This area still has a little bit of old New York to it. There's no suburban sprawl. The houses are small and at least thirty years old, and there's still a sense of community.
There's a deli, a diner, a bar, and a pompom-and-pop grocery store, and a few clothing stores. There are a lot of elderly people who live here, because they can still take the bus or walk to get their groceries and their medications at the local pharmacy.
I run past the bakery, and the smell of fresh bread knocks me back for a moment. I feel around in my jacket and notice that I have brought my wallet.
I'll make a stop here on the way back, but for now I'll just continue to run. I run fast.
I'm not a very good runner, and my side quickly begins to ache. I'm probably breathing all wrong, but my legs still feel good. I like the gust of wind that knocks itself into me, and I like watching my breath make little puffs all around me as I exhale.
Finally, when my lungs feel like they're on fire, I stop, fold in half, and try to catch my breath.
What am I going to do?
Where am I going to get a quarter of a million dollars? I ask myself, shaking my head.
I mean, that's the kind of money that ... Who the hell even has that kind of money?
I try to think of everyone I know. Allison is at the top of the list. The most that I could probably borrow from her is $10,000, but it would be from her credit line and she'd need it back at a high interest rate, mostly because she has a tendency to forget to make payments, and her credit is shot.
If not Allison, then who? I run names in my head as if I'm going through a Rolodex one after the other.
Unfortunately, when you're poor, you happen to only know other poor people, and even if I were to meet a rich person, what would I do? Ask them if I can borrow this money just out of the blue?
What about charities? I say to myself. There are charities that help people. Well, unfortunately as a journalist, I've reported on some for school projects and I discovered that charities have a lot of overhead to pay their employees, however meagerly, so that seems like an unlikely option.
The few medical charities that I have heard about and read about will do things like pay for hospice care and a nurse just in the last months of someone's life, not invest a quarter of a million dollars into an experimental treatment that may or may not work.
I run back home and on the way, stop at the bakery. I buy two loaves of French bread along with some muffins and a bag of bagels. Food has always been the place I turn to when I am in pain.
When Dad was gambling, we lost all of our money and a moving truck came to repossess our furniture.
When Michael died.
Almost every time I've had any sort of breakup.
Unlike my mom, I don't turn to exercise naturally.
I'm more self-destructive than that.
That probably explains why I've been going to Redemption.
When I get back home, I put the baked goods on the dining table and make myself a strong cup of coffee.
I've slept maybe two hours the whole night, and whatever energy jolt I experienced earlier has all but disappeared. Now, I feel like I'm completely drained.
"Oh, wow. Look at all this," Mom says, coming into the kitchen, waking me up.
I raise my head up and feel a strong crick in my neck that suddenly spasms. It's a few hours later because the sun is now streaming in through the window, and I realize that I must have fallen asleep on my arms right here while I was waiting for the coffee to heat up.
"When did you get all this?"
"Oh, I went on a run earlier. Stopped by the bakery."
I move my neck from side to side, trying to work out the pain, but it just gets worse.
A moment later, my neck has completely stiffened and I have to move my whole body around just to turn and look behind me.
"Come here.” She points and sets me down in the chair and begins to rub my neck gently.
After a few minutes, the spasm relaxes.
Her massage gets more intense and my neck starts to feel infinitely better.
"Thanks for getting all of this, but you know how I am with white flour. It's not good for me,” she says sweetly.
I nod.
She’s wearing the same robe and the silk pajamas from last night, along with some sort of mask on her face that's blue in color and yogurt-like in consistency.
Suddenly, I want to cry. She has always been so good about taking care of herself, making sure that she drinks enough water and she eats only healthy food, and that's why her face looks like she is at least fifteen years younger than she is without any fillers or Botox.
And yet she's the one who is sick.
She's the one that has been sick for as long as I can remember.
First, it was the chronic disease, the mold, and then the cancer diagnosis. It went into remission and then was back again, back in remission, and now it's more aggressive than ever.
"You have to get this treatment," I say. "I don't care if I have to rob a bank, but we're going to do this."
She's surprised by my tenacity and the determination in my face.
"Okay," she says after a brief pause.
"I'm going to figure it out, and I'll tell you what happens, but you fill out this paperwork and you tell them that we have the money and that we're going through with it as soon as possible."
She reaches over, grabs me, wrapping her arms tightly around my shoulders.
Suddenly she begins to sob.
I think she needed this. I think she needed for me to step up to the plate and not always be her child, but to take action for once.
I hold her as tears roll down my cheeks, and we both sob and I try to figure out how the hell I'm going to make this happen.
11
Jacqueline
I can't believe that this is actually happening. I put my head on the steering wheel resting briefly. When the light turns green, I continue to stare straight ahead even when the asshole behind me leans into his horn.
“I'm going. I'm going, okay?” I roll down the window to gesture to him but he already drives around my used Toyota Corolla with a dented front side and flips me off.
I don't care. I'm upset, not about him, but something else. I can't believe this is happening.
I press on the accelerator and drive and get onto the first exit going onto the highway. I do this sometimes to clear my head.
I drive nowhere, in particular, just to be alone with my thoughts.
I turn on the radio going through the channels and nothing strikes and keeps my interest. When I pass a few exits, I flip on my phone and start to blast 90s, No Doubt.
This is the music that I grew up with and this is what I listened to long after it was no longer popular. I thrash around and sing along at the top of my lungs. And then I put on Aerosmith’s “Cryin’”, also from the 90s, and then some earlier stuff from the 70s.
I feel a little bit better, a bit more empowered, but the cracks quickly begin to show when I pull off the exit and head into a gas station for snacks.
I'm just wasting time. I'm just trying to make sense of something that makes no sense at all before I have to go back home and deal with life there.
How did this happen?
How did my life get so fucked up so quickly?
I grab a pack of M&M's and a bottle of water and get back in my car, into my fortress of solitude. This is where the world isn't loud and obnoxious, but quiet. This car is over six years old and I'm its third or fourth owner but it's all mine, with the loan paid off and everything, which means that I'm not likely to lose it unless someone crashes into me.