You Shouldn't Have to Say Goodbye Page 3

  “Okay,” Mom said. “Now I’m going to call you lots because I miss you lots. And take down my number so you can call me.”

  “Wait a minute.” I scrambled for the chalk and went to the little blackboard that hangs on the kitchen wall and wrote down the number.

  “Got to go now,” Mom said. “There's somebody here to take me away for more tests, and I feel like a pincushion already. Now, Daddy will be there in a little while, okay? I’ll see you in just a day or so.”

  “Okay, Mom. Bye.” I hung up, went back to the drawer, got out more bread, and put it in the toaster. Daddy was on his way home. Mom would be home tomorrow. Suddenly I was starved.

  MOM DIDN’T COME HOME THE NEXT DAY OR THE NEXT. ON the morning of the third day, Daddy said that if she didn’t come home that day, I’d be allowed to go see her at night. But that afternoon, when I got home from school, there was a note from Daddy on the blackboard. “Sarah, please call me at the hospital as soon as you come in. You have Mom's room number. Call me there. Love you, Daddy.”

  I dialed the number, and that choked feeling came into my throat again, the way it always does when I’m scared or nervous.

  A voice answered. It was Daddy, but he spoke so quietly, I could hardly hear him.

  “Hello?” “Hello, Daddy? This is Sarah.”

  “Sweetheart! How are you?”

  “I’m okay. How are you? How's Mom? What's happening?”

  “Honey, Mom was operated on this morning. She…”

  “Operated on!” I interrupted. “For what? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We didn’t know, honey. The results of the test came in just this morning. They decided to operate immediately.”

  “But why? For what? What's the matter with Mom?”

  For a second, Daddy didn’t answer, but then he said, “It's hard to tell you about it on the phone. Besides, Mom's back from surgery now, and she's asleep. I don’t want to talk too loud. As soon as she's awake, I’ll leave her and come home. Okay?”

  “No, you don’t have to do that. She’ll probably need you.” I wanted him home with me, but I knew he should be with Mom too. I remembered when I had my tonsils out, how I wanted somebody with me the whole time. Mom probably wanted Daddy there.

  “No, Sarah,” Daddy said. “It's okay. Mom said this morning before surgery that she wanted me to go home to be with you as soon as this was over. So as soon as she's fully awake, I’ll be there. Maybe we’ll even go out for hamburgers or something.”

  “Okay, but Daddy, what was Mom operated on for?”

  “Honey.” He paused for just an instant, but then he said, “Honey, can I tell you about it when I get home? Can you wait till then?”

  “Okay, but—but, Daddy, is she all right?”

  Again that weird little pause, but then he said, “Fine. She’ll be okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Okay, Sarah?”

  “Okay,” I said, but I wasn’t sure it was okay at all.

  I said good-bye then, my heart pounding harder than it should have been. Mom couldn’t be really sick, could she? Anyway, even if she was, if they had operated they must know what was wrong, and they must have fixed it, right? I needed someone to tell me that, so without even hanging up, I put my finger on the disconnect button, then lifted it and dialed Robin's number.

  She answered right away, and I told her what had happened. “So if they operated,” I said, “they must know what's wrong, and they must have fixed it. Don’t you think so, Robin?”

  “Of course.” She laughed. “They don’t operate not to fix things, silly.”

  I felt a little embarrassed when she said that, as though she were making fun of me, but before I could answer, she continued. “Besides, it's probably just her appendix. I had my appendix out when I was three years old. It was yucky at first. I felt sick all the time. But then I got ice cream and ginger ale and toys, and everybody came to visit. It was neat.”

  “Appendix!” I said. “Of course! That's why she had that sore spot in her back and side. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Robin giggled. “Because you’re not a genius like me. Want to play for a while? We could skate or something. ”

  I looked around the kitchen, where I was standing. The place was a mess. Daddy and I have always done our share of the housekeeping, but somehow it wasn’t the same as when Mom was there. I knew I should really clean things up.

  “Huh?” Robin was waiting for my answer. “Want to skate?”

