Tell Me Something Real Read online

  “If that’s what you want,” I say.

  “You look disappointed.”

  I shrug. I want to go to Swensen’s for ice cream or see a movie: Bad News Bears or Freaky Friday. Even Jaws for the sixth time—it’s still playing at the second-run theater. What I really want to see is Taxi Driver, but I know she won’t take me to anything R-rated. I’m old enough for cancer, but too young for sex and blood.

  “Why don’t we go to a movie?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to overdo it.”

  I look at the silverware scattered at the bottom of the sink, like silver fish flailing in a shallow pool. Maybe I should have gone with Dad. I want to be with Mom, but in this moment, I want to be out of the house, with or without her. Nothing sounds better than the cool, quiet movie theater.

  “The theater isn’t far. I’ve been practicing. I could drive with my permit.”

  “I said I don’t feel well enough, Vanessa.” Her voice sounds thin.

  I can’t turn around and look at her. “I meant I could drive myself.”

  “That’s out of the question.”

  “Why? It’s the last day of school. I want to do something fun.”

  She coughs and I listen as she sips her tea. “You should have gone with one of your sisters. I’m sorry I’m not any fun.”

  “You used to be.” The words fly out, and while I know they hurt—they hurt me—I can’t bring myself to stop. “Why can’t you go? All you have to do is sit there. That’s all you’d do here.”

  “Look at me,” she says.

  I feel equal parts embarrassed and angry. I collect a handful of silverware and shove it into the dishwasher. The forks clank in protest.

  “You’re acting like a child.”

  I turn to face her. “That’s because technically I am a child.”

  I meet her eyes, which contain every possible emotion. I expect to see frustration and annoyance, but I see so much more. She looks almost angry, and that makes her look almost strong.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t see a movie,” I say. “I don’t get it.”

  “We can watch TV. We have popcorn.”

  I wipe my cheeks dry. “I want to go out.”

  “Get your bike, then.”

  “I hate your cancer!” My voice rises an octave with each word. I turn back around. This will be our last summer together, the last time she’ll be here when we come home from the last day of school. Just one instance in a long series of last occasions: last Fourth of July, last daylight savings, last birthdays.

  Mom is the only person who can be quieter than me.

  “I really hate it.” I throw a spoon into the dishwasher, but it hits the floor. I throw another one and then slam the dishwasher shut.

  She absorbs my tantrum. A minute passes before she leaves the kitchen without a word.

  I drove her to her room, probably for the rest of the day, now ruined.

  I’m alone with my chores, I think, as I wipe down the counter and kitchen table, sweeping the crumbs into the palm of my hand. I leave Mom’s mug of tea, still warm.

  An empty box from the clinic, once filled with vitamins and medication, blocks the entrance to the family room. I kick it aside, a little too hard. Consumed by the final weeks of school, we haven’t bothered to pick up after ourselves. Art supplies, a torn Twister mat, books, magazines, and at least two dozen records cover the family room floor. She is sick. She doesn’t feel well. She can’t help it, I remind myself as I slide the records into their assigned places, following Dad’s instructions: alphabetical order by the name of the band. Even with the albums and books returned to shelves, the room looks nothing like it once did, back when Mom organized piles of clutter. Now, water stains cover the end tables, overlapping concentric circles distorting the wood, which I cover with a fan of old Seventeen magazines.

  I look up when she clears her throat. Mom hugs her pillow, and car keys dangle from her hand.

  “I’d better drive,” she says. “You haven’t had enough practice.”

  “I thought you didn’t feel well enough,” I say.

  “I’ll manage. I can nap in the theater if I need to.”

  I’m being selfish. A baby. Already, she looks paler than just five minutes ago. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “It’s the last day of school. You’re right—we should celebrate.”

  She joins me in the family room, lowering herself onto the couch as though the soft cushion will somehow hurt. “You’re missing a lot because of me. I know you’re disappointed about music camp.” She runs her hand through my tangled hair, liberating knots. “I know how hard you work. I know what you do for me. I forget to thank you, sweetie.”

