Page 55 of That's Not a Thing

“She’s sick,” my mom says. “Lymphoma.”

“What?” I sit up, immediately sharp. “Aaron’s mom has cancer?”

She’s silent for a second, letting me process.

“And Aaron doesn’t know? Mom, no, that’s wrong. She has to tell him.”

“No, sweetie. It’s not on us to make this decision for them. And you don’t tell him either—you respect her wishes. When she’s ready, she will tell him herself. You can’t know what it’s like to have to tell your child you might be dying. You can’t know.”

“It’s not right, Mom. This isn’t right!” I’m shouting now. I am imagining all of the emotions Aaron would be feeling if he knew his mother was keeping this from him, and I have to do something. It doesn’t matter that we’re fighting, or decomposing, or whatever. This is not okay.

“All I was going to say,” she continues in her pointedly calm tone, the tone that is meant to alert me that I’ve gotten out of control, “is that this is not a good time for you and Aaron to be estranged. I have every confidence that he would come around at some point anyway, but who knows how long that might take, and this is a time when you need to be there for him.”

“But he doesn’t even know,” I argue as I toss my dirty Kleenex toward the small trash can in the corner of the room. It’s a feeble misfire, and the tissue sails down at least a foot from the wastebasket.

“Well, once he finds out, he’s going to need you to be there for him.”

We sit there on the phone together then, neither of us talking, as we digest each other’s words and our own. I have a quick memory of Aaron’s mother complaining of pain in her abdomen a couple of months ago at the Mother’s Day barbecue. Aaron offered to get her an appointment with a gastroenterologist at NYU. She said it was probably nothing.

“Is that what you were talking about with Mary when I came to the synagogue for the wedding planning?” It’s dawning on me all at once. I remember the way the caterer and my mom were whispering about someone with cancer.

“Yes,” she admits. Caught.

“I’m going to go out and see her tomorrow. Can I do that, at least?”

My mother sighs loudly into the phone. I picture her sitting at the kitchen table in Livingston, twirling the curly cord of the landline telephone around her finger like she did when I was a little kid. Rationally, I’m aware that my parents’ house is equipped with only cordless phones and has been that way for well over a decade, but I have a longing for those other days, so many years ago, when my mother could actually fix the messes I made.

“She’s going to kill me,” my mom finally says, “but if you feel you must, I won’t stop you.”

After we get off the phone, I stare at the blank wall beside the bed. All I wanted was to help people—Wesley, Moe—but everything turned into such a mess. I haven’t really done anything to help either of them, and my own life has burst into shards of disaster. And now, as I lie on the bed, feeling the urge to help Gladys and Aaron, I wonder if I’ll only muck things up worse.

My phone vibrates on the bedspread beside me and I pick it up, hoping for a call back from Aaron. It’s a text, from Wesley, across the hall:

Wesley: Everything OK?

I guess he heard me crying, or yelling. Or the pain I’m feeling throughout my body is so rank he can just smell it from across the hall.

Me: Yup. Just a standard-issue fight w mom. No biggie.

I’m sure he knows I’m lying, but I can’t get into it with him right now. I have to stay focused on Gladys, on Aaron.

I tap on my calendar app to see what time I can visit Gladys in Long Island tomorrow, and then I toss the phone down without looking. No need to check my calendar. It’s not like I’m gainfully employed or anything.

As much as I want to crawl under the covers and set time back by six months so I can do everything over, do it better, I think about Gladys and how frightened she must be. And Aaron. He’ll be devastated when he learns the news. Especially if she doesn’t let him help her. I have failed Aaron so completely in our relationship. I will not fail him on this.

I STEP OFFthe Long Island Railroad in Syosset, sweaty from the un-air-conditioned train car. It took me until after eleven this morning to get a hold of Gladys and tell her I wanted to visit, and now, standing on the concrete train platform in the heat of the summer afternoon, I feel myself turning into a puddle of sweat and nerves.

Gladys clearly assumed I would be driving Aaron’s car out to the North Shore of Long Island. Otherwise, she would have insisted on picking me up at the train. I didn’t want to tell her by phone what happened between us. Nor did I want to concoct a fake story about why I wasn’t using the car. So I just let her know when I’d arrive at her house and then hurried off the line.

Now, as I step toward the navy-blue cab in the line outside the corner coffee shop, I wonder what I will say. I wonder if Aaron has spoken to her yet. I wonder how to tell her that I know she’s sick. I wonder if the sweat on the back of my thighs is showing through my clothes, leaving noticeable wet marks on my denim shorts.

After the cab pulls down the long driveway to Aaron’s parents’ house, I find a turquoise sticky note waiting on the front door: “Meredith—come around back.”

I climb the stairs at the side of the driveway and open the wrought-iron gate to the backyard. I walk past the deck outside Aaron’s parents’ bedroom, an addition they built when he was in high school. I continue to the main portion of the deck, where they keep an outdoor table and chairs, the grill. Gladys comes into view now beyond the far end of the deck, lounging under an umbrella in a chair set back from the freeform pool. She’s wearing one of those big, floppy hats that make me think of sea creatures like stingrays and jellyfish. I think she might be sleeping, but because of the distance I have yet to cover before I reach her and the large sunglasses hiding her eyes, there’s no way to know.

I cross the slate stones that lead from the deck to the brick patio surrounding the pool and continue making my way toward her. My flip-flops snap under my feet, preventing any sort of stealth arrival.

“Meredith!” Gladys sits up as I approach, her copper-colored hair long and loose under the hat and a large smile illuminating her face. “Oh, I was so glad you called. Come, sit.” She pulls the adjacent lounger a little bit closer to her. “Let me text Suzette that you’re here, and she’ll bring out some iced tea for us.” She’s already tapping away on her phone.