  “Okay,” I said. “But I’m going to tidy up this mess in the kitchen first. I’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes, okay?”

  “I’ll be there in five,” Robin said. “If you’re not done, I’ll help you.”

  “Okay.” I hung up and began buzzing around the kitchen, humming. Robin was right. I was silly to worry. I took the breakfast dishes we had left in the sink that morning and crammed them into the dishwasher. It was jam-full because we hadn’t run it in days, so I put in the detergent and started it. I wiped the sink and counter tops fast and dried them off with paper towels. Then I started picking up the junk. My sneakers were still in the middle of the floor from three days earlier. Daddy had hung his jacket and tie on the doorknob the night before, and they were still there. Mom would have a fit if she could see this! I tore around the house, stuffing things into closets and cabinets. In the family room, three days of newspapers were piled on a table, and next to the TV were a plate and glass from my snack the night before. Good thing Mom hadn’t seen that! I cleaned it all up, and when I finished, I stood back and admired it. It was pretty good. Whoever said housework was hard? I hadn’t done a bad job at all, and it had taken only about seven minutes. Then Robin rang the doorbell, and I met her out on the steps.

  We skated for about an hour, practicing circles and skating backward. We had just quit and were taking off our skates when Daddy's car pulled into the driveway. Robin picked up her skates and waved good-bye. “See you tomorrow,” she said to me. “Hi, Mr. Morrow!” She waved to Daddy, and he smiled at her as he got out of the car.

  “Daddy!” I called, as he came up the walk. “Is Mom awake?”

  Daddy nodded. He looked awfully tired and even a little messy. His tie was all sideways, and his hair was sort of rumpled, the way it gets sometimes when he's been pushing his fingers through it. “Yes,” he said. He smiled at me, and it made him look a lot better. “And she said to give you big loves and big hugs. It was the last thing she said before I left. So I guess I have to hug you.” He said it in that way we have when we’re teasing each other, as if he had to hug me but didn’t really want to.

  I shrugged and turned away, smiling. “So don’t hug me. Your hugs are gross anyway.”

  Daddy grabbed me from behind, and gave me a big bear hug, lifting me right off the ground. “Want to go out for hamburgers or pizza or something?”

  “Oh, yeah, pizza!”

  “Okay, wait till I wash up, though.” He started into the house.

  “Daddy?”

  He stopped and turned around. “Hmm?”

  “What's the matter with Mom? Why was she operated on?”

  Daddy shoved his hand through his hair, and I could see why it looked like that. He made it stand practically straight up. “It's something wrong with her kidneys,” he said. “She has…a disease. The doctors had to operate to see if they could fix it.” He turned to the house again.

  “Did they?”

  He turned back to me. “Did they what?”

  I sighed. Was he being deliberately dumb? “Did they fix it?”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “Maybe! They don’t know?”

  “Sarah.” Daddy sighed. “There's nothing simple in medicine. Things take time, They’ve operated. They now know what's wrong. And now they have to see how to treat it. There are medicines, things like that.”

  “Oh, okay.” I was puzzled, but a little relieved. “So you mean that if they don’t fix it with surgery, they can fix it
with medicine?”

  Daddy nodded. “Something like that.” But I thought for a second there were tears in his eyes.

  We looked away from each other, and then Daddy came to me, hugged me again, and ruffled my hair. “Let's both get cleaned up and go out for pizza, okay?” Then he held me away and smiled, and there were no tears at all, so I must have been imagining it.

  “Okay,” I said, and I smiled at him too, but more to make him feel better than because I really felt like it. “And wait till you see how I cleaned up the house.”

  He grinned at me and patted my rear end, and we both went into the house to get ready.

  At the pizza place, we talked a little about Mom, but mostly we were pretty quiet. Daddy said he wasn’t going back to the hospital because the doctors had given Mom some medicine for pain, so they felt it would be better if she just slept a lot.

  When we got home, I went into the family room to do my homework, and Daddy went to Mom's office and closed the door. I could hear him talking for a long time on the phone, and I began to wonder if he was talking to Mom. If he was, I wanted to talk too. I went and knocked softly on the door. He didn’t answer my knock, so after a minute, I opened the door quietly.

