the beginning was to fight. I laced up my gloves, stood in the ring, and imagined cancer cloaked in a tacky satin robe in the other corner. For three years, my hands have been curled into fists. But I’m tired now. I am tired and bloodied and my blows are soft. It’s because of Becca, my relentless coach, that I continue. I dream the white towel floating down into the center of the ring, but she clings to it. She is holding on to it with every bit of her strength, and her fists are stronger than mine.
But it is autumn here now, and I know I am no different than the precarious leaves, holding on to the branches of the trees outside my window. I dream myself red and gold and purple. I dream the flight from branch to sky to ground. But every time I begin to fall, Becca is there, demanding to know exactly what I think I am doing.
She believes the underdog can win the fight, that winning is as simple as persistence and faith. In my corner, she rinses my bloodied face with cool water and urges me back into the cold ring. She knows how tired I am, knows that without rest there is no way I will be able to win. She thinks that I am only taking a break, only gathering strength.
Daddy almost never came home anymore. Every night that he worked, he spent at Roxanne’s house. That was fine with me. When he was home, he just stared at the things my mother left behind. I found him once in the bathroom, holding one of her razors, the bathtub steaming with hot water and the lilac bubble soap she always used.
Before she left, my mother’s baths had been intricate rituals. I actually believed that something magical occurred each time she went into the small bathroom off the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She would leave us after dinner, while we were still cleaning our plates. My father would open another beer, Quinn would scrape whatever was left from the blue-and-white casserole dish onto his plate, and I would wonder what she was doing in there. After the dishes were done and Daddy and Quinn had retired to their respective corners of our small house, my mother would emerge in her giant red bathrobe, turbaned like a woman in a commercial.
I thought I might figure out her secrets by studying the artifacts, but there was little to go on. After she was done, I would lock myself in the bathroom as the water drained. The smell was of lilacs, even in winter. Sometimes I would close my eyes and reach into the steam; I swear I could feel the purple petals in my fingers. Along the edge of the cracked porcelain tub lay mysterious instruments, like the tools of a magician. Silver razor, clippers, tweezers. Once, I took the razor and ran it across the length of my arm. When I looked at the blade, it was full of downy hairs. I blew them off and hoped she wouldn’t know what I’d done. I was obsessed with my mother’s rituals of hand cream and pumice and perfume, because when she came out of the steamy bathroom each night, she looked like a different person. Even if Daddy had spent the whole day lying on the couch with the cool washcloth pressed against his head and a beer in his hand, after her bath, her skin glowed pink and her face looked calm. I imagined her worries swirling down the drain, like bubble soap or the sawdust that always covered our clothes.
What I loved most, though, were the bottles, the plastic containers shaped like champagne bottles, gold foil at the top, plastic corks. Inside, liquid lilacs. Every now and then I would peel a little piece of the foil off, fold it into a tiny square, and put it in my mouth. It hurt when it touched my fillings, but it was a thrilling kind of pain. I wanted my own magic ritual to take away my worries. I wanted instruments that would rid me of all of my fears. I wanted to make my world smell of lilacs, even in winter.
I would stand on the furry bath mat, still soggy from her wet feet, and look at my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I’d turn from side to side, looking for my mother’s features in my face. But I could never find them: not eyes, not nose, not throat. I looked like my father. He was me. He was my birth and my death, rendered simply in his hands and in his eyes. I could see my future in his face and hear my past in his words. Watching him staring at the empty places where my mother used to be was like staring at both the self I’d already lost and the person I would become. I was grateful, in a strange way, for Roxanne. When Daddy was away, I didn’t have to stare my own sadness in the face.
By the time winter descended, touching us at the Pond with its frigid white fingers before moving south toward the lake and on into Quimby, Daddy had stopped sleeping in their old bed. Stopped coming by except to drop off a check and, every now and then, something he thought we needed.
“Let’s take a walk,” Becca says when she finds me buried under covers on my lumpy couch watching the fourth soap opera in a row.
I grumble and burrow deeper into my nest.
“Come on,” she says, gently tugging my hand.
Bog, who has been napping on the rug next to me, stands up and stretches his front legs. He is always ready for a walk. But when I don’t budge, he looks at me and then lies back down, covering his long snout with his paw.
“It’s sunny out,” she says. “It smells like fall.”
Reluctantly, I pull myself away from the beautiful couple on TV and stand up. I am dizzy and weak and everything aches today. On days like this I wish it were over with already. On days like this it’s hard to think I was ever well.
I groan a little with the pain that accompanies the first few movements after hours of stillness. “I don’t think I’m up for it today, Beck. My back is hurting.”
“You need fresh air,” she says, exasperated.
What she doesn’t understand is how little I really do need.
At first, I listened intently to the doctors as they prescribed everything that would be required to wage this war. It’s funny how they always use the language of soldiers. They said that first I would need surgery, but that I did not need to worry. The tumor was large, but did not appear to have spread. It was in situ. Contained. But they were wrong. They would need to extract my lymph nodes. I needed radiation, I needed chemotherapy. Every week, Becca drove me from Quimby to Burlington, where I received the treatment I needed to survive. I needed to keep my appetite up, I needed rest, I needed to fight. But even with every necessity fulfilled, I was losing. New growths blossomed like flowers on soldiers’ graves.
Now, I only need something sweet to eat after dinner. Warm pajamas. Music. Becca makes sure I have all these things.
It felt strange at first, when she reappeared. Shortly after my surgery, she moved home from New York, where she’d been since college, trying to make a career as an actress. She had been offered a job at the high school, teaching social studies and coaching drama. When she found out I was sick, she knocked on my door and said, “What can I do?”
I hadn’t seen her in so long, she was almost a stranger. So I shrugged and said, “I don’t really need much.”
Now, she brings me the eclairs I love, and big bags of Snickers bars that the doctors say I definitely do not need. Sometimes, she stays with me all night, just the way she did when we were kids, and we’ll listen to music until one of us falls asleep. Sometimes, I think the only thing I really need now is Becca.
“Fine,” I say, and take the wool sweater she is holding out to me. “Let’s go for a walk.”
She knows I’ve been thinking about my mother lately. And I think she knows I’ve been thinking about him, too.
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