Page 103 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

My extremely introverted and cerebral father has always existed in sharp contrast to my extroverted, gregarious mother. I remember road trips to the Sleeping Bear Dunes where my mom spoke for hours on end as my dad received her words without response. Once, I followed him into the gas station and found him standing in front of a wall of Gatorades with his eyes closed. When I asked if he was sick, he responded, “No, sweetie, it’s just…your mom’s a verbal processor. That’s all.”

I’ve never viewed my parents’ marriage as a bad one, just one that has never made sense to me. I always assumed he was retreating to his study to escape his chatty wife and two loud daughters, but now that he’s an empty nester, I can see it’s who he is. My dad has always felt more comfortable in the quiet refuge of a book, where my mom only reads enough to get invited back to her many book clubs.

“How did the ultrasound go?” she asks.

“Fine,” I answer.

“Did the cyst go away?”

I throw my head back against the overstuffed chocolate-brown couch cushion. My parents last invested in home decor in 2005, so the aesthetic of the seventies split-level is Midwest Tuscan, all oversized brown furniture and red accents. My eyes rest on the faded, color-washed walls my parents painted themselves with yellow-gold paint, a wet rag, and a rerun of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

“I rue the day I told you about the cyst.”

“Well, did it?”

“Yes. My ovaries look perfectly ordinary,” I answer, irritation burning a hole in my throat.

“Why is my love and concern for you so annoying?”

I clench the brick-red pillow on my lap. “Because BRCA’s the only thing we talk about.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not that bad. I don’t think you realize how much I worry about you. I passed this mutation on to you. I just want to make sure nothing bad happens because of it.”

I watch her braid the tassels on the throw blanket over our legs. I’ve spent so much time imagining how testing negative for the BRCA mutation would have released me of guilt that I’ve never considered the guilt my diagnosis pressed into my mother’s chest. She’s as desperate to alleviate misplaced feelings as I am, but instead of forced hikes and ill-conceived camping trips, she’s ensuring I’m attending appointments and scheduling procedures. My mom, Adam, Rachel, Sam, we’re all powerless against guilt.

“At my last visit, I asked her about the article you sent—the fallopian tube removal. She agreed it’s a good option for me, but I have to take these steps on my timeline. No one else’s. I can promise I’ll take care of myself, but I need to be able to talk to you like my mom. Not my genetic counselor.”

As she nods, her face stiffens like she’s working to hide an emotion from me. “I didn’t realize we were talking about it that much. I only want to know what you’re thinking. It’s like pulling teeth with you sometimes.”

“Yeah, I’m realizing I don’t like discussing how to avoid cancer with you, of all people.”

“Why me ‘of all people’?”

“Because you had to actually survive cancer so I could skip it.”

“You think you skipped cancer? Like you overslept and…” She flicks her hand like she’s brushing something out of her way. “Missed it?”

“Not like that.”

“Explain it to me then.”

I turn toward her on the couch, perched on my crossed legs. “I have this mutation, and because of it, I was supposed to get cancer. In an alternate timeline, we don’t know I have the gene yet, and—”

“Alternate timeline? Is this like a Marvel thing? You know I can’t pay attention to those movies.”

“No, but, absent medical intervention, our bodies were supposed to get cancer. Yours did, and you fought for your second chance. You had to suffer through chemo. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t lose anything. Why do I get to cheat cancer when you couldn’t?”

“You didn’t lose anything? Honey, you lost your breasts. You will lose your ovaries. In an alternate timeline, we’ve figured out a way to keep you healthy that doesn’t involve removing body parts.” She reaches for my hand across the couch, her familiar gold rings cold against my knuckles.

“I’m working through it with Denise, but I’ve been overwhelmed by this feeling that I’m not deserving. Like my life isn’t big enough to justify what I’ve been given. I can’t quite explain it yet.”

She fusses with one of my rogue curls, unable to help herself. “No, I think I know what you mean. You know the breast cancer support group I went to? I swear to you, I had the best prognosis of the bunch. I felt like such a jerk every time I talked about my fears or the treatments when the Stage Four women had no idea what was happening next. One of them was even a little younger than you. She’d just had a baby when she was diagnosed. I remember thinking that she was really fighting for her life, while I was just…I don’t even remember what I thought I was doing. I only remember feeling so guilty that I was going to live when some of those women weren’t.”

She shifts on the couch, settling in. “You know how your dad went back to school? I was the one who first wanted to go back to school. I was going to get an MFA and write the next Great American Novel like I’d always said I would back when I was getting my teaching certificate.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to write.”

“Ugh. I don’t. I barely like reading—it’s all too solitary—but in the back of my brain there was this thought spinning round and round. What if the cancer comes back? What if this is your only chance? What if it comes back because you didn’t do this? But you know what was so much more terrifying than owing a debt to the universe? Realizing it’s all random. And that’s the truth, there’s nothing to pay or prove. We’re all just living.”

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