  Daddy's back was to me as he sat in one of those squashy chairs, and he had the phone in his lap. Whoever he was talking to, he sounded very serious. “We just don’t know yet. A lot will depend on her response to the…” He paused. “No, not yet. But listen, Sarah…”

  Sarah! He was talking to Grandma, Grandma Grimes! I’m named after her, so it had to be Grandma. She lives in Florida and I miss her. I hadn’t talked to her in so long! “Daddy!” I interrupted. “Is that Grandma? Can I talk to her?”

  Daddy looked up, startled. “Sarah!” He put his hand over the phone. ”I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I scare you? But is it Grandma? Can I talk to her?”

  “Yes, okay.” He spoke into the phone. “It's Sarah here. She just came in. She wants to talk to you.”

  He handed me the phone then, and I grabbed it. Grandma and I talked about Christmas, and maybe her coming to visit, and lots of things, including the gymnastics show, but she didn’t say anything about Mom, probably because Daddy had already told her all about it.

  When we finished talking, we both promised to write soon, and I gave the phone back to Daddy. I went upstairs then to get ready for bed. When I had bathed and all, I climbed into bed with a book and waited for Daddy to come up and kiss me good-night. Usually Mom does that, but ever since she had been in the hospital, Daddy had been coming in to say goodnight. For the longest time, I could hear him downstairs, talking quietly on the phone. I called him once, but he didn’t hear me, and finally, at ten to eleven, way past my bedtime, I turned out the light. I tried to stay awake until he came in, but I must have fallen asleep, because I don’t remember his kissing me good-night.

  MOM STAYED IN THE HOSPITAL MORE THAN ANOTHER WHOLE week, and during all that time I didn’t get to see her. I hardly got to talk to her, either. Daddy said it was because the medicines they were giving her—treatments, he called them— were making her too weak to have visitors. One night I heard him talking to Grandma on the phone again, and he said the treatments were making Mom sick. I didn’t understand how treatments that were supposed to make you better could make you sick, and after Daddy hung up, I asked him that. He just looked at me funny, as though he were surprised to see me there, and then he got up and hugged me and said, “Let's go out for ice cream.” But he didn’t ever answer my question.

  It was exactly one week and three days after Mom's operation that Daddy came home with the news. Next day, Mom would come home. Next day! And he said that if I wanted to, I could stay home from school.

  I could barely sleep that night, and I woke up early. When Daddy left for the hospital, I stayed home to get things ready. The first thing I did was clean up the house. I vacuumed and dusted and picked up everything, until the house was as neat as when Mom was there. Then I made brownies and put them in the oven. While they were baking, I got out china and silver and set the table. I used the little room off the family room that we call the morning room. It's small and it looks over Mom's garden. In the summer, we eat there a lot because it's so sunny. I used a linen tablecloth and pink linen napkins instead of the paper napkins we usually use. Then I went out in the garden to get flowers. Mom loves flowers, and she's always cutting them and filling vases, putting them all over the house. Sometimes she puts a vase in my room too.

  It was cold, and most of the flowers were already dead, but there were still chrysanthemums blooming against the wall, and some marigolds too. There were enough for the table in the morning room and for Mom's office, and then I put some in my room, just the way Mom does. There were still some left, and I put them in a vase in Mom and Daddy's room on the table next to the bed.

  I went around the house then, checking. Everything was perfect. I took the brownies out of the oven, and there was nothing else to do, so I went outside to sit on the steps and wait. Right above me was the roof where Robin and I had played about two weeks before. It was weird to remember that because it seemed as though it was ages ago. Even the weather had changed so much. I remembered that we were barefoot, and Mom made us put sneakers on. Now it was cold, and most of the leaves were gone too. Just a few weeks!

  A horn honked at the end of the street, and I jumped. Mom! Daddy! I flew down the steps and down the driveway. I was hopping up and down by the time Daddy pulled the car all the way up the drive and stopped. I yanked the door on Mom's side open and threw myself into her lap. I didn’t know it was going to happen, but suddenly I was crying. Mom put both arms around me and rocked me back and forth, rubbing my back and running her fingers through my hair. I fought back the tears, feeling silly, and when they were mostly gone, I pulled away and looked at Mom.

