A Little Too Much

Chapter Fifteen

“HILARY MCINTYRE HERE to see Roseanne McIntyre,” I tell the guard at the counter, a long slender woman with a horse’s face who has her dark hair all tucked up under her guard’s cap.

“Sign in.”

I do.

“ID,” she says, holding out her hand.

I jump through all the usual hoops and sit in a chair while I wait for them to “announce” me. It’s ten minutes later that the guard calls over the desk, “The doctor says she’s not well enough for visitors.”

I push out of my seat and stare at her. “What?”

“He says she’s weak from the chemo and you should come back later in the week.”

“Chemo . . . ?”

She squints at me. “You knew, right? That your mom has cancer?”

I shake my head.

“Oh . . . sorry.”

“Is she . . . ?” My dry throat clicks as I swallow. “Is she dying?”

“She’s receiving the best care there is, courtesy of the State of New York. That’s all I can tell you. You’ll have to talk to your mother if you want any more information.”

“What kind of cancer?” I ask, slowly getting my mind around what she’s saying.

She shakes her head once. “I’m sorry. I can’t share any information without your mother’s consent.”

I just stand here a minute longer, trying to think. “If I leave a message, could she call me back?”

“Yes. She’s allowed phone calls.”

I step up to the desk. “Do you have something I can write on?”

She pulls a scrap of paper and a pen from the drawer and slides them over the counter.

“Thanks.” I pull them toward me and just stare at the paper for a long time. What am I supposed to say?

Mom,

Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? I came for our visit today, but they said you’re weak from the chemo. Please call me as soon as you can.

Hilary

I slide it back to the guard. “Can I get into the visitors’ room? I just need something from the vending machine.”

She holds out her hand. “What do you need?”

I fish in my pocket and hand her a dollar. “An Oh Henry!”

She nods and brings the bill to the door, where she hands it through to the guard inside and mutters something that I can’t hear. A minute later, the guard is back with an Oh Henry!, passing it through the door. The guard at the desk hands it to me and I wrap my note around it.

“Can you make sure she gets this?” I ask.

She nods. “I’ll have someone bring it right in for her.”

“Thanks,” I say, turning for the lockers.

“She’s really proud of you, you know.”

I look back at her. “What?”

“She talks about you all the time . . . says you’re going to be a big Broadway actress. She’s even petitioned for a furlough for your opening night.”

I just stare at her. She’s got to have Mom confused with some other inmate. “My mom is Roseanne McIntyre.”

She squint-smiles, like she thinks she’s said too much. “I know.” She holds up the Oh Henry! wrapped in my note. “I’ll make sure she gets this.”

I collect all my stuff and turn for the door in a daze. Mom has cancer. I knew she looked bad over the last few months, older every time I saw her, but cancer? My insides pull into a hard knot.

Mom has cancer . . . and she’s proud of me.

I walk back to the train station thinking about my audition on Tuesday. If I get this part . . . if they give Mom the furlough, will she be around to come to my opening night?

I have to get this part.

“You want me. I know you do,” I say, deciding to rehearse my lines again.

I pause where my male counterpart will respond that, yes, he wants me, and mime unbuttoning the top button of my blouse.

“Then take me,” I say with an air of desperation.

Mime unbuttoning another button as he responds that it’s not right for us to give in to our desire. There are other people we need to consider.

A tear in my eye. “Who cares what’s right. We need each other like oxygen. I can’t live another day without you.”

Unbutton. We must exercise restraint, he responds.

“No! I can’t! I can’t wait for you another day. Tomorrow will swallow us whole if we let it.”

Unbutton.

“We can either live life scared,”

unbutton,

“or live life.”

Unbutton.

“There are no other choices.”

Slide shirt off shoulders.

Mom has cancer.

I hang my head and blow out a long white breath that trails behind me in the cold December air. Last time I was here she said something about if I loved her I’d have brought her cigarettes. I remember thinking that I didn’t. I was wrong. Pretending I didn’t really care—that I was just visiting out of some family obligation—felt safer, I guess. But the truth is, regardless of everything, she’s my mother and I love her. I feel the threat of tears and swallow them.

When I make the train station, I have a half hour till the next train back to the city. I go over my lines again, but I can’t focus.

Dev blasts out of my bag and I grab my phone, thinking it must be Mom, but when I look at the screen, it’s Jess. I press the call button, and even before I say anything Jess is already screeching in my ear, “Igotthepart Igotthepart Igotthepart!”

“Wow, Jess! That’s fabulous.” And I really am happy for her. Really. “Tell me the whole deal.”

“Well, you know how we auditioned for those chorus spots, right?”

“Yeah.”