  I rest my head in her lap. “We don’t have to go.”

  “But I want to. You’re right, a movie shouldn’t be too taxing.”

  I wrap my arms around her, wanting to be as close as possible, anything to keep her next to me. I want to stop thinking of today, or any day, as being numbered, a cruel countdown.

  “I don’t care what we see,” I say.

  “Good, because I have it planned out. Now, please help me up.”

  We drive for twenty minutes, away from the border, leaving San Diego and heading toward the northern part of the county. Brush replaces grass as we follow the ocean. Her fingers circle the steering wheel, and her wedding ring glints in the sunlight. When we finally pull into the parking lot, she says, “Let’s save Bad News Bears for Marie. How does Carrie sound?”

  She knows I’ve been dying to see it, any horror movie where chaos and murder cancel class.

  We sit in the middle of the crowded theater. I realize that I haven’t seen a movie in months, since before Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving. Struggling to focus on the plot, I think more about the sound of her breathing. I drink a Coke as Mom sips a small 7-Up. I watch her more than the screen. She sits engrossed with the blood-soaked prom scene, raising the straw to her lips, swallowing slowly. All of her movements are delicate. I wonder if she’ll fall asleep, but the pillow remains in her lap.

  Last year, this would have been unremarkable. On a whim, usually when Dad was out of town, Mom would drive us to school, only to turn around midway and take us on a day trip to feed giraffes at the Wild Animal Park, ride roller coasters at Magic Mountain, or pick apples in Julian. Random and spontaneous and completely unexpected.

  We emerge from the theater, squinting in the bright sunlight. I’d forgotten it was still daytime. Mom drapes an arm around my shoulders, tucking her pillow under the other, and looks at me. “One more surprise,” she says.

  We drive with the radio turned up. Mom sings along, her voice quiet compared to the jangly guitar of a Beatles song. At one point, she reaches for my hand. I look at our overlapping fingers, how mine are longer than hers. Soon, I will be taller, all of my limbs longer than my mother’s, if she lives that long.

  I don’t ask where we’re going.

  I gaze out the window at the long stretch of beach, flanked by an endless concrete sea wall and strip malls. An ugly cousin compared to the hills near our house, perched above the ocean, covered with Torrey pines, their twisted branches distorted by decades of wind. Mom slows when we reach the modest pier, a shaky wooden structure that I expect to fall apart like pick-up sticks, planks tumbling into the cresting waves. She parks in front of the concession stand.

  “You pick,” she says. Clam strips or soft serve ice cream, our guilty pleasures. They serve the best ones here. Dad, Adrienne, and Marie insist that clams taste like deep-fried fingers. When running errands, just the two of us, Mom and I stop here. Like the movies, I haven’t been in months.

  “Can you eat more?” I ask, skeptical after the pizza.

  “I just want a bite. Come on, you love it as much as I do.”

  When Mom is happy, her Southern drawl emerges, elongating vowels, her words blending together. The voice of bedtime stories and lullabies—almost forgotten.

  I order one of each from the man who
has staffed the counter my entire life, regardless of the weather or height of the waves. Fishermen, he says, are always hungry.

  Mom accepts the cone, and I blow on the crispy clams, too hot to touch. She turns down the music. “Wait for me, Vanessa,” she says. “I’m trying. I’m scared too. Wait for me to feel better.”

  “You’re not going to get better,” I say.

  She doesn’t look away. “I’m not giving up, Nessie. We’ll have more days like this.”

  She nicknamed me Nessie when I was a baby, and used it until I came to her as a teary-eyed second-grader and begged her to stop. Adrienne had told me that my pet name was shared with the Loch Ness Monster, a name for nightmares and beasts. Mom couldn’t convince me otherwise, and she never said it again, not until now.

  “Just wait for me.”

  Three

  The boy stands in the shadow of a bougainvillea climbing the arch of the courtyard entrance. The sun diffuses through paper-thin leaves and casts a ruby hue on his Hawaiian print shirt and long, below-the-knee surfer shorts. It’s as though he stands in the center of a pink spotlight. He looks healthy, sunburned, and rosy cheeked like me. It isn’t until he steps through the entryway—away from the protection of the flowers—that I recognize he is one of them.

