Page 27 of How to Walk Away

He ignored her. “She’d like to come see you,” he said to me, “but she doesn’t want to upset you or make any trouble. Can I tell her it’s okay?”

From his expression, he clearly expected me to sayfine. But I found myself shaking my head. The idea of some big, delayed, years-too-late confrontation with her felt like way too much right now. I couldn’t face it. I had enough going on. Even just thinking about seeing her again made me exhausted.

“Okay,” my dad said, nodding. “I get it. I’ll tell her you’re not ready.”

“Just tell her to go back to New York,” I said. “I won’t be ready anytime soon.”

My mother had that look she gets when she wants to yell at my dad, but she holds it in for the sake of the children. I did not envy his car ride home.

“Thank you for going to all this trouble to grab my stuff,” I said to cheer her a bit.

“No trouble,” she said, shrugging in a way that let me knowyes,it had been trouble, but that’s the kind of self-sacrificing mother she was.Also, she was going to make another trip later to bring her folding bridge chairs “so company would have a place to sit.”

“No company,” I said then. “I don’t want any visitors.”

My parents looked at each other. My estranged sister was one thing—butno visitors at all?

“A few close friends, at least?” my dad asked, in abe reasonabletone.

“No friends. No one.”

“Sweetheart,” my mother said. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook. The front hall table is covered in cards. People want to see you.”

It was my moment to reflect graciously on how kind it was of people to think of me. But I just said, “I don’t really care.”

“We can’t barricade the hospital,” my mother said.

But my dad said, “We might talk to the nurses. Say she’s not ready.”

My mom frowned. “But all the literature says not to let them get isolated.”

Oh, God. She’d been reading “the literature.” It was worse than I thought.

“I just need some time,” I said, trying to get her on my side.

Truer words were never spoken. If I had to make a list of things I wanted to see right now, old friends who would pity, judge, and gossip about me would be the last things on it. I didn’t want anyone else thinking the things I was thinking. I didn’t want anyone else privy to the specific horrors of my new situation. I did not want to be the topic of anyone’s phone chats, or get-togethers, or status updates. I didn’t want to be the reason other people counted their blessings.

I would see them—might—when and if I could do it of my own accord.

Which left my mother with nothing but decorating. After capitulating at last to the No Visitors policy, she made us both weigh in on whether or not the hospital might let her bring some floor lamps. Her next stop, she said, was Bed, Bath & Beyond for a tension curtain rod and some better window treatments. Maybe a throw pillow.

This was my mother’s method for loving people: through décor. Sheglared at the mauve-and-gray-swirled curtains as if they actually might try to harm us. “Doesn’t that fabric make you want to cry?”

I tilted my head. “I’m not sure it’s the fabric.”

“That fabric,” she went on, pointing at it now in accusation, “is a crime against humanity.”

My dad and I knew better than to argue. If my mother ruled the world, its prisons would be crammed full of nothing but citizens with bad taste.

***

AFTER THEY LEFT—taking the morning’s sad croissants to donate to the nurses’ station after I declared I’d never eat them—I decided to close my eyes for just a second, and I fell dead asleep. You wouldn’t think being confined to a bed would be so tiring.

I slept until my new occupational therapist, Priya, came in and wanted me to try to wiggle my toes. She also wanted to work on transferring from the bed to the wheelchair, saying the sooner I could get into the chair on my own, the sooner I could wheel myself to the bathroom—and the sooner I could dothat,the sooner we could remove my catheter to see if, God willing, I could pee on my own.

We practiced an extra transfer, just for good measure.

I kept expecting to see Chip. All day, every time the door swung open, I expected it to be him—carrying flowers, at least, and full of apologies and encouraging words. But he never did show up. Maybe he was still at his parents’ house, sleeping it all off. For his sake, I hoped so.

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