I take a deep breath, blink it all back. ‘Isaac, do you remember when I went to the hospital?’ He nods. ‘I went there to get better, and I thought I would, but the truth is, I didn’t.’ I stare at him, willing him to understand even as I wish he didn’t have to. He’s only seven years old. ‘I didn’t get better, Isaac.’
He blinks at me, his face so serious, so young. ‘So will you have to go back to the hospital again?’
‘Yes, I probably will.’ I know that’s where my last days will probably be. ‘But…’ How can I say this? How can I break his heart and shatter his world? ‘The truth is, Isaac…’ I reach out and slide my hand through his hair, needing to touch him. And it’s a testament to this moment that he doesn’t pull away. He just closes his eyes, accepting my little caress, needing it, just as I do. ‘The truth, Isaac,’ I say quietly, ‘is I’m not going to get better. Ever.’ I let those words sink in for a moment as I stare out at the ocean, trying desperately to hold onto my composure. ‘The truth is, I’m going to die.’
Isaac is silent, his head lowered, his face hidden. I squeeze his shoulder. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ He nods, and we both stay silent for a few moments, struggling. Struggling on and on, until the end. ‘I’m sorry,’ I finally whisper. ‘I wish… oh, I wish so much I could be healthy and well. That I could be there for you. I want to see you…’ I stop, because I can’t burden him with my own sorrows, all the things I won’t be here to see. Third grade. Losing his front teeth. Graduation, girlfriends, becoming an adult, finding his way. Everything. I’m going to miss absolutely everything.
Sometimes I wonder how much Isaac will even remember me, ten or twenty years from now, when he’s been living somewhere else, loving other people, but I can’t bear to think that way. I can’t stand the thought that one day I will be a faded, fuzzy memory, and nothing more.
Isaac is still silent, but I watch as a tear plops onto the sand, making a damp, dark circle. My brave little boy. I pull him into a hug, hold him as tightly as I can, even though everything in me aches and my heart, my heart has already broken in pieces. It broke the first time I saw him, but now it’s shattered completely and there will be no putting it together again. I can live with that. I won’t have to for long.
‘I love you, Isaac,’ I whisper, my voice fierce. I want to imbue him with the words; I want him to always, always remember them, to count on them, as sure as the sun blazing in a cloudless sky. ‘I love you so very much.’
His skinny little arms come around me as he burrows into my chest. ‘I love you, too.’ Then, a ragged whisper. ‘I don’t want you to go.’
Oh Isaac, I think. Oh Isaac, if I could stay, I would. I would do anything, endure anything, to be able to stay. To live. But I just hold him, because that’s all I can do now. He will have questions, I know, questions I will need to answer about who he will live with, who will love him and keep him safe. Because his future is the most important thing now. It’s the only thing left in my control.
We have three more days on the Cape: warm, golden-soaked days, lying on the sand, playing in the waves. I mostly sleep, whether it’s in the cottage or on the beach. The meds I’m on are making me dreamy, distant from myself, which can be pleasant sometimes but also disconcerting. I feel like I’ve already cut loose and am drifting.
Often I find an hour or even two have passed and I have no idea what I’ve been doing. Have I been sleeping? Staring? My mind is a dreamscape of memories – my father, my mother, my childhood, Isaac, all of it jumbled together, passing through my consciousness. I suddenly remember absurdly small things – my mother braiding my hair when she had none of her own, the smell of my father’s sweaters when I sat next to him as a child, watching TV.
Sometimes I have moments of crystalline clarity, playing Connect Four with Isaac, laughing with Heather, sitting on the sand and staring at the ocean, reveling in the simplicity of it. I am here. I am here.
Those moments anchor me in a reality that feels too painful to bear, and yet I don’t want to give them up. I will hold onto them until the last. At least I will try.
By the time we leave the Cape, Heather packing everything up, I know I need to go home. I am far weaker than I was a week ago, and my vision is getting worse, so sometimes I bump into things unless Heather steers me right. My right arm is numb to the elbow. Breathing is hard.
The end is closing in. I can see it in the distance, a finish line I want to ignore, a flag waving, and yet it still feels impossible. It’s been a month since my mastectomy, since my world began to end. Just one month. I thought I’d have more time. I thought the end would come suddenly, three months and then boom, not this gradual wearing away, the crumbling and the shrinking.
In the end, and it really is the end, I have three more good weeks. Right into mid-September, when the days are crisp and golden and the leaves begin to turn, my favorite time of year. How can anyone not like September, when everything feels new? I’m not going back to school; I’m not going back to work, either, but I feel the urge to sharpen pencils, to buy new notebooks and smooth my hands over the clean pages, to make fresh starts and well-intentioned resolutions.
When we got back from the Cape I called Stella and asked her to come over. She came right away, no questions, and while Isaac was out with Heather – I don’t know how I managed without her, now – I asked Stella if she would take care of my son. If she would love him.
H
er eyes went huge and tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Grace. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.’
‘I know.’ I was half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa, a blanket wrapped around me even though it was ninety degrees outside, the middle of August. I’d withered away to skin and bone; even my yoga pants practically slid off me. When I looked in the mirror I genuinely didn’t recognize myself, which was the oddest feeling.
‘I love Isaac so much. You know that. And you know I wanted to offer… before you mentioned Heather…’ She waited uncertainly.
‘I thought Heather was the right person to take care of Isaac, but in the end she didn’t feel she could, or should. She will, though, if she needs to, but… she wanted Isaac to be in a place, a home, where he feels comfortable, with the least amount of disruption. And I think that’s with you.’
‘That’s so…’ Stella shook her head, sniffing, tears spilling over. ‘Wow. I mean, that’s just…’ She dashed at her eyes. ‘Sorry. That’s amazing of her. And of course we’ll take Isaac. We’ll love him as our own. Of course we will.’
‘It’s a big decision,’ I felt compelled to warn, even though I know Stella means every word she says. ‘Don’t jump into it just because you want to be the nice guy here.’ I tried to smile. ‘Think about it. A lot. For you, as well as for Isaac.’
She nodded, looking serious. ‘Of course we will.’
‘But,’ I said, trying to joke, ‘don’t think about it too long.’
Stella burst into tears then, and I tried to comfort her, but I couldn’t get up from the sofa. ‘Sorry,’ she said, as she wiped tears and snot from her face. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
‘It’s okay, Stella.’ I smiled, or tried to. I had to think of other people now; I was already slipping away. I was nearly gone.
The next day Stella called me to say she’d talked to Eric and he felt the same way she did. They would be happy and honored to be guardians for my son. The day after, in what felt like a Herculean effort for me, the three of us went to my lawyer and hammered out the details of Isaac’s trust fund, how he would be taken care of financially, forever.
I nearly fell asleep in the middle of the meeting, but we got there in the end. Signed and sealed. I could rest easy now. I could die.