  In the clear light, he is sick and gray-skinned, with half-moon shadows the color of bruised plums under his eyes. He is one of the leukemia kids, his chemo buzz cut growing out like the jarheads sprung free from Camp Pendleton. He looks tall and older than me.

  Now that it’s summer, the sick kids avoid the outdoors. They wither in the heat. So we litter the courtyard with nail polish bottles, back issues of Seventeen and Tiger Beat, and beach towels. We don’t bother picking up.

  The sick guy leans against the wall as if waiting for a bus. He tries to act casual. He may have been cute before the cancer, but his patches of hair and zombie skin ruin him. I stretch my legs on the picnic bench and apply Coppertone to my bare shoulders.

  “You’re not allowed out here, sick-o,” Adrienne says. “Off limits. You’re trespassing. Go back inside and let the nurses take care of you.”

  He ignores her and glances around the courtyard. His eyes meet mine, but I look away and screw the cap back on the suntan lotion. My nose fills with the scent of creamy coconut.

  “What’s the big deal if I hang out here?” he asks.

  “You get the hospital. We get the courtyard. Comprende?” Adrienne says.

  Guadalupe hollers from an upstairs window. “Mijas, come up to visit your mamasita. She’s ready for you.”

  I stand and wipe dust off my clothes. I’m wearing my new shorts, the ones with the seam arching rainbow-style across my butt. All I want to do is stroll down Tijuana’s streets so I can turn heads and let my ears ring with whistles. Adrienne is teaching me how to walk like her, the girl everyone wants.

  “You better be gone when we get back,” Adrienne says to him.

  The three of us assemble a line, falling into rank according to age. Adrienne leads the way. Guadalupe cruises down the hall toward the one open door and waves us through. My mother rests with her back against several pillows, propped up with her eyes closed.

  “Iris,” Guadalupe says. “Iris, your girls are here.”

  My mother blinks three times, reminding me of one of my favorite shows, I Dream of Jeannie. She manages a hint of a smile and waves hello. “Gracias, Lupe,” she says. “What have you girls done today?”

  “Same as every fucking day,” Adrienne says.

  “Language, Adrienne. Please at least try. Sit down, girls. I need to talk to you.”

  Marie occupies the foot of Mom’s bed, and Adrienne and I plop down on the vacant one. Adrienne continues to flip through her magazine. Marie, tired from the heat and still young enough for an afternoon nap, yawns and stretches out on the mattress.

  “I talked to your father a little while ago,” Mom says.

  That gets Adrienne’s attention, and she tosses the magazine to the floor. “About what?”

  “Given that the FDA’s banned Laetrile in the States, a lot of people are coming to Mexico to treat their cancer. Most aren’t as lucky as we are, living in San Diego so close to the border. The clinic is getting calls from people all over the country. What do you think of having people stay with us? Not a lot, but on occasion? We’d be a safe house.”

  “Not in my bed,” Adrienne says.

  “You’d have to share rooms,” Mom says.

  “Why?” Adrienne narrows her eyes. “It’s bad enough we have to hang out here all the time. Now you want to bring them home with us? I can’t believe Dad said yes to this.”

  “Please stop,” Mom says before coughing. Her cough grows louder as it progresses.

  “Now look what you’ve done.” I climb off the bed to get water. I hand a plastic cup to Mom, who drinks, takes several deep breaths, drinks some more, and returns the cup to me.

  “This is important,” Mom says. “Even if you can’t see it, we’re very lucky. There’s a family who needs help right now. A teenage boy and his mom need a place to stay.”

  “Must be that guy outside,” Adrienne says to me.

  “You met Caleb?” Mom asks. “He’s seventeen. Dark hair. Lymphoma.”

  “We saw him,” I say. “How long do they have stay with us?”

  “Maybe a month or two. Then he’ll be back at the hospital so the doctor can monitor his cells. They might have to adjust therapies. We’ll talk if he needs more time by the start of school. Vanessa, you and Adrienne can share a room.”

