AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her fingers feel cool when she rests them on mine. Dark blue veins spider across the back of her hand, old bruises from IV lines mottling the skin that used to be creamy golden-brown from days spent in the Florida sun.
She turns her head on the mound of pillows that prop her up in the bed, the sparse post-chemo cap of fuzzy mahogany hair reminding me of a baby bird I once tried to rescue after it fell out of its nest. I couldn’t save that bird. I woke up one morning and found it stiff and cold in the shoebox I fashioned for its cage.
Mom glances at the backpack slung over my shoulder, which I’ve carried here straight from school. “Do you have something to show me today?”
“Yeah.” I reach into my pack, fishing around the books and homework from my fourth grade classes until I find the large spiral pad secreted at the bottom. I open to the page I made for her today and tear the pencil sketch out.
I don’t want to notice the way her hands tremble as she holds it. Her graceful, artist’s hands, almost too weak to hold a single sheet of drawing paper now. Her eyes mist as she gazes at my work for a long time.
“Oh, Nicky. It’s beautiful.”
I want to lean toward her, yearning to be close, but I stay still. I don’t like the odor of antiseptics that hovers around her, nor the faint ammonia tinge from the tube that runs from beneath her blanket into the bag of dark yellow fluid hanging near my feet.
When she looks at me with pride beaming in her eyes, I feel ashamed of my discomfort in being near her. I should be stronger than this.
I should be brave, but all I am is afraid.
“This is your best one yet, sweetheart.” Her cracked lips spread in a tender smile. “Do you have any idea how special you are, how talented you are?”
I shrug, aware even at ten years old that she’s the talented one. Or she was, until the cancer took all of that away from her a few months ago.
“Promise me you’ll keep at it, Nicky. You have to. You’re too gifted to let a gift like this go to waste.”
“Dad doesn’t like it when I work on my art.”
I sound sullen, but I can’t help it. He and I have never gotten along. We never do things together, which is okay with me because when we do he just seems angry with me. Sometimes I think he can’t even stand the sight of me.
“Dad says art is for girls. And sissy boys.”
She scoffs, an airless sound that seems to scrape her throat. “He doesn’t mean that. Your father had a hard life, honey. His life is still hard, trying to support the three of us with what little he and your grandpa bring in from the boat.”
A boat he refuses to let me step foot on. I’m too young, he says. Too soft for his line of work. Always mocking me.
He doesn’t know what I’m capable of because he’s never there to watch me try.
“He loves you, sweetheart. Don’t ever doubt that.”
I nod and smile, if only to let her continue to believe that. A question burns in the pit of my stomach. A selfish one that leaps off my tongue before I can bite it back. “What am I going to do when you’re gone?”
“My sweet boy.” She let my sketch fall against her sunken breast as she reaches for me. Her fingers grasp mine in a firm hold now, her gray eyes stormy with resolve. “I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to fight this and get better. Then I’ll be home and everything will be back to normal again.”
When I start to cry, she gently tugs me down, gathering my head to her shoulder. Then I don’t care about the smells or the sounds of the many machines that are connected to her. I weep like the sissy boy my father thinks I am, terrified of losing everything I love—and the only person who’s ever loved me.
“You’ll see,” she whispers as she kisses the top of my head. “I’m going to beat this stupid cancer. I’m going to get out of this hospital and then you and I are going to turn that old shed out back into our studio, how about that? We’re going to draw and paint whenever we want to, just you and me. Is that a deal?”
I nod shakily, my tears slowing under the ferocity of her resolve. “Yeah. It’s a deal.”
“Everything’s going to be all right, Nicky. I promise.”
In the end, it was a promise she couldn’t keep. She didn’t get better. She didn’t ever come home.
And after the cancer took her later that same month and she was gone, my life at home became the worst kind of hell.
Then nothing was all right ever again.
“Dominic?”
The raspy voice startles me out of the past. My head snaps up to find Kathryn staring at me from where she lay on the bed. She licks her lips as if her mouth is too dry, then she starts to cough.
