I want to tell him about the reservoir—how the mob came after me and the dog, how humiliating it was to be publicly shamed for wearing her, to have something so innocent called so into question with such a malevolent take—but then I’d have to tell him about seeing him there. Seeing him there with the woman he was with, the woman who is probably his girlfriend. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to hear about how he might be in love, how we’re going to have to figure out a way for him to move out and move in with her.
But for once I push myself to speak. “I saw you last week. At the reservoir,” I whisper. I put the towel down. My hands are shaking. “I saw you talking and laughing with someone, a woman, and then I saw you kissing that woman.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, one last pause before ripping off the rest of the Band-Aid. “You looked happy. The way you used to look.” I stare at him, at his big green eyes and his sharp jawline and silvering hair, trying to see him the way she does, the way I used to. “That’s what I want for you. You deserve it. I think we should do whatever it takes to make that possible.”
He nods slowly, processing. “Are you saying you want me to move out?”
I think of Glenn. “I’m saying that life is short. I’m saying that if you have another chance at happiness, you should take it.”
Making Plans
I bring fresh blueberry muffins from Flour, Glenn’s favorite bakery, and a few single-serving containers of her favorite full-fat grass-fed locally sourced maple-flavored yogurt. I also bring the card that Teddy made the night before and slipped to me in the car on the way to school—a bulging envelope barely taped shut because he’d put a small LEGO figurine inside to go along with the card. “That’s the Cancer Monster,” he’d said when I took the envelope from him at drop-off before he left the car. “To scare away her sickness.”
“Oh, Teddy.”
“Tell her I hope she feels better but I understand if she can’t come to Spotlight.”
I nod. And for what feels like the twenty millionth time this week, my eyes blur with tears.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he says, patting my arm, just like he used to when each of my parents was sick. “It’s okay.”
When I get to Glenn’s house I let myself in with my key, then walk through the quiet of the living room, full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, walls filled with framed art and photographs of past husbands and authors she worked with. A clock somewhere, maybe in the kitchen, ticks. I listen to it mark time, counting the days and hours and minutes and seconds left, measurements of a life shutting down and coming to an end.
Upstairs, Glenn has no appetite, so I put the card on the nightstand and let Charlotte out of her sling, lift her and Lucy onto the bed, and then find a spot for myself. “I brought you something,” I say, opening my tote bag. “It’s an activity. Something we can do together.”
The old Glenn would swear at me, tell me we’ve never needed an “activity” to do together—like playing cards or knitting or even playing Scrabble—“isn’t talking the activity?” she would always say. But today I get no such back talk as I pull out coloring books and crayons. I give her one—Mindful Mantras and Mandalas—and take Creative Coloring Meditations for myself. Flipping through my book and cracking open the big box of Crayolas with the built-in sharpener makes me think that coloring in a giant geometric design is the most perfect and peaceful thing to do in this sad and awful moment: we will literally fill the emptiness with color.
“Sari Epstein sent me these,” I say. “After I invited myself to her house and we accepted the free gift of Gary’s spot and I defiled her property and fled under cover of darkness. Instead of publicly shaming me on Instagram or Facebook or sending me a furious email, she refunded my retreat fee and sent me a package full of her coloring books. I mean, who does that?”
Glenn closes her eyes. “A total bitch.”
We both laugh to the point of tears.
“I’m such an asshole,” I say. “And it was her note that really got me. It said, I’m sorry you’re in pain. May you be released from it soon. How did she know that?”
This time we don’t laugh.
“I am in pain,” I say. “I’m sad about everything.”
Glenn takes my hand.
“I wish this weren’t happening. I wish you weren’t sick.”
“I won’t be sick much longer.”
For a second I think she’s telling me that she’s getting better, that a scan I didn’t know about has come back showing unexpected improvement and recovery. But then I realize what she’s really saying. That it won’t be much longer.
I put the crayons—a fistful of blues and pinks and greens and reds—down. I watch Glenn, with both dogs asleep next to her on the bed, close her eyes.
“It looks like I’ll probably be leaving soon, a little earlier than we thought, so like you said the other day, we need to make our plans.”
I start to cry. I don’t want to make plans. I don’t want her to go. I don’t want her to leave early.
“I’m not ready,” I sob.
“I know. But I am.”
* * *
The plans we make are short and simple; the basics. I know the drill, the order of what’s needed at the end:
We will call for a hospital bed to be delivered; we will call a home hospice service to visit and start their services; a palliative “comfort kit,” with liquid morphine, will be stored in the refrigerator. I’ll print out and tape her DNR—Do Not Resuscitate order—to the refrigerator so there won’t be any misunderstanding should someone—Daisy, me, Glenn herself—panic and call 911. Gary and I will come by daily, but it will be Daisy, technically her cousin’s daughter, who will come down from Portland, Maine, and be on call for the duration and then pack up the house and settle things after Glenn is gone.
“But you’ll take Lucy,” she says, an urgent reminder.
“Of course I will.” I show her the pictures on my phone that I’ve already taken of Lucy’s cabinet in the kitchen: the food she eats, the treats she likes, all the supplies—her crate, her bed, her leash, her brush, her toys. “I’ll bring everything with me so that our house feels like home.”
We look at the dogs, lying next to each other, similar enough in their coloring and shape and size to almost look related. I picture myself walking Lucy on a leash while still carrying Charlotte, just for a few days, until I give up the sling for good.
“Gary doesn’t mind?”
“Of course not. He’d do anything for you.”
“He’d do anything for you, too.”
“I know. But maybe it’s time we let each other go.” I think, but don’t say, that maybe he’d be happier with the girlfriend whose name I don’t even know.
“He doesn’t love her.”
I turn to her. “He told you?”
She nods. “He came yesterday, by himself.”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“He doesn’t tell you a lot of things.” I stare at her as she closes her eyes. “He doesn’t want to leave. He’s not ready yet. And he doesn’t think Teddy is ready, either.” She takes my hand and holds it. “I told you long ago that I was happy to be wrong about you and Gary, and I was wrong. Loss has made you afraid of life, but you have to stay open. Porous. You have to let all the available light—all the tiny shards of joy—still flow through you.” She closes her eyes. “Who knows what beauty the rest of the way will bring.”