till my heart stops. Love of my life, my beautiful life, unto my beautiful death.

  For eight weeks, hot as hell, he took care of me. Trudi Mink, his soon-to-be-ex—I believed him when he said, It’s over, I promise—was globetrotting from fashion week to fashion week tending famous skin, doing business, he was free as a bird, he was nearly moved back in, walking Tom, whistling in the kitchen, washing my hair. He took notes at doctor’s appointments.

  I dodged my daughters. They didn’t even know I’d recurred. Anna had started her residency, she’d met Jules, she was in love, she was in that bubble. Elena, newly graduated, was bumming around Brooklyn, piecing together dollars for rent and a social life. I, Mama, I was out of sight, I was out of mind, they were doing their lives, they were doing their twenties, so all-consuming, right? Normal! Exactly what it’s supposed to be.

  I put aside the ways he’d hurt me before. Burned me. Doc was back, and he loved me and I loved him, that fucker. Love. I told myself that was all that mattered. I let myself trust Ned to help me be strong.

  We slow strolled the shady promenade on Riverside with Tom, who looked over his shoulder, tongue lolling, grinning at his reunited puppy-parents. We watched television. Ned worked on his book, a thriller about a charismatic news anchor and his sexy-stalkery intern, year four or five since he’d begun, he’d lost count of his drafts. I read his pages, my trusty green Flair in hand. Our old routine. We retreated to bed, this bed, where we swayed and floated with desire. Ned on his knees. Cries of pleasure rising from my center. I remember looking to the window and mouthing, Thank you, thank you, to the sky, to the river, for giving me this, at this late stage. Cries of pleasure!

  I showed myself. He promised. I won’t let you be alone. I’m here. I’ve got you. He promised.

  Imagine my surprise.

  In humid August, I was tossing and turning on the sofa. I could not get comfortable. I’d lost weight, and my bones hurt. It was hard to find a way to be. It was hot but I was cold. I don’t like air-conditioning in the first place, but air-conditioning when you’re sick is a nightmare. The noise. The faint chemical smell, what is that? Freon? The steady chill. I could not get warm. Tom was stretched out on the floor next to me. Ned was set up in Laney’s old room, tapping away, working on the book, excited by it, I could tell by the way he hit the keyboard. The tapping stopped, he came to me, he didn’t ask, he didn’t have to, he arranged a quilt on top of me, and he went to the air conditioner and adjusted the setting. He said, Errands, I’ll be home soon, you sleep. He said, Take care of her for me, to Tom. He stepped out and he never came back. They call that an Irish exit.

  Under the monitor’s soft bleats, I remember his voice. Errands. I’m still waiting, Doc.

  I bleat too, a noise like laughing, and I choke on it.

  I’m not crazy. I’m righteous.

  I have fallen past rational thinking. I have fallen past the edge of myself. I have fallen into purple despair, into red, red fury, into bloody black hatred deep and dark as, well, death. Me hating him has turned into me hating me. I’m unrecognizable to myself. Unrecognizable to my daughters.

  A bitter mantra beats inside me: You taught him how to treat you. You taught him how to treat you.

  Bitches are made, not born. What I taste, the foamy fluid in my throat, that’s bile.

  Whatever. I only care about the phone. Swipe, tap, scroll. There’s Trudi. Did I mention the baby bump? No? Oh.