“One of the secondaries bagged out . . . got offered something else off-Broadway, so they offered me her part!” She squeals the last word.

My heart leaps out of my chest. It’s what every one of us hopes for, some fluky thing that will be our lucky break. “Holy shit, Jess! That’s amazing.”

“I know! I have lines and everything!”

“Solos?”

“Only one small one as part of a bigger piece, but it’s something.”

I breathe out a breath and sink deeper into my seat. “That’s a hella lot more than something, Jess. That’s huge. Holy shit.”

“I know!” she shrieks, and I can almost see her jumping up and down, her ponytail swinging behind her.

If I were there, I’d be jumping with her. “So what’s the deal? When do rehearsals start?”

“After Christmas, and we open in February.”

“We’re going out this week to celebrate.”

“Definitely! I’ve got to go call my mom, but we’ll talk later, okay?”

Something in me warms at the realization she called me first, even before her mom. “Yeah, sweetie. Talk later. Congrats.”

“Bye, Hil!”

I take a breath as I lower the phone and hang up. “Break a leg.”

My mom has cancer.

Damn.

IT’S OVER TWO hours later, and I’ve made all the transfers and am standing at Mallory’s door, but now I find myself hesitating.

She doesn’t even know I’ve been going to see Mom. How am I going to do this?

But she needs to know. If Mom’s dying, Mallory needs to get over herself and go see her before it’s too late. I’ve been stalking my phone, hoping to hear from Mom, but so far, nothing. I don’t even know what the deal is. Maybe she’s fine. Maybe it’s, like, a mole or something that they hacked off.

. . . too weak from the chemo. . .

That sounds like more than a mole.

I press the bell. When no one answers, I pull out my key and let myself in. I’ve no sooner settled into the couch and turned on the TV than I hear the garage door. A minute later, Henri and Max come tumbling through the door into the kitchen, fighting over some Happy Meal toy, with Mallory just behind them.

“Auntie!” Henri squeals, running across the family room and tackling me.

“Hey, buddy. How was school?” I ask, ruffling his sable mop.

“Jeremy Timmons brought his tarantula and we watched it eat a cricket!” he says as Max disappears up the hall.

My stomach squirms a little and I lower myself back onto the couch. “Cool. Was it gross?”

“It ate the whole thing! No guts left over or anything!” he says, clamoring onto the couch next to me.

“I don’t know whether eating the whole thing, or left-over guts is grosser,” I tell him.

Max appears a minute later with a laptop and settles onto the floor on his stomach.

“To what do we owe the honor?” Mallory says, coming out of the kitchen with a sliced apple and peanut butter for the boys.

“We need to talk.”

She looks up at me as she set the plate on the coffee table, and concern flits over her face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mom, Mal—”

But that’s as far as I get before her hand goes up and her face turns to stone. Her whole posture changes at the mention of Mom, stiffening into something hard and unforgiving. “Henri,” she says, “take your snack and you and Max find something to play with in your room, okay?”

“Are you okay, Mom?” Henri asks.

She nods and tries to smile, but it’s pinched. “I just need to talk to your auntie for a minute, ’kay baby?”

“ ’Kay,” he says. He picks up the plate of apples and tugs at Max’s shoulder.

Max grabs his laptop and Henri gives me a concerned glance over his shoulder as they make their way down the hall.

“Is she trying to get ahold of you?” Mallory hisses the second their door closes. “Because if she is, don’t fall for it. Don’t call her back. She’ll tell you some fancy story to suck you in, but she’s a liar, Hilary. You can’t believe anything she says.”

“She’s sick. I think she may be dying.”

She barks out a bitter laugh and rolls her eyes. “Is that what she said? She so full of bullshit.”

“No, Mallory. She didn’t say it. I just came from Bedford Hills and they wouldn’t let me see her because she was too weak from the chemo.”

Her jaw tightens and I swear she stops breathing. I wait until she says something to know whether it’s me going there that she’s stuck on, or whether it’s that Mom really is sick.

“What were you doing in Bedford Hills?”

“Visiting Mom.”

“Why?”

I slouch back into the couch. “Because I just was, okay? I’ve gone on the first of every month for years—ever since I moved out of here.”

Mallory’s face blanches. “She’s poison, Hillary.”

“She’s sick, Mallory! She’s looked really bad over the last six or seven months, but I just thought . . . I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “I guess I just thought she was getting old and all the drinking and smoking was catching up with her.”

“I don’t want you going back there.”

I shove out of the couch. “Tough shit.”

For a full minute she doesn’t say anything, then, “You really think she’s dying?”

“Yes, Mallory. I’m pretty sure she’s dying.”

