I looked at Dad, so overwhelmed I felt out of breath.
He nodded at the playpen. “I want Grace to have sleepovers at her grandpappy’s house.”
I started to laugh. And then, just as quickly, I started to cry.
I don’t think I ever really believed that my family was capable of being okay. In any sense. It’s the thing that terrified me most about being sick, the thing that kept me from being at peace with dying. But maybe Dad could change. And if he could change, maybe Annabel and Brent could too. And if they were okay, Grace would be okay. Then I could go. I could focus on me and what time I had left, if that’s what was happening, and ALS would take one less thing. It would take my life, but maybe it wouldn’t take my family with me when I went.
Adrian leaned down and whispered in my ear. “I thought you said this place was a shithole…”
I did a laugh-cry, and he gave me a sideways hug.
Dad hung up my purse. “I made goulash for dinner, just like old times.”
I blinked at my dad through the tears, standing there in his clean house. And then I cleared the space between us and hugged him.
We weren’t really an affectionate family. I didn’t see the hug coming and neither did he. But we were both happy to be in it and for a flicker of a second, I was a little girl again.
I broke away from him, wiping under my eyes as Brent came around the corner with Joel, holding a martini. “Oh my God. Oh my GOD.” Brent gestured dramatically to the house. “I mean, I saw the dump trucks outside, but I thought they were bringing things in.”
I laughed.
Brent put a hand up. “Dad, you should be very proud of yourself.”
Dad beamed, looking a little misty-eyed. “I have a special surprise. To the living room, chop-chop.” He clapped his hands.
He herded us over to the sofa and when I saw what he was leading us to, I gasped.
On the coffee table were our family photo albums. The ones Dad said he couldn’t find. The ones I was worried were lost in the hoard, never to be seen again.
“You found them?” I breathed, picking one up.
“I did,” Dad said proudly. “With the help of this lovely lady, of course.”
Sonja smiled, sitting on a chair that used to be stacked with board games. “He’s the one who put in the work. I’ve been very impressed with him.”
Dad practically glowed.
Dad was always a hundred times prouder of himself than he should be. Delusions of grandeur abounded. But this time he deserved to be proud.
I sat on the sofa and opened a photo album with reverence. This was the one with pictures of Mom. My eyes started to tear up again as I flipped through the pages. Mom sitting in a lawn chair, and me and Mel playing in a kiddie pool on the grass. Halloween, Mom dressed like a biker chick, smiling with a jack-o’-lantern. Birthdays with the Baskin-Robbins ice cream cakes she always liked to get us. The house was clean back then too.
There were pictures of Dad, twenty-five years younger. He had sideburns and clear eyes.
He wasn’t broken yet.
I wondered how long the ripple effect lasted after someone died. Maybe until everyone who knew them was dead too? Or was it something that went on for generation after generation because the damage was handed down, touching each new person and changing them, even if they don’t know why?
Something told me it was that one.
Grace would never know her aunt Melanie, but the loss of her would ruin her just the same—because that loss ruined her mother.
Annabel used drugs to dull the memory of what she witnessed at the hands of ALS. She couldn’t do what I did—live a good life in spite of it. She needed something to take the edge off the pain and devastation she’d endured. And so her loss was now Grace’s loss too. Grace would ride the ripple of it her whole life unless Annabel got clean—or unless I took Grace out of the pool. Got her adopted by another family who didn’t share this tragedy.
I shook it off.
There was no point in thinking about it. I’d spent enough time dwelling on things I couldn’t change today. I didn’t want to look at the sun again.
Adrian sat down next to me, so close his thigh pressed into mine. He peered down at the album. “She looks just like you,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah. She did,” I said quietly.
And just like me, her disease was invisible—but it was there, lying in wait inside of her, ready to spring its trap.
Mom had been a dancer. She taught at an academy. Losing her ability to do the one thing she’d loved the most, one muscle-withering day at a time, would have been extra cruel. It was a reminder that some things are worse than death—losing the things worth living for are worse than death.
Traveling was what I loved.
I never saved anything for the long run. I didn’t go to college. I couldn’t afford it back then anyway, and why waste my life sitting in a room working on a degree when I’d die before I’d get to use it?
I didn’t watch my cholesterol or exercise. I didn’t worry about where I’d be in ten years. I made long-term plans for my family, not myself. But I did plan for this.
Back when I’d started my quest to travel the globe, I’d researched all the best cities in the world for wheelchair users. And in all my journeys, I didn’t visit a single one. Barcelona, Vienna, Singapore, Sydney, Berlin—these were my things to look forward to. To keep living a life worth living and having new adventures for as long as possible. I’d squeeze every drop of happiness from my time on this Earth. I’d cherish every second.
Especially now that the seconds were likely running out.
* * *
Dinner was amazing. For the first time in longer than I could recall, I didn’t feel worried or angry or resentful toward my dad. I just got to enjoy him. I got to hear him tell his funny stories and laugh and remember how charming he could be. And the best thing of all was that Adrian saw it too. I could tell. Dad would say something witty and Adrian would look over at me and I’d see it in his eyes. It was like taking someone to a magical place from your childhood and having them see all the same wonder that you did once, even though it didn’t hold the same power over them. And I couldn’t explain how precious this was to me.
I wanted to be proud of Dad. And there was nobody in the world that I wanted to feel that way in front of more than Adrian.
He was so normal and grounded and had all his shit together, and I was like one five-alarm fire after another. Debris in a cyclone of chaos. I knew he liked to hang out with me because I was fun—and I really tried to stay fun in front of him. But the more time he spent with me, the more he saw. And most of what he saw was just sad. To share and celebrate some normality felt like a gift.
After dinner Adrian stood shoulder to shoulder with me, helping with dishes. Dad and Sonja had cooked, so we cleaned. They were in the living room with Joel and Brent—who didn’t do anything to earn the right to relax, but that was typical.
Adrian looked over at me. “You should be really proud of what he’s done here,” he said quietly.
I nodded. “I am.”
It wasn’t the whole house. My old room was still home to half a dozen bikes that Dad had insisted he keep and sell. And the upstairs hadn’t been touched yet. But the progress was beyond encouraging.
Sonja had explained to us that the process of cleaning the house was bigger than just getting rid of things. It was helping Dad understand why he felt like he had to acquire them in the first place. Her plan of attack wasn’t just to clean up. It was for him to relearn behaviors and find other ways to cope with the stresses that caused the compulsion to begin with. And one of the core aspects of that was him finding a different job. One that didn’t require him to collect things for a living. She didn’t have to tell me that was a slippery slope, I’d seen it with my own eyes. Dad was looking for accounting work again. He had an interview on Monday.