  She was crying too, but she didn’t look at all as though she were fighting the tears, just letting them roll down her face. She took my face between her hands then and held it, looking hard at me. For some reason, her tears scared me.

  “What's the matter?” I said.

  “I’ve missed you,” she answered. “I’ve missed you so much. And it stinks…” She broke off as though she were choking.

  “What stinks?”

  But she shook her head and didn’t answer, she was crying so hard. Daddy had come around to her side of the car, and he reached in to help her out. I ducked and backed out, watching Daddy help Mom. She seemed to need his help too, and she leaned heavily on his arm. When she was standing up fully, I looked at her, surprised. She had lost so much weight that her clothes hung on her, loose, almost baggy. Her skin was funny, sort of brown, like she had a tan, but pale underneath, and there were dark rings under her eyes. But she turned to me and smiled, putting her free arm out to me. I went to her, and the three of us walked to the house together, Daddy on one side of Mom, me on the other.

  Halfway up the walk, Mom stopped. “The house looks so good,” she said, and she smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The house.”

  I looked up myself, but shrugged. It was the same house. I guess because she hadn’t seen it in so long, maybe it appeared better.

  Inside the front hall, Daddy asked, “Do you want to lie down?”

  “No.” Mom shook her head and turned to me. “Let's sit together. We have so much to talk about, to catch up on. What smells so good?”

  “Brownies. I made them for you. I set the table too. In the morning room. Come here.” I took Mom's arm and pulled her gently into the morning room. With the sun shining through the window, everything was beautiful. Perfect. The china was shiny, and I remembered those silly ads on TV where the ladies look at themselves in their plates, and how Mom always laughs at that.

  “Flowers!” Mom said. “Oh, Sarah, did you do this?”

  I nodded, pleased. “Here!” I said, and I pulled out a chair for her. “Sit down. You too, Daddy. Do you want coff
ee?”

  Mom seemed hesitant. “Yes, I would but … have you learned how to make it?”

  I made a face at her. “Nah, but I can learn. It's easy, right? I’ll be right back.”

  “Want help, Sarah?” Daddy called when I was halfway to the kitchen.

  “Nope, I can do it myself.” And then I added, “It's a breeze.”

  I heard Mom giggle, and for the first time since the car pulled in the driveway, I smiled and felt okay. That sounded like Mom.

  It was harder than I thought to make coffee, and when it was finally ready and I poured it, it didn’t look the way coffee is supposed to. Mom's coffee is usually dark brown, and this was sort of tan, but I guessed it would be all right. Anyway, I put it on the tray with the brownies and took everything to the morning room. Mom was sitting back in her chair, turned partway so she could see the garden. Daddy had moved his chair close and was holding her hand. Mom had a sort of quiet look on her face, but Daddy looked weird—tight and strange—and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then Mom turned to me and grinned. “The kid—the cook,” she said.

  “Wait’ll you taste the coffee this kid made,” I said, grinning back. I held up the glass pot for her, and the sun shining through it made it seem even paler than it was.

  Mom winced, and then she laughed. “Let's try it.”

  I poured their coffee, and we all sat around the little table. Mom had taken a flower out of the bowl in the middle and was gently twisting it around in her fingers, but her hand was trembling. I cut a brownie for her and then one for Daddy and one for me.

  “For Mom,” I said, holding up the cake as though I were making a toast. “Welcome home!”

  Mom held up her brownie too, and so did Daddy.

  We all took bites together, but I saw Mom's mouth get all twisted suddenly, and she put a hand over it, as though she were forcing down the brownie. Her eyes filled with tears, and she put down her cake and reached out to me. She took both my hands in hers, even though I still held my brownie.

  “Sarah,” she said, crying, “there's just no easy way to tell you this. It's so damn unfair. It's melanoma, a terrible kind of cancer, too advanced to do anything. It's spread to my kidneys—everywhere. They say I’m not going to get better…” She broke off.