  “But you’re sick,” Adrienne’s voice sounds sharp. “We can barely take care of you. How can we take care of more sick people?”

  “It would be nice to feel like I’m doing something for other people. Everyone at the clinic has been so good to us. When I met Barb, I wanted to help. She’ll take care of Caleb, and she promised to help with the house. I don’t want you girls to have to do everything. It should be easier with them there. Not harder. Your father agreed. Okay?”

  We all nod but Adrienne, who mutters something about the goddamned Von Trapp family meeting the Brady Bunch.Adrienne and Marie curl up next to each other on the spare gurney, napping. I agree with Adrienne—I can’t believe we are going to have to share our house, especially with someone as sick as Mom. This boy needs to understand how hard this is going to be for us. That Mom is really sick. Dying sick. He can have a room or two, but that’s it. I slip out the door and make my way back to the courtyard.

  He sits on the picnic table, pale skin baking in the heat. I want to walk over confidently like I’ve seen Adrienne do a hundred times. But all I can do is comb my hair with my fingers and slide a coat of bubblegum Bonne Bell on my lips. Caleb turns and looks my way.

  “So, are we roomies now?” he asks.

  “You knew who we were?”

  “It’s hard to miss three blond girls in Mexico.”

  “You should have said something, like, introduced yourself.”

  He doesn’t apologize. We’re feral, but at least we have manners.

  “You want to check out the beach?” He starts walking out of the courtyard.

  It’s less than a quarter of a mile to the ocean, an easy distance if you don’t have cancer. It is off limits, forbidden territory. Patients and their families are discouraged from straying from the clinic grounds. They warn us of armed robberies, kidnappings, unpredictable riptides, and hazardous currents. But Caleb keeps walking without looking back to see if I’ve made up my mind. I glance around the empty courtyard. It’s hot, that unbearable late afternoon hot. I follow.

  I catch up with him and we walk down the dirt road to the beach.

  “How long have you been coming here?” he asks.

  “Don’t you know everything about us, roomie?”

  “Not really. Just what your mom told mine.”

  “A few months,” I say.

  “Your mom’s not any better?” He sounds tense.

  “Worse.”
r />   “Where’s your dad?”

  I shrug and repeat what Mom always says when we ask her the same question. “Someone’s got to pay the hospital bills. He comes when he can, but his boss is a jerk.”

  “At least he stuck around. Mine bailed right after I got diagnosed.”

  Before I can respond, Caleb draws in his breath. We stand a few yards from the water.

  “You okay?” I look him over, top to bottom. He seems fine. A little pink, but that’s all.

  He nods. “The last couple of months have been really hard. Nothing’s worse than chemo. I used to surf and play water polo. You know, before. The best thing about Laetrile is moving closer to the beach.”

  When I look at him, I see a mixture of sickness and strength. Something about him makes me want to leave this place, to escape the clinic even just for a little while. Maybe Adrienne is wrong. Maybe it could be okay having them around. I nod. “Let’s go this way.” I point north toward Rosarito.

  We walk with our feet in the water. We talk about school and how no one understands what it’s like to be uprooted by illness. I tell him how I breezed through my final exams with the certainty of passing, of my teachers grading me with pity.

  “Until you got sick, did you know anyone with cancer?” I ask.

  He gazes at the ocean; the water swells beyond the waves. “My grandma. That’s it. Until I started chemo, I thought I was the only kid with cancer in Seattle. But now I see it everywhere.”

  “You look good,” I say. “Considering.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  Mortified, I stare at my feet. He looks a lot better than Mom. That’s all I meant, but this proves I’m completely incapable of having a normal exchange with anyone my own age, cancer or not. I feel stupid and start asking inane questions that adults always ask me. “What grade are you in?”

  He stops and sizes me up. No one has looked at me like that in months, not since Mom and Dad met with the principal and explained our family crisis and increasing absences. I’m not prepared—to answer his question or for the way he makes my heart pound twice as hard. We embark on a staring match. Indisputably, he used to be good-looking. Probably popular.