“Nothing much,” I said to Jill. “I’m still at Steve’s. Still living with Lauren. You know, same as last month.”
“I don’t know how you do it, working at that tattoo store.”
“Tattoo parlor,” I corrected her.
“Right. Parlor. It’s just—all those needles, the blood. I wouldn’t last a minute. Surely there must be something else you can do with your talents.”
The man with the cigarettes stood up. He wiped his hands on his pants and walked down Thayer Street. A girl, coming from the opposite direction, sped up her pace to meet him. When they reached each other, they embraced, and the girl snagged his cigarette with a laugh. He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek as she took a drag.
I turned away, facing the bar again. He’d been harmless, of course—just someone waiting for his girlfriend to arrive. Lauren always told me I was paranoid, that the things that ran through my head on any given Tuesday could be lifted straight from the script of a Lifetime Original Movie. The ones where women are always at risk, and men, though beautiful and benign to the untrained eye, are always, inevitably, monsters.
“The needles and blood are no big deal,” I said to Jill. “You get used to it.”
“Okay,” Jill said. “So are you just used to it, then, or do you actually like tattooing?”
“I like it,” I lied, because it was easier than explaining the truth.
“Okay. Well, listen, Sylvie,” Jill said, her tone suddenly shifting. “I know this isn’t the best time for this. You’re celebrating right now, I’m sure. But can we make some time to talk tomorrow? There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
There was an edge to her voice that I hadn’t heard in years. For the first time since I’d walked outside, I registered the cool October air on my skin.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is it something about Persephone?”
“It’s—what? No. Nothing like that.” I could hear her, probably in her kitchen in Connecticut, sighing.
Sixteen years after my sister’s murder, the case was as cold as her body must have been that night. But there were still days when I found myself hoping for some kind of news, some fresh lead that had come to light, some witness that hadn’t found the courage to speak, until now. Never mind that it had happened on a street without many houses. Never mind that the snow had compromised the crime scene, made the chance of finding DNA evidence or fibers of clothing nearly nonexistent. After all those years, I’d never stopped waiting.
“Is it Missy, then? Something wrong with the baby?”
“No,” Jill said. “No, no. She and Carl just went for an ultrasound last week actually. The baby’s doing great. It’s . . . about your mother actually.”
A group of wobbly, laughing girls spilled out of the bar, and the sudden flare of music felt like a punch in the stomach.
“Listen,” Jill said, “I can hear that you’re busy. Let’s just—”
“No,” I interrupted, walking a few yards down the street. “It’s okay. I can hear you. Just tell me.”
I waited as Jill inhaled on the other end of the phone. Even with the muffled sounds of the bar surrounding me, I could still hear her slow, deliberate breath. I put my hand on the arm of a sidewalk bench.
“I’ve been taking your mother to a few doctor’s appointments lately,” Jill said. “She’s been getting treated for what they thought was just acid reflux. But . . . well, new test results came back today, and it’s . . . cancer. Esophageal cancer. I’m so sorry, Sylvie.”
My fingers tightened on the bench’s metal arm.
“Is that the one you get from drinking a lot?” I asked.
In the pause that followed, I could tell that Jill was surprised by my question. But what surprised me was that she hadn’t been calling to tell me my mother was dead. In the months after Persephone was murdered, how many times had Jill and I pressed our ears against Mom’s bedroom door, listening for some sound of life inside? How many times had I picked her lock, only to creak open the door and find her lying the way I imagined that people in coffins did? At a certain point—when our pleas did nothing, when the bottles continued to pile up in the sink, when the meals we made her never made it to her lips—I’d stopped seeing her as a withered plant that could be watered and sunshined back to life. Instead, I’d started seeing the sagging stem of her spine for what it was: a sign that death was rooted within her.
“Uh, yes,” Jill said. “Well, that’s not the only cause of it, but . . . alcoholism can definitely be a factor.”
My heart contracted. I tried to imagine my mother’s face as the doctor told her the news, but whether her expression was one of fear or anxiety or relief, I couldn’t tell; in my mind, she kept looking away.
“How long does she have?” I asked.
Again, there was a pause from Jill’s end.
“She’s starting chemo next week,” she said. “Then, depending on how that goes, there might be another round before, hopefully, she can have surgery.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
“It’s not a death sentence just yet, Sylvie. But, I’ll be honest—it doesn’t look good.”
I nodded, staring at the goose bumps that had risen to the surface of my skin. I wanted a sweater. I wanted my blankets and pillows. I wanted to crawl into bed.
“I’m going to be staying with her during the treatment,” Jill continued, “in her house. But if you want to stop by sometime soon, that would be great. I’m sure she’d be happy to see you.”
I heard, more than felt, myself chuckle. “No, she wouldn’t,” I said, and I loved Jill then for not trying to argue otherwise.
“Well,” she said. “You should get back to your night. I’m sorry about the terrible timing, but I didn’t want to wait too long to tell you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m glad you told me.”
“Let’s talk more about this soon, okay? Will you call me if you have any questions?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, Sylvie. Good night. Happy birthday.”
In her last few words, there was a tinge of sadness that I knew was more than grief about my mother. I should have said more to her, asked her more questions—the whole conversation was over so quickly—and yet, it was exhausting trying to be what Aunt Jill expected of me. I couldn’t pretend that, just by turning thirty, I was old enough now to have outgrown my feelings of motherlessness.
I knew that Jill understood, on some level, what those years had been like for me, but she hadn’t lived them like I’d lived them. She couldn’t know the ache of remembering how my mother didn’t fight for me that first year, when Jill had declared that until Mom got her act together, I would stay with her and Missy. She never tried to get me back, never contacted Jill to see how I was doing. Every Sunday, when Jill and Missy and I went back to the house to check on her, stocking her cabinets with groceries and toiletries that Jill had bought with her own money, Mom cracked open her door, asked in a paper-thin voice if we’d brought any booze, and then shut us out again when we told her, our arms firmly crossed, no—no, we had not. “Well then what the hell did you come here for?” she yelled, a phrase that still jostled me out of sleep sometimes.