Her
tired, dark eyes open. She smiles when sees him. Her lips are chapped,
greyer than the rest of her face and chapped, but that smile is the
most beautiful sight he’s ever seen.
“Hey,” she husks, the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.
He
doesn’t want to cry, doesn’t want to alarm her, make her worry, ‘cause
she’s his mom, but he can’t hold it in anymore, can’t stop tears that
scald the backs of his eyes and then his cheeks and oh, God, please
don’t take her, please? Take anyone in the world, but not her, not my mom?
“My poor baby. . . .” she croaks. Croaks and husks are all that’s left of her voice. “My sad, lost boy.”
“Mommy.” He wants to hug her, but she looks so small, so weak, so - breakable.
As if she senses that, she opens her thin arms and gestures him closer. “Come ‘ere.”
“I
don’t wanna hurt you,” he murmurs into her neck, already curled up in
her arms, laying next to her. She smells like illness and rubbing
alcohol. Hospital smells. He knows these smells very well.
“Nah. . . you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” Her hugs are as strong as ever. Stronger, even.
“Hush,
baby, it’s alright.” He doesn’t even realize he’s sobbing until she
says that. The same words she’d said to him at Aunt Jenny’s funeral
five years ago, then again, two years later, when she was first
diagnosed.
He knows she’s lying to comfort him, though he suspects she’s comforting herself, as well.
“My
sweet boy. . . I haven’t been a good mother to you, I know. Always
holding you too close or pushing you away. . . when I get better again,
things’ll be different. We’ll leave Oxnard, leave Tony. . . adios! And I’ll take you to England. You have family there, you know?”
He nods once, afraid that if he opens his traitor mouth, all that’ll come out is sobbing.
“When
I’m better. . . we’ll go there.” Her voice sounds slurred and dreamy.
Yay! for the morphine drip because he hates this part.
“And. . . we’ll find your father.. . we’ll live in his big house in London, with your older brother.”
“William,”
he whispers, cursing the tumor that’s liquefying her brain. Almost
worse than the fact of her death - and he’s twelve, old enough to know
what dying looks like - is the damn-fucking-tumor that makes
her dream up stupid things like his imaginary English father and
brother, and the happy life waiting for them in London.
Yeah. . . he’s old enough, now. He knows that the only life left for her is the afterlife. And when she’s gone -
- when she’s gone, it’ll just be him and his real father.
“Momma?”
“Xan. . . .” Her arms around him are slackening. She’ll be asleep, soon.
“Tell me more about England and William and - dad.”
“Big house. . . in London. . . and. . . and -”
“We’ll live there with my him and my big b-brother?”
“Yeah. . . you'll go to - a fancy school. . . you’re so smart. . . .”
"Lost"
"Father"
"Son"
"Prodigal"
"Mother"
"The Ballad of Spike and Angel"
"The True Meaning of Family"
"Each Day Is Valentine’s Day"
"The First Move"