She sags into the door frame but hate still runs through her voice as she says, “So, what are we supposed to do, just pretend she didn’t abandon you to the system? Just pretend that everything that happened to you there wasn’t on her?”

“She’s dying,” I say, slumping back into the couch. “I think maybe it’s time to forgive and forget.”

“I will never forget,” she says low through gritted teeth, and that’s when I realize this isn’t about me.

I straighten up. “What did she do to you?”

She looks at me a long minute, then spins for the kitchen. “Don’t go back there.”

I pull myself up and follow her. She’s at the sink, peeling a potato when I walk in. “So we’re just going to let her die all alone.”

She keeps peeling.

I move to the counter and pick up a potato. “You have another peeler?” I ask, pulling open the utensil drawer, but when I look up at her expectantly, I see the tears tracking down her face and dripping onto the counter.

“Mal?”

She swallows hard and sniffles, but doesn’t look up from her potato.

“What’s going on?”

Her whole face pulls tight and she drops both the potato and the peeler into the sink. “Do you remember the day I left?”

I mostly remember the yelling. “Sort of.”

She looks up at me with sad eyes. “You were only ten.”

Mom and Mallory were always fighting about something. I don’t think they knew how to communicate at anything less than a yell, and it usually ended with Mom hitting Mallory. But I remember, at the end of that fight, Mallory was gone and never came back. When I asked Mom, she said Mallory had gone to college. End of story.

“You went to college.”

She shakes her head. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yeah . . . didn’t you?”

She scoops the potato out of the sink and puts it on the counter. “Eventually. But that was just after graduation, Hilary. I was in the city until August.”

“Why did you leave, then?”

She hauls a deep breath, then looks at me. “Do you remember Doug?”

My mind does a quick inventory of the string of Mom’s live-in men. “The big blond one with the gold tooth?”

She nods. “It was graduation night. I was drunk and Carrie and her boyfriend gave me a ride home. Doug was on the couch, watching some old horror flick when I came in. I guess Mom was already passed out in bed.” She lowers herself into a chair, resting her elbows on her knees and holding her face in her hands. “I don’t really remember much . . . just that I stumbled into that little table behind the couch in the family room and knocked some things off it. Doug helped me up and sort of carried me to our room.” She looks up at me. “I don’t remember why you weren’t there . . . probably sleeping over at McKenzie’s or something.”

McKenzie. My friend from “before.” I’d forgotten about her.

“I remember he left and I started tugging off my clothes, but then I looked up and he was in my door, watching me . . .” A tear leaks over her lashes and she wipes her face with her palm. “I screamed, and Doug took off, but when Mom staggered in a minute later, and I told her what happened, she blamed me. Called me a tramp.” She looks up at me with the most tortured eyes I’ve ever seen. “I wanted to take you and go. I wanted to get us both out of there.”

It feels like I’ve been kicked in the gut. “But you left me.”

“I was only seventeen. When she threw me out a few weeks later because Doug whistled at me, I didn’t even have time to grab my stuff. She was crazy, waving a kitchen knife around in the air and threatening to kill me. I kept thinking I’d come back for you . . . that I’d bring you to Dad’s with me. I even went to the house one day to grab you. But you were with McKenzie, and you seemed so . . . normal. I knew I was leaving for college in a few months, so I . . .” She drops her face into her hands. “I just left you there.”

“If you’d taken me, I’d just have ended up in the system sooner, Mallory. There’s nothing you could have done to change that. I couldn’t have gone to Florida with you.”

She lifts her head and looks at me. “Don’t go back there.”

What do I say? “I don’t think . . .” I breathe deeply and lift my eyes to hers. “I don’t think you should leave it like this, Mallory. I think you need to . . . I don’t know . . . maybe if you saw her, if you talked about it—”

“No!” She springs from her chair. “I’m not going to talk to her! I’m never going to forgive her. I’m happy she’s dying, Hilary. I want her to!”

“Mommy?” We both spin on Henri’s voice. He’s standing just inside the kitchen with the empty apple plate. Max is behind him in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

She wipes her eyes and drags a forearm under her nose, sniffling as she moves quickly toward him. “Nothing, baby. Everything is good.” She smiles and takes the plate from his hand. “You want more apples?”

“Yes, please,” he says.

He comes to me, where I haven’t moved from the table. “Will you build Legos with me, Auntie?”

I stand and ruffle his hair, then pull him into a hug. “Sure, buddy.”

When I glance up at Mallory, she’s pushing an apple slicer down a Granny Smith like nothing ever happened, and I know as far as she’s concerned, the discussion is over. But I’m not going to let it drop. I can’t.