“Andy, I’m not a missionary. I’m a shrink.”

“I didn’t think the Vatican let you compartmentalize,” I say, laughing. “See, I have been paying attention. I’m getting pretty facile with the lingo, huh?”

“So does being an atheist bother you?” he asks.

“Aha! See! I knew you’d get around to converting me! A leopard doesn’t change its spots!” I say, satisfied.

“Sorry, pal. It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in God or Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. But I’ve got this funny feeling it matters to you.”

“Think you know me pretty well, don’t you?”

“I’m beginning to,” he says.

“Maybe you are,” I concede. “But you’re wrong about this one. I’m not an atheist.”

“So you do believe?”

“I suppose.”

“What do you believe in?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just hedging my bets. Maybe I’m too much of a coward to make a commitment to heresy. I mean, maybe there is an Almighty Being and maybe there is a Saint Peter and I don’t want to get turned away at the Pearly Gates because I made the stupid mistake of thinking there isn’t a God.”

“Covering all your bases, huh?”

“Right. Anything wrong with that?”

“Not necessarily.”

“It’s not all about me, you know.”

Matt sits quietly, knowing where I’m headed.

“What if there aren’t any medical miracles? What happens to my mother if she dies? I’d rather think of her flying around heaven with a harp than lying in a box in the ground.”

“So you’re saying your mother is the reason you haven’t quite given up on God?”

“She’s one of the reasons.”

“Do you want to talk about your mother? About how you feel about this bad news?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to think about it. I haven’t thought about anything else. I just can’t think about it anymore. At least not now. And you’re right. Maybe it’s not worth thinking about at all. Maybe there’s a little bit of God in modern medicine after all. Maybe this time next year everything will be back to normal.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Tell you about what?”

“Tell me what it’s going to be like when everything’s back to normal.”

Goddamn it. This priest sure has a talent for stumping me.

Back to…what?

A Saturday night date with my mother at the club, then sleeping late in the morning while she putters in the kitchen, whipping up my favorite Sunday dinner?

Possible…but not normal.

Crawling into bed and drifting off to sleep while Alice rustles the pages of her novel?

Normal…but not possible.

“Andy, I think under the circumstances you need to concentrate on the present and not worry about the future. You need to focus on the positive to help you deal with the negative.”

“The positive?” I sneer.

“You’re a very lucky man, my friend.”

I snort, laughing.

“It almost makes me angry, your willful refusal to acknowledge what you have,” he says, his voice more measured than his words.

“And what would that be? A fat frequent flyer miles bank?”

“The knowledge that you are unconditionally loved. That’s a gift not everyone is given.”

“And now she’s gonna die.”

“That doesn’t die with her. That you will keep for as long as you live.”

I’m not taking a chance.

We’re going to get through this, Mama, if it’s the last thing we do.

The Most Beautiful Girl

It came disguised as a birthday present, but I know it’s really penance, an offering, a bone to throw at the guilt that occasionally pricks the seamless rounds of closings, meetings, parties, tennis matches, all the comfortable routines of my sister’s life. She’s convinced herself that the distance between Charlotte and south Florida justifies why I’ve had to assume full responsibility for these endless rounds of hospitals and medical office buildings. She’s willfully, blissfully ignorant of the six daily nonstop flights from West Palm. It’s probably just as well. Patience is not one of my sister’s virtues. To her, a waiting room is where people cool their heels until she is ready to receive them. She’d never be able to tolerate the slow drip of hours spent flipping through ancient copies of Newsweek and Good Housekeeping. Time doesn’t exist in a doctor’s waiting room, four beige walls and no window. It feels perfectly natural to study a recipe for the Perfect Plum Pudding for Your Holiday Table months after the twinkle lights have been packed away and the tree hauled away by the trash man.

“Mrs. Nocera, why don’t you step this way.”

I handed my mother over to the nurse and settled back to wait while they pumped her bloodstream full of chemicals. Later, at home, I’ll ask her how she feels. Fine, she’ll say, when I can see she’s doubled over with nausea. I’ll pour her some flat ginger ale and she’ll smoke a cigarette, saying it settles her stomach. My sister will call and my mother, exhausted, will try to sound interested in her tales. Then Regina will ask to speak to me and start haranguing, asking me the prognosis. I’ll tell her I don’t know. It’s true. I’ve never asked. My sister needs something more definitive; she uses medical terms she doesn’t understand like age-adjusted mortality and morbidity rates, primary and contributory diagnosis and cancer clusters, words she’s picked up from the Internet. I tell her all of this doctor bullshit is nothing but educated guesses, something on which to base false hopes and unrealistic expectations. She needs to pick up the phone and call the oncologist if she’s not satisfied with my reports from the field. Frustrated, she’ll swear at me and slam the receiver in the cradle.

I’d brought the mail along, intending to pay household bills while I waited. My name was scrawled on one of the envelopes. I knew it was from Regina by the Florida postmark. It was just a birthday card, but I turned it over and over in my hands as if it were something rare and precious. Which, as the first piece of mail I’d received in months without the return address of a law firm, it was.

She’s working hard, my sister, at trying to accept me. The last connection between us may be dying and she’s afraid of losing her history once our mother is gone. Or maybe I’m just a bitter pill she has to swallow until Mama is six feet under and no longer needs care and attention. It could be she’s doing it to spite her husband. Maybe she’s preparing for the inevitable and using me as a dress rehearsal for the day her younger son comes to her in tears, terrified of rejection, with something he can’t keep inside anymore, something he has to tell her.

I don’t know why, but she’s trying. It’s just that it’s hard to talk about. Gestures, even clumsy ones like this, are easier. She’d taken a long time choosing the card, not knowing what I’d like, realizing she doesn’t really know anything about me anymore. She remembers how I wailed and cried when she broke my Superman milk glass and how proud I was the day I finally figured out all the chords of “I’m a Believer” on my ten-dollar guitar. But it’s been twenty years since she could tell you Colossal Boy was my favorite Legionnaire, followed by Lightning Lad and Timber Wolf. She doesn’t know that Karloff and Lugosi had been replaced by De Niro and Pacino and that now, approaching middle age, Clint Eastwood’s the only actor whose movies I never miss. If you asked her my favorite Beatle, she’d still get that one right. I’ve stayed loyal to George through a lifetime. But my obsession with Billy Davenport died many years ago and I don’t like peanut butter cups anymore and competitive swimming cured me of my morbid fear of anyone seeing my bare feet. She’d barely recognize the boy she knew so well in the man I am today. We’re strangers who once shared the same last name.

So she settled on something mildly risqué, probably bought two of the same card, one for me and one to titillate her overweight receptionist on her fortieth birthday. The messenger boy was chiseled down to his little toe, wearing nothing but a discreetly positioned beach ball. The Hallmark inscription said, “It’s your Birthday! Have a Ball!” and the handwritten greeting from my sister said, “…on the beaches of Oahu. This card is good for one free first-class ticket to Honolulu. Love, Regina.” The sweet old lady sitting across from me giggled, amused by the card.